Opseth opened her eyes in satisfaction. She had only touched the surface of the dream, seeking instead the essence of the girl where she left a clear, unfailing message. Let us work together to rule the Ilazers and hence Garla. Come to me, not to Corday. She would allow the girl to ponder this message in the time remaining before she reached the city, and when she arrived, Opseth would be ready to supplant Holder Corday’s plan with her own—domination over the Empir. Yes, very good.
Lisen’s mind droned on as it had continuously ever since her dream last night, plunging her headlong into the riptides of arriving at a plan that somehow ensured certainty. As she followed Korin west on the same road she’d traveled eastward in the throes of possession more than two months earlier, she lost herself in ever-shifting streams of consciousness. Her fingers fiddled unwittingly with the gold band on her left middle finger, and through it all, one constant remained—the absolute of purpose.
Korin had grown stern, quiet, almost sullen, and the only words they exchanged these days came during their morning practice sessions. For the rest of the day, he said nothing that didn’t require saying, and that was fine with her. She could consider the secret acts which might prove necessary to accomplishing what fate—fickle, freakin’ fate—had decreed for her. On the surface, it seemed simple. Why else had Eloise brought her to Solsta? Why else than to allow her to cultivate the gift with which she had been born? Why else, indeed?
But underneath, the more complicated questions sidled through the murky waters of confusion. Why, then, had Eloise sent her on to Earth? That had effectively denied her the opportunity of harnessing her skill with a master like Hermit Teran. It had robbed her of time to train her mind as it should be trained. Then again, had she been trained and taken vows, could she have pushed the spy? A second’s hesitation might have killed her. So is that why? Is that why I ended up on Earth? To allow me the freedom to choose quickly in that moment? She wondered if she’d ever know why Eloise had done it—sent her to Earth, that is. She certainly didn’t expect Eloise to come out and tell her. Damn Earth had muddied everything.
And what of my promise to Korin? She hadn’t thought about that till now. Long ago, right after they’d met, she’d told him she’d never use magic the way Ariel’s watcher had. She’d used it to save her own life, and he seemed to have accepted that. But if she confronted her fate in the manner she’d been contemplating…. He’ll never…. She shook her head. Get back to the plan. She knew what she must accomplish. It was the how that eluded her.
Korin pulled up in front of her, and she reined her horse in as well. They couldn’t be more than a couple of days’ ride now from Avaret. They’d taken the northern branch of the Rukat at the fork early this morning where he’d explained that the other branch would have taken them on to Seffa. She wasn’t ready for that place yet.
“Why the hesitation?” she asked as her horse settled in beside his.
“Someone approaches,” he said softly as he continued to stare ahead.
“Then we should pull off,” she suggested. That had been the drill the last two times they’d faced exposure on their journey.
But this time Korin shook his head. “No. I know who this is.”
Lisen could barely make out the figure of a horse and a rider, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. How could her captain identify anyone at this distance? But she only asked, “Who is it?”
Korin smiled at her. “An old friend.”
“Are you sure?”
He turned back to watch the approaching rider. “See how he sits with his left hip a little forward of his right? It’s an old wound. That’s Captain Palla.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Oh, that’s right. You two haven’t met. But you can trust him. Besides, he knows most everything already anyway.”
She nodded, knew he couldn’t see it and didn’t care. For days now he’d had no smile for her, yet this old friend of his had lit him up with a veritable torch of celebration. She’d lost him. The magic words in Thirstas, but then nothing. She didn’t understand. She’d felt him near, but now he was gone. Well, if this is the sort of crap an Empir must deal with, then I guess I’ll just have to deal. Despite her bravado, it made her sad that distance had replaced the warmth she’d felt with him in the desert. Oh, well. She decided she must learn to relegate the care and feeding of the mundane in her life to others and rely solely on herself for her survival.
They stood and waited, and when at last Lisen could make out details, she saw what Korin had seen, the slightly asymmetrical seat upon the saddle. She also saw that the captain was out of uniform although he carried himself like a warrior. His own smile rivaled Korin’s, yet in all other ways, they were different. Light and dark. Heavy-set and wiry. Complementing one another nicely. I bet he’s easier to get along with, too.
The captain pulled up when he reached them. “Korin.”
“Palla.”
Then the captain turned to Lisen. “My Liege,” he said with a nod. “It’s good to finally meet you in the flesh.”
“Captain,” Lisen replied, allowing her trust in Korin to override her panic at people she’d never met before knowing who she was.
“To what do we owe your company?” Korin asked.
“Holder Corday sent me,” Korin’s friend explained. “He wanted me to make sure you stay out of the city until the Council is fully in residence. I found lodgings for you in Saktoff. I’ll accompany you there.”
“Sounds good,” Korin replied as the captain turned his horse and set out, back the way he’d come, Korin moving out behind him, but Lisen hesitated. Something about Saktoff. She shook her head, deciding it was nothing, and kicked her horse to urge it to catch up with the other two.
“What’s the plan?” she heard Korin say as the old comrades rode together.
