“I guess we have much to be grateful for,” Lisen said, raising a conspiratorial eyebrow.
Nalin sensed Rinli’s discomfort and wondered at it. “It’s a compliment, you know,” he said to the girl.
Rinli glanced up at her mother. “Thank you. I think.”
“All right,” Lisen said and pushed away from the table to go back to her desk. “Rinli, would you ask Jazel to send the next petitioner in?”
The daughter with her father’s hair and her mother’s eyes and smile rose and moved towards the clerk’s office door. Nalin looked at Lisen, and Lisen shrugged back. “She’s going to make it,” he mouthed silently.
Lisen nodded. “I know,” she mouthed back and smiled. “I know.”
Everyone, including Rinli, stood up as her mother stepped into the Council chamber from her office and strode to the podium on the dais. Day three of the session, and two trials were about to begin—the legal battle itself between the Ba twins for their inheritance and the first test of the heavily revised procedure for a trial by Council.
“Good morning. Please sit.” The Empir paused to allow the assembly to settle and then continued. “Each of you should have received a scroll delivered to your room earlier this morning, correct?”
Rinli turned to look behind her at the Council members who’d filled the chamber this morning, and she noted the nods from everyone. Some of them even held their scrolls up, tied beautifully with little Ilazer-green ribbons and affixed with the variously colored wax seals of each of the councilors and holders.
“Commander, Under-commander.”
At the call from their Empir, the two highest-ranking guards stepped down from either side of the dais and picked up the large baskets which had been set there for them. Starting at the back of the room, they stepped from one seated Council member to the next. Rinli watched as the two commanders inspected each rolled and tied scroll before placing it in the basket, checking that the seal at the end of the ribbon matched the noble submitting it.
Commander Tanres stepped past Rinli’s father and herself without offering the basket, and Rinli noted the smiles the commander and her father surreptitiously exchanged. There had been talk at one point that her father should be the next Commander when Tanres retired in a few months, but his obligations to the treaty had precluded that possibility. Now it would likely be Under-commander Kopol. Why else would they have brought her in from Pass Garrison for a Council session?
“Thank you,” Rinli’s mother said softly as Tanres and Kopol brought their baskets up and set them on the table. She reached out to Holder Corday for his scroll, placed it in one of the baskets, then upended the contents of the other basket into the first. Finally, she stuck one hand into the full basket, stirred it around a bit and pulled out a scroll. She inspected the seal and untied the ribbon. After reading the name written on the parchment, she looked up.
“Holder Melanda Cabell.”
“Aye, my Liege.” Holder Cabell, a member of her mother’s privy council, rose from her seat almost directly behind Rinli and made her way up to the dais. The Empir gestured to the first of the four chairs behind the table, next to where she stood, inviting the holder to sit. She repeated this ritual three more times, appointing Councilor Kiptor of Holding Bedel, Holder Sakal of Grimmal and Councilor Himlin of Holding Prea as the other three judges.
After the judges all took their places behind the table, Rinli’s mother moved to stand behind them, spread her arms out to encompass them symbolically and spoke. “This is your panel of judges for Mutar Ba versus Akdor Ba in the matter of the inheritance of Holding Terane.” She stepped around in front of them and continued. “But you, too, are judges, all of you” she said, encompassing the entire assembly with her arms, “and you must listen as though you’re sitting up here as well and must attend every court session in case a judge up here is unable to continue and must be replaced.”
“Will you be checking attendance?” someone in the back asked. Rinli started to turn to look, but her father stopped her.
“Tazori Dors,” he whispered.
Rinli nodded. Elor’s friend.
“If you think that’s necessary, Holder,” Rinli’s mother said with a sweetness that bordered on sarcasm. “I don’t.” She smiled and continued. “Remember, if you want a written copy of the rules of the court, my clerk will be happy to provide that to you. Now, I declare a brief recess so that our judges and I can discuss the protocol. We will reconvene in a half hour.”
After the Empir beckoned to the four jurors, she strode out the door to her office, and they followed. The shuffling of rising and exiting Council members brought Rinli out of her state of concentrated awe, and she turned to her father. He glowed with what Rinli could only interpret as pride, and her heart swelled at the possibility that one day she, too, might garner such a reaction from him.
“So the trial begins,” she said, and her father nodded, remaining seated.
“Yes, it does.”
“Shall we go?”
Her father shook his head. “If she says half an hour, it will be twenty minutes when the bell tolls.”
Rinli nodded, and they sat in silence, for the moment alone in the chamber together, and Rinli’s thoughts wandered. Could she respect her mother without conceding to her demands? Probably. Was it possible to view her mother as a brilliant leader while still recognizing the manipulator within? For the first time in her life, Rinli began to understand, albeit unconsciously, that people were neither dark nor light but composed of myriad shades of grey.
“What are you thinking about?” her father asked as he leaned into the back of the bench and stretched his long legs out.
“Mother.”
“Not so easy to read, is she.”
Sometimes her father startled her with his ability to know her thoughts without a word from her and then interpret them in ways that she hadn’t quite gotten to yet. “No,” she breathed. “How do you do it?”
