25. A Confession
Chapter twenty-five
A Confession
Rerdas rushed back through the palace, searching for Etiana. He found her sequestered with Dantin Heckly in a windowed parlor nook. Rerdas wound across the room, trying not to notice the tight smiles, darting looks, and armed, red-cloaked guards stationed at every doorway.
“Did you find Umber?” Etiana murmured. She’d tucked herself up on the window seat so the fall of the heavy velvet curtains blocked the guards’ view.
Rerdas drew up a satin footstool and put his back to the rest of the room. “No. But I saw Hassindra. I don’t know if this is another one of her games, but she suggested everyone here is one wrong word away from being executed.”
Heckly shuddered, but Etiana shook her head. “If Kuraya’s preparing for an open fight against the Southern Felds, she’ll want allies. Even ones that are only at her side by force.”
“That fits Hassindra’s idea that she’s got all their children here as a means of controlling them,” Rerdas muttered.
“It’s possible your theories about this interview are wrong, Etiana,” Heckly said uneasily. “It may not be about Imalroc’s disappearance. And if the summons were only for Umber’s benefit, she wouldn’t bother speaking to the two of you once Rerdas returned to the city.”
“She must have heard the rumors that Southern freedom traders destroyed the battlebox in Drida. Imalroc vanishing the same night casts suspicion on us,” Etiana argued.
“What if it’s not about that?” Rerdas lowered his voice even further. “What if she suspects something about…” He didn’t dare speak Uralta’s name in the palace, but Etiana and Heckly’s expressions both flashed with understanding.
“Then we stick to our story. She’s traveling. We haven’t been in contact.”
“But we also need Her Majesty to believe that Uralta is still hidden at my estate,” Heckly said. “I’ve sent a runner to continue to procure the so-called medicine while you were gone, so we’ve maintained that part of the fiction, but she may be suspicious because you left Kirinoll for so long.”
“True.” Etiana smoothed her curls back from her face. “We’ll drop some hints that it was never our intention. I’ll imply there’s an urgent reason we must visit your house once this stupid interrogation ends.”
“It puts you in danger, Dantin,” Rerdas said quietly. “If she’s watching more closely.”
“Too late to avoid that, dear boy. We’ll muddle through. Are we agreed that we leave Kirinoll as soon as she’s finished speaking with us? I can have a coach prepared.”
Rerdas nodded fervently. He was about to suggest that they meet outside the south gate, when a paralyzed silence overtook the parlor, and Rerdas turned to see what had triggered its cascading arrival.
A new pair of red-cloaked guards marched across the thick carpets, naked weaponry glinting.
“Lady Etiana. Master Toriem.” The guard in the lead inclined her head in a gesture that could barely pass for a bow. “The queen wishes to take tea with you.”
Etiana rose to stand with him. Her fingers tightened on his forearm, but her smile was faultless.
Rerdas tried to control the frantic bursts of his pulse.
He mimicked his cousin’s posture and kept his chin high, ignoring the stares from the watching courtiers fanned around them.
They processed out of the entry hall and deeper into the glittering maze.
Opening a pair of thick wooden doors, their escorts melted back to let them walk into an enormous, brightly lit room.
It was different from any other room he’d seen in the palace, although still armored in carvings and tapestries and ornate furniture.
But all of it was the glaring white of exposed bone.
It reminded him of the sterile rooms the Optologicians had used to interview their subjects.
Dead center was a table draped in a froth of lace, topped with a three tiered tea set.
Queen Kuraya sat like a lump of lead in a high-backed chair.
Arrayed around her, advisors in white robes shuffled through reams of parchment and leather cases, piled on tables and spilling onto the floor.
There were guards stationed every arm-length around the perimeter of the room, their red cloaks the only slashes of color.
“Your Majesty.” Etiana sank into a low bow, and Rerdas followed suit.
“How pleased I am to see that you have accepted my invitation.” Kuraya’s voice rang across the room. She sounded as though she would be pleased to bash their heads into a wall.
“Majesty, you honor us with your—”
“Yes, but do you honor me, Lady Etiana? Your family has been little but a disappointment to me of late.”
Etiana bowed again. Her words flowed steadily and smooth. “How may we endeavor to regain your favor, my queen?”
Thank the gods his cousin was with him. Rerdas felt quite certain that if he opened his mouth, he would immediately vomit all over the sheepskin rug.
