Chapter Three
"A RARE DELIGHT TO see you, cousin," Bolah said, closing the door behind him.
Her tone was warm, yet subtly sharp. Natun felt a blossom of guilt. Earned, no doubt; it had been years since his last visit.
The room was small and snug, walls heavy with expensive tapestries. Red and black velvet drapes dampened sound.
Bolah gestured to chairs at a small center table. Natun sat, passing his fingertips over the wood. Perripin mahogany, and that worthy of his scowl. But the inlaid marquetry of sigils of the Lesser Houses was good Arunkel wood—birch and amardide, if his old eyes didn't steer him wrong—and balanced the insult.
He examined the room. Cut-glass and shelves revealed all manner of beautiful items. Some were heirlooms and quite expensive. A few, he was nearly certain, were mage-wrought and priceless.
"I meant to come sooner," he said. "But I can hardly slip from the palace without my absence being noted."
"So I hear." He gave her a sharp look to see if this was humor, but her face showed nothing. "Wine? Twunta? Tea?"
"Tea," he said primly.
In truth, he would welcome something stronger, to soften the edge of this visit and the times that compelled it, but he could not return to the palace with smoke on his jacket, or wine on his breath.
What would it be like, he wondered, to indulge whatever whim took him, without regard to the many who watched him so keenly, seeking his corruptibility? A different life, that, certainly.
Bolah moved about the room, setting a kettle of water on her iron cookstove, adjusting the stovepipe flue. She brushed a spot of ash from her silk sleeve. Natun noted the worn fabric and a short thread where it should not be.
For a moment, annoyance flashed through him at this fashion breach—in his own staff, an unacceptable lapse. But no, with Bolah, it was deliberate. She cultivated a look of worn elegance, of cast-off wealth. It put her exclusive clients at ease and assured them that she was still entirely beneath them.
A familiar task, he thought sourly, and that thought led him to another: should he even be here? He gripped the sides of his chair, pushing himself to stand, to leave.
"How is our excellent queen, cousin?" Bolah asked smoothly.
At this, he eased himself back into his seat. That's why he was here: the queen. And, as annoying as he was, her Consort. They both needed him, even if they did not know it yet.
Yet. It was surely his duty as the queen's seneschal to know when yet was too close.
Bolah set a porcelain tea cylinder on a side table, her movements unhurried.
The queen's pregnancy had only just been announced, but Natun had been watching her closely. The signs were there. Trouble was brewing.
"She is most excellent," he said.
"Ah," Bolah said, drawing out the sound, as if this explained everything.
Natun narrowed his eyes at this sarcasm. "I can only say so much."
"You need something from me, Natun, or you wouldn't be here."
He caught himself raising and lowering his pressed lips over his teeth, a nervous habit he had long tried to break, and forced himself to a less mobile scowl.
"Yes," he managed.
"Then I think you can say a little more."
"What have you heard?" he demanded.
Bolah selected an ornately carved box from a shelf. Black gum wood, if Natun didn't miss his guess, and clearly House Nital's detailed work. With polished silver tongs that sported a filigreed handle, she pinched out a small tangle of deep red leaves, holding them over the center of the open tea cylinder, releasing them to fall into the hot water.
Again, she dipped the tongs into the box. Again, the slow motions, the release, and the fall of tea leaves into water.
Very slow. She was making him wait, and making the point that he had come to her, and not the other way around.
He exhaled. "I must rely on your absolute confidence."
"Yes, I think you must."
If they hadn't known each other since childhood, he might have missed her quiet rebuke.
"I have no choice," he said, "but to be discreet in every word." Which, for the most part, meant saying nothing. "The crown's honor is paramount. My loyalty must be unquestionable."
When the young queen Cern had taken the throne, Natun had entertained the idea of relinquishing his position to one of his apprentices. Surely, he thought, he had earned a respite. The old king had needed him, and he had served that great monarch gladly. But when Cern ascended, it became clear that Restarn's daughter needed him just as much.
Bolah placed before him a short cup that matched the cylinder, and gestured for him to continue.
"Tell me," Natun said, "who has spoken to you about the queen. The Consort, perhaps?"
She snorted, amusement and irritation across her aged face. "You think I live this well..." she gestured around the room, "because I am the village minstrel?"
"No," he muttered, his lips moving over his teeth again. "These are hard times, cousin. If my words come edged, it is because I am..." He inhaled, let it out slowly. "Afraid."
She seemed moved by his confession. He met her eyes, hoping that she would read there his desperation.
"You think the Consort would speak to me, but not to the queen's seneschal?" she asked gently.
"He doesn't trust me."
"Ah."
"It's not my fault," Natun said, feeling he must explain. "He's Cohort." Natun thought of young Emand's fall so many years ago, and Yandesa, sent back to House Kincel to die. Pohut's body on the king's audience chamber floor, which of course had fallen to Natun to clean up. "In the Cohort, too much trust is deadly."
So many of them, gone so young.
