“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Well,” Nalin said after he’d taken a swig from his goblet, “I’ll make this brief. As I explained to you all, our Empir needs a privy council. You will hear things in here that you cannot share with anyone. The Empir and I must have your individual assurances that we can trust you. Bala?”
“My Liege, I’m a Tuane, and Tuanes keep their word. I believe we’ve proven that to you already. But I’m sure you want a direct answer, so, no, I will never speak to anyone else about what I learn here.”
“Malaki?” Nalin asked.
“Miras, too, keep their word. Besides, my father would box my ear soundly if he caught me revealing your secrets, my Liege.”
There it was—Malaki making her smile again.
“All right, then,” Nalin continued. “Felso?”
“My Liege, how could I, in good conscience, punish my son if I weren’t willing to hold my tongue as well?”
Ariannas found it interesting that although Nalin asked the questions, they responded to her.
Nalin then turned to Holder Cabell. “And you?”
The holder nodded, her brown eyes shining. “My Liege, I don’t reveal secrets. Besides, my brother irritates me when he fawns over Lorain. Why would I give him further fuel for his adoration?” The holder allowed a small knowing smile to curve her lips.
“And, Commander, do you still stand by the oath of allegiance you took when you joined the Guard?” Nalin asked.
“Unlike some, I consider that oath sacrosanct, my Liege.”
Ariannas didn’t miss that jab at the captain who had violated his oath, and she wished for a way to explain it. There was none that she could face.
“Good,” Nalin said. “My Liege, you and I must begin forging your priorities. Once we’ve got that under control, we can all meet again, say, in mid August?” He looked to her and then to the others, and he received nods all around.
“And if we need your thoughts before that,” she decided to add, feeling bold, “we’ll correspond. Nothing of a sensitive nature of course.”
“Of course,” Malaki said and winked at her. Oh, if only he didn’t remind her so much of Rusty….
“All right then. May you all have a safe trip home. And thank you,” Nalin said, but it was Ariannas who rose with them and followed them to the door, Nalin remaining behind.
“That went well,” he told her.
“It seemed to.” She returned to the conference table, took her seat again and picked up her goblet. She’d discovered the comforts of wine and found she rather liked it.
Nalin came over and sat down beside her. “Maybe it’s a family trait, but you’re catching on quickly.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I ask stupid questions. I feel like a fool.”
“You ask the questions you need to ask. Someone brought up in court would know the things you ask about, and they would have already established alliances. You have to trust my knowledge and my suggestions for allies. It can’t be easy.”
She allowed a small laugh to escape, then grew serious again. “What about the grumbling this afternoon when I announced I’d appointed you Will? Was that normal?”
Nalin sighed. “Well, you’d made a point of an important announcement. I think some believed you were going to share our intention to join.”
She nearly choked on her last sip of wine. “Oh, God, Nalin. Really? I’m sorry.”
“No, no. You misunderstand. Of course I knew that wasn’t coming, not now at least. But the Council looks for an Heir, especially with Lorain pouched with Ariel’s child. Until you produce one, her child is presumed first in line. It’s awkward, but that’s how it is.”
“Oh, so there’s a certain amount of hurry-up-and-get-on-with-it involved. Well, then, add that to my list of priorities.”
They spoke for a few minutes more before Nalin rose to take his leave. Once he’d gone, Ariannas sat at the table alone, fingering her goblet. She felt like she’d done and said one stupid thing after another during her first two weeks as Empir. So much to learn. She determined she’d start in the morning on the scrolls her mother had left her. She had to start somewhere, and that seemed the logical place. Oh, God, how she hated homework, but she’d always done it. And she’d do it now. Her world depended on it.
