She opened the Sessin book and flipped through the pages; the genealogy charts and notes quickly became a blur of tightly scripted words and tiny lines. Struck by a sudden curiosity, she turned towards the end and scanned for familiar names. At last she saw them: Eredion S., Nissa S. and Pieas S.
After a few moments of tracing lines and squinting at connections, she shook her head and put the book carefully away, not having learned anything particularly useful or even new. She’d known that Pieas and Nissa were siblings; now she knew they’d been twins. She’d known Eredion was their uncle; now she knew that Eredion’s older sister, Tashaye, was Lord Antouin Sessin’s second wife, and that if anything happened to Lord Antouin’s first-born son by his first wife, then Pieas would have been in line to be Lord Sessin. Whether that potential would now transfer over to Nissa, Alyea had no idea. As far as she knew, Sessin, while heavily patriarchal, wasn’t entirely averse to allowing women to positions of real power.
“I suspect what I don’t know about that would fill an ocean,” she muttered, and opened the Northern Book of Blood, which proved much more informative.
Some time later, a voice from the main doorway broke her concentration: “Excuse me, Lord Alyea!”
Alyea barely controlled the startle reflex. She looked up slowly and kept her tone cool. “Yes, Wian?”
Her former servant stared, black eyes hard and hostile, then said, “I don’t think Lord Eredion would care for you going through his books.”
“Then he shouldn’t have left me alone here with unlocked drawers,” Alyea said, unhurriedly closing the book and sliding it back into the drawer. “Are you saying you haven’t gone through his things?”
A faint flush turned Wian’s skin a shade darker. “I think you should go, Lord Alyea.”
“And I think I’ll stay,” Alyea said, leaning back in the chair. She allowed a moment to pass, watching the girl’s climbing fury, then added, “Lord Eredion told me to stay here, Wian. Is that a problem for you?”
Wian’s nostrils flared, then pinched; she let out a hard snort. “It’s not my place to say where you can be, Lord Alyea.” She lifted her chin and, after a moment’s awkward hesitation, opted to turn away towards the bedroom.
Alyea thought about calling her back for a talk, but there really wasn’t any point, and even less for them to say to each other. She didn’t trust the girl as far as she could heave a horse, and Wian clearly had no remnants of her former devotion left—if it had ever been real in the first place.
How in the hells Eredion had apparently seen fit to welcome a proven traitor into his bed mystified Alyea; and now Wian had access, once again, to the palace. Shaking her head, Alyea wondered if the girl had made a play for the king yet, or if Eredion Sessin was as high as Wian dared reach.
Then again, she wasn’t being entirely fair. She knew, first-hand now, what Wian had gone through; the treatment that had broken Wian to Kippin’s will.
Kippin’s intent face, eyes gleaming with unholy calm, as he ever so lightly traced a razor-edged blade over her skin, creating patterns only he understood...the tickling, burning agony as line after line drew blood to the surface...the shocking white-out of vision when he drenched her with salt water laced with more dasta and then set Tevin loose for the more brutal stage once more....
She shook her head hard to clear the memories, then set the Northern Book of Blood on the desk again and went back to reading. On impulse, she flipped to the entry for Peysimun and traced lines, curious to see if she had cousins too “common” for her mother to have mentioned—
—stopped, frowning, and looked more closely at the entry for Lady Hama Peysimun.
At the lack of entries linked to that name.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said aloud, wondering why the revelation didn’t hurt as much as she might have expected. “That certainly explains a lot.”
The outer door opened. In what felt like one fast movement, Alyea shut the book, dropped it back in the drawer, shut the drawer and stood, leaping halfway around the desk before she slowed down for a breath.
Eredion’s grim expression, as he came through the main door, stopped Alyea cold. Her legs suddenly unsteady, she caught herself against the desk with one hand and said on a gasping outbreath, “What hap—”
A red-haired young man followed Eredion into the suite, and breath left her completely.
She’d never seen him before, she was certain of that; but...she knew him. Knew that bright blue stare, remembered the touch of his large-knuckled hands. Her mouth flooded with a strange, fiery-bitter taste that brought tears to her eyes.
