The Dead God's Due (The Eye of the Lion Saga Book 1) (16 page)

There were guards at the gates
and throughout the public areas, but anyone could come and go
freely. It was only as he was nearing the actual entrance to the
private sections that he found himself chest to chest with Caelwen
Luvox. The burly soldier interposed himself bodily, hand on his
sheathed blade, his cold, steel gray eyes boring into Aiul,
searching his soul. “Stop.” He said the word like
another might swing an axe.

Had Aiul not been so angry, he
might have had second thoughts, but after confronting Narelki, even
Caelwen was less intimidating. “Out of my way. I have no
quarrel with you.”

Caelwen glared back, his usual
calm, cool manner missing for some reason. “Aye, is that so? I
think you might, after all, House Amrath. I think you fucking well
might.”

“What are you talking
about?”

By now, several onlookers had
gathered to witness their conflict. Caelwen glanced at them, hatred
and disgust on his face, and gestured for Aiul to follow him into a
side room.

“Oh, we don’t need
privacy,” Aiul declared. “I’m happy for the whole
world to hear what I have to say!”

“I am not.”
Caelwen’s hard eyes were adamant and commanding. At last, Aiul
nodded and entered.

Caelwen closed the door behind
them gently, then, without warning, grabbed two hands full of Aiul’s
shirt and slammed him against the wall. The impact was enough to
knock the breath from Aiul’s lungs. Caelwen moved closer, his
eyes brimming with cold fire and madness. “Did you know?”
he asked, his voice soft and menacing.

Aiul stammered unintelligibly,
still struggling to breathe. Caelwen slammed him against the wall
again, then clamped one gauntleted hand around Aiul’s jaw, and
the other about his throat like a vise. “Did you know she was
going to kill my men?”

Aiul struggled against
Caelwen’s grasp, but it was useless. The man was strong, a
trained killer from birth. Struggling against light headedness and
black spots swarming in his vision, Aiul tried to convey that only
Mei knew what Caelwen was talking about, and that in short order,
Aiul would be too dead to be of any use.

The message seemed at last to
get through to Caelwen. He relaxed his death grip on Aiul’s
throat slightly. “You don’t know a fucking thing, do
you?”

Aiul, eyes wide, shook his head
as he struggled for breath. Caelwen released him in disgust, then
turned and slammed a mailed fist into one of the walls with enough
force to crack the stone tiling. Aiul slid slowly to a sitting
position, still wheezing.

“Why are you here, House
Amrath?”

“Fuck you, House Luvox.”

Caelwen chuckled to himself
without humor. “Just wondered if you would say. I already
know. I just couldn’t put it together. I thought maybe you had
been the target instead of Lara.”

Aiul rubbed at his aching neck.
“Stop being cryptic. You’ve had your fun choking me, so
I don’t see the point of this guessing game. Get to the point
or Elgar take you!”

Caelwen stared at the ground,
his jaw working, for long moments before speaking. “She killed
them. All of them that knew about the Southlanders.” He looked
up at the ceiling and ran a hand over his face in frustration. “You
and I are the only ones left who know her secret.”

Aiul
felt
suddenly and deeply ill. He
stammered unintelligibly for a
moment, unable to find words. Somehow, the news of the guards'
deaths seemed even more horrible due to his heroic efforts to save
several of them recently.
I put them back together, and Kariana
tore them to pieces again, as if they were nothing more than paper
dolls.
“Mei!”

“Mei, indeed,”
Caelwen said with a sigh and a nod. He looked back at Aiul, his eyes
now watery and tired. “Are you sure she tried to kill your
wife and not you?”

Aiul tried to speak, coughed,
and nodded, still rubbing at his throat. “She said she was
going to last night. Promised it, actually.”

“It could have been a
mistake.”

“They went directly for
her. I heard her cries and came running with my mace. They didn't go
easy, either. I damned near killed one of them before they broke and
ran.”

Caelwen nodded, his expression
sour and unconvinced, but seeming to have no better theory. “Still,
we two are loose threads that should be burned off. No doubt, she’ll
slay the Southlanders too, and then we are all doomed.”

Aiul boggled at this. “What
are you saying?”

