“You know very little, Taritana, especially about me.” He knew the words would sting. She did not care over much for him but she had never been treated to his temper either. It would make her uncomfortable. Far be it for Valor to leave her, his secret weakness, to her discomfort. “I apologize for my tone, Second Empress. The Empire is strong but there are those that stir the wind with questions. You have done something to calm the swaying trees and breaking waves, for now. It is an honorable thing you have done, Taritana.”
He imagined she nodded. When he felt her hand on his back his muscles tightened and his hands turned to fists on his favorite quiver.
“Thank you,” she said.
He turned to regard her. Tall, like all women from the North, she stood at the same height as his brother Lanus, a scant few inches shorter than himself. She had shining waves of hair that vacillated from blond to brown almost as if changed by mood. Her large eyes were blue-gray but could also darken at a moment’s notice. She had generous lips, very strong brows and cheeks…even her nose dared those around her to call her anything less than beauty. Her square jaw seemed fit for a man, yet she appeared completely feminine. Valor could not understand it. Surely, her beauty differed from Raeche’s–the Empress was small and dark, her features delicate–yet Taritana could hold a man spellbound with her raw, bold, daring beauty. Raeche held a man spellbound like a neurotoxin.
“She swims as poison in his blood.” Taritana said aloud what echoed in his mind.
“Yes.”
“And she does not even know it. How can she be such a fool?”
Not often one to defend the Empress in any way, his sense of fairness overrode every other instinct. “Raeche has never known anything else but her existence as Empress. She knows little of the Spirit of Nature. Her father died long ago. Her mother–we both know–is a fool of auru proportions. She has no sisters. By rights, her education on such matters should fall to you.”
Taritana frowned. “For that I have surely earned the Spirit of Disappointment.”
He tilted his head to the side, blond locks falling forward. “I find it intriguing that being a sister to her is your only perceived failure as a Personal.”
“I have a sister,” she snapped.
“In the eyes of the Empire, Ina is not your sister. Raeche is your family as Lanus is mine.”
“Lanus is really your brother. Dahouina is really my sister, not Raeche.”
Valor would get nowhere if he followed this path. He changed his tone to one of conspiracy. “Tell me. What has she done now that is worse than all she has done before to provoke your ire? For that matter, what have you done now that causes you such irritation? My Spirit senses justice, yet you…”
The Empress’s Personal raised her shoulders and the slightest shimmer appeared at the corner of one eye.
The Emperor’s Personal put out his hand. At his silent request, Taritana came closer. She opened her left hand to him and peeled back a thin red pad covering the small space below the lines of her fingers and above the lines of her palm. The skin there was pale and soft–no different in appearance than the rest of her hand.
Valor touched the exposed flesh with his fingertips. A rush of Spirit closed his eyes and the vision took form.
* * * *
With a night-blue hood pulled low over her eyes, Taritana watched from a dark parapet.
The rich forest of the East formed a natural boundary around the Imperial wing of the palace. Brittle brambles grew dense in the winter, making the woods practically impenetrable without the use of Spirit or the help of the Lovers’ Opalus. On this cool night the woods opened like the flower of the single-vine. Dark but streaked with lighter shadows, the opening accepted Raeche’s dark silhouette.
Earlier that evening, the Imperial couple had celebrated two rings of marriage before the Empire. That night, Raeche used her beauty to tempt a bold timra player to suicide by another’s hand. All saw his flirtation, but recklessly Raeche encouraged him, so much so that the fool believed her Personal to be complicit.
Though Taritana had delivered the message from Galan, the timra player, she had believed Raeche would laugh and mock. Instead, she treated the Spirit-enhanced missive like the most valuable of gifts. The Personal had also believed Raeche smart enough, devout enough, not to take part in any forbidden liaison. In that, Taritana was also wrong.
