The Second God

by Pauline M. Ross

  “Drina! Wake up!”

  I kept my eyes shut. Maybe he’d go away again.

  But no. A soft ripple of laughter. “I know you are awake. Here – your morning herbs. It is past second bell already, and you have the Trade Council meeting this morning.”

  Groaning, I rolled over, and hauled myself upright. “Thank you, Ly. Is Arran up and about yet?”

  Even in my half-awake state, I noticed the little flash of alarm that crossed his face. He was no diplomat, Ly, and could never hide his feelings. He said nothing, but he didn’t need to.

  “Oh. So… still asleep? Or bed not slept in?” A little needle-prick of anxiety.

  “The steward told me Arran did not come back here last night. I expect he slept at the barracks.”

  “Yes. That must be it. Thank you for the herbs.”

  He turned to go, but his eyes were dark with concern.

  “Ly…” He stopped, spinning to face me. “Do you know something? About Arran? Should I be worried?”

  A hesitation. “I do not know anything,” he said, head down.

  “But you suspect? I’d much rather hear it from you, than find out from one of those gossiping waiting women.” But my heart sank, all the same. Surely this couldn’t be happening, not again?

  Ly perched on the edge of the bed, his thin fingers playing with the cover. “He asked me…” he began, then sighed. “Drina, I do not know what it means, and maybe it means nothing at all, but he asked me if I thought…”

  “If you thought what, exactly?” I tried to keep my voice soft, when all I wanted to do was scream. And cry. I was very close to crying.

  “If I thought you would want to know if he was doing something he should not. Or whether it was better to say nothing. But Drina, I am sure it is not what it sounds like. He said he would never do anything of that sort again.”

  So he had. He’d wept all over me, and begged my forgiveness, and sworn never to look at another woman. And I, loving him, had kissed him and forgiven him. But not forgotten. Once a man has drifted, there is always that curl of doubt at the back of your mind. Every time he’s late, or seems distracted, or is quieter than usual.

  We were at morning board when Arran crept in, and even if I’d not had suspicions in my mind already, I could hardly miss the guilt written all over his face. I dropped the piece of fruit I’d been pretending to eat.

  “By all the gods, what have you done?”

  He slid into a chair, and buried his face in his hands. “I am such a fool,” he said, his voice anguished.

  “Who is she?” Distress made my voice shrill.

  His head shot up. “She? Oh – no, no! Not that. No, I swore I would never—” His hand reached for mine, sticky with juice, but he didn’t notice. “It is nothing like that, I promise!”

  I breathed again. But what else? “Tell me,” I said softly. “Tell me everything.”

  “It is the Gurshmontas,” he said simply, and, in truth, that told me just about the whole story in itself. Shallack Gurshmonta was a powerful man, the head of a wealthy trading family, constantly whispering in corners and forging shifting alliances to improve his position. It didn’t surprise me that he’d tried to recruit Arran.

  “They want you to influence me, I expect, with the new round of trade agreements coming up. I am in sole charge of the Trade Council now, and I’ll be head of the Fiscal Determination Table next year, too.”

  “No…” A flash of bewilderment crossed his handsome face, so that for a moment he looked very young. “No, I think they wanted information. They have been so friendly for moons now, inviting me to their apartments for private meals, very quiet, nothing… I thought nothing suspicious. Just so interested in me, and the children, and… and you, of course. No pretty young women at all, I swear, just a few of the older ones. But then I began to realise that they were very interested in the southern plains, so last night I went there with my mind fully alert, and I am sure of it. They have trade links there, so I suppose it mattered to them what is going on in that region. And… and I may have told them what you said about Greenstone Ford. And the Vahsi.”

  “Ah.”

  “It is very difficult to remember what is secret and what may be talked about, and… and the Gurshmontas keep an excellent table, very generous.”

  “And plenty of wine, too, as I recall.”

  He nodded miserably. “I am so sorry, Drina. You must think me such a fool.”

  “I think you might have been more on your guard,” I said. “I have had several brushes with Shallack Gurshmonta in the past, so we know he’s as slippery as a snake.”