“You’ve seen the
wounds they gave my men at five to one odds, and these are just
scouts. How do you think we will fare when they will send armies to
have their revenge on us for this villainy?” He shook his head
and pounded a fist into a palm. “They will crush Nihlos under
their boots, and they will have the right of things. This is how it
all ends, and it is out of our hands.” Caelwen heaved a great
sigh and reached toward Aiul, offering him a hand up. “So now
we talk about you, and what you came here to do.”

Aiul accepted his help and rose
to his feet. His throat still hurt, but this was no time to cry like
a child about it. “And?”

“Go home, Aiul. I can’t
let you do this.”

“What? Are you mad? Now
more than ever--!”

Caelwen hammered a fist against
his breast plate. “I have my
duty
!
I cannot simply let you walk in and stick a knife in her!”

“Elgar take your duty!”

“It serves
Nihlos
well, wretch. I might dance a jig to see you had stabbed her in her
black heart, but I
will
kill you to prevent it.”

Aiul shook his head in disgust.
“I say you’re just weak.”

“If I were weak, I’d
kill you for your insults, and her for her crimes. Then I would have
a go at seizing the crown myself. Who do you think would stop me?”

Aiul had no answer. Caelwen
nodded. “So you understand, now. It would seem neither of us
can do anything but accept our fate.”

Aiul searched his mind for the
right words to change Caelwen’s mind, but it was pointless. He
was a rigid fool. He knew Nihlos might well be crushed by enemies if
Kariana lived, and yet he would not move against her. Aiul would
have to find another way.

As he neared the door, Caelwen
spoke once more. “It’s best that I stopped you here, or
else you would have interrupted the Empress’s preparations for
her orgy. She would have been most displeased.”

Aiul looked at Caelwen in
confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“Why, just making
conversation.”

“Idiot!” Aiul
turned to leave again.

“I hear the orgy is to be
a large affair, but I won’t see it. Ordinarily I would be
guarding the doors, but I have a more pressing duty tonight. I must
bury my Lieutenant.”

Aiul paused, sensing this was
suddenly something more then idle conversation. “Oh?”

“Yes. His name was
Kelthas. He was a good man, a father with three children.”
Caelwen clenched his jaw and ground his teeth a moment. “My
duty to see him off supersedes all else, you understand?”

Aiul nodded slowly, and Caelwen
snapped him a salute, then turned to leave.

Tonight or never. That was the
best Caelwen could offer. Aiul intended to take full advantage of
the deal.

Kariana woke to what she felt
certain was the impact of a sledgehammer against her skull. It was
an event worthy of a prodigious scream, but the best she could
manage was a slight moan.

She slowly rose to a sitting
position, raised her hands to her head with difficulty, and squeezed
as if she were trying to hold back an explosion. For a few moments,
there was nothing but pain and confusion. She wasn’t even
certain who she was, much less where. Then the memories, blurred and
hazy, began to trickle in.

Mei! What did I do?

The sledgehammer struck again,
and her wounded brain finally processed the fact that someone was
pounding on the door. Her head seemed to swell and contract
rhythmically with each blow. She opened her mouth to scream a curse,
but thought the better of it as her stomach threatened to rebel.

“Kariana! Open this door
at once!”

She knew that voice, one that
always made her feel like a stupid little girl. She had first heard
it chastising her for entering the palace covered in mud. At the
time, she had barely been old enough to understand words at all, and
he, an adult, had been quite a terrifying figure. Some things never
changed.

Since then, her cousin Sadrik
had been her personal critic, a nettling demon who took sadistic
pleasure in pointing out her mistakes. He was as bad as Caelwen,
though at least he didn’t bother with saccharine pleasantries.
Sadrik was and always had been a sour, mean, frightening person. He
had probably sprang from the womb with a frown on his face. He was
the last person she wanted to see right now.

“I will break this door
down, Kariana!” he warned her. “You have ten seconds!”

“I’m coming!”
she answered. She had intended it as a roar, but it came out much
more along the lines of a sob.

It took her some time to find
her feet and shamble across the room, but she moved as quickly as
possible, strongly motivated to be done with it before Sadrik
resumed his pounding.

