Need
SINDAR HELD HIS tongue until they were alone, but as soon as the door to the king’s office was safely shut, he whirled on his mentor, shedding what little royal decorum he had like an old skin.
“Patty, what the devil did he do to my Flower? Why isn’t the Champion staying with him? Why doesn’t my—the Flower have royal guards? Why is only one acolyte attending him? I checked and all Flowers have Champions! All of them! What kind of hospitality is this?”
Patel dragged a stool in front of the liquor cabinet and climbed onto it. “You’re besotted. I can’t decide if I’m thrilled or horrified.”
“I’m not besotted,” Sindar spat. They said besotted royals were hopelessly smitten with their Flowers. As youths, they’d always heckled and tormented those who were getting married, teasing them about what lovesick fools they’d become.
He might be lovesick, but he was no fool. Ardor was incredible. He’d be a fool not to love him. “He’s beautiful, and he’s perfect, and he must be treated with dignity and respect!”
Patel poured a shot, reconsidered, and made it a double. “Sit down. Calm yourself.”
Sindar sat, still bristling when Patel brought him a whiskey. His adviser settled into the short-depth chair Sindar had sent for and nodded his approval. Sindar waited until Patel was comfortable before persisting. “Where is his champion? That’s the worst part. Explain yourself.”
“Tensions with the Pavarians are at an all-time high. The king refused to have an armed Pavarian Champion in his court. The marriage contract was negotiated on those terms.”
Sindar knew his brother’s tactics well. Xandar isolated those he did not trust. When he was younger, he’d been neatly separated from his own friends and loyalists one by one.
Some were sent abroad, others were bribed or coerced, and there was at least one suspicious accident.
Now, Xandar had isolated his Flower. What the devil was wrong with Xandar?
Where was his head? The Pavarians would embed spies in the palace one way or another.
Better to have an obvious spy in plain sight, rather than a hidden one skulking about in the shadows where they least expected it!
Sindar shook his head. “So he insulted them by flexing his muscle from the very start. He assumed a Flower, of all people, had bad intentions simply because he was from a rival nation, and he treated him accordingly. Why am I surprised?”
“You’ve been away a long time. The situation with Pavar was at a crisis point, and we were on the brink of war.
This marriage was carefully negotiated over the course of a year, and both sides made concessions.
The king agreed to forgo a public marriage ceremony, and in exchange the Flower surrendered his champion. ”
“Why doesn’t Ardor have royal guards, then? And why does he have a curfew? Xandar had no right—”
“I ordered the curfew,” Patel said. “Doctor Jain confirmed the Flower is fertile and capable of bearing children. We can’t have him out and about at night. A Flower’s scent is irresistible to many, and Ardor desperately needs to get pregnant. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
The thought of anyone else touching Ardor propelled Sindar to his feet. “You think he’d be unfaithful?” he cried, incensed by this slander. “He was blessed by the goddess herself—”
“Sit down,” Patel said wearily. “He’s a man, you silly boy, and he’s in an impossible position. You don’t know him well enough to be this consumed by him. Some obsession is unavoidable, you’re supposed to be obsessed with him, but it’s not rational. Use your head, if you can. The one up top.”
Sindar sat, glaring at his mentor. “Say what you like about me. None of this is Ardor’s fault. Even now, you won’t come out and say it. This is all Xandar’s fault. He cannot ensure Kysan’s stability any longer, and that won’t change when he wakes up.”
“I know what you’re doing, Sindar. You’re sussing out a way to snatch the crown with my approval.”
“Do you blame me?”
“No, but that’s beside the point.” Patel took a drink.
“Patty, if you want stability and peace, you don’t have the luxury of sparing my brother’s pride. Facts are facts. I can make heirs. Xandar can’t. ”
Patel’s expression, usually so carefully guarded, shifted. “We don’t know that for certain yet.”
“He had months to try. He can’t do it. When he wakes up, you’ll still need me to sire heirs to keep the peace.
And you and I both know he’ll be too proud to let me do it.
Ardor clearly despises him. Bani told me Ardor was only willing to have one private ceremony with Xandar a week, if even.
Well, he’s already agreed to have one with me tomorrow! How about that?”
Patel stared at him. “Goddess,” he said, draining his glass. “This isn’t even about the crown anymore. Now you want that Flower.”
“I want both,” Sindar said, as Patel went for another drink. “And don’t pretend you aren’t enjoying this. I’ve heard enough of your lectures on the ancients ‘demented eugenics protocol’ to know a part of you is secretly thrilled one of the 12 royal families might die out.”
Patel chortled as he helped himself to the liquor cabinet.
“What can I say? Ancient bastards. They wanted to control who could procreate, to get rid of people like me. Well, we see how that turned out! Now their descendants are cursed, unable to breed without the help of the Flowers, and the little people can have as many children as they please with whomever they like! Ha!” He raised his fist. “The dwarf triumphs!”
Sindar slow-clapped. “Bravo, Patty. Now all you have to do is stop perpetuating the system you claim to despise and dismantle the monarchy. But that would require giving up power, wouldn’t it?