  But I couldn’t help squeezing his hand and smiling as I spoke. He was a fool, of course, and he’d been my drusse long enough to be aware of the pitfalls around the Drashona’s court, but I was too relieved to care. At least he hadn’t been in the arms of another woman. And that made me the fool, because my heart was insignificant to the future wellbeing of Bennamore, but the information, so hard-won, from Kallanash was a different matter.

  ~~~~~

  I went to see Yannassia that afternoon in her apartment, even grander than mine. Her official chambers glittered with gold and sparkling gems and the lush colours of Vilkorani rugs, but her private rooms were sparsely furnished, with her youngest’s abandoned toys on every surface.

  She was in bed. Ever since her last difficult pregnancy, she’d taken to having a rest after the noon board, an hour when she read a book, or played dragon stones with her husband, Torthran. No one else was allowed to disturb that precious hour, but the steward admitted me without question.

  “Drina! Come in, come in,” Yannassia said with a smile, laying aside her book. “How did the Trade Council go this morning?”

  Yannassia could look formidably regal when she dressed in the stiff robes and jewels that went with her role as Drashona, and a word or a look could quell even high-ranking nobles full of their own importance. But here, with her hair loose about her face and a smile softening her lips, she looked very motherly. The golden hair had faded to silver, and her features were more rounded than before, but I thought she looked much prettier this way, despite being more than fifty now. She was not my birth mother, but circumstance had made me her heir and I had grown fond of her over the twelve years I’d known her.

  “Quite well, for a Trade Council. The sticking points were as we suspected. You will have my full report at the Inner Circle meeting tomorrow.”

  “So that is not what brings you here. Very well.” She turned to Torthran. “Dearest, a chair for Drina, if you would be so good. And some wine, perhaps.”

  He was already lifting an ornate armchair of heavy wood across to the bed for me, and then went willingly to fetch wine. I liked Torthran very much. He was ten years younger than Yannassia, but I think that helped her from falling into stodgy middle-age too soon. Like me, Yannassia had found the love of her life in her bodyguard.

  I sipped the wine, then set the glass down on a side-table. There was no purpose in prevaricating. Yannassia always liked to get straight to the point. “Ly wants to attend the Challenge this summer. He feels the need to demonstrate his power, to remind his people who he is. But it would mean allowing his magic to grow for a while.”

  “Ah, interesting,” Yannassia said. “I heard that the Blood Ceremony will be a bigger affair this year. The decision is yours, of course…”

  “I’d like your approval, though,” I put in quickly.

  “Hmm, so you are minded to agree?”

  “His people treat him with disrespect. It would do no harm to show them what he can do.”

  “You mean to put on a bit of a show, then? Arrive on the eagles, that sort of thing?”

  “Yes, although many of his people have connections to beasts, so that is not at all unusual, but Ly is the only one who can connect to all of them.”

  “Ah, I see. Well, I have no objection. He has been very well-behaved while he has been in Kingswell. You have managed him beautifully, Drina. Both
your men, in fact. I was sure they would kill each other when you first set them up in the same apartment, but they get along rather well, I think.”

  She saw my rueful grimace, but there was no hiding Arran’s disaster. “Unfortunately, it seems I cannot manage my drusse as well as I would like. He has been drawn in by the Gurshmontas, and was induced to reveal something of the Kallanash situation.”

  Yannassia was too well-trained to betray the extent of her dismay, but she huffed a breath, and her words were sharper than usual. “I am disappointed, Drina. He should know better than to be seduced into indiscretion. But he has always had a weakness, we know that. I suppose they set one of the pretty young daughters to trap him.”

  “No, quite the opposite. It was Shallack himself, and the old lady – many of the leading family figures. He thought he was safe with them.” Poor Arran! It was the lack of pretty young women which had drawn him in. He knew his own vulnerability, but amongst the older generation he’d not seen the danger. And they’d flattered him and fussed over him, and offered him the finest dishes and wine – and he’d grown too relaxed. Over time, he’d let slip a whole host of small but significant dribbles of information, only realising his error too late.

  “This I do not like, Drina,” Yannassia said. “Our people are very vulnerable. I do not want Shallack Gurshmonta rushing in and starting a panic out there.”

  “I have taken measures,” I said. “I talked to Shallack privately after the Trade Council.”

  “Did you threaten him, or offer inducements?” Yannassia said sweetly.

  “Both, of course! I believe – I hope – he will be circumspect, but we should let the specialists know of this.”

  “Certainly. But I cannot let this pass without censure. You realise I could have him executed for this?”

  Fear roared through me. “No harm has come of it! Shallack will be discreet. He understands the stakes.”

  “Perhaps, but it is a betrayal, nevertheless. A lashing, maybe.”

  “And how will you explain it? There would have to be a trial, and reasons given, and you cannot do that without revealing everything. If it must remain a secret, then you cannot punish Arran publicly.”

  She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Very true. Besides, for your sake I am minded to be merciful. I have had a couple of complaints about Arran overspending his allowance, so I shall censure him for that. In public, so that the Gurshmontas will know what we are about. You will bring Arran to me in – oh, three suns should be enough to make him sweat a little, then I will give him a thorough scolding. And tell Ly that he will need to request permission officially to attend the Challenge, so he will have to petition me at an assembly.”