When the woods closed behind Raeche, Taritana knew that even if she summoned the guards no one would make it in time to follow the Empress. Even if they penetrated the forest Raeche would be lost to them, for she sought the Lovers’ Opalus. The Empress was ever the fool, willfully ignorant of the rumbles of the Imperial couple’s failure to produce an heir had begun to shake the Empire. Taritana would allow no further humiliation of Lanus.
She had to tell him. The Emperor would reject Raeche, for she had betrayed the man and the Empire by lying with the timra player while she hid from his bed and denied him an heir.
The Empress’s Personal went to the Emperor’s room and found him abed, naked. When she told him what she knew, she watched in awe as he covered his perfect body and demanded she take him to the exact spot on the parapet where she had seen Raeche. Ice started to fall from the sky as they stood shoulder to shoulder, waiting for her to appear.
When the East Forest returned her, Raeche stepped out without a cloak. Instead, she wore a white gown, bright in the night against the backdrop of her streaming black hair and dark skin. Even from the parapet, they could see her slight form shivering under the burden of a dress weighed down with water. Though her face was hardly visible, they could tell she tried to keep water from her eyes. Then a nearly imperceptible bubble, perfectly born from Spirit of Heat and Protection, encircled the Empress.
Raeche had never mastered any Spirit well enough to protect herself this way.
Taritana gasped and stepped away from the Emperor.
He did not even look at her. “I will not let her make herself sick with this folly.”
“But–”
“Help me keep her warm, sister. We will devise a plan.”
* * * *
Valor felt Taritana’s horror at his brother’s words. Lanus had not known, but he had nearly broken the woman then. He destroyed her faith in the Spirit and the Empire when next he required her to assist with his plan.
Valor pulled back his hand. Watched as she covered her palm again with the sliver of red tape.
“You have done the right thing. Understand that here.” He touched his temple. “And believe it here.” He touched his chest above his heart.
She nodded. A slight flush chased across her cheeks as she studied him. “Some moments you look almost exactly like him,” she mused. “Your voice is deeper than the Emperor’s and, though younger, you are taller, and sometimes seem wiser. At least in your sensible disapproval of the Empress.” This time her voice was breathy and high. He found he loathed the sound of it.
Valor stepped away from her, ignoring her comments about his resemblance to his brother. “It is always right for Personals to put the Empire before themselves. Now, if we are both quiet–in our souls quiet–the people will look upon the child with certainty, and the Empire will remain strong.”
He did not look at her again before making his escape. If he stayed longer, he might reveal truths of his own.
Chapter 4
Raeche convinced herself the baby would change. Someday soon Rucha’s eyes would darken, her hair would darken, her skin would darken. She would stop growing so fast. She would look, maybe, like Raeche and the people of the East, or maybe, just maybe, she would begin to look like Galan, who had let her talk endlessly about nothing while he touched her with the flower of the single-vine.
Raeche had given herself to him for all that he was like her: small and dark, with sensitive eyes. Someone who could never frighten or intimidate her. Someone who did not have the power of knowledge that she had spent her entire life being trained to his pleasure, that she had never posse
ssed her own life. Spirit help her, but she had not wanted the child’s life to be yet another possession of the Emperor’s. She wanted Rucha to be hers and hers alone. To love her and her alone.
Yet as the girl grew longer she remained fair-haired and light-eyed. Her lips compressed like the Emperor’s when frustrated. She radiated with Spirit that felt like his in all ways.
But the time did not fit, even for a late child.
This mystery forced a wedge between Raeche and her little daughter. Though the Empress dutifully spent time with the baby, Rucha sensed her mother’s unease and cried while her Spirit clung to the Emperor. Raeche neither trusted nor felt worthy of a like bond so she did not press. The separation wrought despair, and despair wrought obsession and paranoia. In all ways, Rucha was the daughter of the Emperor. She bore no signs of the man with whom Raeche had betrayed him. But that was impossible.
