by Gwynn White
Both Tao and Meka knew Grigor didn’t just need Meka’s company; he craved it. But since meeting Tao, he had reached the point when he would do almost anything to have someone other than his brother to talk to. Reading helped, but even the books in the schoolroom offered no fresh insights into the world. In Grigor’s view, talking to Tao had been the best thing to ever happen to him, even though Tao had been so guarded about all the things that fascinated Grigor.
“I have to know what you think.”
Meka sat at his chair and picked up his quill. “I have nothing to say because nothing happened. We asked Kestrel some questions and got no real answers.” He glanced at the closest guardsman. “If Lukan asks, we tell him one of the guardsmen mentioned something about a man named Tao. That he suggested we look like him. Some rubbish like that.” But it was obvious from his tone that Meka’s heart wasn’t in that lie.
Grigor was about to challenge him when Meka gave his almost blank parchment on Thurban III a dispirited shake.
“I have to get Arkady’s stupid essay done tonight.” Meka’s deflection irritated Tao.
Grigor, too, by his reaction. “Since when did you give a stink bug’s eyeball about homework? Especially when we have something as important as this to discuss?”
Grigor swiped his hand at Meka’s parchment and ink pot. He put more force into it than he intended; the ink pot bounced against the silk-clad wall. Black ink splattered everywhere. His eyes widened in shock as he took in the mess.
Tao groaned and braced himself for Meka’s retaliation.
Meka glanced over at the splatter and shrugged. “The silk’s already faded.”
But from the cast of Meka’s jaw, he wasn’t happy with the “accident.”
Instead of backing down, Grigor demanded, “Answer me. How does Tao get around?”
Meka huffed and slumped back in his chair. “What do you want me to say? That I think Tao is a walking, talking dead man? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not that stupid.”
An all-too-familiar wave of frustration and helplessness—no, impotency—welled up in Grigor. “I can’t explain it, but—” He frowned, searching for the words to explain how he just knew, instinctively, that Tao was dead.
An idea came to him, and despite how it might affect his brother, he decided to mention it. “It’s like the Dreaded—”
“The Dreaded?” Meka interrupted, his voice wary. “What do they have to do with anything?”
Tao quickly riffled through Meka’s thoughts to find the root of his concern. In the weeks following the axing of the two guardsmen, every one of the Dreaded that had jumped out at him had looked like hideous, ethereal versions of those men. Those specters had enraged Meka even more than the Dreaded usually did, but he had been powerless to stop them terrorizing him.
Tao considered nudging a book off the shelf to distract Grigor from tactlessly mentioning them, but he decided against it. If talking about the Dreaded helped Meka see the truth, then it was worth his son’s pain to hear about them.
“They are supposed to be spirits of the dead, right?” Grigor asked.
“Yeah. And Tao looks nothing like them.”
“Have you ever seen a Dreaded out at the lake?”
Meka pulled a face.
“Me neither. Ever had a Dreaded guide you past half a dozen guardsmen at the drawbridge? Ever had a Dreaded make you disappear?”
Meka glared at him. “Your point?”
“Tao does things no one, not even the Dreaded, can do. So maybe the Dreaded aren’t the real dead people. Maybe Tao’s the only dead one.”
Meka’s anger flared. “Just because Tao is smarter than the Dreaded doesn’t make him dead. It makes him—” Another shrug. “I have no idea what it makes him.”
Grigor’s foot tapped against the threadbare carpet. He almost shouted, “So he’s just a miracle worker, then?”
Meka shouted back, “I don’t know!” His voice dropped. “What’s so great about Nicholas? Why didn’t Tao want us, too?”
Pain lanced Grigor. Talking about Tao suddenly wasn’t that interesting. He stomped away from Meka into their bedchamber and slammed the door.
“Idiot,” Meka muttered under his breath as he scooped up his homework. But instead of putting it on his desk, he tossed it against the wall. His forehead dropped to his desk.
Tao closed his eyes as silent sobs wracked Meka’s shoulders.
