Dareios looked resplendent in a royal blue kurta, whose placket and rounded collar were embroidered with jewels in the design of a falling star. With his shining dark hair, the Khoda Panaheh marking his brow, and that dangling ruby in his ear, he seemed the quintessential Kandori prince. “Pardon my eavesdropping, but Ean’s thoughts were loud enough to perceive far down the hall.”
Ean grunted. “I’d invite you to explore the deepest corners of my mind if it would solve this problem.”
Dareios’ smile implied there weren’t too many dark corners he hadn’t already explored, but he said only, “My family has contacts in the Prophet’s temple. They may be able to tell us when the Prophet is next away. Ean would only need a few hours to get in and out and could do so without attracting Bethamin’s eye.”
Sebastian muttered, “That would at least be one less evil to deal with,” at the same time that Ean asked, “You have contacts in the Temple of Tambarré?”
A wry smile teased on Dareios’ lips. “You’d be amazed how many people have ‘people’ in the Prophet’s temple, Ean.”
Sebastian exhaled by way of agreement. “The place has more spies than candles.”
Ean perked up. “Then perhaps—”
Dareios shook his head. “I’m afraid they won’t be of much help to us, save to provide some information.”
“He’s right,” Sebastian said. “There’s no deadlier place to serve two masters. No spy would so much as dare to lift his head, lest the Prophet notice him.”
Ean thought of the truthreader Kjieran van Stone and the formidable task he’d accepted in becoming Dannym’s spy in the Temple of Tambarré. He wondered if the man yet survived, and if he’d managed to learn anything that would help his king father keep the kingdom safe from the Duke of Morwyk.
Ean gave a ponderous sigh. What a tangled web.
Dareios glanced at him with understanding in his gaze. “Let me see what I can learn.” He nodded to them both and departed.
Sebastian fingered his goblet and stared quietly into the dark liquid within. “All these eidola…” After a moment’s contemplation, he muttered, “Do you ever ask yourself why? What’s he making them for? What does he intend to do with them?”
“All the time.” Verily, for lack of understanding that very important truth, Ean felt like he was already standing at the gallows, with the eidola looping a noose around his neck.
Sebastian set his goblet on the table and then sank back in his chair. “I wish Isabel had shared more of her vision with us.”
Ean grimaced into his wine. He would rather have had needles driven underneath his fingernails than think about Isabel. He clenched his jaw and stared off into the day, noting how the world beyond seemed very bright in comparison to the loggia’s cool shadows and his own stormy humor. “She’s a Player in the game, Sebastian…” he murmured discontentedly, “but so am I.”
Sebastian considered him with a frown. “Have you made your peace with her, then?” When Ean said nothing to this, only glowered off, he noted, “You can’t avoid her forever—”
Ean’s eyes flashed to his. “Nor can I just forgive her.” He hadn’t wanted to bring the subject up again. He hadn’t wanted to discuss Isabel at all.
Sebastian absently edged his goblet away from his knife. “I could’ve sent Trell to his death at the hands of Viernan hal’Jaitar,” he observed quietly. “Can you not forgive me either?”
“You were under compulsion and had little choice, as I recall.”
“Perhaps she didn’t either.”
“Isabel herself would argue every free mind has a choice. She chose her path. She chose to betray me while upon it.”
“And I chose to send Trell to M’Nador, but you’ve forgiven me that betrayal. What choices did you make that betrayed Isabel?”
Ean clenched his jaw and stared off into the painfully bright beyond.
Sebastian sat forward and leaned elbows on his knees, hands clasped before him. “Here’s one to help you, little brother: Arion abandoned Isabel. You left her to live her life alone for three hundred years.”
Ean flung him a black glare. “I died, damn you!”
Sebastian arched a brow. “Indeed.” He sat back in his chair with challenge gleaming in his gaze. “And in your knowing decision to walk that path to your death, weren’t you choosing the game over Isabel—even as she chose the game over fidelity to you when she bound a Malorin’athgul to our cause?”
