“Stop. That is an order, Zennar.”
He halted, but did not turn to look at her. How she wished she could have her window to his mind again; to feel his emotions as she had before.
“Why did you come to me?”
“I wanted to make sure you were still alive after that idiotic jump.”
She sighed with exasperation. “Thank you for your concern, but you know that is not what I meant. What is it that is so wrong?”
He half turned his face, so that she could see his profile. “I wish you would stop this pretence of ignorance.”
“What pretence?”
Morghiad turned fully, so that his glittering eyes settled on her with an intensity that was not altogether pleasant. It caused the shadow crawler to growl in the depths of her mind. “You know exactly who I am, my lady. You have always known. And yet you persist in treating me as if I might become your lover and you flaunt yourself before me. It is disgusting! Is
that considered normal amongst your kin? But I’ll tell you this now – I will not be an insect to your hive, and I will not be conditioned or moulded by you into one of them.” A look of anger so intense that it threatened to waste the trees around him spread across his features, and he turned once more to leave. “No weaknesses visible,” he muttered as he left.
Artemi did not pursue him this time. It was not possible, surely, that he knew about his previous life? He was far too sensible to have met with his memories this young. And surely he would have mentioned something about their marriage, or even offered an explanation for his actions twenty years before. And why would he have found the thought of her so revolting? He had loved her, hadn’t he? Or had she imagined the entire marriage was something far more perfect than it really was? She dropped to the ground in deep thought, quite insensitive to the nettles beneath her. None of this made any sense!
It took some hours before she found the strength to clamber to her feet and onward to the top of the cascades. When she reached their upper heights, however, she found The Hunter sat cross-legged beside her belongings.
“Worth the wait,” he said, grinning.
She said nothing, and instead set about re-clothing herself.
His smirk only widened further. “I didn’t sniff your breeches, honest.”
“That was very restrained of you.”
“Wasn’t it?” He tilted his head. “Is something wrong, Tem?”
She nodded. “I think you know with whom. He is impenetrable.”
The Hunter raised a pale eyebrow. “It’s usually you who is
guilty of that particular trait. Is he making you unhappy?”
Distraught. Although the joy she felt at his being alive at all still burned within her. “I am confused. He speaks as if he knows he was once The Morghiad, and yet he does not.”
The Kusuru rubbed at his jaw for a moment and gazed across the steam of the falls. “A partial recall never happens – at least not that I know of. It’s all or nothing.”
She nodded in agreement. “He said the words: ‘No weaknesses visible.’ It was quiet, but I’m sure I heard him say it.”
“Did you teach him those words?”
“No! And I do not know how he could have picked them up. Don’t you think that is odd?”
“He could have heard you say them in your sleep. But perhaps he has remembered a part of his last life. Maybe he is the exception. If it happened early on, it may have affected his mind. Do you know which parts he might remember?”
Artemi finished lacing her bodice and shrugged. “He only said that I should stop pretending I did not know who he was, and that it was wrong and disgusting for us to engage in any sort of relationship.”
The Hunter’s brow knitted instantaneously. “Eh?”
“I do not entirely understand it either. Unless – perhaps he was not content at the end. He could well have fallen out of love with me. Perhaps he hid that from me, too.”
“Don’t be stupid, Fireblade.”
“He volunteered to die.”
“To save you, fool!” he spat. “If he has remembered, and his feelings toward you are negative, then it probably means he’s reverted to the mad, bad king I met and he thinks
you’re Mirel. Seduce him. Fix him. Anyway, enough of this. You need to know something else about your squad.”
She was too stunned to think of much else but the horror of the possibility of the madness returning. “Oh?”
Tallyn Hunter stood. “We found Seffe lying with Demeta last night. Will this be an issue for you?”
She drew her mouth into a thin line, and tied on the last of her blades. “At least someone is having some fun. As long as it does not get in the way of their fighting, there is no reason why I
should stop it. That would be somewhat hypocritical, would it not?”
Her old friend smiled. “Not a century ago, you would have spanked their behinds and sent them away to think about their lack of discipline.”
“Alright, Tal - I know I’m soft! But I cannot keep Morghiad around and then tell others they may not do the same.”
“Have you considered leaving him at the castle? Think what you would have told yourself to do before.”
“I didn’t know before! It would be like leaving my right arm behind, or my head, or all of my swords. I cannot
allow him out of my supervision, not after what happened. Even if he is difficult, and especially if he is... what you say. Everyone understands that, surely?”
The Hunter’s dark features softened. “Of course they do. He is a fighter and so are you. But do you really think this thing between Seffe and Demeta will be the same? Do you think she will be his right arm and he her blades?”
