Heir's Revenge (Return of the Aghyrians Book 4)

by Patty Jansen

  “Promised what?”

  He shrugged.

  “Enzo?” Her heart thudded. What in all of heavens name was going on? “Where does Asitho Bisumar have his claws in you?”

  He looked up, sharply. “Nowhere. He’s giving me the best opportunity anyone has ever given me—”

  “—Providing you marry his daughter.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “So that’s part of the bargain. Does she have any say in it?”

  He shook his head, looking down at his hands.

  “Damn. He must hate her a lot. You know she’s got something with Jintho, right?”

  Another sharp look, alarmed almost. Then a nod.

  “This is wrong, Enzo, and you know it.”

  Now he gave her an angry look. “How do you think Jintho is going to look after her? With this shop that’s going to be a failure, even if it actually opens, which I doubt?”

  It was a harsh assessment, but unfortunately, Ellisandra agreed with him.

  He continued in a calmer voice. “I’m doing it to help Asitho out. Our brother has made an embarrassment of himself, and Asitho has given me an opportunity—”

  “What opportunity is worth looking into your brother’s eyes for the rest of your life, seeing his anger for taking the girl he wanted?”

  He met her eyes, the expression in them hard. He said nothing.

  “Do you really care so little about Jintho’s life?”

  “Jintho is meant to take control of his own life. Since he hasn’t done that for the past two years, I will pick up the pieces for him, because I’m his brother, and that’s what brothers do. So either help me organise this wedding, or don’t speak to me again. Because I’ve had it with his whining and complaining and his good-for-nothing friends who egg him on. A shop! He could have chosen hundreds of careers, but no, he’s got to go all artsy just to make absolutely sure there is no future in what he does. He can apply for the licence, but he’s got no contacts and no suppliers, and you know how important those are. No suppliers means no entries in the ledger. It means no credits, no work points. Nothing. How is he supposed to support himself and a family on promises that are nothing but thin air? If his domestic staff can’t draw on any of his accounts? Tell me, Elli, because I’m not seeing it.”

  Ellisandra didn’t know what to say to that, because he was right about all of it. She ended up half-heartedly agreeing to help with the wedding, because if he had agreed with Asitho Bisumar, there was no going back. The wedding would be a mere few days after the performance, so if she did the big things now, she could finish it all when the play was done.

  “I appreciate it, Elli. I really do. I know you’re busy. I don’t need a big wedding.”

  He actually had the gall to look in her eyes while saying this. Every Endri girl had dreams of the biggest, most showy wedding. It was her one and only way to shine. Asitho was denying his daughter even that?

  After she left the room, she felt sick at the thought that she agreed to do it. She was a coward just as much as everyone else was. It would be a long time before she’d be able to face Jintho. She liked Jintho. He could be a bit misguided, but his heart was in the right place.

  She went down into the kitchen, where she picked up the tray with Father’s dinner.

  “You must come and eat when you finish, mistress,” Riana said, while standing at the stove with her back to the door.

  To be honest, Ellisandra didn’t know if she could face eating, because Enzo’s request had made her feel ill again.

  Father sat in his usual chair by the fire and, from the way he looked at her when she opened the door, she knew that his thoughts were reasonably clear today.

  “I missed you this morning,” he said while she put the tray on the table.

  “I was sick.”

  “Are you better now?”

  “Yes.” Although the smell rising from the soup when she took the lid off the tray made her feel queasy.

  “Did anything interesting happen today?”

  “Enzo asked me to organise his wedding.”

  Father gave her a sharp look. “And, did you tell him to stay away from that Bisumar girl?”

  “He seems to have made an agreement with Asitho. I don’t like it. She’s Jintho’s girlfriend.”

  “She is trouble.” Was he again confusing Sariandra with her older half-sister?

  Ellisandra used the usual technique with him: half-agree with something he said and change the subject. “Her father is giving us a lot of trouble.”

  “He’s keen to marry his daughter off?”

  “It seems so.”

  “Hates women, he does. Never mind that the Bisumar family seems to be blessed with the most headstrong women in Miran.”

  “You served in the council with his sister Amandra, didn’t you?”

  “I did. It was a pity when she resigned. The whole council should have resigned with her over that incident. A pity I didn’t see it at the time.”

  “What happened?”

  He flicked up his eyebrows. “What now? My daughter is asking me about politics?”

  “Well, I don’t know what happened, so I don’t know what I’m asking about. Tell me.”

  “All right, all right.” He picked up his soup bowl and raised it to his mouth. Ellisandra helped him steady it.

  “No need to do that. I’m not an old man.” He sipped. “Ow, that seems to be hot.”

  He set the cup down without spilling any, and looked at her over the steaming contents. For a moment, Ellisandra was afraid that his moment of clarity had lapsed and he had forgotten her question, but he continued, “It goes back to the time that Nemedor Satarin was army chief of Barresh, when they were still a Mirani protectorate. Some rebel people in Barresh asked for a judgement from gamra and they declared that the Mirani protectorate was akin to an occupation and told Barresh that it was their right to order us out, which they did and which led to the Two Day War. People here were pretty angry. We’d spent many years and a lot of money in Barresh. The place was a right mess. Crime everywhere in broad daylight.”