In the bedchamber, Grigor lay facedown on his bed, punching his pillow.
Tao made a decision.
It wasn’t enough just to tell his sons who and what he was; they needed a lesson to draw them together, just as everyone around them fought to tear them apart.
Tomorrow at school would be an interesting day.
Chapter 33
Tao stood at the window in his sons’ classroom, waiting for them to leave their breakfast table. Today, he would teach his sons the most important lesson he had to impart: that they had to stand together, or they would fall beneath Lukan’s crushing control.
Despondency hung heavy around them. From their thoughts, he knew they dreaded the next four hours of Arkady’s droning voice. Soon, they would face far worse than boredom.
Meka tossed his spoon down on the table and spoke to his brother. “Different day, same crap. You ready for it?” There had been no further mention of their argument the night before.
Grigor huffed a breath into the cold air morning air. There was no heating in the turret. “No. But that doesn’t change reality.”
He scooted his chair back, ramming it against the wall. Tao winced as he heard it tear the silk cladding.
“C’mon, Meka, lead the way.”
Tao’s ears tuned to their dragging steps. They reached the door—and stopped. He turned slowly to look at them, stepping out of the fourth dimension.
The reaction on their faces: gutted fish.
As pleased as he was to see them, he couldn’t resist teasing them. Grigor, at least, would appreciate the joke.
“Well, are you just going to stand there like you’ve seen a ghost, or are you going to sit?” He suppressed a smile as their mouths, already impossibly wide, gaped even more. “I see from your timetable that it’s history today. Should be interesting.” Tao gestured to their school benches.
“Where’s Arkady?” Grigor’s voice was strained. As usual, he stood a little behind Meka.
“Arkady? Your tutor?” Tao had slipped the poor old man a mild sedative with his breakfast, and a palace physician was checking him over now. “Some . . . phantom illness he’s developed. I think it’s all just in the mind. Now sit.”
They sat, their expressions wary.
“So . . . history.” Tao rubbed his chin, making a show of thinking. “Hmm. You know, boys, I’m not in the mood for history today. I think behavior modification would be much more appropriate, don’t you?”
“Never heard of it.”
“You haven’t, Meka? Well, that explains a lot,” Tao replied.
“Where have you been?”
Tao smiled at his dark-haired boy. “Grigor, you are so wonderfully predictable. It’s as if I can read your thoughts. I was waiting for you to ask that question.”
“So do you intend to answer it?”
“I have been away.”
Grigor waited. But when he realized that no further answer was coming, he rapped his fingers on his desk. “Did your son go with you?”
This was it. The moment Tao would dispel all their illusions.
“No, my sons did not go with me. They were busy at school, learning a few hard lessons.”
“Children in Chenaya don’t go to school. Not unless they’re princes.” Grigor’s voice brimmed with suspicion, a tragic failing for a boy who needed people as much as Grigor did. “Just like people in Chenaya don’t travel without the emperor’s permission. Did you have Lukan’s permission?” Grigor was about to remind Tao about his falcon-impervious skin.
Tao interjected, “You are quite right.
Ice crystals ensure no one travels anywhere without Felix and Lukan’s say-so. They don’t grant it readily.”
Tao knew Grigor had never heard the words ice crystal and had no doubt that tidbit would fire his son’s imagination.
“But everyone goes to school,” Tao explained. “This whole mortal experience is like a giant classroom. We learn a few things. Play around with what we learn. And then we get tested. Sometimes we pass. Sometimes we fail. My sons failed one of their big tests. But I think they’ve had sufficient time to think on that harsh lesson. Maybe they would not fail it again—given a similar opportunity.”
Meka picked at his desk with his fingernail. “What did they do wrong?”
“They picked up the wrong stick.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Meka’s desperate pleading almost broke Tao’s heart.
“They made a bad choice. The consequences were devastating, as they always are when we make the wrong choice.”
“What should they have done?” Grigor was becoming irritated with this conversation.
“You tell me what they should have done, Grigor,” Tao prompted.
“How should I know?” Grigor shot straight back. “I don’t know your sons.”
