The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(37)

An old madwoman, he thought. Theliopa dressed like an old madwoman.

He stood, brushed the dirt from his knees. A gust swished through the hibiscus tree above them. An autumn insect buzzed between.

Something has gone wrong, the Voice whispered.

He nodded to the sky, to the rhythmic, almost sub-audible boom pulsating across the sky. “The Fanim can’t really get us, can they?”

She strode forward, as if taking this comment as permission to enter his imaginary room. She came to a pause just to the left of where he had buried the third guardsmen he had killed …

And eaten.

“They-they build siege engines,” she said. “When they are done, we shall see.”

She was watching him closely—far more intently than he could ever remember, in fact.

Perhaps she can smell them rotting in the dirt …

She doesn’t have that Strength!

“Who is that man, Thelli, the one dressed in a slave’s cloth?”

She all but peered, her suspicion now so obvious as to be comical.

“That is the Narindar Mother contracted to assassinate our uncle.”

“I knew it!” he cried, surprised at the honesty of his elation. “Narindar … He’s the one!

He’s the one that saved us!”

Anas?rimbor Theliopa continued to gawk.

“What’s wrong, Thelli?” he finally said, throwing up his arms the way Mother often did when confounded by her daughter’s strange ways.

She answered in a rush, as if his question had opened the very door she leaned against. “You think-think I can’t see, that-that Father’s blood runs too-too thin in my veins.”

The Prince-Imperial scowled and laughed—the way a daft eight-year-old should. “What are yo—?”

“Uncle Holy told me, Kel.”

Enemy drums pounded across the skies.

“Told you what?”

She looked like a thing graven, the goddess of some lesser race. “I know what happened with Inrilatas, with Sharacinth and-and—” She halted on a sharp intake of breath, as if a razor tumbled in her wind.

“With Samar-marmas.”

Fear. He would have liked to have seen fear on her face, some inkling of peril, anything that might reflect his power, but he saw what he needed instead—thoughtless confidence.

Say nothing. Appear weak.

She amazed the boy by managing to kneel stiffly at his feet, despite the apparatus of her skirt. For the first time he realized the cunning she put into their manufacture, the myriad springs and folding armatures. Her manly scent enclosed him.

“Tell me, Kel,” she said.

He could stab her now if he wanted.

She looked a pale monstrosity, her eyes slightly bulbous, their lids rimmed pink, her angles slightly cadaverous—everything about her wandered the verge of disgust. And her skin seemed so thin for its pallor, a tissue he could rip away with his fingernails … if he so wished.

“I need-need to know …”

The bottomless indifference of her gaze was the only thing that terrified.

“Was it you who killed Lord Sankas?”

He was genuinely stupefied.

She gazed at him with piscine relentlessness, her pale blue eyes dead, void of passion. And for the first time he felt it … the menace of her inhuman intellect.

Let her watch … his twin murmured.

“Did you wander last night?” she asked.

“No.”

Let her see …

“You slept?”

“Yes.”

“And you had no idea that Lord Sankas was returning?”

“None!”

She maintained her implacable gaze, her manner as stilted and as relentless as an automata, her face as blank as a sunflower opened to receive the sun.

“What?” he cried.

Theliopa popped to her feet without reply, turned away with a swish of her ridiculous gown.

“And if I had murdered him?” he called after her.

She paused on the hook of his voice, turned to regard him once more.

“I would have informed Mother,” she said plainly.

He was careful to look down to his thumbs. Dirt had inked the whorls across the pads, the ruts about the knuckles. How long would it take, he wondered, to bury her out here? How long would he have?

“Why haven’t you told her already?”

He could feel her scrutiny now—and he was amazed to think how he had utterly ignored it all these years. As long as he could remember, she had always been too focussed to not be oblivious, and now …

Now she had become the next eye to pluck.

Pale skin was always more intense, somehow, bleeding …

“Because the Capital needs its Empress,” she said, her voice falling from the shadow of his bangs, “and you, little brother, have made her too weak … too heartbroken to bear knowing your crimes.”

For all the anxious contrition he had slathered across his manner and expression, Anas?rimbor Kelmomas cackled within. His twin brother fairly screamed.

Truth.

Always such a burden …



A small table draped in white silk stood unattended in the centre of the road some thirty paces from where Esmenet stood upon the Maumurine Gate. A swan-necked decanter had been placed upon it, blue glass caught in a cage of wrought gold, set with seventeen sapphires. A golden bowl sat empty beside it.