“Is the evening meal ready?” Vanya asked.
“In the courtyard,” one of his daughter’s servants said with a bow.
“And the warden?”
“Waiting for you, Your Imperial Highness.”
Vanya left the nursery, the low-lit gas lamps in the room casting shadows behind him. The ones in the hallway beyond were set brighter, lighting his wing of the Imperial palace as bright as day.
He found Soren in the private courtyard, already seated on a cushioned bench at the low glass table. Well-tended ferns and small trees in various-sized ceramic pots were scattered around the mosaic floor, while a fountain burbled away in the center, filters and pipes keeping the water clean and moving. Flowering vines hung from balconies that overlooked the courtyard. The space above was open all the way through four levels, the night sky a starry blackness overhead.
The courtyards were the center of any home in Solaria, and the palace had been built around many of them for the Imperial family’s personal use. This one belonged to Vanya and his daughter. A meal such as the one prepared tonight, held within the Imperial family’s private space, was an honor afforded to very few outside the House of Sa’Liandel. Vanya wondered if Soren even knew what it meant for him to be here or if he even cared. In Vanya’s experience, wardens cared for very little beyond their duty.
Vanya stepped into the courtyard and was pleased to see that Soren had indulged him by wearing the clothes he’d instructed the bathhouse attendants to provide rather than slipping back into his uniform.
The white robe was made of thin gauze, banded at the wrists by gold cuffs with thin gold chains that connected to the delicate fabric by way of neatly placed grommets. It fell open over his torso, no shirt beneath, showing off the golden medallion Vanya had gifted him last year, as well as several old scars. A delicate gold chain hooked into two grommets that rested over his collarbones, keeping the robe from sliding off his shoulders. His loose trousers were of thicker material, but only just, and as white as the robe. They were open from knee to thigh, secured by a tie on the side of each hip, with no belt to aid in keeping them up. Someone had given him house sandals, but he’d kicked them off beneath the table.
“Did you enjoy the bathhouse?” Vanya asked.
Soren watched him approach with unblinking eyes. “Better than any I’ve found on the road.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t join you.”
Vanya truly did regret being unable to join him. Having his way with Soren would’ve been far more enjoyable than watching the Senate argue for hours over a needed allocation law. In the well-lit courtyard, it was impossible not to see how Soren’s gray eyes dilated a bit at that statement. Vanya was trained to notice and catalogue a person’s reaction in any situation. Soren’s was encouraging for how Vanya intended the evening to end.
“You had your duty.”
“And yours brought you here.” Vanya sat at the other end of the small square table, the serving platters and bowls between them overflowing with food. A servant had already poured their glasses full of the cold red wine swimming with fruit Solarians enjoyed during the hot months. “Though, duty aside, I am glad you came.”
Soren hooked a thumb beneath the gold chain of the medallion he wore and lifted it for Vanya to see. “I still have no answer for you about this.”
“Remember what I said in Bellingham last year? You will come to me with the border reports twice a year, or more, if you like, and someday, you will have a need that I can provide for.”
Soren let the vow he carried settle back against his chest and sighed. “You’re so stubborn, princeling.”
Vanya’s mouth quirked a bit at the hint of what one could maybe call fondness in Soren’s voice. “One must be to survive what Maricol throws at us.”
He had no qualms about speaking so openly of the vow in the palace, in the wing that was his. The servants who tended to him were loyal to his House and, aside from that, were bound to silence by way of mind magic cast by a magician. His mother had become far more stringent when it came to those employed in the palace after the attack last year that should have, by all rights, killed him.
Loyalty could be bought, and it could be sold, but it could also be a collar tight enough to choke someone.
One of the servants stepped forward from her spot by a potted tree. She reached for the serving spoon in the spiced rice bowl and scooped some out onto Vanya’s plate, then Soren’s. The meal was served family-style, with more than enough to feed a group of people rather than just the two of them. Soren hesitated only a moment before he started to eat.
The flatbread was warm and garlicky, a perfect vehicle for the rice and stewed meat. Vegetables charred a bit from the grill surrounded a bowl of cool herbed yogurt there for dipping. Vanya was pleased to see that Soren tried a little bit of everything, though there were one or two dishes he didn’t try twice.
They ate in silence for a time, servants standing attentively nearby, ensuring their wineglasses were always topped up. Soren ate with a single-minded focus that Vanya remembered from their brief time on the road last year. Here, he wouldn’t need to watch his rations, though, and Vanya would rather he want for nothing while within the palace walls.
“Did you come here from the poison fields?” Vanya asked when Soren had finished most of the food on his plate.
Soren shook his head and reached for his wineglass. “Took a train from Karnak. I’m to head southeast after delivering the border reports. The wetlands there need deeper mapping.”
The towns in that part of the country were few and far between, and most relegated to commercial harvesting operations. It was a hard, if lucrative, living. Many of the companies with stakes in that area had once belonged to the House of Rixham before his mother thoroughly annihilated that House. She’d parceled out the ownership of such businesses to various other Houses over the years, buying bits of loyalty in order to sway politics.
If the wardens thought the wetlands needed deeper mapping, it could be a sign of trouble. That area had a history of losing settlements to poisoned mists and fog that carried spores in its depths. Hunting revenants in murky, low-lying water and thick tree coverage was always dangerous.
“Anything of particular note I and my mother should know about?”
Soren shrugged. “The northwest is more of a problem than the southeast right now. It’s in the border reports.”
