“Thank you,” I said, and rose.
“Wait,” he said, and went behind his desk. He rummaged through the drawers for a moment, then straightened, holding a small, beautifully painted ceramic flask. He handed this to me.
“See if that helps,” he said. “He could buy himself bucketsful if he wanted, but he likes being bribed.”
I pocketed the flask and memorized the information. Yet the whole exchange raised a new question. “T’vril, why are you helping me?”
“I wish I knew,” he replied, sounding abruptly weary. “It’s clearly bad for me; that flask cost me a month’s wages. I was saving it for whenever I needed a favor from Relad.”
I was wealthy now. I made a mental note to order three of the flasks sent to T’vril in compensation. “Then why?”
He looked at me for a long moment, perhaps trying to decide the answer for himself. Finally he sighed. “Because I don’t like what they’re doing to you. Because you’re like me. I honestly don’t know.”
Like him. An outsider? He had been raised here, had as much connection to the Central Family as me, but he would never be a true Arameri in Dekarta’s eyes. Or did he mean that I was the only other decent, honorable soul in the whole place? If that was true.
“Did you know my mother?” I asked.
He looked surprised. “Lady Kinneth? I was a child when she left to be with your father. I can’t say I remember her well.”
“What do you remember?”
He leaned against the edge of his desk, folding his arms and thinking. In the Skystuff light his braided hair shone like copper rope, a color that would have seemed unnatural to me only a short time before. Now I lived among the Arameri and consorted with gods. My standards had changed.
“She was beautiful,” he said. “Well, the Central Family are all beautiful; what nature doesn’t give them, magic can. But it was more than that with her.” He frowned to himself. “She always seemed a little sad to me, somehow. I never saw her smile.”
I remembered my mother’s smile. She had done it more often while my father was alive, but sometimes she had smiled for me, too. I swallowed against a knot in my throat, and coughed to cover it. “I imagine she was kind to you. She always liked children.”
“No.” T’vril’s expression was sober. He had probably noticed my momentary lapse, but thankfully he was too much the diplomat to mention it. “She was polite, certainly, but I was only a halfblood, being raised by servants. It would have been strange if she’d shown kindness, or even interest, toward any of us.”
I frowned before I could stop myself. In Darr, my mother had seen to it that all the children of our servants got gifts for their birthing days and light-dedication ceremonies. During the hot, thick Darr summers, she had allowed the servants to take their rest hours in our garden, where it was cooler. She’d treated our steward like a member of the family.
“I was a child,” T’vril said again. “If you want a better recollection, you should speak to the older servants.”
“Is there anyone you’d recommend?”
“Any of them will speak to you. As for which one might remember your mother best—that I can’t say.” He shrugged.
Not quite what I’d hoped for, but it was something I’d have to look into later. “Thank you again, T’vril,” I said, and went in search of Relad.
In a child’s eyes, a mother is a goddess. She can be glorious or terrible, benevolent or filled with wrath, but she commands love either way. I am convinced that this is the greatest power in the universe.
My mother—
No. Not yet.
In the solarium the air was warm and humid and fragrant with flowering trees. Above the trees rose one of Sky’s spires—the centralmost and tallest one, whose entrance must have been somewhere amid the winding paths. Unlike the rest of the spires, this one quickly tapered to a point only a few feet in diameter, too narrow to house apartments or chambers of any great size. Perhaps it was purely decorative.
If I kept my eyes half-lidded, I could ignore the spire and almost imagine I was in Darr. The trees were wrong—too tall and thin, too far apart. In my land the forests were thick and wet and dark as mysteries, full of tangled vines and small hidden creatures. Still, the sounds and smells were similar enough to assuage my homesickness. I stayed there until the sound of nearby voices pushed my imagination away.
Pushed sharply; one of the voices was Scimina’s.
I could not hear her words, but she was very close. Somewhere in one of the alcoves ahead, concealed behind a copse of brush and trees. The white-pebbled path beneath my feet ran in that direction and probably branched toward it in some way that would make my approach obvious to anyone there.
To the infinite hells with obviousness, I decided.
My father had been a great huntsman before his death. He’d taught me to roll my feet in a forest, so as to minimize the crackle of leaf litter. And I knew to stay low, because it is human nature to react to movement at eye level, while that which is higher or lower often goes unnoticed. If this had been a Darren forest, I would have climbed the nearest tree, but I could not easily climb these skinny, bare-trunked things. Low it was.
When I got close—just barely close enough to hear, but any closer and I risked being seen—I hunkered down at the foot of a tree to listen.
“Come, Brother, it’s not too much, is it?” Scimina’s voice, warm and cajoling. I could not help shivering at the sound of it, both in remembered fear and anger. She had set a god on me, like a trained attack dog, for her own amusement. It had been a long time since I’d hated anyone so fiercely.
“Anything you want is too much,” said a new voice—male, tenor, with a petulant edge. Relad? “Go away and let me think.”
“You know these darkling races, Brother. They have no patience, no higher reason. Always angry over things that happened generations ago…” I lost the rest of her words. I could hear occasional footsteps, which meant that she was pacing, toward me and away. When she moved away, it was hard to hear her. “Just have your people sign the supply agreement. It’s nothing but profit for them and for you.”
“That, sweet Sister, is a lie. You would never offer me anything solely for my benefit.” A weary sigh, a mutter I didn’t catch, and then: “Go away, I said. My head hurts.”
“I’m sure it does, given your indulgences.” Scimina’s voice had changed. It was still cultured, still light and pleasant, but the warmth had left it now that Relad clearly meant to refuse her. I marveled that such a subtle change could make her sound so different. “Very well; I’ll come back when you’re feeling better. —By the way. Have you met our new cousin?”
I held my breath.
“Come here,” Relad said. I knew at once he was speaking to someone else, perhaps a servant; I couldn’t imagine him using that peremptory tone with Scimina. “No. I hear you tried to kill her, though. Was that wise?”
“I was only playing. I couldn’t resist; she’s such a serious little thing. Do you know, she honestly believes she’s a contender for Uncle’s position?”
I stiffened. So, apparently, did Relad, because Scimina added, “Ah. You didn’t realize?”
“You don’t know for sure. The old man loved Kinneth. And the girl is nothing to us.”