25. Alar
ALAR
"The threat of the enemy at the gates is answered by the defenders on the walls. The threat of the enemy within is insidious and far deadlier to the throne."
—King Aldric III of Catonia, Letters to My Queen
"This time, they very nearly succeeded."
The shockwave of these words was still reverberating through me.
I had braced for bad news on the long road home, imagining all kinds of scenarios, and I'd even postulated an assassination attempt.
It wouldn't have been the first one. But none of the previous attempts had managed to come close.
My father was extremely well protected, always surrounded by multiple guards, and no one could come close enough to him to inflict real harm.
"What do you mean they nearly succeeded?" I said. "How? Are you injured? I've noticed that you are favoring one side."
My father waved a hand, but it wasn't the usual grand gesture.
"My injuries are minor. Some metal in the shoulder and a couple of cracked ribs.
They will mend." He paused, and the careful way he held himself, along with his shallow breathing, told me the ribs were troubling him more than he admitted.
"Arlen saved my life, taking the brunt of it, and his injuries are far more severe. "
The cold in my chest turned to ice.
"Where is he?"
"Recuperating," my mother said, the wineglass in her hand shaking slightly, a few red drops landing on the pristine napkin. "We are keeping him out of public view as much as possible."
I'd never seen my mother's hands shake before, and the dread in my gut grew to dangerous proportions.
"That doesn't answer my question, Mother." I pinned her with a hard stare because I had more chance of breaking through to her than to my father. "What happened to Arlen?"
She opened her mouth, but my father lifted his hand to stop her.
"Let me, Hanith." My father drew a breath that visibly pained him.
"Arlen and I were in the gymnasium," he said.
"Just the two of us, with guards posted outside the doors as usual.
We were practicing hand-to-hand drills, or I should rather say that Arlen was humoring me, because I'm no longer a match for him.
" He winced. "That was before he got hurt. Now he can't fight off a fly."
"How bad is it?" I choked out the words.
Arlen was a strong man, well-trained, so if he couldn't fight off a fly, he was on his deathbed, and I was wasting time with my parents instead of rushing to be by his side.
"You know where the royal family's private gymnasium is. It's on the fourth floor of the palace," my father continued, as if he hadn't heard my question. "That's thirty-two meters above ground. It's still not clear how the assassin managed to throw an explosive device through the window."
I could think of a number of ways it could have been done, although that would have meant the assassin infiltrating the palace gardens with a projectile tube, which wasn't likely.
But right now, I wasn't interested in the operational details of the assassination attempt.
I wanted to know what had happened to my brother.
"Father, please. Tell me if Arlen is dying."
My mother reached for my hand. "He's not dying. He's going to be okay."
I expelled a relieved breath, even though 'okay' could cover a wide range of injuries and handicaps.
"The glass shattered," my father continued in a flat tone.
"We both heard it, but Arlen's reflexes were much faster than mine, and he threw himself at me and drove me out of the path of it.
We both went down together, crashing into the equipment racks.
But the blast caught him across the back.
In the split second he had to think, my son decided to get between the grenade and me. "
I had to remind myself to breathe.
I could see it like a movie inside my head.
Arlen, who looked like a younger version of our father, who had been groomed since the cradle to rule and had never once flinched from the weight of responsibility, reading in the blink of an eye the trajectory of the explosive and shielding our father with his own body. It was Arlen through and through.
"How bad?" I asked once again.
My mother set down her glass, and her hand was steady, demonstrating that she had regained her composure, but it was the brittle kind, the top layer of frozen water in a bowl that would crack under the pressure of a single finger.
"His back is ruined," she said. "The surgeons spent hours removing fragments.
He has extensive burns and scarring across his back and shoulders that they say are going to fade with time but never go away completely.
" She drew a breath. "His hearing was damaged by the blast, and that, at least, is returning.
The physicians say it should come back in full, or nearly so. "
I had a feeling she was starting with the less severe injuries to prepare me for the worst.
"What else?"
She could not say it. I watched her try, but the words refused to come.
I turned to my father, who I knew would finish, because he was the king and he never shied away from harsh truths.
"A fragment remains lodged in his spine," he said.
"In the lower back. The surgeons could not remove it without killing him, and they said that removing it would have changed nothing.
" His eyes met mine, and there was an ocean of pain and guilt in them.
"Arlen cannot walk, Alar. He has no use of his legs.
The physicians are not optimistic about his chances of recovery, which in physician speak means that they believe it is permanent. "
The room tilted, and I put my hand on the table because I needed to feel something solid under my palm.
Arlen, tall, strong, athletic Arlen, couldn't walk and never would.
"He is alive," my father said, and there was iron in his voice now.
"That is the thing to hold on to. He is alive, he has full use of his arms and hands, his face is unmarred, and he can still father children.
The line is not broken." He said the last part deliberately, holding my gaze, and I understood the meaning he was infusing into the words. "We should count our blessings."
I let out a breath. "How is he taking it?"
Knowing Arlen, he was trying to play the hero and not letting anyone see him crumble.
My parents exchanged a look I couldn't decipher, but I knew it didn't bode well.
"His mind is whole," my mother said. "His reason, his memory, his wit, all of it is intact.
But he is not well." She drew a breath. "A door closing too hard, a glass dropped in the corridor, and he enters a state we cannot reach.
His hands start shaking, his breathing becomes erratic, and he has to be taken from the room.
" Her voice thinned. "The physicians say it is common in soldiers who have survived a near-death experience.
They say it may pass with time. They do not say how much time, or whether it will pass at all. "
I'd learned about it at the Vedona Academy.
The physician who'd lectured us about it had said that it could trigger a sort of paralysis, and that soldiers afflicted with it shouldn't be returned to the field because they could no longer fight even if they sustained no physical wounds. It wasn't a matter of willpower either.
"Was the assassin caught?"
"Yes, but the guards were too late," my father said.
"They reached him within seconds, but before they could lay hands on him, he bit down on a capsule of poison he'd carried in his cheek.
He was dead before he hit the floor." My father's mouth twisted.
"He had no documentation on him or anything else that could indicate who he was and where he was from. "
A suicide assassin. A man who'd known going in that there was no way he was getting out alive and had been prepared to die to carry out his mission.
I had seen that before. The attempt on Kailin's life in the Pilgrims' Bar in Skywatcher's Point had been carried out in a similar fashion.
These were either Sitorian converts, eager to die for their hateful god and get their ticket to heaven, or people who had been coerced, their family members held hostage with the promise that they would be freed after the deed was done.
I wondered if the Sitorians ever kept those promises. I suspected they didn't. The god they worshipped was the deceiver, and lying was a way of life for them. Everyone knew that, but desperation could lead people to take desperate steps for the slight chance that those they loved would be spared.
I did not voice my thoughts, because if I told my parents about the assassination attempts on Kailin, I would hand them one more argument against my return to Elucia.
"How did you hide it from the press?" I asked.
"We let it be known that there had been an attempt and that it failed," my mother said. "That the assassin did not succeed in causing any real damage and was caught and killed by the guards. That's the story we gave the press, and that's what they ran with."
Of course, they did. Whoever thought that the press reported real news was naive. They reported what my father and the rest of the Council wanted them to report.
"To admit how close they came would have invited more attacks," my father said.
"Those who plotted the attempt would have felt emboldened because their assassin had almost succeeded.
They would have planned the next attempt better.
So, our story is that the king is hale, the heir is occupied with matters of state, and the would-be killer is ash.
" He spread his hands. "It's not a straight-out lie, just a slight twisting of the truth, and it keeps the vultures from circling. "
I leaned forward. "Who do you suspect sent him?"