"Thank you, Karin. You are simply superb at all that you do here."
One would have thought he'd slapped her. Which was why he'd learned all the servant girls' names. No doubt she would return to her keep and tell all of her girlish friends of this encounter, adding fantasies along the way.
When done blushing and bowing and departing, A'zur was looking at him.
"What?"
His stare intensified.
"What?"
He shook his head. "You ought not get their hopes up like that."
"Polite."
"I say again, you know nothing about us."
"I know enough." He twirled his finger in the holster's leather loop and grinned. "I've met a few of you Lymereans in my travels."
That gathered his intrigue. "Please, do tell what impression my faceless representatives have instilled within our foreign friends."
"You're all manipulative. Skivvying and thinking—and on and on. A bore, really. I say, if you've an enemy, chop off their head. If there is something you want, take it. And really, the Pyraceans are no better. Know how?"
A'zur lifted a brow. "There is a saying, 'Killing one born of the stormlands is an easy feat: simply stab them, for by the time they finish saying please and thank you, the blade will already be reddened.'"
He didn't get it.
A'zur sipped his wine and appeared to be enjoying it—his confusion, not the wine, which he kept smacking his lips lightly when tasted. "They're a very polite and friendly people, even when faced by their enemy," he explained. "They're patient and in a way, very honourable. They have an immense heart and care for their own. But they put cordiality before the blade."
Rhenan smirked. "Lymereans are quite polite as well, if not for their constant plotting behind the veil."
"You've not seen us in battle."
Now he grinned. "Are you inviting?"
"We both know I would lose in a matter of time."
He plucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "Deception is your sharpest blade, Prince A'zur. You may play quiet and breakable, but I see the steel in your eyes. Deadlier than any blade, and I suspect that slight frame of yours would be blinding on the field."
"Thellemere's princes are trained, yes."
"Your vaguity is such a fresh glass of water!" he laughed. "Do you know what we are known for? Us Thornstons?"
"Quick tempers, even quicker actions."
"Damn right you are, but quickest of all is our cocks and our words. My brother, prime example. You'll not find anything vague and manipulative from him. He is but a sulky old man. But your sister manages him well enough. Say, when were they set to return?"
"I know not what you speak of."
He sighed. Why did they insist on playing ignorance until the bitter end? What was there to gain when one already knew the truth?
"I caught them," Rhenan murmured. "During the game of hide and seek, I caught them."
"Caught?"
"At first I did not understand," he said. "I thought my brother an arsehead who would take a girl not of proper years for his pleasure with or without her say, but I know my brother well. I know his nature to be rage and irrationality, but never such a blatant atrocity. So then I thought on it, and you, a man who likes to do his thinking, knows what it can lead to."
He refilled his glass and downed it in one go. "For me, it led to the realisation that it was your sister whom I did not know well. And yet I've seen for myself what she is capable of. That female changes faces like a cobra does its skin. And then I remembered, you Lymereans and your manipulative minds."
A'zur was watching him closely, those thoughts sifting through endlessly.
Rhenan picked at his bitten nails and shrugged. "So you mean to have her ensnare my brother."
He had seen it in how his brother interacted with the girl, how the little Lymerean looked up at him with both adoration and deception. No one sent such a royal pair across disputing borderlines over a matter such as coal. This had everything to do with Thellemere wishing to wedge its blood into Redthorn's line of succession.
A'zur's mouth opened, but Rhenan held up a hand. "Let them fuck. Let them have pretty babies as a result of their fucking." He leaned forward into the male's surprised expression. "Let them fuck until they bury the Sirista, or else it'll be me who has to."
The Sirista had no one face in which Rhenan despised, rather he loathed their existence. An existence that threatened the life of his family at every turn. They wished to take the place of the Hansons as the superior ruler, to remove the monarchy and place their church beneath the crown. It was an ambition existing since the time of yore, and even now, it was no different.
If Tristian did not marry the Sirista's Lady Constance, then the problem would be averted, their ambition removed, even if it was a temporary solution.
He could see the male wagering his options. To assume Rhenan spoke the truth and indulge him, thereby admitting guilt of his sister's actions, or to reject it all, to keep his mask shaped to his face without the slightest peek inside.
A'zur deflected. "What has bred such strong distaste. I was under the impression Redthorn was a kingdom united by its one spiritual god?"
Rhenan scoffed. "More like the Sirista's spiritual cock. It has been a pissing war between the crown and the church since whichever ancestral nimrod thought it would be a good idea to worship something they could not see and, what more, throw coin at building worship houses for this unseen god. Of course the wiser took advantage of the idiots."
"Oh?"
"Father Conwell, he is one of those wiser. Redthorn, it is filled with the idiots who follow him."
"But it is the crown who holds ultimate rule, is it not?"
"By the thready belief of God living in our blood, controlling our vessel, crafting a line of purity." Another laugh, scornful. "Purity. All three kingdoms base their royalty on the ideology, but we do not realise how easy it is for another to step up, to claim to have a drop of divinity flowing through their veins, and therefore, should be looked to as royalty."
