5. CONFESSION
CONFESSION
JACEN
Jacen woke the next morning from a liquor-induced approximation of sleep, sick and exhausted, just as his daily report arrived by pigeon.
He had time to feed the bird but not himself, blunt his hangover with a shot, and change into cleaner robes before Nines emerged from her room.
Though he tried to pretend nothing was amiss, his thoughts wandered incessantly back to the skull of the fallen god, glistening white as death in the moonslight.
He set off for the Citadel before he could lose his nerve.
If he didn’t go now, he never would, and there would be nothing to stop him from spending the day alone with a bottle.
As for what he thought he might accomplish .
. . he’d lain awake for a long while trying to figure that out.
He couldn’t go to Akkani about this—he just couldn’t—but neither could he sit by and let Ged do as he pleased.
So, Jacen set out to find Seth. It was better than nothing.
The Citadel’s streets were quiet but for the occasional lay brother or sister and servants of Zivora’s wealthiest citizens who dwelled in the towers.
A cylindrical polyhedron lurked in the central plaza, drifting in circles like a very large, slow vulture.
Jacen quickened his pace as he crossed its shadow, and today he knew he saw it rotate in his direction.
He tugged at his collar, suddenly short of breath.
He sent Nines off to her meeting with the Council, at which they would presumably discuss Jacen and his shortcomings. He proceeded alone.
Seth Semira’s office was located near the City Guard headquarters, deep in the knights’ training compound. Unlike Ged, the High Lord’s second son preferred to stay outside the palace walls. Jacen had paid attention after they’d stopped speaking and knew Seth had a habit of sleeping in his office.
He found the door ajar and slowed in his tracks. He could still turn back, avoid this—
“Jace?”
He winced and turned around.
Seth Semira stood down the hall, frozen, wearing an expression somewhere between shock and outrage. He was shorter than Jacen, smartly dressed and handsome with thick, tousled dark hair and an aquiline nose.
Though Seth had been knighted and remained an obscenely talented swordsman, he had proven an abysmal officer of the Guard, prone to questioning anything that sounded like an order.
He’d lasted one year in the field before his quiet reassignment to the Citadel, where he oversaw the training of new knight candidates.
His rank of Captain was mostly decorative.
At thirty, he was broad-shouldered and solid, getting stout in a way that made him resemble his father.
He’d always had a glare that could cut through steel.
Once Jacen regained the ability to speak, he managed, “Good morning.”
Seth seized him by the arm and steered him into his office. Sure enough, an unmade cot sat behind the desk. Miniature potted cacti lined a high, narrow window, and a familiar black cat slept atop a pile of parchment.
“It’s good to see you,” Jacen tried again, but no sooner had Seth shut the door than his fist slammed into Jacen’s jaw.
The room swam. It took Jacen several moments to refocus. He ought to have seen that coming, and not only because he was a telepath.
“Right,” he said at last, between breaths.
His face throbbed. Seth could hit much harder, but this would leave a bruise.
“I deserved that.” “Three and a half years,” Seth shouted at him.
“My mother died. My sister-in-law died. I caught the plague and I nearly died. I got engaged. You were there for none of it, without so much as an excuse or apology. The last time we spoke, you called me an ‘injudicious drain on society’.” He struggled to compose himself. “And now you say it’s good
to see me? What’s wrong with you?”
Had it actually been so long? The days blended together. Jacen
averted his gaze. He half-expected Seth to hit him again, but he only said, “This had better be good.”
“We need to talk,” Jacen said. “If anyone asks, you felt guilty about missing yesterday’s offering, and you requested a priest for confession.”
“Everyone in the Citadel knows I haven’t attended an offering since I was young enough to be physically dragged there,” said Seth.
Seth’s dislike for anyone telling him what to do extended to the gods—he had that in common with Ged—and this had long been a point of contention between them. Jacen suppressed a surge of exasperation. “Tell them you had a change of heart. Or tell them you needed a—a friend.”
“A friend?” Seth threw his arms in the air. “Brother Kheris has
friends? I thought he was too holy for that.”
“Point taken.” Jacen held up a hand. “Enough. Please.”
But the circumstances of their last meeting hadn’t been quite so one-sidedly terrible.
Before he could think better of it, he let his frustration speak for him.
