Inheritance (13 page)

He stood ramrod stiff, arms out straight as a cloak was pulled behind him. He closed his eyes.

Not now
, he told himself.
You cannot cry in front of all of these people. You would shame her memory
.

He swallowed hard. Everything he did, everything he thought, reminded him of his loss. Since the death of Usharna the morning before last, there had been no time to grieve alone. He understood that this was part of his duty now, to ensure a peaceful and rapid succession, but he longed desperately to have half an hour alone by his mother’s white corpse, to let himself indulge in his own feelings one last time without concern for the kingdom’s greater good, the kingdom’s greater need.

I am being swallowed up
, he thought unhappily, and squeezed his eyes tighter against the tears.
No more grieving. Not now. Not ever
.

Areava breathed deeply as she strode determinedly down the hallway. She had been dressed for over an hour, but despite her heavy mourning clothes and the bright sun, she was cold. Her hands felt like lumps of ice. She fondled the Key of the Sword, found it ironic that she should be wearing it formally for the first time while garbed in clothes most unsuitable for war.

Oh, God, Mother, why did you leave us now? The kingdom still needs you.

She entered Olio’s chambers without knocking. Servants, flocking around her brother like robins around a piece of bread, bowed to her and continued with their work.

Olio eyed her steadily. “You still m—m—mean to continue with your p-p-plan?”

The servants stopped what they were doing for an instant, their minds registering an opportunity for some palace gossip. Olio told them to leave. “I am almost ready. I can finish the rest myself.”

When they were alone, Olio repeated his question. Areava strode to his dresser, picked up the Key of the Heart and with some stiffness placed it around his neck. “There, that’s better.”

“You are wrong in this, sister,” Olio breathed, careful to keep his voice down.

Areava nodded. “Perhaps. But I know no other way to resolve the issue.”

“It is only an issue for you,” Olio responded, avoiding her gaze.

“No, brother, it is an issue for every citizen of the kingdom. The great families are great for a reason. They are destined to rule. We are all bred for it, trained from birth to take up the reins of running a kingdom.”

“You forget—you
always
forget—that Lynan shares our m-m-mother’s b-b-blood.”

“I do not forget. You once accused me of hating him. You are wrong. I do not hate him. I don’t even hold it against him that his father replaced our father as the queen’s consort. But the kingdom must retain its strength and vitality, and it can only do that if those in power are true to their bloodline.”

“You take a great risk. Lynan m-m-may p—p-prove to be worthy—”

“Olio, listen to me! This is not about Lynan!” Her words were sharp, and Olio stepped back. He looked down at the floor. She reached out to hold him by the shoulders, brought him close. “Poor, timid Olio, do not be afraid of me. Of all in this world I care for, I care for you the most.”

Olio relaxed in her arms, returning her embrace. “I know, and will never forget it.”

Areava sighed deeply and held her brother tightly for a moment more before releasing him. She lifted him with one hand and looked him directly in the eye. “Everything I do, I do for Grenda Lear. I am devoted to this kingdom and its peoples. I do not love them the way I love you or Berayma, but my life is theirs. I am born to serve, to serve by doing my duty as the daughter of Queen Usharna. This is not about Lynan, but about tradition, about the future, about what is right.”

Olio had no more arguments. He nodded, surrendering to her. “Very well. Do as you m-m-must. B-b-but take care, sister. Usharna is dead, and a new order has arrived. For your sake, I hope your vision for Kendra is a p-p-part of it.”

“It is up to us to make sure it is,” she said evenly, and left him to finish his preparations for the funeral.

Lynan studied himself carefully in the full-length dress mirror. He wore gray woolen trousers, the ends tucked into his favorite boots—polished so brightly by Pirem that they were hardly recognizable—a white linen shirt with fashionably wide cuffs, and a short black jacket. His sword, sheathed in a metal dress scabbard, hung from gold rings attached to his finest leather belt. The Key of Union hung shining around his neck.