“It’s still being worked out. I’ll sneak in and out of Avaret to get more information. The holder is hoping to come himself at some point, but that all depends on whether we can secret him out. He’s being watched.”
“No great surprise,” Korin replied. “And how long before we can move?”
“We should be in Saktoff by the eighth,” the new captain replied.
“Aye,” Korin agreed, “three days.”
“The big dinner is the following night,” Palla said.
“Everyone will be there.” Korin nodded. “And less wary. I mean, what could happen at the dinner? Better than the actual Opening of Council, I’d say.”
“Aye,” his friend replied.
Lisen heard nothing after that. Four days? Was that right? Could it only be four days until…? Her fingers began working at her ring again. Whatever she was going to do, she’d better get it figured out, worked out, planned out within four days. Whether the Council accepted her claim or not, she would, in the end, be forced to meet her brother in a duel, and that was madness. But to avoid it and still win—that was madness, too. She boosted the volume of the voice of controlled lunacy droning on within her head, raised its pitch, allowed her deepest thoughts to reveal their workings to her. She must find the shortest path to victory. She must finalize her plans.
I’m the Empir, Ariel thought to himself. I do what I wish, and when I wish to reveal what I’ve done, no one had better dare question me. Why, then, had he let three days pass since the watcher had advised him to let Lorain in on his secret without doing so? Each night he’d lain in bed beside her, unable to appreciate the warmth of her body, unable to sleep, even when he knew that speaking the words would free him.
At first, he’d believed that once he figured out how exactly to say it, to bring it up, it would be easier. So he’d played it over and over in his mind, and he could recite the revelation without hesitation when he could be sure he was alone. But when Lorain entered the room and it was just the two of them together, it had grown harder, not easier. I killed my mother. I hired a watcher to help me, and I killed my mother. To a woman about to become a mother, he doubted that would play well.<
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Lorain lay beside him now in the bed, but how to begin?
“How does it feel?” he asked as he lay behind her, snuggling her in his arms.
“How does what feel?” she retorted.
“The babe, at your teat. How does it feel?” This was not how he’d planned it.
She didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he felt a subtle tension overtake her body. “It’s like a pinching,” she finally said, “a nagging, incessant pinching. Not bad, but not pleasant either.”
“Oh.” He wanted desperately to touch her pouch, but he knew she would repulse him if he did. “Lorain.” No more delays; he had to do this. The Council members had nearly all arrived, and he needed her support, her informed support, if he were to successfully counteract any charges Nalin might make.
“What?”
“You asked what the necropath knew.” He’d broken the spell of silence, and he could not mistake the constricting of her muscles. She rolled over slowly to face him in the near-dark.
“Yes?”
He scooted back, just far enough to allow him to focus on the outline of her face. “Well, it was never anything my mother could tell her. My mother knew nothing except that she’d been attacked by one of her own.”
“What then?” Her voice was heavy with caution.
“The assassin was pushed.”
This time she drew back. “What?”
“Rasendir Mirta was pushed. She was cultivated and eventually brought to the task by someone I hired a long time ago for that very purpose.” Delivered mostly as I rehearsed it, he thought with relief.
“Creators.” Lorain sat up, turning away from him. He’d stunned her to silence, but not for long. “How does the necropath know this?” she asked.
He sat up, too. “She went to Mirta first apparently and sensed the watcher’s presence. We believe, the watcher and I, that her testimony could connect me to the deed.”
She reached behind her, touched his leg, all the while looking anywhere but at him. “I…I need to think about this.” She rose from the bed, slipped into a robe, and started to leave.
“You won’t betray me, will you?” His outburst of insecurity embarrassed him.
She stopped at the door but remained with her back to him. “No, my love,” she replied, shaking her head as she spoke. “I carry your Heir. I would do nothing to endanger that.”
“And you’ll help me?”
“It would be easier if I were your spouse.”
And there it was. She’d found the way to force him to make it official. So be it. “We will announce both your pouching and our joining at the Council dinner. I’ll get Jazel on the plans so we can join before the close of Council.”
“Thank you, my Liege. I will help you in every way I can.”
Then she left him there, alone.
At least she hadn’t gasped in horror. Her wisdom, her ability to contemplate difficult truths and decipher the most complex clues in a mystery had, no doubt, given her some advance sense of what he’d just told her, but to be faced with it….
She wouldn’t betray him. She had promised him that. She would help him. She had promised him that, too. Creators, he hoped Opseth knew what she was doing.
Lorain got up cranky from her own bed in the old palace the next morning after no sleep at all last night. How could she sleep? That sly, selfish, stupid boy had dug himself into a pit so deep he would never be able to crawl out without help, and somehow she had to find a rope long enough to rescue him. It wasn’t as though he’d hired an assassin and had his mother murdered. That would have been simple. No. He had hired a watcher—a pusher—and allowed that one to work forbidden magic on an innocent servant. How could he live with that?
He was bright, too bright sometimes, but he lacked something, some sense of order and honor. Somewhere deep in his core, he understood what he’d done, but he was expert at obliterating conscience. Not that she wouldn’t have moved to see herself put on the throne under similar circumstances, but she would never have manipulated the essence of a person. That…that…that was wrong.
