Chapter Seven
C HAPTER S EVEN
The Hurricane Wars had shaped Talasyn in more ways than one. The most glaring way, in her opinion, was her tendency to be deeply suspicious when things were going well.
Because it was almost too easy, wasn’t it? And she had her Nenavarene companions to thank for that, whether they knew it or not.
At first, it was frighteningly awkward in the wake of Alaric’s departure. Every once in a while, the Kesathese officers’ questioning gazes slid to the empty seat beside her, containing no leader to take cues from. The obvious implication was that the Night Emperor thought so little of his political marriage that he had no compunctions about abandoning his wife at a feast purportedly held in her honor.
This was a uniquely excruciating brand of humiliation, to be sure, but Talasyn would rather have scooped out the World-Father’s earwax than let on that any of it affected her. As she sat straight, holding her head high beneath the weight of her new crown, Urduja and Elagbi and Jie eventually came to the rescue. There was nothing quite like the Nenavarene at their most charming, and the tension was lessened somewhat as the three of them worked together to draw even the most taciturn diners at their table into lighthearted, perfectly appropriate suppertime conversation. After that, it was only a matter of waiting for the opportunity to present itself once the officers had relaxed and the liquor had loosened their tongues.
Talasyn didn’t make her move until Mathire was distracted. Although the Dominion nobles had run rings around the commodore during negotiations, making plain that her talent was in brute political force rather than cunning, Talasyn still didn’t trust that secretive little smile from earlier. Some instinct cultivated during the months under Urduja’s tutelage warned her not to play games with Mathire. Therefore, it wasn’t until the other woman was embroiled in discussion with some other commodores that Talasyn turned to the general sitting beside her.
“You cannot imagine my relief, General Vim”—Talasyn marshaled her snootiest Lachis’ka airs, praying that he wouldn’t see through them—“to learn that all the surviving rebels from today’s attack have been apprehended. It is commendable how swiftly, how bravely your men acted in the face of such an emergency.”
Talasyn could hear Urduja’s voice in her head as she watched the general’s chest puff out with pride. If you have no strong pieces on the board, then play to your opponent’s weaknesses. Ego is usually the most reliable path to someone’s downfall.
This was one of the many tidbits of wisdom that the Zahiyalachis was forever spouting during all those long, drawn-out lessons in her salon at the Roof of Heaven. Talasyn was glad that she’d been paying attention that particular day.
“Indeed, the stars will never set on the Night Empire,” General Vim proclaimed, taking another swig of brandy. His grin was broad, his cheeks were flushed, his guard was down. “The Allfold set sail for the Citadel believing that they had the upper hand—now they languish in our cells.”
Underneath the table, Talasyn’s fingers laced into her skirts, gripping the fabric so tightly that one of the pearls came loose. She leaned toward Vim, widening her eyes in a picture of innocence. “And we are absolutely certain that they’ll stay there?” She let her voice tremble from anticipation, let this arrogant man in his cups mistake her tone as fear.
“Not to worry, Empress Alunsina.” Vim grabbed a table napkin and patted at the crumbs on his walruslike mustache. “The eastern wing of the prison is so heavily fortified with ballista platforms and sentry towers that the Legion doesn’t even need to patrol it. It’s right by a mess hall, too, so at any given time there are scores of the Night Empire’s finest soldiers who will come running at the first sign of disturbance.”
Talasyn smiled. “I’m glad to hear it, General.”
It really was too easy to loosen their tongues, but the nebulous dread in Talasyn’s gut refused to abate until the whole onerous affair came to an end and she and her delegation left the hall, accompanied only by their guards and Nordaye, Alaric’s aide. She recognized him as the one who had poured the wine on board the stormship during Kesath’s sweep of Nenavar.
Quietly mousing along ahead of the group, Nordaye had, in Alaric’s absence, been tasked with showing the Night Empress back to her quarters. The aide was short and skinny, with brown hair cut in the shape of an inverted winnowing basket and a perpetual downtrodden look on his face. He was the most forgettable young man Talasyn had ever encountered—a trait that apparently fixed him in Urduja’s mind as a spy, for the Zahiya-lachis kept her voice painstakingly low as she walked behind him with Talasyn and Elagbi, clutching their arms.
“It is odd that the Regent does not show himself to us,” Urduja mused in Nenavarene. “Quitting the business of governance does not render one incapable of greeting his new family, surely. A private audience, at the very least. Although I should think that he would have quite liked to celebrate his victory against the rebels with his people!”
