“Actually, I’m trying to get a promotion.”
He managed a short, hoarse laugh. But she wasn’t laughing. He pried his eyes open, looking for humor on her face, only to see that she was utterly serious.
“If I were archmage, I could do much to effect change in the temple, and it’s what I’ve worked for my whole life.”
“Your whole life? You can’t even be that old. Thirty?” He felt like a hypocrite after the words came out. He was only thirty-three. When had that started seeming old? After five or six years of fighting in Taziira, he supposed.
“I’m thirty-two. I became an inquisitor at twenty-two, the youngest ever in the history of the Water Order. I’d been apprenticed to another inquisitor—he has since retired—for more than five years before that. And for the five before that, I was in school here in the temple, being taught everything. I didn’t know how to read and had no education at all before I was orphaned, before they took me in. I owe the temple a lot.”
“I… see.” Jev had been joking when he’d suggested she quit—sort of—but he wouldn’t have made the joke if he’d known all that. He had no trouble grasping loyalty and why it was important. Raised on the Zyndar Code of Honor, he understood it perhaps more than most. He just wished she didn’t feel it toward the people who had tortured him.
“Who was—is?—your father?” Jev asked, remembering Iridium’s words about Zenia’s heritage.
If her father was zyndar, why would she have been orphaned? Jev knew about bastard children that randy zyndar men had out of wedlock, and that such a child would be denied any inheritance and might not be acknowledged, but most men quietly gave the mother some money and saw to it the child could go to school and have opportunities.
Zenia leaned back, looking toward the high window. Deciding whether to answer? Maybe she didn’t want him knowing that much about her, or feared he would use the knowledge against her somehow.
“Zyndar Veran Morningfar,” she said quietly.
“Oh?” Jev knew the name. He was familiar with people from most of the zyndar families in the kingdom since his father had often sent him to social gatherings in the city and dinners at Alderoth Castle—his father hated such things and had been glad when Jev had turned sixteen, the age one was allowed to be named heir and sent off to represent the family. “He’s zyndar prime and owner of all the Morningfar land, isn’t he? It’s a small estate, and the Morningfars aren’t the oldest and most prosperous family, but he should have had enough money to send any offspring to school.”
He extended a hand toward her and didn’t say more, not wanting to presume to know the story just because Iridium had blabbed some details. Details that might be little more than false gossip.
“Yes.” Zenia shifted her gaze to the stone floor. “He has money enough to feed and clothe his mistresses if he chose, I’m certain.”
Jev wrinkled his nose at the thought of the gangly rat-faced Veran having hordes of mistresses. Jev had only spoken to him a few times but distinctly remembered him being condescending and haughty. He always had a foul-smelling cigar dangling from his mouth at gatherings, the smoke lingering around him and his chosen cronies like a curtain. If he was Zenia’s father, it was amazing she was such a beautiful woman.
“It wasn’t money for school I wanted. I wouldn’t have asked for anything since I didn’t know the man—my mother gave me his name but not much else. I certainly never got the impression they’d had some passionate affair. More that my mother had made a mistake. She told me never to ask him for anything, but that was before she took ill. Shrumphasis. You know it?”
She didn’t look at his eyes when she asked. She seemed to be finding the stone floor tiles fascinating. It would take too much effort for Jev to roll over and contemplate their fascination for himself.
“Something that causes heart defects, right?”
“A bacterial infection that does, yes. A healer using magic can cure it, but it takes several treatments to fully eradicate the bacteria, and then hours of work to repair the heart. We went to the public hospital and signed up, but we didn’t have any money. My mother had worked as a weaver when I was growing up, and she made enough to keep us fed and in a room we shared with another mother and daughter. But there was never extra money to save, and she… I’m sure she didn’t expect such a disease to strike her down.” Zenia’s already soft voice grew softer as she whispered, “She wasn’t that old.”
