Thy Father's Shadow (Book 4.5) (15 page)

“May it ever be so,” Sareea murmured, and the rest of them said it as well, a low intonation that reminded Terian of the time he’d stumbled into the ceremony of a sect worshipping Mortus. He brushed off that comparison.

“We remain ready to serve at the Sovereign’s bidding,” Amenon said, and the group of them relaxed. Verret, in particular, looked stiff and at attention after all the talk of the Sovereign and his bidding.
Months spent in the depths in the Sovereign’s name will do that to a person, I suppose.
“Today I expect you all to remain close at hand, whiling your time away until you are needed, as I have a few inklings that we may have use for our abilities yet before the close of the day.”

Terian felt himself speak in acknowledgment just as the rest did, a faint murmur of “Yes, sir,” that was not quiet out of lack of conviction but hushed in respect.

“Go on, then,” Amenon said. “Go to the basement if you desire to remain here, otherwise find your stations in town where you can be easily fetched if necessary.”

“I shall be at the Healer’s Union,” Dahveed said with a nod and turned up the cowl of his white robes. “If anyone finds they’ve lost a limb and has sudden need for my skills.”

“Why should anyone lose a limb here?” Grinnd said, a pinched expression on his broad face.

Terian looked at Sareea out of the corner of his eye, and she caught him and looked back with fierce red eyes. “I can think of a few causes offhand.”

“Come, my friend,” Verret said, clasping a hand on Grinnd’s shoulder and steering the big man toward the door. His queue snaked down his back as he steered the warrior out of the study. “We can surely find something to do in the cellar. Perhaps tend to the cleanup of the mess that Terian must surely have left taking apart our prisoner yesterday.”

“Surely,” Grinnd said with true enthusiasm. “Labors of the hands make the mind free.”

“You’d need a mind to make that work,” Verret replied.

“That will be a great disappointment for them,” Amenon said, watching the two of them go, Bowe following not far behind after giving a short, curt bow from the waist to Amenon which was returned by a simple nod of the head. “To find the cellar rooms already in good order, no sign of blood to scrub or flesh to pick up.” He settled himself on the edge of his desk. “Not that Guturan would have let a mess linger overnight …”

“I shall see you later,” Xem said to Terian with a nod and a half-smile. “I will await your order at my establishment, sir, should you have further need of me.” He bowed deeply to Amenon.

“The Unnamed is a little far for a messenger to go and fetch you in case of emergency, isn’t it?” Terian asked, looking at Xemlinan with all seriousness.
Wouldn’t want him to raise Father’s ire
, Terian thought, finding himself a little surprised at the consideration.

“Not that one,” Xem said with a smile. “I just bought the Jaded Eye this past month.”

Terian blinked. “That fancy ale house and inn off the square here in Saekaj?”

“Indeed,” Xem said with a smile. “One cannot remain stagnant, always treading water in the same unmoving pool, after all.”

“Sure you can,” Terian replied. “Fish do it in the Great Sea all the time.”

“And are destined to be the meat and bones in some poor family’s stew,” Xem said.

“Many’s the time you’ve been the bone in some poor woman’s—”

Amenon cleared his throat loudly, cutting Terian off.
Just when I was starting to feel a bit of myself,
he thought and felt the trickle of sweat growing on his forehead, beads falling down his brow and into his eyes. “Fare thee well, Xemlinan,” Amenon said with a nod. Xemlinan took the meaning plainly, bowed to Amenon once more, and departed without ceremony, shutting the double doors to the study behind him.

“Thank you for remaining, Sareea,” Amenon said.

“You did not order me to depart,” she said, voice still hard like cavern rock. “I will remain until you do so.”

Amenon lifted himself off the desk and studied her carefully. “Will you follow my every order?”

There was no hesitation. “Without question.”

Amenon nodded and took a slow, meandering path around his desk, filled with pondering steps. When he arrived at the other side he paused and looked down at the desk, and Terian caught him looking at the little red gemstone on the far side. He looked up and caught Terian’s gaze before turning it back on Sareea. “Very good.” He looked her straight in the eye and spoke into the quiet. “I’d like you to kill yourself.”