  I nodded, but my heart sank. I wasn’t sure which of my two men would have the greater dread of the prospect before them.

  2: Petition

  In the end, it was Ly who was most terrified of his encounter with the Drashona. Arran was noble-born, and well used to the ways of court. He’d regularly shared a relaxed morning board with Yannassia, and seen her ill and afraid and dragged from her bed at midnight; it made her image as an imposing ruler less than terrifying. So he donned his best formal clothes, and waited patiently to be summoned, and then held his head respectfully lowered while she lectured him. And afterwards, he was just as ebullient as ever. He was more afraid of me, as it happened, for I had the power to terminate his drusse contract. Not that I ever planned to, but I wondered sometimes just what it would take for me to take that step.

  Ly was a different matter. He’d never adapted well to Bennamore court formality, and unless he was absolutely forced to attend some function in his official capacity as my husband, he was happier keeping to the apartment, or working on his small farm on the edge of the town. The farm had been a wedding gift from one of the noble families, probably because it was too small to be worked economically. Maybe they expected us to turn it into a summer estate. But Ly loved it and kept a whole range of animals there, wild ones as well as domesticated types, and it had become a place people went to on rest-suns to look at all the strange creatures.

  Yannassia held assemblies quite regularly, to greet visiting dignitaries, hear petitions, initiate legal matters and, occasionally, dole out punishments. The nobles flocked to them like bees to flowers. They listened and watched and whispered together in corners, but mostly it reassured them that they were still important to the realm. It was my natural domain, too, where I kept track of the shifting alliances amongst the noble houses and watched for any budding threat to Yannassia’s position.

  It was all too formal for Ly, though. “Do I have to speak?” he asked, for the thousandth time. “You can speak for me, you know all the proper things to say.”

  “I will be with you, and I can prompt you if you forget what to say. But it will be better if you can say the words yourself.”

  And it would have been a lot easier if he could read, but he’d never wanted to learn. Sometimes I read aloud to him, if I found a passage in a book that might interest him, but as often as not it confused him. He couldn’t understand the idea that a book was written by someone else, not me, and the words I read were not mine. Words written hundreds or even thousands of years ago by people long dead were beyond his comprehension.

  “Don’t you have storytellers in the Clanlands?” I’d asked him once. “People who tell you the histories – where you came from, great events, that sort of thing?”

  But he didn’t seem to understand the question.

  He hated the clothes, too. “I feel like a goose trussed up for the spit,” he grumbled, even though it was a modified version of his own people’s costume.

  “You look rather splendid,” Arran said. “That hat suits you. Do you want to borrow a sword?”

  But Ly shuddered. By the time we got him to the assembly, he was shaking from head to toe. The assembly chamber was designed to impress, and the endless marble pillars and larger-than-life statuary did nothing for Ly’s nerves. Nor did the collected majesty of the nobles and petitioners, all dressed in their stiffest, most formal clothes, whispering behind their hands as we passed by. I stood one side of Ly, and Arran, who more correctly should have been behind us, was on the other side, practically propping him up. I’d timed everything so that we wouldn’t have long to wait, but even so, I thought Ly was going to faint away from sheer terror.

  The moment came when we stood before the Drashona’s dais, with Yannassia and her husband in their oversized thrones, and her multitude of advisors and mages and scribes and waiting women and guards around her, all gazing down in silence at Ly.

  The senior steward banged his ceremonial spear on the floor. “Pray silence for the Most Powerful Lord Ly-haam, Dush-Drashonor of all Bennamore and its dominions, Banshar of the Dehavoran, who requests permission to petition the Most Powerful Lady Yannassia, the wise and enlightened Drashona of all Bennamore and its dominions.”

  “Byan shar e de’haa vyoran,” Ly growled. The corruption of his name irritated him more than summer flies. When we had first married, and the scribes had tried to construct the proper title for him, somehow the words had been mistranscribed, and there was no correcting the mistake, since it was written in indelible ink on all the official documents.

  “You may speak, Most Powerful,” Yannassia said, with an encouraging nod.

  Ly bowed and launched into the little speech we’d rehearsed. Perhaps his annoyance gave him fluency, for to my surprise he was word perfect and didn’t stumble once, although it came out rather fast, with the intonation flattened.

  “I hear your petition,” Yannassia said when he had finished. “I will consider it carefully, and give you my answer in the third assembly from this sun.”

  Ly bowed again, shaking with relief, and we withdrew.

  “Do you want to stay for a while to watch the fun?” I said, reaching for a glass of wine as a tray went past.

  “Fun?” The look of horror on his face made me laugh.

  “It’s not a
bad idea to be seen at these affairs occasionally,” I said. “You’re so seldom around court, the nobles tend to forget you exist.”

  But he shook his head, making his soft curls bounce violently. “You stay if you want. I should like to leave now. If you permit.”

  “We will all go. There is nothing else of interest this sun.”

  I took a sip of the wine and then regretfully abandoned it on a side table.

