Sorrows of Adoration (52 page)

“Well, this is just
splendid,” he began. His words were slightly slurred, and I knew he
was quite drunk. “You’ve got my people worshipping you, saying
prayers at your statue, and praising you as a living Goddess.
You’ve got my cousin and best friend despising me, and now you’ve
got my son choosing Jarik over me. How else would you like to
destroy me?”

“I thought perhaps I’d
take your armies to Wusul and add a province or two to Keshaerlan.
Then I shall change the direction of the Great Kal just to spite
you,” I said coldly.

“Oh, you’re very funny,
Aenna. I’ll fetch you a set of jester’s toys, and you can juggle
them whilst standing on your head at the next Council meeting.”

“If that’s what Your
Majesty wishes,” I said with a voice dripping forced sweetness as I
rose briefly to curtsey.

His eyes narrowed in
fury. “I won’t let that overgrown Champion of yours steal my son,”
he growled.

It was such a
ridiculous accusation that I could not help but burst into
laughter. A dangerous look entered his eye, but I could not help
myself. “Kurit, you fool,” I said, laughing, “Jarik doesn’t want to
steal Raelik! We’d all be delighted if you’d spend more time with
him. He loves his father, and you don’t care!” I stopped laughing
at my last words.

The anger left Kurit’s
face and was replaced by his more typical sadness. That pained look
always made me want to hold him, but I was long past the point
where I would let myself do so. I had learned to steel myself
against his cycle of anger and sorrow.

He ran his hands
through his hair as he always did when upset. “I do care. Seeing
him choose Jarik over me today …” He sighed. “That cousin of
mine wins over me too often. He is already your preference. I don’t
want him to become Raelik’s as well.”

“Jarik is not my
preference,” I retorted. “I wish every day and night that you would
be as you were, that I might come to you for friendship and comfort
rather than relying on him. And Raelik only knows what he sees,
Kurit. He sees Jarik all the time, always being playful and
affectionate. He rarely sees you, and when he does you’re usually
in a foul temper. If you were three years old, which man would you
choose to play with?”

He staggered to a chair
and dropped himself into it awkwardly. He stared at the floor, eyes
distant and glazed. Then he sighed, and again I had to resist
comforting him.

“Kurit,” I said,
keeping my voice level, “if you wish to catch the attention of your
son, you need only spend time with him. And if you feel you cannot
do so because you do not wish to be near me, then I shall set aside
time when I am not with him.”

He put his head in his
hands, and I wondered if he was weeping. He had been known to
isolate himself in his room or a tower and cry when drunk. I had
heard him myself on more than one occasion, yet when I had tried to
console him later he had been furious with me for knowing of his
weak moments.

“I want to spend time
with both of you,” he whispered. “I want to, but I can’t.”

I sighed, knowing this
would be one of those heart-wrenching, cryptic conversations in
which he’d try both to tell me why he had become this miserable
shell of a man and at the same time to withhold from me those
secrets.

“Why can’t you,
Kurit?”

He mumbled slurred
words into his hand, and when I asked him to repeat them he just
sat in silence.

“Kurit, I’m not going
to sit here while you tease me with letting me understand you, only
to withdraw from me a moment later. It’s too hard on me. But I will
say this: the warmer weather has been making me want to take Raelik
into the garden to play. I’ve been waiting only for the ground to
dry some more, for I don’t want him rolling about in that much wet
mud. No doubt we’ll start going out there regularly soon. If you
wish, I will let you know when we’re going out to play, and you can
join us. Raelik would be delighted if you’d come and play with him.
He loves his father very much.” I paused before my next words,
considering the wisdom of saying them. I decided I wanted to say
them, wise or not. “And I love you and miss you as well.”

He stood up suddenly,
and I thought he was angry. He hurried to the door as though I had
threatened him somehow. He paused, his hand on the knob, and
without looking at me said, “I want to join you. Tell me when you
are going to the garden with him.” Then he opened the door and
left.

So, when spring came,
Kurit, Raelik, and I would go out to the gardens frequently, often
joined by Lyenta. At first, I could tell Kurit was making a
concerted effort to remain mostly sober and to be pleasant.
Fortunately, however, I did not allow this short-lived trend to
inspire me to thoughts of a healed marriage. He soon became
increasingly irritable when invited out to join us, and I suspected
it was because we were cutting into his carefully balanced schedule
of drunkenness.