She nodded. "I can tell you this: The Houses maneuver early for control of the Charter Courts. They see the opportunity..." She paused, as if weighing her words. "For circumstances to shift."
Circumstances.
The queen's fragile rule, Bolah meant, made more fragile by Cern's recent withdrawal. It was too early in the pregnancy for this.
"They test for weak boards in the fence," Bolah added.
He knew who she meant. Risen fast and harsh, Innel sev Cern esse Arunkel, his brother's lifeblood on his hands, and now a House Etallan head as well, an act that Etallan would not forgive or forget. Innel took great risks. He made great enemies.
"Strong, for a weak board," Natun said. "The mining shipments are back on schedule. The rebellions are quelled."
"Do these not count in his favor?"
"Some say he takes credit that is not his," Natun replied.
"The battle of Otevan? The Teva treaty? Surely those are his to claim?"
Natun spread his hands. "Others say that General Lismar Anandynar brokered the treaty, while Innel lay wounded in his tent. But we cannot know the truth."
"We cannot," agreed Bolah.
Natun looked down at his hands on the table, a fair match to her own, a map of the hills and valleys and landmarks of age.
How many palace doors had these hands opened? How many ambassadors had he placated with some gesture, royals soothed as he pointed out a tapestry or sculpture as they waited to see the monarch?
From secrets to dispatches, from quills to trays, keys to coins, Natun had carried anything and everything that could not be entrusted to mere servants, his hands conveying some of the most important affairs of the Anandynar royals.
A shepherd, that's what he was, shepherding the monarchy across days and decades, from the blood-red and ebony-black robes of state to the pages of the Histories. It was not too much to say, were he of a mind to boast, that some of the things he had touched on behalf of the monarchy had great consequence.
As this one might.
Unless he was wrong. Could he be wrong?
Just yesterday Natun had seen a second doctor rush into the queen's quarters. Later that day, to his shock, Natun himself had been excluded from the quarter.
Bolah poured from the steaming tea cylinder into his cup, a slight trembling in her aged hand.
No, he was right.
"The queen," he said.
"Trouble with the pregnancy?"
Natun blinked slowly, forcing his breath to be steady. The work of a lifetime, this cultivation of a controlled demeanor.
"What do you mean?"
"I only guess, cousin. You would not be here if it were not so very important."
His voice dropped. "In times past, the Consort has come to you to secure the services of the High One called Keyretura."
"I cannot say."
"I was not asking. I know who is in the palace and who is not, and mages are no exception." He took a breath. "My service to the crown, Bolah—my life's work, if anything is. That High One healed Sachare sev Cern after she stood between our queen and certain death. We need him to be close by, in Yarpin, so that when the Consort realizes that he needs a mage to save the queen, it will not be..." his mouth moved silently, struggling to force out the words. "Too late."
Too late. The queen dead, no named heir, no child, no succession—at best a political melee among the royals. At worst, the Houses would begin to think the unthinkable.
No. At worst, it could be the end of his beloved country, Arunkel.
"Send for him," Natun urged.
"You want a mage of Keyretura's standing sent for?"
Natun made a vague gesture. "Petitioned, then? However it is done."
Illegally, was how it was done. If it came out that the queen's seneschal had initiated this—no. He must seem irreproachable. Hence this visit.
Bolah gestured. "Drink, cousin. A fine brew. It will not stay warm forever."
"What does?" he muttered, putting the tea cup to his lips.
A subtle, many-layered taste met his tongue. He sighed in satisfaction at this salutary pleasure. There seemed to be fewer and fewer of them as the years piled up, the reward for long life a kind of curse. His joints ached. He moved slowly. Names he knew sometimes flitted away like uncatchable butterflies.
He looked down into the small bits of leaves at the bottom of the cup. "I never expected to serve so long. Does it not seem astonishing to you, cousin, what we have survived?"
She snorted gentle agreement.
He thought of the closed door to the queen's quarters, of what might yet happen. "Sometimes I wish..."
"Yes?"
"Green pastures on which to roam. Flowers. Grasses, where I might eat my fill, without being milked quite so... vigorously. Do you ever wish for such things?"
"Until my clients stop pressing embarrassingly large purses upon me, I can hardly turn them away." She eyed him. "The Anandynars have asked much of you."
"It is my work, to be asked much of."
"Released to green pastures," she mused, staring distantly. "It would need to be a very long way away, to be sure we were not drawn back into service. When I think of how much we both know..." She shook her head. "There are many ways not to be milked, cousin. We must take care to be sure it is to pastures we are being led, and not the butcher's table."
He nodded glumly. For a time they sat together in silence.
His thoughts circled. What would his life be about, in a world where the only daughter of the great king Restarn died with her unborn child still within?
Nothing. His life would be about nothing.
His chest felt tight, and his swallow was painful. He blinked, snuffled, scowled, then looked around the room, seeing little. Eyes damp, his gaze returned to meet his cousin's.
"We can't let her die, Bolah."
She took his hands in hers. "No, cousin. We can't."
"Mages," spat the eparch of House Etallan, as if it were a curse.
