The Seer - eARC

by Sonia Lyris

  Ascending another long flight of stairs, shoulders burning, Innel walked another corridor. Word had preceded him, and this hallway too was lined with onlookers. He let his gaze slowly rake across their faces, seeing who looked back, who shifted away, who smiled in support, who grimaced with uncertainty. If he survived today, he would remember them all.

  He headed toward the king’s audience chamber. A likely wait of hours, given the monarch’s usual schedule, but at least he could rest a moment, maybe even put his brother down.

  To his surprise, one of the king’s retainers waved him over, holding him with a gesture, then exchanged a few quick, urgent whispers with the king’s seneschal, a gaunt man with graying hair who never smiled, who glared at Innel furiously over his papers. The seneschal then waved him through the just-opening doors of a lesser audience chamber.

  He did as he was told and walked inside. Behind him the doors closed.

  At the end of the room sat the king, white-haired, white-bearded, sitting in a heavy ebony and bronze chair atop a dais. He leaned on one arm, the other hand slowly straightening the collar of his morning robe, which was the color of red amaranth.

  Restarn esse Arunkel. Restarn who is Arunkel. A thinning face betrayed his age, but the old man was still strong enough to give the impression the empire ran exactly as he wanted it to.

  By him stood Cern, arms crossed, hands vanished inside the loose sleeves of her similarly colored robe, her face a mask of indifference, a mirror of her father’s. That they both wore morning robes told Innel they had come from their rooms, recently woken. Possibly by reports of Innel coming back from his wandering, carrying a body.

  Well, that was a kind of reassurance, that Restarn was willing to leave his bed to find out what Innel had brought home.

  He could read nothing from them. The only emotion before him was at the king’s feet, where a pair of his favorite royal dichu dogs sat on their haunches, faces brindled in black and tan, eyes bright, black-tipped ears up and forward, noses twitching eagerly.

  One of the dangerous jokes that one never repeated came to him, the one about how the king’s fondness for his bitches explained both the proliferation of dichu puppies and his single heir. Innel had heard it once, a long time ago, from a drunken scullery boy whom he had never seen again.

  The king snapped his fingers and gestured. Both dogs dropped to their bellies, noses still quivering. Scenting his brother’s body, Innel guessed, even from this distance.

  Prudence would say follow them down, so he did. Innel let Pohut’s body slide off his shoulders onto to the polished stone floor and went to his knees. He touched his head to the floor three times in the direction of his monarch and once to Cern.

  Full formality. If ever there was a time for it, this was it.

  “Your Most Excellent Majesty,” he said, wondering what to say next.

  “Show us,” said the king.

  Innel sat back on his heels, gestured to the knife on his belt. “With permission, Sire.”

  Restarn waved him on impatiently.

  Innel cut the knots and rent the fabric covering the head. He pulled back the burlap to reveal his brother’s face. Now no doubt remained.

  In the silence that followed, Innel thought of many things. Of growing up in the Cohort, his brother at his side. Of their last, violent encounter. Of all his plans. With a small surprise, he realized he did care if his sister Cahlen lived beyond today.

  He looked up. Cern’s mouth was open, her expression stricken, no longer anything like impassive. It was one thing to suspect and another to know.

  She had cared for Pohut. The devotion with which the brothers had courted the princess their entire lives had paid off a few years ago when Cern had finally allowed that she held some small affection for them both. Then her father had pressed her to choose one, so of course she would not, carefully apportioning her attention to them equally.

  His brother would have been quite pleased at the grief on her face now.

  “Well,” the king said.

  Innel got to his feet. What he said next could determine his prospects at the palace, his chances with Cern, and whether he would live to see sunset.

  “He tried to kill me, Sire. Came at me with a knife. I had no choice.”

  Short. Direct. Perhaps it would carry the force of veracity.

  And it was true, mostly, though Pohut hadn’t actually used the knife, because Innel hadn’t given him the chance.