On the day following the close of a Council session she’d expected would mark her ascension as Empir-Spouse, Lorain surveyed her small office. She’d promised herself she’d organize this room by the end of the session, putting all the things she’d taken to the Keep and brought back again into their familiar spots, and she’d done it. All her things seemed to have grown in the short time they had spent across the plaza, but now they were home, and for now that was how it must be. Not that she would ever accept the role of a once nearly Empir-spouse as the end of her ambitions. Plans bubbled in her mind, awaiting the addition of the right ingredient to transform them into something workable. She would find a way to force them to give her what she wanted—status as a member of the Empir’s family.
Her thinking remained muddled, something she hoped would right itself soon. Pouching could do this to a person even without the added impediment of grief. She wished for a way to shut the grief down, but she suspected that was a pointless desire. No matter. Her mind muddled was better than anyone else’s mind fully functioning. And, she always had her lists.
She had to act, but she must act with caution. No bold, obvious moves.
And it would probably serve her better to wait until this Heir of hers made its first appearance. It had to be viable in case something happened to her.
And she should line up a nurser for convenience sake while telling everyone she wasn’t sure if she could bear to continue nursing the child herself once it had emerged from her pouch.
And then there was the most difficult trick of all—ridding Garla of the usurper.
She jumped at a knock on her door, startled, an unaccustomed reaction. Out of habit, even though she’d written nothing yet, she slipped the blank sheet of paper out from in front of her and into a drawer.
“Enter,” she said in a seamless transition with a pause so short that whoever awaited her invitation would never know she’d hesitated.
The door opened, and Tazori Dors and Pretor Cabell came in.
“Lorain,” Tazori said. “We thought we’d come by and say our farewells here.”
“For privacy sake?” she asked.
“Of course,” Pretor replied.
Lorain found Pretor Cabell to be a lovely young man, curly brown hair to his shoulders, an angular face with strong features and those eyes—ah, those pearlescent blue eyes. Not that she was actually attracted to him. How could she be attracted to him when her Ariel was barely two weeks gone?
“Do you have time to sit?” she asked and gestured to the two chairs in front of her desk.
“Of course we do,” Tazori said, and the two young men settled in. “Pretor has something of interest to share.”
“Pretor?” She raised an eyebrow at him.
“I…well, I have to admit that I’m not precisely sure what it means, but my sister was called to the Empir’s office last night along with a couple of other nobles. Bala Tuane, I believe. Maybe one or both of the Miras.”
“Did your sister, perhaps,” Lorain asked, astonished at her ability to muster up a whiff of seduction, “give any hint as to the nature of the invitation?”
“All I know is a servant came to her at dinner and told her that Holder Corday would like to see her. When I left the Keep, she still wasn’t back. I did ask her what it was about when she returned to our chambers a little later.”
“And?” Oh, Lorain did love intrigue. It returned light to a soul she’d thought permanently darkened by grief.
“She smiled and said nothing. But I could hear Tuane’s voice in the hall talking to someone who sounded like Felso or Malaki. It was hard to tell which.”
“Perhaps Nalin is gathering advisors,” Lorain mused a
loud, then returned her attention to the two men in the room. “Thank you, my friends. I will monitor this.”
“So you’re staying?” Tazori asked.
“I’m spending my pouching days here, yes. Don’t want our Empir to forget her only Heir.”
“And in the meantime, you can keep your eye on the comings and goings across the way,” Pretor added, smiling a smile Lorain wished she could appreciate.
“Indeed, my lord,” she said. “Indeed.”
“Mantar, Maker and Destroyer,” Korin intoned, gazing up from where he sat on his horse at Mesa Terses in the first light of the moon. “Bless the leaving and the returning.” He was home.
It felt like he’d ridden forever, but the truth was he hadn’t, not really. Fifteen nights ago he’d watched a young woman he’d nurtured step into darkness, and it pained him more now than it had then. Their journey together had begun with such hope, with excitement and anticipation of a task to be completed, an evil to be brought down. It had ended with her ordering him out of Ariel’s bedchamber and committing an act that horrified him more each time he thought about it.
No. He would think of it no more and end his revulsion. He was home. The arid breath of Thristas drew life into his heart, into his soul. He would mend without letting on to anyone here how she had broken him. They would believe his time alone served to heal him for different reasons. He’d devised his lie well; if he were ever found out, at the least it would not be for years.
