He urged her up the steps to the portico, and once inside, he herded her away from her office and towards the stairs instead, but she pulled to a halt.
“I have work to do,” she protested.
“You always have work to do. But I don’t want to talk to you in your office.”
“Then give me a minute to check in with Jazel.”
He watched as she entered her clerk’s office and waited until she reappeared.
“A letter from Nalin.” She waved a sealed note and smiled as she approached Korin. “He almost never writes.” She broke the seal. “Let’s see. ‘My Liege,’ he begins. ’You are the third to know, after Linell and Alabar, of course. Bala is carrying our third child.’ Oh, that’s wonderful news, isn’t it?”
“Is that all it says?” he asked.
“No, there’s more.” She read in silence as they mounted the stairs. “He assures me this will not affect his service as my Will. Bala will pouch the child.”
“Well, that’s good, then, right? They wanted another child, I assume?”
Lisen laughed. “They worked on it through the entirety of Council. Every time I looked up, Nalin was excusing himself.”
“Well, thank the Maker it worked.”
They slipped into silence as they continued to ascend the stairs. The conversation he planned with her required they reach a place of privacy first. They arrived at their bedchamber and stepped in past the guard. Once inside, and with the door closed, Lisen pulled off her boots and her riding leathers while Korin sat down on the bed, waiting. She rinsed her face in the washing bowl that always awaited them and dried her face and her hands with a fresh towel. Then, wearing only her undergarment, she plopped down in the chair in front of where he sat.
“I didn’t ask about your day.”
Korin shrugged. “It’s not over yet.” Lisen nodded, and he continued. “But so far it’s been consistent with most other days.”
“Korin, I’ve run out of options. You’re leaving next month, and she’s never going to let me in.” She put her head in her hands.
“You talk,” he said. “Does she ever talk?”
“Of course, she does.”
“Yes. She uses that snaky tongue to inflict injury.”
Lisen shrugged then sighed. “Mostly. How do you do it?”
“I let her talk. I guide, but I try to be subtle about it.”
“But she won’t talk to me. I mean, if I just sit there waiting, she stares at me and says nothing.”
Korin shook his head. “And these conversations—or whatever you want to call them—where do they take place? And at whose invitation?”
Lisen opened her mouth to speak, then closed it quickly again. She looked past Korin—out the window, he presumed—then after a moment, she focused back on him. “It’s always on my terms. That’s it, isn’t it. Or part of it.”
He smiled and nodded.
“But she’s never going to come to me on her own,” she continued.
“No. Give her a little time, and if she doesn’t come to you, you go to her. Knock on her door and hope that she invites you to enter.”
“How long do I wait?” Lisen’s tone of distress broke his heart.
“I’d give her a week, maybe two. And in the meantime, I’ll see if I can encourage her. Subtly of course.”
“Of course.”
“You want control, but there is no control.”
“Everywhere but there,” Lisen muttered.
“Lisen.” He took her hands. “You’re the Empir, so it’s easy for you to think you have control. But do you? Have you? Ever? The assassination attempt attests to that.” She shrugged, and he bore on. “You and Rin are possibly the two most stubborn people I know. Someone has to give. She doesn’t believe she’s in danger, so it’s not going to be her.”
“Probably not,” Lisen said with a sigh.
“Listen to her. Let her talk.”
“But what if—”
“No.” He put a finger to her lips. “Let her talk and she’ll get to it.”
Lisen pushed his finger away. “She could die out there, Korin. The prophecy says so.”
“The prophecy could mean a great many things,” he replied softly. He could hear the fear in her voice, and although he didn’t trust the vague visions of a Thristan or Thristans who’d been dead for hundreds of years, he feared for Rinli as well.
“Or nothing at all.”
“Or nothing at all,” he repeated.
“All right then, I’ll wait.” She stood up, stepped away from him, pulled a tunic out from her wardrobe and slipped it on over her head. “Now, I really need to get to my office.”
