“And what would that accomplish?” Elor knew where Nas was headed but wanted Nas to state it out loud. Elor reveled in the thought of allowing others to play his hand out while his hands remained neat and clean.
“The Thristans probably assume that it would make Rinli Empir. But I’m not going, even if Mother insists. Garla is mine, not Rinli’s, and I won’t let the Thristans get what they really want.”
“So,” Elor began as he leaned back in the chair, “you think the Thristans want their prophecy-fulfilling, soon-to-be-leader to take over Garla, too? Well, it does have its merits. If the current Empir, who signed the One-Day War treaty, is gone, there is an argument that could be made for breaking that treaty without them looking like the villain.”
“Exactly,” Nasera replied, and Elor watched as the boy’s eyes sparkled in the light of Elor’s positive attention.
“But won’t they look like the villain if they murder the Empir?”
Nasera shrugged.
“I mean,” Elor continued, “if they meant to kill her and nullify the treaty somehow, wouldn’t it have made more sense to do it earlier?”
“Well, they needed Rinli to be old enough to make her own decisions,” Nas snapped back.
“Don’t misunderstand. I think you’re right about what the Thristans ultimately want. It’s your reasoning that fails. Their Elders are a smart bunch, and they, no doubt, realize that they will need time once your sister is invested. They need to extend their reach. They’re like children—they require full independence before they can fulfill their potential.”
“I don’t understand.”
Elor sighed. “Of course, you don’t. You’re still a child.”
“And you’re not?”
“I’m older than you and I’m older than Rinli, and I will receive my inheritance in August, long before she does.”
“A month before she does.”
Elor hated it when his cousin got testy. “Seems like a long time to me.”
“And then what? Technically, you’re an Heir of Garla, too.”
Elor smiled. “Ah, finally, you see it. We are rivals, cousin.”
Nasera sat up straight in his chair across the desk, his brown eyes widening.
“No, no. Don’t worry about me,” Elor protested. “I don’t want your title. I’m not ambitious like my mother, though I do have other wishes.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, let’s just say I’m a planner in need of a plan.”
Nas shot up from his chair and tossed the quill he’d been fiddling with onto the desk. “You are impossible, and I don’t want to deal with you anymore today.” He whirled and bounded out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Insenlo rose from her corner on the floor, shrugged at Elor and followed Nasera out. Strange girl, Elor thought about his youngest cousin. How much does she really understand?
He sat back in his chair, rubbed his chin with its two whiskers—I’ll get more soon, he reminded himself—and contemplated how his life and his choices would soon revert to him from the Empir. First, he would head straight for his capital, Tonkin, a place he barely knew, and make it his home, permanently. He would use his quarters here, where he sat now, only during Council sessions. He was tired of Avaret and couldn’t wait to leave the place behind. Bring on the storms of the north which often slid into Bedel before they met the mountains of Prea and fizzled to showers. How much better than the seemingly constant, infernal sunshine of a capital city which lost its enterprise the minute the Council adjourned and returned home. Yes, in four months, majority and independence would be his, and then he could begin seeking vengeance on those who had stolen his parents from him.
They rode into the park from the back road—Lisen, Korin and Rinli together. Ever since Bellin Plain, Rinli had treated her with quiet respect, and as they walked their horses through the park towards the Keep, they actually felt like a family to Lisen. None of them said a word. In fact, they’d communicated verbally very little since the plain. But Lisen sensed an underlying desire in Rinli’s soul, seeking a definition of new feelings she couldn’t explain. The sooner they got home where she and Korin could talk alone as parents, the sooner the two of them could consider how best to approach their daughter.
When they arrived at the stable, a hand took her horse’s reins at the bit of the bridle, and Lisen dismounted, leaving her pack on the animal. Someone would grab it and hand it over to servants to see to the unpacking and cleaning of her clothes. Her month in Thristas had set her back on the ground where most people lived. Now she’d returned to the clouds of her eminent position, and the adjustment momentarily boggled her.
She headed first to Pharaoh’s stall. The big black stallion whinnied at her approach. He knew her; she knew him. And she knew that his reaction after her extended absence was a scolding one.
“I didn’t take you because you wouldn’t be safe,” she whispered as she snuggled briefly into his jaw. He lifted his head away and shook it, and she laughed.
“Should I be jealous?” Korin asked from behind her.
“Don’t listen to him,” she whispered to Pharaoh. “I promise I’ll be out here with you tomorrow.” She patted the horse on his neck, then turned, smiled at her spouse and said with feigned innocence, “No, why?”
Korin reached out a hand to her, the one that wasn’t holding his pack. Unlike herself, his refusal to be waited on was accepted by stable staff and Keep servants alike. Interpreting his offered hand as an invitation, not a demand, she stepped in behind him, noticing that while she’d been cooing at Pharaoh, Rinli had rushed on and was running up the steps to the Keep’s portico far ahead of them.
