Tainted (Lisen of Solsta Book 2)

by D. Hart St. Martin

Lorain stood in the bedchamber of her quarters in the old palace, numb, empty, lost. Two servants from the Keep had arrived early this morning with the things she’d thought would stay in that center of power forever—her beautiful tunics fit for an Empir-Spouse and intended for use throughout this session of council, her notes and styluses along with her special ink from her office, certain mementoes which she had no desire to plow through right now. A lifetime shrunk into the tragedy of one useless night. She plopped down on the bed.

  “Damn him!” She pounded a fist into the mattress. “Damn her!” This time she shouted it loud enough she suspected others in the palace had heard. She didn’t care. Her life lay at her feet in absolute ruins. What in the name of the Destroyer was she to do now?

  She wanted to cry. She needed to cry, but she mustn’t. She must never allow the hurt, the pain—the grief, dared she think it?—to leak through to the surface. She was a Zanlot, and Zanlots never let on. They found better ways to manifest the ache and the anger. Anger. There it was. The light to head towards, the motivator she required to carry on.

  She stood up, pulled off her nightshift and stared at the spreading pouch at her belly. This child deserved the life of an Heir to the Empir of Garla. And as long as the so-called new Empir remained childless, this child was all that was left to the silly little hermit. Lorain could play that, could play it like a game of castles and peasants. The girl, the alleged sister, and apparently soon-to-be-throned Empir could be seduced by Lorain’s sparkling good will and an offer of total involvement in the life of the girl’s niece or nephew.

  She pulled the tunic out she had planned on wearing today before…before the unfortunate incident. Wine red, no hint of grey, intended to serve notice that mourning had ended. A new Empir reigned. Well, that much was true. But the color disgusted her. Too close to the color of blood, the blood that had run like a river from Ariel’s heart but a few hours ago.

  She sat down again, suddenly naked emotionally. She’d insisted on going in to see him. She didn’t know why. Perhaps she’d needed to find a way out of denial. Confronted with the reality, she’d expected to be able to accept his murder as fact, and yet she still struggled. The fact that he’d been murdered by a damn hermit with powers nobody knew the extent of, that she’d found all too easy to believe.

  She rose, and this time she chose an old tunic from her own closet. The new ones would have to be cleaned and pressed before she could wear them anyway—they’d arrived in such disarray. She chose a grey one, of which she had several. She had a right, a duty to mourn and make her mourning conspicuous. She might not find a way immediately to make the girl pay for what she’d done, and she’d have to limit the sharing of her plans to only a small circle of friends and make sure they spoke and acted in nothing more than a whisper. The scope of the girl’s power remained unknown. But her actions would not go unpunished. And, in the meantime, Lorain would observe her closely for signs weakness. Once she found the snag in her cloth, she’d unravel it.

  Now, that was better. No true plan, but a plan for making a plan. Lorain pulled on her undershift, then slipped her tunic on over it. She clipped her hair up on top of her head, the brown locks she normally left loose restricted. She would make sure nobody in that Council Chamber forgot who was the aggrieved one in the room.

  Nalin paused in front of the door to the Empir’s office and pulled on his tunic to make sure he looked neat and tidy. He hadn’t slept all night. His mind had rattled on and on, and there’d been no stopping it. Everything that had happened yesterday, everything that he’d seen and everything Lisen—Empir Ariannas—had done to make Flandari’s last wish a reality, had thrown his thoughts into a whirlwind and left him with no safe place to land.

  “Is she in?” he asked of the guard at the door, and the man nodded. Nalin took a deep breath, turned the latch and entered the room.

  He found Lisen sitting at her desk, a servant snipping tentatively at her newly shorn hair. She looked up as he stepped in, and the dark circles under her eyes told him everything. She hadn’t slept either.

  “My Liege,” he said with a nod, and she gestured him forward.

  “Please. No formalities with me, Nalin. Sit. I’ll just be a second.”

  Nalin sat in his accustomed center chair in front of the desk and waited as the young female servant finished cleaning up the consequences of Lisen’s impromptu hacking off of her braids. He’d heard from Commander Tanres how they’d found Ariel, bloodied from a single terrible wound, Lisen’s braids and her hermit ring on top of his body. He hid the shiver that ran down his spine at the image.

  “All right then,” the Empir said as she dismissed the servant with a flurry of fingers.

  Once they were alone, Nalin stood up and started around the desk. “I have something to show you.”

  “What?” she asked as she turned to watch him fiddle with the hidden latch on a door to one of the cabinets set into the wall behind her.

