To say that I did not expect to see my mothers in the house of Vol Mak Khan was an understatement so vast that even I would not have found it funny. Our host, however, clearly had expected them, for they and their cook laid out a feast more than generous enough to provide for us all. They put my mothers at their left hand, so they sat across from me, and laughed at my clear discomfort.
“It appears that you truly do not remember me,” said Vol Mak Khan, their face still bright with humor, “but I remember you. You and your mothers enjoyed my hospitality when last you were in Ghol Vidar, and I sent word to them as soon as rumor reached my ears, even before I offered my hospitality to the archons.”
I was stunned. And embarrassed.
“I remember the city,” I confessed, “but it is a child’s memory: more vague feelings than thoughts or images. I remember being in awe of the massive buildings, and frightened of strangers, and frustrated that I had no language to express either my fears or my needs.”
Vol Mak Khan nodded.
“Yes,” they said. “I remember the last most acutely. It was no use to you then, because you could barely recall your native tongue, but it was I who gave your mothers the diplomat’s tongue spell, which I see that you have put to excellent use, since.”
I froze. My companions beside me did the same.
“What gave us away?” Elana asked after a moment, sipping her water and appearing to return her attention to her meal.
“Never fear,” said Vol Mak Khan. “You have been quite discrete, and perfectly diplomatic. Likely few, if any, have noticed that you have picked up more of our languages than might be expected during your travels. But I am of an age and talent that I can see the spell upon you.”
I sighed, shook my head, and glanced to my mothers. They, too, were surprised – but far more amused than our party.
The rest of dinner was a different kind of tension. My mothers wished for tales of our journeys. My companions wished for tales of my childhood, and for our host’s best guesses as to when the prince might see us. To the last, there was no useful speculation to be done – probably weeks, but maybe months. Winter had only begun. As to the other things … my companions and I gave brief summaries of the journey, particularly our arrival in the Lightning Planes, and the hospitality we had received in the Holy Empire. My mothers traded that for thankfully bland tales of my childhood, and no mention of my obsession with Xadaer, his lore, and his artifacts. Vol Mak Khan had his cook open a flight of wines, which we enjoyed immensely, and we talked well into the night.
And then dinner was over, and it was time for my mothers to depart.
“We are staying at another house,” Almanata said, “friends of Vol Mak Khan, whom they recommended. Please, call upon us there soon. I know you have more to say, and we have missed you.”
I promised them that I would. And, with the prince’s blessing – there was, after all, very little I could do to aid or advise her until we knew when we would meet with the prince – I did, the very next day.
The house of Oraniandi was only a brief walk down the slope of the city, near enough that Shaelodor gave me directions rather than calling for a palanquin. Perhaps it was fractionally smaller in size, but it was clearly equal in dignity – I was very nearly turned away from the gate. When I was admitted, with apologies, I was brought to my mothers’ suite where they were already enjoying tea in a lovely sitting room, decorated in deep red-grained wood and sapphire blue upholstery, with a fresco of the Storm King’s palace on one large wall.
“Ah, Yma Rinlo,” Jijuma sighed, taking me into her arms again. I had forgotten how much I had missed the company of giants, my mother especially. “We did not expect you to come so soon.”
“We await the pleasure of the prince,” I said. “For the moment, my company has little need of me.”
“I very much doubt that,” said Almanata, “but if they will spare you, we are grateful.”
“It has been very long since you left us,” said Jijuma, gesturing for me to take a seat across from them, securing me a cup and pouring tea for us all. “Tell us, how have you found life among the djuunan? Not just this adventure, but everything?”
I sighed, wiped a tear from my eye, and sipped my tea. Then I took a deep breath and I told them everything. Actually everything. I told them everything that I had kept secret up until now, even from the high-ranking priestesses that had interrogated me in in Khrigo City.
I told them of my life and travels in the Compact.
“You would not believe how warm it is. Rarely as hot as the Holy Lands in summer, but even the depths of their winter are almost never as cold as autumn in the Western Reaches.”
I told them my new name and the true scope of my power.
“I took the first name that I found and liked,” I told them. “And with it, certain roles and expectations that I had not guessed.”
“So,” Almanata asked, “you are a sorcerer in the south?”
“No,” I shook my head. “A man. Djuunan and llamenan divide themselves more like freemen do than like the rhu xian. By the time anyone had an opportunity to second guess that assignment, my role was too well established to question. And, while I picked the role by accident, I think it suits me better.”