Good, Tokerae thought. Better to have his mother's displeasure directed somewhere else. Anywhere else.
"Mother," he said, bowing deeply. He had not seen his mother in—had it really been months?
It had.
Tokerae keenly regretted having slept at home last night, and worse, having slept late enough that his mother could summon him before he was already gone.
He should have approached her first, months ago. He knew this. But each day his resolve rotted further.
She would demand an account of his whereabouts and actions. Engaged in the business of the House, mother, he would say, with a slightly affronted tone, quenching her doubt, his voice confident, his stance certain. He was eparch-heir, after all.
Now, facing her withering look, he found himself instead examining his feet. And she hadn't even spoken.
Well, the one word. Mages.
Tokerae regretted forgoing a swallow of wine. His reasoning had been sound—clear thought, clear breath, give her no cause for complaint. But the craving nagged. Which itself was a distraction. Next time he'd allow temptation a hand in his decision.
He made a show of examining the new set of lenses that dangled in the window facing the spring garden, spreading rainbows across the metallic filigreed walls. Lenses from House Glass, one of Etallan's vassal Houses.
Damn, but Tok's thoughts felt muddled. He cleared his throat. Mages. What could he say about the magi?
"I must assume," she said in a tone he knew presaged a cutting comment, "that you've been busy engaging with various and relevant persons these last months, your Cohort among them, and not merely indulging yourself in smoke and drink and body sweat. Have you heard anything useful, my dear son, or have you simply been improving your already impressive capacity for excess?"
Oh, I've heard things, mother. If you knew what they say about our House—vile jokes about losing our heads, and changing our colors to dried blood.
"Yes," he managed after a moment, hoping that was the right answer. "You'll be pleased." He took a wider stance and at last met her gaze.
She gestured for him to continue.
"Mages," Tokerae said, echoing the derisive edge of her voice, "have been seen, in-city. Black robed. Walking our streets, as if our laws mattered not at all."
She made a long, guttural sound he finally deciphered as disappointment. She strolled to the long mantel atop the wide hearth and examined a set of ten silver bells resting in a carved amardide and ebony stand. They had been bestowed upon House Etallan a generation ago by Niala esse Arunkel, the Grandmother Queen. Niala the Conqueror.
The bells had been a token of monarchical favor, one that Etallan was rightly proud of, given to commemorate the House's acquisition of the Lesser House Bell at the Charter Courts. Etallan had held House Bell ever since.
"I'm fond of these," his mother said, gracing him with a fast, bright smile that he did not for a moment mistake for affection. "So well-cast. Cleverly tuned, the set of them, to sound in harmony. A fine example to us all, don't you think?"
"Yes, mother," he said, pretty sure that was the right answer. He pushed his sluggish mind to find the trap.
She took the middle bell, shook it, cocked her head to listen. A high, pure sound filled the room, ending abruptly as she returned it to the stand. She took another, shook it—a higher sound yet—set it back again.
"Ah, but this one—this is my favorite." She took hold of the largest of the bells, turned it upside down to examine the inside. "The clapper is made of bronze, tin, and nickel, blended to achieve an unusually resonant tone." She rang it sharply, then again. The deep pealing sound hinted at multiples of tones as it echoed off the high ceilings.
With an abrupt motion, she hurled it into the unlit fireplace, the reverberating sound abruptly muffled in a puff of ash. "If I never see it again, I will be sad, Tokerae. I truly will. But..." Her smile hardened, showing teeth. "I have other bells."
Ah, that was today's game: to put him in his place. She had named him Eparch-Heir of House Etallan, but it was not etched in stone. Drawn in ash, perhaps.
They both knew that if he wanted to be eparch someday, he would play any game she put before him.
She stepped very close to him. Full grown, he topped her by a head and a half. Why did it feel the other way around?
Reaching up, she put a hand on the side of his face. From anyone else, a tender gesture. He felt dread.
"What else have you heard, my son?"
Jibes and mockery, whispered snickers. Outrageous quips.
Tokerae had been spending nights with a particular woman, named Lilsla. Her half-sister's uncle's wife worked in the palace and relayed news back down the chain to Lilsla. Tokerae had put the Cohort's royal anknapa teachings to good use, and had convinced Lilsla that she had charmed and bedazzled him beyond sense. She told him everything.
Thus Tokerae had information that he'd been saving for this very moment, to quell his mother's accusations.
"The queen," he said, in a tone he'd gained from years from the Cohort, proximity to the old king—and yes, his mother. "Is withdrawn from sight, beyond her innermost circle and a new doctor."
A troubled pregnancy for the only scion of a dead king? How ironic, if the greatest threat the Anandynars faced came from within.
Across the empire's centuries, Etallan was the only House that kept the Anandynars in check. Unsaid outside the House, but whispered within, was that but for a small accident of history, the monarchy's name would be Etallan.
Said more quietly was that this might yet be corrected.
His mother's look went blank, and he felt a dawning elation. Had he surprised her? He began to smile.
