23. Alar
ALAR
“The most dangerous ground a King has to traverse is the polished floor of his own court.”
—King Aldric III of Catonia, Letters to My Queen
By midmorning, we crested the shallow hills above Vedona's northeastern flank, and despite my mounting worry and ever-present anger, I had to admit that there was something to be said for coming home.
I'd forgotten how beautiful it was.
Towers rose from the valley floor in tiers of pale stone and glass, catching the auroral shimmer and reflecting the magnificent colors.
The council building was the tallest and crowned with the banners of the seventeen provinces.
Boulevards ran between buildings in clean lines, bordered by manicured trees, flowerbeds, and lawns.
In the plazas, great fountains put on performances, jets rising and falling in time to music we couldn't hear, water sculpted into arches and spires and then allowed to collapse, only to climb again.
Everything was engineered to perfection and meant to impress and intimidate.
Vedona was the most magnificent city in Aurorys, but a shadow network ran beneath its boulevards, where deals were struck under the table, influence was traded like any other commodity, and smiles were fake.
All that subterfuge was quite ironic for a nation that prided itself on following the Precepts of Truth.
"She's a sight, isn't she, Your Highness?" Colonel Krest said. "There is nothing like coming home."
I had spent ten days in the armored hover-vehicle with the guy, and other than greeting me in the morning and wishing me good night in the evening, those were the first words he'd said to me that hadn't been absolutely necessary.
"It is," I agreed because it was true.
In a way.
I dreaded what awaited me at home.
I'd called my mother from every inn and rest stop that had a telephone line, but she'd always given me the same evasive answers, and with each subsequent call, my anxiety intensified.
"How is Father?" I would ask.
"He needs you home," she would answer.
"Is he ill?" I would ask. "Tell me what I am coming back to."
"We will discuss it when you arrive, darling. Not over the telephone."
That had been every call with slight variations.
The line to the royal quarters was as secure as it got, and my mother usually wasn't so paranoid.
That particular affliction belonged to my father.
For her to fear someone eavesdropping on her conversations with me, things must be out of control in Catonia, or perhaps the entire Federation, and every shadow was suspect.
The last call had really raised my hackles. The connection was bad, and the line was so degraded that I had to strain to hear her through the static. When I'd asked her how the rest of our family was doing, her pause had been too long to mean nothing.
"Soon, darling," she had said. "We are all waiting for you."
Perhaps the trouble wasn't with my father but one of my brothers?
Why did she fear telling me about it? What was she hiding?
I was worried, so I pushed, arguing for earlier starts in the morning, longer hauls, and fewer stops, and I'd managed to trim four days from the journey, but I felt no sense of achievement.
With each day, Veynathei's distant warmth faded more until it was so faint that I had to stop and search the back of my mind to find her at all.
Ten days of hard travel had stretched the bond between us until it was little more than a thread humming at the edge of my perception.
She was still there, but the vivid, vast presence of her had attenuated to a whisper, and every kilometer southwest had deteriorated it further.
When the royal palace came into view, I didn't know whether to feel relief that I was finally going to get some answers, or dread for the same reason.
We came through the main gate under a presented arch of rifles, the household guard snapping to attention in their crimson and gold.
The great doors opened before the vehicle had fully stopped. I stepped down onto the marble of the receiving court, and the chamberlain rushed toward me, while a column of liveried staff arranged themselves behind him.
Usually, I didn't receive such a stately welcome, but then I usually didn't come home in an armored vehicle with a convoy of special forces soldiers.
"Your Highness." He bowed, and the assembled household bowed with him in a single motion. "Welcome home. Catonia rejoices at your safe return."
"Thank you." I shifted into the cadence I had been schooled in, every vowel rounded, every word weighed. The merchant's son who had crossed into Elucia was no more, and the cadet who'd become a dragon rider receded.
I was once more Prince Alaranthus Tekumuton the Fifth, and as I stood on the marble stones in my travel-rumpled clothes, I let the old title settle back over me like a collar.
I hated how easily it fastened.
"I hope your journey was not overly arduous, Your Highness." The chamberlain fell into step beside me as the guard took up position around us.
"It was shortened considerably," I said. "Colonel Krest should be commended for his efforts to bring me home expeditiously."
"I shall see to it, Your Highness."