  Don’t hesitate. Because he will.

  Restarn’s silence hung. Heavy with implication, weighted with consequence. The king looked him over; then his eyes flickered to the body.

  Long silences were one of the king’s tactics for getting people to talk. Innel had seen it many times in the monarch’s adjudications. A terrified petitioner facing the king’s expectant but wordless expression would babble. The mouth would open and damning words would pour forth.

  Innel knew this, but even having watched innocent men talk their way to the hanging walls, he now felt an almost irresistible need to explain and defend. Clamping his jaw tight, he forced himself to think through what might be going on in the king’s mind.

  It was no secret that Restarn was impatient to have Cern produce issue, to continue the Anandynar line and the unbroken rule of centuries. But surely he must realize that if he took Innel out of the picture, Cern could become mule-stubborn, refusing anyone else. Tempted though he must be, the king could hardly shove her in a cage and wait for her to go into heat as he did with his dogs. She must say yes.

  It was a standoff as old as Cern.

  Innel and Pohut had become, he suspected, the only candidates that she and her father could agree on. Innel was betting that the king could see that his life was worth more than his death.

  But the king did not like having his choices curtailed, either, and might resent Innel removing one of the other possibilities as much as Cern did.

  The next moment was too easy to imagine: the king would call an order, the doors would open, swords would be drawn.

  A few years ago, an overly witty ambassador was beheaded exactly where Innel was now standing. By the time Innel and the rest of the Cohort had come to gawk, servants were mopping up the last of the blood and bits. The head had been mounted on Execution Square’s hanging wall for a good tenday, a strangely thoughtful expression on the ambassador’s face.

  At least it had been fast. Innel hoped he wasn’t important enough for the full treatment in Execution Square. Those tended to take a very long time.

  He swallowed, throat dry, wishing for water, and looked down at his brother’s face.

  Always the calm one, Pohut, even now.

  When at last Innel looked up, Restarn was watching him, a terrifyingly thoughtful expression on his face. Then the king made a clicking sound behind closed lips, a sound Innel had come to know well: the monarch had decided.

  “He is to be despised,” Restarn said flatly. “A criminal’s burial.”

  Relief flooded Innel, and he sucked in air. He would keep his life today.

  Cern stiffened, drew herself up, turned angrily, stormed out. Innel might be her best remaining choice, but that was not the same thing as winning her.

  But he had survived; he could manage Cern. A problem for later.

  “I’ll expect you at the meal,” the king said, ignoring Cern’s departure. “Get cleaned up.”

  “I should see my mother, Sire. Tell her. She should know.”

  “She already knows. The entire palace knows. Half the city knows.”

  Half the city?

  Restarn said more with tone than he did with words, and woe to those who didn’t hear. Like the witty ambassador. What did this mean?

  It meant that Restarn thought Innel and his brother significant enough for the news to carry. And that meant Innel could push.

  He met the king’s look, forced himself to appear composed.

  “I must see to my mother. To make funeral arrangements.”

 
“No funeral. No gift ceremony. A criminal, Innel.”

  If Pohut had won, it would be Innel’s body lying on this cold marble floor and Innel’s dead spirit that would wander aimlessly, only the memory gift ceremony to help him find his way to the great Beyond. Without which, he would be ostracized by family and friends, lost forever, wandering the twilight of death.

  Or so the story went.

  More importantly, the most dangerous place to stand with the king was between compliance and challenge, where he would notice you but not respect you.

  “Mother could not bear that, Sire,” Innel said. “And so I cannot bear it.” Not even close to true, and they both knew it, but the best he could do on short notice. “The gift ceremony. A full funeral. Please, Your Majesty.”

  The annoyed look Restarn gave him now made him wonder if he’d gone too far. But then the king shrugged, the shoulders of his robe barely moving.

  “Be quick about it, then.”

  As Innel began to reach for his brother’s body, the king said, “No. Leave it.”

