He wished he could think the king possessed or mad. But he wasn’t. This was Karolje, a man, an ordinary man in a line of men, who had over and over chosen to do evil. The king had shaped himself. Gods and demons had not brought him to this spot. Power had, and cruelty and selfishness and vicious joy, and the unshakable certainty that the world existed to do his bidding. With time and circumstances, any person could become like him.
“I always have an audience. And so do you, both of you. There are no secrets in the Citadel. You’re a fool if you think you can hide your actions from me, or the actions of your tools.”
Esvar opened his mouth and shut it again at the glance from his brother. Tevin’s senses must be finely tuned right now to have heard Esvar’s intake of breath.
“I have done hundreds of things you have never seen,” Tevin said. “And when you are dead, I will undo your works. I will erase your name from the records, and you will be known only as the traitor king.”
“Will you boast of your goodness? That will be a lie greater than any I have ever told. You were conceived in filth. You don’t know what manner of whore and adulteress your mother was. I shall tell you. You are not my sons. She lay with her father, and it was no rape. She used to taunt me with it, tell me how he suckled her breasts and rubbed his cock against her belly. I hurt her, and she laughed.”
It was a lie, of course. Esvar had only to look in a mirror to see how like he was to Karolje. The same shape of forehead and nose and set of eyes, darkness of hair, line of brow. Tevin’s coloring was lighter, but the face was the same.
His revulsion was no less for knowing that. Shame and revulsion. He was unclean. He could not help imagining his mother, naked and golden-haired upon a bed. It’s not true, it’s not true, he thought. He lies. He always lies.
“You are impotent, then?” Tevin said, striking back with a sword Esvar would never have thought to lift. “And powerless to hold a woman’s affection?”
“You are not my son.”
“But you named me your heir. You can’t undo that.” He took two calculated steps closer to the king. “And you won’t live forever.”
“The woman is pregnant,” Karolje said. “I have raised two children as my sons who are not. I can do it again. Proclaim you bastard and traitor. The priests will not interfere.”
“No one will believe the first. As for the second, if you name me traitor, I will prove it on your body.”
Careful, Tevin, Esvar thought.
“I did not think you so foolish as to threaten me,” Karolje said.
“You don’t know me at all,” said Tevin, cold and hard as marble.
The king sat unspeaking. His fingers gripped the chair arms. That’s something you weren’t ready for, Esvar thought in satisfaction. The repudiation struck at the heart of Karolje’s self-conceit. It was inarguable. Tevin had found a weak place and pried it open. Esvar wished the court could see his brother now. The lords would hesitate to cross him.
Esvar went to Tevin’s side. Neither Karolje nor Tevin broke their stare at each other.
“You tried once before to prove my mother had betrayed you,” Tevin said. “It was in this room. You failed. Do you remember that? Or does your memory fail you too? I remember who was here that day. If you try to cut me off as your heir, I will call those men as witnesses to your madness, and they will give the crown to me while you yet live.”
Somehow Esvar kept from exclaiming, from staring at his brother, from doing anything that would interrupt Tevin. His heart fluttered in his chest like a butterfly against a pane of glass. What had happened? Had Karolje killed her after he could not prove betrayal?
“You are a fool unworthy of a crown,” said Karolje.
His voice cracked on the last word. He convulsed violently, then slumped, his hand to his heart. His face was deathly pale. It more than ever resembled a skull.
Tevin ran to the door and yelled. Light from the antechamber flooded across the floor, banishing the darkness. Esvar’s mouth was dry. Die, old man, die, he thought. It was the only clear thought he had in a swirl of emotions. His heart ached with old grief, stained with fear and anger, but he could not have said what the pain arose from.
Guards came running. Esvar watched impassively as they carefully placed the king on the dais beside the chair. Tevin stood near him, looking for all the world like a worried son. One guard felt for a pulse, then looked up and said something Esvar could not make out. Tevin nodded and took a few steps backward.