“And you pass off your thaumaturgy as sorcery,” pressed Jijuma. “Because they call our gods demons.”
“A little,” I conceded. “But I am a wizard, not a sorcerer. Sorcery, in the south, is inborn. Wizardry is trained. I have mastered the magical arts discovered by humans, and am counted the equal to any in the Compact. In fact, I am one of the two most powerful wizards alive. Which is why the prince came to me, even though my connection to the man who took her throne is common knowledge.”
“And how powerful is that?” asked Almanata.
I shrugged.
“Powerful enough to part the Eastern Veil unaided,” I said. “Powerful enough to dissemble before the archons of a dozen cities. Powerful enough that I will address the Prince of the White Steppes as an equal. Powerful enough that I grow younger each day, and have not yet found my limits.”
I told them of my wounded heart and my conflicted loyalties.
“At some point, I realized what should have been obvious from the very beginning. He would want me to give him an heir, and there was no way I could survive the scrutiny of mothering the crown prince. And who would wish such a fate on their child? To be raised in the impossible darkness of our combined shadows? To be heir to a new imperial dynasty, hated by all whom their parents had subjugated?” I shook my head. “So, I helped him take the throne, and then I left.”
I sighed.
“I wasn’t even supposed to make friends in So’renner. I wasn’t supposed to meet or love Sara while I was waiting for the prince. And I wasn’t supposed to care what happened to the prince or her companions, when they did come. But I do care. I care about Khanaarre, in particular.”
Almanata could not relate to that, beyond the strain to my loyalties. The passions of the rhu xian are famously cool. But Jijuma was another matter: the hands were notorious in their passions and affairs and even for their marriages.
“When I left him,” I went on, “I was confident that Aemillian would be a great king. But I have heard rumors from the south, and the ways in which he has interfered with my attempts to execute our plan … I wonder if maybe the prince’s claim is worth honoring.”
I had never told it all at once before, here or in the south. The closest had been when I had told the prince and Khanaarre about how I had left and then returned to the Compact. It took longer than I expected. They listened with patience and sympathy, brewing pot after pot of tea, and calling for lunch when the time came. Finally, as they called for dinner to be brought to us, I finished my tale.
“Life moves swiftly in the south,” Jijuma said with awe. “So much accomplished, so much lost, so much at stake, all in so little time.”
“Yes,” I said. “Though in truth, very little of it felt rushed in the moment.”
She nodded. So did Almanata.
“Have you sought purification,” asked Almanata, “since you’ve returned to the Empire?”
“Some,” I said. “At the Observatory in Khrigo City. But not … not enough.”
“You should go to the temple of the Flame,” she said. “And when you have, you should seek out the Oracle. Perhaps they will have some insight into your quest, and your questions.”
I nodded again. The priestesses of the Flame served, among so many other things, as confessors and scourges for the people of the Holy Empire, offering purification and forgiveness for those wracked by guilt over accidents, or crimes for which law could give no fit punishment. And although the Oracle’s most sacred duty was to issue prophesies over rhu xian mothers, they also cast prophesies and auguries and omens for any who approached them with a proper offering. I would have thought of it, myself, eventually, but my attention had been on the prince and on Khanaarre and on the problems of getting us home.
“I will,” I said.
“Good,” said Jijuma.
“Speak to Vol Mak Khan,” said Almanata. “They will arrange it for you.”
“I will,” I said.
We shared dinner, and I walked back to the house of Vol Mak Khan in the icy dark of wintery night. The light of the Holy Lands running where my blood had been kept me safe, and the layers of leather and furs that I wore kept me warm enough, but I was still glad the walk was short. It was hard to imagine that I had been accustomed to such weather, once.
My companions had retreated to the solitude of their own rooms by the time I returned, doors closed and only a single lamp left burning for my convenience. Though our host did not, themselves, indulge, or usually even serve wine with dinner, they kept their guest rooms stocked with fine wines and liquors, so I found bottle of brandy from the cabinet and poured myself a glass to take back to my room.
My room, like the others in the guest suite, was simple but beautiful. The stone-cut walls of the building were beautified with wood paneling. The floor was drowned in carpets, and the bed was low but thick. A clothes-chest and a vanity filled one wall, opposite the door. The bed stuck out into the room from another, occupying the middle of the room, with a heavily curtained rock crystal window mounted to either side. Next to the door was a writing desk and a comfortable chair, and the last wall was left blank so that one could move freely past it. There was a place to put my boots, and a soft silk house-robe folded at the foot of the bed that I gleefully changed into. On a whim, I cracked the door open in case any of the others emerged, and settled myself onto the bed with my back resting against the wall at the head.