“You could start by telling me the truth.”
“The... truth? About what, Majesty?” He knew Etiana’s voice well enough to hear the nervous edge creeping in.
“Why does your mother not attend me? Where is she?”
It was straight into the attack, and Rerdas felt as if he were still fumbling for any kind of weapon. His palms broke into a sweat.
“She regrets... She is traveling, Majesty,” Etiana said.
One of the advisors, a long-faced man with unnervingly sleepy eyes, looked up from the desk where he collected a few sheets.
“She regrets? You have been in contact with her, then?” He brought the records to Kuraya, sliding them onto the table beside the queen without ever taking his gaze from Etiana.
“No, my lord Advisor. I merely meant...”
Rerdas barely listened as Etiana spun a meaningless apology.
He felt the proximity of danger like the singe of a bonfire.
Kuraya played some kind of game with them.
She knew the lies they told already, and simply repeating them wouldn’t be enough.
If she was suspicious, then they needed something to confess.
Something that would make her think them helpless beneath her thumb, and still desperate to save their aunt. They needed to confess something real.
“That does not explain why you were traveling so far from Kirinoll.” The advisor still pressed Etiana.
“We have been forced to travel in order to secure fights for our battleboxer.”
“A beast which you managed to lose,” the advisor countered lightly.
Rerdas twitched. He clenched his damp palms behind his back.
“Forgive me, my lord Advisor, but the battleboxer was stolen from us. He was not the only one taken that night in Drida. Ask the bookers. The guards in Drida. They will second our account.”
“But why were you so insistent on fighting him? And in so many different places?”
Etiana hesitated, and Rerdas summoned his courage. The sort of courage that allowed someone to step forward and fight. Out of the tunnel and into the box.
“Etiana,” he said softly. “Cousin... we must tell them the truth.”
Seats creaked as both the queen and advisor swung their attention to him, shifting.
Etiana’s face turned slowly up toward him, pale in the white light.
“What truth, Master Toriem?” Kuraya asked.
He peeked at her and turned back to Etiana, as though his words were for her alone. “About the fights. Our situation... with onyx.”
“Rerdas...” Etiana sounded dazed and utterly off-guard. Perfect.
“The truth is, Your Majesty,” he said, turning back to the queen with bowed shoulders, “we have been hiding something from the court for some time. It is a great shame upon our family, but we have little onyx left to our name.”
“That seems unlikely,” the advisor said. His tone was mild still, but there might be interest circling there. “Your cousin paid a hefty sum for the fighter, worthless though he was. Yet you claim to have no onyx?”
“Well,” Rerdas cast another glance at Etiana.
The best lies were stitched together with truth.
“That was a slightly mad decision on the part of my beloved cousin. She hoped to use the fighter’s winnings to bolster our situation.
We… we have costs, certain things we must secure.
That sum was the better part of what we had left. Before—”
“So then, your confession is this lack of funds?” Kuraya cut him off with a growl. She was impatient.
The advisor cocked his head, his guileless eyes open and fixed on Rerdas. “Where there is one lie, there may be others.”
Etiana still looked stunned. Rerdas hunched further and looked only as far as the queen’s restless shadow sprawled across the rug. “Majesty, we only sought safety for what we have left. You alone know the truth of our fall.”
“Tell me, Master Toriem,” she said. “Where do you think your aunt is?”
“I wish I knew, Majesty. Perhaps we would not be in this position if she were here to help us,” he said.
There was a measured silence.
Kuraya turned to her tea set and waved a servant forward to freshen her cup.
“You have our sympathy for your family’s delicate predicament,” the advisor said. “Please rest assured that you will find loyalty handsomely rewarded in the days ahead.”
They were dismissed, but Rerdas still found it difficult to breathe.
The same pair of guards who had escorted them waited outside the doors. One of them, a dark-haired woman, bowed and asked them to wait. She slipped back into the white room before reappearing a heartbeat later with another oily smile.
“Right this way, if you please.” She steered them through the corridors.
Rerdas combed back through everything he and Etiana had said to Kuraya.
The queen knew they were still lying about Uralta traveling, but that lie served her purposes, as long as she wanted Uralta to die poisoned by her own kin.
He hoped Kuraya or her advisor had caught the hints he’d dropped that they needed funds to keep buying the false medicine.
But he’d forgotten to mention anything about an urgent desire to get to Dantin’s estate.