There was silence in the chamber, until Sheltatha stretched on the divan and spoke in a loose tone. ‘More likely the nobles will surrender, milord. There’ll be no battle. Simply show the sword and the will behind it, and your enemies will kneel.’
‘If they do,’ Urusander replied, ‘they will leave the field with their Houseblades intact. We but delay the clash.’ He faced the chamber, eyed both women. ‘This is what Hunn Raal does not understand. Nor the High Priestess. The marriage wins us nothing but an uneasy delay. Which of the noble families will be the first to yield a portion of its land?’ He waved a hand. ‘The two thrones are meaningless. These conjoined hands, dark and light, cannot win us peace.’
Sheltatha slowly sat up, her eyes bright on Urusander. ‘You mean to betray them. Your own soldiers.’
‘I wanted peace. All I ever wanted.’
‘Hunn Raal will see you dead. High Priestess Syntara will hand him the dagger, with every blessing of Light she can conjure.’
‘We march to battle,’ Urusander said to her, voice suddenly cold. ‘We will force the nobles to fight us. We will shatter the Houseblades, and leave the highborn with no choice but to negotiate. And then there will be restitution.’
‘All to keep Hunn Raal from your back.’
‘I will see peace forged.’
‘Hunn Raal—’
‘Is an outlaw and a murderer. I will hand him over to the Hust Legion, with my blessing.’
Sheltatha smirked. ‘Your first gesture of reconciliation.’
Looking between the two, Renarr could not decide which one dismayed her the most. After a moment, she shut down such emotions, mentally turned away from them both. None of this mattered. None of this was relevant. The winter loses its grip upon the Legion. The camp whores, men and women alike, gasp at the sudden rush of coins, the eager tumble of bodies. By this, they know. They understand. We are to march. Cut a heated path through the season. There is excitement riding the lust, because lust comes in so many flavours. Time to taste them all.
None of it concerns me. Not any more.
My adoptive father has come to his sense of duty. He will take the hand of Mother Dark. This is not so vast a deviation for Vatha Urusander. He was always one to embrace sacrifice, to set aside his own wants and needs. Indeed, he yearns for such moments, such gestures. They are what he would use to set him apart from the rest of us.
Noble acts, like the spreading of a peacock’s tail. Nothing for himself, and everything for those who witness. After all, let it not be misunderstood. It is his very reluctance that spawns the virtue, and by the virtue’s power, he will force upon this realm all the justice it can stomach.
But even then, he will defy the most egregious demands from his soldiers, and so they will see him as a betrayer. This too will stand as a sacrifice. This too will taste of virtue.
But none of it matters.
Soon, I will stand with Urusander, in the Citadel. I will see him made a husband once more. I will see the marriage done. I will see the beginning of his overtures. The first gestures at reconciliation, restitution, the sure path to some kind of justice – the kind none like, but all can live with.
The dust will begin settling. There will be relief. Elation. The storm has passed. It’ll not turn now.
She rose. ‘I will take my leave, milord. Sheltatha’s lessons are done for this day.’
But Urusander was at the window once again, and only now did Renarr hear the clamour of the Legion breaking camp. To Renarr’s announcement, he simply nodded, and then, as if in afterthought, he added, ‘Preparations will take some time. We march on the morrow, or perhaps the day after.’
‘Heady times,’ said Sheltatha Lore in a low voice, smiling down at the wine in her goblet. Raising her voice, she said, ‘Milord, I beg you, on the day of your justice, spare not my mother.’
When Urusander made no reply, Renarr quickly left the chamber.
* * *
‘A procession will be necessary,’ said High Priestess Syntara from where she stood near the altar. ‘A lighting of sacred torches, perhaps, to burnish the dawn. I will lead. With awakened Light suffusing my person, bright as the sun, and yet purer. We must make the dawn our first blessing, each and every day, even while on the march.’
Seated on a stone bench, Sagander studied the woman from beneath heavy lids. Pomp to cow the masses was all very well, but this woman’s vanity was too transparent. She lacked subtlety. ‘I was speaking of Sheltatha Lore,’ he said. ‘In the keeping of a whore is not acceptable. A whore but makes other whores, even should they be children. The habits of the adult seduce, and against such things no child can resist.’
‘From my understanding,’ Syntara said, ‘Tathe Lorat’s daughter was never a child. I told you, she is too damaged for my temple. It is a wonder that my blessing of white still remains upon such soiled flesh.’
You were one of Emral Lanear’s temple whores, woman – what of your soiled flesh? Of course, he dared not point out such details, lest they sully this woman’s desperate reinventions. Besides, reinventions are necessary, enough to knock history into some semblance of destiny, when it is all said and done.
I will pen the new truths of all this. The eyes and the hand of a witness, here within the inner sanctum of a newly forged realm. Sagander will be a name revered for ages to come.
‘Besides,’ Syntara continued, ‘your obsession over that child is unseemly.’