Thy Father's Shadow (Book 4.5) (16 page)

Terian felt his father’s words trickle down into him, pondering the wisdom of them.
He knows this man is milking this moment, and he lets him have it. Curious. I would think he would land upon him like a blade on the back of the neck of a true traitor.

There was a noise from ahead as the officiator reached his dais. The pudgy, round fellow blinked as he locked his eyes on the disturbance. Terian followed his attentions to where every eye in the room rested.

Firmly on Ameli, Kahlee Ehrest, and another girl standing next to the two of them.

“You are a fool, Sareea Scyros!” Ameli’s voice broke over the crowd, silencing the hundred quiet conversations that had sprung up in the courtyard.

Terian felt his father bristle next to him.
This is shameful.
A public dispute with some unnamed, unknown soul?
Ameli would have been better off feuding with Kahlee Ehrest; that wouldn’t look nearly as bad.

“I am no fool,” the girl said in reply to Ameli, in a voice low and cool, like ice on glass. “And you are making a spectacle of yourself in front of everyone.”

“I don’t care!” Ameli gave this Sareea a firm, double-handed shove that knocked her off balance. Terian watched the girl fall backward, landing in a wet patch of clay. Her face showed only a hint of shock that faded quickly.

“Ameli.” Terian’s father’s voice crackled with quiet menace, silencing everyone in the courtyard. Every head turned to look at him, without exception.

“It was not my fault, Father!” Ameli said. To Terian’s eyes, she looked as though she were regaining her senses. Her eyes widened as she took in the scene around them, the realization that she’d embarrassed herself before the entirety of the audience sinking in.

“She was firmly in the right, Lord Amenon.” Kahlee Ehrest said, her white dress hanging off her skinny shoulders and clinging to her thin figure. She drew nearly every eye in the room, pulling them to her through the volume of her voice, which Terian noted was curiously directed.
She’s had experience controlling a room, drawing their attention to her.
Of course.

“Thank you, Kahlee Ehrest,” Amenon said.
He calls her by her full name to make her aware that he knows who she is, but denies her the respect due an adult by doing so.
“I think I can handle my own daughter’s behavior without your counsel.” He turned a burning eye on Ameli. “Come with me.” He looked to the officiator. “You will wait on us.”

The officiator stood stunned, mouth slightly ajar. “Of course, Lord Amenon.”

Without waiting for a reply, Amenon strode out of the courtyard. Terian watched Ameli, and she followed moments later, her head down and avoiding every eye in the room—all of which were on her. As the low buzz of conversation sprung back up in the courtyard, Terian looked at the girl who had been pushed—
Sareea, wasn’t that her name?

She was no beauty, that was certain. Her face was all harsh lines, though her lips were full and dark. He caught her eyes trawling the room, studying the reaction to the scene that had just played out. She saw him watching her and stared back, giving him just the hint of a smile—barely enough for him to know she was doing it.

“YOU WILL CONDUCT YOURSELF IN A MANNER THAT BEFITS YOUR FAMILY!” Amenon’s voice crackled from outside the courtyard, and the sound of a hand slapping a cheek was followed by a sharp cry from Ameli. Amenon’s voice was lowered upon his next comment, and Terian did not hear it.

He did fix his eyes on Kahlee Ehrest, though, and caught the darkening of her cheeks. Her embarrassment and shame was obvious. Terian did not take his eyes off her as Ameli made her way back into the courtyard. He saw her turn her gaze on his father, saw the emotion shine from beneath a face that had long been taught not to show itself truly. Terian recognized it for what it was, though, having seen it all too often on Ameli’s face.

Anger.

Chapter 19

Terian awoke in the dark, in his room once more, the shock of his own breath in the cool air not making up for the sweat that coated him, covered him. The sheets smelled of whatever fever afflicted him, a sick feeling that was not likely to depart any time soon. “He had her kill me,” he said in realization.

“Oh, indeed,” came a voice out of the dark, and suddenly a lamp hovered in his vision, illuminating a dark blue face in the darkness. “I am rather surprised you didn’t see it coming, though. How long have you been gone again?” Dahveed’s ironic smile was still there, and his robes still bore their bloodstains.