  “This,” Nalin replied as he successfully accessed the secret panel to the back of the cabinet. It opened, and he smiled when he found that everything remained in order; Ariel had never discovered this.

  “What?” Lisen stood up behind him and looked over his shoulder. He pulled out several scrolls, hidden there for some years, and set them down on the desk.

  Lisen turned back around. “What are they?”

  “Your mother’s musings on what lies in front of you.”

  “A lot more than she could ever imagine,” Lisen commented and started to shuffle through the ribbon-tied treasures.

  “Wait. Wait,” Nalin cautioned. “There’s one in particular. Where’s the one with the black ribbon?” Nalin spread them out and grabbed the scroll Flandari had left specific instructions about. “Yes. This one.”

  “What about it?”

  “She said you could read them in whatever order you wished except this one. You must read this one first.”

  “Why?” Lisen asked, her once sunlit-ocean eyes focused hard and darkly upon him.

  “I don’t know. She never told me.”

  Lisen picked up the scroll, considered it, then set it down. “Later. Not now. I need to know what to expect in there.” She nodded towards the door to the Council Chamber.

  Nalin returned to his chair and sat down again. “Of course.”

  “How do we start? Will they already be seated when I step in? I mean, I don’t even know what it looks like in there.”

  “You’ll wait in here until Elsba introduces you.” When Lisen nodded, Nalin continued. “Don’t sit on the throne. It will be moved later today or tomorrow to the grand hall for your throning, and until then, there’s another chair for you to sit in.”

  “All right. I step in and sit down.”

  “Everyone will rise and will sit again once you’ve taken your place. Let Elsba guide the proceedings. Did you prepare something to say?”

  She held up a couple of sheets of parchment. “I had nothing else to do all night.”

  “I’ll let Elsba know. Do you want me to take a look at it?”

  Lisen shook her head. “No. If I can’t figure out what to say, I don’t deserve to be here.”

  “It’s a delicate thing, this beginning. Are you sure you don’t want—”

  “No. I’ll be fine.”

  With the topic so abruptly dismissed, Nalin moved forward. “Elsba will keep everything going. There will be no questions, not today. Near the end, he will ask me to discuss the revised schedule. Copies have already gone out.”

  “I didn’t get one.”

  Nalin stood up and considered all the papers on her desk. At last he found it. “Here,” he said, lifting the schedule from where Jazel had no doubt placed it early this morning. She took it from him and perused it as he continued. “Ariel’s throning had been set for tomorrow with his joining with Lorain the next day. Elsba and I thought it best to push the throning back a day, give the Council a chance to adjust, come to know you.”

  “And how do you
propose they do that?” she asked, looking up from her reading.

  “We’ve scheduled an informal reception for tomorrow afternoon, in place of the original throning. Today and tomorrow morning, holders and councilors will present themselves to your clerk for appointments. During the reception, she will guide you through the list. You’ll go to them, or they’ll come to you. The clerk, Jazel, will remain at your side to fill you in on who you can trust and who’s likely to demand explanations.”

  Lisen shivered visibly. “Ugh. Sounds like The Godfather.”

  Another strange word, but Nalin pressed forward. “Elsba and I thought it best to give you a full night of rest before you have to deal with this.”

  “You certainly have my life all planned out, don’t you,” Lisen said, staring him down with those eyes which had grown cold overnight.

  “I’m sorry, my Liege,” Nalin began, but a knock at the door stopped him before he could blither all over himself.

  “Enter!” the Empir called out, shifting her focus from Nalin to the door.

  Elsba entered, looking older than ever, but walking proudly nevertheless. “My Liege,” he said as he came towards the desk.

  “Holder Tuane,” Lisen said with a smile. “I hear you’re going to run things out there.”

  “Indeed, my Liege. Nalin? Everybody’s in place. We should get started.”

  Nalin rose, looked to Lisen. “My Liege?”

  “Go,” she said, standing herself.

  “The guard inside the chamber at your door will open it,” he said, his last instruction.

  “And then I’ll step in. Got it.” She nodded, and in her eyes Nalin saw a hint of the old Lisen flash through and then vanish.

  He nodded back, and he and Elsba departed the office. The trickiest of moments, this introduction of what some perceived as Ariel’s assassin.

  “She wrote a speech,” he confided as they made their way to the public entrance into the chamber.

  “Did she now? Have you seen it?”

  “She wouldn’t let me,” Nalin replied as they climbed the steps into the back of the chamber.