by David Weber
Lazima chan Zindico trailed watchfully along behind, his eyes searching constantly for any tiny flaw in the crowd, any possible sign of danger for his charge.
He didn't find one, of course, which didn't prevent him from settling into what Andrin privately thought of as his "brooding protector mode" as Kinlafia seated her at one of the small, candlelit tables placed to catch the pleasant evening breeze swirling in through the wall of opened double doors. Kinlafia glanced at chan Zindico with a much more measuring eye than most of the young sprouts who had pestered Andrin all night ever showed. Obviously, the Voice recognized chan Zindico for what—and who—he truly was, whereas most of the spoiled, pampered aristocrats saw him only as one more item of furniture. Andrin liked that.
Kinlafia disappeared for a moment or two, then returned with not one glass of punch, but four . . . and Prince Howan Fai Goutin and Alazon Yanamar. Andrin thanked the Voice for the glass and raised it to her lips a bit more quickly than she might otherwise have to hide her smile. She'd wondered when Alazon would turn up. She also wondered how long it would be before the reporters noticed that wherever "candidate Kinlafia" happened to be, the Emperor's Privy Voice was virtually certain to turn up, and vice versa. The thought tickled her fancy, and her eyes gleamed mischievously as she considered how she might twit the two of them. The two Voices were busy looking at one another, and Andrin's dancing eyes met Prince Howan's equally amused gaze for just a moment.
"Forgive me, Voice Kinlafia," she said then, lowering her glass, "but I've noticed that some of the papers and some of the Voice reports are commenting on how much time you seem to be spending here in the Palace. There's speculation that your presence here indicates you've decided to become one of 'Zindel's men.' "
She paused, and Kinlafia cocked his head slightly to one side.
"I've seen the reports, Your Highness," he said. "May I ask why you mention them?"
"I know from something Yanamar said that Father didn't want it to seem as if he was too openly supporting your candidacy. But I've also noticed he seems to be spending an extraordinary amount of time talking to you . . . especially for someone who hasn't even won election yet. I was just wondering if you and he had changed your minds about the possible implications of his openly supporting you. Or, at least, appearing to support you?"
She looked at him very steadily, and saw something like recognition flicker back in those brown eyes of his, but he didn't reply immediately. Instead, he sat there for several seconds, gazing at her thoughtfully—much as Shamir Taje might have. That thought danced through the back of Andrin's brain, and as it did, she realized that one of the things which most appealed to her about Kinlafia was that he and Taje were the only two men, apart from her father, who didn't seem to care about her youthfulness when she asked a question. They actually thought about those questions, about their responses to them, because they extended respect to the person asking them, not simply out of courtesy to the title of that person.
Then he tilted his head to one side, glancing at Prince Howan, and arched one eyebrow.
"King Junni has become one of Father's closer allies, Voice Kinlafia," Andrin told him. "I don't think we need to worry about the Prince's discretion, do we, Your Highness?"
"Most assuredly not, Your Grand Imperial Highness," Prince Howan responded with a slight smile. His Ternathian had improved enormously over the last couple of months, thanks in no small part to the services of a Voice language tutor, and the irony in his tone came through perfectly. Then his expression sobered. "Still, I will certainly understand if Voice Kinlafia would prefer to answer your question in privacy."
The Eniathian prince started to stand, but Kinlafia shook his head.
"If Her Highness trusts your discretion, Prince Howan, then certainly I do, as well," he said. The prince looked at him for a moment, then inclined his head in a small bow which mingled acknowledgment and appreciation of the implicit compliment. He sat back down, and Kinlafia turned to Andrin.
"Actually, Your Highness, I don't really think you were wondering about campaign strategies at all, were you?"
Andrin's eyes widened. Despite what she'd just been thinking, his directness—and perceptiveness—surprised her. No wonder Alazon was so attracted to him!
"You're right," she admitted. "I suppose I'm just not used to asking such questions directly."
"With all due respect, Your Highness," Alazon put in, "you should get used to it." Andrin looked at her, and the Privy Voice shrugged. "You happen to be Heir-Secondary, Your Highness. Yes, you're young. But don't let the natural deference of youth keep you from asking the questions you need to ask and demanding the answers to them."