  Ellisandra was going to say Like Miran, but didn’t.

  Father picked up the soft cloth to wipe his face. She must remember to put some salve on it so that he didn’t break the skin and turn those spots into sores.

  “The bottom line was that the Barresh council and their lame army were unable to look after themselves. I mean, half the population is running around naked with spears and climbing trees. The city was a hotbed of Coldi influence and only our presence kept that under control. When Nemedor Satarin came back to Miran, people felt sorry for him. He’d been doing all the right things, keeping criminality out of Barresh, and look where it had gotten him. They supported his candidature for the council and they supported when he was elected. He made the genius move to include a woman on his ticket for the High Council. Amandra Bisumar had a lot of opinions. She was well-spoken, and she was the first and only-ever female Trader in Miran, holder of her own licence. She was very popular. People loved it.”

  He dabbed at his weeping eye. He didn’t do a very good job, because she could still see moisture glistening in the deep grooves of skin.

  “But then she started to ask questions, because she was a Trader—still is, I hear. She heard of the stories of foreign Traders being scared out of Miran. Gamra had instated boycotts after the Two Day War, mainly because of how they believed Mirani soldiers had treated the locals in Barresh, and they demanded that money was returned. Instead of answering her questions, people in the pay of Nemedor Satarin started blackballing her. She had a Coldi lover—had him for years. He was an all right sort of guy, also a Trader. He came to Miran regularly, but they started putting alerts on his visits and giving him a hard time when he entered. They started making suggestions about her and him and smearing her name whenever she proposed something. Because she was just a silly woman. The situation became unworkable, and she resigned. The Ilendar family left at the same time, because th
e council was restricting imports. Then there was the whole business with the Andrahar family.”

  “What was with them?”

  “Iztho Andrahar took all the family’s foreign money out of Miran and put it in an account in Barresh. Nemedor Satarin threatened to suspend council favours to the family unless they brought the money back. They didn’t. They invented some scheme that supposedly showed that the Mirani council had blackmailed them and tried to blame the family for crimes they didn’t commit. It was all made-up of course, but it went to the Trader Court and they of course sided with one their own and awarded the case to the Andrahars. People in Miran were so angry that a mob of youths burnt down the house that very night.”

  That wasn’t quite how she had heard the story at other times, also from him, but today he was in his bitter stage. It had to be sad sitting here all day by the fire with nothing to do. Father had been a proud man. It was sad to see him like this, and to know that what he said could no longer be trusted to be the truth.

  Eydrina Lasko had said that he might still live for years and there was no reason that he would die soon. Who would look after him all that time? People would be increasingly unlikely to take him seriously or want to talk to him.

  It was all so terrible, seeing him like this, with his weeping eye, telling stories that mixed up details from several stories in one.

  One thing, though, she did realise from his words: in all of the past years, Nemedor Satarin had ruled Miran behind the scenes. He got the praise and the honour. He got other people to do the work that was nasty or dubious.

  That person at the moment was Asitho Bisumar. He was trying to pull the last remaining Foundation family into his network.

  And women were punished harshly for asking pointed questions.

  18

  THE PLAY WAS going well. The actors were professionals, and Changing Fate was not considered a particularly hard play in terms of learning their lines.

  Ellisandra still needed to make a decision about the last scene and it so happened that Tolaki was rehearsing that with the cast.

  That particular morning had dawned with a leaden grey sky from which it had started snowing at breakfast time. Loret and his men had come to the theatre. They were meant to be putting on the ground floor roof: that of the kitchen, the laundry and the back of the house, which held servants’ rooms. The slate got very slippery with snow, so they couldn’t work. Instead, their hammering and happy talk echoed through the theatre building.

  Ellisandra went to sit at the side of the stage to watch the rehearsal. There were a few musicians playing to provide the background for the scenes, but not the full orchestra.

  Tameyo stood at the back of the stage holding the bars of an imaginary prison cell, and the two men were fighting over her. Despite being both Endri, Liran was a good deal shorter than Keldon and the two had been in training with a real sword master so that they could do a convincing fight. The blunt swords clattered against each other. They were designed to be shiny, so that they would reflect light into the audience. It was done for show, and that fact was overly clear. Despite the fighting training, there was little genuine about this performance. She would have to talk to the sword master to see if he could inject some grittiness in the moves. She didn’t want a pretty dance, she wanted a fight.

  The curtains next to her stirred, and someone appeared quietly out of the darkness. Vayra.

  Oh no.

  “Haven’t had much of a chance to talk to you,” he said. He spoke softly so as not to disturb the rehearsal.

  “Yes, well, running a theatre production is hard work. I’ve been very busy.”

  “Too busy to give me an opinion on something in the house?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Your house?”

  He nodded. “As someone from a traditional family familiar with history, you can perhaps advise me on colours to use in the downstairs rooms.”

  “Suppose I could. Come and see me in my office at midday. Bring your samples.”

  “I’d actually prefer if you came out to the house.”

