Part 18 (1/2)
”Keep your tongue behind your teeth unless you're answering my questions, boy.” Femensetri sipped at her drink, then spat it over the side with a grimace. Mari smiled. Femensetri took Nehrun's drink, sipped, seemed content since she kept it. ”And before you bleat about how you demand this, that, or the other, understand you're in no position to demand a thing. You know me, know my reputation?”
Nehrun nodded nervously. Mari was sure she heard him swallow convulsively, even from across the table.
”Then you know I'll kill you where you sit and there's b.u.g.g.e.r all you, or anybody else, can do about it?” Again Nehrun nodded. ”Then talk, boy, and hope you tell me enough that's useful so I don't find a reason to scorch the flesh from your bones. The best you can hope for now is incarceration.”
His voice faltered at first, as he choked on a combination of pride, guilt, and fear. He spoke of his years of disagreements with his father, whose progressive Federationist att.i.tudes were in stark contrast to Nehrun's Imperialism. How his reading of Corajidin's insights in Our Destiny Made Manifest had changed Nehrun's perceptions of both the Avn and Shran. Mari detected an undercurrent of resentment in Nehrun when he admitted he was the child of a monarch who had never actually been intended to be the rahn-elect of the Great House of Nasarat. She was surprised to learn it was Delaram, Indris's mother, who had been rahn-elect until she had taken her place with the Sq Order of Scholars. Ariskander had been chosen after his brilliant elder sister had made herself unavailable.
Nehrun had traveled in different orbits than the rest of his family. Through his friends from university, as well as the various clubs and a.s.sociations of the privileged he belonged to, Nehrun fell into the company of like-minded women and men. And into the habits of gambling, drinking, smoking, and courtesans. In the parlors of wealthy political reformists and half-baked philosophers, the high-minded discussed how a world could be remade over snifters of mulberry brandy kissed by clouds of pipe smoke.
”I didn't know it was Yashamin who was buying information...at first,” Nehrun said, his gaze distant. Rosha's glare was sharp as a chisel, her hand trembling around the hilt of her long-knife. ”Though I hated Corajidin, still do, I couldn't disagree with his perspective. Father's insistence on protecting Far-ad-din and his nest of freethinkers and foreigners in Amnon was...misguided. Far-ad-din needed to be removed from power, or else the Seethe were going to be in a position to rebuild an empire of their own.”
”You were lied to, boy,” Femensetri countered. ”Many of us argued against coming to Amnon in force, yet Corajidin had bought the vote and neither the Asrahn nor the Speaker for the People could do much to fight it.”
”Be that as it may, my father had outlived Shran's need for him,” Nehrun insisted. ”Though we were enemies, Corajidin and I agreed on where we thought Shran needed to change. That the Teshri could be manipulated showed us how weak it is. We need a single monarch to govern Shran, and it's possible it could've been me. After all, aren't the Nasarat, the Great House of the Phoenix, descended from the blood of emperors? The Empress-in-Shadows in Mediin is herself a Nasarat.”
”I can't believe what I'm hearing,” Rosha breathed. ”Do you mean to say you thought you'd be Mahj?”
”One day. Why not?” Nehrun shrugged.
”Because you're the weaker son of greater sires, Nehrun,” Femensetri growled. ”Did you know what Corajidin had planned for your father?”
”Not the extent of it!” he said, panicked by Femensetri's grim tone. He looked across at Mari. ”My arrangement was for Father to be killed in battle. It didn't happen. I needed to improvise to get what I wanted. I'd no idea he'd abduct Father, or do...what he's doing.”
”And after Corajidin became Asrahn?” Rosha whispered.
Nehrun looked at his sister, his smile cold. ”I'd be the new Rahn-Nasarat, with a bold new vision. But whatever Corajidin is doing, he'll have to do it without me. I doubt it will be me wearing the Phoenix Crown now.”
Mari cantered her giant mountain-hart through the open gates of the villa to find her father and brother standing in lantern light outside the stables. Mari rode up to them, smiling as she dismounted. Thankfully she had had the foresight to take saddlebags with her, which held an old tunic, breeches, and the leather-wrapped length of a wooden practice sword. Her father eyed her suspiciously as one of the stable hands took her mount away.
”I did not realize you had left the villa.” Her father's tone was suspicious. ”Where have you been, and why did you not tell me you where you were going?”
”I've been training, if you must know,” Mari lied with good cheer, to mask the hammer in her chest. ”Since I lost my post with the Feya.s.sin, I need to find other people to train with.”
”Why not train with me or the Anlki?” Belam asked as he checked the saddle girth on his hart. ”I'd be happy to fence with you.”
