Roars cascaded from the gallery while Senators nodded their heads or shook them. Velbaor pounded his gavel for silence.
“This is highly irregular, Prime Minister,” Fensin declared. “A trial in absentia goes against every custom of honor and fairness this body was designed to uphold.”
“The people demand justice,” Velbaor replied. Protests filled the chamber, and several minutes passed until the gavel knocked them out. “Prince Ashel has refused multiple summons to return home and answer these charges.”
“He should at the very least have representation,” Fensin replied. “I would be happy to speak for his Highness.”
Velbaor agreed, took another vote, and declared the trial would begin that afternoon.
Outside the Hall, people jammed the foyer with sharp elbows and angry voices. Manor guards formed a phalanx, shoving a path toward the door. In the press of bodies, Geram felt a papery hand clasp his wrist. “Inform Elekia she will have a guilty verdict,” Fensin murmured before slipping away.
Ne'er-Do-Well
Ashel stared into his glass as epithets swirled like liquor and spit: Spendthrift. Ne’er-do-well. Coward. The Lathan papers had been full of those names for years. Now, they were true.
Spendthrift. He kneaded a pouch full of Korng mullas. Could he drink enough harlolinde to bankrupt them? He’d heard Lornk’s mother had done a good job of it, smoking bliss. He slid another crystal across the bar. Frowning, Ellen topped his glass.
Ne’er-do-well. He had not done well finding Vic and Bethniel. He had sung for the Center in a wild fit of wishful thinking and been soundly rebuffed. He had seen every slotaen merchant, spoken to every ship captain and customs officer involved in the slotaen trade, and gained the help of none. He’d searched every volume in Lornk’s library and found not a single bit of evidence to refute Lornk’s claims and not one hint of how to bring his wife and sister home, if they were in the past. Every chronicle pointed to the same outcome: Victoria of Ourtown had died dueling Meylnara the Oppressor.
Coward. All his boastful vows that he would find his beloveds, that Vic would not die in the past, withered in the face of his growing terror that they were beyond his reach. Or already dead. He wanted to shrink into a corner and drown his promises and his fears in drink. Like a coward. A shemen.
Traitor. A new epithet for the headlines, and one just as true as the rest. He hadn’t helped Lornk break out of prison, but he hadn’t stopped him from escaping Latha, and he’d done nothing to stop his rebellion here in Traine. Inaction was collusion. Small feet dangled in his memory. Parnden was a vicious tyrant who deserved to be brought down, but surely Lornk would do no better. A blunt stump butted his forehead. “I gave these to bring him to justice,” he muttered at the missing fingers. Now he’d lost everything and achieved nothing.
“Did you say something?” Ellen asked.
“I’ll take a bottle.”
He moved to a table in the corner. Liquor scorched his throat but couldn’t burn away memories of amber tresses sliding through his fingers, or erase that crooked half-smile, or drown the rare and cherished laughter. Dispel the scent that would send his heart racing, his blood rushing hot and urgent; banish smooth skin and firm muscles from his touch. Hours ago, before he’d Listened to his mother banish him, his dreams had turned into a nightmare when he realized the sensations he’d thought were fancies of his wife were real couplings between Geram and his mother! He filled the glass and slammed down another draught.
A man rushed through the tavern door and leaned over the bar, speaking urgently with Ellen. Threadbare clothing and thick black hair tugged at his memory—it was the same man he’d seen with the Commissar. Ellen angled her head at Ashel. They argued a moment more, and the man came over to his table.
Glancing back at the tavernkeeper, the man made the Oreseeker condolence sign. “For your loss, Highness.” He spoke in Betheljin, his diction crisp, but with an Oreseeker’s accent.
Ashel filled his glass and shoved it at the man. “Just Ashel. You’re another one?”
“Another?”
“Someone who knew my wife,” he said in the Ancient’s tongue, speaking slowly through his brimming inebriation.
The man’s shoulders relaxed, and he answered in the same language. “My name is Samson of Cairo, and yes, I knew Vic. I was a teacher, and she was my supervisor.” He loosed a sardonic chuckle. “I didn’t like taking orders from a teenage girl, not that I was much older.”