The Empress had to be mad. Only insanity would have her reject what was surely a blessing from the Spirit. A miracle. The Empire had its rightful heir. The Empress had her life, but the question opened a raw wound, draining her of all interest and energy. It drew her away from her duties as Empress. Trapped Raeche in her chambers, where she wore through the thread of her rugs and of the curtain she pulled back often to look toward the East Forest, which hid Galan’s secret path to her.
There was no one in all the Empire or beyond to whom she could speak or beg counsel. Galan had gone. It would be unwise to address this with the only person who knew for certain of her awful treachery–her husband. Her wretched mother, who arrived at the palace as a banquet for the eye, though empty-handed, empty-headed, and empty-hearted, recommended that she brush her hair fifty more strokes, use more bahtberry on her lips, and finally begin to wear the ornate crown of the Empire. Even in Raeche’s state of half-living she rejected these foolish remedies, and wished she could do the same to her mother.
Her mother. Annikah. Raeche could not think of her without fearing she would be consumed by the Rage. More often than should have been bearable, this fury washed over her as she stared at her own reflection. She looked very much like her mother. Sometimes, to the Empress’s horror, she behaved very much like her as well.
Annikah had been the Empire’s reigning beauty before her daughter came of age. Perhaps the constant adoration and power bestowed on Annikah for her exquisite appearance had hardened her to the benefits of cultivating other Spirits. Never had she sought to tame her erratic temper, or to soften her heart to anyone around her. The Spirit of Compassion was as foreign to her as the mysteries beyond the Death White Border. Taritana had disdained Raeche’s behavior as much of the same for as long as the Empress could remember.
However, Annikah had never made an exception for her daughter. Her blood had never warmed to Raeche and she had found no joy in her role as mother. Raeche, on the other hand, felt her daughter tug at her heart with every glance, every touch. Annikah had never told her daughter her secrets, of which Raeche was certain she had many—for an instant she saw again the soft glow of the objects on the vanity—while Raeche had vowed to keep nothing from Rucha. In the end, she banned her Spirit-cursed mother from the palace altogether. She was happy for the first time that she did not have sisters because she alone had to bear the bite of her mother’s vapidity and neglect. The status of her birth was proof that the Spirit possessed a sense of humor. An older sister would have saved her from the Empire–Raeche would have been the Personal. A younger sister and Raeche would have at least had a proper Personal, a confidante she could trust with her life and, beyond, with the Empire, should she perish. But she was glad no one else would suffer her mother, though it forced her to rely on the Personal she had been saddled with.
Taritana, ever distrustful, would certainly confirm the Emperor’s suspicion and force his hand. She had broken her stony silence for mere seconds to say, “Raeche, you do not seem well. You should eat more, drink more, and spend more time in the morning shine of the daystar, away from the palace.”
A moment of reflection caught Raeche wondering what the world would be like if Taritana did not hate her or covet her husband. Before Rucha was born she had wondered if there was some way to exchange places with Taritana. The Personal could have the Emperor and Empire. Selection for this, the second most exalted position in the Empire, required that she be the second most suitable woman in the kingdom to wed the Empire. Likewise Valor, the Emperor’s younger brother and so much like her husband, was the second most suitable man to wed the Empire. Raeche did not fool herself into believing she would be any good at the role of Personal, but for freedom from the Emperor she would try. Sadly, supposition was pointless–she would never abandon Rucha, despite her distance from the girl.
She tried Taritana’s therapies but they failed to restore her as they did not solve the ever-present puzzle. She watched her daughter grow blonder. The daystar did not harm Rucha, but did not warm the tone of her skin either. Her eyes remained pale green, like the Emperor’s, but shaped like Raeche’s, as were her nose and cheeks. The Empire rejoiced over how beautiful its heir would be, and how strong.
Raeche considered more than once that perhaps Galan had been an unconscious production of Spirit. A figment of her imagination, or even a phantom. Still, in all her imaginings, she had known little of the relationship between man and woman before him. She had received no education in such things when she was given to the Emperor. It had been her mother’s duty to prepare her, but Annikah had merely told her that she knew all she needed to know.