The Avaret Keep, the royal palace built by her mother more than twenty years ago, rose up three-and-a-half stories from the park laid out behind it and above the square in front of it which served as the access to its main entrance. Its simple columns and white exterior allowed its light to shine from where it stood on the tallest hill in Avaret. All eyes could find and admire the Empir’s Keep from any point in the city.
“Thank the Creators,” she muttered, as they, too, mounted the steps of the back portico. “Finally, room to talk.” They still had to watch themselves. Ears awaited around every corner, especially the words that passed between herself and Korin, but with dedication, their life together and the lives of their children remained locked behind closed doors. Oh, stories leaked out, rumors mostly, and mostly untrue. So anything verifiable overheard within the walls of the Keep became a gem of great price to the listener. For this reason, the Empir and her spouse had limited their verbal exchanges to the Empir’s office or their bedchamber upstairs, with the doors closed and servants exiled. And when they fought—and they did fight—they did so in forceful whispers. These were the choices one had to make, Lisen knew, to keep their private lives private.
They turned together to the right and stepped into the office of Lisen’s head clerk, Jazel Iscador, and with the sigh of the resigned, Lisen approached the clerk’s desk.
“Anything that can’t wait until I get cleaned up and then face it tomorrow?”
“Your Will awaits, my Liege.”
“Ah, your Will,” Korin said. “I’ll leave you to him.”
“Tonight,” Lisen replied.
“Aye, my Liege.” Korin nodded, then backed out through the door to the hall. Lisen sighed. She’d hoped to crawl into the nice warm bath and sit there nibbling on fruit or bread or cheese or all three for a day or two before having to face her responsibilities, but if Nalin had lived up to his promise, he’d been here for a week already. Best she confer with him before indulging her basic needs.
She left Jazel and entered her own office, a room whose size and opulence still offended her simpler sensibilities. She’d dressed the place down a bit over the years, but as Ilazer antiquities, her large carved desk and equally impressive conference table could not be replaced. She nodded at Nalin who smiled as he rose from his place at the table.
“Welcome
home, my Liege. I trust it was a productive but uneventful trip.”
“In the main.” She gestured for Nalin to sit, and she joined him at the table, deciding to say nothing for the moment about the emergence of Rinli’s newfound powers.
“We have all the petitions and testimonies for the Ba twins.” He swept his hand over the multiple piles of paperwork on the table.
“All organized, I assume.”
“Yes, my Liege.”
“And I,” Lisen said in broad tones, “have the latest draft of the plans for the investiture. Not on me, of course.”
“Of course.”
She sighed. “Can this wait until tomorrow, Nal? I’m tired, hungry and filthy. And I’d like to see my other children if possible.”
“Certainly. You should know, though, that Nasera has been spending an inordinate amount of time with Elor in the Zanlot quarters across the way.”
Lisen nodded. This did not surprise her. Nasera worshipped Elor’s ambition and the analytical abilities he’d inherited from his mother. “Is he there now?”
“I don’t know.”
Lisen rose and gestured Nalin not to stand with the angled flat of her hand. “I’ll see them at dinner.”
She left him there and headed out into the hall where she gave orders for the bath to be heated. Fresh warm water would soothe her sand-infested skin and scalp. No doubt they’d emptied and cleaned the giant pool while she and Korin were gone.
Upstairs she found Korin and invited him to join her. He agreed but only after some frugal reluctance.
“Don’t talk about the waste,” she responded when he initially declined. “Think how wasteful it will be if I’m in there all alone.”
Within moments of their conversation, she’d settled into the water, only a small towel wrapped around her waist. She thought of the tops women on Earth had to wear to cover their breasts and chuckled inaudibly. Haven’t had to worry about topless for years now. No need with my teats in my pouch. Korin joined her soon thereafter. He pulled off his towel, sat down on the edge of the bath she’d once likened in her mind to an Earth swimming pool and began to unbraid his long, heavy, dark hair. She agreed. Two months without re-braiding was enough.
After removing his eye patch, he slipped in beside her, and she gently retrieved the dish of soap from his hand. “Allow me,” she said. He turned away from her and lay his head back in front of her. His hair swirled around in the water, and she passed her fingers through the dark tentacle-like locks. She settled into this little intimacy they’d discovered years ago—moments filled with the joy of sharing each other’s company and none other.
“So what are we going to do about Rinli?” Lisen asked as he sat up again and she started combing her fingers through his thick mane.
“You’re sure about what happened?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Memory can be deceptive.”
“If I’d had any doubts,” she replied, “her reaction at Bellin Plain would have retired them.”
“Damn.” He sighed as Lisen began applying the soap. “Madlen could be the larger problem.”
“Madlen is no problem at all if I can get Rinli trained.” She massaged his scalp with the experience of years. She was useless at the braiding; they’d learned that early on. But Korin had his own years of experience at that.
“With time to figure it out…,” he began, then hesitated.
