Odd.Her magic registered what he was saying as true, yet it was a soft, numb creature in comparison to the clear gongs of sound that normally rang in her chest. Perhaps Telmar was right, and Noceo’s power could be her equal and opposite. Yet, he had wiped the memory of their meetings before.
“Am I here for you to blackmail Kadra?”
“Oh.” He looked chagrined again. “No, he’s due to fall any day now in Edessa. I don’t need to dangle you over his head. No.” He stood, leaning over his desk to peer at her. “You’re here because I want you here.”
An invitation to a tower, and a man who wanted her there for reasons she couldn’t fathom.I’ve been here before.With Kadra.
She had a sinking feeling as to what Noceo was going to say but couldn’t halt the precipitating question. “Why?”
“Because we want the same thing,” he said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. At her incredulous snort, he hummed thoughtfully. “It is a difficult thing, Death-Summoner, to see things in others that they don’t in themselves. Like the fact that love is not enough for you.” He rounded his desk and perched atop it to stare down at her. “Like the fact that you crave power.”
The breath in her lungs suddenly burned. “LikehavïdI do.”
“Don’t take it as an insult. I wasn’t always this powerful either, but there are ways.” Something amused formed in the furrow of his eyebrows when she failed to hide her curiosity. He stood and offered her a hand. “Come with me.”
She glowered at it. Sighing, he tucked it into his pocket and led her down the never-ending stairs winding out of his tower.
He stopped before a pair of double doors untouched by fire, wards etched into the very doorframe as protection. They parted noiselessly upon unlocking to reveal a hallway that stretched as wide as Aoran Tower. Her steps echoed on the stone-and-marble floor past busts of men with a vague resemblance to Noceo and Kadra and books that looked older than the Aequitas within clear crystal cases.
“Welcome to the Clan’s Relic Hall.” Noceo looked amused at her dropped jaw. “No one could keep me away from here as a child. There’s something powerful about having a people or place or to tie yourself to that you know will go on after you.” He glanced back at her. “I hear you’re an orphan.”
“Are you trying to say that I’m tying myself to Kadra because I haven’t known permanence?”
“I think you’re rebelling,” he said, with a kindliness that set her teeth on edge. “Just like Drenevan is. Do you know why he calls himself ‘bu Kadra’ instead of ‘bu Kader’?” He didn’t wait for her response. “It’s an obscure Urdish word that means ‘no one.’”
Her steps slowed.Drenevan bu Kadra.The “bu” was a possessive. He’d gone by “Drenevan of no one.”
“Dramatic, don’t you think? Orphaning himself like that. But thatispart of why you went for him. You thought he was like you.”
This time, the blow landed. “I don’t need someone to mirror me to love them.”
“We all do. At the end of the day, we love ourselves most. I hope you can be honest about that.”
Glowering, she assessed him as they wove through the Clan’s mementos of more powerful days. Like Kadra, he moved with purpose and elegance, body language so contained as to make him impossible to read.
“Why bother with a coup?”
He thought for a moment. “Vengeance. Irritation.” He flashed her a grin. “I find the south tiresome on the best of days.”
“So, you loosed a plague and turned them madness-struck?”
A frown edged Noceo’s lips. “I’ll accept every accolade for exacerbating tension, but the rest wasn’t me. I don’t know why the beetles went rabid either. The north hated the south just fine without me, and I had nothing to do with your madness-struck.”
Truth. The words rang clearer than they had so far. Sarai froze. “You hadnothingto do with the madness-struck in Edessa?”
“Of course not.”
True. Everything turned to smoke and snow in her head.Then, who’s behind it?
Mistaking her terror for thought, Noceo offered her his arm again. An imperceptible shift took place in the line of his shoulders when she stood where she was. “You don’t take easy to change, do you? Drenevan’s a different beast though. He always adjusted to what Clevsin—our father—demanded so easily. There wasn’t an emotion in him that wasn’t linked to violence.”
Her hands clenched.
He followed the motion with a thoughtful nod. “Yes, his ‘love’ for you. Every man has their urges, even him. But there is a reason our father wasso preoccupied with Drenevan. He’s the very best of us. I doubt that there’s any child this Clan has raised that has so completely become a monster.”
“You set a market aflamehereto test your strength!”
“Coups don’t come cheap,” he said wryly. “Targeting a southern city would have brought the Tetrarchy’s eyes on me too quickly, but the north never bothers telling you anything, and they blamed the Guilds so quickly.” He shrugged. “As they should. I didn’t create this conflict. Does it matter that I held the flame to the brazier? Would you rather that they stay impoverished here?”