She started towards the door, but he grabbed her hand, stopping her. “What is it you do down there?”
“I read, mostly. Chronicles of times long past. A few epic tales. Lately I’ve been studying various legal documents. You know, to gain a better understanding of our laws.”
Their eyes met, and she smiled. He nodded slowly and released her hand. She paused a moment longer, and finally she turned and left. He shook his head, rose and headed downstairs. There were still a few good hours of daylight left. Someone in need of a sparring partner would be waiting for him to come, and he didn’t want to disappoint them.
The hardest part of a successful union, he thought as he stepped out into the park, is what you have to put into it to make it successful.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PERMANENT AS DEATH AND INESCAPABLE
Two weeks after she’d taken off from her mother in the park, Rinli looked around her bedchamber and smiled with pride. Rather than heading directly down to breakfast this morning, she’d stayed up here and begun picking up and sorting clean clothes from filthy and straightening up other assorted belongings. Now, at midmorning, she could see most of her floor and all of her bed, with a pile of dirty clothes set by the door for the servants to take away and wash.
She considered how drastically her life would change once Thristas became her permanent home. It would simplify her life, for one thing. She’d have no more than two tunics, a robe, the bottom half of her riding leathers and a scarf to protect her face if the sand rose up in the wind. All the rest of this mess of fashionable Garlan garments would remain here. Perhaps they would be of use to Nas or Sen, but for her, their usefulness would vanish.
She started at a knock on her door, but a familiar voice immediately following allowed her to breathe again.
“Rin?” It was her father, the one person who seemed to truly understand her unpleasant dilemma. Is any dilemma pleasant? she wondered. By definition, probably not.
“Yes, Fa. Hold on.”
She slid her pile of dirty clothes from in front of the door in order to open it, and when she did, her rock-of-a-father greeted her on the other side.
He surveyed her room with one of his swift captain-of-the-Guard looks and nodded. “Cleaning up?”
“Well, it’s not going to be my room much longer, is it.”
“You’ve got more than a month. Put your shoes on. Your mother is about to get an update on the investigation into the attack, and we want you to join us.”
“Why? So you can question me?” She pawed through her as-yet-disorganized pile of shoes, found a pair of sandals and sat down on the bed to buckle them. No matter what the next few hours intended for her, she couldn’t simply ignore an invitation from her mother.
“No,” he replied, leaning up against the door jamb, arms crossed, waiting. “We eliminated you long ago. I told you that.”
“I know. But things have a way of changing around here.” She stood and approached him, caution tightening every muscle.
“Not that. Now come on. Your mother and Commander Tanres are waiting.”
“And Madlen?” She’d heard rumors that Madlen had made it to the list with her, but she believed that if Madlen remained on the list, she herself wouldn’t have been invited to sit in on today’s discussion.
“Eliminated as well. Let’s g
o.”
She closed the door behind her and followed her father down the stairs, thinking—always thinking. She understood why they had considered her a suspect initially. Firstborn of the Empir, coming of age in three months. It was obvious. She had appreciated the fact that they had also placed Elor on that list. If they’d considered her while ignoring him, she would have had plenty of reason to complain. But when she learned they’d looked at him longer than they’d looked at her, she’d smiled, appreciating his august company in the list of suspects but reveling in her swift exclusion.
When they arrived at the door to the Empir’s office, the single guard shifted to one side immediately and allowed her father and herself to pass. Rinli stepped in with her father but stopped short once inside the door. Her mother and Commander Tanres both looked up, Tanres swiveling in her chair in order to see Rinli and her father. He had stopped a few steps ahead of her and turned to query her hesitation with the rise of an eyebrow.
“Rin?”
“Yes, yes. I’m coming,” she said, making her legs propel her forward once again. She reached the conference table and stood there stupidly, wondering where to sit. Her father stepped around and without hesitation settled into the chair directly to her mother’s left.
“Why don’t you sit down,” her mother urged.