”So you should be.” Mari threw her arm around her brother's wide shoulders, then mussed his golden hair. ”You might learn a thing or two.”
”Oh ho!” Belam gave chase as Mari dashed away. She leaped over potted shrubs, dashed around the edge of the fountain, and ducked under harts, which stamped their split-toed hooves. She and her brother laughed all the while, even after he tackled her, which sent them both headlong into the gra.s.s. She wrestled Belam to the ground in a headlock, pushed him aside, sped away.
”Enough, you two!” Corajidin clapped his hands, grin wide. The years fell away from his face when he smiled. Mari had not seen her father look so relaxed in months. ”Belam has somewhere to be, and I cannot have him put in hospital by his younger sister.”
”Thanks for the confidence.” Belam smiled wryly. He pointed at Mari. ”Your day will come!”
”If only we could both live so long.” She gave her saddlebags to a porter. ”Where are you off to, Belam? Want company? I can help.”
”Not this time.”
Her father and Belam excused themselves to exchange a few words. Thufan and some of his ruffians waited nearby. Corajidin hugged Belam, then headed inside. Thufan smiled at Mari through his customary cloud of pipe smoke, a grotesque contortion of wrinkles on his hollowed cheeks and thin lips.
”Belam?” Mari caught her brother by arm.
”Later, Mari,” he murmured.
”Amre yaha, big brother,” she called out as he walked his hart to where Thufan and the others swung into their saddles. It was something they used to say often to each other. Not so much anymore. It seemed their lives had taken such different directions of late. Belam stopped, then looked over his shoulder with a surprised smile.
”Who doesn't?” He gave her a friendly smile, then was gone along with Thufan and his men.
With Thufan gone and her father occupied, now was the perfect time to seek Armal out. It took her almost half an hour, but she eventually found him in the villa's library. It was a tall, three-tiered chamber, golden with lamplight. Bookcases lined the walls, their doors paned in stained gla.s.s. Ivory scroll cases, like a honeycomb, held ancient maps and sc.r.a.ps of knowledge. There was also a collection of more recent printed material, coa.r.s.e reed paper pressed between thick card covers layered in velvet or coated with lacquer.
Armal overfilled a large leather chair, his wide, plain face creased by a slight frown. Mari smiled. When he read his lips moved. One blunt finger traced the words on the page, as if he deliberately searched out each one as some kind of wonder. She entered on quiet feet. Armal caught her movement, looked up from what he was reading, face flushed.
”Pah-Mariam,” he murmured, bashful as a boy.
”What are you reading?” Mari came across to join him. She would have to have been a fool to not see his infatuation. It happened. People desired her, or admired her, which sometimes led to an affair that rarely, if ever, ended well for either of them. It had been her experience that people loved the thought of her rather than the reality. Perhaps love was too strong a word. It rarely got beyond l.u.s.t before feelings withered on the vine. Not so with Indris, who was secure enough to see her for all of what she was and was not.
”I enjoy the library, Pah-Mariam,” he said in his quiet voice. ”If that's not a problem.”
”Problem?” Mari laughed. ”Why? Books are to be enjoyed.”
”I never used to read much before...”
”Before Maladur gaol?”
He closed his eyes for a moment in what appeared to be genuine pain. ”It's an old palace, you know? Stuck out there in the Marble Sea, surrounded by water. It's filled with cracked old statues, vandalized paintings, and hundreds of rooms. Very rarely did we see anything new, and we had a lot of time on our hands.”
”I take it there were books there?”
”Few were complete,” he said ruefully. ”Even so, I learned what I could. It was humbling to know how wrong my life had been, living solely for my father's good opinion.”
”Ah, yes. We all seek the approval of our parents. At least for a little while. It's a trap I think we are both ensnared in.”
He read to her from the book in his hands.
Though the moments pa.s.sed me by, along with dreams I thought I'd lost, I wondered where my heart had gone, your forlorn child of future past Mari looked at him in wonder and finished the pa.s.sage from memory.
Scars no memories forget, I had gone missing on the way, stopped to think I seemed to be, hints of promise waiting yet.
She leaned forward to take the book from his hands. Steps Along the Feya.s.sin's Road. She had written it only a year ago. ”I'd no idea there was a copy here.”
”There isn't, Pah-Mariam. It's mine.”
Mari looked at him with raised eyebrows. Clearly Armal's still waters ran deeper than she suspected. He had shown compa.s.sion, even sorrow, at some of the things he had heard their respective parents speak about. If she could rely on his compa.s.sionate nature, he might well be the ally she needed.
”Armal, may I ask you something in confidence?”
”Of course.” Not a moment of hesitation in his voice. Using his affection seemed dishonest, yet what choice did she have?