Speaking to my mothers had not brought me any nearer to any decisions, but it had clarified my thoughts and my options, somewhat. I was frustrated with myself that I had not sought the priestesses of the Flame and consulted the Oracle as soon as I had entered the city. As much as I had enjoyed the simple rest I had taken, purification and prophesy would have served me better. The fact of the matter was that I had not been thinking clearly since cursing Veralar, and my mind had only grown more clouded since we had won the Blade of Xadaer. There had been a few days of adrenaline-fueled clarity in Khrigo, thank the gods, but I had been in a fugue state since.
I had spent decades ordering my life meticulously, no plot or scheme less than three contingencies deep, and in less than a single year almost every plan I’d laid had gone awry.
I was half through my glass of brandy when a soft knock came at my door frame. I turned, and was surprised and delighted to see Khanaarre, also wrapped in a house robe. I smiled.
“Come in,” I said. “Sit where you like.”
“Thank you,” she said, slipping through the door and closing it most of the way behind her.
“I left the brandy sitting out,” I told her, “if you want some. Or if you’d like something more familiar, I am certain I have a bottle of Tanirinaal apple jack in my wizard’s chest.”
That startled a laugh from her.
“Thank you,” she said, moving the chair at the writing desk next to the bed before she sat down in it. “But I have already indulged enough for one evening. Elana and Rennin had their own go at the cabinet, tonight.”
“Oh?”
Khanaarre gave me a sad smile.
“Meeting your mothers made us all a little homesick,” she said.
I nodded.
“I imagine,” I said softly, “that my role in their mothers’ deaths came up at some point.”
Khanaarre nodded.
“Yes,” she said simply.
I wished that I had been able to convince Aemillian to spare more of the royal family and the court, but I had not. I could not recall in that moment how Rennin’s mother had died, but I knew from various sources that she had not made it out of the City. I knew then and I knew now that it was fewer than would have died in a conventional war, but that was hardly any consolation to the survivors. And more, still, would die in the attempt to put Elana back on the throne.
None of which bore saying.
“How are your mothers,” I asked, instead, sipping my brandy.
Khanaarre smiled and shrugged.
“They were well, when I saw them last,” she said. “Which will be two years ago, come spring. My father was ill, but they were all in good spirits. With any luck they will have convinced my sister to go to a matchmaker, by now, and she will be courting her own future marriage circle. If she left the homestead not long after I did, there might even be a wedding planned for the summer… though that is exceptionally optimistic.”
I nodded and smiled at her.
“I am glad to hear that.”
She looked off into the distance, her eyes unfocused for a moment.
“If we take the river Venn south, as Dano`ar claims to have done, and which seems the best possible path,” she swallowed, “we will pass by both my family compound and my tower. I will prevail upon the prince to stop there.”
I nodded again. I thought of asking if she would continue to travel with us, afterwards, but I thought that might be taken amiss. She knew – the prince and her consort knew – as I did that all foreigners who had passed through the Holy Empire had been magically bound against speaking of what they saw there. I did not want to call that likelihood to mind.
“My biological parents,” I said, “my Handari mother and father, have almost certainly died by now. Her through neglect or abuse or childbirth. Him by age or disease. If either of my siblings survive, they are probably grandparents, now.”
“Do you think about them often?”
“Nearly every day, since returning to the Holy Empire,” I admitted. “And frequently while I lived in So’renner, surrounded by people living lives much like they probably lived. For the decades I lived in Vencar, I had almost forgotten them.”
“Do you ever think of seeking them out?”
I laughed a little and shook my head.
“To what purpose?” I asked. “To mock them with my power, my prosperity? To confuse them by appearing as a too-young man who cannot even remember the name of the sister that they thought they had killed?”
I shook my head again. A sound somewhat like laughter escaped my throat.
“Whatever impulse might drive me to attempt such contact, the experience could not possibly satisfy it.”
Khanaarre laughed as well, but sincerely: a quiet sound that I had not heard enough of since crossing into the Lightning Plains.
“You are a strange and complicated man, Derrek Rowan,” she said.
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