Tainted (Lisen of Solsta Book 2)

by D. Hart St. Martin

  “Oh, to be privy to that conversation,” Nalin mused aloud.

  “Indeed,” Elsba replied, picturing Lorain verbally dissecting her lover.

  “Now,” Nalin continued, sounding purposeful, “Bala and I had an idea.” He turned to look at Bala, who looked to her father, her eyes bright and animated, and nodded.

  “Tell me,” Elsba encouraged, his energy waning but his enthusiasm still strong.

  “I’m going to ask the commander to allow Captain Palla to head out to meet Rosarel and Ariannas on the road. He can divert them to Saktoff until the night of the dinner.”

  “And then what?”

  A discussion ensued between the three nobles on how best to present the girl’s claim, when and where to do it, and what measures must be taken to protect her life should it come to that. They came to no brilliant conclusions, and after Nalin left for his own quarters, Elsba turned to his daughter.

  “Well, at least we made a start,” he said.

  “You’re tired,” Bala replied. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  Elsba reluctantly allowed his daughter to support him as they made their way into his bedchamber. As she helped him lie down, he looked up at her. How he loved her, this child of his pouch. How he wished Nalin were free of whatever promises he’d made to Flandari. Bala would be happy with him, leaving Elsba with less worries at the end.

  “Go to sleep,” she said softly. “I’ll wake you before dinner. Maybe we’ll come up with some more ideas by then.” She kissed him gently on the forehead and left him there, closing the bedchamber door behind her.

  He sighed. Not meant to be, he thought. She and Nalin were not meant to be, just as he and Flandari had not been meant to be, and look at the happiness he and Firjo had shared. Plenty of sons of noble houses remained. Bala would not want for a mate, and with her easy temperament, she’d make a happy union of it.

  Stop it, he told himself with a yawn. She’s only sixteen, a year younger than the Heir of Garla. Always wise to think ahead, but larger concerns lined up in front of them now. All in good time. All in good time.

  All right, Lorain thought to herself as she marched across the plaza. It’s time for the truth. Time for her to know what she had hoped she’d never have to know. Damn Elsba and his prying, his digging where he shouldn’t dig. She’d managed to maintain a perfect state of denial for months, with only an occasional surfacing of suspicion and doubt which she would quickly put down. But now, Elsba had come out and said it, had definitively accused Ariel of assassination. How could she continue to deny it? Ariel had murdered his mother.

  She had no idea how she’d convince him to confess it to her, not after all this time of insisting he not, but she must. Of that she was sure. She couldn’t allow herself to get caught in a spot like the one she’d just barely managed to extricate herself from. She required knowledge. She needed to know at least as much as Elsba—and certainly Nalin—knew. Only then could she defend him effectively.

  She barely noticed the guards stepping back away from the door or the one who opened that same door so swiftly. All she knew was the door had been opened and she hadn’t had to break her stride waiting for it.

  She headed straight for his office. She marched right past the guard stationed at the door there and into the large, well-appointed room without announcement, waiving all semblance of formality, and she stopped right in front of his desk. He had hastily put something away at her entrance, and she knew what it was—malla. He seemed to believe his addiction to the paste remained a secret from her, but she knew thoughts of it constantly preoccupied him. At some point in the future, she might confront him about it, but right now she shook with an anger of a different timbre. She tried to stop shaking, but she couldn’t. She glowed with anger at this man who had committed an act so heinous she was loath to confront it though confront it she must.

  Look at him, looking up at me now, she thought, feigning innocence in his brown eyes, yet showing so little affection for me as the babe in my pouch suckles life from my teat.

  “What is it, Lorain?” he asked.

  “Nalin and Elsba seem to know things that I’ve only guessed at. It’s time I knew, too.” She sat down in the chair in front of him. “I…cannot protect you if you keep me ignorant.” She nearly choked on her words.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lorain.”

  She wanted to slap him, but instead, she took a very deep breath, placed her hands, folded, on the desk, leaned in towards him and smiled sweetly. “My love, I know I asked you very specifically not to tell me what really happened the night your mother was murdered, but I’m amending that request now. Tell me what the necropath knows, because I suspect I’ll be hearing it from her own lips soon enough.”

  “Nothing, Lorain. There’s nothing to know.”

  She stifled the biting response rising like bile, swallowed it back, and spoke softly. “I carry your Heir. Who else can you trust if not me?”

  He rose abruptly and headed for the door to the hall. He halted there before exiting and turned back to her. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  Then he was gone, and she would have thrown something from his desk after him, but there was nothing but papers there. How like him to leave her with no outlet for her frustration. She slammed her fist down on the desk’s pristine surface. His stubbornness would destroy him. Her, too, if she let it. If he wouldn’t tell her, then so be it, but she must find a way to distance herself from the trouble about to surface from the dregs of his depraved act. She had a child to protect, even if that child’s father refused to acknowledge how ugly this might become.

  She touched her pouch lovingly. Here was someone who would never run from her as its father had just done. It made its demands, but one day it would rule Garla and would listen when Lorain shared her advice and expertise. It was all worth it if this child eventually reigned, and it wouldn’t matter what she had to do between now and then to protect it.