“To the Logs,” Ashel swigged from the bottle, and Samson sipped from the glass. “I saw you at Parnden’s.”
Samson flushed. “Yes.”
“You don’t look like an Oreseeker.”
“My mother was Caleisbahnin.”
“That must be quite a story.”
“It is. I . . . Ellen suggested I talk to you. I’m an inventor . . . or, a re-inventor, actually.”
The glowing bulbs hazed into Ashel’s memory. “The electric lights. Is that your work?”
The man smiled and raised the glass. “Yes! Unfortunately, the Commissar hasn’t paid the bulk of my fee—”
The door banged open, and a trio of toughs barged over and yanked Samson out of his chair.
Ellen protested, and a hard woman said in the Buzzard patois, “Take Kinseller outside, brothers. No stains on pretty floor.”
“No seadog keep you safe,” one of the men sneered as they dragged Samson out.
“What did they mean by Kinseller?” Ashel asked Ellen. His tongue felt thick and ungainly, his head like it might roll off his shoulders.
Brows knitted, she slid into Samson’s seat and leaned close. “Some from Cairo blame him, say he betrayed us to the Caleisbahnin.”
“Did he?”
She shrugged. “He went on the auctioneer’s block like everyone else from that ship.”
Traitor. Inaction was collusion. Ashel took the bottle and stumbled out. Thumps and groans leaked from the alley. He followed the sound into the shadows, where the men held Samson pinned to the wall, a target for the woman’s boot.
“Stop,” Ashel said.
The woman paused mid-kick, her foot suspended. “Leave, silkie, or you be next.” Her heel jabbed Samson’s gut. The Oreseeker groaned.
Rage fired Ashel’s heart, and he cracked the butt of the bottle against the woman’s head. She dropped. Glass and liquor sprayed as he smashed the bottle against the wall. The men cursed. A knife slashed. Ashel batted the blade aside, slashed the wielder’s forehead. The savagery of his own attack shocked him as blood drowned the man’s eyes, but the heel of his hand followed Geram’s instincts and slammed into the man’s chin. He finished him with a kick. Bone crunched, and the assailant collapsed. Samson released a loud “Ha!” as he rammed a fist into the other thug’s nose. His knee rammed the man’s groin, and the trio lay groaning on the ground.
“You’re bleeding,” Samson panted, pointing at Ashel’s maimed hand.
He sucked at welling blood, the pain dull within the dizzy fog of harlolinde. He hadn’t even realized the blade had sliced him.
“Thank you,” Samson added. “I thought you were drunk.”
“Not that drunk.” Not drunk enough. Geram’s instincts and skills for a street fight had once again prevailed. The blind Alnan tomcat taking advantage of a queen’s grief. Shrinejump, it wasn’t simply lust—he knew Geram genuinely loved his mother, which only twisted the knife in the wound left by Vic’s loss. If only he could be free of the other man—all his thoughts, all his sensations. What would it take for the pair of them to be something other than a twisted manifestation of an Ancient tale about a blind man who fucked his own mother?
Palm afire and oozing blood, he stumbled out of the alley. Samson limped after him, a hand pressed to his side. “You should go home,” the Oreseeker said. “Those people have dangerous associates.”
“Who are they?”
“They work for my creditors.”
Ashel chuckled
bitterly. Ahead, an ironwork arch sported a dozen bent-backed, winged figures among filigreed leaves and thorns, obsidian eyes glinting in the setting sun. The gate to the Buzzard’s Roost. Spendthrift. Ne’er-do-well. Coward. “Show me to a place where I can buy bliss, and I’ll help with your creditors.”
Samson shook his head. “You don’t—”
“Show me.”
Samson hesitated, eyes darting down the alley and toward the Roost. His gaze shifted to the bay, his expression wistful as the sun sank into the mountains behind them. “You’re not the only one to lose someone in the Kiareinoll,” he said. “Gustave is my . . . Gustave of Sect Dameron is with your wife and sister. You must believe they’ll come back.”
Ashel snorted. An Oreseeker, speaking about faith. “Are you going to show me or not?”
“No.”
