twenty-six #2
Early the next evening, Sulim went up to her room to fetch Sonall for dinner, whom she last saw disappearing in there with a stack of folders from his father’s office.
The urgency on his face dictated that he was in a bind, and she had mostly left him alone.
Now seemed as good a time as any to check in, especially with food available downstairs.
He was on the couch in the small living area of their quarters, and the searing gaze on his face when his wife walked into the room almost stopped her in her tracks.
“Shut the door,” he quickly said. “I need to talk to you.”
Sulim slowly shut the bedroom door, aware that someone else would come looking for them in a few minutes. As her throat closed under the threat of having been found out about her affair, she straightened her spine and approached, ready to get this over with.
But Sonall’s face was buried in a piece of paper. From an older folder, by the looks of it. It can’t be about Mira… Sulim sat next to him, her resolve quickly replaced with curiosity. “What is it?” she asked.
He handed her a typed piece of paper that bore the official seal of Lord Gardiah, an emblem that went back generations, based on what Sulim had noticed around the house.
She perused it, but didn’t see anything in particular—other than it was an official communication with Marco di’Flare, and occurred ten years prior.
This would be before the assassination attempt.
Or so Sulim assumed. Sometimes, the dates were fuzzy, especially as years went by.
“What am I looking at?” Sulim read phrases like, “This is the prudent thing to do,” and the name “Graella Gardiah” more than once, but it was like her brain refused to connect the two. Particularly when it came to Marco and Graella having something in common.
“Look down here.” The way Sonall jabbed his finger into the bottom of the paper was a foreign feeling to Sulim, who had ever only known a gentle man whose biggest fault was not paying attention to things happening right in front of him.
Unless it’s this, I guess. Yet there was strife in his voice and anger on his otherwise placid face.
Despite this piece of official correspondence coming from his father and being left where Sonall could easily find it, something about it unnerved him. “I can’t believe this!”
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He barked that right in her ear, making Sulim jump. He apologized, but did not soften. Sulim struggled to read the paragraphs of text to figure out what her husband was upset about.
“This is not a legally binding contract,” Vern had written to Marco, “but one of serious consideration. The marriage between you and my daughter will go ahead after she is twenty, assuming she agrees.”
“Wait…” Sulim glanced at Sonall, whose nostrils flared as widely as a horse’s. “What?”
“You see it too, right? My father… he was going to marry Graella off to Marco!”
Sulim stood up, paper in hand as she wandered behind the couch and started again from the beginning.
Now that she knew what she looked for, she saw the details but without any context: ten years ago, Vern had offered his daughter’s hand to Marco in return for him officially becoming a part of the family and selling off his shares of Gardiah Estate.
How old was she back then? Sixteen? Maybe almost seventeen?
Marco was twenty years older than her and had known her since she was a girl!
“What the hell was he thinking?” Sonall, reading Sulim’s mind, leaned over the back of the couch and peppered her with angry questions. “Never in my life has my sister ever said anything about being attracted to Marco, or wanting to marry him!”
“He’s a man who wants to advance himself.” Mira’s warning echoed in Sulim’s head. “He doesn’t care with whom, as long as he climbs the ladder a little more.”
“This is definitely interesting,” she said, giving it way too much credit.
“You would have been even younger when this discussion happened. I don’t get it. What made your father worry about the line of succession? Unless…”
No, there were no rumors that either Gardiah child was infertile or otherwise incapable of carrying the line or inheriting the family business.
Even though this occurred before the attack, neither kid had sustained life-threatening injuries, either.
Sonall had a scar on his left arm from where he cut himself when shoving both him and his sister into a closet for safety, but it was nowhere serious enough to call his abilities into question!
“This isn’t about his kids. This is about Marco’s shares in the business.”
Sonall took the paper back and read through it once more, as if he could see that written in plain Basic.
No, I’m reading between the lines. Sulim had been studying the dynamic between those with the last name Gardiah and those who worked for them.
You’re either one of them, or you work for them.
Sulim was “one of them” due to her legal last name and being married to the heir, but there was also a clear delineation for those who were servants and those who were ranch hands.
Marco, however, fell into a rare between space that was neither family nor employee.
He worked for Gardiah Estate, but because it made him good money on his return on investment.
In truth, Sulim knew little about his history with Vern, aside from them attending the same agricultural university where they became friends.
Vern is older, but Marco was some kind of savant who matriculated early. Where was he from? Dassil?
“Graella never talked to you about this?”
“No. I think she would have been disgusted. We both made it clear to our parents that we weren’t interested in an arranged betrothal unless we couldn’t find our own love matches first.”
“This is from before the… attack,” Sulim said. “I wonder if that changed things.”