He rode to the entrance and slipped off his horse, handing it off to the wrangler, thanking Mantar the wrangler wasn’t Rika. He grabbed his pack and made the climb to his quarters. Should he report in immediately? It was the middle of the night. Everyone would be tending to their duties, and he was so exhausted he wanted to fall onto his pallet and sleep until the following sunset. But protocol dictated otherwise. So he left his pack where he’d dropped it and headed up the tunnel to the Elders’ Chamber, but before he got there, he ran into Ondra, the one person he’d hoped to avoid.
“Korin?” Ondra asked as she stopped and stared at him. “You look like a snake’s sloughings.”
“Thank you, Ondra,” he replied with a sigh, “but I’m too tired to counter your venom.”
“No, really, Korin. What are you doing here?”
She wouldn’t let go without a fight, and he had no fight in him. Let the lying begin. “No need to hide from you anymore. Lisen is dead.” That was true enough as far as he was concerned. The young woman he’d known as Lisen had died in that bedchamber. Of course, if anyone who’d met her here ever caught sight of her in Avaret, they’d know the truth, but he doubted the likelihood of that happening.
“Oh, Korin.”
“Don’t even pretend to care.”
“I care about you,” she protested.
“The Tribe will be pleased. She died during the pouching of a child conceived in the Farii.”
“So…you’re carrying?” Ondra asked, her eyes staring at his lower midsection.
“Can’t you tell?”
She grabbed his arm and pulled him close to a sconced torch. In the light she studied his belly more closely, then reached out and brushed it with one finger.
“Damn, Korin. You did it. You really did it. You hardly touched the girl when anyone was watching, so I was sure nothing had happened up top.”
Korin sighed. “I need to go. I’ve ridden long and hard, and all I want is sleep. But I must let the Elders know I’ve returned.”
“And about what you’ve returned with.” Her eyes shone in the torchlight, though with what thoughts he couldn’t fathom.
“Yes, that, too.” He stepped away from her and continued up the passageway to the Elders’ Chamber.
As he climbed, he considered the ramifications of what he must do. The child kept hidden away from her mother. An Heir to Garla unknown to all save himself. But he could not allow this Empir with grave powers to corrupt his child. He had to protect the little one cradled now in his pouch and keep it from the evil enchantment of hermit magic that included murder by manipulation.
He paused in the tunnel, his lungs fighting for breath, but not from exertion. It still sickened him—what she’d done to Ariel—and likely it always would. He saw the blood and the braids and the hermit ring again, and his stomach wrenched at the thought. He’d seen killing before, and he’d certainly seen plenty of blood from wounds both destructive and fatal. Damn, he’d done his own fair share of maiming others. But how could she have wreaked so much havoc from one little thought in her mind? And how had she justified it to herself?
No, that answer he knew. She’d said it seconds before acting on a plan he might have countered properly if given the time to consider it, but she hadn’t given him that. “You know I can’t win a duel,” he remembered her saying. “Let me use the weapon I know best, the weapon I can win with.” And with that she’d moved into action.
“Creators,” he whispered in Garlan, surprised at this very non-Thristan response. He leaned into the wall for a moment, then breathed deeply to regain his composure. An Elder awaited him in the chamber. He, too, must move into action.
CHAPTER SEVEN
lies and consequences
Ariannas opened her eyes to a pristine summer dawn and rolled over in bed, a bad dream pursuing her into consciousness. How can you run from something you can’t remember? she asked herself, pulling the blanket up to hide her head.
Ten days since the close of Council, and Avaret had transformed into a village of servants and dock workers and not much of anything else. Certainly nothing like summers in the Valley, she thought with regret. Right about now Betsy and Rusty were fighting their way through finals, preparing to graduate, with their higher education goals firmly set. No, wait. They’re just starting senior year. Because time doesn’t match. Either way, she should be laughing with Betsy and Rusty whenever they were and not here.