One bright, sunny
afternoon he was in a particularly foul mood. The weather had been
wonderful the previous three days, so we had been outside in the
afternoon of each day for several hours. As a result, Kurit had
stayed up later at night to drink and suffered headaches the next
day. I had told him to remain inside if he was not well, but he had
grumbled something incoherent and followed me out to meet Lyenta
and Raelik in the garden.

So Kurit sat with his
eyes squinted against the glare of outdoor light, his arms crossed
and an angry look upon his scrunched-up face. Raelik kept looking
to his sour-faced father and would almost become upset. I managed
for a while to distract him with a ball, but soon his attention
could not be drawn away. I worried that his sad little face would
burst into tears and was even sadder when it didn’t. I realized he
was getting used to Kurit’s moods, and that broke my heart.

Unable to bear the
scene, I said, “Kurit, dear, if you are not feeling well, you
should go back inside.”

He cast me an irritated
look and muttered, “You want us to have these ridiculous father-son
playtimes outside. So I’m here. Don’t keep changing your mind,
Aenna. I don’t dance that fast.”

I resisted the urge to
point out to him that he was hardly participating in a father-son
playtime. “I’m not changing my mind, Kurit. I just don’t want to
see you uncomfortable.” I saw Raelik looking from his father to me
and back again and wondered how much longer it would be before he
knew his parents lived in misery. My heart felt heavy at the notion
of my innocent little boy learning so soon of such awful things. I
forced a smile and called to him, trying again to distract him with
the ball.

For a minute or two
more he played with me happily, but then once again he looked to
his father. A sweet smile spread over Raelik’s face. He grabbed the
ball in his chubby hands and ran joyously over to Kurit with it.
The little boy offered the sour man the ball, holding it out in his
small arms proudly and saying, “Papa, here’s the ball for you.”

Kurit made no reply,
which Raelik decided was part of this new attention-getting
game.

“Papa!” cried Raelik.
Kurit ignored him, choosing instead to squint his face in another
direction. “Papa Papa Papa!” Raelik squealed with delight, his
little legs stamping happily as he chanted.

Finally Kurit looked at
him and said, “Papa doesn’t want your ball, Raelik. Take it to your
mother.” His voice was strained with irritation, but I breathed a
sigh of relief that he did not snap at the child.

“Raelik, dear, come to
me,” I said. “Papa doesn’t feel well.”

The boy just giggled
and continued to yell out, louder and louder, “Papa! Papa! Papa!”
Kurit closed his eyes to shut the world out, but Raelik would not
be ignored. He threw the ball happily at Kurit, obviously trying to
initiate a game. Unfortunately, the boy managed to flip the ball
right into Kurit’s face.

Because Kurit’s eyes
had been closed, he was taken by surprise and fell backwards off
the bench, legs and arms flailing. Raelik giggled hysterically at
the wild scene, but I already feared the coming result and leapt to
my feet.

Sure enough, Kurit
stood up and began to yell at his son. “What in the Temple’s name
do you think you’re doing?” he shouted, looking as though he wanted
to pick the child up and throttle him. I ran over to pull Raelik
out of the way, a maternal fear seizing my mind and filling it with
horrific images of Kurit harming my boy.

Kurit brushed the grass
from his arms and backside angrily. “You do not throw things at
people’s heads! Hasn’t your mother taught you how to behave at
all?” he yelled.

Raelik burst into
frightened sobs and turned himself away from Kurit, into my arms.
He clung to me in terror as I picked him up and tried to calm him.
I couldn’t even hear Kurit’s next shouts over Raelik’s loud cries
right beside my ear, but I clearly saw my husband’s fury.

“Enough, Kurit!” I
shouted.

Kurit stopped speaking
and seemed to suddenly see the scene before him, as if he had not
seen us the moment before. His face fell and his shoulders slumped,
yet I did not feel the least bit of sympathy for him. I was enraged
and wanted to attack him for his behaviour towards my baby boy. But
the crying child in my arms needed to be calmed, so I simply turned
my back to Kurit and walked towards the pale and shaken Lyenta.

