He reached for the pile of letters as though the scraps of paper might lend him stability and tore one open seemingly at random.
“You seem popular,” said Branwyn. Zelen tried to tell himself that her voice was only throaty because of her injuries.
“Most of the council gets more, I’d think. I—” He blinked down at the message.
“Not more bad news, I hope.”
“It could be worse, but it couldn’t have come at a worse point. At least the food will be horrible.” He met Branwyn’s questioning look with an explanation. “Gedomir wants me in the country tomorrow.”
Chapter 27
Leaving Heliodar proper behind, one approached the Verengir house across a long stretch of flat land: tree-studded plains that rapidly gave way to marshes. In summer, these were a hell of insects, but now they were, if gloomy, at least subdued. Slim, dark cypress trees clumped sociably together above brown cattails and water that reflected the flat gray of the sky overhead. Zelen’s carriage rumbled along steadily, but with squashy enough noises to make him occasionally nervous—as though he didn’t have plenty to worry about.
Fields of barley and other plants Zelen had never learned to recognize punctuated the landscape occasionally, all in clumps like the houses that went with them. Solitude had never been the death sentence in Heliodar that he’d heard it was in Criwath and the other kingdoms that hadn’t had sea or southerly positions to keep them from the worst of the storms, but living too far from one’s neighbors was still a bad idea.
A high fence marked the boundary of Verengir lands. Orderly rows of trees began to line the road after that. Passing between them had always made Zelen feel as though a harsh hand descended on his shoulders, pulling his back rigid against the carriage seat, and a cold voice pointed out every wrinkle in his doublet and bit of dirt on his boots. This time, he was acutely conscious of the secret he carried as well and wondered how obvious it was.
He was still thinking it over when the carriage pulled up at the front door.
The Verengir house was dark wood, plain but large, with four stories and chunky, sprawling wings to either side of the square central building. What few windows it had squinted out suspiciously from the upper floors. Standing stiffly at the large double doors, footmen in livery regarded the carriage with the same lack of reaction they showed everything.
Zelen got out, nodded politely and received polite bows, and passed through the doors, miniscule in their shadow.
Inside was as he remembered: high hallways and tapestries in sober colors. Duty, Purity, and Prudence lined the front hallway, each one a maiden with pale skin, rosy cheeks, and a sickeningly earnest expression. Duty had her head bent over a cradle, Purity was holding one hand out in front of her in a warding gesture, and Prudence was closing the door on a well-stocked larder.
As he’d done twenty years ago, Zelen crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue at them. It felt embarrassingly juvenile but extremely satisfying, and nobody was likely to box his ears now.
“Brother.”
Zelen’s ears actually did tingle at the greeting, and the swish of skirts that went with it. He turned to meet Alize with far less composure than he’d hoped.
She kissed him on each cheek, her lips cold and dry. Her hair, white blond like Gedomir’s and their mother’s, was twisted into a tight bun, as always. She probably hadn’t been wearing the same all-concealing black wool dress since she’d been fifteen and Zelen six, but he couldn’t have told the difference between one gown and another.
“It’s good to see you,” he lied.
“And you. You look…” She scanned his clothing, taking in every bright color and scrap of ornament. “Well. Gedomir is in the library.”
“Much obliged. Mother and Father?”
“Getting ready to go to the city, naturally,” she said. Immediately Zelen wanted to look away, sheepish for having asked. “It’s hard on them, particularly at their age, but for a state funeral…well. There’s no point objecting to duty.”
“No,” he said. “And Ilesen?”
“Overseeing our estates.” Alize’s husband was a washed-out and rather chinless man, who gave the impression of being a petty tyrant in his own home but obeyed Lord Verengir’s suggestions as soon as he heard them. That quality had probably recommended him as a match as strongly as his impeccable bloodlines had done. “I’ll give him your regards.”
“Much obliged,” Zelen said, realized that he’d repeated himself, and coughed. “Well. I’ll just duck in and have a word with Gedo, shall I?”
“You’d best do so. He’s quite busy. I’ll see you at dinner,” she added, and then swept off on some errand immeasurably more important than talking to him.
* * *
“How much pain would you say it gives you to stand?” Altien’s tentacles waved idly as he observed Branwyn, and his fingers tapped his legs in the same rhythm. Branwyn suspected it was a barely repressed desire to take notes.
“Only a little now,” she said, closing her eyes to better concentrate her other senses. “I’ve had worse after a day of hard training. But I’m keeping my weight on the other, mostly. If I shift—”
She did so, not entirely but evenly. The pulse of discomfort made her grunt. “No. I couldn’t maintain that for very long.”
“Then don’t,” said Altien, and waved her back toward the bed. “Progress will happen faster if we don’t get in its way. I will provide you with mild exercises. They should be helpful, insofar as I understand human musculature, which I do. You’re not as dissimilar that way as you are skeletally.”