“Where? Where would you like me to sit?”
“Anywhere. We’re not wanting for chairs.”
Rinli looked around, feeling awkward, like she didn’t belong here. But her mother was right; there were at least half a dozen empty chairs. She made her choice—to the commander’s right and one chair over. It put her within a couple of chairs of her father’s left but not so close that she’d get lost to his missing sight on that side.
“Good. Commander, Rinli’s copy of your notes?”
“Aye, my Liege.”
Tanres passed a few sheets of paper to Rinli, and the girl nodded her thanks.
“Now, tell us what you’ve got.”
“First, my Liege, as you know, we found what we believe to be the assassin’s nest in the secret passageway leading from the statue of Balthazar in the plaza to the dungeon. We have since permanently shut down that entrance, and we are now patrolling the passageways twice a day.”
“So much for secrets,” Rinli’s mother commented.
“Now, in the month since the attempt on your life, we have eliminated all but two suspects. We were able to cross the heirs of Thristas, Garla and Bedel off almost immediately. I sent Captain Morla to interview Councilor Meeken. The councilor vehemently denied any desire to assassinate his Empir over a minor confrontation.” Tanres shuffled through her papers for a moment, then continued. “He said that he’d realized later you were right and wanted Morla to extend an apology to you, my Liege, on his behalf.”
“And Morla’s sense?” the Empir asked. “I mean, as to whether or not Meeken was telling the truth?”
“As stated in her report, she believes he’s mostly truthful. He might be hedging a bit, but not regarding his lack of involvement in the attack.”
Rinli watched as her mother sat back in her chair with a sigh. “That makes one less suspect. And the retired captain?”
“As you know, my Liege, I spoke to Bento myself,” the commander replied. “A great unpleasantness had arisen between us when she left the Guard, and I wanted to see if peace were possible.”
“And?”
Tanres shook her head. “My full report is included in your notes, my Liege. The gist is this. It wasn’t her. She remains loyal to you. She and I, on the other hand, are a different story.”
Rinli’s mother nodded and turned to her spouse. “And the Elder?”
“Our remaining infiltrators,” her father began, “sent word through Pass Garrison that they’d heard nothing that could implicate Elder Kalal, or anyone in Thristas, for that matter.”
Her mother nodded. “I see. So who does that leave? Tazori Dors and Akdor Ba, two men from the north. Wasn’t the assassin dressed in caral wool from the north? Do we have anything to the contrary where either of them is concerned?”
“Not yet, my Liege,” the commander replied.
“I still find it difficult to believe that someone as scattered as Akdor Ba could be behind this.”
Rinli could hear the disbelief in her mother’s voice. “Scattered doesn’t rule out vengeance, does it?” The other three turned their attention to her, and she wanted to wiggle her way out of there. What had possessed her to speak out like that?
“No, it doesn’t,” her father replied. “And that’s why we need to continue our investigation of him, agreed?” He looked to her mother and then the commander.
“You’re right, Rin,” her mother said. “We shouldn’t assume that his behavior in court tells us anything about him. Commander, I want to speak to him directly.”
“Aye, my Liege. I’ll send my best to find and collect him. And Holder Dors?”
“Yes, him as well.”
The commander picked up her notes and rose. “If that is all, my Liege?”
Rinli’s mother nodded, and Commander Tanres strode out the door. She’s a strong one, that Tanres, Rinli thought. Even as old as she is—in her early fifties, right?
“Well, Rin, that’s how it goes.”
Rinli looked up at her mother. “What? Oh, yes, the investigation.”
“I asked you to join us because I wanted you to see how important the right advisors can be.”
“Where’s your Will? Shouldn’t he be here as well?”
She watched as her parents exchanged glances that said they knew something they couldn’t share with her.
“Holder Corday has other matters to attend to. I’ll confer with him when he returns before your departure for Thristas with your father.”