He noticed with some regret that although his clothes looked noble and dashing, his own physique still left a lot to be desired. He was shorter than average, and he suspected he was not going to grow much taller; by all repute, his father had been no taller than Lynan was now. At least his shoulders were straight and strong, and would become wider with age. But his torso appeared too long for his legs, and his neck too frail for the generous head perched upon it. His face was too round, too boyish still, to be considered handsome, and was topped with mousy brown hair.

“Well?” Pirem demanded impatiently.

“It’s fine. Stop worrying.”

Pirem snorted and told his charge to turn around. He attacked the youth with a clothes brush, using stiff, heavy strokes that stung Lynan’s skin. When the old servant had finished, he stood back to admire his handiwork. “You’ll do,” he said in a resigned tone which suggested that no amount of extra work would improve things anyway.

Lynan nodded his thanks and left to join his siblings in the palace’s great hall from where the royal mourning entourage would begin its march through Kendra to Usharna’s funeral pyre near the harbor. He was the last to arrive, and Berayma stared reprovingly at him as he hurried to his position next to Areava and Olio and behind the new king. In front of Berayma stood Dejanus—now Berayma’s Life Guard—and the court sergeant. Behind Lynan was the queen’s bier, a simple wooden frame garlanded with hundreds of flowers. The bier was flanked on one side by priests led by Primate Giros Northam and on the other side by the five malefici, leaders of the theurgia, the magic circles of air, water, earth, fire, and stars, led by their superior, the Magicker Prelate Edaytor Fanhow. The bier was followed by a hundred-strong escort of the Royal Guard led by Kumul; the other nine hundred guards were already posted along the route to the harbor, under the command of Ager. Next came all the foreign ambassadors and provincial consuls, chief of whom was Prince Sendarus. None of the kingdom’s minor rulers had been able to reach Kendra in time for the funeral. The rear of the entourage, led by Orkid looking even more severe and threatening than usual in his black mourning gown and hood, was brought up by various government officials and visiting dignitaries of lesser rank.

Berayma nodded to the leader of the court musicians waiting at the exit of the great hall. Trumpets blared, cymbals crashed, and the procession got under way.

It was a long march of nearly five leagues, planned to take the queen on a last inspection of her royal city. The court musicians kept a hundred paces in front, heralding the arrival of the entourage with a loud, military dirge. People thronged the streets, hung out of windows, and leaned over balconies, waving black handkerchiefs and wailing as they saw their queen for the last time, lying white and pale on her bier.

The first district they passed through, on the heights between the palace and the city proper, belonged to Kendra’s wealthier and better-born citizens, in particular, members of the Twenty Houses. Tall stone-and-glass mansions glittered in the morning sun like giant jewels, surrounded by reserves of tall headseeds and stripe trees, resplendent in their summer dress. Farther down the slope the buildings became less grand and closer together, separated by formal gardens rather than glades. This was where the city’s older families lived, those without claims to nobility but who strove to move upward socially and away from Kendra’s growing middle class, whose quickly expanding district surrounded the city in a great semicircle, the ends anchored on the harbor shore. At last, the procession passed under the old city wall. The streets became narrower and darker, the tops of houses drooping toward each other and forming a sort of open archway. Most of these structures were centuries old and made of wood and mud and reed bricks. Fires in these quarters were common and difficult to control, but the people born here—merchants, craft workers and entertainers— would live nowhere else, for they believed they formed the heart of Kendra and therefore the heart of the kingdom itself.

The last district, which surrounded the great harbor like the dirt ring left in a washtub, was comprised of hovels crammed between warehouses. Many of its inhabitants slept in the open, scrounging what cover they could from the garbage left by those better-off Closer to the water the smell of the sea mixed with the not entirely unpleasant aroma of drying nets and tar, and the smells from the cooking pots of a hundred cultures that all great ports seemed to attract.

The procession reached the docks, continuing north until it again met the old city wall, where the funeral pyre was waiting for them. Usharna’s bier was carried to the top of the pyre where Berayma set it alight. At first, the fire caught on only slowly, but a brief incantation from the Maleficum of Air brought in a fresh sea breeze and in no time at all flames were leaping high into the air. A thick column of brown smoke spread inland, hiding the morning sun and casting a gloomy shadow over the whole city, eerily mirroring the unhappiness of Kendra’s citizens. There was a brief moment, as the cloud started to break up, in which it seemed to take on the shape of Usharna’s face, and as it dispersed, it was as if her own soul was finally being released from its earthly prison. Lynan noticed that the subtle performance had strained most of the malefici and their faces were covered in fine films of sweat. He hoped the assembled citizens had appreciated the illusion.

