Then it began beating again, faster and hotter. He looked to Nayil.
“What felled our queen and king?” he asked, and his voice was quiet, but every Parsathean knew that quiet simply preceded the rage of a fire, the fury of a storm, the clash of a sword.
He saw the hardening of Nayil’s face, the rage already burning. But it was not the warrior who answered him.
Pella said, “Before we begin, Commander Maddek, you must understand that all has been satisfied by alliance law.”
“What has been satisfied?” Not he.
Eagerly Bazir leaned forward to tell him. “This winter past, your queen and king came to Syssia to discuss strengthening the alliance through your marriage to one of my kin. While there, your king assaulted a woman of the household, and was slain when my father defended her honor—”
Without haste, Maddek started for him.
Bazir scrambled back, bone chair clattering to the floor in his rush. His pale eyes finally darkened with fear—but the sight didn’t amuse Maddek as he’d thought it would. Instead he only saw red.
He did not reach for his sword. He left his silver claws tucked away.
With bare hands he would tear this liar’s head from his neck, rip out his sly tongue, and stuff it down the ragged blood-spurting hole of his throat.
The crescent table stood in his path. The ministers were already scattering—Gareth thrust the boy behind him as if to use his own body as a shield against Maddek’s wrath, and Pella grabbed Kintus’s arm as if to haul her away before the table was shoved aside. But Maddek simply leapt onto the carved surface, then over, his muscles coiled like steel springs, his gaze fixed on Bazir’s bloodbare face. The man’s pale eyes darted right and left, searching for escape.
Instead of escape came rescue in the form of Nayil’s wasted hand upon Maddek’s arm.
Nothing else in that tower could have made Maddek pause. Only out of the deepest respect did he halt.
And Nayil knew that halted was not stopped. “If you value your life, leave us!” he snapped at the cowering Bazir. As if Nayil was uncertain of the depth of Maddek’s rage, the warning in his gaze shifted to the brother. “Leave us, Tyzen.”
Maddek would not have touched the boy. Any fool could see that the youth had not shared Bazir’s smirking pleasure when his brother had spoken the foul lie. Instead he’d turned his face away, as if shamed.
Ashamed of his brother or ashamed of what their father had done, Maddek cared not. The boy would have neither brother nor father to be ashamed of much longer.
A murmur from Pella sent Gareth and Kintus from the chamber after the two brothers. With bloodrage in his eyes, Maddek’s gaze followed Bazir’s hasty retreat through the ivory doors. The sly-tongue’s escape now mattered not at all.
Maddek would find him again. He would rip that lying tongue from between Bazir’s smirking lips.
He could hardly believe that it hadn’t yet been done. With a throat scoured raw by grief and rage, he looked to Nayil. “You were friend to my queen and king. Tell me why he still lives. Tell me why Zhalen does. It could not be my absence that stayed your hand. You would not wait for me to avenge their deaths and to silence the lies that would stain their names.”
“There will be no vengeance,” Pella said, but Maddek’s gaze did not stray from Nayil’s face. “We could not prove any lie. Indeed, part of the story was corroborated by a minister on this council.”
“A minister?” An incredulous sneer twisted Maddek’s mouth. “Zhalen’s son?”
“By me.” The older man’s eyes were steady on his. “Your parents came to me and asked what I knew of the House of Nyset. They had received a message from a woman within the household that put forth the possibility of marriage to unite our people.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“To avoid Syssian royalty as they would avoid a nest of starving drepa. But your parents said they knew what Zhalen and his sons were, and went.”
“That is only corroboration that they journeyed to Syssia. Not that my father assaulted a woman.”
Simply speaking the words was like acid burning Maddek’s tongue. His father would never touch a woman other than his mother. To do so would be to betray his vows and be known as the most cursed and cowardly of all warriors, an oathbreaker.
Pella shook her head. “The incident was also witnessed by the Rugusian guards—”
“And upon Rugus’s throne sits Zhalen’s murdering son, who has most reason to support his father’s lies! And you say this matter is satisfied? It is not satisfied.” Nor was it in Nayil’s opinion, Maddek saw from his face, yet the older man still held his arm. Still held him back. “What of my mother? Was she also murdered by these treacherous curs when my father was?”
For she would have fought to the death at his side—or to avenge him.
Renewed rage sparked in the older man’s gaze. “She was held as an assassin and interrogated for three turns of the moon before she tried to escape.”
Interrogated. Maddek could not speak.
“She killed Zhalen’s eldest son during her escape attempt,” Pella added solemnly. “Her sentence was the same as any who had been found guilty of assassinating a Syssian royal.”
“What sentence?” he asked hoarsely.
“Beheading.”
Maddek closed his eyes. His queen, his mother—bound and beheaded, forced to endure not a warrior’s honorable death but a criminal’s shameful punishment.
Not a single wall would be left standing in Syssia when Maddek was done. Not one.
His eyes opened. “I will have Zhalen’s head.” The man could hire every guard and mercenary from every realm west of Temra’s Ocean. It would not save him.
“You cannot seek vengeance for this,” Pella said firmly. “Disputes between alliance members must be settled by the council—”
“As my father and mother’s dispute with Zhalen was settled?”
“That was not a dispute between the realms. Theirs was a personal attack made against a member of the House of Nyset on Syssian soil. Zhalen had the right to administrate the laws of his city, just as you could enforce Parsathean law if he attempted to kill someone while in your territory.”
“There was no attack. There are only lies.”
Pella did not deny that. “The incident has been investigated. By alliance law, it is satisfied. All reports support Zhalen’s claim that his actions were justified—and he has also lost a son. Blood has been shed on both sides. To seek vengeance beyond the law is an affront to the gods.”