Rinli nodded. What else could she do? “Uncle” Nalin busy with “other matters”? Then it occurred to Rinli that when one was a member of the Empir’s family, that was basically all you did. But a holder with a family of their own had responsibilities beyond the Empir.
“Would you like to join me for a ride?”
“No. Thank you. Not today. I’ll see you at dinner.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She jumped up out of her chair and rushed out the door, leaving no room for protest. As she mounted the stairs, she thought about how hard her mother was trying and how poorly she herself was responding. Maybe it was time for her to rethink.
She shook her head and stepped into her bedchamber, its door still guarded after a month. No, she reminded herself as her will threatened to weaken. I can’t give in. It’s magic. It’s wrong. Once you open yourself to the power, it can consume you.
But your mother? her inner voice asked. Is she consumed?
I don’t know. The stories they tell about her seem to say she was consumed once. Is she still?
Some questions had no answers, she knew, and this was going to be one of them, at least for now.
With Bala nearly incapacitated by the nausea pregnancy inevitably put her through, Nalin had taken to riding out to the vineyard most days on her behalf to check on the hard, green grapes building up to ripening in the next month or so. Jokal Artet, the Tuanes’ resident vintner, always greeted Nalin with her typically broad smile and a “wee taste” from a barrel nearing time for bottling. It was never a long visit. With Bala’s transfer hibernation looming, Nalin didn’t dare stay long chatting about the health of the vines or how this year’s pruning had succeeded in producing the potential of a much larger harvest than usual. The woman was obsessed, but her family had served the Tuanes in this capacity for generations. Nalin valued her dedication and made a point of telling her that every time he visited.
But now his visit had come to an end, and he mounted his horse. After slipping out of the prosthesis and pushing his stump into the saddle’s boot on the right, he bid farewell to Jokal and her vines and headed back to the castle in Seffa.
It took nearly an hour to cross the distance. The Tuane
estate was vast, perhaps because they’d settled in a very small town many miles from Minol’s only large city, Halorin. Here, servants and retainers from the Tuane castle comprised the totality of the little town of Seffa. They were a tight lot, and it had taken Nalin some years to gain their acceptance.
Cresting the last hill before descending into the valley in which the castle stood, Nalin caught sight of a horse and rider galloping towards him and knew immediately it was Alabar, dark hair in a short loose tail at the back of his neck. It’s time.
Three days of his own teats swelling and itching as Bala’s did the same and the restlessness he could no longer fight had told him that today or tomorrow would see this child they’d conceived make its appearance for transfer. He urged his own horse into a casual canter; he’d lived this moment before, whereas for Alabar this was new and clearly alarming.
They met at the fork in the road where one could choose north to the vineyard or south to the town. Nalin pulled his horse up—a calm having settled over the nervousness he’d experienced in the last few days—and halted short of his son. Alabar’s mount fought being slowed and only stopped to avoid running into Nalin’s steed.
“Mother says come.”
Nalin nodded. Bala never issued orders, save for twice in Nalin’s memory—when she felt the great sleep of transfer hibernation upon her. “Is Lin with her?”
“Yes, but I think she’s scared.”
“Then, we’d best ride our fastest to relieve your sister.”
In one simultaneous motion born of a lifetime’s experience, Nalin kicked the horse’s flanks, rose up in the saddle and pushed the reins forward and slack, and the animal responded by breaking into a gallop. Nalin could hear nothing at first from his son, but then the recognizable pounding of hooves coming up behind him told him that Alabar followed.
It took only a few minutes to reach the castle where a stable hand awaited them. No doubt, when Alabar had taken off to find his father, the boy had left instructions for someone to be ready on his return. As the hand took hold of his horse, Nalin unbuckled his right leg from the saddle’s boot, passed his prosthetic leg down to the hand and dismounted to his good leg. Then he slipped his stump into its substitute calf and foot and grabbed his cane.
Protector of Thristas: A Lisen of Solsta Novel Page 14