Terian did not have a chance to speak before the sword was drawn. His eyes went wide even as Amenon made no move, did not flinch, merely stared on. Sareea’s blade was curved, fearsome, broad at the top of the arc like a scimitar Terian had seen an elvish sea captain carry but with a much broader blade. The inside of the curve was serrated, lending it a savage look, and the crossguard was simplest metal. She reversed her grip in a half a heartbeat, just as he surged into motion.

He reached her as the blade finished running over her throat with a stroke so light he would have sworn it was cutting through the air itself. Deep purple blood spurted out from her throat, running down her dark armor as her red eyes failed to so much as register surprise. He caught her as her legs gave out and he helped cushion her fall.

“Son of a—” Terian jammed his hands against the wound, her glassy eyes staring up, staring past him. He looked at Amenon. “Are you going to do something?”

Amenon said nothing, merely watching, as still as if he had been carved into place. “Usually they hesitate quite a bit more than that.”

“She’s dying!” Terian yelled and turned his attention back to her. She stared on, straight ahead, at Amenon, though her glassy look was already fading. Terian felt heat simmer through him unrelated to the sickness he was already experiencing. “Were I her, I would swiftly reverse my condition unto you with a spell, rip the vitality right out of your body to make you feel the pain of—”

“Which is why I did not even bother to test you,” Amenon said coolly, watching the proceedings as though it were nothing more disturbing than watching a vek’tag being slaughtered for dinner. “For it would have been a shame to have to reverse your own spell back upon you. Keep in mind she slit her own throat first; by your logic the smartest thing to do would have simply been to not run the blade across your own neck.”

Terian looked down; the red eyes were empty now. They stared at Amenon no more, instead looking to the dark wood ceiling, the glow of the fire somehow barely reflecting in them now. “This is despicable, even for you.”

Amenon arched an eyebrow at his son. “You grow soft or forgetful, and I know not which. Life and death are games, mere states that we have authority over. They are a simple enough matter to cure and control with the magic at our disposal.” He clapped his gauntlets together once and called out, “Dahveed!”

The doors opened and Dahveed Thalless walked back in, his white robes trailing. He knelt next to Terian and Sareea, and closed his eyes, concentrating on an incantation that he did not even speak aloud. A moment later the light gathered in his palms was released, blurring Terian’s vision as a sharp intake of breath could be heard from Sareea in his arms. Another few moments, another spell, and he watched the dark blue skin close around her wounds, knitting them shut.

Sareea said nothing at first then once her gasping was done, she turned to look back at Amenon. He did not say anything. Terian heard the slow rattle of metal against metal, and before he could stop her, she held a wide dagger in her hand. It came across her throat again, and this time the spatter covered Terian and Dahveed, turning the white robes of the healer a deep indigo. Terian tried to stop her, grasping her hand, but the damage was well done. Her throat was opened once more.

“Quite the devotee here,” Dahveed said with a certain amusement, and his energy gathered once more, white light glowing in his fingers as he touched Sareea with his fingertips. There was no reason for it, Terian knew, but the healer did it anyway, as though to impart his life-gift back to her.

Terian turned his glare back to Amenon, who watched still, impassive. “Would you have her do it again?” Amenon did not answer.

Terian’s grip on her arm was strong, anchoring it in place while Dahveed, on the other side, maintained a looser grip.
She’s going to
—

Sareea bucked, knocking Dahveed aside. Terian looked down to see her eyes afire, and her hand snaked at him with mailed fingers extended. He ducked his head and she knocked his helm asunder, narrowly missing his eyes. He twisted her arm in his grasp, forcing her body down while moving her shoulder until he heard it crack from dislocation. She did not cry out, instead driving her free hand up toward his face. She caught him across the cheek with an ineffectual punch that did little more than anger him. The next hurt slightly more, and he ducked his head so her third blow hit him in the forehead, on the bone, where it ached only slightly. He drove his shoulder into her back and heard her bones crack further, though she still did not cry out.

“Enough,” Amenon said, and Terian let his grip grow weak. “I no longer wish you to kill yourself, Sareea Scyros.”