He ducked his head, looking away: freckles stood out in sudden sharp relief as the color left his face, and he swallowed hard.
“Told you this was a mistake,” he muttered, barely audible.
Eredion shot him a sharp, irritated glare, then snapped, “Alyea, sit down before you fall over, godsdamnit!”
She almost collapsed back onto the desk chair, shuddering all over and unable to take her eyes off the bizarrely familiar stranger as he followed Eredion into the study. He glanced at the available chairs, then shook his head slightly and opted to lean against the wall near the doorway.
“Alyea,” Eredion said, his expression still taut, “this is Tana—” He paused as the redhead made a faint noise of protest. “This is Tank. You’ve met, briefly, but I doubt you remember it.”
“I remember...something,” Alyea said, her voice faint, and shut her eyes, rubbing her mouth with one hand. “When did I...?”
“Peysimun Mansion is completely empty,” Eredion said, ignoring the question. “Everyone is gone. Servants, guards, your mother, Deiq. No bodies, but plenty of blood in a couple of rooms. And....” He paused again, his mouth tightening even further. “There’s stibik dust in one of the hallways. A lot of it. And signs of a fight there.”
She sat up straight, her woozy half-memory of the redhead fading into unimportance. “They were expecting him?”
“I think,” Eredion said, his eyes squinching almost shut, “he may have been the real target.”
Chapter Ten
Eredion had rarely been so completely and catastrophically wrong, and it left him shaken in his judgments. Bringing Tanavin back to the palace had been a matter of overwhelming instinct: Eredion could think of a half-dozen ugly endings to this situation without even trying, and Tanavin, willing or not, seemed the best shield he could have to hand for most of them.
As the tension rose in the room between Tanavin and Alyea, however, he began to wish he’d listened to the boy’s protests and left him behind, even though that would have meant losing any chance of enlisting his help in the coming conflict.
He steered them out to the main room of the suite in an attempt to at least get some physical distance between them. Before he could point them to opposite seats, Wian came through the bedroom doorway. Her delighted squeal broke through the growing thickness in the air.
“Tank! What are you doing here?”
“Being a fucking idiot,” Tanavin muttered under his breath. The words were only audible to a desert lord’s sharp hearing, but Alyea, thankfully, seemed not to be listening.
Tanavin forced a smile as Wian practically threw herself into his arms. He pried himself loose as quickly as possible, evidently embarrassed by her attentions, and retreated a few steps to keep some distance between them.
“Wian,” Eredion said hastily, before she could start peppering them with questions, “I need you to go ask the king to give us a private audience. Tell him it’s urgent. “
She nodded, flashed one last grin at Tanavin, and darted out the main door.
“You’re bringing this to Oruen?” Alyea said in alarm.
At the same time, Tanavin said, “You want to drag this in front of the king?”
Eredion rubbed his nose for a moment, watching Alyea’s gaze return, inexorably, to Tanavin; and decided he very probably had made a mistake bringing the boy into this. No help for it now; letting
him go would be an even worse error. He didn’t have a strong enough hold on the boy to pull him in twice like this, so for better or worse Tanavin was along for as much of the ride as Eredion could force or trick him into.
It crossed his mind that it was a damn shame he couldn’t use the boy to help with the meetings; but Tanavin was far too unstable yet, and Eredion didn’t particularly want to encourage him to learn more about what he could do.
“Yes,” he said at last. “This can’t be handled privately any longer. The entire city is at risk now.”
“The entire—what are you talking about?” Alyea demanded.
Tanavin, in contrast, stayed silent, his growing pallor proof enough that he understood the situation very well indeed.
“They’ve taken an elder ha’ra’ha captive,” Eredion said, regretting more than ever that Deiq had chosen to protect Alyea from so much necessary information. “Think about it, Alyea. If Kippin’s the one who has him...even ha’ra’hain can be broken. Especially First Born. And he’ll make one hell of a nasty threat to hold over the king.”