“I don’t try. She’s a complicated creature, and I just revel in her complications.”
“Easy to say when she’s your equal. Not so easy when she’s your mother.”
“My equal?” Her father laughed. “I am a half-Garlan, half-Thristan former guard without title or heritage. She could swat me like a fly, and I would have to thank her for it.”
“So that’s why you never stand up to her.”
Her father pulled back and studied her a moment. “Is that how you see us?”
“Well, we always do things her way, so I assumed…”
“My duty is to make sure it looks like her way when we get there. That doesn’t mean it is.”
“Oh.”
“Your mother and I have worked very hard on the definition of our so-called equality with one another. It has helped that she didn’t spend her youth as a noble. That has allowed her to look past class and hierarchy.”
“Has she ever ordered you to do something?”
“In private, she asks. In the company of others, she frames her requests carefully so as not to sound like she’s offering me a choice, but the truth is my compliance is my choice.”
“Well, she certainly has no problem ordering me around.”
He leaned forward, forearms supported by his legs, and stared at his hands. “She wants you to be prepared. She feels like she’s failed you, and she’s trying to catch up.”
Rinli felt herself softening, but with a quick breath, she held herself together. The wall she’d carefully constructed against the horror of magic must be maintained. For if she couldn’t hold this line, how could she ever expect to stand against her mother as the Thristan ruler her mother had manipulated her into being?
The bell sounded twice from the tower above the Keep, pulling Rinli from the brink of further conversation. The Council would reassemble quickly, freeing her from a response. She had to steel her resolve. It was the only way she could ever lead Thristas.
Bathed in sun and heat, Madlen stood on the crown of the mesa, br
eathed arid air and thought about how insane a great many people thought she was. Well, they were right, weren’t they? Because here she stood in the late afternoon sun soaking up the unbearable intensity of a late spring day on the desert. Her feet suffered the radiating sand fire all the way through her sandals, and she could barely tolerate the oven her fully robed body baked in. Take me, she thought. Take me for your own, Mantar. Make me worthy of your Child. Melt my metal and turn me into what your Child needs—sword or shovel. I would be her tool.
It wasn’t a new sentiment. She’d spent many a late afternoon up here over the last few years begging Mantar to somehow make her worthy of Rinli and her affections. Was she? It wasn’t a question she could answer. If she listened to her father, as comforting as he could be, she belonged wherever she’d been welcomed, and certainly Rinli had welcomed her. Her mother, on the other hand, believed it was a fool’s game, implying that Madlen was a fool.
She stared at the southeastern horizon and noted the night sky beginning to encroach on the light of the lingering day, the shadows of the mesas stretching out to greet the dark. How many times had she and Rinli met up here to marvel in this sight? Her mother had begged her to end the friendship. “It can only end with infertility on both your parts,” she’d said. But Madlen had persevered and deflected yet another potential spouse. Tinlo Randa.
“Madlen?”
She jumped. A man’s voice. She turned, gasped inaudibly and managed a smile. “Tinlo. You were just in my thoughts.”
“I hope they were good thoughts,” the young man replied, stepping towards her, granting her his sweetest smile.
“How did you find me?”
“Your mother. I came to your quarters thinking you’d just be rising, but she said you often come up here.”
Did she tell you why I’d be up here? Of course not. She doesn’t know, not really. “And here I am.” She tried to be civil. Tinlo was a friend.
He looked down at his sandaled feet. “But you’re not looking for company, are you.” His brown eyes focused on her again, and she found it hard to remain impartial. She liked him. And if circumstances were… But they weren’t.
She shook her head. “Not really.”
“The Child could betray you.”
She could hear the sincerity in the caution, but his remark irritated her. “She’s Mantar’s Child. People seem to forget that part. They always say ‘the Child’ like she’s small, immature, and as though there’s something about her that’s not quite in line with the prophecy.”
“Her mother and father say she’s Mantar’s Child,” Tinlo said, his voice kind, his words anything but. “Of course, no one here has ever truly accepted that claim.”
“No one? I have.” Mantar, why are you testing me? “She is the coming and the going, the redeemed and the redeemer. Why is everyone so sure she’s going to turn on us?”
Tinlo shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again. “People talk. They think that the treaty never should have been signed in the first place.”
“Is it more than talk?” she asked, her stomach knotting up like unwieldy braid ribbons.
“I don’t know. But they do complain that the Elders never should have signed off on the treaty when it was brought back to them from Garla.”
“But she is Mantar’s Child.”
“Well,” Tinlo said with a shrug, “if she is, she’s going to die, you know.”
“Go!” Madlen shrieked and pushed him in the chest. “Go. Leave. Don’t ever come near me again.”
Tinlo stared at her. She saw his shock, but it confused her. Didn’t he understand how his words stabbed at her heart?
“I’m…,” he started, then turned away, towards the trap door which would take him out of the sun’s scrutiny. Once he was gone, Madlen knew he’d wanted to apologize but couldn’t find a way to do it. She looked to the darkening horizon and closed her eyes. Mantar, Maker and Destroyer, make me worthy.
