Chapter XXIX
XXIX
You warn me of Rosalyn and try to make a fit successor of Orden, but if there is one child among your whelps I fear, it is Silas. He watches me when I am watching him, and while he makes a good show of harmlessness, I believe if pushed into a corner, he’d show no bark—only a killing bite.
—FROM CARIAN INVER TO DARIAS INVER
Don’t move,” Fia warned, and the Priest did as he was told.
He sat on the edge of Orden’s bed, in rooms that still smelled of his half brother but were the rightful quarters of whomever held Honoria’s throne.
Which meant the Priest and Justus. The Priest’s only consolation in taking up residence there was the fact that he’d have his nephew close at hand, and by extension, Fia.
Already the little king’s bassinet had been brought in, as well as the postulant’s meager belongings.
Stripped bare from the waist up and freshly washed, the Priest fought back a wince as Fia drove a needle into the flesh of his upper arm.
“You’re none too gentle, are you?” he groused. “No wonder Honoria lost so many soldiers in Corrin, if this is how you dealt with convalescents.”
“I can do it quickly or painlessly,” Fia said, sounding distant and distracted as she fixed her attention on stitching the wound Lucian had left behind. “Hadrian wants you in front of the nobles as soon as possible, so I haven’t time to make a numbing paste and let it sit.”
The Priest nodded.
“Hold still,” Fia scolded.
He fell into motionlessness, and for once, the retreat into himself was unwelcome.
Not with everything that Lucian had revealed resting at his center like a cold stone.
He hadn’t spoken a word of it to Fia yet—the Priest believed what had been said, for there was a ring of truth in it, and the spymaster had never struck him as a particularly inventive man.
Worse still, he’d been backed into a corner when it came to Ariana. Immediately after the rite of conquest, Hadrian had drawn the Priest aside and spoken to him briefly.
“All right, Silas,” the old man had said.
“I’ll back you for now. I suppose it’s to your credit that you’ve survived so long.
I always believed you were alive thanks to Orden’s forbearance and protection, but the rite and how you handled Lucian taught me otherwise.
Besides which, any choice is better than Afon and his pagan goddess and Caervallion taking precedence over Honoria.
It doesn’t even matter so much if he is Carian, though Lucian seemed a trifle mad to me, there at the end.
Can you imagine? Darias’s eldest and favored son alive and unrecognizable?
A story for children, or fools. But it means Afon has his eye on our vacant throne.
We need it occupied immediately, and with a show of strength, which you’ve already provided. ”
Still reeling from the strain of the rite and soaked in Lucian’s blood, the Priest nodded.
They were in a corridor outside the audience hall, and a dull roar of voices could be heard from the lingering crowd.
The Priest felt sick and bleak and disoriented.
What he wanted was the solitude and chill of his sanctuary, and the voices of his ghosts.
Or a sun-soaked, sparsely furnished bedchamber by the sea, with Fia and Justus safe beside him.
He did not want Honoria. He did not want its throne.
“Now, if Afon moves against us, there will be those among the Invers willing to believe his story and lend him support, so long as it furthers their own aims,” Hadrian warned.
“What you need is to show yourself as a ruler who places Honoria before all else. We will reject all foreign interference and punish collusion mercilessly. An alliance with the cloister and the plains is acceptable—no one would argue that they’re as Honorian as it comes.
But to show leniency to the queen will stain the outset of your regency with suspicions of weakness toward the very outside forces that would undermine us.
Do you understand? Regardless of any friendship or kinship that once existed between you, you cannot pardon Ariana. ”
The Priest had been toying absently with the hem of his sleeve, which had gone stiff with dried blood, but at Hadrian’s last words he fell still.
It was as if the old man had read his thoughts.
He’d planned to make a pardon for Ari the first order of business, once he was recognized as regent before the gods.
That, at least, would render this business of rising to power worthwhile.
“You can give her a quick death as a blood sacrifice at the ceremony that will make Justus’s reign and your regency official,” Hadrian went on.
“At least she’ll see her son made king as she dies.
I suppose for a mother, that might be enough.