And you’ve worked so very hard to maneuver your step stool into a cozy spot next to the Kysanian throne, so you can better whisper into the king’s ear. ”
“Oh, fuck you,” his adviser said amiably.
Sindar laughed, his annoyance smoothed over, and drank.
Kysanian whiskey was made from heirloom sweet corn grown in the homeland’s dark, hearty chernozem.
It had a distinctly smooth flavor. The rich cropland that made it possible had been contested for centuries, ever since the Great Extinction.
“Would it kill us to give the Pavarians some land? Maybe, I don’t know, the bit we stole the last time we went through this? ”
“They don’t want part of it. They want all of it. Say what you want about your brother, he has done a fine job holding our borders. There is more to being king than producing heirs.”
“You should have believed in me, Patty.” The words spilled out before Sindar was even cognizant that he was saying them.
An oppressive silence fell. It was the sort of silence that belied hard truths.
Patel took his time pouring another drink and returning to his chair.
Finally, he said, “I never liked your brother, but I accepted he would be a strong king. He’s cutthroat in a way you never were, even when your survival depended on it.
Even now, you instinctively seek compromise.
You don’t negotiate from a position of strength.
I can’t teach you that, Sindar. That’s instinct, and your brother has it.
You’re too malleable. You will always appeal to decency, even when there is none. ”
Sindar turned his glass slowly, staring at the pristine amber liquid. “Is he really the eldest?”
Patel sighed. “Does it matter?”
Perhaps it didn’t.
“Why did she do it?” Sindar asked, knowing there was no answer.
“I have asked myself that more times than I can count. Your mother was one of Amar’s brightest scholars, and she was the smartest person I’ve ever known.
She had her choice of consorts, and she chose your father.
” Patel considered his glass. “She was a strategist, your mother. She could see into the future. It was uncanny, really. I learned not to question her choices. Whatever her reasons, they were thought out well in advance.” Patel’s voice was fond, soft.
Whiskey made him prone to reminiscence. After a moment, he smiled.
“She loved to sing to you boys. Do you remember that?”
Sindar nodded. His mother’s voice sometimes echoed in his dreams, a lullaby rendered unintelligible by time and a child’s lack of understanding.
She’d sung to him in Amari, he thought. Em ella, em ella gan ne mindar…
Or was it em elle, em elle gan ne mindeh…
? He’d never been much for languages, and his Amari was never good enough to piece it together.
Patel spoke fondly of his mother, telling a few stories Sindar had not yet heard, but the warmth in his advisor’s voice did not keep melancholy away. When they parted, the gnawing sense of loss in Sindar’s chest could only be abated by one thing: riding.
He swore his personal guard to secrecy, bullied the stable hands into preparing a mount, and soon ambled into the twilight.
Sindar brought his steed to a slow trot until the horse’s eyes adjusted, then he clucked and gently squeezed, urging a canter.
The terrain was much as he remembered it, and he soon fell back into the familiar cadence of riding, and he was one with the powerful surge of muscle beneath him, his hair dancing in the wind.
He stopped at the edge of the forest.
He’d ridden here with Shashi. They went on mid-morning rides like clockwork, and as Xandar watched from the study he would soon inherit, his paranoid, orderly mind grew wary. He was plotting against Sindar, therefore, Sindar must be plotting against him.
It never occurred to Xandar that his brother might simply wish to spend time with a clever young noble who enjoyed riding as much as he did. Or maybe it had, but Xandar was determined to get rid of him anyway.
Sindar stroked the steed’s shoulder, murmuring softly, his mother’s muted words sifting through his memory. Em ella, em ella… He’d always associated those sounds with comfort, and the horse shifted into his hand, sighing softly.
The second the guillotine blade came down, and Shashi’s head was severed from his body, a wall came down in Sindar’s heart.
It was a survival mechanism. If not for that wall, he would have surely withered and died right on that spot.
Shashi was brave and defiant, and he protected Sindar until the very end.
Sindar must be strong to honor his sacrifice.
He purged the sorrow from his heart, filled it with hatred instead, and lunged for Xandar’s throat.
But even then, he couldn’t do it. He could not kill his own brother.
Patel called it weakness. Would his mother have agreed?
Now, standing in this place, Sindar felt a dull ache, a tiny echo of the pain he’d felt that horrible day. His friends were killed, and he was exiled, and Xandar sat uncontested upon the ruby throne. Until now.
“Where are they buried?” Sindar asked.
“Your Majesty?” his guard asked.
This was dangerous, and foolish, and stupid, but suddenly he had to know. “Where did they bury the usurpers?”
“They burned them according to your orders, Your Majesty, but I’m unsure how the ashes were disposed of. Shall I find out?”
“No,” Sindar said.
They rode back, the warm night air whipping about them, and Sindar’s grievances and concerns distilled to two salient points. He must get Ardor pregnant, and he must make sure his brother never sat atop the ruby throne again.