"Yes," she said. "The old doctor has been withdrawn, a second brought in, to be watched by a third. A fourth waits in the wings. Very well, you found this out on your own. I suppose it's a start. Do you know about the mutt's woman, then?"
Tokerae's smile vanished. "Rumors about Innel's women dissolve upon approach, Mother. He keeps his snake sheathed. He is exceedingly—" Clean was not the right word. As Cohort sibs, Tokerae had seen Innel grow into abilities and ambition, and Innel was nothing like clean. Rather, he managed to surround himself with people who stayed clean for him. His brother Pohut, for example, until Innel had murdered him, that act somehow forgiven by the old king.
Now the mutt was Royal Consort and Lord Commander both, and had an even greater shield to hide his stains: the queen.
For a moment, Tokerae imagined Innel's crumbling world should the queen die in childbirth. An enticing vision. "Devoted," he finished at last.
"Devoted," his mother said. "I see. What of that young woman he kept chained in a cell, then in a wagon at Otevan? The one the soldiers laughingly called his whore?"
Tokerae took a breath. "Ah," he said. "That was Innel's father's sister's child, from the slime-puddle his family crawled out of to come to Yarpin. She was spouting dirt about his father, and he wanted..." He trailed off at his mother's widening smirk. "He wanted..."
"There is no such cousin."
"Respectfully, mother. I have it from Mulack who had it direct from Innel when he spoke with him before Otevan." Tok faltered to a stop. Since when had he trusted anything Mulack said? He felt as foolish as his mother's look said he was. He summoned irritation, waved a hand. "How can you be sure of this?"
"Because I sent people into that river valley slime-puddle to find out. My informants are better than yours. I don't fuck them. I pay them."
He felt his face go hot. "I know things from my... informant... that no amount of money could have gained me."
She snorted. "When you're older, you'll understand how much more reliable are the hard chains of coin than the slippery silks of sex."
This was not going well. Time to resort to dignified deference.
"Mother. If I have failed you in any way, allow me to make it right. Tell me what you want me to do and I will do it."
The honest annoyance on her face was an improvement. "Get yourself back to the palace. You're the queen's Cohort, damn it; they can't turn you away. I want to know what is going on."
But Tokerae heard nothing past "the palace."
He could still see his cousin's Eregin's head as it flew through the air, blood spraying across everyone who had the wretched fortune to be standing close to Innel and his impossibly fast sword.
The head bounced across the stone floor in three soft, meaty thuds. It seemed so wrong that the moment did not make a great deal more noise.
Tokerae was no stranger to such things. Old king Restarn had required Cohort education to include the observation and study of questionings and executions. There was an art to dealing death, the old king said, and they would learn it. While only the odd Putar of House Kincel was truly passionate about the subject, no one in the Cohort dared retreat from the lessons.
But not one of those experiences had made Tokerae so desperate to wipe the images from his mind.
These last months, Tokerae had consumed an astonishing variety of elixirs. Twunta and kanna were easily obtained. Seuan qualan white was much harder to find, but find it he did, then cut it paper-thin from a small, translucent brick, and tucked it up inside his cheeks. The qualan had cleared the haunting images in swirls of joy, bringing welcome relief, but it didn't last.
Then Tokerae scraped off small chunks of the green resinous floral-scented phapha into a pipe, and smoked it alongside the twunta. That helped for a time, but sleeplessness returned. He poured powdered duca and kanna into his wine.
The mix proved a potent combination. Tokerae woke to discover that he had lost whole days. Only when he saw Lilsla's expression did he realize how far he'd slipped, and that if this continued, he would never become eparch.
He stopped. The nightmares came back, along with the worst breath of his life. He considered consuming the rest of everything he had, all at once, to make it stop for good. Lilsla kept him alive.
His cousin Eregin had been an innocent man. Offered to the queen, to make right House Etallan's revealed transgression—not treason, despite the mutt's outrageous accusation.
Eregin, born to the Great House Etallan, was meant to pay for the House's overstep. He should have been imprisoned a short time in the tower, perhaps a light whipping, allowing the crown to demonstrate her displeasure. That was how such things were properly handled, giving everyone a chance to save face, to reset the balance. The offering should have been accepted and honored.
Instead, Innel had murdered the man in front of his family and the queen. House Etallan was shamed beyond measure.
Tokerae had burned the clothes he'd worn that day. He still felt the smear of Eregin's blood on his face, and washed obsessively. Every night, mid-sleep, he woke from the nightmare. The headless body, the knees buckling, the torso crumpling to the stone floor like some slaughtered animal.
"Yes, Mother," he said bleakly, belatedly.
"He's not going to lop your head off right there in the hallway," his mother snapped, too clearly reading his thoughts.
"No?" Tokerae demanded. "What would stop him?"
His eparch-mother's expression went dark. "Eregin was not my heir. That is a line even the mutt dare not cross. It would be war." She exhaled slowly, banking—not dousing—her fury. Tokerae found it oddly comforting that his eparch-mother might consider his death less acceptable than his cousin's. "Get yourself back in play, boy. Pull your tail out from between your legs and start sniffing some palace ass."