  ~~~~~

  Yannassia held a private meeting with the specialists, to discuss Arran’s mistake. The specialists were a small part of the Elite Guards, trained in secrecy to undertake any task necessary for Bennamore’s safety considered too dark for the army to undertake. When kin of my Icthari father had tried to avenge some perceived slight by killing me and my two siblings, Zandara and Axandor, it was specialists who had crept in disguise into Icthari lands to assassinate the perpetrators.

  The meeting was held in one of the inner rooms of Yannassia’s apartment, small and intimate. The location was deliberately chosen. It was unlikely that a specialist would withhold information from the Drashona, but in such a confined space nothing could be hidden. The smallest nuance of expression could be clearly read.

  Yannassia’s drusse-born son, Hethryn, was also present, his first time at such a meeting. He was eighteen now, and likely to be appointed Yannassia’s heir in the autumn, relieving me of that burden, so his mother considered it time to introduce him to some of the secrets of the court.

  Both the specialists in attendance were known to me. Rythmarri was only thirty-six, slim, dark and so unmemorable, you’d pass her in the street without noticing, but she was as astute as anyone I’d ever met. She’d done her share of creeping about in disguise and, perhaps, assassinations, but now she was resident at Kingswell, and in charge of what was known as the eastern project on the Plains of Kallanash.

  The other specialist was almost as familiar to me as a brother, for we’d grown up together. Lathran was the son of the mage guards assigned to my birth mother, and he’d irritated me intensely when we were children. I’d never even tried to be polite to him. Once he grew up he’d fallen spectacularly in love with me, and I’d rewarded his devotion by seducing him, in one of my stupider plots to disgrace myself and persuade the Drashona I was unsuitable heir material. Fortunately, this worked out well for Lathran, who was sent to train with the Elite Guards, and they discovered that his unmemorable features and ability to blend in anywhere made him the perfect spy.