"The Sirista and Hansons have been united for years. The holy marriage of Tristian Hanson and Constance Durendale is set to strengthen the union. Am I ill-informed?" Something the man did not take kind to by the sour look on his face.
Rhenan emptied the carafe, but refrained from calling for another. He was not even feeling it hit yet. "That female is nothing more than the Sirista's foot into the royal monarchy. Do you know what will happen if she and my brother were to birth a son?"
"The trumpets would blare?"A'zur murmured evenly with a raised brow.
"The Sirista would hunt us down until not a single Hanson, save the newborn heir, lived."
The male did not look surprised.
"Why do you not look surprised?"
He raised his brows, then appeared modestly apologetic. "I merely thought that obvious, but was prepared to wait to be proven wrong. That, or presented an alternative reason for the marriage."
"And why would such a thing be obvious?"
"You're quick with your blade, as I am with my mind." He set down his barely sipped wine. "The Dark Rebellion was a result of something similar, was it not? The Sirista attempting to overthrow the crown?"
Rhenan's mind perhaps was not so quick, for he still did not get it. "The Dark Rebellion had nothing to do with the church, but the demands of the people not being met. The lords demanding more land and rightful wages. If anything, the royal family turned to the church more readily in those times."
"Ah, and that's the thing. You turned to the church, but who do you think instigated the insurgent?"
He frowned deeply, then narrowed his eyes. It was easy for him to navigate battlefields, but when it came to hints within a conversation, he was irksomely lost and confused. "You speak conspiratorially?"
"In life, there are the sheep, the shepherd and cattle dog. Typically, the shepherd and his dog work together to herd the sheep where they wish them to go. But there are times
the cattle dog senses things only an animal can sense, and he may lead the sheep onto a different path, whereas the shepherd might urge them another direction. To whom do the sheep obey? The shepherd, his stick and limited speed or the dog, who nips them and appears everywhere at once in their minds?"
"Well, how hard is this stick?"
A'zur was bemused. "They obey the dog."
"And who is the dog?"
"The Sirista."
"Why the hell so?"
"Religion is everywhere. Fear is everywhere. But your household, you are but one shepherd demanding to be obeyed, when a fearsome animal bites at their heels, leading them elsewhere."
"What would they have to fear? There was never any reports on the Sirista coercing this rebellion."
"Do you recall what fed this rebellion?"
All too clearly, even if it were learned through that of his teachings. "The lords and farmers, they protested for a time when the taxes were too high or their work not well-received. And all those who protested, their homes were set afire. Their families."
"The crown refused responsibility for this atrocity, and in turn it was the church who offered to restore the destruction, correct? And the village people and lords were thankful for it."
"Exactly, hence why I say they had so little to do with the rebellion."
The prince across from him smiled tenderly. "Who do you think started the fires?"
Rhenan recoiled, refusing to believe such a small thing could have started such a dark age of destruction. Refusing to believe such a grave, incriminating ploy had been carried out and still the Hanson household went to the Sirista and prayed to God through Father Conwell. Worse, his brother was set to marry his niece. "I say you think too much, Prince A'zur. Because what you say, and I forbid it be true, would mean they are placed on my list." His eyes went to his blades, tangled in the holster upon the table. "And such a smart fellow like yourself can guess what sort of list it is."
"I can. But I am one man, though my sources are many. Whether you believe me has little consequence for Thellemere."
"Oh? When your sister is likely to be making us in-laws as we speak?"
His mouth became taut.
Was it true? The shameless desires they held for their own kin? If so, did this lust and bond exist between the prince and his sister princess?
"I can't imagine it myself," Rhenan said.
"Imagine what?"
He leaned back, focus shifting from talks of insurgents. "Porking Beth or Jocelyn. Might vomit on them—if I could even get it in." He held up sincere hands. "Not that they're ugly, but flaming hell, I saw them when they were no bigger than my forearm. Haggled them with wooden swords and let them braid my hair. Takes a strong man to push that familiarity to a higher level."
He may as well have been speaking to himself, the man having looked across at him boredly all the while.
"Incest," Rhenan prompted. "What is it like? All this talk of treachery and death does make me curious of the small, strange things. Are you picking fights with them one moment, then holding them down the next? Catching glimpses of their nakedness when in the bath? Does she gallop to you freely with tits in the wind and words such as, 'How do you do, brother? My, my nips are quite pink today, what say you?"
"I think that is quite enough."
"And what does she say after?"
Prince A'zur gritted his teeth and pushed from the table.
"Ah, no, don't leave me. You've not even finished your drink."
"You speak too freely. I do not tolerate disrespect on my or my siblings' honour."
Rhenan sat forward. "I get it, I do! Please, sit. I'll not offend again."
How desperate did he sound to be around another who did not fear him and his family of knives and swords? A mind not afraid to talk of the darker things in the light of the world.
The man was hesitant, his gaze offended, but he sat, his body turned away from him the slightest.
So sensitive, those around him. Those battlefields of words and offences he never could navigate. "You are protective of her," he said. "And I sense you're much like me."
Grey steel slid to him.
"You would do anything to see your family safe. Give anything and more."
"I would."