A man in the alley stirred, then fell prone. Ashel rubbed his chin. “Come by the Korng palazzo Thirdday evening. We’ll talk about debts and creditors, faith and lost loves then. But tonight, I’m going to forget all of it.”
Inside the Roost, filthy, sharp-toothed children ran about, flinging mud and insults. Sour-faced women and old men scowled from doorways. Framed in lank, stringy hair, every face was dirty, and every one was pale, like Vic. The only brown complexion was his own. Pale skin was uncommon in Latha, though not unknown. Sashal had had red hair and a propensity toward freckles, like Vic, so Ashel had never thought of her as belonging to a people. Yet here were yellow-haired children shouting in the Ancients’ tongue, proving the Oreseekers were not an abstract idea of a lost tribe but flesh and blood people from a culture rooted in heresy, stolen from their homeland and sold into slavery. Like his wife. See you soon, husband. The Buzzards’ glaring misery dug at him, pricking his conscience as he took random turns, nose twitching through air laced with smoke, rancid meat, and chamber pots, but his need to forget his troubles squashed his sympathy for the suffering around him.
The slum was bigger than he expected; he wouldn’t find what he needed wandering aimlessly. A knot of filthy waifs clustered in a shanty doorway; he flicked half a mulla into their midst. A dozen greedy eyes turned to him, and a girl rose laconically. She looked younger than Timny. “What you want, silkie?” The youths cackled as she sidled up to him. “You want sweet? Come inside. Better sweet than fine silkie flop.”
“Bliss.” He slid another crystal into the girl’s hand. “Take me where I can get it, and you’ll get twice that when we’re there.”
Eyes alight with greed, the girl led him along slime-slicked paths echoing with shouts and squalling babies. She stopped at a grimy door. “Emily will do for you. You want sweet to follow, you stop by my flop.” She pocketed the remainder of her fee. “Pretty silkie like you get twice the sweet for half the price.”
“No, thank you.” He entered the place and slammed the door in the girl’s face. A saccharine reek pervaded a dark corridor. He trod toward flickering light. Floorboards creaked. The hall opened into a chamber where shadowed figures sucked on hookahs, their exhalations a yellow smoke that swirled into clouds under rough ceiling boards. Other figures sprawled on mats, grimy faces bearing slack grins.
“Come.” An old woman rose from a stained chaise and beckoned him into another room. “Very clean. Very private.” She waved at a bed covered with a moth-eaten blanket. “Top grade for Citizen,” she said as she filled the hookah and wiped the mouthpiece with a rag. “You like? Twenty mulla.”
He raised his eyebrows at a price that would buy a fine meal and refined company at an elegant brothel, but he handed over the crystals. Spendthrift. The crone rolled the stones in her hand. “Whole night yours, now. I send you girl? Boy?” At the shake of his head, she patted her chest. “Emily bliss monger long time. You come right place. Whole night yours.”
Shaking, he sat on the bed. His head still reeled from har, but he could sense Geram, sipping soup at the state dinner celebrating Timny’s designation as Heir. Bethniel, robbed. Robbed and gone and no one did a thing about it. Least of all him. Ne’er-do-well. Ashel swiped the hookah’s pipe and sucked the smoke. Yellow scalded the back of his throat, and he broke off, spluttering.
A sob gripped him. Cheeks wet, he tried again, suppressing the desire to cough, sucking the heat deep into his lungs. Warmth spread out from his chest, traveling up his neck, into his face. Anguish melted into relief. He took another toke, and elation rose through his blood. Coward. Elesendar, it felt good to forget. Traitor. A third inhalation drew joy deep into his chest, and bliss—bliss indeed!—bloomed behind his eyes. A wave of oblivion broke over him, washing away pain and awareness. He sank onto the mattress, his lips curved in beatitude.
* * *
Voices echoed, hard consonants and soft vowels, uttered in rhythms he knew but with sounds stretched out, as if he floated beneath the ocean’s surface and the speakers stood above the waves. A tug pried open an eyelid, and a light shone. It hurt, but his limbs were too heavy to flinch, and the eyelid snapped shut. A white circle scarred the darkness.
Every particle in his body longed for the beautiful wave that had washed memory and sensation away.