The pyre burned fiercely for two hours. When the flames started to hiss and die and curl into gray tendrils of smoke, the entourage made its way back to the palace. This time there was no music to mark their procession, just the solemn tramping of the mourning march and the Royal Guards closing in behind it, their spears reversed.

The palace gates were thrown open for Usharna’s wake, and everyone was welcome to come and celebrate the life of their late queen. There was plenty of food and drink, and soon people were laughing again, some nervously but most from relief. Usharna had been a popular ruler, but the dead could not be brought back to life and it was best to look forward to the future as hopefully as possible. There would a new monarch and a new beginning for Grenda Lear. The cloud from the funeral pyre had blown away, and the sun again shone down on the city. The only signs left of mourning were people’s somber dress and the black flags and pennants that fluttered from the palace’s tallest towers and from the masts of ships in the harbor far below.

Lynan found it difficult to join in the spirit of the wake. He was still confused about losing a mother he had hardly known, and yet who had, at the very end of her life, shown she had thought of him as a son. He managed to avoid the most patronizing and the most sycophantic of the well-wishers, people who, before his gaining one of the Keys of Power, would studiously have ignored him. As the celebrations became even more earnest and rowdy, he made his way alone—except for the company of a leather flask filled with red wine—to the palace’s south gallery, a long, narrow room on the top floor decorated with fine paintings and tapestries.

The gallery’s wide double doors were open to let in light and fresh air, and he stepped out on to the balcony. From here, he could see over all of Kendra and its three hundred thousand people, a large number of whom presently occupied the palace’s courtyard and the grounds immediately beyond.

Lynan sipped his wine slowly, enjoying his privileged view. The sun was just beginning to touch the rising ground to the west, reflecting off windows, the color mixing with the red and green of the city’s roofs to form a beautiful tapestry that merged with the lapping waters of Kestrel Bay, saffron in the afternoon light. In the distance he could just make out the rainforest-cloaked shores of Lurisia.

Lynan found himself absently fingering the Key of Union.
I am to be Berayma’s representative in Lurisia and the other provinces
, he thought.
It’s ridiculous. What do I know of such things? Who will teach me
?

He took a large swig from the flask and turned to leave, depressed by the weight of his new responsibilities. With a start, he saw Areava standing under one of the large double doorways, studying him closely.

“How long have you been there?” he asked, irritated that she had said nothing.

“Not long. We missed you downstairs at the wake.”

“We?”

“Your siblings. There is a great deal we have to discuss.”

Lynan snorted. “About the Keys of Power.”

“Of course.” She joined Lynan on the balcony. “You are very lucky, you know. Most of us believed our mother would leave you nothing.” Lynan kept quiet, Areava shrugged, and continued. “You haven’t been trained for such a duty, brother. What will you do?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m still getting used to the idea of being accepted as a true prince of the blood.”

Areava winced but recovered with a smile. “Possession of one of the Keys does not change the circumstances of your birth.”

“You’re right,” he said dryly. “Usharna is still my mother.”

“And your father was a commoner,” she returned calmly. “Whereas Berayma’s father, Milgrom, and my and Olio’s father, Tafe, were noblemen, members of the Twenty Houses. There is a distinction between you and us, Lynan, and it will out eventually.”

Lynan looked away so that Areava would not see his face burning. “I share with you the name of the Great House, Rosetheme,” he said defensively. “The queen’s blood flows in my veins as strongly as it flows in yours.”

“Yes, but that’s not all that flows in your blood, is it? Look, Lynan, I don’t hold anything against you because your father didn’t come from one of Kendra’s original families, but let’s face the truth. When our mother married your father, she thought she was well past the age for conceiving. If she had known she was still fertile, she would have married someone from one of the Twenty Houses.”