Briskly, Zaethan heaved the Pilarese al’Haidren down the corridor and around the bend.
“Y’siti trash, all of them! He is utterly enthralled by her, Zaethan. Enthralled!” she shrieked. “Don’t you see it?”
“Depths, Sayuri,” he hissed, “of course I see it.”
“Then what are we going to do about it?”
“Shtàka.” Zaethan tossed her into an alcove. “We aren’t going to do anything.”
Her hands planted on the slight curve of each hip. “Something has to be done about the witch before her spell infects him for an entire lifetime. We both know what I’m saying is true.”
“I know, from experience, that you never tell the truth.”
Sayuri prowled toward him, as if another person suddenly occupied her skin. Warm breath puffed against his chin when she leaned in, coaxing, “I told you there would come a day when you and I would need each other, Zaethan. We could make a memorable alliance in this game she’s playing. Very memorable.”
He felt her nails skim the underside of his jacket when she reached around and dragged him against her. Zaethan suppressed a smirk and let his lips brush her ear.
“Dmitri chose a ‘putrid whore’ over you, Sayuri. Why would I want even less?”
Shoving her aside, he straightened his sleeves and headed for the war room, her petty scream echoing at his back.
It was unclear what drove Zaethan to seek out Orynthia’s notorious war room, except his longing for an empty space, his desire to breathe, or perhaps its library of maps.
He rebound his dreaded coils as he marched through the palace. There were too many moving pieces on the proverbial board. Between the cross-caste killings, Dmitri’s sudden need for a wife, and Sayuri’s near descent into madness, Zaethan needed to clear his head before his fists found a simpler solution. With the openness of the plains out of reach, the vacant war room would have to do.
When Zaethan arrived at the ornate entry, he reached for the byrnnzite handle, then wavered. Masculine chatter trickled through the crack between the twin doors, though to his knowledge, no military discussions were planned for that morning. Confused and intrigued, he pressed an ear against the fissure.
“…nearly ready, coming to eighty warships…”
“… impressive, Lateef. Our navy will nearly double that of Razôuel.”
“My navy, Tetsu. Don’t forget where we stand, you and I...”
“…vessels may belong to you, Nyack, but they’re berthed in my waters.”
Pulling back marginally, Zaethan scratched the newly grown scruff at his jaw. The king’s contract with Pilar was for forty vessels, not eighty. He’d sat at the table, in that very same war room, when the agreement was signed.
If Zaethan’s father, both Haidren and Commander of Orynthia’s armies, had negotiated a secondary contract with Tetsu Naborū, it was a deal between Haidrens outside the crown’s awareness. Dmitri’s father was many things, but proficient in military dealings was not one of them. It was entirely possible the king would overlook additional warships stationed in Pilar, but the greater question was why the naval expansion had been ordered in the first place.
“…prydes will handle that, when the time comes.”
“You speak as if you hold authority, little Alpha, whilst being no one with nothing to your name…keep your pet in line, Nyack, or put him outside.”
Zaethan crammed his ear against the door again, wishing not for the first time that his hearing was cursed like the y’siti. Whatever bargain had been arranged between Tetsu Naborū, General Lateef, and his father, it affected the prydes. Zaethan’s prydes.
Except it wasn’t Zaethan at his father’s side in the war room. It was Wekesa.
“…place in Bastiion secured. Get used to it.”
“What about that son of yours, Nyack? He’s your al’Haidren. Will that not spark trouble for…”
The tenor of a younger man snickered, dampening Naborū’s inquiry and his father’s reply.
“…never worry yourself with insignificant details, Tetsu.”
Breathless, Zaethan stood mute in the empty hall, unable to move.
Like a satchel of stones, his stomach plummeted to his feet, numbing his toes. He knew he’d become a disappointment to his father. A reminder of his mother’s death; an ever-present barb in an unhealed wound. But at the very least, pain ensured his significance. Without that pain, Zaethan wasn’t sure if there was anything left between them.
In a rush, he rolled his body to the side when a click of the handle signaled their exit. As the doors pushed open, Zaethan sucked in air to flatten himself between the decorated slab and the cold stones at his back. Watching them through a thin crevice, they concluded their discussion.