Ean held Sebastian’s eyes with his jaw clenched. He wished he’d never told his brother any of it, for Sebastian willingly looked where Ean would not. Moreover, his point hit closely to a truth Ean had yet to unveil about a choice he didn’t understand.
Sebastian tapped at one arm of his chair. “How were your choices any different from Isabel’s, Ean?”
Ean ground his teeth. “She laid with another man, Sebastian.”
The quirk of a grin twitched in the corner of his brother’s mouth.
Ean glared at him. “What?”
“Ean,” Sebastian retrieved his goblet from the table, “it’s just…she’s sleeping with another man every time she sleeps with you.” He raised his goblet to him meaningfully and then took a long drink.
Ean just stared at him, feeling numb.
Perhaps seeing that his point had struck center, Sebastian regarded him pensively. “You’re both Players, you said. So be a Player. Do what you have to do…but don’t make the mistake of thinking your choices are any different from Isabel’s, or that the decisions you’ve made for the sake of the game are somehow beyond reproach, while hers are not.” He dangled his goblet beneath one draped hand and regarded Ean with concern darkening his brow. “You’ve both chosen the game over each other. You’ve both made the game more important than anything else, and maybe…maybe that was and still is the right choice.”
Ean wanted to argue, but his brother made things too simple. Out of belligerence more than reason, he grumbled, “One betrayal doesn’t sanction another.”
A grim smile flickered on Sebastian’s lips. “How do you valuate betrayal, Ean?” He fingered the rim of the goblet suspended beneath his hand. “Can one kind of betrayal really hold more weight than another? You betrayed Isabel, she betrayed you…by Epiphany’s light, is any of it even important? Ah…” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to guide you in this.”
Sebastian set down his goblet and pushed out of his chair. Shoving hands into his pockets, he walked absently beneath the terrace arches. “You’ve a right to feel as you feel, Ean. I’m not taking sides against you, only…” he glanced over his shoulder, “only I would have you see both sides. It’s what our father always taught us—that there are at least two sides to every conflict, and often both feel equally justified in their view. Our power as kings, as diplomats, as leaders of men, comes in being able to assume multiple points of view and understand them. Only in understanding can we hope to positively influence the outcome of any conflict.”
Sebastian paced quietly for a time and then turned another sudden, pointed look at Ean. “You know…you’re not the same man Isabel made the Unbreakable Bond with, yet she bound herself to you newly in this life without hesitation.”
His words felt like crushed glass ground into the wound. Ean glared down into his empty goblet. “What’s your point, Sebastian?”
Sebastian turned to him, looking thoughtful. “My point is that Isabel saw in you the man she vowed to love for eternity, even though that man carries a different face and body.” He leaned back against a column, hands in his pockets. “I was just thinking…maybe these shells and what’s done to them…maybe that isn’t so important.”
‘…We are none of us the shells we wear….’
Isabel’s words, given as consolation when Ean had rejected Creighton because he wore a face of chrome.
“I’m not trying to excuse what she did, Ean, or saying that because we are not these shells that it doesn’t matter how we interact with them. Only…you’re seeking some way
to forgive her, and it seems to me like deciding what parts of your relationship are most important to you is a good beginning.”
While Ean stared broodingly at his goblet, Sebastian blew out a forceful exhale and turned his gaze out over the vista. “How often do you think I've thought about what Dore did to me?”
Lifting his gaze, Ean suddenly saw not his oldest brother, hale and whole, but the naked, broken man he’d found chained to a granite slab in Tal’Afaq.
Sebastian must’ve observed the latent horror in his expression, for he grunted with understanding and laid his head back against the stone column, letting his gaze drift away. “You have no idea what it was like…the degradation I felt, how utterly ruined I was for so long. Dore worked his damnedest to destroy everything about myself that I respected. He dug himself so deeply into my soul, I thought I’d never be free of his seed. But somehow, despite all of it, I managed to hold onto at least a shadow of my honor.”
