He held up a hand. “Thanks, no. I’ve had enough jerky to do me the rest of my days. Anyway, I am truly grateful. I just hope we can rescue Rol-and cure him.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to him?”
“No.” Gan shook his head and blew out a breath. “The more I see, the more it’s something magical, but beyond that …” He shrugged. “I got nothing.”
Tricht’tha was masticating her jerky. “Did you have to fight him?”
“Mercifully, no. I was the second-best fighter they had left after him, so they used me as the lead-in to him. Sooner or later, though …” He shivered, then looked at the thri-kreen’s compound eyes. “Thanks for deciding to help.”
“Feena argued that you were part of our clutch. I suppose you are, in a way.”
Gan frowned. “I thought you didn’t like your clutch.”
“You thought wrong,” she snapped. “I simply am happier with the clutch I have found than the one I was born to.”
With that, she moved away to clamber up to her hammock and sleep.
Feena came back into the carriage alone. She sat down next to Gan, who wrapped an arm around her.
“You okay, Sis?”
“Zabaj may never forgive me. I all but forced him to do this because I made the offer to trade him for you without consulting him first.”
“If you were just going to send Tricht’tha in anyway, why do the trade at all?”
“Because we needed to get you out of there, and we needed Zabaj in place in order to properly game the arena. There was no way to get you the plan in time.”
Gan nodded. Feena could send sentences into Gan’s mind without much effort, but anything more complicated than that-like, say, a plan-would require her to focus and concentrate, and also be proximate to Gan. She couldn’t do that if she was at the Pit and still in her “Wimma” persona.
“Also,” she continued, “Zabaj is stronger than you and would be in better shape for the violent part of the plan.”
“Yeah. I guess I was just hoping I’d get to be the one to slit Calbit’s throat. And Tirana’s. Jago, I might’ve let live.” He chuckled. “Though I can take some solace in the fact that Tirana wasn’t really interested in Rol. A welcome change, that.”
Feena, he noticed, wasn’t laughing. Instead, a tear rolled down her cheek.
“I may have lost him, Gan,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Gan whispered.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Well, it kinda is, yeah.”
Feena sat up straight and looked him in the eyes with those ice blue eyes she’d inherited from their mother. “No, Gan, it isn’t. You were kidnapped-that’s not your fault.”
“Yes, actually, it is. If I hadn’t lost that frolik game-”
She interrupted him. “If you hadn’t played the frolik game, you likely would have done something else impulsive and thoughtless.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I speak the truth.”
Gan sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.”
She lay back down against him. It was good to see his sister again.
They stayed that way, the sounds of Serthlara and Shira snoring in the background, along with Komir and Karalith bickering over which clothes to wear.
He just hoped that they could rescue Rol as easily as they rescued him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
King Hamanu hated parties.
For a time during his reign, he had banned parties from Urik altogether. He was younger then-only in his first century-and he figured that he was the king so he could do what he wanted.
Eventually, though, as he matured, he realized that he needed-to some extent-to cater to the wishes of his people. Even an absolute monarch as powerful as Hamanu needed his people to be happy. They didn’t have to like everything he did-indeed, they didn’t have to know everything he did-but they were less likely to complain if they had sufficient distraction.
For the upper classes, it was parties such as the one he was attending. In that case, it was less a distraction than a general attempt to keep the sirdars happy. Happy sirdars made for non-complaining sirdars. Hamanu had had his share of complaining sirdars over the years, and he’d grown weary of having to kill them.
For the lower classes, there were the vulgar attractions, most notably the Pit of Black Death. He had been grateful that the Pit had once again become a popular venue, as the arena was a good way to distract the poor from their miserable state.
Which made it that much more annoying that Calbit and Jago had gotten themselves killed. Their fighters had all escaped, and while a few of them wound up captured or imprisoned, most were in the wind.
He wasn’t sure what the occasion was for the party-he had a social secretary whose job it was to find appropriate reasons for the parties and space them out in such a manner that the sirdars were kept happy by their frequency, and that Hamanu wasn’t driven crazy by the same thing. It was being held in a large function room that was often used for state dinners.
Hamanu hated them too.
Currently, he sat in one of his thrones. When his reign began, he had had ornate, ostentatious thrones all over Destiny’s Kingdom. But after several centuries, the desire for showing off his station grew tiresome. He referred to himself as the King of the World-a bit of hyperbole that seemed reasonable in his (relative) youth, and which he was well and truly stuck with-and for many decades, he thought that required a level of finery.
But being so self-consciously royal proved exhausting after a while. Not to mention annoying. So the royal finery became more streamlined, the patterns faded, the colors darkened.
As the king went, so went the people, since he was King of the World, so the people of Urik over the years started wearing more neutral colors as well.
Hamanu’s younger self, he knew, would be appalled. But the simplicity appealed to him now. No one in his court now knew of Hamanu as anything other than a king of uncomplicated tastes.
It also meant that at parties such as this, he wasn’t blinded by the brocade. Meeting with people from Nibenay often gave him a headache, their clothing was so covered in brightly colored stitching.
Plus, as an added bonus, he could easily pick out the people who were not from Urik. There were always several-visiting dignitaries, wealthy travelers, and so on-and he noted two in particular. Both appeared to be half-elves, and they were dressed in wraparound linens that bespoke recent times in Tyr. The woman had several bracelets on each arm.
Their race made them stand out. It was the rare half-elf who could manage to be invited to such a gathering-and indeed, many of the humans and elves in the room were giving the pair odd looks.
One of the sirdars came by with a drink for Hamanu-often the nobility would do so in order to speak with the king-and the king asked him who they were.
“They bore a letter of introduction from Lord Porsich, magnificence.”
Hamanu nodded, sipping his drink absently. Porsich was an ancient dray sirdar who’d died of old age a year earlier. He was only a few years older than the king.
“Do they have business in Urik?”
The sirdar’s face was overcome with disgust. Hamanu almost smiled. “I sincerely hope not, magnificence, but I only know what I have told you-and I’m afraid I only knew that because I happened to be standing near the entryway when they were announced, and they showed the doorman the letter.”
Again, Hamanu nodded, then dismissed the sirdar with a wave.
Sighing audibly, the sirdar ran off.
He supposed the woman was attractive and the man handsome-it was hard for Hamanu to tell anymore. They seemed to be working the crowd.
The woman had found Drahar and was talking with him, though the chamberlain seemed a bit distracted. Seeing that the man was alone, Hamanu instructed a page boy to encourage the man to bring the king a drink.