“He is ill, I believe,” said Elagbi. “I overheard a few officers inquiring with one another after his health. No one seems to know the true state of things, and such secrecy is usually only employed to prevent causing a panic.”
“That might be why Alaric took the throne,” Talasyn ventured. “A nation postwar is vulnerable—even more so with an ailing leader.”
“You’re learning.” Urduja squeezed her arm. “But the simplest answer is often a ruse, is it not? Or the surface of a vast root system.”
Talasyn bit her lip, considering the situation. “Even if Gaheris is ill, his influence has far from waned. We all saw how quickly Alaric left to answer his summons. I think the Regent has found a way to quell fears about the Kesathese sovereign’s physical condition while still ruling from the shadows.”
And that means I was right to call Alaric his father’s puppet, and to tell Vela that Gaheris is the real power in the Night Empire.
“I would certainly tire of my reign not being wholly my own.” Urduja’s tone was casual and yet not—an airiness grounded in intent. “One can only marvel at Emperor Alaric’s sense of filial piety.”
Talasyn didn’t have the patience to puzzle out her grandmother’s words. She knew only that she wanted to talk to Alaric. To demand where he’d gone off to and why he hadn’t come back.
There was a melodious giggle up ahead. Nordaye had gone as red as a ripe tomato, from the base of his neck to the roots of his winnowing-basket hair. Jie, who appeared to have fully recovered from her earlier distress, was strolling beside him, fluttering her lashes and looking far too pleased with her handiwork.
“Lady Jie, stop torturing that poor boy,” Urduja barked. “Come here , you silly siseng-goose.”
Nordaye recovered in enough time to direct them to their wing of the residential building. After bidding goodnight to Urduja, Elagbi, and Jie—when it was just her and Nordaye standing outside her chambers—Talasyn put her plan into motion.
She fixed Nordaye with her steeliest glare, one that she had learned from Urduja. The aide started shaking in his boots.
“Take me to my husband,” Talasyn commanded.
Nordaye was too much of a wilting flower to put up a fight. He escorted her deep into the heart of the fortress and then vanished so swiftly that he might as well have been a spectral. But Sevraim was a different story.
“Absolutely not, Empress.” The masked legionnaire stood, arms crossed and feet slightly apart, beneath the severe archway that led to Alaric’s suite of rooms.
“Who are you?” Talasyn asked waspishly.
There was a squawk from behind the obsidian helm. “It’s me! It’s Sevraim!”
She already knew that, but she hadn’t been able to resist. “Well, then, let me through.”
“I can’t . His Majesty isn’t even in yet.”
“So I’ll wait.”
“You can’t just waltz into the Night Emperor’s bedroom unattended—”
She shoved past him. “You can abandon your post to keep watch over me in his chambers—where, as his wife, I have every right to be—or you can try and stop me from going in by raising your blade to your new empress. It’s your choice.”
“Have it your way,” Sevraim peevishly replied. “But I warn you, if His Majesty demands my head for this, I will be seeking political asylum in Nenavar!”
“That’s a risk I’ll have to take,” Talasyn shot back.
There were five doors on each side of the hallway she’d marched into. She paused.
“Third one on the right,” Sevraim grunted.
And Talasyn stepped into an austerely furnished bedroom that was, very obviously, Alaric’s.
It smelled like him.
She had never developed the habit of associating certain scents with certain people. In Hornbill’s Head, everyone had smelled like the Great Steppe, dusty and sunbaked, and the Sardovian regiments had used the same kind of standard-issue lathers. Among the Nenavarene court, the mix of various perfumes and oils was too confusing to try to make sense of—and it was downright cloying on occasion, to the point that she would sometimes sneeze in a crowded hall.
Alaric, though, was different. Talasyn just hadn’t realized how much until she entered a room she’d never been in before and knew instantly that it was his because of the scents that hung in the air. There was the warm fragrance of sweet myrrh in his soap, mingled with juniper berries and the spice of the sandalwood water that he splashed on after shaving, as well as a hint of honey from his pomade. Underscoring all of these, also, was the slightly acidic tang of coffee, the earthiness of leather, and traces of vellum and ink.
She spent ages standing in the middle of the room, agonizing over whether it was more proper to sit at his desk or to remain on her feet while waiting for him. She also didn’t know whether she was here to be mad at him for abandoning her at the gala or to squeeze more information out of him. She still hadn’t decided what tack to take by the time Alaric stumbled in.