And the constant touching! If he’d wanted so badly to know what it was like to carry, why hadn’t he volunteered to do so? “How does it feel?” indeed. There were moments of startling ecstasy, but in the main she derived little pleasure from it—only the satisfaction of knowing their child had now sealed their coming union and provided her with security in her old age.
She paced back and forth in her office, the sun long up, and still she couldn’t put his revelation to rest. If Nalin meant to obstruct the Council session by producing the necropath and revealing her knowledge, he’d benefited from Ariel’s fear of telling her. But no more. It was, however, an amazing feat on Nalin’s part, and showed more cunning than she’d believed him capable of. He had held this in for how long? Something like three months now? Amazing. She’d have to rethink her opinion of him.
And Elsba Tuane. Was he in on it as well? And poor, dead, superficial Jozan—now this explained a great deal, this cause worth dying for. For some. Not for the Holder of Bedel, though. Which meant that she must make two sets of plans—one to keep Ariel where he was and the other to keep herself alive with her child the only Heir to the throne. Just in case the father should succumb to the accusations about to befall him, mind.
A little charge flew up her spine. The child was nursing heavily now, but the small rush of pleasure had arisen more from contemplating the prospect of playing the game than from the physical contact with the life in her pouch. She patted the small protuberance of her belly. Not too much different than before the pouching, but she was bulging outward, smoothing out the fine muscular angles she’d worked so hard to maintain.
Ah, she thought, perhaps the announcement of a joining and the imminent emergence of an Ilazer Heir will quell the inflammatory properties of Nalin’s charges. It was certainly a start, but she had so little time to prepare.
She sat down behind her desk, finally able to concentrate on the important task before her. She pulled out fresh parchment and her stylus and began making a list. She loved lists. They always helped her focus her energy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
AH, THE EXPECTATIONS
A lovely spring day, and Opseth absorbed the smells, the sounds, the colorful sights this time of year provided, the time when she could kneel down in her garden, do a bit of weeding, a little turning of the soil and add a few new seeds in the empty patches. She found working in the soil with her own hands refreshing, rewarding, and she allowed no one to touch this private area of her estate. The air smelled crisp and filled with promise, and she hummed to herself as she worked.
Without warning, pain broke through her contentment. Pain and the eloquence of loss. She had remained open to the approach of the little necropath and knew the girl was close, but this sense was now, immediate. She sat back on her feet, closed her eyes and explored, allowing the girl’s feelings to flood into her. But she did not remain passive. She reached out, rubbed the girl’s thoughts, seeking to ignite them, intensify them.
Her manipulations succeeded, and more quickly than she’d hoped. A simmering fury took hold, and Opseth could only smile. She had groomed the girl so delicately, so unobtrusively, that the necropath remained completely unaware of her presence, yet fully engulfed in it. The girl’s power continued to amaze Opseth every time she touched it. Despite the fact that Opseth knew this fledgling’s strength would one day drive her beyond anyone’s control, Opseth also knew she must do all she could to urge the girl in her direction. She must seduce the necropath, now, while the girl remained malleable, to keep her open to the possibilities Opseth could offer in the future.
The girl’s mind was focused yet functioning at a tremendous speed, a plan forming as Opseth observed. She wished she could insinuate herself further into that mind and read it, but that would induce one or both of two unpleasant outcomes. First, it might alert the girl to her presence, and second, it could blunt the girl’s power. Opseth
wished to do neither, so she remained distant. Her time would come. In the meantime, whatever the girl intended to do, it represented a grasp at dominance of some kind, and Opseth approved. She smiled broadly as the girl slipped into a sweet place, an arena of warmth and contentment.
Then, between one breath and the next, fear arose, followed by a bit of comfort, and then, finally, by a return to strategic contemplation.
Opseth returned to her weeding. The girl was on the verge of action and must be watched, but time remained yet. For her part, once she was done with her gardening for the day, Opseth would see to it a horse was saddled and ready, and then she would wait. It was nearly time—she may not know for what, but she knew it was definitely nearly time.
Nalin rode behind Captain Palla, his nerves jangling, and not just at the possibility that they were being followed. No, Nalin’s anxiety stemmed from a realization that he’d come to only this morning, before dawn, as he’d slipped as quietly as possible out of the old palace. In the two months since he’d last seen Flandari’s Heir, she had undoubtedly changed. He knew he had, and he couldn’t imagine what a season in Thristas might have done to the girl. He had no idea what to expect.
They’d parted on tenuous terms, he and the Heir, nothing defined, far too much left unuttered, and once parted, he’d placed his memories of her into a locked box in his mind, allowing him to move forward with preparations for tonight, after their reunion. He had avoided thinking about seeing her again, about seeing her for the first time again—had, in fact, ignored picturing the moment in his mind like one ignored an uninvited guest at a party. Now that that moment was upon him, he wanted to run in any direction save the one in which he now headed on horseback behind Captain Palla.
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