She would be highly displeased with his plans then. He smiled humorlessly. “Apathy in the midst of war, Cassandane?”
“There isno warin Ur Dinyé!” It was more plea than pronouncement. “None that we can acknowledge. We’re on crumbling ground, Kadra. One wrong move, and all will be rubble.”
His lips curved at the familiarity of that excuse. Many aiudexhad warned against interpreting the law too liberally when he had entered the profession at fifteen. Progress, they had insisted, had to be a slow crawl lest the upper class notice and throw the weight of their power behind stymieing it. People would die during this incremental justice, grave wrongs would be rewarded, but the land would see a brighter future if lawmakers and judges went quiet and slow with progress. A philosophy of delayed gratification undoubtedly inspired by the Elsarian Order’s notions of morality. Drivel.
He tilted his head at the pile of parchment on his desk. “The coalition of northern Praetors has answered.”
Frustration leeched from Cassandane’s face, replaced by the same fear he kept seeing in Sarai. Her fingers stilled around the scroll he handed her before she set it down. “I can’t.” She swallowed. “Not tonight.”
“Hmm.” Another concession then.
“Godsdammit, don’t you judge me, Kadra!” Fury splintered her voice into jagged marble. “For the next three hours, I must smile and wave and project enough strength to prove that I am worthy of being Head Tetrarch, while bowing before every Guild to prove that I’m also amerewoman who knows her place. Donotask me to do that while holding whatever dreadful news the north has sent us in the back of my head.” She sought the fireplace, staring at the still-burning volume of the Distribution Act with grim resignation. “Itisdreadful news, yes?”
“Yes.” He was alive to her troubles. “You aren’t without allies. You have my blade, and Sarai—”
“I’m deeply grateful that she threw herself forward to protect us, but I cannot live as you both do.” Her jaw pulled so tight that she seemed poised to gnaw off her tongue. “Have you even seen her lately? Don’t you notice the exhaustion and fear in her posture when anyone approaches her? She’snineteen. She should beyoung. Dancing, failing, loving the wrong men, so she can look back and wonder what she was thinking and laugh at the life she led. Instead, she carries the weight of a country and the fear that she might have broken it. She canneverput a toe wrong because the public will tear her to shreds.” Cassandane gripped the fireplace mantel like she wanted to break it. “You’re unrepentant about what you do and what you want, but others pay the price.”
Three bottles of wine, and they still didn’t numb him as the barb struck. The chasm in his chest tore wider. “Do you think,” he fisted the neck of a bottle, “that I don’t know that?”
Cassandane risked a glance and nearly tripped into the fireplace when his eyes tore into her. “Then hold back. A fearful nation is a dangerous one.Get the Guilds on our side tonight.” She warily glanced at his clenched grip and cursed. “Kadra, are you fuckingdrunk?”
His damaged spine burned as he rose. Three bottles hadn’t been enough after all. “The Academiae’s previous Headmaster threw people off Sidran Tower. Its reputation will survive me.”
He barely noticed her furious departure, still consumed by what she’d uttered. The same truth that kept him at his vigile station for days at a time. That had driven him to ally with Aelius’s enemies and write to Praetors and Tribunes in towns with powerful economic reach. Because he had planned his death but had nearly taken Sarai with him. He had forced her into a bitter world, shackled her politically to the very man who had ignored her as she bled to death. And she’d inherited his enemies.
Cassandane was wrong.Dancing, failing, loving the wrong men. Sarai had already done one of those things.
He was outside before the sonorous water clock by the courtyard struck ten. Wine poured freely from a fountain of ice, spilling onto beige cobblestones. Students in the Academiae’s dark-gray robes bustled around a banquet table with enough to feed a small village—roasted slabs of beef, herb-stuffed fish, steaming pies, with myriad soups and roasted root vegetables. Bards sawed and plucked at their instruments. A cozy sight were it not for the frenzied whispers at his arrival.
Wind wrested a needle from a nearby pine and wove it into a bitter gust that pushed at him, seeking weakness and finding none. He was too familiar with the cold for it to trouble him, born into ice but destined for lightning, the years in between little more than a cloud of blazeleaf smoke and blood. The ever-present strain of the ruined nerves in his spine had been his only companion throughout. There were nights when those memories didn’t resurface. He’d known many of them after Sarai. Tonight wasn’t one of them.
Throngs splintered at his approach, slinking forward with the same feverish intensity he had witnessed in childhood. Proximity to power was a drug as strong as wine. These people had drunk deep. They offered flintyeyes and primal fear, along with false cheer in their voices as they greeted them. Obsequious grins belied their sly hatred. Some families wore a jeweler’s entire stock; some snuck a few portions of the roast into beeswax cloth for another day’s meal.
Then, there were theotherbeings. The whispers at the back of his mind and the spills of crimson bubbling from the courtyard’s tile. Skeletal figures watching with overlarge eyes from behind the distant conifers. An oil-slick miasma distorting the air above segments of the crowd. Invisible to all but him, and proof of a truth that he couldn’t tell Sarai when she was so burdened. That he hadn’t returned entirely unchanged from the dead.
“My daughter’s a Petitor too.” A noblewoman thrust a graduate in front of him. “She’ll be one after tonight. Top of her class before she left because of that unfortunate situation with Petitors… losing their lives. Very generous of you to allow everyone to return to complete their studies. She’seighteen.”
Why this was significant escaped him. “Congratulations,” he addressed the air above the girl’s head and moved past, but the mother blocked his path.
“I beg your pardon, Magus Supreme, but she’s a Tenth-Tier.” The woman summoned an ingratiating but determined smile. “Properly trained.Certo, you must wish for a more powerful Petitor to help with your caseload. We’re all aware that the current one is only a Seventh-Tier and a bit… broken,” she said with a high laugh that echoed across a suddenly silent courtyard.
Gold winked at the edge of his vision as a figure carefully set down her wineglass.
Fuck.
Anguish bloomed like a bloodstain in Sarai’s eyes before she smoothed her features into a blank canvas. That winded him even before he took in the vision she made. Black fabric embroidered liberally with golden vines and flowers wound around her torso in a bodice that bared the gentleupper swell of her breasts and clung to her waist before proceeding to a floor-length gown. A shawl of some gauzy fabric with all the substance of gossamer shielded her shoulders along with black gloves that crested above her elbows. To hide her hand tremors, he realized.
She carries the weight of a country and the fear that she might have broken it.Cassandane’s barb sank deeper when Sarai caught his eye and managed the same reassuring smile she’d worn for months. Saying that she wasn’t hurting. That he hadn’t robbed her of the life she should have had.
Anger and self-hatred licked at him when the woman kept talking.
“There’s nothing saying that you must wait until next year’s Robing to take on a new girl—” She froze when his eyes bored into hers. A weak puff of air fled her throat.
“A tragedy to be loud and wrong.” The ice in his voice sent a ripple through the crowd. Steps away, Cassandane stiffened. “Crawl up the social ladder if you must, but be circumspect about your target. Ihavea Petitor. She is entirely whole.” He caught Sarai’s gaze, and his heart eased at the glow suffusing her golden eyes.
Hushed laughter circled the red-faced noblewoman. Grains Guildmaster Ioratius separated him from Sarai while vociferously complaining about the northern riots. He struck down his proposed solutions—all variations on the same theme: violent retaliation against the rioters—and continued through the crowd. Nothing had changed. The same dance, the same game, the same system that knelt to power.
A vise gripped his head upon his next breath.