  Leave his brother? For a moment he didn’t know what to do. Days on end, aching to put him down, to have him gone, but now he did not want to walk away.

  No. Pohut had betrayed him. He was rotting meat. Nothing more.

  And it was the king’s command.

  With one last look at his brother’s body, Innel bowed and backed out of the room. Around him the seneschal and various aides rushed in.

  In the hallway the waiting crowd opened a path for him. He had walked out of his audience with the king. He met their eyes, looking for reactions. Many began to leave, perhaps coming to the conclusion that a free Innel was not wise entertainment. The crowd melted back.

  He walked toward the residences, where his mother’s room was. Srel fell into step with him. By now the smaller man would know.

  “What would you have me do?” Srel asked.

  So Srel was still loyal. He felt a flash of relief.

  “Plan a funeral for tomorrow. Tell the Cohort to be there. Make sure they know I’m not asking.”

  Srel nodded and peeled off.

  At the stairs up to the residences, Innel paused, alone for the first moment since he had entered the city. Really, since the night he had left the girl’s shack.

  Without his brother’s body. Without a watching crowd.

  He put a hand on the wall, his head hanging, breathing deeply for long minutes.

  He had done it. He had said the right things. He had survived. This, the hardest trial of his life. His brother would have been proud.

  His brother the traitor.

  It didn’t matter. Tomorrow Innel would lay his brother’s body next to their father’s in the tombs outside the city, paying close attention to who came to the funeral and who did not, whose eyes were correctly blacked and smeared in the nine directions to show their grief, and whose were not.

  Now that he stood on Cern’s path to the throne, anyone who did not attend the funeral was foolish beyond reckoning, and foolish beyond that if they did not seem to be glad that it was Innel who had returned intact.

  He thought of his competition across these many years, Tok and Mulack and Sutarnan and others, of how they had stumbled in ways large and small, losing the king’s backing or slipping in Cern’s esteem. How finally only he and his brother had remained.

  As he arrived at his mother’s door, it came to him that he truly was Cern’s last, best choice. All he had to do now was win her back.

  The king had been right: his mother knew. He could tell the moment he saw her.

  She sat in a plush red chair, head turned away, face buried in a small handkerchief.

  “The funeral is tomorrow,” he said, pausing for a response. She snuffled quietly. “You and Cahlen will be there.” A sound and a small movement with her head. Was it a nod or another sob? “Mother? Do you understand me?”

  Both, it seemed. She curled forward, head down, shaking.

  His mother had long seemed to him a fragile flower meant for other soil. Palace life had not suited her, not from the first.

  “I had no choice,” he said evenly, walking the small room, feeling the need to be moving. “He plotted against me. Had been arranging my downfall for three years. He came at me, Mother. He meant to kill me. Do you hear me?”

  Again, the shaking, wordless sound.

  He sighed his frustration, wondering why she was still here. The king did not make a habit of keeping in the residences those who were not useful to him. Like the women he’d bedded who produced no children. Cern’s mother, the only woman to provide him a living heir, but unable to conceive a second one, had finally been sent to a small town in Epatel. Ostensibly for her health, though ironically she had died there of some high desert illness.

  No, he knew why his mother was here. It was to remind him and his brother of where they had come from and might be sent back to, if they did not perform. The simple power the king had over them. As if they might forget.

  The door opened and in came his sister, Cahlen. She slammed the door shut behind her, eyes casting about, faced blotched with red.

  Cahlen and his mother were both small, slender women, but there the similarity ended. His mother had survived palace life by being unnoticed. If she bore any ill-will toward the king for conscripting their father into the military for an expansion war that he quietly disapproved of, that had then killed him, and then giving her family business away, she never showed it. Silent, fragile, and well-behaved—she simply survived.

  Cahlen was something else entirely. He remembered having to explain to his sister why she couldn’t wear the green and cream of the servants, why she must wear the palace retainer red and black regalia instead.