“How old were you?” Jev couldn’t help but compare her childhood to his. Sharing a room with another family? He and his brother had shared the second floor in the north wing of the castle. They’d had the services of a nanny, tutors, and a cook whenever they wished.
“Eleven. As I said, we went to the hospital and signed up for the charity program, but as you probably know, you have to wait months for treatment.” Zenia looked at his face. “I guess you wouldn’t know, actually.”
She didn’t sound bitter. Maybe because this had all happened twenty years ago, some of the edge had worn off. Or maybe not. Jev remembered the cool way she’d originally greeted him, the little comments that gave away her bitterness toward the zyndar, toward their wealth and special treatment in society. Maybe she just didn’t feel bitter toward him anymore.
If so, that was an improvement.
“She got worse while we waited her turn for treatment,” Zenia said. “I realized she wouldn’t make it. I went to Morningfar’s townhouse.” Now, she curled her lip. Showing her distaste for someone who had multiple homes across the kingdom.
Jev decided not to mention that the Dharrows had a townhouse, too, even if his father never used it, preferring working the land with his tenants to hosting social gatherings in the city. The last Jev had heard, one of his cousins who taught at the university lived there.
“It took three tries before I could get past his henchmen to talk to him,” Zenia said.
“His henchmen? Like his personal guard?” Jev also decided not to mention that Dharrow Castle employed a couple dozen such men to protect the family on trips off the property.
“I think one was his butler. They all seemed henchman-ish to an eleven-year-old girl. I finally managed to yell across the courtyard to him as two men were pulling me away. I told him who my mother was and that she needed help. I asked for a loan, not a handout. I guess he didn’t think a dumb kid could ever pay back a loan, but I would have.”
She lifted her chin in that now-familiar gesture Jev had been considering haughtiness. He decided it was determination.
“He walked over to look at me and waved for his henchmen to set me down. I thought he was willing to listen, that he might help. A woman had come out of the townhouse by then. His wife, maybe. I thought he might want to look good—be generous—in front of her. He bent and looked me square in the eye to say he didn’t give charity to beggars. I tried to tell him he was my father and about my mother’s illness and that I could take him to see her if he wanted, but he ordered his men to carry me out, and I distinctly remember him saying he’d have them flogged if they let me back in.” Zenia shook her head. “I didn’t want to try again after that because I didn’t want other people to be hurt because of me. Besides, he’d recognized my mother’s name when I gave it. I’m sure of it. I saw it in his eyes. He knew I wasn’t some street urchin with no connection to him. He just didn’t care.”
Jev was fairly certain he’d heard something about Morningfar and his wife celebrating their fortieth anniversary right before he’d gone off to the war. Which meant he’d been married when Zenia had been born—and conceived. The old man probably hadn’t wanted his wife to hear evidence that he’d been unfaithful, even if such was common among some zyndar, despite the Code of Honor forbidding it.
“He’s an asshole,” Jev said.
Even if he could understand why the man hadn’t spoken to his offspring by another woman in front of his wife, he didn’t condone it. If nothing else, Morningfar would have had the resources to find Zenia and her dying mother in
the city later if he’d wished to do so.
Zenia smiled slightly. “I certainly thought so.”
“Did you tell him?”
“I was too busy being hauled out of the courtyard, kicking and punching at the henchman carrying me over his shoulder like a side of beef. I may have called him an asshole.”
“Misplaced anger, I fear.”
“Yes. Perhaps if I chance across Morningfar someday, I’ll belatedly let him know.”
“I believe he’s in his seventies now,” Jev said.
“Is there an age cut-off for when insults can be delivered to a man?”
“Probably not. He might even wet himself if you showed up at his door in your robe, implying he’s guilty of some crime.”
Zenia’s smile turned bleak. “I wish he were, but not supporting your mistress’s children—or your mistress herself—isn’t a crime.”
“A shame.” Jev wondered if that was something she would try to change if she became archmage of the temple.
