Yet, there was a new virulence to the past eight months. People had been content to support her and Kadra when they had been seen asrunning counter to Aelius’s established government. Now, Kadra was the established government. Every time he burned someone alive, justice began looking a lot like tyranny.
“Let’s begin.” Blasius stood, lifting both hands to the sky in an echo of Aelius’s statue towering over the Aequitas, still smiling benignly skyward. “Today, we, the Inquisitors for the High Elsar, call to Truth, to Wisdom, to crack open the heart before us such that we may discern—”
That’s my havïd heart you’re talking about. Her fists went white-knuckled as he invoked all six gods of the pantheon of the High Elsar—Wrath had been relegated to the ambiguous Elsar again. Anger and exhaustion warred for purchase in her gut.
In the weeks after the Unraveling, she had dared envision her future: long years of righting wrongs with the man she loved. But her eyes had been too hopeful. Governance was a game of likability. She had lost before she’d had a chance to begin.
It had begun innocuously enough.
Outrage had swept Ur Dinyé after the reveal that Aelius’s fulgur scuta, or lightning shields, were in fact lightning rods designed to prey on the devout while dispossessing them of their land when the inevitable bolt struck during stormfall and razed their homes to brick and ash. The Metals Guild had borne most of the public’s scorn, but the Elsarian Order and the over-religious had seen their share of mockery. And that had been her first mistake—assuming that groups that had fallen from the height of power would accept defeat. Assuming that they would be too busy licking their wounds for immediate retaliation.
First had come their ousting of Aelius’s replacement Tetrarch. Like Harion, Marzia had allied with the Guilds to fund her campaign and bought herself a victorious election, but Sarai had felt sorry for her when she’d fled the capital three weeks later after Aelius’s Quarter had impeached her for incompetence. Then, throngs of hecklers had begun appearing at her trials with Kadra.
Marzia had been practice. She was next.
Protests, false accusations of Aelius’s martyrdom and of her and Kadra having committed a coup—she hadn’t expected any of it to stick. But repeating a lie long enough and loud enough gave it credence. Over months, a fringe belief had become a competing truth—an easy thing in the insular capital of Edessa, the proud jewel of Ur Dinyé’s south. Because as much as she sought to do right by its people, they preferred a scapegoat for their woes.
Aelius’s devotees had known that the Tetrarchy wouldn’t prosecute her. So, in a devastating blow, they had allied with the Elsarian Order to spread venom. She had finally understood it then. The Unraveling had affected too much across the land: politics, religion, and the rule of law. Too many had lost power because of her. Now, they would reclaim it by discrediting her.
“All will be well,” Gaius had insisted yesterday when she’d shown as much interest in her amphora of wine as Anek did in men. “You’ve nothing to hide.”
“That’s just it!” She had slapped the hapless table with mounting hurt. “I shouldn’t have to prove a thing! Thousandssawme Summon Death.”
“You can show people the truth, Petitor Sarai. But you can’t make them believe it.”
“Then what good is showing it to them?”
Gaius had wisely said nothing.
A dull roar rumbled through the audience. Inhaling sharply, she searched for who had spiked the commotion. Her gaze caught on the front row. A wave of relief nearly sent her to her knees.They came.
Garbed in her customary bronze-edged crimson robes, Head Tetrarch Cassandane entered the court’s most opulent seating box—traditionally used by Petitors. Her stunning features pulled into the same strained smile that had graced it since the Unraveling. The country hadn’t reacted well to its first female Head Tetrarch. No doubt the minutiae of her expressions would be picked apart by the crowd.
Anek followed Cassandane, fiery curls loosely contained at their nape. Sarai’s throat tightened at the wink they shot her. Short black hair slicked to his skull, Harion sauntered in with a haughty sniff.Here to see who wins and ally with them no doubt.
And then,him.
Magus Supreme Drenevan bu Kadra, her very heart, strode into the box with predatory elegance. The morning sun ran adoring fingers over his silhouette, limning a face that was a monument to ruthlessness and a map of severity.
Few would call him handsome. High cheekbones framed a hard nose that had likely been broken in youth and a jaw like a blade. The stern line of his lips rarely knew genuine amusement, and the weight of his position had etched grim grooves around them too early. Yet, the potent brew of cunning and power that clung to him had every breath stilling in fearful awe. Under his grip, the gilded viewing seat became a throne. He was its black-robed god and the Aequitas an unworthy people. Quiet settled over the crowd when the piercing gaze that most of the country found terrifying settled on her.
Heat pricked at her eyes when he inclined his head, a smile curving his mouth. The quietest of salutes. Torn between laughter and tears, she raised her chin in silent, amused question.So, this is “quietly observing”?
The responding gleam in his eyes insisted that he saw it that way.
She touched a hand to his crest pin at her throat in silent gratitude and watched his eyes soften. Her spine ceased its painful stiffness. The crowd’s interested murmurs told her that it wasn’t lost on them that the Tetrarchy had chosen to arrive after the priests. They may as well have put up banners saying they intended to have the last word.
“You don’t have to come,” she had grimly informed Kadra weeks ago, once the realization that she was facing an Inquisitorial Hearing had settled in. “In fact, you probably shouldn’t.”
On the other side of the desk in his tablinum, he’d raised an eyebrow.
“They’ll argue that your presence skewed the Hearing or that you put the fear of Death into the Inquisitors so they’d go gently with me. Everyoneonly sees me as an extension of you. That’s—”why I need to prove that I can handle this on my own. She exhaled heavily. “Kadra, I need to beat them.”
Black fabric trailed over the edge of his desk as he’d rounded it to gaze down at her with quiet gravity. “Inquisitors of the Elsarian Order do not see fairness as a strength.”
Her stomach had sunk somewhere in the vicinity of her ankles. Master Cleric Linus was the Order’s highest religious official in Edessa, but the Inquisitors oversaw the Order’s reach across all thirteen lands, a powerful cabal within an already secretive organization. No one even knew how many there were across the world. “You think they’ll overreach.”
He’d nodded, absently circling the rim of his wineglass with a finger. “It isn’t unheard of for Petitors to enter the Order. The Inquisitors will bring one.”