He looked to Ean with concern furrowing his brow and shifted his stance against the column. “I have to believe this is because honor doesn’t reside in our corporeal forms, Ean, but in some, I don’t know—” He shrugged absently, searching for the term, “ephemeral part of us…the part that continues on into the Returning. If that’s who we truly are, what does it matter what happens to these bodies we don for a brief span of eternity?”
Sebastian pushed off the column and walked beyond the loggia into the sunlight. The passage seemed to cleanse him of the dark shadows that were gripping both of their hearts. “At least…that’s how I have to think of it.” He leaned his forearms on the balustrade. “It’s the only way I can think about it and live on with my sanity intact, knowing all of the things Dore did to me…the things he made me do.” At this, he let out a slow breath and hung his head.
Regarding him gravely, Ean understood what his brother was trying to tell him, and Sebastian probably had the right of it. It unfortunately didn’t lessen the confusing guilt he felt around the entire affair.
Sebastian turned over his shoulder and regarded Ean with a frown. “We’d better go see what Dareios has learned.”
Ean stared at him through burning eyes. “Yes, I guess we should.”
As fortune—or fate, Ean couldn’t quite decide—would have it, Dareios’ spies reported that Bethamin had been gone from the temple for a few days, but they had no information on his expected return.
Not knowing when they might get another chance, the three of them decided it was worth the risk. They spent the rest of the day and evening planning, with Sebastian and Dareios each sharing all they knew about Tambarré, exploring all possible places where the eidola could be housed, and delineating escape routes for Ean to follow after he’d accomplished the mission.
“One last thing, Ean,” Dareios said as they were wrapping up. “My sources tell me that the Prophet’s Advisor” —aka Dore Madden— “has put a bounty on your life to the tune of two hundred gold talents.”
Sebastian let out a low whistle.
“A princely amount indeed,” Dareios agreed.
“The whole of Tambarré will be on the lookout for you with that kind of bounty on your life, Ean,” Sebastian said.
Dareios stroked one triangular eyebrow. “You’ll need to get in and out fast and unnoticed.”
Ean stood and smiled darkly at them. “So what else is new?”
Long after midnight, Ean returned to his rooms and collapsed onto his bed with an exhausted sigh. He hadn’t intended to sleep, but it had been so long since he’d visited with slumber that it claimed him almost at once.
*—*
“Dore’s planning something.” Arion slung himself roughly down into an armchair beside the drafting table where Björn was working. “He’s set up his own little version of our Council of Nine. He’s plotting an overthrow—I just know it.”
Björn was sketching an intricate diagram on a large canvas that took up the entire drafting table. He narrowed his gaze as he carefully connected two lines using one edge of a triangular ruler. The currents were amassed around him in billowing, burnished clouds, flax to his spinning wheel, only this spindle took the form of a glass-tipped pen. He spun several strands of elae to form his magical ink, adjusted his ruler to a new direction, and drew another line. “What does Isabel say?”
“She says she can’t see anything on his path.”
Björn angled him a look. “Can’t see anything of consequence, or can’t see anything?”
Arion scowled. “She wouldn’t specify.”
“An odd ambiguity, coming from my sister.” Björn sat back in his chair and considered Arion with a slight furrow between his brows. “Do you think Dore’s actions connect to this pattern of consequence you’ve predicted?”
Arion worked the muscles of his jaw. “There’s a darkness at the other end of that pattern that I can’t work through. It vanishes into mist as if their objectives are purposefully being obscured.” He met Björn’s gaze. “Would even our enemy have such power?”
Björn arched brows to admit the possibility. “We don’t know all that they’re capable of.”
“We don’t know a tenth of what they’re capable of!” Arion shoved out of his chair and stalked over to the windows, pushing hands into his pockets. “Cause and consequence follow in a logical sequence. Even though I can’t see how it all connects, instinct tells me that it does.” He turned a serious look to Björn. “I fear Isabel is relying too heavily on her Sight. She’s not willing to believe what I’ve foreseen, though logically the path extends in that direction.”