“I’m telling you. Rinli can deal with Madlen, but only if she’s trained.” She touched his forehead with two fingers and he leaned back into the water again.
“And there’s the problem,” he said looking up at her with his single eye as she swirled his locks in the water to get them to release the soap.
“We talk to her together,” Lisen offered.
“I agree, but how?”
“We sit down with her, informally, say, upstairs in her bedchamber, and you start by describing what you saw and felt in the stable in Thristas. And we go from there.”
Korin sat up again, and she pulled all of his coarse locks into a solid loose queue, doubled it up from the bottom and squeezed as much water out as possible.
“I don’t know,” he said. “To just boldly bring it up out of nowhere. Seems a plan headed for disaster.”
“Well, if she’s not going to bring it up and we’re not going to bring it up…that seems even more disastrous. Korin, she can’t go back to Thristas like some over-muscled child, bumping into things and knocking them over. It wouldn’t be seen as benign here; how do you think they’ll view it there?”
“I know. Damn it.” He stood up, took one of the clean towels the servants had placed there and started to dry himself off.
She looked up at him from where she remained in the bath. “I had planned on taking her out riding a few times a week during her last days here. To talk to her about leadership and all, you know? Fill in any holes I might have left along the way. I want to make sure she knows more than I knew when I first got here.”
“Just spending the majority of her childhood in this building gives her that.”
Lisen rose and grabbed a towel. “Maybe. It’s hard to tell if she’s paid any attention.”
“She can be a bit of an enigma.”
“That’s an adolescent thing, I suspect,” she threw out, then grew somber again. “But now…now, it’s imperative that I get through to her. She’s playing with danger and doesn’t even know it.”
“I fear it may be difficult to reach her.”
“So, we sit down with her. Both of us. Together,” she said softly.
They stood, facing one another, naked, souls exposed. They shared a sense of sacred duty to their children. Lisen couldn’t help but smile at how a pouch in a man could arouse her, but Korin’s pouch had carried two of their three children, a holy trust. She placed a hand on Korin’s chest, over his heart. She could feel its slow, rhythmic beat.
“How do you propose we do that?” he asked. “You know how Thristans feel about hermit magic. If they discover what she can do… If they see her do it…”
“I know.” Lisen picked up two robes from the stool beside her, wrapped one around herself and handed the other one to Korin. “Tonight. We’ll talk to her tonight. After dinner.”
“I’m tired,” Korin replied with a sigh.
Lisen nodded. “We all are. Tomorrow then?”
“Tomorrow. After breakfast.”
Later that night, as Lisen and Korin lay in their bed, she snuggled up to his back, and he sighed.
“What?” she asked quietly.
“I thought we were there.” He brought her fingers up to his lips and kissed them.
“Where?”
“I thought we were nearly done with all the travel and separation. I thought I’d finally be able to come home and stay home for a while.” He sighed again.
“I like that you call Avaret home now.”
“I did, didn’t I.”
“Let’s just determine to get through to her tomorrow. Then I can take her out riding and work with her.”
“She’s a stubborn one,” Korin said, turning over to face Lisen in the moonlit dark. She liked looking at him without his eye patch. “Not unlike her mother.”
“Then, I must out-stubborn her.” Lisen savored the smell of desert that never seemed to leave him no matter how long he spent in Avaret.
“Well, if anyone could…”
“We take her on together.” With her right hand, she lightly brushed the left side of his face, from his ravaged eye socket down to his lightly bearded chin. “Creators, I’m glad we’re back.”
“Roll over,” he said softly. “Let me hold you for a while.”
She shifted onto her right side and scooted back into his embrace. This was the privacy they guarded more closely than anything else in their lives. Servants who advanced to upstairs duties were cautioned firmly that they were never to enter the Empir’s private chambers without an invitation, without knocking. If sent up with a meal, they coul
d not step in unless the door was open or, upon knocking, they were invited. Lisen treasured these moments. They came rarely and always with a price of some kind attached to them.
She settled into his arms, and her body relaxed for the first time in months. Her captain held her, safe from intrusion and demand. She was content.
CHAPTER THREE
THE PROBLEM WITH RINLI
Rinli hated the cold, squared-corner uniformity of the rooms in the Keep, so much so that she tossed everything she owned around her room and let it lie. She forbade servants to straighten anything up or to even come in and clean around her mess. Her parents had tried everything they could think of to force her into a state of organization, but she had crossed her arms over her chest and said, “No.” She got forced into doing too many things she didn’t want to do; she had to take a stand somewhere.
The problem was she couldn’t separate the clean clothes from the dirty. This made sorting then handing the laundry out the door to a servant—she’d never let a servant in—a bit difficult. It also complicated retrieving a clean tunic from the mess. This was where she stood now, on the mesa crown’s edge of a dilemma, staring at her pile of clothing on the floor, hoping that something would pop up and tell her, “I’m clean. Choose me.”
Protector of Thristas: A Lisen of Solsta Novel Page 3