  Opseth sensed the boy’s approach long before he arrived. His spirit seethed with fear and unmitigated obsession. So easy to read. How could she have believed that he would be the colleague she had sought, the apprentice she had hoped for in her later years? He was nervous and high-strung and hence basically useless. He possessed some talent, that was true, but he lacked discipline. Now, the little necropath—she was an entirely different matter. She could be trained. She could be molded. She could be nurtured and become an asset to Opseth for years to come. She and that were worth waiting for. Yet, while the boy remained the Empir, he would require nurturing, too.

  She left her garden when she knew his arrival was imminent, washed her hands in the basin just inside the house, dried them and then stepped out into the receiving yard to wait. One of the servants came to her there, but she dismissed him, telling him that she did not want to be disturbed once her visitor arrived. And arrive he did, not five minutes later, galloping up, his horse huffing and puffing at the intensity of the ride. Opseth stood firm, unflinching, even when he pulled up to within inches of her. His face burned with exertion, and he exuded a bile of spirit which she found unpleasant and difficult to deflect.

  He threw himself off the horse, tossed her the reins and barked, “Where can we be alone?”

  She tethered the horse, then said, “Follow me,” and took off at a quick pace, listening as the young Empir stepped in behind her.

  “You knew I was coming.”

  “Yes, my Liege,” she replied. “You have a powerful presence.”

  She led him into her home via the side entrance next to her lair and opened the door to her private space wide so he could enter before her. She stepped in behind him and closed the door tight, the signal to family and servants that she would tolerate no disturbance.

  “My Liege, it might have been wiser for you to have sent me a message,” she said as she moved to stand behind her desk, gesturing for him to take the chair before it. She waited until he had settled before she sat down herself.

  �
��I couldn’t wait for your reply, and I doubted I could be subtle in what I wrote.”

  “I understand.” The necropath neared Avaret; he must be feeling it, too.

  “Lorain is suspicious,” he blurted out.

  “And you wish to confide in her.”

  “You don’t understand. She’s more than my lover; she’s my ally, my protector, my defender and will one day likely be my spouse. And she’s insisting on knowing everything.”

  Opseth sighed. She was familiar with Holder Zanlot though they’d never met. A brilliant strategist, gifted with the ability to ferret out truth while in possession of only a minimal amount of information. If the Empir didn’t tell her, she’d eventually figure it out on her own. “Then perhaps, my Liege, you should tell her.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything.”

  “She’s carrying my Heir.”

  “All the more reason to tell her.”

  Opseth watched him digest this. Secrets had their uses, but revelation in this case would make Zanlot her ally as well.

  “And you should know, my Liege, that the necropath is coming this way. She’s been far away for some time, but now I can sense her growing closer and closer each day.”

  “Creators,” he whispered.

  “She’s young, inexperienced. A child in many ways. I believe we can control her.”

  “No. It’s time you destroyed her.”

  That slammed Opseth back in her chair. How easy murder became after the initial commission. “If she cannot be controlled,” she argued, “then I’ll do what you ask. But please, my Liege, let me try my tactic first. Necropaths shouldn’t be wasted. She could be a powerful ally.”

  “For whom?”

  “My Liege?”

  “You’re a blade that cuts on both sides,” he said with cold precision. “I never forget that. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I do.”

  “Never, my Liege.” Opseth sent soothers to pacify him, and his expression slowly softened.

  “Well, do what you will, but no harm must come to me or mine.”

  “I am your servant, my Liege. I’ll render her powerless if it becomes clear I cannot deflect her as a threat any other way.”

  The boy sat there for another moment, and then he rose, and she bounced up in a show of respect.

  “I’ll talk to Lorain,” he said. “You’re sure it’s all right to tell her?”

  “Yes, my Liege.”

  He nodded and turned, and she rushed around her desk to see to the door. She led him back out to where his horse still stood, no longer panting though its coat remained soaked with sweat. She untied the steed as he mounted, and then she handed the reins up to him.

  “I’d ride the animal less hard on the way home, my Liege.”

  “Yes,” he replied, his eyes vacant in the wake of what must have been a difficult confrontation.

  “And my Liege?”

  “What?” he barked back in a response from the gut.

  “It might be time for me to put more pressure on the sooth,” she suggested, wishing she could push him but knowing he’d suspect if she did.

  “I’ll let you know when I think it’s time.” And with that, he backed the horse up two steps, turned it and rode off while she stood and watched until he disappeared from sight.

  The mystery in all of this was Flandari. She had allowed this child to flounder in the world of the unloved. This had worked to Opseth’s benefit; she’d stepped in as surrogate, had manipulated him to reach out to her and then had allowed him to believe he had done so on his own. But why had the late Empir failed to see what a thug her dearth of affection had created? What had blinded her to his needs? Yes, that was the great unknowable in all of this, and the woman was no longer available to ask. A pity. But still, Opseth had benefited, and she would forever be grateful.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  PURPOSE

  In the middle of the night, Opseth reached out. She had waited three days since the Empir’s visit, sensing the necropath’s movement towards Avaret, feeling the fear and the excitement in the girl’s soul. All the while, she had kept her encroachment into that soul a secret submerged well below the level of consciousness, but tonight she would begin the seduction.