Palace.
What a strange procession they had made that day, his family shuffling their way out of the palace, down the front steps, to where the sun shone hot and bright on the ground. Nothing rushed in any of their motions. Nothing to reveal dishevelment or lack of dignity.
Nothing but a dripping head, held tight in his father's chalk-white grip.
"Go and make nice with your Cohort siblings," his mother was saying as the familiar images played through Tokerae's mind. "Find out if our ransomed Sutarnan has recovered enough wits to tell us what happened at Garaya. I'm going to punish those putrid traitors, the moment we have things in hand."
Things in hand.
At the bottom of the palace steps, his father dropped the head, bent double, and began to retch. His mother gave him a disgusted look and snapped at Tokerae to pick it up.
Such a simple thing. He meant to obey. He told himself to. Step forward, reach down, grab the hair of his cousin's head.
But as his father continued to spew bits of food, Tokerae felt frozen. Eregin's face stared up at him, one eye bizarrely open and the other shut, as if winking at him in some shared grisly joke.
His mother had been furious. The eparch of the most powerful Great House of the Arunkel empire, who had named him eparch-heir, was displeased with him.
That had not changed.
"The woman he had in chains at Otevan," his mother was now saying. "Is she the seer everyone was talking about? Is that what the cursed dog Innel thought he had?"
Innel, fool enough to believe in fortune tellers?
"He knows better than to credit such things."
"Does he? You've proven you don't know him nearly as well as you think. Who said, 'Best we go to Cern, before she sends for us'? Who said, 'She's my Cohort sister—she'll understand'? And we carried Eregin home in pieces."
His father had slowly stood, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and picked up Eregin's head again by the thick mop of hair. Only that morning his cousin had been pressed into a carriage for the family's hastily arranged audience with the queen.
"The rain of gold at Otevan," his mother said. "No trivial magic, that. Who arranged for magi to be there? It's time we had one of our own. Find us one."
"What? Me?" Tokerae squeaked.
"You want to be eparch, start earning your place at my table."
Start earning? He considered the years in the Cohort, the agonizing and careful work of befriending Innel, the dangerous travel to Otevan and back—all at his eparch-mother's direction. He swallowed angry words.
"Be discreet," she continued. "The royals embarrass themselves. The palace might as well be an inn for mages. Revolting."
"I understand, mother." Not really—he didn't have the first idea of how to hire a mage. Not quite the sort of thing he could ask his Cohort sibs over drinks. "Perhaps I can even find one less expensive than our new foundry." A small joke.
"Don't be a fool," she snarled. "No cheap mages. Find us the best."
"How am I to know that?" Frustration leaked into his tone.
"Discuss with those who know, eparch-heir. Find out who they recommend but can't obtain. That's who we want."
Reveal his House's intention to break Arunkel law?
No, just his own. She was dangling him out in the wind, giving him the risk. If he failed, she could disown him. But if he succeeded...
"And Innel's woman," she said. "What does she look like? I want a portrait. Where is she? Find out."
His mother inspected him for flaws as if he was a black-market iron ingot. "And I don't care that you sleep with trash, boy, but this fixation on one piece of it makes you look like trash yourself. Spread your seed. If you can't find legs to spread, I will arrange them for you."
With a sick feeling, he realized that his mother knew exactly who Lilsla was.
"I don't need you to find whores for me, mother."
"I am gratified to hear it. Now go."
He held his breath and his tongue until he had left and was well on his way back to his own room, where a carafe of wine waited. He wondered how much of it he would need to wash away the taste of his mother.
Tokerae stood outside the front door of the Boar and Bull.
Go on in, he told himself. Having anticipated his own reluctance, he had refused himself drink until now. Desire nagged. There's drink within. Yet there he stood, hand on the door.
Then he remembered the bell in the fireplace.
The door yielded to his press. He took the outer hallway to the back room, which the Cohort had long ago dubbed the Pig's Ass. He leaned on that heavy, familiar door a moment, composed himself, took a breath, and pushed inside.
The table was full of Great House scions.
"Well, well," said Taba—the only woman there, and one of the few to finish out the Cohort's formal and final years. Her captain's green-and-blue jacket stretched across wide shoulders. A smile showed teeth. She and her cousin Fadrel—away at sea—had been House Helata's presence in the Cohort.
"Look what's staggered into the barn." This from Mulack, Eparch-Heir of House Murice. Mulack's hands, thick with rings, were held high in a dramatic gesture, a smoldering reed tucked between two fingers. His starched white double-folded cuffs set off rich purple sleeves. Murice—House of Dye and Weave—was proud of their colors, and Mulack's clothes were always immaculate. He let out a long, loud belch.
Tokerae smirked, nodded at Taba, gave a head tilt to the brothers Dil and Putar of House Kincel, in their beige and dark gray colors. Thinking better of it, he gave a nearly respectful inclination to Putar, the oddest of their Cohort sibs, in deference to his new position as assistant Minister of Justice.