Instead, she ruled a country—a world really—the boundaries of which no one seemed to know. She’d watched people die; she’d even killed a few herself. She’d fallen in love, mated for the first time and then watched the man she’d thought she loved run away, unable to stomach the horror she had committed to achieve her mother’s desire. And although these last ten days had been quiet, something in her gut told her that everything was waiting to change.
Having indulged her dreams of a life other than this one long enough, she sat up. Immediately the door to her chamber opened, and a servant entered with breakfast. She still couldn’t sleep in the room where she’d killed her brother, so she’d chosen another room—traditionally the Empir-Spouse’s quarters—as her own. It had a lovely view of the park and shared an antechamber with the Empir’s bedchamber. Its only inconvenience was the secret passageway could not be accessed directly from it.
“Set it in there,” Ariannas told the servant, pointing to the adjoining antechamber, and when the servant had left her alone, she slipped out of bed and wrapped herself up in a long lavender robe. She stood there for a moment, arms wrapped around herself against the cool air, and considered the sun rising into her window.
It wasn’t a life she would have chosen, not at ten as an orphan at Solsta and certainly not in her teens as she tore around the Valley with her friends or attempted to follow her parents’ academic discussions at the dinner table. But one couldn’t escape fate apparently. And although everything else may have been manipulated by the damn sooth, her real family had always been here, in the confines of this Keep, in a city that woke up twice a year when Garla’s nobles invaded it for Council.
Shaking off the bitter chill of this internal place she’d visited nearly every morning since her first morning here, she stepped into the antechamber. On Earth, a newspaper would have awaited her on the table along with her breakfast, but here the food and one of the scrolls from her mother—the one she was currently reading—greeted her. She sat down, stared at her plate and wondered what delicacy they’d offered her this time. It could be green eggs and ham
for all she knew, but the concoction in front of her wasn’t green; it was a blue so light it could almost be white with orange specks within it. Sort of a pancake, but not really. She took a bite and decided she liked it. Slightly sweet and definitely hearty, she could compare it to nothing in her previous lives.
Perhaps she’d take a ride in the park today. She and Pharaoh had developed quite a rapport in the last couple of weeks. She felt that she learned far more from him than he could possibly be learning from her, and it pleased her that her muscles had finally stopped complaining about how she mistreated them.
The door to the antechamber opened, and she looked up as Nalin entered. This was early for him. She usually didn’t see him until after she’d gotten into her office.
“My Liege, there’s a problem.” He looked a bit frazzled, a state she never would have expected from him.
“What?”
“Jazel sent for me because she wasn’t sure how to handle it.”
“What?” Come on, Nalin, get to the point. It can’t be that bad, can it?
“May I sit?”
“Certainly,” she replied and set her fork down, breakfast forgotten.
After settling himself into a chair, Nalin spoke softly. “A man and his two nearly grown children are here asking questions about a woman they claim came here the night of the opening dinner.”
Ariannas knew who they sought—the watcher, the one who had pushed, the woman she’d sent to Solsta with Eloise minus her faculties. She didn’t know what to do, but she had to deal with these people somehow. She mentioned a family that night, Ariannas remembered. Should have occurred to me she’d be missed.
“Ask them to wait. I’ll dress and be with them shortly.”
Nalin rose. “Aye, my Liege.” And with a nod, he was gone.
Ariannas stood up slowly from the table. A plausible story. She needed a plausible story and, once she had one, a messenger sent urgently to Solsta to warn Eloise. She returned to her room, found a burnt umber tunic laid out for her. Not her best color, not with her hair, though it was more brown than orange, and that was better than the other way around. As she pulled the tunic on and fluffed her short hair a bit to overcome bed-head, her thoughts flew around like a mass of lost butterflies seeking a flower to settle on. Bare legs, sandals and a hammered bronze cuff for her upper arm completed her outfit.
Blooded (Lisen of Solsta Book 3) Page 7