It did seem an unlikely pairing, and Seffe Forllan was not known to be especially sentimental. Then again, her husband had once appeared impossibly cold and emotionless, whereas the truth of his nature was something altogether different. “I will talk to them. In the meantime, I think we should head back to Gialdin for a short break and to see how things are running without me. We’ve been out here for long enough.”
“A good idea. Will we be taking a detour through Jesundh and paying a visit to its misbehaving mayor on the way?”
“We most certainly shall.” Artemi grinned. “I’ve wanted a word with him for some time.”
Silar sat forward in disbelief. Before him, wrapped in a surprisingly sheer impression of Kusuru Assassin garb, was his former queen. As she had done so often before, she swung both legs onto her old desk and sat there like the most arrogant, or possibly impudent, of soldiers. How he had missed that! Four months, it had been; four, damned, messy months of fiddly administration and dull documentkeeping and sour-faced glances from the youngest Jade’an. Silar still felt responsible for the boy, except he was now responsible for ensuring that the eldest son did not get himself killed in other ways. And throughout there had been no Artemi to smile at him or speak in that calming voice of hers. It had been harder than he had predicted. Damn his brain for seeing the ends of the journey and not the trials
themselves! “And he did nothing? Absolutely nothing?” The general was aware that the face he was pulling would cause some amusement.
Artemi giggled, but her features soon straightened. “No. He said he found me repulsive. Tallyn Hunter suggested that he might be reliving his memories of his madness, somehow. But I’m not sure.”
“So you asked him if he thought your name was really Mirel?”
She nodded. “I did not mention her name, but I asked if he thought I was pretending to be someone else, if he thought I was not Artemi. His reply
was peculiar. He said that was not my pretence to the world and that I knew it. I couldn’t get any more out of him than that. ”
Silar paced the room a second time. “Something is very wrong.”
She harrumphed. “That’s what he said. Do you think my having children has put him off? After all, some men do not like the idea-”
“No, Temi. Somewhere h
e knows they’re his.” Somewhere in that horrible chaos of a mind. “And you were naked?”
“What? Yes! Does that matter? This body has seen a few battles. I
didn’t think it was that horrifying to look at, but I’m not exactly a work of art without clothes!”
The general guffawed. Now was not the time to be thinking about her undressed form. He scrubbed the image from his mind, but it was too late. Already his visions were filling with possibilities that would have made the most free-thinking men in the world blush. He tried to apply some discipline, and succeeded to a small degree by recalling his memory of that disturbing woman of the rotting timbers. She was far easier to push from his thoughts.
There was no doubt that the old Morghiad would only ever have hesitated out of shyness, but even that would not have stopped him from taking what he wanted in the end. No, something they had not accounted for was causing this particular problem, and it made Silar’s skin itch. He was sure, though he could not have said why, that Morghiad’s distaste for Artemi had other, wider-reaching implications that were not good. “Something in this life,” he murmured.
“We have tried to explore that before. All we’ve found are inaccessible memories of this Felis
Hasarde and a piece of metal and evasive answers from Master-BloodyZennar himself.”
Dead ends. Whoever heard of a vanha-sielu who could not remember specific details? Their very definition ought to have implied that they were bloody world-leaders at remembering things. “But we must consider that something he knows in this life has made him dislike you, something he thinks you are aware of.”
Artemi withdrew her legs from the table and sat forward. “I was queen. Any order I gave during that time could have caused him upset.”
“But someone kept him a secret from you for the first nineteen years of his life. Intentionally.”
“So you think they could have poisoned him against me? And, if so, why? What could it possibly gain them if they are not Mirel?”
Toryn D’Avrohan would certainly have had his reasons for keeping them apart, Seffe would have done it out of bloody-mindedness and The Hunter had very strong ideas about Artemi’s role in the future. But Talia’s death discounted each of them entirely. Whoever had done this clearly had a heart of stone, and given that,
would likely have had worse things in mind for Morghiad’s role than in simply rejecting Artemi. “We have to put him in a cell.”
“What? Because he refused me? That is hardly warranted!”
The general shook his head. “Morghiad is a loose blade, and I do not like the direction in which his sharp edge is pointing.”
“He was under my supervision for the entirety of our last adventure. He has a good heart under all that mess. He has done nothing to arouse that sort of suspicion!”
“And where is he now?”
She shrugged. “Having some well-deserved time off. Didn’t you put your shadows on him again?”
He had, but the more he thought about them, the more he had a growing feeling that something had happened to them. “We need to find him. Now.”
Artemi’s eyes were wide, but she nodded in a fearful acquiescence. “I’ll go.” With that, she all but sprang from her chair and sprinted out of the offices. The air barely moved for her smooth transition through it. Bloody blazes! Silar shook his head, and began his first round of yelling orders at the nearest set of guards. It was not long
before the unwelcome figure of The Hunter trotted into his path.
