3 There Is No War #2
Anguish bloomed like a bloodstain in Sarai’s eyes before she smoothed her features into a blank canvas.
That winded him even before he took in the vision she made.
Black fabric embroidered liberally with golden vines and flowers wound around her torso in a bodice that bared the gentle upper swell of her breasts and clung to her waist before proceeding to a floor-length gown.
A shawl of some gauzy fabric with all the substance of gossamer shielded her shoulders along with black gloves that crested above her elbows. To hide her hand tremors, he realized.
She carries the weight of a country and the fear that she might have broken it. Cassandane’s barb sank deeper when Sarai caught his eye and managed the same reassuring smile she’d worn for months. Saying that she wasn’t hurting. That he hadn’t robbed her of the life she should have had.
Anger and self-hatred licked at him when the woman kept talking.
“There’s nothing saying that you must wait until next year’s Robing to take on a new girl—” She froze when his eyes bored into hers. A weak puff of air fled her throat.
“A tragedy to be loud and wrong.” The ice in his voice sent a ripple through the crowd.
Steps away, Cassandane stiffened. “Crawl up the social ladder if you must, but be circumspect about your target. I have a Petitor. She is entirely whole.” He caught Sarai’s gaze, and his heart eased at the glow suffusing her golden eyes.
Hushed laughter circled the red-faced noblewoman.
Grains Guildmaster Ioratius separated him from Sarai while vociferously complaining about the northern riots.
He struck down his proposed solutions—all variations on the same theme: violent retaliation against the rioters—and continued through the crowd.
Nothing had changed. The same dance, the same game, the same system that knelt to power.
A vise gripped his head upon his next breath.
You could end it, murmured a voice that sounded like guilt and a desolation more ancient than his. He was no stranger to its intrusion over the last few months. Burn them all to the ground and safeguard her.
She wouldn’t appreciate the cost, he replied dryly. I’m more partial to building than burning these days.
A quiet laugh scraped across his senses.
This city and its inhabitants thrive off the suffering of the rest of the country.
They want blood not bridges. If you don’t appease them, it’ll be yours that spills.
Relinquish the present and take back your past. Power waits for you in the shadows. Reach out, and you’ll see everything.
He gave that the same consideration that he did every offer of infinite glory. None.
Upon his next step, the unearthly tension in his head tightened and grew thorns. Pain lanced through his eyes. His vision grew dark, forcing him to a halt.
This won’t convince me. Kadra’s jaw tautened when the pressure worsened. He reached for his armilla when a different, familiar voice spoke at his shoulder.
“Magus Supreme.”
The assault on his mind ceased. Blood rushed back into his beleaguered skull. Exhaling, Kadra turned to consider the half-veiled newcomer with faint menace. “Inquisitor Silvus.”
“We finally meet.” Silvus’s muffled voice held an odd note of elation. “I’ve been following your career for some time.”
Kadra’s lips curved. “A pity, I can’t say the same.”
Silvus chuckled. “Well, I did hope to surprise you. I hope you don’t mind the unpleasantness with your lover yesterday. She did hold up rather well after all.”
Wintry rage lapped at Kadra at the way the man referred to Sarai. “If only the Order could say the same.”
“Be that as it may, the Order didn’t expose her to ridicule in the first place Magus Supreme.
She put out one fire as you did tonight, but there’ll be more.
” Silvus sucked air in through his teeth.
“What a bitter life. To watch over your shoulder forever and work for a country that sees you as either a usurper or a whore.” He met Kadra’s incandescent eyes with amused calm. “She cannot fight forever.”
“She won’t have to.”
“Yes, certo, the might of men. Let me tell you a story. You may have heard it before. Five and a half centuries past, before the monarchy fell, it was served by five powerful Clans. Each with their virtues and vices, certo, but none as feared as Clan Kader.”
The echoes of wine on Kadra’s tongue suddenly tasted sour. “Ancient history, Silvus?”
Gray eyes laughed, something slithering in the striations of his irises.
“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you? But allow me to finish.
Now, only Clan Kader and Clan Am Semni survived the monarchy’s ruin by retreating north, where they were able to still find some deference.
There, they set down roots in the mountains. ”
There was a hint of blazeleaf in the air, tart and bitter. A student smoking inferior product. Kadra’s spine throbbed. The past seethed at the periphery of his mind.
“Clan Kader rebuilt itself into the north’s preeminent drug producers, then the land’s most powerful crime syndicate.
The northern city of Komis was the center of their underworld and the forested Drust Mountains held their warehouses for blazeleaf farming, drug production, flesh-trade, and any other unholy deed they could perform.
They loomed over Komis like vultures, immutable.
” He tipped his head back with a hard, incredulous laugh.
“No one dared question the occasional corpses thrown in ditches.”
The pressure in Kadra’s veins surged dangerously. “Edessa has seen the same.”
Silvus shrugged. “I suppose so. Violentia nervus potestas or ‘violence is the sinew of authority’ was the Clan’s motto, and they performed it with relish.
Clanlord Clevsin ruled with an iron fist, the women he used as broodmares were rapidly sent to the afterlife, and children, they say, were evil incarnate.
Only a few survived to adulthood, often offing each other in shows of ability to their Clanlord. ”
Kadra’s back was aflame.
“As a child, I was foolish enough to pity the Kader boys. What sort of life was it,” Silvus wondered quietly, “to be locked in a vast property and forced to prove your worth by the amount of pain you could dish out and take?”
It took everything for Kadra to feign impassivity. “And?”
“Well, those questions didn’t last long.
Eleven years ago, on a cloudless night, a fire suddenly gutted most of Clan Kader’s manor in the Drust Mountains.
No one could claim to know the cause though some argued that a bolt of lightning, wide as a boulder, struck the manor.
And the Clan and its scions were never seen again. ” Silvus sighed. “An empire fractured.”
Memory dug teeth into him. Kadra raised a brow. “Illuminating.”
“Funny, your Petitor didn’t care for the story either.” Silvus chuckled. “But you see, might is a frail thing. If a power that outlasted the monarchy can crumble in a night, then might won’t save her.”
The tension in Kadra’s jaw threatened to shatter his molars. Taking a wineglass from a passing server, he swirled it, searching for the oily sheen of poison as the liquid hugged the sides before taking a sip. “There is more to power than might. Clan Kader learned that too late. I am not the same.”
A bitterness that approached hatred passed over Silvus’s half-hidden face. “I suppose we’ll see how true that is.”
Fabric rustled at his shoulder. Cassandane cleared her throat. “Magus Supreme, it’s time.”
Tempering his surging adrenaline, Kadra moved past Silvus. The audience broke into applause as he took to the limestone dais that students would cross as they graduated.
Sarai hadn’t gotten the chance.