Tao suppressed a smile when Meka stared at his brother in surprise. Meka then looked pointedly at Tao. Then back to Grigor.
Grigor ignored Meka. “You have told us nothing about yourself or your family. How do we know what your children do? As far as we know, you only have one child—Nicholas.”
Tao canted his head. “Did I say Nicholas was my child?”
“You said he was your boy.”
“Oh, that he is, Grigor. I call him my cub. But he’s not my son. He’s my nephew. He lived with me and his mother, Lynx, from his birth.”
Meka frowned, trying to work all this out. “Is Lynx your wife?”
“No, Meka. My sister-in-law. She is married to my brother. The father of my nephew, Nicholas. My nephew’s full name is Nicholas the Light-Bearer.” Tao pointed to a celestial map on the wall. “He was born the night the constellations changed and the stars you know as the Northern Constellation shifted the Dragon from the highest point in the sky.”
Regardless of Lukan’s wish to rename that constellation, it took no imagination to see the starry outline of a man holding a flaming torch in the northern point of the map.
“His birth was also heralded by a magnificent comet known as the Pathfinder. It was quite a night.”
Meka breathed out a slow breath and then slouched back in his chair. He fixated on the doodles carved into his wooden desk top.
Score one.
Meka understood exactly who Tao was. More importantly, he also knew where Nicholas fit in the succession. A thousand questions tumbled through Meka’s thoughts, the overwhelming one: Why would Lukan declare Grigor the crown prince if he had a biological son called Nicholas?
Tao was nowhere near ready to start explaining the Dmitri Curse. He turned to Grigor.
His dark-haired boy swallowed. “Just how many brothers do you have?”
“Just one. An older brother.” Tao suppressed another smile as enlightenment flashed across Grigor’s face.
Grigor gasped, bit his lip, and stared at the map as if seeing it for the very first time.
Tao waited for Grigor to absorb the lesson.
Finally, Grigor stirred. “So where is Nicholas now?”
Even though Tao didn’t have the answer to that, he hazarded a guess that his cub had been imprisoned where no one would ever learn who he truly was. “Like you boys, Nicholas also lives under the curse of isolation. Lukan has an interesting philosophy on the needs of youth.”
Tao thought about adding that Lukan planned to change their lives, but decided against it. That knowledge would distract them from the lesson he wanted to teach them today.
Grigor burst out, “Why isn’t Nicholas the crown prince?”
Tao started at the rage in his son’s eyes. “Because you were born first, Grigor, and Lukan chose you.”
A kaleidoscope of emotions roiled through Grigor. Tao didn’t believe it fair to judge too quickly his son’s reaction to the loss of legitimacy in his claim to the Chenayan throne.
Tao reached for a book on the tutor’s desk—a math textbook. “Now, enough talking. Let’s get on with some math.”
Meka leaned forward. “I thought we were doing behavioral modification. Or whatever it was called?”
“We just did. That, and history. Genealogy, too. All in one lesson.”
A recalcitrant mien settled on Meka’s jaw. “I haven’t finished learning yet.”
Meka asking for more lessons? That had to be a first.
Tao resisted the urge to smile. “What part didn’t you understand?”
“What did your sons do wrong that their father vanished out of their lives?”
Tao knew Meka wanted to know why he hadn’t been there for them over the last sixteen years. As much as Tao wanted to tell him that he had longed all his life to be with his sons, the only way to explain his absence would be to open a discussion on the curse.
Neither boy was ready to learn about that yet.
He hedged. “They failed to obey a simple instruction. Then they resorted to war to solve a leadership clash. I believe they have now agreed on a truce. How long it will hold, I am not sure. My view of the future is not that clear.”
Meka whistled softly, his cobalt eyes every bit as challenging—as confrontational—as Nicholas’s icy ones. “Was all that so bad that they had to have such a harsh punishment? People died, you know.”
“Death is not the worst thing that can happen, Meka.”
Meka snorted his derision. He leaned over to Grigor. “I think he buys into your whole ‘being dead is fun’ theory. Next, he’ll tell us he walks through walls.”
