Thy Father's Shadow (Book 4.5) (7 page)

“Terian Lepos, you cad,” Kahlee said with a slight rolling of her eyes. “The streets of Saekaj have not missed you in your lengthy absence.”

“Indeed not?” Terian asked. “Unfortunately, my father apparently did miss me, and so the streets of Saekaj will have to suffer in order for the great Amenon Lepos to be happy.”

“Happy seems a strong word for Lord Amenon,” Kahlee said, still looking entirely unimpressed. “I’d ask you to release my arm, but I know how little you listen to the commands of your social lessers.”

“Oh, Kahlee,” Terian said, still smiling, “I’ve never once thought of you as my lesser at anything, especially being social.”

“I’d like to think I’m lesser than you in the realm of rudeness,” Kahlee said. Terian stared at her face, which was still pinched with irritation.
Cute, though. And hardly aged since last I saw her
, though she had gained a certain thinness of face that he didn’t remember. “Presently, you are proving my theory on that.” She flexed her arm slightly under her faintly-dyed clothes as if to illustrate the point.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Terian said, still not relinquishing his grip. “I’m just trying to save you from falling prey to that utter arse over there.” He jerked his thumb back in the direction from which he had come.

Kahlee craned her thin neck to look past him, and he wondered again if she’d been this thin when last he’d seen her. No, she hadn’t. Thinness was not a prized attribute among the nobles of Saekaj; the plumper the noblewoman, the more prosperous the house, it was said.
A young and unattached woman such as this would practically be force-fed by her parents, yet she’s looking surprisingly waif-like.
He smiled wider.
And blue hair?
“I doubt Guturan Enlas could be described as an ‘utter arse,’ even by you, Terian Lepos,” Kahlee said.

Terian turned, not letting loose of her arm. “What? Not Enlas. Well, Enlas too, if you knew him.” He pointed at the nobleman he’d knocked down, who was speaking to Guturan in hushed tones. “Him. He’s plainly circling the market looking for servant girls to make his conquests.”

Kahlee laughed, causing heads to turn in the hushed market square. “Yaren Machin?” She kept her voice low so that Terian could hear it without letting it drift as his words had. “He’s a fool, but he’s not fool enough to accost me twice. I’ve warned him off before and he knows who I am.” She gave him an unamused look. “Now that we’ve established that I am perfectly safe from the predations of others, will you drop this pretense—and my arm?”

“I’ll drop one,” Terian said, frowning, “you decide which.”

Kahlee sighed. “My arm, then.”

Terian let his mouth snake slightly upward as he let her arm fall. “Now, about that supposed pretense—” Kahlee Ehrest turned away without comment. “Hey, wait!”

“No,” she said, moving through the crowd of faintly colored garb. She paused to let an older noblewoman clad in a black dress cross in front of her.

Terian stepped forward to follow, and three servant girls in their teens nearly fell over themselves to move out of his way. “I really didn’t have a pretense when I grabbed hold of you. I was just trying to catch you so I could say hello—”

“Which you’ve yet to say,” Kahlee said, whirling around to face him. “So get it out of your system and we can both be on our way.”

He stared at her, the angular lines of her high cheekbones and dark blue skin flush and faint against the blue hair and pale red dress. “Hello, Kahlee.”

“Hello, Terian,” she said, almost tonelessly. “And good day. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I hope we can avoid speaking for another twenty or so years.” She drew herself up. “Which will not be nearly long enough for me to forget what you did—and who you are.” She gave him a look of faintest reproach then turned about on her heel and faded into the crowd.

Chapter 7

Terian felt the sting of her contempt coloring his cheeks as he made his way back to the carriage. Guturan waited silently but with furious eyes. “Are you quite finished accosting the serving girls? You need not be as flagrant as that fool Yaren, you know? Arrangements can be made without resorting to public displays of—”

“That was Kahlee of the House of Ehrest,” Terian said, the smells of fresh yeast bread from the market filling his nose. His flesh felt surprisingly warm given the coolness of the caves.

“Sovereign’s grace,” Guturan said in shock. “I’d heard she’d defied her parents, but to see a girl of one of the noblest houses dyed and garbed in such a manner—” He halted in the middle of his sentence. “This is hardly a matter to be discussed in polite company.”