Andrin glanced at Prince Howan, the only other person at the table remotely her own age. His expression gave away very little, but she thought she saw a trace of agreement in his almond eyes as he looked at the Privy Voice. And as Andrin considered the advice herself, she remembered that Alazon Yanamar was far more than simply her father's Privy Voice. She thought about it for several seconds, then nodded in acknowledgment and moved her eyes back to Kinlafia.
"Taking Alazon's advice, Voice Kinlafia, am I just imagining that Father—and First Councilor Taje—both seem to be treating you much more as if you'd been a family adviser for years than like someone who just got back from Hell's Gate less than two weeks ago?"
"I—" Kinlafia began, and paused. He looked very thoughtful for a moment or two, then he gave a little shrug of his own—very much like Alazon's had been—and nodded.
"I wouldn't say they regard me as any sort of adviser, Your Highness. And they certainly don't regard me as any sort of retainer, or as some sort of official member of your household or administration. But there have been certain . . . developments, since your brother sent that flatteringly inaccurate letter of recommendation to your father. I'd really rather not go into all of them at this point, but—" he looked into her eyes once more "—some of them, at least, concern you."
"Me?" Andrin's pulse fluttered ever so slightly as she remembered her own thoughts during the Unification Parade. "Is it something Father's Glimpsed?" she asked.
"To some extent, yes."
She could tell Kinlafia hadn't really wanted to admit that, yet she felt strangely certain he'd never been tempted to lie to her, however diplomatically. The front of her brain told her she should take her cue from him, let it rest where it was. She'd already learned more than she'd really expected to, after all.
"Can you tell me what he's Seen?" she asked, instead.
"No, Your Highness. Not without his permission, I'm afraid."
Andrin felt a quick, brief flicker of anger—a spike of almost-rage, made far stronger by the background of her endless days of anxiety and fear for Janaki—and Kinlafia was a Voice. She knew he'd felt her anger, but he only looked back at her steadily, and anger turned into respect.
"I can . . . appreciate your discretion, Voice Kinlafia," she told him after a moment. "That's not to say I don't wish you could be more forthcoming." She sipped from her lemonade glass once more, then lowered it. "I'm sure you're well aware that Father and I have been experiencing an entire cascade of Glimpses for the past several days. It's a very . . . uncomfortable sensation. It worries me. No, it scares me, and I suppose that makes me more anxious than usual for some kind of reassurance."
"I do know about the Glimpses, Your Highness."
He looked across the table at her, his eyes filled with a compassion which seemed somehow only warmer and deeper because of her awareness of what he himself had endured. He was like her father in some ways, she realized. From a different sequence of causes, perhaps, but with that same inner core of strength. Not so much of toughness, or hardness, but of purpose. Of determination to meet whatever challenges the Triad might see fit to throw before them.
Was he always like that, I wonder? Or did what happened to him at Fallen Timbers change him that deeply?
"I will tell you this, Your Highness," he continued. "Your father—a
s I'm sure you need no one in the multiverse to tell you—loves you very, very deeply. I haven't known you very long myself, but I can already understand why that is. I've told your father that if I win election to Parliament, my opinions will be my own, and that if I disagree with him, I'll say so. I meant that then, and I mean it now. But since then, I've been privileged to come to know him—and you—far better than I ever expected I would. And speaking as Darcel Kinlafia, not Voice Kinlafia, and not Parliamentary Representative Kinlafia, I would count it an honor if you would call upon me for anything you need."
Andrin's eyes widened once more in fresh surprise. People told her father—and her, to some extent—that sort of thing every day. Sometimes they even meant it. But coming from Kinlafia, it was . . . different, somehow. There was an echo almost of what she often sensed from chan Zindico and her other personal armsmen, and yet that wasn't quite correct, either. Chan Zindico and the others were her family's loyal retainers—her servants, when it came right down to it. Even though it would never have occurred to her to think of them as such, they were always aware of that relationship. It helped define not simply how they regarded her, but who they themselves were.