"That is what I am trying to do for my own. Honest, I meant no harm to your fragile mind. If anything, if we are to be brother-in-laws, should we not act in each other's best interest?"
"I do not believe in in-laws or blood. I believe in those whom I care for. You are not among them, Prince Rhenan."
He clapped a hand to his heart. "How you wound me."
"It'll heal."
"Seems a fatal blow to me."
"What is it you want?"
He sighed, for he knew this moment was coming. The time to discuss what would be met with insight to further his agenda, or another useless throttle from an inexperienced mind. "I need your help."
"In what matter?"
Rhenan reached across the table and secured the man's drink, aiding him in finishing it. Now he was beginning to feel it. Loosen his restrictions, his resolve, his loyalty. "I said I too am protective of my family, yes?"
"You did."
"And have you noticed anything odd since your arrival here?"
The prince shook his head.
"Think harder. The parties. The games. The endless well of expenses. The marriage of Tristian to what is clearly a death sentence. The marriage of my sister to that...that clean, pritsy male."
"Poor decisions?" A'zur offered.
Beyond poor decisions. Rhenan had seen the kingdom's financial accounts. He had read the bizarre letters written to the western cities and the Westlands. He had seen things he could not quite explain, and yet he knew the answer before the question had even been asked.
"Five years ago," Rhenan said quietly, watching the other man over the candle light. "Could you have said the same about our kingdom?"
Now A'zur was fully attentive, his body turned towards him, his gaze fogless. "Five years ago every decision made was that of cunning, admittedly brilliant stratagem. All things of which pushed Redthorn to endless prosperity."
"And now?"
He frowned, and Rhenan could see the moment the pieces fell in their proper place. "And now...it is as though a mindless man rules."
Hearing it from another's lips took a weight from Rhenan's shoulder's, aligned his thoughts in his head to where they could no longer lie in the back of his mind, vaulted and kept in secret.
There was something terribly wrong with his father, the king, and if it was not remedied—if such poor decisions continued to go on, it would bring his siblings and his mother to great ruin. And so it had come to the internal war he had been having for some time now as he'd watched his father's mental decline: the king or his family?
Rhenan licked the rim of his own glass before setting it down and looking to the murals upon the ceiling. "Your land is of strange magic, is it not?"
Silence answered him.
A yes, then.
Gold met grey once more across the firelight. "Magic enough to rid of a king?"
14
~TRISTIAN~
Why was it these sands were not walked by many here in Redthorn? he mused as he and Princess Astrid drifted across their grains. Thornhall's castle was erected directly along its stretching shores, the Great Ocean unfurled beyond as far as the eyes could see. It was night, the moon sliced to a crescent, but the skies were clear, the ocean waves rising particularly high, as though in distress or attempt to convene with the white cut hanging high above it.
"Maybe," he was saying to the princess. "They feared these shores, for every half a century or so, the skies would not be so clear, but grow a menacing grey and the tides would deplete all down the shoreline and we would see all of the ocean critters dried up on the sands. But then, as though from God himself, the waters would all come crashing back—records show the biggest wave was once taller than the castle itself. Hence w
hy my grandfather had these walls fortified with bedrock the moment he came into his kingship. But alas, I've never seen these blue waters rise anything higher than your knees."
The indication of height had her glancing down at her knees and a soft hum of a laugh left slightly parted lips. "Are you sure that you were not told these stories of giant waves to keep you from playing here? I know that my sister would have gone head first into the water if she heard that there were all sorts of creatures down there." She bit her lip and gazed up at him, pale eyes wider than they typically were in the daytime, most likely as she was not staring up at a bright sun and sky. "Can you swim, Prince Tristian?"
These mundane enquiries, posed not even a day proceeding what they'd done, were a mystery to him, for all too often did he have his fill of select females and nothing more. There was no chatter in the afterglow. In fact, they would be lucky if he so much as glanced in their direction ever again. And yet...it had been him to invite the princess on the muted twilight traipse, and her voice, he did not tire of hearing it like he did the others.
However. "I can swim to save my life."
"Can I use you as a boat then?" Her words were mingled with the cascade of her laughter, though she did not relinquish the grasp upon her teeth. "I can paddle a little, like a little dog, but that will not save me if a giant wave is to interrupt us. Though that would be very rude of it, don't you think?"
"You've many questions this night." Strange ones, no less. "When I do believe it I who should be asking you the question, as your household is the most...under-explored of the two."
Her mouth finally freed itself from the two front teeth. "Oh," she paused, and he wondered whether she was about to stammer an apology but was relieved when she smiled and nodded. "I don't know where any buried treasure is around these parts if that was a question, but I will answer anything else!"
"That may well take up the entire night, for I've a long list, perhaps starting with why it is you are the timid little bird you are. Is that a commonality amongst Lymereans, or have I the displeasure of encountering too many brute Thornstons?" Though he had met Lady Constance but a handful of times, it was enough to deem her wholly her own woman, one who dared not stammer or fumble in the presence of a man nor woman, let alone appear as innocuous and wide-eyed as the princess beside him.
Bonds: A Cursed Six novel (The Cursed Six Book 1) Page 21