I tried to softly
soothe poor Raelik, bouncing him in my arms, speaking hushed words
of affection. When his crying became more of a need for continued
comfort than sobs of terror, I looked to Lyenta, who was still
facing where Kurit had stood, and whispered, “Is he still
there?”

She shook her head.
“No, Majesty. His Majesty left when you walked this way.”

I sat back on the grass
with Raelik in my arms and cuddled him until his tears stopped. I
spoke to him as happily as I could in an effort to cheer him up.
After some time of pleasant words and Mumma’s tickles, he was made
to smile again. But when Lyenta offered the ball, his small face
grew sad and he clung to me again. I asked Lyenta to take it away
and bring another toy. She went quickly to do so and returned a few
minutes later with a wooden horse.

Between us, we were
able to interest Raelik sufficiently that I was able to excuse
myself and head into the palace to find my wretched husband. I went
first to his workroom, but he was not there, so I went upstairs to
the south wing.

Jarik stood at the
hallway entrance and blocked my way. I was furious at Kurit and in
no mood to let go of my anger long enough to deal with whatever
Jarik’s problem was. I glared at him and tried to pass. He stopped
me.

“Not now, Jarik,” I
said quietly, trying not to snarl at him.

“I saw what happened. I
was on my balcony, watching over you as always, and I saw it all,”
he said.

“I’m delighted you were
entertained so,” I snapped and tried again to duck around him. He
was, of course, too fast for me and prevented my passing again.

“Aenna, don’t go after
him now. You’re furious, and understandably so, but you’ll do more
harm than good in this mood.”

“I no longer care what
good comes out of my marriage,” I whispered forcibly, “for there is
no good in it. But I will not abide him to destroy my son. Let me
pass, Jarik, or I’ll fight you to pass, and though I shall not win,
I shall make an ugly scene of it nonetheless.”

Jarik sighed. “He’s in
his rooms. Kasha is with him. Don’t put yourself through this,
Aenna,” he said sadly as he stepped aside. I shot past him and went
straight to Kurit’s chambers, not even pausing to knock on the
door.

Kasha was indeed seated
there with him. In Kurit’s hand was an almost empty glass.

Kasha glared at me for
my rude entry, but I refused to even return her gaze. I looked
directly at Kurit and announced, “I would like to speak with my
husband alone.”

“I am his mother, and
my son holds no secrets from me,” she replied darkly.

Still keeping my eyes
locked on the sullen and well-on-the-way to drunk Kurit, I said, “I
would like to please speak with Kurit alone.” I emphasized the
‘please’, despite knowing that it would do no good. Sure enough,
Kasha remained still in her chair.

“Fine,” I snarled,
deciding that I wasn’t going to be dissuaded by her presence. I
stepped closer to Kurit and spoke in a low tone of fury. “If you
want to live inside a liquor bottle and treat me as dirt, that’s
one thing, Kurit, but don’t you dare, don’t you ever treat my son
like that again!”

“You are dirt,” Kasha
said coldly, “and deserve to be treated as such. And Raelik does
not belong to you. He is Kurit’s son, the heir to the throne. You
are but a peasant in pretty clothes and should feel fortunate that
we allow you to even be with the boy.”

Kurit rolled his eyes,
sighed, and muttered, “Mother, don’t. Not now.”

I took a deep breath
and forced myself to ignore her. I knew that her words were
spiteful and meaningless, and I pushed her out of my mind. I asked
Kurit, “How could you treat him like that? He’s just a little
boy!”

“And if you continue to
treat him like one, he’ll end up as unworthy of the crown as you,”
Kasha droned.

“Mother, that’s
enough!” snapped Kurit. His face then fell, and he muttered to her,
“Leave us, please.”

I glanced at her out of
the corner of my eye. I saw her eyebrows raised in indignation, but
nonetheless she took her leave.

When she was gone,
Kurit’s face grew dark and angry. “Don’t you ever embarrass me or
question my actions in front of anyone ever again,” he growled.

I crossed my arms
angrily and said, “I asked her to leave.”

“You should have waited
until later,” he said, rising to pour himself another drink.