Sometime during her sharing of her history, she’d stopped stroking his face. Lamentable, but he hitched himself up on one elbow. He needed to figure out what he was supposed to do next. He assumed his interrogators had gotten everything out of his mind and realized it wasn’t much. Would they keep him locked up?
He pushed himself into a sitting position. The cell door was open behind Zenia.
“Does your father have any bastards?” Zenia asked.
“Uhm, technically, yes. He’s had a couple of lovers since my mother disappeared, and he never married any of them. They were women from one of our villages. They probably bonded over fixing some fences together, then got randy.”
Judging by Zenia’s dark expression, she didn’t want a humorous answer.
Jev cleared his throat. “He acknowledges the women and their children. The last I knew—before I left for Taziira—I had three half-sisters and no half-brothers, at least not yet. I have no idea what’s been going on lately. My cousin Wyleria wrote me from time to time, but her preference is to gossip about other people’s families, not her own. My father never wrote me. We’re not that close.”
“Ah.”
He didn’t know if he’d given her the answer she wanted. It was the truth, and that was all he could offer her, but she may have hoped his father was too honorable to have children out of wedlock.
“Do you?” Zenia looked in his eyes.
“Have bastards? I don’t think so. I was engaged to be married before I left, but her children… aren’t mine.” Jev looked at the cell door again, wondering if he could convince Zenia they should wander out instead of discussing his past. “She wasn’t my first lover, but there weren’t that many before then. I’d pined for her since I was about fourteen, you see. She was two years older, and it took me a few years to convince her she pined for me too.”
Alas, her pining had not survived distance and time. Damn, he didn’t want to talk about this with Zenia. Or anyone.
“So, what’s my status among your Order friends?” He pointed at the open door. “Did you forget to close that or am I being encouraged to wander off?”
She kept looking at him, not at the door, and he didn’t need magic to sense that she wanted to ask for more details about his one-time fiancée.
“Actually,” Zenia said, “you are being encouraged to wander off. And I’m being encouraged to follow you.”
“Oh?” Jev asked, relieved she’d dropped the subject.
“Archmage Sazshen believes you don’t know where the artifact is, but she also believes you’ll find it if she lets you go. You’ll want to clear your name and remove any doubt about your honor, and you can only do that by turning it in. So, you’ll look for it promptly. And if I’m with you, I’ll be there when you find it. Or maybe I can see something you don’t and help you find it. I know you haven’t seen me do anything brilliant yet, but I am good at solving puzzles.”
“If Master Grindmor finds her diamond tools in a pumping station, I’ll surely believe you.”
She snorted. “That was just a guess.”
“A thoughtful one, I imagine. All right, the artifact. Once I—or we—find it, you’re to take it from me?”
Zenia didn’t hesitate to nod. “I am. The archmage believes you won’t object since it’s not yours. It’s only chance that it passed through your fingers at one time.”
“No kidding. I wish she’d figured that out before she sent her henchmen after me.”
“Her henchmen?” Zenia touched her chest—she was clad in a fresh blue inquisitor robe. “Me?”
“I suppose I should have said henchwomen, but I don’t think that’s a word. It definitely should be.” Jev rolled himself to his feet, glad his shoulder only stung minutely, and offered Zenia a hand, hoping she knew he was joking.
“The archmage has arranged for Rhi to meet us out front soon with horses.” Zenia accepted his hand and let him pull her to her feet. “I’ll share your label with her, that you consider her a henchwoman.”
“Do you think she’ll object?”
“Perhaps not. She’s proud of her deadliness. She would prefer it if more people shrank away from her than they did from me.”
“Would you prefer it?” Jev wondered if she had deliberately cultivated that reputation or if it had simply evolved over the years due to her deeds.
“I wouldn’t mind. Being considered powerful and threatening isn’t quite the boon I once thought it would be.” She regarded him curiously. “It surprised me that you were never uneasy in my presence. Even though I’d come to arrest you.”