Esvar joined him. “You never told me that about our mother,” he whispered.
“Later. Go wait in my rooms.”
Dismissed, he thought. Protected.
* * *
He pulled a book from Tevin’s shelves and paged through it without reading. For the first time he wondered what each of them held to himself that was in fact known by both. He knew things he would never say to his brother because the secrecy of them was etched into his bones; Tevin might know them too. Fear pushed them apart from each other and corroded the trust they should have had.
I’ll have it out with him, Esvar thought. Hoarding secrets played into Karolje’s power.
And what secret would he give up when Tevin asked? Alcu Havidian’s daughter? The book that had been his mother’s, which he had sent away forever? His foolish hope that he could leave the Citadel and join the resistance to fight Karolje?
Gods, he hated waiting. He needed something to do with his hands. A table in the corner had wine and glasses on it, and he poured some. It was a dark wine, velvety, not too sweet. Had it been sold to the Citadel by Servos Tashikian? He put his fingers under the cup of the glass, cool and smooth and unyielding. He took a polite, unsensuous sip. Through the open windows he heard the familiar noises of guards changing watch somewhere below.
Finally Tevin came in. He too filled a glass with wine and sat down. His face was tense.
“He’s conscious,” he said. “I expect he’ll live. Everyone present is sworn to secrecy, and the halls were cleared before they brought him to his rooms. The doctor said it was his heart without any prompting from me, so I think we will escape a murder accusation.”
Someone would tell. Someone always did. Rumor would run, and poison might get added to the story. Hell, some people would approve of murder and would think that Tevin had failed. You should have let him die, Esvar thought.
“Why did you call the doctor?” he asked grimly. “There weren’t any marks on him. No one could think you killed him.”
“That doesn’t matter. I would still be accused.”
“You’re afraid to kill him.” Esvar regretted the words as they left his mouth.
“No,” Tevin said, cold. “But if I do it, it has to be when I am surrounded by those who will support me. Not alone, like a thief in an alley.”
“Just tell me you have a plan.”
“I have a plan, damn you!”
Esvar knew he had pushed his brother too far. For an instant he remembered Mirantha in the last few months of her life. She had been quick-tempered, even harsh. Her hands had become very thin and the planes of her face angular and sharp. He realized now she must have been waiting for Karolje to kill her.
More subdued, he said, “And Jeriza? What’s happened to her?”
“I sent them home and will get them off-island as soon as possible. You’d better not know more than that. I told them they were still married, and right now my word is law,” he said bitterly. “Don’t blame yourself for this one, Esvar. Darvik sent most of his money to Traband and encouraged others. That looked like preparation for treason.”
“I understand arresting Jeriza and Darvik. That’s political. But I don’t understand the rest of it. The taunts. The claiming of the child. Has he gone mad?”
“If so, it would give me grounds for Articles of Deposition. But I don’t think he has. Everything that happened tonight is in keeping with things he’s done as long as he’s been king.”
Esvar took a breath. He wasn’t sure h
e was ready for the answer. “What did he do in the Green Court to our mother?”
“It was after Ashevi was arrested. He made her submit to a Truth Finder about infidelity. The Truth Finder said she was innocent.”
The Truth Finder could have torn Mirantha’s mind apart. “How do you know?”
“I was there,” said Tevin, jaw set.
Gods, Tevin had watched it. No wonder he was so set against the use of a Truth Finder. But—Esvar frowned. “You told me she was unfaithful, though. Were you wrong?” He remembered that clearly, the anger he had felt at his brother when Tevin finally told him.
“No. I saw how they looked at each other. He at her, mostly, as though he owned her. The Truth Finder lied.”
Truth Finders lied when they were directed to, but lying to the king himself was a different matter. “What happened to him?”
“Slipped on a staircase a few weeks later and broke his neck. Karolje knew what was going on with Ashevi, but after Mirantha was declared innocent, he couldn’t prove anything. He’d known for a long time, I think. I don’t know what moved him to get rid of Ashevi then.”