Darcel Kinlafia didn't see her that way. She'd never been "his" grand imperial princess, although she supposed that was technically going to change in about eighteen hours. There was no institutional, dynastic sense of loyalty in what he'd just said, and in a way Andrin doubted she would ever be able to explain, even to herself, that made the sincerity of what he'd just said indescribably precious. He meant it when he said he would be honored to help her, and there was no reason why he had to be. No basis for her to simply expect him to be.
"Voice Kinlafia, I—"
She paused, her eyes burning strangely, and he reached across the table and very gently took her hand. It could have been a presumption, an intrusion, but instead of drawing back, her wrist turned as if of its own volition, meeting his hand palm-to-palm, and as she felt him squeeze her fingers, something clicked almost audibly deep down inside her. The bumblebees buzzed louder under her skin, the sound almost deafening, and something seemed to literally flow from her fingers into his hand. She'd never experienced anything like it, never heard of anyone experiencing anything like it, and she inhaled sharply, her nostrils flared.
"Your Highness?" she heard chan Zindico say from behind her, his voice sharpening with the instinctive bristle of the deadly guard dog he truly was. "Are you all right, Your Highness?"
"I'm fine, Lazima."
She turned her head to smile reassuringly up at him, then looked back at Kinlafia. The Voice must have recognized chan Zindico's flare of suspicion, but his expression was calm, almost tranquil.
"Voice Kinlafia, I think—" she began, only to break off abruptly as Alazon Yanamar jerked upright in her chair.
The Privy Voice might have been carved from ice, so still she sat, as she Listened to whatever message had arrived with such abrupt, brutal unexpectedness. And then, her eyes filled suddenly with tears.
"Alazon?" Andrin said quickly, urgently. She took her hand from Kinlafia's, reaching out to the older woman as Alazon's pain reached out to her. "What is it? What's wrong?"
Alazon closed her eyes, her face wrung with an anguish so deep, so bitter, that Andrin literally flinched. She saw Kinlafia responding to his beloved's grief, as well. He reached out towards Alazon, and only later did Andrin realize that he'd reached out towards her, not Alazon, first.
Andrin leaned towards Alazon across the table, unable to imagine what had hurt the older woman so. And then, abruptly, she realized the music had stopped. That an ocean of utter silence was flowing out from the ballroom, sweeping over the entire palace. She turned her head, looking through the arched colonnade back into the ballroom, trying to understand the sudden stillness. And then, at last, Alazon spoke.
"Your Highness," the anguish, the grief, in Alazon's beautiful voice ripped at Andrin like a knife. "Your Highness," the Privy Voice said, "your father needs you."
'Chapter Thirty-Four
Darcel Kinlafia followed Andrin and chan Zindico back into the ballroom. It was one of the hardest things he'd ever done, and his right arm tightened protectively around Alazon as the sledgehammers of shock, disbelief, grief, and fury hammered at their Voice's sensitivity.
Yet if it was terrible for them, it was still worse for Andrin, for she knew what her father was about to tell her.
He saw it in the way all color had drained out of her face, Felt it in the emotional aura trailing behind her like a fog of smoke and poison. Yet she crossed that ballroom floor tall, straight, and graceful.
"Yes, Papa?"
Her voice cut through the stillness, the silence, with an impossible clearness as she stopped before her parents. Her mother's face was as white as her own, but Empress Varena's eyes were filled with the dark terror of the unknown, not the even darker ghosts foreknowledge inflicted. Emperor Zindel's right arm was about his wife's shoulders, and his face was strained.
"Andrin." His deep, powerful voice sounded frayed about the edges, and his arm tightened around his wife. "We've just received word from Traisum. From Division-Captain chan Geraith. It's—"
His voice broke, and his left hand rose. It settled on the back of the empress' head, cradling it protectively, as he turned her and folded her against his massive chest. His own head bent as he bowed over her slenderness, and the tears of a strong man gleamed in his eyes.
"It's Janaki," Andrin said. Her father looked up, and she met his eyes levelly, steadily. "He's been killed."
The empress stiffened convulsively in her husband's arms. There was no word to describe the sound she made. It was far too soft to call a wail, yet too filled with pain to be called anything else. She shuddered, and the sound she'd made turned into something else—shattering sobs that filled the hollow silence.