Korin opened his eye to the dawn and the embrace of his beloved at his back. If he hadn’t known better, he could swear she was Thristan. Her ferocity of spirit had nearly consumed him in their early times together; now, he basked in its warmth. As long as purpose guided her, she remained content, even if that purpose sent her off in a dozen directions at once. He knew he shouldn’t feel so safe with her. Dangers threatened behind every corner, some recognized—such as the volatile unpredictability of The People of the desert—and some as yet unknown. But it was exactly that lack of safety that maintained the passion of their commitment.
He felt her shift position slightly, but he could tell she hadn’t surfaced from sleep yet; the rhythm of her breathing hadn’t changed. He remembered telling her many years ago that she would make a brilliant Empir. She’d scoffed that it was the gryl—the drug she’d consumed in the hope of bringing the war between Thristas and Garla to a quick conclusion—and not her own strength that made her brilliant. But she’d never returned to the “plain Lisen” she’d claimed to be. She was anything but plain.
He heard the approaching footsteps before the light tap-tap at the door. Lisen moaned softly and muttered, “Already?” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it.
“Yes,” he whispered.
He heard her draw in a full breath and felt her roll away from him and sit up. He slid his legs down and pushed himself up to sit opposite her on the bed.
Another tap-tap on the door.
“Yes, yes, we’re up,” Lisen responded loudly enough to be heard. “Have breakfast sent.” She stretched and yawned then pulled the robe beside the bed on over her nakedness. Korin did the same with his robe and stood up.
“Did you sleep?” he asked, aware that after only one day, the Ba case had already begun to wear on her.
“Not well.” She brushed her loose copper locks from her face.
“You look like you grappled all night with a very mean bear.”
“Bad as that, huh? Just fatigue. And you?”
“I’m not the one dealing with the Ba twins.”
“That’s true. You’re not.”
He nodded and went to his wardrobe where he pulled out one of his modified Guard uniforms. It had taken him a few seasons of feeling useless here in Avaret as Empir-Spouse before he’d alighted on his current role as advisor to the Guard. Commander Tanres had welcomed his input, and he spent much of his free time here training recruits. He’d required more than mere usefulness to fill his days, and he’d found his own form of purpose in supporting his spouse in every move she made and offering his skills and expertise to those who provided her security. And so he dressed as a pseudo-guard for official functions. Tanres had often encouraged him to re-adopt the Emperi insignia for his own use, but he’d declined. To him, unless he held a rank and served as commanded, he wasn’t a guard.
He sat down on a chair to pull his boots on and caught Lisen standing up with a sigh from the bed—he was nearly dressed and she hadn’t even started.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m tired of hearing Akdor Ba whine about his sad life,” she replied as she entered her dressing chamber adjacent to their room. They’d never returned to the bedchamber designated as the Empir’s; Lisen hadn’t been able to bring herself to sleep where she’d pushed her brother to kill himself. The room had been completely redone—new murals on the walls, entirely different furniture—but in the end, she’d made it into a small personal library, one where she could step in and out, choosing to read in the room’s antechamber instead. Korin suspected she would have walled the room off completely if it hadn’t held the second-floor entry to the secret passageways.
“At least today,” she continued as she dressed out of sight, “we’ll move on to Mutar.”
“Do you think he’ll be any better?” Korin asked as he tied on his eye patch.
“He has to be,” Lisen said as she stepped out fully dressed in a maroon tunic with an orange flame at the shoulder. She called this her Rosarel tunic—orange
being his Thristan family color—and he smiled broadly in recognition of her wearing it today. She scooted him out of the chair and pulled her own boots on, and when she was done, she stood up and put her fists on her hips, arms akimbo. “Now, where is our breakfast?”
She’d taken to having breakfast in her room during Council. Their children’s pick-pick-picking at one another could rip her nerves to shreds, and she needed calm to deal with a sometimes equally childish Council day after day. As if in answer to her question, a hesitant tap at the door heralded the arrival of the meal. Korin stepped over and opened the door, and the servant brought a tray loaded with breakfast choices to the table at the far side of the bed.
“Thank you,” Korin said as the man turned around and left the room. Korin pulled two chairs up to the table and sat down. After finishing with her boots, Lisen joined him.
“Do you think there’s any chance they’ll finish up today?” he asked as Lisen placed a sausage and a biscuit on her plate.
“The presentation of evidence and testimony may carry over into tomorrow, I fear.” Lisen began nibbling at the sausage.
“Rinli’s growing restless.”
“I’m growing restless. How can I possibly expect her to be patient with it all when I’m not?”
The one thing he knew he couldn’t ask was how she thought it would turn out. He believed she favored Mutar Ba, but unless the judging panel tied their vote, her personal preference would count for nothing.
She gasped, as though a long-lost memory had snapped back into place. “Creators, Korin,” she said, “Rinli doesn’t want to continue attending, does she.”
“No, she’s bored, but she’s said nothing about wanting to avoid the trial. I think there’s something about it that’s made her think. I’m not sure what she’s thinking. I’m not sure that she even knows what she’s thinking.”
“But she is thinking. That’s good.” Lisen smiled—a rare occurrence when a full day in the Council chamber awaited her.
Protector of Thristas: A Lisen of Solsta Novel Page 8