“To help prepare me. To teach me, so when the time comes—”
“He wants it to be now, Row. You’d have his full support if you did choose to depose your father. Sometimes I get the feeling he’s waiting for it. Waiting for you to suggest it. Which is why we need to talk, because things are changing, and fast. And it will have an impact on us. We need to be ready—”
“Rasmus.” Sorrow moved her hands to his chest and pushed him gently back. “Not now. I have to go.”
“Wait. Please, Row.”
She paused. He didn’t often say please. Rhyllians never did. Nor sorry, nor thank you. Rhylla didn’t have a single word that translated to mean the same thing, and in Rhylla the phrases they used instead were potent, Ras had told her. Powerful words that were only spoken when they were truly needed. He said the Rhannish versions were used too freely to fill holes, after goodwill had been dug up, too easily tossed around so that they were all but meaningless. So for him to say “please”…
Her brown eyes met his violet ones. “We will talk. I promise. Just let me get through the next two days. After the memorial ceremony, we’ll talk properly.”
After a moment he released her wrist, his mouth a line of grudging acceptance.
“I’ll see you later?” she asked.
“Ever your servant, Row.” He bowed low, taking her hand once more and turning it over to kiss her palm.
She slipped her hand from his, leaving him there, a new layer of guilt coating her old ones like varnish.
Lamentia
Sorrow walked through lantern-lit corridors, her footsteps silent on the threadbare carpet, in no hurry to get to her father’s apartments. The palace, as always, felt still, as though in the midst of a great sleep, and when she trailed her fingers along the decorative stucco on the wall, thick dust coated the tips, leaving a glaring smear of white in the grey.
As she crossed the landing between the wings, something brushed her cheek, and she lifted a hand to gently catch it. A small spider, ink-black and gleaming, scurried across her palm, and she carefully placed it on the banister, watching it skitter away out of sight.
Sorrow had grown up unafraid of spiders, simply because there would have been no end to her terror if she had been. The neglected Winter Palace was a haven for them.
While her grandmother had been alive she’d tried to keep a grip on things, fighting dirt and decay in a palace determined to atrophy. But Sorrow hadn’t bothered since she’d died, allowing dust and cobwebs to accumulate. What was the point? They did their best to discourage visitors; the guests who’d come to Rhannon for the memorial dinner would be smuggled into the palace via the east wing, straight to the state dining room, and they’d leave the same way the moment the feast was over. The stewards who’d visited her earlier were herded in and out the same way. Though there was room for them all, the suites simply weren’t in a fit state for guests. And neither was the chancellor.
Sorrow tried not to leave the east wing, using the rooms there to dine, sleep and work. There, at least, she could make things comfortable; sew up the holes in her hand-me-down furnishings, scavenge cushions from the cavernous storerooms to cover the damage she couldn’t mend. She’d found other treasures too, like the Malice board, storybooks and even some old jewellery, though she assumed it was paste, and not real gems. Sometimes at night she’d take them out, trying to imagine where she might wear a ruby the size of a duck egg, or emerald earrings that were so heavy they made her lobes hurt when she tried them on.
In her room she could push back the drapes, and open the windows when there was no one to tell on her. She could smile illegal smiles with Irris and Rasmus, play games, talk about dreams and hopes.
The rest of the Winter Palace felt too big: a mausoleum for the living, where sunlight was banished and the oil lamps were always lit. Where every moment, no matter the hour, felt like the dead of night: those quiet hours when it felt unnatural and strange, dangerous even, to be awake. Sorrow hated to walk the palace, because it made her feel like a ghost, too.
As for her father’s quarters, in the west wing, Sorrow avoided them as much as she could, avoided thinking about them if she could help it, unwilling to deal with the tangled mix of guilt and fury that rose whenever she thought of the chancellor. And with good reason.
The moment she crossed the balcony along the central complex of the palace and opened the doors to the west, the sweet reek of Lamentia smoke – real this time – assaulted her nose.
Sorrow raised her sleeve to her face to breathe through the fabric, her headache rallying once more, her mood souring even further.
Almost as soon as she passed through the double doors to her father’s reception rooms, she found Balthasar, and the source of the Lamentia reek.
Disappointment flooded her as she looked at the senator for the South Marches. He was a relatively young man, barely in his thirties, handsome, and recently married; Sorrow and her grandmother had attended the subdued ceremony a month before she died. And now here he was, slumped in a chair beside the covered window, a small bone pipe, still smouldering, between his fingers. He’d clearly wasted no time heading here once the meeting of the Jedenvat had finished.
“Senator Balthasar,” Sorrow barked.
One bloodshot eye peeled open, looked at her, and then rolled back into his skull. A single tear fell as the lid shut once more. Sorrow closed her own eyes, breathing through her sleeve as she counted slowly to ten, trying to decide what to do with him.
She’d thought him too driven to be so foolish; after all, he’d been shrewd enough to talk his way on to the Jedenvat eighteen months ago after Harun fired his predecessor. He’d done it despite his age, despite having no family ties to the council, and despite being a descendant, albeit distantly, of the royal family the Ventaxises had deposed centuries before. It was no small thing he’d achieved, and Sorrow knew he must have wanted it very badly.
But perhaps that’s what led him here – his ambition, right to the inner circle of the chancellor, and his addiction.