Immediately, her memory served up to her the expression on Illukar’s face when he had bowed to Ieskar. Such straightforward respect. Did he admire the man who had destroyed her Empire to save his people’s pride? Had he been raised on stories of the Niadril Kier’s war, just as Medarists followed the legend of Medair? What would Illukar have done, in Ieskar’s place?
"What is it?" he asked, catching her off guard. He must have read some tension in her body, unless he truly could see into her mind.
"This isn’t the moment," she said, aching more with every word. She didn’t want to ask him, not now.
"It is the last moment, Medair," he said. Almost wry. "Speak."
Would it be better not to know, and live with the uncertainty? Or should she risk tarnishing her memory of him? She drew back, enough to look up into that faintly glowing face, and saw a shadow of concern. That made it harder to refuse, for she would not leave him wondering as he went off to die.
Her tongue was heavy and reluctant as she spoke. "Kier Ieskar…told me that he invaded because the Ibis-lar would have become a pauper race if they’d accepted the Emperor’s mercy. Feared, hated, separated…" She trailed off.
"I have heard the Niadril Kier’s reasons," Illukar said. His voice had gone quite soft, as if someone held a knife to his heart. Medair stared up at him, a knot in her throat she couldn’t swallow.
"Do you think he was right?" she asked, faintly.
"Not for Palladium," Illukar replied, immediately. But his eyes were unhappy. "It was disastrous for the Empire, and so many centuries later there is still division because of it. It is the one great wound in our past that Farakkan cannot forget. As Ibis-lar…" The care with which he weighed his words was answer in itself. "It may not have happened as he forecast. Grevain had offered aid, shelter: a generous welcome. There was no certainty that they would have devolved into hearthless outcasts. I do not doubt they would have been feared for their power, that inevitably they would have been at odds with some Farak-lar, perhaps persecuted. We are not the most flexible people, and the laws which bound us at that time were astoundingly rigid. Being divided, as refugees must be, among those who could house them, they would have been powerfully disadvantaged, overwhelmed by Farakkan’s numbers. A vulnerable position." He stopped, then continued grimly. "In the longest of terms, yes. It was not an honourable thing to do, but for the Ibis-lar as a people, I think he was right."
There were so many implications to this admission that Medair’s head spun. And yet, it barely mattered.
"Strange how little difference that makes to the way I’m feeling now," she said in astonishment, and kissed him because it was true.
Too soon someone – Sedesten – came near them and said: "It is ready." When Illukar drew back she had to force herself not to cling to him, and instead tried one last time to conjure some plan for his survival out of need and nothing. All she could manage was a wretched attempt at hiding the way her breath sobbed in her throat.
"I will miss you, always," she said. His attempt at a smile was sadly awry, out of place on Illukar’s beautifully drawn features. It was her pain, her loss, which was doing that to him.
"I will love you always, Medair," he said, a stark statement which did not pretend that his always would not be longer than that night. He brushed her cheek once with those slender white fingers, then turned and walked away.
Hidden by the dark, Medair curled down to hug her knees, closed her teeth on the hand pressed to her mouth, and howled.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was the longest stretch of nothing she’d ever known.
Illukar had been planning to travel near to the centre of the Blight, to try to avoid destroying Finrathlar’s western hills, but Medair had no idea how long the journey would take. Such drawn-out tenterhooks had left her with a conflicting desire for it to be over, and for it to never happen. Sitting forever in the dark, on chill, marshy earth, would be a small price to pay for Illukar’s life, wouldn’t it? But she supposed that would mean he would be eternally traveling to his death, and she wouldn’t have that, either.
The Blight was getting close. Drained and weary, she stared out into the night. Few birds flew past now, but the supply of insects seemed never-ending. Medair pictured all Farakkan’s inhabitants, every species, crowding to the edges of an ever-expanding lake, then discarded the thought. Hardly a happy thing to picture Illukar’s sacrifice as futile.
"Keris an Rynstar."
She watched dispassionately as Islantar approached, carrying a glowstone. "I’m not going to hurl myself in, if that’s what brings you."
"No. You would not do that to him."
Islantar sounded more certain of that than Medair was herself. She didn’t bother to gainsay him, watching him arrange himself into an attitude of polite attention. Court posture. This was more than solicitude, then.
"There is one who wishes to speak to you," he said.
"I have no wish for company, Kierash."
"I am aware of that. I ask this of you, Keris."
Again that was the kind of request Emperor Grevain had been wont to make: refusal was not easy. Medair looked up into Islantar’s young, resolute face and sighed silently. "Very well," she said, standing. Islantar waited a moment, then gestured with the glowstone.
Two figures approached along the bank, gradually resolving into dark-haired, copper-complected young men of similar build. There was, Medair noticed, a similarity in their features which suggested blood ties. Tarsus and Thessan. She supposed it was not improbable that Xarus Estarion might have decided to join his own line with the Corminevars, but these brotherly countenances were the first suggestion she’d encountered of such a union. What, she wondered, had happened to Tarsus' mother? And what were the implications for the succession of the Decian throne?
Those questions, however, were not why these two had come to see her. Prince Thessan looked like he’d rather be anywhere else. Tarsus, only marginally less ragged than her previous sighting of him, was evidently the one who wanted to speak to her. Behind the two young men emerged a half-dozen guards, headed by Kel ar Haedrin. They remained just at the edge of the circle of light cast by Islantar’s glowstone, none of them completely hiding their concern.
Tarsus sketched a gesture of courtesy. He seemed to be as high in formal ropes as Islantar. Thessan just looked sour.
"Herald an Rynstar–" Tarsus began, and Medair shook her head.
"I lost my role as Herald, Lord Tarsus." The title she gave him sat awkwardly on her tongue, but it would take too long to decide the correct formal way to address someone who might be the true descendent of an ousted Emperor. She would rather they just went away.
"Forfeited it, you mean," put in Thessan, at no pains to hide the anger and disdain in his voice. "When you sided with White Snakes over Palladians."
Medair shook her head, ignoring the sick knot which had instantly formed in her stomach. "It was not a matter of choice, Prince Thessan. I stopped being a Herald of the Empire when I woke five hundred years after the Palladian Empire’s fall."
"How convenient for you," Thessan snapped. "With your oath magically dissolved, you’re free to take up with whatever White Snake catches your eye."