Tavi didn’t raise her voice, though she didn’t need to in order to attract attention. Arkadi’s presence did that well enough these days. A server approached their table with a carved wooden box that held small jars of loose-leaf teas for their perusal. Arkadi let Tavi choose, and the dried tea leaves that made a lovely cup of rich, minty blue tea were placed in the samovar to brew.
“The small plates will be out shortly,” the server said before slipping away. The teahouse offered no set menu, insteadproviding a dozen or so seasonal dishes that rotated weekly and which were delivered in small ceramic dishes to be shared between people.
“How is the Isar?” Tavi asked, driving straight to the heart of the matter. The broadsheets had been reporting on the Isar every day, from what he wore to who he met with. The country was starved of knowledge for their new ruler.
Arkadi, for all of his skill at unearthing information from others, found himself reluctant to share beyond the superficial. “He works himself to the bone. It’s a marked change from being a Minister, he tells me, but he is doing well.”
Tavi nodded, not in the least satisfied, but at least in agreement. “Papa has sat in during the Council of Ministers and says the Isar is a serious man who never loses his temper.”
He didn’t lose it in public, but Arkadi had seen Rodian’s frustration in person after some of the Council sessions. But what they spoke of wasn’t for Tavi’s ears or anyone else’s subtly listening in.
“The Isar is dedicated to Urova, far more than our last one, I would say.”
Tavi nodded, anger flashing across her eyes for a moment. She’d lost several cousins who’d been turned intorionetkas, but luckily, no one in her immediate family. Few ivoryanin had come out of the Infernal War unscathed.
“Papa says the Isar is going to sign off on what the wardens want regarding the tithes.”
“The Council agreed to the terms before the Isar was crowned. He won’t back out of it, despite what some hope.” Arkadi cut his gaze across nearby tables, seeing several people hastily look away. “Giving up Urova’s children to the wardens is how we ensure our country’s survival. We need the wardens in our poison fields.”
No country could survive without wardens. Arkadi didn’t know what had possessed the previous Isar to agree to ally with Daijal and attack the Warden’s Island. Nothing good had come of that attack. Their country was left to pick up the pieces and pay the price of the dead by giving up numerous children as tithes.
Arkadi had spent a very long evening watching Rodian rail against what had already happened while drinking his way through a bottle ofika. But they all had roads to walk, and those children would learn to walk new ones for the good of Maricol as a whole.
“Papa said the children will be chosen fairly, even from ivoryanin,” Tavi said.
“Yes, that has been argued in the sessions,” Arkadi said. The broadsheets had all screamed that headline the other week when Rodian had made that amendment to the agreement. It had been a rather horrible day in the Council, but Rodian had held firm. The Isar, Arkadi was coming to discover, was a big proponent of fairness.
“He won’t change his mind?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
A few guests at neighboring tables beyond the alcove picked up their conversations again, the subject being discussed becoming what he and Tavi had just spoken about. A different servant arrived just then, bringing a tray containing small porcelain bowls and plates they set on the table.
Arkadi picked up the small, two-pronged fork used for such a meal, politely letting Tavi take the first bite. They ate slowly, sipping at their tea and chatting about less-fraught subjects than what Urova owed as amends for losing a terrible war the lower classes had never wanted. Perhaps that was why Rodian wanted ivoryanin to be included in the tithes. Still, ivoryanin hadnot been forced to tithe for centuries, and Arkadi should have expected that to be a sticking point with some bloodlines.
Toward the end of the meal, Arkadi excused himself from the table to use the washroom, navigating past tables to the rear hallway that led to the private tearooms and the washrooms. The hum of conversation from the main room was partly muted in the hallway, allowing Arkadi’s keen hearing to pick up the quiet words of a threat as he passed a nearly closed door.
“—ask for a private audience and deal with him then. His mastery of starfire is nothing like Queen Caris Rourke’s or Emperor Vanya Sa’Liandel’s ability. It should not worry us,” someone said inside that room.
Arkadi carefully put his foot down from the stride he’d taken, making sure he made no noise. He eased closer to the crack in the door, someone having not fully closed it. A detriment to whatever plans they were making, but a good thing for Arkadi.
“My wife gave birth six months ago, and I will not have my son be a warden,” someone else said, voice rising a bit in fury and disgust. It was one Arkadi recognized from many Council sessions—Ivoryan Sigurd had become head of his bloodline when his parents and grandparents had died asrionetkas. He was a newly minted Minister but the leader of a small cohort who were not pleased with what the rest of the world had demanded of Urova in its surrender.
“None of us wants that,” another woman said quietly, forcing Arkadi to strain his hearing, leaning a fraction closer to the door. He thought her voice was familiar, and it took him a moment to place it—Ivoryan Kaja, a Minister who had taken her uncle’s seat in the Council when the man had been found out as arionetka. Her father had died of a broken heart, not a missing one, when he’d learned of his twin’s betrayal.
“Then we are in agreement? We will handle this problem, and the Midnight Star can choose someone else.”
Someone said something too low for him to hear after that, and Arkadi grimaced, forcing himself to continue on to the washrooms. Not for the first time did Arkadi wish he’d been born a magician, capable of magic, like some of his cousins. He would love to hide himself in the shadows, but if he stayed much longer, he would be found out.
Whoever sat in that room with Sigurd and Kaja had spoken of treason and had signed their deaths by Arkadi’s hand, whether they knew it or not.
No one would kill Rodian so long as Arkadi breathed.
Ten
RODIAN
The fire burning in the hearth chased away the cold in his office, the sun close to setting, despite the mechanical clock on his desk indicating it was only early afternoon. Rodian had the curtains drawn back from the windows to his left so he could see the sky. During winter in the far north, they never saw the sun, only the stars. Here in Matriskav, he got to see both, and that was still a revelation as the calendar shifted into Third Month.