“I do,” Esvar said. “He knew he had lost you. He was afraid he would lose me. He needed to put someone completely loyal to him in charge of me.” The man who had replaced Ashevi as his tutor had been stern and humorless. It could not have been a comfortable position, teaching a prince when your predecessor had been executed.
“That was part of it,” Tevin agreed. “Karolje usually has more than one reason for what he does. Ashevi might have been conniving with Goran. He was damned ambitious in his own right.”
Esvar said, “Tell me what you have on Goran. I might need it.”
Tevin hesitated. “I will tell you, but don’t use it unless something has happened to me. I don’t want it to explode in my face. I need to wait until the next time he falls out of favor, and I prefer to wait until Doru has been eliminated. Do you remember when Goran’s son died of winterfever?”
Esvar nodded. The Citadel had been full of illness and death that year, nine years ago, and when the chancellor’s son died, no one had been surprised.
“Goran killed him.” Tevin picked his wineglass up off the table and drained it. “I watched him do it.”
“How?”
“The old servants’ passage in that wing runs behind the rooms. Some of them have peepholes. They’re all forgotten about now. Nihalik showed me when I was about nine, while Karolje was at the border before Piyr died. He was uncanny, that old man, I have no idea how he knew about them.
“I happened to see Goran go down the corridor to his son’s room, and I knew he was going to do something bad. I just knew, the way one does sometimes. There was no one around, so I slipped into the servants’ passage and went down to the peephole. I heard him talking to the nurse. I saw her go out. He sat down and talked to the boy, then sat by him and waited. His son fell asleep. Goran put a pillow over his face.
“It was quick. The boy might have died anyway. He hardly struggled. He was five, I think. Goran put the pillow back and went out and told the nurse he was sleeping and not to disturb him. The next time the nurse went in she found the boy dead and thought it was the sickness that had killed him. No reason not to think that.”
Appalled and fascinated, Esvar said, “Is that enough to blackmail him with, though? He can call it slander.”
“Ah, but there is something I know that only a few others know. The boy was Karolje’s son. Goran knows it, and the king does, and maybe a servant or two suspects.”
Gods. Poor Tahari. “How do you know?”
“Our mother told me. I asked Tahari once, in confidence, if the boy was Karolje’s, and she confirmed it. I didn’t tell her Goran had killed him.”
“But—” Esvar could not see how this gave his brother leverage. Not in a court where Karolje could whip his own son and Disappear his own wife. “That will be your word against his, and no one will care enough for it to threaten him. The only person who will be hurt is Tahari.”
Tevin refilled his cup and had a generous swallow. “Karolje doesn’t know about the murder. He would probably have liked to make this boy his successor, since you and I are so unsuitable. Kill us, kill Goran, put the boy in place as Karolje’s heir. Everyone thinks his claim comes through Goran, but Karolje has the satisfaction of knowing it’s his own son. What do you think would happen to Goran if I told Karolje this now?”
Goran would go to the block. Why had he even married Tahari? He must have thought raising a king’s bastard as his own would give him influence with Karolje. The man was a fool.
Esvar said, “Goran can say you’re lying. And if the king finds out you kept this secret, he’ll kill you too.”
“As to the first, I’ll tell Goran that I am willing to submit to a Truth Finder. That should keep him from risking disclosure. As to the second, Karolje understands political expediency. But in any case, Goran won’t go running to him to spill the story. I trust you.”
“And if Karolje dies before you blackmail Goran? What will you do then?”
“Tell Goran I know, and threaten to try him for murder if he doesn’t submit.”
“You could have used this years ago,” Esvar said.