“…your men. Order them to be on watch. I don’t want any interference, yeye qondai?” their commander instructed Wekesa as the pair followed General Lateef to the end of the corridor. Even from the back, Zaethan could tell Wekesa had begun dressing in the finest Unitarian garb the Bazaar had to offer. From the fine wax coating his braids to the virgin leather of his boots, he’d thoroughly transitioned to life in Bastiion, and the bastard was enjoying it.
“Uni zà, Commander.” Wekesa struck his chest eagerly. “I will see it done.”
“Uni, that you will.”
Unable to look away, Zaethan’s jaw slackened when his father lifted an arm, cabled in scars and muscle, and patted Wekesa on the back—a gesture Zaethan had never once experienced at his father’s hand.
Together rounding the turnoff, they were gone.
After a few moments, Zaethan shoved the door off himself and struck the bronze-plated wood with force. Knuckles throbbing, the door flew back on its ancient hinges, threatening to bust from the framing.
“One so insignificant should be quiet.”
Zaethan spun in place. Drowning under the silvery swell of his shoto robes, the reedy and jaundiced Haidren to Pilar waited patiently beside the archway. The tail of his pointed beard rotated like the hand of a compass when his head angled eerily, and he fixed his yellowing eyes intently on Zaethan.
“Just looking for my father. Jolly fellow.” Zaethan stretched out his shoulders, resisting the inexplicable urge to itch his exposed skin all at once. “Seen him?”
Tetsu Naborū’s lips quirked at the sides before his head propped upright again. Zaethan had never taken to the man, and this sort of kakk was a perfect example why not.
“I have seen many things and foresee many things to come, young Kasim.” Naborū waltzed closer, accompanied by the reek of sour pipe marrow. “I foresee that an insignificance should be quiet. It doesn’t think…” He touched his metal nail-piece to his temple. “It doesn’t speak…” The tip dragged to his thin lips. “…unless his master ordains it. So, run along, young Kasim—run to your master and heel.” He dropped his claw to his thigh and patted it, like one ordering a hound.
“Treat a man like a dog, Lord Haidren,” Zaethan folded his arms stiffly and stepped back, “and eventually, he’ll bite like one.”
Refusing to lower his gaze until he put his back to Sauryi’s uncle, Zaethan strolled to the turnoff, admittedly a bit faster than he’d intended.
“Oh, young Kasim,” he heard the Pilarese Haidren call after him, “I’m counting on it.”
TWENTY-SIX
Luscia
As a woman under the immense scrutiny of her personal guard, Luscia found it mildly depressing that she was to spend her only hour of freedom at the behest of an ill-tempered Darakaian. With a slight twitch of her finger, she signaled Aksel, her sole confidant in all matters treacherous, to follow her descent down a grand, plunging staircase. In an abandoned training room floors below, Kasim awaited her, no doubt brooding over things he didn’t understand and never would.
She’d argued to Marek, rather tersely, that her station warranted the rig
ht to some privacy, be it a mere walk during waking hours in the company of her own thoughts and restless wolx. As such a walk encapsulated the miniscule hour of solitude left at her disposal, she hoped one day the entire House of Darakai would appreciate the sacrifices made to hone their meddlesome al’Haidren into a decent excuse for a warrior.
In Marek’s lingering anger, the evidence of which balanced on the hard set of his shoulders, they’d quarreled at Luscia’s exit, his words both detached and taciturn. The captaen of her guard still refused to look her in the eye after the profound bite of Alora’s rebuke, for though the weight of their Haidren’s disappointment fell on Luscia, her criticism had settled on the men as well, casting a net of shame far beyond herself.
Lost in thought, Luscia passed under a narrow arch and entered a less occupied corridor with her head hung low. She wished she could have explained the events of that evening to her aunt, but even more to her guard. Disagree as they may, Alora was right in her assessment of the Najjan and their sacrifice. They’d traded their own lives for Luscia’s, in more ways than one. It was the call of the five, just as it was hers as future Haidren for their people.