“Look at you,” Annikah had said, gesturing to her. “Of course he will want you. There is nothing left for you to know.”
When Raeche began to ask questions, her mother had kept her distance but scrutinized her as if scrying, her gaze delving her daughter’s. The moment had passed soon after, and her mother had gone, leaving her to her fate. The things the Empress had learned since the few ill-fated couplings with her husband had not come from her imagination. They filled her mind at the oddest of times, made her cheeks and belly hot.
Galan was real, but he could not be the father of her child. Yet, it could be none other.
Raeche’s hair became dry and brittle. Her skin began to flake. Dark half-circles developed beneath her eyes. Her lush curves diminished. When she evaluated the image in her mirror, all the womanly trappings that had lured Galan to her had disappeared. Though the bards still wrote songs of her beauty she heard none of them. Raeche made few appearances in public, ignoring many of her duties as Empress. She talked to herself incessantly, often arguing over the puzzle of her daughter’s conception. When Taritana interfered, Raeche sliced through her insincere overtures with the lethal truth: the Personal loved the Emperor and could therefore not do her duty to the Empress, though it was Raeche to whom she owed her fealty and devotion.
Her existence grew unbearable. As cycles scraped by, she spent her free hours apart from the world in the Imperial Library. She read books, scrolls, the Codex of the Empire, and the Codex of the Spirit. Searching for answers–even searching for a reference to a strange blood-eating vanity–but she learned little more than she already knew.
Steeped in yawning despair, she would have willingly and with relief gone into death this way, if not for a Chance of Spirit in the form of Rucha taking her first steps.
Raeche had not even noticed Rucha was of an age to walk, so long had she dwelled in a compartment of fear and confusion. As she passed the Emperor’s apartments one day she saw his door standing ajar. Though not unusual, a whisper of breath on the back of her neck made her turn her head and she saw her daughter’s first steps. Of course, Rucha had been walking to her father. From his loud whoop as he swung the girl in the air, Raeche knew for certain the Emperor had never experienced a happier moment. He did not contain his Spirit and it overwhelmed her, pouring happiness into her. She did not remember ever knowing the Spirit of Happiness or Contentment.
In this breath of a moment, Raeche was reminded of her husband’s masculi
ne beauty. More than the most powerful man in the Empire, from head to foot he was the most handsome, courageous and terrible. His coloring so different from her own, his body so large and undefeatable in battle, he stole her breath at the strangest of moments. Galan had never stolen her breath or stopped her words and she had been so thankful for that. The Emperor had sea-green eyes that stroked her. The Emperor’s hands were scarred and had thick calluses on the palm yet were gentle as they directed her in a dance.
She had always known him to be handsome but, until that moment, she had allowed her nervousness to cloak him in something ugly and aggressive. Her husband exuded danger without compare.
Rucha did not fear her father, only felt his love and protection, and yes, occasionally, the cruelty required to exert command. Raeche, by this time, had witnessed the child’s unerring reading of Spirit. If Rucha had faith, there could be no doubt Lanus was completely and utterly devoted to Rucha’s happiness. Perhaps his thirst for blood was duty rather than passion.
Her own duty had been to fill the Emperor’s life with protection, happiness, and fealty, yet she had failed him because she feared him. Even worse, deep down, in her heart of hearts, she wanted to hurt him for making her a coward when more than anything she wanted to be brave. Such a lapse in Spirit was shameful. Her distance from her child was shameful, but she was the Empress. She would repent. Take action.
Raeche squared her shoulders. She took a deep breath and smoothed her hands over the purple gown that bared one shoulder and was at once loose and flattering on her petite curves.
She knocked on the open door frame then stepped inside the Emperor’s chamber. When he looked up, his smile faltered, though Rucha’s did not. Sitting on her bottom, the toddler lifted her arms and squeezed her hands at Raeche. Instead of picking the child up, Raeche gestured to the floor. “May I?”
The Empire (The Lover's Opalus) Page 2