Terian stopped before the door of the carriage as the driver waited for him, holding it open. The man was stooped low in a bow. “I could stand to discuss it a little more,” Terian said. “She looked …” He turned his head, trying to catch a glimpse of her through the crowd. “… good.”

Guturan made a hacking noise deep in his throat. “You have been away for far too long, Master Terian. She was rangy as a street orphan of Sovar, and those clothes—”

“You don’t have to agree with me, Guturan,” Terian said. “You can shut up any time, though.”

They fell into silence as Terian climbed back into the carriage. Guturan latched the door behind him, and the faint noise of the market square faded as Guturan started to pull the cord of rope to shut the curtains. “Don’t,” Terian told him, and Guturan let it be.

The carriage began to move again, the light thumping of the wheels against the road allowing Terian to drift into thought.
Kahlee Ehrest … oh, how you’ve changed
…

They passed back onto the main road at the far end of the square, and walls cropped up to separate the street from the noble manors on either side of the avenue. The sides of the chamber quickly gave way to the largest and most prominent noble estates. Each manor they passed was grander than the last in the line.

Here sit the most favored
. Terian’s eyes swept to the left, to the next-to-last house.
The House of Ehrest. Third in the line for the most favored in Saekaj. Though I’m certain Kahlee’s behavior isn’t helping them at present
.

Terian’s eyes were drawn to a familiar house, and the carriage made a turn through the gates of the estate nearest to the Sovereign’s palace on the right-hand side of the road.
My right, not the Sovereign’s. And that is important.
He glanced out the window and caught sight of the manor house directly opposite.
The House of Dagonath Shrawn
. Terian’s eyes narrowed.
The most feared and hated man in Saekaj Sovar. The Right Hand of the Sovereign.

The House of Shrawn passed out of sight behind the gates, and there came a smell of familiar gardens as they crossed through the wall. Guards were present, clad in the livery of the sigil of the eye that hung over the carriage. A small waterfall flowed out of a rocky streambed against the wall of the cavern. A large, blocky estate house waited at the end of the drive, built into the rock. The lines of it were sheerest elegance, aping the palace of the Sovereign wherever possible. The carriage squeaked to a stop in the roundabout in front of the front door, and Terian drew a deep breath of cool air.

“Don’t forget your cloak,” Guturan told him, not even looking at him.

“I never took it off,” Terian said.

Guturan looked back at him, frowning. “Why not? It is abundantly warmer here in Saekaj than it is outside in that awful wind, out in the frigid elements of that city you were living in.”

Terian shrugged. “I suppose I’ve become accustomed to the warmer temperatures humans and elves prefer.”

Guturan made a disgusted noise. “Comforts.”

“I’m sure we don’t have any of those here,” Terian said, “in our palatial estate.” He brushed past Guturan and stepped out of the carriage first, taking care not to miss the hinged step that had been kicked down for him by a well-dressed doorman who had come out to greet them. Terian let the clank of his boots against the stone carry him up the steps to the entrance where a second doorman opened the front door with a deep bow.

Terian strode into the house, where wooden floors varnished and dark awaited him. There were lamps burning in the entry, concessions to the fact that the bright luminescence from the ceiling of the cave was not present here, and that even a dark elf could not see in total blackness. He eyed the nearest lamp, saw the slosh of the fuel oil that he knew had been dredged out of the Depths by prisoners, and pondered idly whether it was the slaves on the surface or the dark elven criminals who truly had it the worst in the Sovereignty.

“My son,” came a quiet voice from the corner. He turned and saw her, rising up from an unpadded hardwood chair, . Olia Lepos wore a dress of cotton grown on the surface by slaves. She was thinner and frailer than he
 
remembered, much more so than the other noblewomen he’d known, though she was less than a century old. Her face was lined in the manner of humans who had spent days in the sun, but he knew that daylight had never touched her skin, even now. She stopped only a pace away, her reserve clouding whatever emotion she might be feeling. The room was smallish; a foyer with a staircase leading upward, the majority of it carved stone, built in the style of the noble houses of Saekaj to conserve space. Terian could have reached up and touched the ceiling were he of a mind to but even so, she appeared miniscule within it.
 