Grigor frowned, shaking his head, telling Meka to shut up.
Tao smiled at Meka and mussed his silky blond hair. It felt good to be doing that again. “They made a choice, Meka. That was entirely within their rights. But the choice came with consequences. They didn’t investigate those first. Now they pay the price. Perhaps next time they will think more before they choose.” He glanced at Grigor. “Perhaps they will not follow so blindly.” His focus shifted to Meka. “Or lead so thoughtlessly.” He stood. “Now, I think that is enough classroom learning for one day. Our next lesson will be biology—and we will study it in the forest.”
Meka scrambled to his feet and started for the door.
More hesitant, Grigor didn’t stir from his chair. “Care to explain to my brother how you intend getting us past the guardsmen?”
“Oh, I think you know the answer to that.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
Tao thought quickly. If he said yes, he would spook Meka, but if he denied that he was dead, he would alienate Grigor. The object lesson he planned today in the forest had been designed to reach each of his sons individually. He couldn’t preempt that. “Your intelligence has been sorely underfed, Grigor. I promise to make it my mission to rectify that. Perhaps we can talk in the coming weeks?”
Grigor shook his head. “Never a straight answer.” He turned to Meka. “We should take lessons on how to bamboozle people. They may prove useful with our guards.”
“C’mon, Grigs. Stop worrying about drivel.” Meka bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. “The whole forest awaits us.”
“Idiot,” Grigor muttered under his breath, but he followed Meka and Tao from the room.
Tao took infinite pleasure in watching Grigor watch him as he bent the light, but it made no difference; Grigor was mortal and would not see what a dead man could. As usual, Meka grabbed the boon with both hands and without question.
Once past the drawbridge, the only noise they made was the rustle of their feet in the fallen autumn leaves. Clouds of steam billowed from their mouths into the cold, wintery air. The first snows would not be long in coming.
Tao led them to a r
otten tree, collapsed against an old oak. A steady stream of bees, hovering around a large hole in the side of the trunk, filled the air with an electric, terrifying hum. With more confidence than he felt, he strode toward the hive.
More bees appeared. Both of his boys pulled back.
Then Meka stopped. “Are you sure about this? I’m allergic to bees.”
“Are you?” Tao said, once again feigning ignorance.
Meka’s eyes dilated with fright, and his face paled.
Tao knew a single bee sting would send Meka into anaphylactic shock. This far from the palace and medical treatment, the boy could die. Tao would never let that happen, but neither Meka nor Grigor knew that. And he wasn’t about to enlighten them, either. The worst part, however, was that, after this lesson, it was unlikely either of his sons would want to talk to him again.
It was a small price if it kept Lukan from commanding Morass to sink an axe into Meka’s chest.
“That’s unfortunate, Meka. And you, Grigor? Any allergies?”
“Only to stupidity. Is this excursion really necessary?” Grigor stood in front of Meka. “There’s a book in the schoolroom about bees.”
“’Fraid so. Your cousin, Nicholas, has an amazing way with bees. He can put his hand into the hive and pull out the honeycomb, but he never gets stung. They have a name for people like that—bee charmers. But that’s Nicholas. He can charm anything, if he sets his mind to it. He’s a bit like mercury. You know, quicksilver. Bright and fast, but scattered and impotent when distracted. As I’m sure he is now. But lethal when in his concentrated form. But he’s also very stubborn. A bit like you, Meka—he also doesn’t like seeing the facts staring him in the face.”
Meka was too busy shrinking away from the swirling bees to comment.
Grigor frowned, torn between a desire to know more about the mysterious Nicholas and the need to protect his twin. Typical Grigor, the thirst for knowledge won. “So how does he do it? Bee charming.”
“I always wondered that myself, but I never had the guts to try. I was scared of bee stings, but physical pain no longer affects me, so I think I’ll give it a whirl.” Tao stepped over to the hive, and speaking softly, the way he had always spoken to his falcon, he pushed his hand into the hole.