Tanavin was the one to shut his eyes and sway on his feet now. Eredion latched onto the boy’s elbow and propelled him to a chair.
“Head between your knees,” he said roughly. “Now breathe, damn you—there.” He kept a hand on the boy’s shoulder for a few more moments, until he was sure Tanavin wouldn’t collapse entirely, then raised a hard stare to Alyea’s grey face.
“He wouldn’t,” she said, almost a whisper.
“Oh, he would,” Eredion said brutally. “First Born are more susceptible to going insane than any other generation of ha’ra’hain. I told you that already, and you can be sure that whoever went to this much effort and expense knows it too. All they have to do is flood him with stibik, dasta, and esthit in the right proportions and sequences, and he’ll be foaming like a rabid asp-jacau and ready to attack anything they point him towards.”
Tanavin said something indistinct, then sat up slowly, rubbing his mouth, and gave Eredion a piercing glare. Apparently the pieces had finally clicked together in his mind. He didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to. The outraged sense of betrayal in his glare said enough.
Eredion lifted a shoulder and set his hip against the desk, suddenly feeling exhausted down to his bones.
“I don’t have anyone better to hand, Tank,” he said without apology. “I’ll hold to my promise about leaving you alone after this, if that helps.”
“It doesn’t,” Tanavin said thinly, and put his head into his hands.
Eredion sighed and looked to Alyea. Her gaze had gone unfocused and abstract, and he could almost see the pieces finally starting to connect in her head.
“You’re ready to kill him,” she said, a flat statement, and looked him straight in the eye.
Tank, not lifting his head, snorted bleak amusement and muttered, “Surprise.”
Eredion met Alyea’s stare without flinching and said, just as flatly: “Yes.”
For a moment he thought she might protest But he’s your friend! or even worse, I won’t let you do that! To his relief, she just looked down at her hands, her lips tight as though to stop herself from saying anything that stupid.
Eredion let out a tiny, quiet breath of relief.
“You can’t do anything,” Tanavin said, sitting up straight again, “if you can’t find him.” He locked stares with Eredion for a moment, then stood up, his jaw set.
The door opened and Wian hurried in, breathing hard, as though she’d run to the other end of the palace and back without pausing.
“He’ll see you now, Lord Eredion,” she panted, her red face flushing further as she saw that Tanavin was still in the room. She tried to catch her breath and went into a coughing fit; Eredion grabbed her elbow and steered her to a chair, reflecting sourly that he seemed to be taking care of everyone but himself lately.
“Stay here, Wian,” he said once she recovered. “Stay here.” He waved Tanavin and Alyea to follow him.
Out in the hallway, with the door to the suite safely shut behind them, Tanavin said, “I don’t need to go see the king, Lord Eredion. I have some arrangements to make. This looks like it’s going to take longer than an hour’s worth of my time.” His blue eyes narrowed, bitterness sharp in the last few words.
Eredion shrugged aside the glare. After a brief consideration, he unhooked one of his bracelets and handed it to the young mercenary. “Put this on.”
Tanavin studied the thin strand of beads for a moment, then snorted and said, “I’m not yours, Lord Eredion.”
“I know that,” Eredion said patiently, “but that bracelet will get you back in here without challenge.”
Tanavin snorted and slid the bracelet onto his wrist; while it had hung loose on Eredion’s forearm, it barely shifted on Tanavin’s.
“I hate wearing bracelets,” the redhead muttered under his breath. “Too much like—” He shut his mouth tight on further words, but an old anguish shifted across his face for a moment.
Eredion ignored both comment and flinch.
“Meet us back here,” he said with only a moment’s concern that the boy would never return. Tanavin had a deeply rooted sense of honor and understood the gravity of the situation. Besides, Eredion could hardly chain the boy to his side throughout this debacle.
Let the bird go, he thought bleakly, and see if it comes back as it’s been trained to do.
He snorted at his own cynicism and urged Alyea down another hallway as Tanavin trotted away.