  All right. So what was this? A ploy to get her away from here? To talk to her alone? “I’m very busy. I don’t know if I’ll have time for that.” If they were seen together, there would be more gossip and she didn’t even want to think about what Jaeron would say about it. Or Nemedor Satarin.

  “The old Andrahar office will also do, but I am a bit reluctant to take you up there, because I live there by myself. I am aware of how rumours start and spread.”

  “And you don’t want to tarnish my reputation?” That sounded really prim.

  He laughed, and she laughed as well.

  “I’ll come to the house if I can. I can’t promise anything.”

  “It would be much appreciated.” He bowed and left again.

  Ellisandra remained a bit longer, looking at the actors on the stage who had now progressed to the very final scene. Keldon had thrown Liran to the ground. He lifted his sword, and brought it down. Ellisandra gasped. For a moment there, she thought he was going to hit Liran, but the sharp point of the sword—which was not very sharp at all but could still injure—disappeared in the hollow between Liran’s shoulder and neck. To the audience it would look like it went into Liran’s neck. Liran lay still.

  From the back of the stage, Tameyo called, “Jihan!”

  He ran, jumping over the bodies of minor actors who lay as dead on the stage.

  This was the part where the play made a major misstep, as far as she was concerned. This was the part where she would have wanted Mariandra to scream at Jihan for killing her lover, where she would have fallen to her knees to check if he was still alive, and where the conclusion of the play should have been war is an awful thing and makes no one happy instead of victors are glamorous people who need to be admired at all times.

  She imagined the stage covered in blood, and felt queasy at the thought of having to ask all those glamorous actors to carry bags of blood under their clothes.

  She felt even queasier at the thought of seeing the unsuspecting audience go white in the face. Some ladies might faint. Their husbands would be outraged. Was that something she wanted to have to her name?

  This was the part where she could give orders that would change the entire nature of the play. As performed here, the progression of events didn’t work. Many of the prisoners had been quite sympathetic characters. This scene spoiled the play. It turned around the interesting development of blossoming relationships between Mirani and Coldi prisoners and killed a number of very decent characters.

  Ellisandra turned away from the stage and slowly walked up the stairs while the choir sang the last song of triumph. This type of triumph did not sit well with her at all.

  And she still didn’t know what to do about it.

  She remembered that, a while ago, when sorting the play’s texts, she had come across the little old book with the play’s notes. Any political message the author had intended in the play would be in that book.

  She went to the library where it still lay as she had left it: in the middle of the large table.

  As it turned out, the notes weren’t even written by the author, but by some council administrator claiming to speak on behalf of the author, because the author is not in the right frame of mind and is hell-bent on destroying the reputation of several councillors who she sees as having done her wrong.

  Ellisandra read that passage a few times, focusing on the words she and her.

  Was Changing Fate the only play of the classics that had been written by a woman? But why would a woman write such a violent play, unless . . .

  Unless she was the woman depicted as Mariandra, unless she had been in love with this visitor, killed by her own kinsmen. Unless this play was about her pain. And seen like that, the story made so much sense. This wasn’t about the glory of Miran. It was one woman’s protest dressed up as glory of Miran.

  It wasn’t meant to be performed as it had been in the past. The last scene was su
pposed to be heart-wrenching and unhappy. She hadn’t been wrong about the sympathetic characters of the Coldi prisoners at all. The interpretation of it hadn’t changed with the changing attitudes of time. The last scene was horrible because it was meant to be horrible.

  Upstairs in the office, a delivery boy had brought a number of large but not very heavy boxes which came from the theatre’s stores. While the main actors’ costumes were auctioned off after each show, the theatre kept the less glamorous outfits for later use, and it was here that Ellisandra had ordered prison guard uniforms, maid’s and other domestic staff’s dresses and plain commoner dresses for the ubiquitous “crowd” that was a feature of each Mirani classic play. In the box were also a number of pretty, frilly and colourful dresses. Ellisandra had already decided that she was going to wear the blue one on performance night, blue being the colour of the Takumar family. Tolaki and Aleyo had also ordered their preferred dresses to be taken out of storage, and Ellisandra had ordered a few choices for Sariandra. One of them was a beautiful light yellow number, soft and delicate. There was also a hard pink one, which upon seeing it, Ellisandra thought was too stark, and a green one. Ellisandra hoped that Sariandra was from the branch of the Bisumar family that used the green. She should have asked, really, but that had somehow slipped the net.

  She asked Sariandra to come to her office, where she stood looking awkwardly from one dress to the other spread on the table.

  “I don’t know,” she said, fidgeting.

  For someone supposedly interested in fashion, she seemed remarkably unenthusiastic. She always wore her thick cloak indoors these days.

  “I think the yellow one,” Ellisandra said.

  Sariandra stared at the dresses some more.

  “Or green. Are you from the branch of the Bisumar family that uses green?”

  “No. We’re orange.”

  What a bummer. She really should have checked that. “I’ll get an orange one brought in. Meanwhile, why don’t you try the yellow one on?”

  “It’s cold,” Sariandra said, pulling the cloak closer around her shoulders.