The last of them was Ilmach del House Passare. Nearly as tall as Tokerae, who still loomed above his Cohort sibs, Ilmach's Passare grays and greens were mottled with road dirt. "Business," Ilmach said, answering Tokerae's wordless question.
Business between Passare and Kincel, he meant. Passare's Roads, bridges, and wayhouses, and Kincel's stone and brothels. Their business was as old as the empire.
It had occurred to Tokerae the other night, while twirling Lilsla's curls of honey-colored hair around his fingers, that Cohort was nothing except business. No moment unguarded, no word that did not affect future arrangements, understandings, and contracts. The trick was to make it seem personal.
To business, then.
Tokerae found an open chair, doing his best to act as if the scrutinizing looks of his Cohort sibs meant nothing. He leaned his long frame back in the chair and took the full mug to his right, which happened to be Mulack's, and downed it entirely, earning a sour look from the smaller man, who snapped fingers at a servant, who obediently loped off.
Taba put her wide hands on the table. "We thought perhaps your esteemed mother was keeping you abed a time, to recover from your shock." Her smile deepened the taunt.
"I've had business to attend to," Tokerae said, hoping his forceful tone might carry across the emptiness of the statement.
Mulack gave him a raised eyebrow. "A side-gig as an anknapa?"
"Taste-master for Elupene's twunta crop?" Taba asked, following Mulack's lead.
Mulack tapped ash from his reed into a small plate, then took a drag. "Food. Drink. Smoke. Why do our Elupene sibs not host us for tastings?"
"Armand died in that fall, remember?" said Ilmach.
"Not exactly clever, dueling on the palace roof," said Dil.
"Sutarnan was only half Elupene, anyway," Taba said. "A mess, they say."
"Lucky to be alive," said Dil.
"Ransom, not luck," Mulack said, waving the pungent reed in two fingers. "A child of two Houses—Garaya would be foolish to pluck a hair from his head, with what each one is worth."
"What you say makes no sense." This from Putar, who stared at them, his tone prim. "As Eparch Heir, Tokerae would never be employed to teach fornication or to opine on the quality of twunta cultivars. Your words are either foolish or erroneous."
Putar's cup, Tokerae noticed, was untouched.
"It's a joke, brother," Dil muttered.
"Explain it to me," Putar said flatly, his look falling first on his brother, then on Mulack, then on Tokerae.
A silence took the table, as fast looks assigning responsibility were tossed back and forth, finally settling on Dil, who looked distinctly uncomfortable.
Putar almost never came to these gatherings, which could be because he was rarely invited. In years past, the Cohort had managed the odd Putar by the simple means of ignoring him.
Then Cern esse Arunkel had made the mutt the Lord Commander and Royal Consort, and Innel—in a move that was either stunningly clever or deadly stupid—had made Putar assistant Minister of Justice. The Minister of Justice oversaw criminal assessments and executions.
Putar's knack for unsettling even his Cohort sibs was now backed by this newly minted power. From the looks on the others' faces, Tokerae suspected that they were musing on how astonishingly creative and breathtaking the last few executions had been. No one wondered if Putar had a hand in designing them. His touch was obvious.
Dil, well on his way to becoming House Kincel's official palace liaison, due to his agreeable and diplomatic nature, put a casual touch on Putar's arm.
Suddenly Putar gave his brother's hand a great deal of attention. Dil snatched it back, cleared his throat. "We have all, ah, heard that Tokerae has been sexing and imbibing rather a lot since the... " he looked sideways at Tokerae, "event."
"The event? What event? You mean the beheading?" Putar asked. He waved a hand around the table. "This is exactly what's always been wrong with the Cohort: words get stuck in your throats behind your gaudy, jeweled chokers. It's as if you can't think at all. I suspect inbreeding."
A new silence settled on them all. Taba was grinning, as if this were a great joke. Mulack tongued and sucked at his teeth, as if trying to dislodge a seed. Ilmach looked around the table, eyebrows raised.
Behind Putar's back, Dil gestured urgently at Mulack's servant, who had just returned with a carafe of wine. The servant allowed Dil's motions to sway him from his intended target, his master, Mulack. Dil took hold of the servant's sleeve in one hand, downed his drink with the other, and gestured for a refill.
Tokerae could well imagine that being Putar's brother might make intoxicants necessary. He himself wanted more. A lot more.
Mulack, his empty cup held high, growled at his servant, who pretended not to notice as he filled the mug and fled. Mulack moved the full cup to the side away from Tokerae.
All this was, Tokerae reflected, probably not quite what his mother had meant when she told him to make nice with the Cohort. He took a deep breath, readying himself to speak. That was all it took: he had everyone's attention.
"Well," he began, "Yes. I've been... Some indulgences were..." he worked his mouth, "necessary."
While Mulack was momentarily looking elsewhere, and Tokerae demonstrated the length of his arm by reaching across him to again take his drink. Tokerae sipped the thick, dark red liquid, nodding appreciatively, and gave Mulack an abbreviated toast.