That very call, in methodology rather than ideology, had splintered Luscia from her predecessor. Like Alora, she too hoped to submit herself for the sake of Boreal, but not by way of surrender to the will of the Peerage or the prydes. They had no right to speak for the maligned and forgotten, the trafficked and sold, the innocent and the unascended. There wasn’t room for Alora’s passivity in a city where people’s lives held less value than the political entanglements of men unburdened by the death of Boreal’s children.
Even still, her convictions didn’t change the fact that Luscia was not Haidren to Boreal yet, and it had been wrong to elevate herself in such high esteem. In that, Alora had spoken the truth twice over. Luscia had become blind. Because of her pride and therefore disloyalty, Aurynth would sing of her unworthiness; a melody Luscia, like the five, could never unhear.
And yet…
Out in the world, there was a cross-caste boy, both frail and frightened, who had lived to see a new morning. Bittersweetly, the corner of Luscia’s mouth curled, though the smile quickly retreated.
A muffled, mouse-like whimper tickled her ear when she stepped onto a lower landing. Frowning at Bastiion’s fondness for public trysts, she looked to the lycran and remarked sarcastically, “And here I thought Unitarians couldn’t function this early.”
Her excuse for a smirk fell at the low growl from Aksel’s underbelly. Changing course, she entered a narrow, shadowed corridor to the east of the landing, the highlander wolx several paces ahead. What at first had resembled a stifled moan rolled into a shuddered sob, and Luscia hastened after Askel, following him around the bend into an even darker hall dotted by a dozen cutouts built into the stone archways along either side. A silver tray and its fine contents laid strewn across the marble floor near the farthest alcove.
Without hesitation, Luscia sprinted down the hall in search of its owner. Inside the alcove, a lady’s maid was pressed against stone wall, buried under the heaviness of a tall nobleman.
“Niit, heh’ta!” Luscia shouted as she slammed into his body. Gripping the folds of his velvet waistcoat, she used her weight to reel him off the maid. Halting her momentum when the Unitarian’s back hit the wall, Luscia released the catch of Phalen’s radials with each thumb. Furiously, she anchored her left blade against his gut and her right beneath his chin.
The dark-haired maid slumped in the corner. Torn fragments of her dress slipped off her slight shoulders as they lifted around her crumpled form, hiding herself as she wept.
“I know you…” The yancy’s throat bobbed carefully against the edge of the radial as he glanced down. “We don’t have to keep meeting like this. Bastiion houses better places meant for your kind.”
“Lord Ambrose.” Luscia spat the name when she recognized him as the same nobleman she’d seen with the Haidren to Pilar, in another dark corridor weeks before. In the softer light of the snug alcove, his complexion was wanner than expected, lacking the warm radiance attributed to Unitarian blood.
“You will never touch another lady in this palace again,” she instructed, pushing the radial through the outer layers of costly material around his waist.
“That y’siti mutt is no more a lady than you are, dirty highlander witch.” Ambrose sneered as Luscia realized he was referring to the young woman crying on the floor, not the snarling beast at her heels.
“Mark my Boreali witch-tongue, Ambrose. If you touch one of them again, I will gladly spill your entrails and serve you at a Mworran feast.” Luscia dropped her left radial from his navel and slid it below his belt. Ambrose shuddered as a bead of sweat dripped from his walnut waves and past his protruding brow. “Or…I might just serve them another local delicacy.”
Felix Ambrose stared at Luscia, locking on her Tiergan eye, and twitched in a manner she took for a nod. Backing away, she shielded the maid and ordered Aksel to let the yancy pass.
Stopping under the archway, Ambrose paused and licked his lips. “You smell delicious when you’re angry, Lady al’Haidren.”
Luscia stomach roiled as she took a deep breath and instantly regretted it. “And you smell like carrion. Leave us!” Aksel snapped at his ankles, yipping as he urged the noble further down the hall.
“M-my l-lady.” A familiar, delicate hand touched Luscia’s leg.
“Mila!” Luscia fell to the marble to aid her lady’s maid. “Meh fyreon, I didn’t even realize it was you!” Her hands went to assess the state of the girl, but slowed, remembering it was best not to touch right away. “Are you injured? Can you walk?”