Their eyes met, then widened in sync as the door slammed shut. There was a gash on his forehead. His shoulders sagged and his body dipped forward in the beginnings of a slow, terrible collapse.
Talasyn hurried over to Alaric, bracing him in her arms before he could hit the floor. “You’re injured!”
“Your powers of observation are—” His sentence cut off into a sharp hiss as he pressed one gloved hand over his ribs.
Burdened by her dress and heeled shoes, it took some effort to haul him onto the bed, but she finally succeeded. His face was a worrying gray at the edges against the black sheets, and his fine tunic was soaked through with—with blood—
She wrestled the tunic and his formal gloves off him, her heart clenching in sympathy as he grunted with each jolting movement, and sat down beside his sprawled form. Now he was bare from the waist up, but she couldn’t afford to be embarrassed; all of her attention was on the bruises and lacerations marring his skin like some gruesome star chart.
“What happened?” she demanded, vehemence leaching into her tone. These weren’t battle wounds. He’d had to have stayed still for them to be this concentrated. And she recognized the telltale jagged edges left by the Shadowgate. “Who did this to you?”
Alaric turned his head to the side, avoiding her gaze, his lips clamped shut.
“Tell me.” Talasyn put her hand against his cheek, urging his eyes back to hers. “Or I’ll go to your guards and ask them instead.”
“ Don’t. ” Within the depths of his pupils, sparks of silver aether flashed. But this stirring of magic brought on by an abrupt surge of emotion vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, its wielder utterly sapped of strength, his pride running aground on her stubbornness. “It was my father,” he said hoarsely. Every word sounded ripped from his throat. “In punishment for my shortcomings—” He shuddered with a fresh spasm of pain, eyelids twitching as he closed them, long lashes fluttering against the tops of wan cheeks. “A lesson.”
Talasyn had known, of course, that Gaheris was cruel, but it had never before occurred to her that this cruelty would extend to his son. This is how he keeps him chained. The epiphany brought with it a rush of nausea. That the Master of the Shadowforged Legion did not fight back told her this had been going on for a long time. It had been ingrained in him to not fight back.
She reached out to scrub some of the blood off his face with the pad of her thumb, and her stomach twisted when he flinched at her touch. She thought about the orphanage keepers and how they’d made a game of hitting her and the other children, how she’d snuck out on her own as soon as she was able.
Alaric’s mother had left. He’d had nowhere to run.
“I’ll tell Sevraim to call for a healer,” Talasyn announced, getting to her feet.
“He already offered to. I told him to get lost.” Alaric’s large fingers clamped around her wrist, dragging her back down. “No one else can see.” She hesitated, unconvinced and worried sick. He added, his tone uneven and his grip on her tightening, “Don’t, Talasyn.”
His blatant panic forestalled all argument. A leader could not appear vulnerable to his people. Not so soon after a war. His thumb brushed across the inside of her wrist in fretful strokes, and her free hand moved as though of its own accord, wrapping around his, squeezing in reassurance as she asked, “Do you have any bandages, then? I can—”
“Leave it,” Alaric told her through clenched teeth. “I’ll take care of myself.”
“You’re in no condition—”
“I can manage—”
“No, you can’t !”
He gave a start at her raised tone, his powerful body twitching as though it longed to curl in on itself in a protective ball. Thoroughly chastened, she cradled his cheek, the walls that she had so carefully built around herself in his presence crashing down. “Alaric,” she pleaded, “let me help you.”
“You shouldn’t even be here.” Despite his rough, strained words, he leaned into her touch with a quiet desperation that made up her mind for her.
“I am, anyway,” she retorted. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
He opened his eyes and suddenly she was staring into the liquid silver of them, glazed over with terror and anguish. Perspiration dotted his brow. It was several long moments before he spoke again. She could see various decisions playing out across his conflicted features and, above it all, the yearning for comfort. For relief from his suffering.
“My back’s worse off,” he admitted.
Talasyn bit her tongue to keep from scolding him for taking his sweet time telling her. She helped him roll over onto his side, and then she had to stifle a gasp at the sight. Gaheris’s magic had lashed at him with tendrils of thorns and heat. The striated wounds crisscrossed down his spine, weeping drops of scarlet on singed skin. How had Alaric survived this? How could anyone have survived this? What kind of father would do this to his son?
Later, she thought. She could ask questions later. For now, she had to concentrate on the daunting task at hand.