“Such a light collar,” il Tornja said. “Sometimes I forget that it’s even there.”
“You don’t forget anything. Why are you here?”
“Aside from the chance to see my Emperor, my son, and the mother of my child?”
“Yes. Aside from that.”
“You’re less sentimental than I remember.”
“When sentiment feeds my troops, I’ll look into it. Why are you here?”
Behind her, Sanlitun stirred uneasily, whimpering at the sound of her raised voice. Il Tornja glanced over her shoulder, studying the child with something that might have been interest or amusement.
“He is healthy?”
Adare nodded. “He had a cough two weeks ago-that ’Shael-spawned wind off the Romsdals-but it’s mostly over now.”
“And you still keep him with you, even when you work?”
She nodded again. Prepared to defend herself. Again. Nine months since she first arrived in Aergad, an exile in her own empire. Six months since Sanlitun’s birth. Only six months, and yet it felt she hadn’t slept in a year, in a lifetime. Despite his name, Sanlitun had none of his grandfather’s calm, none of his stillness. Either he was hungry or he was wet, puking or fretful, clutching at her when awake, or kicking her as he slept.
“A wet nurse-” il Tornja began.
“I do not need a wet nurse.”
“Driving yourself into the dirt does no one any good,” he said slowly. “Not you, not our child, and certainly not our empire.”
“My empire.”
He nodded, his smile barbed. “Your empire.”
“Women raise their own children all the time. Six children. Ten. I think I can manage a single baby boy.”
“Shepherds raise six children. Fishermen’s wives raise children. Women whose cares don’t extend beyond keeping the hearth lit and the sheep fed. You are the Emperor of Annur, Adare. You are a prophet. We are at war on two fronts, and we are losing. Fishermen’s wives have the luxury of caring for their own children. You do not.” He did a thing with his voice then, a shift in tone or register that, coming from anyone else, might have indicated a softening. “He is my child, too.…”
“Don’t speak to me,” she growled, sitting back in her chair, putting more air between them, “of your children. I know too well how you have gone about rearing them in the past.”
If she’d hoped to dent his armor, to knock his mask askew, she would have been disappointed. Il Tornja assembled the planes of his face into a regretful smile and shook his head again.
“That was a long time ago, Adare. Many thousands of years. It was a mistake, and one I have labored long to correct.” He gestured to Sanlitun, an unfolding of the palm at once paternal and impersonal. “He will not grow stronger or wiser from your coddling. He may not grow at all if you neglect everything else.”
“I am not neglecting everything else,” she snapped. “Do you see me sleeping? Nattering endless nonsense? I’m at my desk each morning before dawn and, as you can see, I’m still here.” She gestured to the papers. “When I put my seal on these treaties, our men will eat for another season. And when I’m done with these, there’s a stack of petitions from Raalte to address. I live in this room, and when I’m not here, I’m with Lehav reviewing our southern strategy, or reviewing the troops, or drafting letters.”
“And fortunately for us all,” il Tornja added smoothly, “you have your father’s brain. Even sleep-addled, even clutching a child to your breast, you think better than most Annurian emperors I have known.”
She ignored the compliment. Il Tornja’s praise seemed as genuine as the rest of him, and like the rest of him, it was false, weighed to the last hair, measured and parsed, distributed only where he thought it was needed, where it would be useful. The point, the heft of the statement, remained: she was doing her job.
“There you have it. I will raise Sanlitun and-”
The kenarang cut her off.
“We don’t need you to be better than most of your ancestors, Adare.” He paused, fixed her with his general’s stare. Not his real stare, thank Intarra, not the fathomless black gaze of Csestriim contemplation she had seen just the once above the battlefield of Andt-Kyl, but the other one, the one he had no doubt studied for generations-a hard look, but human. “We need you to be better than all of them. For that, you require rest. You must give up the child, at least occasionally.”
“I will do what needs doing,” she growled, doubt’s sick flower blossoming inside her even as she spoke.
The truth was, the past six months had been the most brutal of her life, days filled with impossible decisions, the nights an unending torment of Sanlitun’s screaming, her own fumbling with the blankets, drawing the child into her bed, murmuring to him, praying to Intarra and Bedisa that he would fall asleep once more. Most times he would take the nipple, suck greedily for a few heartbeats, then shove it away and begin bawling.
She had servants, of course, a dozen women seated just outside her chamber who would come darting in the moment Adare called, arms piled high with dry swaddling or new bedding. That much help she would accept, but sending the child away, training him to suck at another woman’s breast … that she could not ask of him. Or of herself. Even when she wanted to weep from exhaustion, from the flood of sleep-addled confusion brimming in her blood, she would look down at her child, at his fat cheek pressed against her swollen breast, and she would know as she knew any great truth about the world that she could not give him up.
She had watched her mother die, coughing her shredded lungs onto the softest silk. Adare had stood beside her father as he was laid into his tomb, imperial robes hiding his wounds. She had killed one brother herself, and was locked in a desperate, vicious war with the other. Her family had been whittled down to this one child. She glanced over to the crib where he slept, watched his small chest rise and fall, then turned back to il Tornja.
“Why are you here?” she asked for the third time, voice ripe to bursting with weariness. “I doubt you left the front, the fight, to discuss the finer points of my parenting.”
Il Tornja nodded, steepled his fingers, studied her for a moment, then nodded again.
“We have an opportunity,” he said finally.
Adare spread her hands. “If I don’t have time to raise my son, I certainly don’t have time for your fucking riddles.”
“The republic has offered to treat with you.”
Adare stared.
“My men intercepted the messenger-the man is waiting below. I wanted to talk to you before you saw him.”
Slowly, Adare told herself. Slowly. She studied il Tornja’s face, but could read nothing there.
“A messenger sent to whom?”
“To you.”
“And yet your men intercepted him. Hardly a model of trusting cooperation.”
Il Tornja waved a dismissive hand. “Intercepted. Tripped over. Escorted. They found him-”
“And they brought him to you,” Adare said, trying to keep a clamp on her anger, “instead of me. What are your men even doing in the south? The Sons have that front secured.”
“Staring fixedly in one direction is a good way to get dead, Adare. While I don’t doubt the devotion of the Sons to both their goddess and their prophet,” he inclined his head toward her slightly, “I learned long ago not to rely on units outside of my command. My men found the messenger, they came to me, and when I learned his message, I came directly to you.” He shook his head. “Everything is not a conspiracy, Adare.”