  She had held off, waiting for the novice’s approach to bring her closer. This would allow Opseth to infiltrate with a subtlety not possible at greater distances. But, more importantly, she had waited because she had wanted to be certain that this was the course she meant to follow. She was about to betray her Empir, but he’d proved too fearful, too prone to anxiety, and not nearly powerful enough for her needs.

  This one, though—this girl who traveled now in her direction—held a promise so complicated and yet so complete that Opseth had finally admitted that her initial insight, her intuition, had been right. It was time to bring this one in. So she leaned back in her chair and reached out for the girl’s awareness, hoping to insinuate herself into a dream of such consequence that it could not be ignored.

  She sits at her mother’s side awaiting death. Not freakin’ again. She wants to scream, but the infirmary walls will only echo her words back at her, and all will be lost regardless.

  Her mother moans. This woman who rules an empire is as vulnerable as the daughter who sits here with her, and she will die, yet again, because even Empirs are not immune to death.

  But I want to know you, she thinks and feels grief wad up in her throat and tears well up in her eyes.

  The woman reaches up a hand to touch those tears. “There are ways to salvage this,” her mother says.

  She pauses. The dream, familiar now as she has watched every detail layer in over the last few months, has shifted, changed. Never before has the figure of her mother spoken back, responded in any way whatsoever.

  “There are ways to salvage this and survive, and you know what they are.”

  She stares down at the Empir, confusion wrapping itself around her like a suffocating blanket, and watches as the woman’s face changes and coalesces into another. The hair remains short but goes from red to brown, and the green eyes lose any hint of blue and become more yellow. The face rounds out. This is no longer her mother.

  “I sense your fear, little one.”

  She cocks her head. Something here seems so safe, so inviting.

  “But you needn’t fear. You’re strong, stronger than you know.”

  She listens. She can’t help it.

  “You feel a lack of preparation, the emptiness of imperfection.”

  She wants to respond but has no voice.

  “The answers are inside you. Seek the power that resides within. It will not fail you.”

  Lisen awoke to the darkness of the night, Korin sleeping soundly just beyond the embers of last night’s fire. She awoke and sat up, her entire being shaking. At least her body had grown to feel more like her own, her mind adapting slowly, meticulously, with little conscious thought on her part. She believed the days and nights resting in the cave had worked some sort of magic because it was after that that she had finally noticed the adjustment. Now, if only the dull ache in her head would go away.

  She sighed. They would reach the great city in a few more days, and then her true trial would begin. The dream called to her. The voice in the dream, she thought. The woman in the dream. She spoke the truth. Until this moment Lisen had fought accepting it. Korin continued to drill her daily before they set out, but she had no hope of winning if it came to physical confrontation with her brother.

  As the hopes of everyone bore down upon her, she touched the pocket of her robe where Eloise’s healing stone remained a comfort. Through death and loss she’d kept it near, all the way from Solsta, to Halorin, to Thristas and then back again, but now, everything it symbolized lay decomposing in her desperation. Because in the end, the sacrifices of the others would waste away to nothing, pointless, lying in a pool of her useless blood because she would fail.

  She would present her case to the Council, bring
forward all the documents she had and leave it up to them to choose. If they decided in her favor, her brother would no doubt challenge her to a Duel of Honor. If they chose him, how could she do any less? No matter what happened in the Council, it would still and inevitably come down to swords or knives and a duel between her brother and herself, a duel she knew she could not possibly win, and all would be in vain.

  “Seek the power that resides within.” Yes, that’s what the dream mother had advised her. Perhaps the answer lay not in what she’d had too little time to learn but in the skills the Creators had given her, skills much better honed than anything physical.

  Those skills had saved her in Halorin, when the necessity of survival and the demand of purpose had forced her to act and she’d called on that power within to overcome the spy. In the rush of mortal threat, she had turned to what she knew. Now, another imperative, similar to the first in essence yet different in place and time, loomed before her.

  She took a deep and trembling breath. Survival coupled with purpose had driven her in Halorin, had extracted a decision in a manner not unlike the launching of a rocket but without the countdown—furious power discharged in a sudden burst of violent energy. Purpose was all, and all the losses, all the death that had brought her here, deserved a purpose. And the only purpose she could dredge up from all those sacrifices was the seating of herself upon the throne of Garla.

  Well, if that was how it had to be, then she would do whatever must be done to make it happen. She would not abandon the mother and the friend who had both given their all to see this thing accomplished. It was her duty, and what was a hermit if not bound to duty?

  Yeah, but I ain’t no hermit, she thought ruefully.

  She took another deep breath as she began fiddling with her ring, and this time air entered her lungs without a stir. She settled into the promise and the purpose and granted her inner self time to work it through. By the time they reached Avaret, she would have a plan, and then she would fulfill her mother’s dream. She would sit on the throne of Garla no matter what it cost her morally or ethically. After all, others had given everything to see it done; could she give any less?