Someone picked up his right hand. Fingers palpated the blunt flesh covering his knuckles, traced the scars, hissed at the new gash in his palm. “What happened here?” The echoing voices resolved into words. “Hand me the slotaen and clean dressings from my bag, please.” A cooling balm masked the hurt, and a bandage wound over the wound.
“The stumps have healed well, considering,” the stranger concluded.
“Said without a trace of judgment.” Lornk’s voice.
“Disappointment. You refused every lesson I ever tried to teach you.”
“I learned better than you think—kindness has its uses, but that night I needed a sharper edge.”
“That night you failed, and you ruined this man’s life and livelihood for nothing.”
“A tactical setback, Moralen, but success is within my grasp. As for my son, he doesn’t need a livelihood.”
“Or a grasp? Is he your son?”
Ashel’s heart lurched into a faster rhythm. The probing fingers held his wrist, moved to the pulse in his throat as Lornk said, “I doubt Elekia could answer that question with certainty, but look at him, sprawled here, just like my mother. Bliss-lust runs in families, doesn’t it?”
“It does, but—” Moralen squeezed Ashel’s shoulder. A weight pressed upon the bed. “Every man has his breaking point. I met mine, and I know how hard it is to resist the forgetting that comes from that pipe over there. Even after all these years, every bit of me yearns for it.”
“That’s why I called you, to help me steer him from this path.”
“If that’s your goal, you’d better put up some guide rails. Rumor has it, he’s been cooling his heels in merchants’ offices for months.”
“He visited with Parnden too. Will you talk to him? You’ve been where he is, in this very room.”
“I could never afford this room, and this is your problem to fix.”
“All right, my friend. I’ll take him home with me.”
The door latch clicked.
Ashel pried his eyelids apart. “Who was that?”
“My physician,” Lornk said. “Can you sit up?”
Ashel levered himself up on leaden elbows. His gaze fell on the hookah; desolation yawned deep and wide.
Lornk grimaced. “I hate this place. Mother used to come here, and Elsa and I would have to fetch her home. We had only one servant—besides Elsa—and he was almost as useless as Mother.”
“I couldn’t care less about your rags-to-riches story.”
“Never rags, Ashel. We had no servants. The palazzo and mines carried two or three mortgages apiece, and my mother sold heirlooms so she could suck on that hookah over there. Yet we still were far better off than the wealthiest family in this slum. Get up. We’ll walk to the Circle—exercise is the best purgative for bliss.”
“I wil
l not help you become Commissar.”
“Yet you haven’t stopped me, have you? You could have betrayed me to Parnden, but here I am, fetching you from this place instead of swinging from the gallows. The last time he executed a Citizen for treason—the last time a Citizen refused to buy a way out of the noose—her body hung there a full month. I wonder how long he’d leave me up.”
Ashel shrugged, thinking of small dangling feet. “I don’t care which of you holds the Commissar’s seat or swings from a rope.”
Lornk laughed. “You don’t? Well, that’s progress.”
A pain like icy fingers gripped his heart. Tears ran into his beard. He scrubbed a sleeve across wet cheeks. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Lornk pulled a note out of a pocket. “Seems you have nowhere else to go. This came for you through the Device.”
Official notice of your banishment has been posted all over Narath, and couriers have taken it to the rest of the nation. Your refusal to return home has sealed this fate and done nothing to secure the return of your sisters.
There was no signature, but it was his mother’s hand.
“Elekia used to send me nasty notes through the Device. Now she’s sending them to you. Let’s go. If nothing else I’m sure you want your pouch filled.”
On shaky knees, Ashel followed Lornk into the main room, where Emily snored on her chaise. Lornk curled his lip. “That fiend hasn’t changed in thirty years.” None of her customers woke as they stepped through sprawled limbs. Outside, morning fog obscured coastal range and bay alike, the mist curling ahead of their steps. Fish reek pervaded the alley; pops and sizzle of fry grease crackled through paper windows. Buzzards filtered out of doorways and joined a growing procession heading for the Roost gate.
“Citizen,” a woman called and pressed a bundle into Lornk’s hands. “Thank you, sir.”
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