Chapter Eleven
Oruen’s impassive expression hardened as Eredion explained. By the time the tale ended, the king had ordered even his guards from the room and cleared the Hidden from the posts within the walls.
In the silence that followed, his stare seemed sharp enough to skewer Eredion to the wall; then it moved inexorably to Alyea’s face, and she felt the breath catch and stop in her throat. In that moment, her back straightened as if of itself and she felt her own face go taut, her stare darken into a glare.
A moment later, Eredion waved a large hand rapidly in front of her face. She blinked, feeling as though she’d just been slapped. Oruen sat back in his chair, expression astonished.
Eredion snorted in dry amusement, dropped his hand back to his side, and said, “Bad idea to get into a pissing contest with her, Lord Oruen. She’s too new a desert lord to hold her punches when challenged.”
Alyea swallowed back an apology before it emerged and tried to tone down what had suddenly become a far too aggressive stance and expression.
“Right,” Oruen said thinly, still not looking at her. “So I have an insane ha’ra’ha about to rampage through my city—again. What exactly do you suggest I do, Lord Eredion?”
“We don’t even know for sure yet that there’s a danger,” Eredion said. “He might be escaping even now, or there might be aspects of the situation we don’t understand.”
Alyea wondered why Eredion seemed to be hedging, as though afraid of making a decision.
“I doubt you’re misunderstanding the problem,” Oruen said tartly. “Unless you’ve misled me about the situation, I think we have valid reason to consider Deiq is now a danger to the entire city.”
“No,” Eredion said, avoiding the king’s stare, “you’ve been told everything relevant.”
Oruen’s eyebrows came down sharply at the qualification.
Alyea said, “But... “
They both looked at her.
“Something doesn’t make sense,” she said.
Eredion’s eyes narrowed just a bit, as though in warning; she ignored him this time.
“I know Deiq is dangerous. I see that. But if....” She paused, then made herself say the name. “If Kippin’s involved, I don’t see how threatening the city could benefit him. He’s the type to work underground and keep to the background.”
“Like Rosin,” Oruen noted.
Eredion’s eyes shifted slightly to one side, new creases appearing around them. Alyea abr
uptly wondered what the desert lord knew about Rosin that he didn’t want the king to find out.
A heartbeat later, Eredion’s expression smoothed out. He said, mildly, “Who knows what Kippin might have in mind these days? Maybe he’s given up on subtle and decided to go for a power grab. It’s not impossible.”
“Not likely, though,” Alyea said. “Kippin makes his money through drugs, prostitution, and kathain. I don’t see how his setting Deiq up as a threat to you or to the city would help those goals. Lord Oruen would hardly agree to grant him immunity, no matter the threat; and setting Deiq loose in the city would kill many of his customers. It’s not in his nature to risk destroying his own customer base. I don’t—I don’t think it’s Kippin. Maybe—the Church?”
She glanced at Eredion. He shook his head slowly, frowning at nothing in particular.
“No,” Eredion said. “Any faction of the Northern Church is more likely to simply kill him as an obscenity. If that’s the case, there’s no threat.”
Her chest went tight for a moment. She glanced up to find Oruen watching her with narrow-eyed intensity; looked away, feeling a hard flush rise to her face, as though she’d been caught doing something wrong.
“But you said someone went to a lot of trouble to set this up, if Deiq was the target all along,” Alyea pointed out. “There are easier ways to cause trouble, if the intent is to disrupt Bright Bay.”
Oruen’s intent expression shifted into a frown.
“I see your point,” he said after a moment. “But where does that leave us?”
Eredion glanced at Alyea, then studied the floor. Thin lines at the edges of his eyes and mouth spoke volumes about his irritation.
“Alyea?” Oruen prompted. “You’ve been doing the talking. What do you think?”
She bit her lip, thinking, then said, “What if this isn’t about the city? What if it’s...personal?”
Oruen remained motionless, his eyes tight, for a few breaths. Then he sat back with a sharply relaxed demeanor and said, “That does sound like the most plausible explanation. Gods know he’s made enemies over the years.”
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