“I said some inexcusable things. I know. But you—” He lowered his voice, half-expecting Mother Akkani to appear behind him as he said, “You kissed me. You know full well what vows I’ve sworn.
Did you ever stop to consider that what might have meant nothing to you would mean risking everything for me? ”
He left unsaid I was in love with you. Of course he’d distanced himself. Being face-to-face with Seth again was almost more than he could stand.
Jacen wasn’t stupid; he knew Seth cared about him, too—or, at least, he had. But while Seth was free to dally about with whomever he pleased, it would always be different for a Priest of the Black Sun.
“Do you really think it meant nothing to me?” Seth said quietly. “I—” Jacen needed to stop talking before he made this worse. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
Seth’s concern brushed across the surface of his mind. “You look terrible.”
Jacen let out a short, harsh laugh. “Are you drunk?”
Jacen winced again. “Not at the moment.”
“I shouldn’t have hit you,” Seth conceded. “But . . . I’ve been trying to apologize, Jace. I sent you a handwritten invitation to my betrothal ceremony, because I hoped you’d at least have the courtesy to respond.”
“We both know the fastest way to ruin a social function is to invite a priest.” Jacen gave a poor attempt at a smile. “And you don’t even like Saraida.”
“I’m a Semira. None of us like our spouses.”
What was Jacen supposed to say to someone he had loved and then hurt, not spoken to in years, at a time such as this?
Nothing makes sense anymore. Please forgive me.
I miss you.
He settled on “I’m sorry.”
Seth’s face was unreadable, his red-brown eyes unusually cool, and Jacen did not dare go near his mind. Not just because Seth was trained to protect himself but because he feared what he might find. Feared it might be something like disappointment, or worse: apathy.
Once it was clear Seth had no intention of speaking first, Jacen asked, “When is the wedding?”
“Before the end of the cycle, I imagine. Our fields are failing and we need the Ancarath family to keep bringing in grain shipments, or else people are going to starve. It’s not a wedding; it’s a business contract. Besides, Saraida’s never had any interest in men.”
Seth said this all with an air of abject misery, and Jacen was all too aware he was about to make matters worse. Without the faintest idea how else to broach the dilemma, he pointed at the cat. “Is that one of Neri’s?”
“Probably. They shit in my flowerbeds, but letting them in here keeps them away from Damir.” Seth sat on the edge of his desk to scratch the cat behind its ears.
It stirred and made an irritated noise, so he stopped.
“I know you’re not here to talk about my nephew’s cats.
” Jacen recounted the previous night’s events: the scavenger, the skull, and whispers of a demon powerful enough to burn a god to the bone.
Seth folded his arms. “Go on.”
“Akkani wants to cover it up. She—” Jacen swallowed, shook his head. “Ged takes issue with how your father handled it. He wants to use the demon for a . . . a coup.”
After several seconds had passed, Seth flicked his gaze upward with a sigh. “I suppose that was only a matter of time.”
“I think he believes he can overthrow the gods.” Jacen could scarcely bring himself to utter the blasphemous words aloud.
Seth raised an eyebrow. “Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know.” Jacen answered quickly so he wouldn’t have to dwell on it.
“I’m not even sure what I saw. And—you’re taking this rather well.
” He was evading the crux of the matter, but Seth needed to understand the full scope of it before he lost his mind.
The unsettling lack of hysterics thus far only added to Jacen’s sense that he was about to set off an explosion.
“You’ve met Ged. We Semiras like to think we’re close to godhood.” Seth shrugged. “Are you certain it was a god? Did you see it die? I know you think she’s infallible, but maybe Akkani made a mistake. Or the scavenger misinterpreted what he saw. Can he—”
“He’s dead,” Jacen said shortly.
Seth had the tact not to press him about that. He knew what Jacen was capable of. “Say you’re correct. What is my dear brother’s plan?” “He’s sending Neri into the canyon,” Jacen said heavily. “He wants him to find the demon.”
Now Seth’s posture went rigid.
“Neri is a weak telepath,” Jacen made himself continue. “Ged expects that the demon will try to use him as a host.”
“A telepath.” Seth drew a long breath and nodded to himself. “I had guessed. I didn’t think anyone else had.” He began to pace. “I just saw Neri saddling up two kirikil with Damir and Casandra. Gods, is that where they’re off to?”