“I hear you and obey,” came her muffled voice from where her face was pressed into the floorboards. Terian pulled his weight off of her and stood, getting to his feet while listening to the bending metal of his armor as he took a step back. He watched her warily, tempted on the one hand to offer her assistance, on the other hand knowing it would in no way be taken as anything other than a suggestion of weakness.
She is no longer a little girl, that is certain. To slit one’s own throat is madness, to do it without even a thought is the sign of a truly deranged mind
. She came to her feet, a little slower than she might have, but giving no obvious sign that her shoulder was wrenched out of its proper placement. Her expression was cool, no sign of rage, but she was covered in her own blood from front to back. Terian knew she must be feeling sick from the resurrection spell but she hid it well, expressing nothing whatsoever.

“Very good,” Amenon said with a nod. “Very good indeed.” He looked to Terian. “Not you.”

“I assumed as much,” Terian said.

“Tell me, Sareea Scyros,” Amenon said, watching her. “How did they teach you to handle the matter of someone blatantly disregarding an order given by an instrument of the Sovereign?”

Terian felt the tingle run over his scalp. “You can’t possibly mean—”

“Death,” came the whisper from behind him, and Terian did not manage to turn faster than the full weight of Sareea slammed into him. “Death to all those who disobey the Sovereign, and to disobey his own instruments is to disobey him.” Terian heard it all even as he slammed face first into the floor of his father’s office. There was a weight on his back, and his neck. “All you need do is give the order.”

Terian’s hand was pinned, unable to reach behind him but ineffectually. He grasped at her, landed a hand on the plate metal that surrounded her thigh and squeezed at it. There was only the sound of metal against metal, a light scratching that was nearly lost in the sound of blood pounding in his ears. He looked up enough to see Dahveed, standing warily to the side, still covered neck to hem in Sareea’s blood. Terian shifted his gaze to his father, who looked down impassively, watching the spectacle as though there was not a woman straddling the back of his only son.
Dammit, I’m his heir.

“The order is given,” Amenon said, and Terian felt a chill run through him far beyond the queasiness he had felt all morning.

There was barely even time for him to register the blow before it broke his neck. He shuddered once, felt his whole body go slack, his breathing dissipate, and then he simply died.

Chapter 18

Eighteen Years Earlier

“All these girls are skinny,” Terian said with a chuckle as he stared at Ameli’s peers. She was standing in the midst of several other girls, but she turned to wave back at him.

“Thin girl, thin purse,” Amenon said. “Or so the conventional wisdom goes when searching for a bride.”

Terian let his hand fall on the hilt of the training sword he carried with him everywhere he went now. It had only a dull blade, but to him it was the weight of responsibility that made it so important. “I don’t know why, but I don’t quite subscribe to that philosophy.”

“It’s because your mother is thin,” Amenon said, with a hint of a smile. “And you know she is wealthy.”

Terian nodded. “True.”

They stood in the small yard of the school Ameli attended, a few dozen parents and siblings of the girls knotted toward the back of the courtyard. The whole place was stone with wood trim where possible, a clear attempt to demonstrate the wealth and prestige of this particular school. Terian knew it was only open to the most elite of elite.
And that is why Ameli is here.

Terian’s eyes fell on the thinnest of girls, who was standing next to Ameli. “Isn’t that …?”

“Kahlee Ehrest,” Amenon agreed, his voice soft and low where no one could hear him. “Her father was the one who gave me the idea to send Ameli here. Nothing but the finest for our family.”

Terian nodded stiffly.
Damned right.

There was an officiator making a slow path toward the front of the courtyard, where a dais sat, but he was taking his time. Terian felt the itch and annoyance at watching the man’s slow progress. He wasn’t old, just slow.
Does he not know the aggregate value of the time he is wasting here?
The parents are some of the most powerful people in Saekaj, and he’s just loafing along like they’re the poor waiting for their daily ration!

“Fuming will not make this go any faster,” Amenon said, and Terian could hear the lightness in his voice—a surprise in and of itself.

“But Father,” Terian said, lowering his voice to a whisper, “this man clearly has no respect for his audience. He treats this as though it is some matter of little consequence that can simply be dealt with at leisure.”

“Most do,” Amenon said, looking sidelong at him with a twinkle in his eye. “Those outside the top manors know not what goes into acquiring them. The time, the effort, the single-minded focus. This man takes his slow walk because in this moment he is more important than every other person in the room—and it is the only time he will ever feel this way. Let him have his moment.” Amenon smiled. “For we have all the rest.”