“I’m not easily scared anymore. I’ve seen… a lot.” A lot that he didn’t want to talk about any more than he wanted to talk about the woman who hadn’t waited for him. “Let’s head out, shall we?”
Zenia released his hand and stepped into the corridor. “Yes, we should hurry, so you can start questioning people tonight. The new king’s coronation is tomorrow, and all the zyndar families will likely attend, as well as everyone else with the wherewithal to snag an invitation to the event. Three days of festivities and holidays are scheduled after it. It may be hard to find anyone to question then.”
“Yes, I imagine so.” In addition, he might receive an invitation to the event and be expected to come.
Jev would like to see Targyon crowned and give him a solid thump on the shoulder, but would Zenia object if he wandered off before finding the artifact? Even if she’d stuck a finger up his nose and almost kissed him, he couldn’t forget that she worked for the woman who had tortured him.
15
When Zenia saw Rhi standing at the back door of the temple with three horses, she rushed over and hugged her, forgetting to portray a professional image for Jev and anyone else around. Rhi grinned and hugged her back, the bottom of her bo clattering on the cobblestones.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to get back,” Rhi said when they parted.
Jev stopped a few feet away, waiting while they had their reunion.
“We got back early this morning,” Zenia said.
“Yes, I heard you were taking a nap.”
Zenia faltered over what should have been a witty reply as she tried to decide if Rhi had somehow been in on that deception, if she’d known Sazshen had ordered that sleeping draught brought to her. Probably not. Rhi wore an affable easygoing grin. One free of guilt. She likely didn’t know anything about the potion—or that Jev had been tortured.
Zenia glanced at him, and Rhi’s gaze also drifted in his direction.
“You’re looking a lot prettier today than you were yesterday, Zyndar.” Rhi gave him a lazy wink.
“I thought I might convince the inquisitor to change her gaze from withering to appreciative if I cleaned up,” Jev said.
“If you manage that, let me know. You’ll be the first man she hasn’t withered.”
Jev’s eyebrows rose, and Zenia blushed.
“We have a new mission,” Zenia said, taking the reins of one horse from Rh
i. “We have to head back up the highway to Dharrow Castle. Is the road safe now? Have you heard? And what happened to you last night? We came to the edge of the mangroves to look, but I didn’t see you anywhere. And there were people searching for us so we couldn’t stay.”
“A couple of thugs leaped out of the shadows, startling my horse before I got to the village. I was thrown, and the men attacked me. No explanation. I attacked them back. As one does.” She patted her bo. “They had guns, but I knocked them out of their hands, and they couldn’t find them again in the dark. I then convinced them to run away. Wish I’d questioned them. By the time I got to the village, the golems were gone, and so were all the inhabitants. While I was trying to figure out why someone had constructed an attack in the first place, I came across two of the watchmen we’d been working with. They were injured, one badly, and I worried he would die if I didn’t take him straight to the hospital. It wasn’t an easy decision to leave you behind, and I apologize for not coming back to tell you, but I judged that he didn’t have much time. When I got to the hospital, the healer said that judgment was right. I hope he pulled through after all that. I’ll go check tomorrow. Before the coronation. Did you hear all about that? We should get a couple of days off.”
“Was she this chatty yesterday?” Jev asked.
“No, but this isn’t atypical,” Zenia said. “Yesterday, she was being aloof and intimidating to keep you in line.”
“She was? Or you were?”
“We use some of the same tactics.” Rhi thumped Zenia on the shoulder, then mounted her horse. “I’m ready when you two slowpokes are.”
Zenia and Jev mounted their horses and let Rhi lead the way out of the city. The sun had dropped below the horizon, and the waning light reminded Zenia far too much of the circumstances of the night before. Now, she wished she hadn’t spent as much time with her hand on Jev’s chest, talking to him in his cell. It would have been better to reach his castle before nightfall. Or to wait until the following day to go, but Sazshen had made it clear she wanted this resolved quickly.
Agents of the Crown- The Complete Series Page 17