“I want to control Goran, not give him to the king to dispose of and replace with someone worse. Now.” He drank. “Do you see the red book there, on the third shelf from the top?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a letter in it for you if Karolje and I kill each other and you are somehow still alive. Nothing in it would be useful to anyone else, to use against me or for their own profit, but there are things in it I want you to know if you become the king. No facts or plans or coded messages, only thoughts.”
“Is there anything I should know if they take you away tonight?” He tried to sound droll, ironic, but he expected Tevin would see through that. Voices carried in from outside as people went about their ordinary business, unaware or unconcerned that the king had turned on a lord that evening.
“Once when I was seventeen,” Tevin said, “a man came to me and offered to help me overthrow the king. He was wealthy and had friends among the courtiers. I wanted to trust him, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a trap. I ordered him killed. Quietly, without notice or fuss. For years I told myself it was the only decision I could have made. Even if he did truly support me, it seemed a bad idea to hurry to the throne on the shoulders of someone else. That kind of secret gets found out, or collects interest. I had no desire to owe anyone a favor for my crown. And you weren’t old enough to take my place if necessary.
“It was a mistake. I could always have said I intended to double-cross him.”
Esvar had only a little wine left. He finished it. “You were seventeen, Tev. You didn’t have support. There was no one to advise you. What could you have done?”
“Challenged Karolje as I did tonight. He’s never been invulnerable. No one is. He has just succeeded at looking so. The weakness was there, if I had had the nerve to strike.”
“He might have exacted a bloody revenge on someone else,” Esvar said. He was not used to reassuring his brother instead of arguing with him.
“It’s no use playing ‘might have.’ The time is past. But I’m not going to let caution rule any longer. If the king’s soldiers fight mine, mine will fight back.” He drank again. “There are other secrets. Do you know that Karolje murdered our mother’s family? It was her brother first, during the war. He was injured, and Karolje’s doctor poisoned the wound. Our grandfather was beset by bandits and our grandmother was thought to have hanged herself in grief. The murders shouldn’t surprise you, though it’s interesting that he bothered to conceal them.” Another drink. “He turned on the doctor later and had him killed. I talked to the doctor while he was waiting for execution, and he told me about the wound. He said it wasn’t the only time he’d been ordered to kill instead of to heal, and he told me where he kept the poisons. They’re now in a box under a false bottom in t
he chest that holds my winter cloaks.
“There are a few other things there that were our mother’s that I managed to get out of her rooms before Karolje had them thoroughly searched. She had her own hiding places. No papers—she wasn’t that foolish.”
Esvar was clutching the stem of his glass too hard. He relaxed his fingers and put the glass down at his feet, far enough away that he would not kick it accidentally. Tevin looked feverish. He wasn’t revealing information; he was confessing. Slicing away rot.
“She hated him, you see. I think she was working up the nerve to kill Karolje herself, and that’s why he had her Disappeared. She had learned how to be cruel too, just as you and I have. Because that’s how you survive Karolje. You bathe in acid and everything is dissolved that isn’t hard and inflexible and essential. If you think there’s anything left of who you are but that, you’re deceiving yourself.
“And that, Esvar, is why no matter how much you try to be right and good and just, you will fail. You keep trying because you have to. If you don’t try, he wins. But you will never know what it is to love, or to have joy, or to not be shadowed by fear. Every time you look at yourself, you think you see Karolje looking back. You won’t let anyone come close because you don’t want to hurt them, but you will pretend to love them so they don’t know how much you’re like him. However you try to turn things, you are yourself a lie.”
Then Tevin, Tevin who never lost control, dashed his glass against the floor. It rang one high sweet note and shattered. The wine splashed, red everywhere among the shining fragments of glass. Some of the wine stained his fingers and the back of his hand, lay on his forearm like freckles.
Esvar was mute. This was a brother he had never seen, on the knife-edge of madness. His own fear of Tevin told him not to move, to be invisible, unimportant. He’s your brother, help him, said one voice in his head, while another said, If you do anything wrong, he’ll take that broken glass and slash your neck.
The Vanished Queen Page 21
