Radiance (Wraith Kings Book 1)(34)

Djedor waved his son to his feet and eyed him with a milky gaze. “Make it quick.”

“I request permission to leave Haradis and return to Saggara in the next hour.”

The king scowled. “Have you heard something about Belawat that I haven’t?”

Brishen shook his head. “No, but I wish to return to my estate as soon as possible.” He offered no more explanation. Djedor might be old, but he was crafty and always informed about the goings-on in his castle. The palace was stuffed to the rafter with spies who reported back to him on every detail.

“You don’t wish to bid your mother good-bye?”

They played this game every time Brishen approached his father. Djedor usually came away disappointed by his younger son’s lack of reaction to his needling about Secmis. This time, still lightheaded with the urge to commit matricide, Brishen didn’t bother hiding his anger.

“Unless I can skewer her with impunity, I don’t want anywhere near the bitch,” he stated shortly. As one, the ministers gasped, but the king only laughed. “She tried to kill my wife.”

Djedor twirled a writing quill between his clawed fingers. “Is the Gauri girl still alive?”

“Yes.”

“Then Secmis didn’t try very hard.” He waved the quill at Brishen, his interest in his son’s actions quickly waning. “Go if you want. I’ll send a messenger with copies of the final shipping agreements. Thanks to your marriage, we’ve secured three ships dedicated to the transport of amaranthine to several kingdoms, not including Gaur. Try to keep your ugly wife alive long enough for us to obtain the last document sealing the agreement. After that, she’s welcome to drop dead any time.”

Seething at his father’s indifference though he expected nothing more, Brishen bowed and left the council chamber. In all honesty, he was grateful for his father’s willing permission. He could have denied Brishen’s request and kept him and Ildiko trapped in Haradis indefinitely from sheer perversity. He wasn’t above such behavior.

By the time Anhuset secured arrangements for horses, wagons, and a contingent of guards, midnight had waxed and waned. Brishen found Ildiko outside the stable gates next to the saddled mount she’d ridden from Pricid to Haradis. Anhuset stood next to her, alongside Sinhue also dressed for travel.

Brishen bowed over Ildiko’s hand. “One handmaiden only?”

She nodded toward Sinhue. “She wanted to come, and I only need one. Besides, Kirgipa’s mother needs her more than I do, especially now that Talumey is gone.”

“Have you eaten?”

This time he caught the slyness in her smile. “I did. A potato. It was delicious. We didn’t save you one.”

Her teasing lightened his heart. Though she wasn’t easy on the eyes, she was easy on his soul. He kissed her forehead. “You’re a good wife, Ildiko.”

“Yes I am,” she agreed. Her eyes slid toward their inner corners in a cross-eyed stare.

He flinched and heard both Anhuset and Sinhue gasp. “Ildiko...”

She uncrossed her eyes and winked. “Sorry. I couldn’t resist.”

Their party was a league out of the city before a messenger tracked them down. Brishen recognized his mother’s coat of arms on the rider’s livery. The messenger passed a scroll to Anhuset who delivered it to Brishen.

Brishen barely glanced at it. He was familiar with his mother’s handwriting as well as her demands he return to Haradis at once. Ink blots marred the writing, and there were holes in the parchment where she’d obviously jabbed the quill tip through the paper as she wrote.

He fished a document of his own out of one of the packs tied to his saddle. His father had only mumbled his irritation at Brishen’s insistence on written authorization of departure from court, stamped with the royal seal—in anticipation of Secmis doing exactly what he expected.

“Give this to Her Majesty,” he instructed the messenger. “Then make yourself scarce afterwards if you want to live.” He watched the rider spur his horse in the direction of Haradis.

“What did her message say?”

Brishen glanced at Ildiko next to him. The moonlight had a way of changing her. It didn’t make her pretty by Kai standards, but the shadows it cast across her features hollowed her cheeks, bled the pink from her skin and the red from her hair. He liked the colors of night on her.

“She commanded I return home.”

Her puzzled expression grew easier to read each time she revealed it. “But why? I have a hard time believing she misses you.”

Nearby, Anhuset snorted. Brishen turned to stare at the rider’s diminishing figure. “Hardly. That wasn’t a display of affection but of outrage. I didn’t ask her leave to depart Haradis.” He motioned to Anhuset. “Keep moving. Milling about in the middle of the road won’t get us to Saggara any faster.”

They traveled for five nights after that without incident, riding across a wide plain covered in a sea of dropseed grass. Tall as a horse’s flanks, the grass stems swayed and caressed as they passed, whispering ghostly endearments in the darkness. In the distance, tussocks rose like static swales on the dropseed ocean, and Brishen pointed out a tor crowned by slender menhirs gleaming white in the moonlight.

“Raised by one of the Elder races—the Gullperi, or so the legend goes. The last clan vanished from these lands five hundred years ago.”