There the seneschal quietly said, “It was with great sorrow that I learned what befell Ran Ashev and Ran Marek. They were always the most welcome of the council’s visitors. Of those who knew them, there can be not one who does not grieve for them now.”
Maddek inclined his head but made no other response, except in his gratitude to draw the red cloth up over his shoulder and drape it across his chest.
He had not yet learned what had befallen his parents. Maddek would not press Omer for answers, however. The questions that burned within his breast would be asked within the council chambers.
Nothing had been left unasked or unsaid between mother and father and son. Every Parsathean warrior knew life was too uncertain to leave important words unspoken. And since leaving the Lave, much time had Maddek to think upon what came next, beyond answers and—if needed—vengeance. To think upon what his parents would have wanted of him. When Maddek had last seen them, his queen and king spoke of finding him a bride and of strengthening the alliance between Parsathe and the southern realms.
Nothing was left unsaid, but there was much left undone.
So Maddek would see it finished in their stead.
CHAPTER 2
MADDEK
The tower’s former throne room lay beyond gleaming doors carved from ivory. Such a grand entrance had likely once opened into an opulent royal chamber, but the council’s was starkly decorated. Instead of a throne, six bone chairs sat behind a long crescent table. Those chairs did not belong to any one minister; like the moon, their positions shifted, so that no member of the alliance always sat in the center or at the ends of the table.
Each member had an equal voice and a council minister who spoke on behalf of their home. The alliance between Parsathe and the southern realms formed after the Destroyer had marched through these lands. Former enemies and rivals, now they were bound together by a common purpose: not to stand against the Destroyer—it had been too late for that—but to stand against the warlords and sorcerers who sought to conquer the shattered remains the Destroyer left in his wake.
But for one, the same ministers sat on the council as the last time Maddek had come before them. On the far left was Nayil. The Parsathean minister also only wore a cloth over his belt, with the longer length draped over his shoulder, but Maddek doubted that Omer ever chided the older man for his lack of clothing. A queen’s age past, in battle against one of the Destroyer’s warlords, Nayil had lost his right hand, and a poisoned blade had withered the strength on his left side. He’d stopped wearing a warrior’s braids and had grown his beard long. Yet his quiet and formidable power never waned, and his patience and loyalty were endless.
For those reasons, Maddek’s parents had considered Nayil their closest friend and advisor. They had fought the Destroyer together and helped form the alliance together. Now the older man’s expression brightened at the sight of Maddek, but grief lay heavily on his lined face, and he appeared to have aged ten years in the three seasons since Maddek had last seen him.
Maddek bowed his head in Nayil’s direction. In his role as an alliance commander, he should not show more respect to any one minister over another—but he did respect Nayil above all others and would never pretend otherwise.
Beside him sat the Gogean minister, Kintus, whose sharp expression often matched the words on her scythe of a tongue. As the southernmost realm, Goge would suffer more than any other if the Farian savages were not checked, yet its every contribution to the alliance had to be pried from the woman’s begrudging fingers.
Unlike Parsathe, where everyone was taught to ride and hunt and fight, in the southern realms only a small number of citizens became soldiers. So the cities contributed a few squadrons to the alliance’s army and made up the difference with goods that the council deemed were of equal value. For Goge, that meant sending grain for every Parsathean warrior and horse.
Kintus looked upon Maddek now with a bitter scowl, which he imagined was the same face she would wear if anyone requested air to breathe while they passed through Gogean lands. But he would ask nothing of her. Everything his army required while traveling through Ephorn would come from the woman to her right—Pella, Ephorn’s minister and one of Muda’s high priestesses.
Pella did not sit on the court while serving on the alliance council, yet her gray hair was still sheared closely to her bronze scalp. Over her wrapped linens she wore Muda’s robes, the heavy cloth dyed the deep orange of that goddess’s ever-changing and ever-burning fire. Thin gold chains circled her neck, her wrists, and her ankles—signifying the law by which she was always bound. Yet those chains were malleable. Pella herself often seemed forged of steel, and Maddek appreciated her all the more for it.
He could not feel the same toward the Syssian minister who claimed the seat beside her. Bazir had been appointed to the council by his father, Syssia’s regent king. Bazir’s moonstone eyes also marked him as a son of the House of Nyset and a descendant of that great Syssian warrior-queen, but there was nothing of a warrior that Maddek could see in him.
Bazir had strength enough in his linen-wrapped limbs. He had skill with a sword and upon a horse. But he had not a warrior’s plain speak—his tongue was as slick as his blue silk robes, and his every word stank of indolent rot. He had not a warrior’s honor, which demanded that he fight in service of his people. Instead he was driven by self-interest, just as his father was. From the moment Zhalen had married the last living daughter of Nyset’s bloodline, his seed had corrupted Syssia’s ruling house with selfish ambition. Zhalen did not look upon Syssia’s abundance of riches as a gift from the gods, as did the rulers and citizens of Ephorn. Instead the regent king took Syssia’s wealth as his due, owed to him by virtue of his superior position and birth.
So did his sons. Bazir gazed upon Maddek now with his usual unconcealed disdain—a disdain that frequently deepened to frustration when Bazir realized his opinion touched Maddek not at all, except to amuse him.
As if Maddek would ever be touched by the contempt of an overindulged sly-tongue. If the Parsatheans still raided their neighbors, Maddek often thought he would lead his warriors against Syssia first, simply to watch disdain give way to terror in Bazir’s pale eyes.
That would amuse Maddek even more.
Never would he ride against the man at Bazir’s left, however—Gareth, the Tolehi minister who’d served as a captain under Maddek’s mother in the alliance’s campaign against Stranik’s Fang. With steady hands and a steadier heart in battle, Gareth had also proved himself a quietly stubborn and thoughtful addition to the alliance council—and it was his son Dagoneh who had taken over Maddek’s command on the Lave.
Maddek was unacquainted with the last man at the table. Rugus’s new minister was hardly more than a boy. But Maddek needed no name to know who he was. Those moonstone eyes spoke for him.
So did Pella. “Commander Maddek, you have not yet met the newest member of our council—Lord Tyzen of Rugus.”