"Yes," Andrin's father confirmed in a voice which had been pulverized and glued unskillfully back together once more.
Andrin swayed. Her regal head never drooped, yet Kinlafia could literally See the wave of agony that flowed through her. He stepped away from Alazon quickly, offering the princess his arm, and she took it blindly, without even looking at him.
Gods, he thought. Dear sweet gods. If Janaki's dead, then Andrin is—
"We have to go," her father told her across her sobbing mother's head.
"Of course, Papa." Andrin straightened her spine with a courage which made Kinlafia want to weep, and despite the tears which streaked her face and fogged her tone, her voice never wavered. "Razial and Anbessa will need us."
* * *
"How is she? How are they?"
Alazon looked up at the harsh, angry question, and shook her head.
"I don't know, love," she replied quietly. "The Empress and Razial are sedated. His Majesty is holding himself together—I don't know how. And I don't believe Anbessa really understands what's happened. Not yet."
"And Andrin?"
"She's just . . . sitting there," Alazon said sadly. "Sitting there in the nursery, beside Anbessa's bed. Razial's asleep in her arms—she cried herself out, poor little love, after the herbalist sedated her. Andrin—" Alazon's voice broke, and she raised gray eyes, soaked with tears, to Kinlafia's. "Andrin . . . sang them both to sleep," she managed to get out.
She began to weep once more, weep with deep, tearing shudders, and Kinlafia put his arms around her, hugging her tightly while his own eyes burned.
Again, he thought. The bastards have done it again.
His jaw clenched so tightly he thought his teeth would shatter as memories ripped through him, and white-hot rage boiled in their wake. The same Arcanan butchers who'd murdered Shaylar and all of his friends—his family—at Fallen Timbers. They'd done it again.
Despite his earlier conversation with the Emperor, or perhaps because of it, the pain of Janaki's death was like some huge, jagged splinter buried in his chest. And with that pain came the anger, the fury, that the Arcanans could wreak such
carnage on the hearts and souls of those for whom he cared even here, even in the very heart of Sharona.
His eyes burned even hotter as he thought about all the men he'd known, fought with. The men who'd avenged Shaylar's murder—Balkar chan Tesh, Grafin Halifu, Rokam Traygan, Delokahn Yar, Hulmok Arthag. . . . If the Arcanans had penetrated as deeply as Fort Salby, managed to kill Janaki, then all of those others—still more of Darcel Kinlafia's friends—must have been killed or captured first.
And now the treacherous murderers had killed the heir to the throne himself . . . and devastated his family.
"Is there anything I can do?" he whispered almost pleadingly into Alazon's hair. "Anything at all?"
"I—" she began.
"There will be something you can do, Voice Kinlafia," another, deeper voice interrupted Alazon's, and she and Kinlafia looked up quickly as Zindel chan Calirath strode into the room.
He looked in that moment, Kinlafia thought, like an Imperial Navy dreadnought with its main battery swinging out to bare its teeth as it forged into the teeth of a winter's gale. His face might have been hammered out of old iron, and his gray eyes were colder than chilled steel.
"Your Majesty?" Kinlafia said.
"There will be something," the Emperor repeated in a hard, flat voice. "I don't know what—not yet. But I know that much."
"Your Majesty, I—"
"You'll know what it is when the time comes, Darcel," Zindel said. "For now—" He drew a deep breath and raised both hands, scrubbing his face in his palms. "For now, all I know is that all the Arpathian hells together couldn't hold everything that's about to break loose right here in Tajvana."
His voice came out muffled by his hands, and Kinlafia looked at Alazon. Then both of them looked back at Zindel as the Emperor lowered his hands with a smile as bleak as northern sea-ice.
"Chava Busar is going to see his opportunity in this," the Emperor said. "Shamir Taje is out talking to the heads of the various delegations to the Conclave right now, and you can be damned certain Chava will soon have his . . . representatives doing exactly the same thing. They're going to use my son's death any way they can. As if what's happened to Janaki wasn't going to do damage enough all by itself."