We climbed the great stair, and the palace unrolled around me, all the gilt and marble and the long portraits of Tekumuton kings and queens staring down with their regal expressions, and I performed the small courtesies as we went, a nod to a steward I recognized, an inclination of the head to a pair of bowing footmen, the choreography returning to my body without my having to summon it.
It was obscene how quickly it happened.
I'd spent months learning to be a person instead of a title, and ten minutes in the palace had stripped all of it away.
"Their Majesties await you in the royal chambers," the chamberlain said as we reached the upper gallery. "They wished to celebrate your return home with a small private feast."
I was glad for the family-only welcome, but I wondered why they had chosen to do it that way.
Would my brothers be there?
A welcome feast, even a private one, meant family, and that meant all of us.
I tried to picture our parents' receiving room, with my brothers gathered to greet the prodigal fifth son who had returned from his foolish adventure.
Arlen, the heir, who resembled our father not just in feature but in manner, groomed since birth to rule.
The twins, Aric and Aden, who lived for court intrigue and social climbing and would already be trading the latest gossip and embellishing it heavily.
And Avren, who had found his place in the military and wore his severity like a second skin.
I had spent the last two days preparing for the embraces, the ribbing, and the questions I would have to answer with half-truths.
The skill of saying nothing while seeming to say a great deal was an art that every prince had to learn, and I had always been good at it, perhaps not as good as Arlen, but better than the other three.
We passed numerous guards on our way to the royal family wing, more than I had ever seen stationed inside the palace, and as the chamberlain stopped at the tall doors of my parents' receiving room, the guards stationed there bowed to me and opened them.
I walked in expecting my brothers, but only my parents, two footmen, and a maid were there.
The chamber was lavish yet intimate, decorated with the tapestries my mother favored and furnished with velvet-upholstered furniture in our house colors.
A table had been laid with a festive banquet that was far too much food for three people.
My mother was on her feet as soon as the doors had opened.
"Alaranthus." She crossed the room faster than I had seen her move in years, and then her arms were around me, and she was holding me with surprising strength for her slight frame. She pressed her face to my shoulder, and when she drew back to look at me, there were tears on her cheeks.
I went cold.
My mother didn't cry. I had seen her bury her own father with dry eyes and a steady voice, and I had seen her stare down ambassadors and outmaneuver council factions. She'd absorbed news that would have flattened other women without so much as a tremor in her hands.
But she was crying now, holding my face between her palms as if confirming I was solid, and the fear that had ridden with me for ten days bloomed into something close to terror.
"Let me look at you," she said. "Oh, you're all muscle. Not an ounce of fat on you. Was there a shortage of food in those mountains?"
"Mother." I caught her hands. "What's going on?"
Behind her, my father rose from his chair, and as I focused my attention on him, the cold in my chest became painful.
The King of Catonia, Head of the Council of the Elurian Federation, had always carried himself as though he'd emerged regal from his mother's womb.
It was an effortless quality that made other men seem provisional in his presence.
The man rising from the chair looked somehow diminished, muted.
His face was ashen, the skin gone slack and gray beneath eyes that had sunk into shadow, and the way he moved suggested that it pained him.
He'd aged a decade in the five months I'd been gone.
My mother hadn't been lying about his illness.
Was he dying?
"Father." My voice was unsteady. I crossed to him and bowed, and when I straightened and he gripped my forearm, it was not with the same strength I remembered. "I came as fast as the road allowed."
"I know, and I appreciate the haste." He studied my face with those shadowed eyes. "You look well, despite your mother's fussing. Elucia agreed with you."
"It did."
For a moment none of us spoke. The untouched banquet gleamed by the windows, absurd in its abundance, and my mother's hand found my father's other arm, and the three of us stood in a small, tight knot in the middle of that overly warm room.
"Tell me what's going on," I said. "You have gone to great lengths to evade my questions and give me half answers. I'm going out of my mind with worry. Please tell me now. Whatever it is, I would rather know than keep imagining worse."
My mother glanced at the doors, where two footmen still stood at attention, and at the maid waiting by the table to serve.
"Leave us," she said. "See that we are not disturbed."
They went without a sound, the doors closing behind them with the soft click of well-oiled hinges.
My mother took my hand and drew me toward the table, and my father followed, lowering himself into the chair across from me with marked effort. My mother poured us wine, and my father wrapped both hands around his glass without raising it.
"There was another assassination attempt, Alar," my father said. His eyes came up to meet mine, and the pain in them stopped my breath. "This time, they very nearly succeeded."