“Not long enough,” Terian said with a grunt.

“Now, now,” Dahveed said, and Terian realized the healer was sitting in a chair at his bedside, “he’s not that difficult of a man to figure out. He simply wants his every order followed, and every action to carry with it the appropriate amount of honor to the Sovereign.” Dahveed’s smile grew broader. “Is that really so hard?”

“Apparently,” Terian said, sitting up in bed, feeling the squeak of the frame under the feathered down, “for a free man, it is.”

“There are no free men in Saekaj or Sovar,” Dahveed said seriously. “An important lesson to remember if you’d like to avoid having that terror of a woman separate your head from your shoulders in the future.”

Terian’s hand fell to his throat. “She didn’t …?

“By the Sovereign’s grace, no, she did not,” Dahveed said. “That would have taken me a bit more time to repair. I believe she smashed the bones in the back of your neck to a fine powder, though, and the bones in the back of your skull for good measure.” The healer’s nostrils flared and he leaned forward. “You should remember where you are if you wish to avoid invoking your father’s displeasure in the future.”

Terian let himself stare at the far wall, the sick feeling not even beginning to subside. “I haven’t given a vek’tag’s anus about my father’s displeasure in years. Why start worrying about it now?”

“Because you’re under his roof again now, I would think.” Dahveed settled back once more, and there was a soft whooshing of the fabric of his robe against the wooden chair. “Different country, different house, different rules. Surely you’re a bright enough lad to realize that.”

“I question how bright I truly am at this point, Dahveed.” Terian leaned back and felt the soft pillows awaiting him against his neck. He turned his head just a little, to look at the healer, and lowered his voice. “Was it always like this?”

Dahveed raised an eyebrow. “In your father’s house? Yes—”

“No,” Terian said and looked up at the ceiling as though he could see through the boards above into the third floor and through the ones above that to the study at the crest of the house. “I know it’s always the same here in the House of Lepos. I meant Saekaj. Sovar. The invoking of the name of the Sovereign seems to be at a fever pitch, and I don’t remember it being this way when last I left—”

“This is treason,” Dahveed said warningly and twisted the little flame at the base of the lamp. After a moment, the flame grew brighter and the shadows around them grew longer.

“Sorry,” Terian said.

“It’s quite all right,” Dahveed said. “I just wanted to be sure you remembered it before we went further. The flames of the Sovereignty’s nationalism are growing by the day, stoked by the Sovereign’s own return. Before, in his absence, the words were said but the meaning was not there. ‘In the name of the Sovereign!’” Dahveed said it loudly and
 
without irony and his words echoed off the walls of the room. “After he left, after Shrawn and the tribunal took their place—his place—the flames died for a piece.” Dahveed mimed the action of turning down the lamp’s wick. “Only the dedicated preferred the Sovereign to the weaker grip of the tribunal. Only a true fool like Verret would be mad enough to give voice to those thoughts, especially given all that the last hundred years have brought us.” He began to lift his fingers, one by one, to illustrate his points. “The lifting of the laws set at the end of the last war that confined our entire race to these underground pits, the relaxation of the death penalties for those who dared to speak a single word that could be interpreted as disloyal—”

“That’s enough for me,” Terian said. “I can feel it in the air down here, in the chill. There’s an atmosphere of suffused … I don’t know, goose-stepping. Like everyone’s in a hurry to do their assigned tasks. It’s always been bad, but not like this.”

“Pride and fear,” Dahveed said. “Pride in the thought of our nation ascendant once more, fear from the thought of the punishments that might come each of our ways for any perceived disloyalty.” He held his hands a short distance apart from each other. “The twin motivators, working hand in glove with each other to assure that the dark elven people all march to the same song.” He gave a long sigh. “And that tune is whatever one that the Sovereign finds to be prettiest. As it has always been.”

Terian looked at Dahveed, measuring a response. “Where does that leave us?”

Dahveed smiled bitterly. “The same place as ever. Marching to the music. Because the alternative is too unpalatable to bear.”

Terian stared into the distance to the darkest corner of the room, as though he could see into the shadows there, see something watching or waiting for him within them. “Maybe I don’t want to march to the tune.”

“Because you’d prefer to dance?”