“Providing men make the choices you’ve predicted they’re going to make.”
Arion pinned him with his gaze. “I’ve never been wrong.”
Björn returned a shadowy smile. “Neither has Isabel.”
Arion frowned at him. “You know, you’re really a terrible mediator.”
Björn’s gaze glinted of amusement. He set down his glass pen and folded hands in his lap. “I thought a mediator’s primary mandate was impartiality.”
“Except when I’m right. Then it’s your duty to help your sister see that.” Arion blew out his breath and leaned his head back against a glass pane. He cast a troubled gaze towards the frescoed ceiling. “I have an overpowering feeling that we should be following our instincts instead of depending so much on elae’s channels to guide us through this bog.”
“That’s quite a statement, coming from you.”
Arion looked back to him. “Do you disagree?”
Björn considered him quietly for a moment. “In theory, I agree with you, but I also think we’re going to need to use every resource available to us, pursue every possible avenue, to gain the advantage.” He picked up his glass pen again and went back to his chart.
The canvas spread before him comprised hundreds of carefully intersecting geometric shapes. It was beginning to resemble a globe. When Arion looked more closely at it, he saw the grid was three-dimensional. Björn made a motion with his hand, and the three-dimensional figure on the page spun to reveal a new section, only partially sketched in—the beginnings of T’khendar’s weldmap.
Björn slid the corner of the triangular ruler into a new position. “I trust that whatever machinations Dore may be working against my sister, you and Isabel will soon have them in hand.”
Dissatisfaction thrummed through Arion. He angled a restless look at his brother-by-binding. “Sometimes I think you place too much faith in all of us.”
Björn lifted him an admiring smile, one that acknowledged the deep bond of friendship they shared. “I either trust all of you implicitly, or I take every position on the field myself—which you and I both know would open the game to the liability of a single point of view.” He gave him an encouraging look and returned to his map. “There’s no other way to do this, Arion. I have to trust you and Isabel to play your positions. So play them well.”
*—*
Ean roused with a start and looked to the windows to find them still bles
sedly dark. Surging into action, he tossed his satchel onto the bed and began grabbing the items he would need for his journey. The dream remained in the back of his mind, stirring a restless malcontent.
As he took his sword and scabbard from their hook in the armoire, he stilled. His sword felt heavy in his hands, weighted by duty…a sword that Phaedor had remade for him into a sentient Merdanti blade.
‘…You will have need of that sword yet. Much need…’
Ean exhaled a heavy sigh. He had to wonder, if he went ahead with this course, moving forward as Arion had always done to achieve the effect he intended despite any and all odds…if he chose to pursue a path of unpredictability in the face of Dore’s predictions…would he finally be stepping onto the field as a Player? Would he finally be finding his position and playing it well?
A knock came on the door, and Sebastian pushed his head through the parting.
Ean arched brows. “It’s late…or I suppose I should say early.” He shoved his hair out of his eyes and went back to his packing.
“I couldn’t sleep.” Sebastian closed the door behind himself. “I just kept having this terrible premonition that you’re going to go out there and do something stupid.”
Ean eyed his brother tetchily. “Isabel didn’t come to you in another dream, did she? Send you in here to try to change my mind?”
“No. Just call it an older brother’s intuition, knowing his littlest brother’s foolhardy nature.”
A smile crept across Ean’s features. “Trell was the foolhardy one. I just didn’t want to be left behind.”
Tragically, thoughts of his middle brother reminded Ean of the many others he’d inadvertently drawn into this game: Alyneri, Tanis, Gwynnleth, Fynnlar. Where were they now? What trials had they endured? Even the problems his mother and father were facing against the Duke of Morwyk seemed somehow connected to him, all of them interwoven into the vast tapestry that encompassed Björn van Gelderan’s game.
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