Sadrik hovered like a bird of
prey, his dark eyes full of fire, his raven hair a wreath of black
smoke hanging low on his shoulders. Looking up at him was like
looking at the larger than life-sized statues of Tasinal that one
might see about Nihlos. He had the same sharp features, the same
mile-high cheekbones and commanding jaw line. There was, she thought
ruefully, no doubt about Sadrik’s lineage. How fortunate for
him.

“I am not well,”
she said. “What are you going on about?”

Sadrik raised a fist in which
he held a crumpled document. “This death list, for starters!”

Kariana blinked in confusion.
“What?”

The muscles in Sadrik’s
jaw bunched as he ground his teeth. “Don’t play coy with
me!” He shoved his way past her and closed the door.
“Executions in the dead of night when no one sane could
breathe a word of objection!”

Kariana felt herself reeling,
and steadied herself against her vanity. “I don’t
understand!”

“Do you have any idea
what you’ve done? Mei! Seventy or more loyal men,
good
men!”

“Stop it!” Kariana
slammed a fist against the vanity, knocking bottles over with the
force. “I told you I don’t know what you’re
talking about!”

“
You
stop it! You were obviously out of control last night.” Sadrik
eyed a half empty bottle of liquor on her nightstand and shook his
head in disgust. “It’s all over town that you arranged a
botched attempt to have Aiul’s wife killed, too!”

“What? That’s
insane!”

“Oh, yes! Quite insane!
He would have likely killed you this morning if Caelwen hadn’t
stopped him, and I wouldn’t count on that to happen again,
with you killing his men.” Sadrik’s face twisted in
rage, and he picked up the bottle of liquor and hurled it against
the wall. Glass and liquid exploded, and the scent of alcohol filled
the room. “You’re power mad, Kariana! You’re going
down and you’re close to dragging all of House Tasinal into
the flames with you!”

Kariana shook her head over and
over in denial, feeling as if the world had suddenly slipped from
beneath her feet. “It wasn’t me! It
wasn’t
!”

“It damned well was!”

“How
could
it have been! I could barely move! The only person I thought of
killing last night was myself, and I was too drunk even to do that!”
She was weeping now, drowning in confusion and fear.

He uncrumpled the paper in his
hand and considered it closely, then shoved it toward her. “The
signature is quite sloppy. I’d expect a forgery to be
considerably cleaner. You signed this death warrant, Kariana. Go on,
look at it and deny it to my face so I have an excuse to beat you.
I’ve been looking for one since this came to my attention.”

Kariana looked at the
signature, feeling ill. It was her handwriting. She stared at the
floor in silence and brushed a hand roughly over her eyes to wipe
away the tears.

Sadrik nodded in satisfaction.
“As I thought. Now I will have an explanation, or I will call
a meeting of the Elders to have you removed.”

Kariana shook her head. “I
don’t know why, Sadrik. It’s my signature, but I didn’t
order these men killed. I don’t even know them.”

Sadrik sighed. “You’re
not leaving me any options, Kariana.”

Kariana glared at him with
bloodshot, teary eyes. “I just don’t see how, if I were
so fucked up as to not even remember, if I couldn’t even sign
my name properly, how did I get the document written? How did I make
arrangements to have someone try to kill Aiul’s wife?”

Sadrik eyed her warily for long
moments, the rage slowly draining from him. He gave a slight grunt
and nodded. “There is that.”

“I didn’t do this,
Sadrik. I
didn’t
!”

“Then find me another
explanation. You clearly signed the order. If you didn’t draw
it up, someone else must have. Who? Did you see anyone last night?”

Kariana shook her head. “I
don’t remember.” She paused, thinking. “I left the
prison. I went to Narelki’s and made a complete fool of
myself. Then I came back here.”

“That much we agree on.
Caelwen followed you.”

“He
what
?”

“And saved your life,
doubtless, from muggers. Don’t be an idiot. It’s his
duty. Go on.”

“That’s all. I came
home. I….” She paused again, as memories slowly
revealed themselves. “Marissa was here.”

Sadrik’s scowl deepened.
“Mei! You imbecile!”

“What? She’s my
friend!”