Mulack scowled and shouted at his departed servant. "Two carafes. Hells, make it three."
"Indulgences?" Putar asked, giving Tokerae an unwavering stare. "Do you mean sex and drugs, yes? Or is there something else?"
In a stage-whisper, Dil said to his brother: "You do know he's Etallan's eparch-heir, right?"
"So?"
This was all getting a bit out of control. Tokerae decided to try Putar's direct approach.
"Putar doesn't care who the eparch-heir is," Tokerae said, smiling, "Because he will, eventually, oversee all our executions."
While everyone digested this unsettling notion, Putar asked, with sudden and startled surprise, "Is that what this is about? What, you think being polite to me now will change anything about how you die?"
It was Putar's astonished expression that did it. Taba, who had just taken a mouthful of ale into her mouth, sprayed it across the table, the wet of it managing to reach all the way to Tokerae's face. Mulack choked on whatever was in his throat. For a moment, Dil held tight to his composure, his face twisting in failing control, then he broke into snickers. Ilmach began the donkey-bray laugh that he was famous for.
In moments, Mulack was wheezing for air, pointing at Putar's deeply confused expression, and Taba was flat-out bellowing, pounding her now quite empty mug on the table. Around the table, all the Cohort sibs save Putar were helplessly in the grip of loud mirth.
Tokerae was not immune. He wiped his nose, snorting as the tide of humor rose, crested, and began to ease. It had been a long time since he'd laughed like this. It almost made him miss the Cohort.
A wide-eyed servant at the doorway—Dil or Putar's, from the livery—looked to see what the noise was about, then quickly backed out.
As the laughter died down, Mulack raised his mug. "To our brother Putar, may his great and noble art amuse us all into our quite doddering old ages."
"To Putar!"
"Huzzah!"
"Old age!"
Dil smiled, but his eyes were on his brother and edged with concern. Even Dil was not confident that his blood ties would protect him from his brother.
With the release of tension, Tokerae judged it a good time to test the waters.
"While we're toasting," Tokerae said, "let's drink to our sister and queen: Cern esse Arunkel and her winter child." He raised his mug. Everyone followed.
"The queen!"
"The heir!"
Did they know the rumors about Cern's troubled pregnancy? If they did, they hid it well.
Tokerae smiled even more widely, and raised his mug again. "And the Lord Commander, hero of Otevan and quencher of rebellions."
The table stuttered to silence. Tokerae licked his lips, feeling out the looks, not entirely liking the temperature.
"Look here," he said, gesturing around the table. "We're all Cohort—we understand: Innel did what he had to do. I don't..." Could he pull this off? He let some small splash from the ocean of fury he felt slip out as a short, bitter laugh. "What choice did he have? Standing in his place, I would have done the same." He smiled wryly. "Were I as good a swordsman, that is. What a stroke that was, eh?"
His stomach churned sourly. It took all his years of Cohort training to pull off this act.
But they looked convinced, easing back into the usual guarded, sardonic expressions.
Except for Putar, who was nodding with rare enthusiasm. "Yes! I heard all about it from the guards, but they don't have Cohort eyes. Fates, I wish I'd seen it. What I'd give..." His eyes were hard and bright on Tokerae. "They told me—" he shook off Dil's quelling hand—"told me not to ask you. As if you were a child of delicate sensibilities. An impossible cut! What did Innel do? Describe it to me, Tok."
Tokerae swallowed bile, the sharp pain in his stomach clearing his head. He met Putar's hungry look.
"No."
Tokerae heard his own breath, felt his pulse speed. For a long moment, the Eparch-Heir of House Etallan and the probable future Minister of Justice locked hard gazes. Whatever it was that Putar saw in his face, it was enough; Putar looked away, his features etched in disappointment.
Dil exhaled slowly in relief, gave Tokerae a tiny, apologetic eyebrow raise.
"But never mind all that," Tokerae said, struggling to recover the semblance of his previous joviality. "I've been remiss, not keeping company with you, my good sibs. Now that we're all achieving our positions, we should be working together."
"How do you mean?" Ilmach asked.
"The Charter Courts are coming," Tokerae said.
Mulack favored this with a long belch. "The Charter Courts are always coming."
"Or have just come," Putar said, annoyed. "They happen every fifteen years. No one should be surprised."
"Even so," Tokerae said. "Much is possible this time that might have not always been."
"I can stomach no more of these mush words," Putar said, standing. "You cannot seem to speak clearly."
Dil sighed heavily, looking as if he'd far prefer to stay, but he stood, too, and followed Putar with a longing glance back, then the two of them were gone.
"How interesting, Tok," Mulack said, stubbing out his reed, and sorting through his mugs and glasses, sniffing at the smallest of them. "Do continue."
Tokerae considered the four Great Houses represented here.
Mulack was uncontested Eparch-Heir of House Murice. Mulack's eparch-mother, unlike Tokerae's, seemed to have no desire to put his title in question, a certainty Tokerae envied.