But if you wish to govern, and wish for my support, you cannot do more than that. ”
Hadrian’s words still rang in the Priest’s ears, so he fixed his mind on the sharp, immediate pain in his arm and the work of the needle.
When Fia had finished her stitching, she washed the wound once more with clean water, dried it carefully, and bound it with a neat linen bandage.
It was easy to tell she’d carried out the motions hundreds of times—she did everything with a spare efficiency born of practice.
In the wake of all that had happened, the Priest felt worn out and ill.
He wasn’t Inver enough to revel in killings and intrigue and conquest. Even willfully damaging another—he’d changed the gods’ lesser mode of worship because as little as he enjoyed being cut to pieces by petitioners, he hated doing the cutting more.
There’d been no way around it today, though, and he felt as if he’d never be rid of the scent of death.
“I don’t know why Hadrian said he wants you dressed like a noble, not a Priest,” Fia said, getting up and crossing the room to Orden’s massive bureau.
The Priest had already donned breeches instead of linen trousers, out of deference to Hadrian’s expertise.
“You’re not king, and you’ll be keeping the role of Priest in addition to the regency.
At least you and Orden were a similar height, though you’re leaner than he was. I think this will suit.”
She returned to him, setting a loose shirt and heavily embroidered broadcloth doublet in his hands.
The Priest bowed his head but made no move to put them on.
He didn’t want to wear Orden’s cast-off clothes, to occupy his cast-off throne, to execute his cast-off wife, to raise his cast-off son.
He wanted a world in which he was unremarkable—a farmer, or an apothecary, perhaps—and in which Fia and Justus and Ariana and Celina were all truly his.
He would care for them as well as any man had ever cared for family.
In such a life he could even have cared for Orden and been a true brother to him.
“I’m sorry,” Fia said, surrounded by the trappings of Orden’s failed reign.
The Priest had never heard her speak so softly before.
“I know you didn’t want any of this. I know I pushed you into it.
But I couldn’t see any other way to keep Justus and the cloister and Ariana safe.
It isn’t fair that you have to hold the throne and pay the highest price.
I’d have done things differently if I’d known how. ”
Taking Fia’s hand, the Priest drew her back down beside him.
“I would do it again,” he said. “The reasons are all good ones, and I’d make the same choice a thousand times over, but that doesn’t mean it would weigh any more lightly on me. It’s going to be a very long regency, even if Justus and I live through it.”
“You will,” Fia said, the words a prayer. “I will make sure of it. Nikolau will make sure of it. Even Hadrian, though I don’t care for him, will, I think, work to keep you and Justus alive.”
“Nikolau is Miriel’s father, isn’t he?” the Priest asked. He took great care not to imbue the question with too much interest, or even a hint of envy. He didn’t deserve to be told—didn’t deserve any confidence from her, not burdened with secrets as he was, but he wanted to know.
“Of course,” Fia said. “He’s spent the last decade hiding and organizing deserters in the north mountains.
You’ll find the palace guard is two hundred souls stronger by nightfall than it was this morning—he’s brought a number of his own people with him, to fill important positions and swell the ranks.
But his service will come at a price. He wants the practice of impressment discontinued.
No more forcing Honorian citizens into the army, and off to Vesper. ”
“It may take some time to bring that about,” the Priest said. “But I’ll lend it my support. Do you trust Nikolau?”
“Yes,” Fia answered without hesitation, and a pang of the jealousy he was attempting not to feel bit at the Priest. “Even without Miriel I would, but our daughter means I have something to hold over him that he values greatly. And I’ve made him swear an oath by his mark, to do everything in his power to protect Justus.
He’s honorable enough that he’ll feel bound to keep that oath. ”
“Do you trust me?” the Priest asked. He felt compelled to voice the question, even as he knew the answer should be no.
He was holding too much back, and sprang from a line that bred tyrants.
It was possible power would change him, reworking him into something vicious and conniving.
Better she kept on her guard around him always, as she would in the presence of a jackal or a snake.
“For now,” Fia said.
“Not in future?”