  “I like the green better,” she had said stubbornly.

  “That’s not important,” he’d said, already losing his patience with her but desperate to make her understand. He tried another approach. “Servants don’t work with the birds.”

  That had been sufficient. The subject never came up again.

  Today she wore appropriate colors, though her trousers were too long, her shirt overlarge, her shoulders spotted with bird droppings, and her hair uneven, as if someone had cut it in dim light using a dirty stew bowl as a guide.

  Her gaze speared him and she charged, faster than he would have thought her capable. Once close, she began to batter him with tight, hard fists. He pushed back, trying to hold her at arm’s length. With his greater reach it should have been easy, but his exhaustion and her wild thrashing made her nearly impossible to control.

  While he was busy trying to keep her from hitting him she kicked him in the knee, quite a bit harder than he expected. He swore and stepped back.

  Again she rushed him, lips pulled back, snapping her teeth. Instinctively he raised an arm, the way he would have with one of the fighting dogs, and cocked it back as if to hit her in the snout. He doubted it would even slow her down, though, not when she was like this.

  Across the room his mother stood, holding her hands over her ears, and gave a piercing scream.

  At this the door opened. In burst three palace guards, all of whom Innel knew. As he tried to make sense of this unlikely intrusion, Cahlen came at him again, and the three guards sprinted toward her.

  This had gone far enough. He let Cahlen step in close and put his weight behind a full-force push to the middle of her chest, propelling her backward while the guards stumbled to the side to avoid her. Cahlen sprawled ass-first onto an open space on the carpeted floor. Now on her back, she stayed there, breathing hard, glaring up at him.

  He turned his attention to the guards.

  “What are you doing?”

  He had never before seen palace guards break into a private residential room. Not for screaming, not for crashes of ceramic broken against walls. Not even for cries for help. Gossip would follow all that, certainly.

  But guards? Never.

  “Get out,” he told them. They hesitated, the two looking to th
e one clearly in command. Nalas, a man he knew. Then, with more force, he repeated: “Out. Now.” Nalas tilted his head toward the door, taking the other two outside.

  Innel looked at his sister on the floor, still breathing hard, and wondered what was going on in her head. Cahlen could go from dead calm to bruising fury in an instant, then be over it in the next. A drenching rainstorm turned abruptly to blue skies. Once it had fully passed, the storm would be over. But had it?

  Her expression shifted, mouth went slack, eyes unfocused. There it went, the storm. He waited a moment to be certain, then with a nod at his mother, who stood as if frozen, he left.

  Outside the three guards waited.

  “What in the seven hells was that about?” He stepped up close to Nalas, pushed him sharply with both hands, harder than he intended. Nalas stumbled back, tensed, and Innel found himself unreasonably hoping for a fight.

  Nalas raised his hands in appeasement.

  “His Majesty’s orders.”

  At this Innel forced himself to calm. He wanted to hit something, but a fight here and now over this would be foolish.

  “All right,” he said, breathing deeply. “Why?”

  “Protecting you?” Nalas replied, a tinge of wry apology in his tone.

  “From Cahlen?” Innel said, incredulous. “But she’s harmless.”

  Nalas gave a shrug that said he didn’t disagree.

  The king was guarding him? From what?

  While he was formulating what he might sensibly ask Nalas, knowing that every word would get back to Restarn, Cahlen emerged. Behind her his mother’s face flashed a moment in the doorway and then vanished, the door slamming shut. She wanted nothing to do with this.

  Well, neither did he.

  As two guards stepped to intercept Cahlen, Nalas stepped back, a hand on the hilt of his sword.

  Innel could see this playing out very badly indeed. He stepped into the middle, a hand out to stop Nalas from drawing his blade.

  Oblivious, Cahlen walked directly to Innel. To the other two guards, he held up a closed fist in an abrupt motion. Everyone stopped but his sister.

  “Cahlen,” he said sharply, to get her attention.