Taba had steadfastly refused to take any title beyond ship's captain, but it was widely known that she held far more sway in House Helata than the position would imply.
Ilmach's eparch-father had yet to name an heir, but Ilmach was steady and sensible and was widely seen as his father's first choice for House Passare.
And Tokerae intended to be Etallan's eparch, his mother's bells notwithstanding.
He looked earnestly at each of them as he calculated the connecting forces between their Houses. The understandings and compromises. The long-held grudges.
"Since the last Courts, we've all reached our majority. The next is a scant handful of years hence. Must we bicker among ourselves? Do we really need the crown to adjudicate our struggles, as if we were unruly children? We are the most powerful Cohort in three generations. Surely we can agree among ourselves who will take each contract, and ratify the Lesser Houses without help. For that matter, perhaps it's time to reconsider the institution itself."
That last was a step too far. He could tell from their faces.
"Funny," Taba said, though for a change, she wasn't smiling.
"Etallan feeling a royal chill?" asked Mulack.
Tokerae shook his head. "We all feel it. When we fight over the Charters, no one wins."
"Except the Houses that actually do," Taba said. She shut her eyes, then opened them to slits, staring at Tokerae. "Which might not be Etallan, this time, hmm? But I have the idea you're leading somewhere. Go on."
Tokerae exhaled, spread his long fingers atop the table, looking at the one ring he wore, the one with the emblem of his house, bright brass worked into black silver. "Innel."
"Ah," said Mulack, punctuating it with a shrug. "Seems to be doing serviceable work. Got her pregnant, which was surely his first duty."
Taba gave a dismissive snort. "For a boy to make a pup is a moment's distraction."
"Not so clear with the Anandynars," Ilmach said.
A few years ago, that statement would have been whispered. Times were indeed changing.
Mulack made a hurry-up gesture. "Get to it, Tok."
"The mutt has too much to do," Tokerae said. "He cannot hold all the fish he's netted. Overwhelmed. Distracted. All his convoluted treaties. I blame the hard knock to the head he took at the battle of Otevan."
"What hard knock?" Ilmach asked.
Tokerae shrugged. "I see no other explanation. Best education in the empire and all he's done since Otevan is talk and look under the bed for monsters. Why is the actual treason of Garaya allowed to stand? Where is the force of the crown?"
"And yet," Mulack said, "The rails are no longer under attack, and your House's ore is flowing. Yes?"
Tokerae waved this away. "Nothing to do with Innel. Confidence in the monarchy, with the queen about to produce an heir. Meanwhile, the borderlands grow arrogant, while the mutt invents treasons, and spies on his Cohort sibs, instead of holding the provinces to account."
"Spies on you, you mean," said Taba.
"All of us," Tokerae said firmly.
"Perhaps Etallan got off easy, all things considered," Mulack said.
Tokerae's tamped down the rage he felt. "I was splattered with my kinsman's death-blood," he said. "The mutt derided my House's colors. My House's colors! What price did you pay for similar work, House Murice?" He looked at Taba. "House Helata? Do you remember what we said to each other in the amardide forests, beyond all hearing?"
Taba's lips thinned, her eyes flashed.
No, this was wrong—he must shift to another path, if he wanted cooperation.
With effort, he steadied his breathing, adjusted his tone. "He killed my cousin, siblings. No minor insult. What happens the next time the mutt is allowed to decide the queen's justice with the stroke of a blade? Who in your House will suffer a bloody humiliation?"
"Do you know something, Etallan?" Taba asked softly.
He met her look. "Nothing was said to implicate you, Helata. Not a word." Though saying that now implied plenty, which from her ugly expression was clear to her as well.
Well, he was in it now. Might as well go all the way.
"Let me be blunt, brothers and sister: the mutt does not understand the business of the realm as we do. Doesn't have our history. Our investment. This common, House-less man, who has impregnated our queen, who looks for plots everywhere—give him a chance and he'll put his clumsy fingers into the already tangled Charters Courts—you know he will—and make of them a disaster." Then, slowly, and with a look at each of them. "If we let him."
Ilmach sat back, arms crossed, watching intently.
A noncommittal sound issued from Mulack's throat. "And you suggest...what?"
"Encourage him to keep his focus on the queen. Pleasing her in the bedroom. Smoothing the way for the child. Rather than putting his nose in our business." Tokerae dropped his voice. "Our time is coming, siblings. Day by day our Houses hand the reins to us. If we are not allied in purpose, we will be divided, and more House blood will flow."
"Prophecy, brother?" laughed Mulack.
"Simple observation of evidence. But if we work together... look up, my friends." He gestured overhead at box beams and a grime-speckled, whitewashed ceiling. "This cannot hold us. We break through. We rise above." There, that was suitably picturesque, yet deniably unspecific.
He searched the faces around the table, far more sober than the multitudes of near-empty glasses, mugs, and ashtrays would suggest. Tokerae's words were landing.
He reached again for Mulack's drink. This time, the eparch-heir of House Murice spread his hands wide in a gesture of welcome.