Shakily, Mila guided herself upright and wrapped her arms around her chest, shaking her head. “He…you were in time, my lady.”
A blossom of indigo was already spreading across Mila’s jaw.
“Not soon enough,” Luscia remarked angrily. “Come with me. I’m getting you out of this place.”
Removing her outer sparring tunic, she wrapped the garment around her young friend and guided her to the safety of the Boreali suites.
Back in Luscia’s apartments, she inspected Mila’s surface wounds, knowing it would take far longer to heal what lay underneath.
“Böwen!” Luscia called while Tallulah fetched warm cloths. “Böwen, where is Ana’Mere? I need her. Now.”
“Ana’Mere is meeting with the Peerage this morning, Ana’Sere…about a boy the night before last.” Luscia felt a bittersweet sting at the mention of the little boy they’d saved. Böwen’s eyes darted from his al’Haidren to the solemn girl in her care. Mila hadn’t spoken since they’d entered the apartment. “From there, Emiere said they were to spend the evening in the outskirts of Wendylle. Meh fyreon, Ana’Sere, her guard didn’t share anything more.”
“Shtàka,” she cursed. “And Marek?”
Returning, Tallulah tried to tempt Mila with a cup of water while she cleaned the shallow scrapes down her forearms.
“The captaen took the others to speak with the prince’s sentries in preparation for the Zôueli’s arrival. They stepped out after you left with the lycran earlier this morning.”
Uncertain, Luscia bit her lip. “Mila, you said your mother works in the palace laundry, correct?” she inquired. “What of your sister? Is she in the palace as well?”
Mila’s chin trembled as she nodded. “She’s nine years old,” was her only comment.
“Wem, I recall.” Getting up, Luscia snatched a quill and parchment. “Your father was a trader from Roüwen—give me his name.”
Luscia glanced up at the silence. Mila stared down at a bruise forming across her wrist.
“Mila.” Böwen knelt at her feet and rested one of Tallulah’s cloths over the bruise. “Yeh fappa…his name?”
“Caellaigh. Mac Caellaigh,” she managed as a tear trailed down her po
rcelain cheek and splashed Böwen’s hand. “His parents disowned him for marrying an outsider, before—before he died.”
“Caellaigh,” Luscia repeated as she scribbled a plea for her father’s aid. Folding the parchment, she sealed it in wax and handed it to her Najjan. “Böwen, I need you to escort Mila, her mother, and her sister home to Roüwen. Bring this to my father. Our Clann Darragh will ensure the family takes them in.”
Luscia sent up a prayer to the High One on their behalf. It was common knowledge the Boreali were a closed-off people, a fact that had surely defined Mila’s upbringing in the Proper. They would need Clann authority to ensure the Caellaighs opened up their home voluntarily. One would think that, under the circumstances, Mila’s grandparents would eagerly welcome the sight of their granddaughters on their doorstep. Regrettably, even the House of Boreal had its faults. Thank Aniell that Luscia’s father had the influence to lessen their sting.
“All the way to Roüwen, Ana’Sere?”
“Mila is an unascended Boreali cross-caste, her sister even younger.” Guilt drove Luscia to look away. “Today was the wickedness of one man, but tomorrow could hold even worse. I’m ashamed I didn’t think to remove them from the present danger until now.”
Picking up an untouched piece of bread from her morning tray, Luscia wrapped Mila’s hands around it. “You must eat, Mila—no more of this courtier nonsense. We eat to become strong. Böwen, I want you to train her in the evenings. Her sister, too.” She met his sea-green eyes, begging. “Boleava, Böwen. Like they were your own kin.”
With that, she reached into her upturned boot and retrieved a hidden pocket blade from her youth and placed it into Mila’s open palm. “So it won’t happen again.” Luscia squeezed the young woman’s hand tightly and stood up, moving toward the door. “Leave as soon as you’re able, Böwen. Get them out of Bastiion. Far, far away from this evil.”
House of Bastiion (The Haidren Legacy, Book 1) Page 25