“Ged would send along someone he can control, to ensure Neri makes it through the desert,” Jacen mused. “Someone who would never question him.”
“Damir.” Seth said the name like a curse. “I’m an idiot. I’ve been waiting, just waiting, for Ged to—” He broke off. “We have to stop them.”
He reached for his sword and baldric on the wall, but Jacen said, “We can’t.” He fought back another pang of guilt at the look on Seth’s face. “Not without alerting Ged.”
“Fuck Ged; I can take Ged.”
“What do you plan to do? Fight him? Fight Damir, and Casandra, and anyone else who happens to be nearby? Involve the Church? We have to be smart about this. We have time. Ged won’t want them to draw attention to themselves either, so they won’t leave until after curfew.
One or two people on foot travel faster through the desert than an encumbered kirikil. But—” Jacen hesitated.
“Oh, for gods’ sake, what else aren’t you telling me?”
“Ged is threatening me,” Jacen admitted. “And I have a student now. If I go missing, someone will notice. If you go missing—”
“Half the Citadel will have something to say about it.” Seth scrubbed a hand over his beard. Perhaps he didn’t trust himself to say more.
“You wouldn’t make it far in the canyon, anyway,” Jacen added, somewhat defensively.
The two of them had trained together; he knew very well that Seth’s survival expertise began and ended with melee combat.
He had the outdoorsmanship of someone raised in a palace.
“I think we need to hire someone . . . discreet.”
Alarm still brimmed beneath the surface of Seth’s demeanor, but he had a rein on it now. “You’re not wrong.”
There were decidedly few advantages to running the seediest chapel in Zivora, but Jacen had become acquainted with all manner of useful—if unsavory—people. In exchange for liquor at a discount, he took regular confession from a man who knew a bounty hunter or two.
But Seth said, “Ysira Naktis.”
The name bounced around the inside of Jacen’s skull for a few seconds before he fully processed it. “She’s alive?”
“It’s complicated.” Seth grimaced. “She’s in Guard custody. Saraida told me last night.”
Jacen had known Ysira in his novitiate days—even called her a friend.
He remembered a tall, striking girl with black eyes and a thorny temperament.
She came from less than nothing, and to Saraida Ancarath she’d become something between a surrogate sister and a charity case—a conveniently inspirational ornament for a magnanimous heiress who would always be her better.
Out of what Jacen assumed was sheer spite, Ysira had secured a Knight Candidacy, typically reserved for scions of Zivora’s wealthiest. The first time they’d sparred, she’d put Jacen flat on his back, after he’d made a retrospectively humiliating performance of not wanting to hurt her.
“She left the Citadel after graduation,” Jacen recalled. She’d fallen short of the requisite ranking to become an officer of the Guard. “I assumed she never wanted to speak to any of us again.” He shook his head. “And you want to hire her? Why would she—”
“She’s Neri’s mother,” Seth said.
Jacen blinked at him. “I thought Neri’s mother was Harvested.
” “Yes, well, that’s the easy thing to say in this city, isn’t it?
‘My business partner didn’t abscond with your fortune; he was Harvested.
’ ‘My wife didn’t leave me; she was Harvested.
’” Seth lifted his shoulders and sighed.
“Whatever happened between them . . . Ged doesn’t talk about it.
I only know Ysira turned up pregnant, several cycles after anyone had seen her last. Lilaya made Ged take responsibility, but Ysira wouldn’t stay. I can’t say I blame her.”
“And Neri has no idea.” “None whatsoever.”
Seth’s regret was palpable for an ugly history he’d been powerless to change.
He was the sort of man who loved quickly and easily, and people tended to reciprocate—in that sense, Jacen and Ysira had both been anomalies.
She was something of an angry outsider, not inclined to romance in the slightest, and so naturally, Seth had been smitten with her.
It seemed that part of him had never faded.
Perhaps Ged had even known just how to hurt him.
“I see,” Jacen said.
He lacked Seth’s faith in a mother’s unconditional willingness to risk life and limb for her son.
His own parents, as far as he knew, had given him up to the Church when he was five years old.
But . . . he trusted Seth. It dismayed him to find that, even after years apart, there was no one alive he trusted more.
“She left because she felt she had to, not because she never cared,” Seth insisted. “When she hears Neri’s in danger, she’ll help. I know it.”