“Lord-General. What is all the commotion about?”
“Morghiad is at large. Help us fi-” Silar’s eyes happened upon something about the Kusuru’s clothing. A slim, red silk scarf wound about his waist. He had not paid any attention to it before. Crimson thread. Had Silar so grossly underestimated The Hunter’s zeal for Artemi’s supposed destiny? Without a second thought for the other man’s superior fighting skill, he shoved the Calbeni against the wall.
The ground swept beneath his feet in undulating waves of a bluewhite sea of polished ice. It was very fine and pretty, but it was not what he wanted from these people. Morghiad had never desired wealth, privilege or the power to control; he had only ever desired to put right the things that were wrong. He had his personal reasons for doing so, of course, but he was fortunate that those worked so easily with his true duty.
He had waited long enough to complete his mission here, though things were happening perhaps a little earlier than he had planned. But all that he required was now available, and the bulk of the work could be completed in very little time. And light of Achellon, how it needed to be completed! His thoughts of Lady D’Avrohan had become confusing, disturbing and sometimes worrying. There had to be something wrong with him! Even now he saw her naked and shimmering with
the waters of the falls that had clung to her skin like a veil of translucent silk. He growled aloud at the image, and did his best to replace it with one of Jurala. He could scarcely even recall what she looked like after so many months away from her.
And then there had been the event not two days before, when the one-time queen had decided to wheel out her latest weapon of seduction. It had arrived in the morning, and a hundred curious eyes from across the castle had surrounded its shrouded form in an instant. Is it a catapult? Is it a wielding thing? Is itfor torturing
prisoners? These were just some of the questions asked by the observers. But she had stridden in amongst them, with him following like her obedient foot hound, and she had whisked the covering sheet from the mystery item in one smooth motion. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she had asked of her congregation.
Indeed, it had been a fine object to behold. Sinuous curls of polished hardwood had wound about a spray of golden strings, and as she had drawn a hand across them they had emitted the most sumptuous sound he had ever heard. A harp. What in blazes did a
woman who fought wish to do with a damned harp? He had rapidly found out. Throughout the afternoon he had been forced to listen while she played it to no audience but himself, alone in her rooms. Throughout she had smiled at him and made eyes that he was sure were not appropriate for a lady and her bodyguard. Worse, he had found the experience almost pleasant to endure. And his disgust at that enjoyment made him feel nauseous even now.
He had to stop this before he succumbed to whatever plan she had for him. She had been angry at his subsequent refusal to bed her, angry
enough to push her precious instrument over when she thought he was out of earshot, and that anger would only make her more determined.
This morning he had stopped by at a smaller practice hall to watch her exercise her moves and study how she worked. He had observed her glide between handstands and backflips without any obvious effort, and had watched her thrust and lunge her blade at invisible foes. Morghiad thought that his viewing place was hidden, but evidently it was not. For, when he had looked away from the spectacle for an instant, her sinuous form had presented itself immediately beside him. “That was quite impressive, what I just did don’t you think?” She had moved closer. “Do you want to sleep with me yet?”
Morghiad did not want to be around when she attempted her next trick, and he had a feeling it would have something to do with low-cut dresses. How had she weakened him so? Only yesterday he had found himself writing to his father to tell him of his plans, and he had even included a request that they keep her alive. Her uses were plain to anyone, but he knew all too well that he no longer wanted
her to die, and that meant he was growing soft on her.
He was too close to failure. He strode faster towards his goal, moving through the gentle rays of sunlight that heralded the beginning of a hot summer. He was not sure if it was true, but it felt as if each parsing of the forms he completed only served to divert any sort of energy but Blaze away from him. He certainly could not feel the heat of the sun anymore.
Morghiad arrived at the door he required and knocked once. The occupant immediately answered.
; “Oh. I didn’t expect to see you
here. Is she with you?”
Morghiad shook his head. “I need to speak with you in private. It concerns your brother. May I come in?”
Seffe nodded slowly and held open the door. The room beyond was entirely devoid of any sort of personal effects. It was quite a contrast to the general’s more extravagant tastes and attitude to tidiness. Morghiad seated himself upon a plain wooden chair and leaned forward to place his elbows upon his knees. This had to be believable, and he was far from a good liar.
“What is it you have to tell me, Zennar?”
“You will be aware that your brother has a very close friendship with our former queen...”
“Aware? The whole blasted country knows of their... relationship!”
He cleared his throat, but kept his voice at the same level of severe seriousness. “Well, I overheard a particular conversation which concerns your family. I think you ought to know that the general is planning to give a greater proportion of the Forllan assets to the crown in order to fund their next defence against Forda. Your family will be moved to more modest residences, but with the provision of new titles.”
The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle Page 139