Terian let out a disgusted noise. “I never prefer to dance. I’d rather just ignore the music and hope it goes away.”

Dahveed turned down the wick and the flames that lit the room grew fainter. “I’m afraid that the music that drives us forward doesn’t abate simply because we wish it to, any more than the Sovereign will simply …” he smiled faintly, “… disappear into the darkness because we wish it. No, these changes, this difference … it is here to stay.” His face grew placid, calm, with just a hint of unease. “After all … what can two men do against the entire Sovereignty?”

Chapter 20

“You will read all of these missives,” Amenon said as Terian seated himself at the small table in the corner of his father’s office. It was piled high with parchment; at the top, he could see a report on the amount of fish sold in market the day before. “You will look for threads of interest that call out to you, keep watch for ongoing concerns, anything that may be of interest to the Sovereign, and generally try to make yourself useful.” He glared down at Terian. “A sarcastic response to that last point would be unwise.”

“What am I looking for?” Terian asked, lifting the first parchment and finding a prisoner report from some guard in the Depths that talked about the number who died from labor-related injuries and fatigue in the last day.

“Interesting points,” Amenon said.

Terian stared down at the fish sales report. “I may have to look deep for anything interesting.”

Amenon waved a hand at him. “Now you see why I have assigned it to you.”

Terian squinted, the dark elven text much more complicated and looping than normal elven or human letters. It was more intricate script, with more characters that one had to memorize and understand, a separate one for every elementary concept. After an hour, he was rubbing his eyes. After two, he wanted to burn all the remaining parchment. After three, he was still only halfway through and wondering how his father had sorted through a similar stack in minutes the day before.

“Anything yet?” Amenon said from behind his desk, a book in his lap and cracked open to the middle. Terian could not tell whether it was a spellbook, some practical guide to unknown skills, or perhaps a fictional account of some soaring love story between a paladin and a warrior of the sort he’d seen others read before.
Doubtful on the last; fiction of that sort doesn’t tend to make it onto parchment even here in Saekaj
.

“Fishing production seems to be down again,” Terian said.

“Ah, yes,” Amenon said. “They’ve been griping about that for some time, but it’s hard to maintain output when the boats keep disappearing.”

Terian looked up from his reading and met his father’s gaze. “The Great Sea is an enclosed cavern.”

Amenon raised a white eyebrow. “And?”

Terian pondered it for only a moment. “So where do they go? It’s not as though the Great Sea has some plethora of exits. It’s buried deep in the earth, it’s a cave room with one entry and one exit—”

“Above water, yes,” Amenon replied. “There are more beneath the surface, I am told.”

Terian thought about that for a beat. “So you’re suggesting that these fishermen decided to abandon their jobs and swim into unknown cave exits?”

Amenon took a breath to say something but stopped, watching Terian shrewdly. “No. I wouldn’t suppose they would do that, especially given that work on a fishing boat in the Great Sea is one of the most sought-after jobs in Sovar.”

“So then they’re sinking, right?” Terian said, leaning his head back against the wall. “If they’re not finding any sign of the boat.”

“A fair assumption,” Amenon said.

“Have you not sent anyone to look into this?” Terian asked.

Amenon turned back to his book. “Why should this matter?”

Terian thought about it. “It just should.”
Because the poor will starve, you ass, but if I tell you that, you’ll either laugh me out of the office or kill me. Possibly both
.

Amenon sighed. “Pray tell, why should it? Explain it to me.” There was a shrewdness about him, about the look he gave Terian, something that prickled the dark knight’s senses.

Terian held up the parchment in his hand, gathering his thoughts as he read it again. “This is not the first report of this sort you’ve had?”

“Not the first, no,” his father said, still watching him carefully. “But you have yet to answer my question. Why is it important?”

Terian thought about it, reasoning it out. “Our bean crops, mushroom crops and wildroot are not up to the task of feeding the entirety of Sovar without some sort of fish or bones to help fortify the pottage.”

“Go on,” Amenon said.

“It creates a slow, desperate trickling down of starvation as the fish supply decreases,” Terian said. “Not everyone in Sovar can afford the fish, but—” He blinked. “It’s like a chain—”