“Mother,” Terian said and felt the tug of a worried smile. She looked so faint and worn, as if a thousand years had passed since last he had seen her, when in truth it hadn’t even been two decades.
An eyeblink for a dark elf, really
.

“I am pleased that Guturan was able to find you,” she said, her hand reaching up and running across the pitted surface of his breastplate below the pauldrons. There were only small spikes here, twice as wide as his thumb, near each armpit where he could ram them into a foe with a sharp shoulder check and cause bruising, at least. She kept her small hand well clear of them, however, as though fearing he might employ them on her.
She needn’t worry about that.
“It has been so long,” she said in a voice tinged with regret.

“Not so long for our people,” Terian said as cavalierly as he dared.

“But for the humans whom you have been living among,” Olia said, her eyes still not meeting his, “half a lifetime, almost.”

“I’ve also lived among elves,” he said, as gently as he could. “And for them it would be considered nothing more than a season.”

She finally raised her face to stare at
 
him, and though he could see the clouds of unease beneath them, not a word of condemnation came out. “Still, it pleases me to look upon you once more, especially here in this place, returned to us safe and whole.”

“The blessings of Yartraak have surely been with him,” Guturan said from behind him. “Is Lord Amenon in his office?”

“Of course,” Olia said. “One of the servants brought him that atrocious mushroom, suet and beansprout gruel only moments ago.” She had seemed almost indifferent until the food was mentioned. When she spoke of it, a hardening of the lines around her eyes became evident. “Cooked for only seconds, the way he likes it.”

Terian let that hang in the air for a moment before he spoke. “The way the poor eat it, you mean.”

If Olia was affronted by her son’s comment, she hid it behind the facade of her purple eyes, as indigo as the dyes he had seen in the Reikonos markets. “No matter how far above his beginning station your father has risen, he continues to shun the luxuries afforded him by his Lordship, his fortunes and the continuing favor of the Sovereign.” She shook her head ever so subtly, so subtly that Terian could not discern whether she was mentally chiding her husband or merely dismissing his faults. “To think that the son of a vek’tag herder and a seamstress could rise so far. Truly the Sovereign is gracious.”

Terian bit back his immediate response.
Truly gracious, to allow only those who have sacrificed what you have sacrificed to rise up from the pits of Sovar. Never mind those languishing there who have been given no such opportunity
. “Truly,” was all he said.

“We must take you to your father,” Guturan said without further ado, striding up from behind to lead him on.

“You don’t think he saw our arrival out his window?” Terian asked with returning amusement.

“You will go to the lord of the house; he need not come to you,” Guturan snapped, his long, lanky legs now resting on the first step of the staircase, giving him an even more pronounced height advantage as he looked down at Terian. “Or have you forgotten your manners and your place, having lived so long out in the cold daylight of the filth above?”

Terian let that one pass, feeling more pleased at riling the steward than stung by his ineffectual reply. “I don’t recall ever knowing any manners, actually. Who was in charge of teaching me those? I can’t remember.”

Guturan let out a low exhalation of frustration. “My apologies, my lady, for failing you so in the instruction of this one—”

“My son has always found his amusement in defying the expectations of others,” Olia said dismissively. “Do not trouble yourself over it, Guturan, you did your best. After all, if he confounded the responsibilities handed him by his father, his mother and his Sovereign, it cannot be expected he would take the education you gave him with any seriousness—”

Terian sighed. “Do you hear that?”

Olia and Guturan both stopped, caught by surprise, and listened. “What?” Olia asked.

“You might not be able to see it, here in the dark,” Terian said, striding forward to the stairs and dodging past Guturan as he began to ascend, “but it was the sound of my eyes rolling.”

He climbed the stairs, the long, pacing steps of Guturan Enlas following behind him. When he reached the landing after the third floor, he slowed and Guturan overtook him. There was only one room here, at the top of the house, and the stairs cut straight up toward it. Double doors marked the entry. They were not wood but stone, and heavy, as Terian knew from experience. He recalled many a time as a child trying to push them open, just a crack to glimpse a sight of his father at his desk, poring over parchment that seemed to come from messengers arriving at all times of day and night.