As this was going on, other servants were carrying trunks from the manor and tying them to the back of the carriage. There was a lot of baggage. I wondered if it could cause the carriage to tip over.
Fiona was not there. That was surprising.
“Where is she going to go?” I asked Radia.
“She’s going to be dumped in Savinj, apparently.”
“That’s in the middle of nowhere.”
“That’s as far as Fiona is willing to send her carriage and men.”
“But it’s just going to be her and her belongings dropped on the side of the road.”
“That’s what I hear.”
Huh. That was severe, though I agreed that Daris deserved it. I wondered how she was going to manage. Did she have any money of her own? Did she have any friends? Did she have any useful skills if she had neither of the former?
It wasn’t much longer before trunks and Daris were loaded into the carriage, no less than four footmen being sent with her, presumably to make sure Daris actually made it to Savinj.
I wanted to wave farewell. I decided that wouldn’t be dignified.
It was then that I noticed Tarce in the crowd, leaning heavily on a walking stick. I gestured at him. “I’m aware this is none of my business,” I said, “but I’m going to ask anyway. What do you plan to do with him?”
“Nothing.”
“He’s jumping through a lot of hoops for you.”
“People don’t change, Shield Mallorough. Not really. If I were to give him any encouragement, he would consider the task accomplished and revert to his former ways. I have no interest in spending time trying to improve him.”
“You’re a steadfast person.”
“Yes, I am.”
Hester tapped my shoulder. “Her Ladyship would like to see you in her office.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
Both Taro and Fiona were in the office. “We’ve been going through the Dowager’s things,” she said. I raised my eyebrows at that. “When she died,” she explained, “all that she had became mine, because Shintaro removed himself as an heir and she didn’t choose anyone herself.”
Taro’s posture was rigid. He’d been reticent since his mother’s death, and I had no idea what to say to him. I couldn’t comfort him with reminders of what a wonderful person she had been, how much she’d be missed. And he hadn’t talked about her. I wanted to make him feel better but I didn’t know how.
Fiona spread a collection of documents over her desk. “We found these hidden—well, it doesn’t matter where they were hidden. They’re all letters from the Emperor.” She flipped one over so I could see the seal.
Except... “That’s not the Imperial seal.”
“This letter was written while he was still crown prince. This one is dated about fifteen years ago.”
“That’s—” I didn’t know what that was. Except disturbing. The Dowager and Gifford had been communicating that long ago?
“I showed these to Shintaro, and we both felt you should see them.” She put the letter down. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
I sat in Fiona’s chair and picked up the first letter.
“If I remember correctly,” Taro said from his post by the window, “that was written shortly after my father died.”
The letter was very short. After elaborate salutations, the Emperor had written:
I am not prepared to intercede with Her Majesty on this matter. Frankly, it is not in Our best interests to have the Westsea title settle on you, and you are not named as an heir. However, I am sure the new lord will come to rely on your excellent guidance. We would welcome any news on how he is faring in his new role.
“He’s talking about your brother, right? The new lord.”
“Aye.”
“Your mother wanted the title to go to her instead.”
“It seems so.”
“But she’s not a Karish.” Wasn’t. Wasn’t a Karish.
“Of course she is.” He’d forgotten, too.
“Not by blood.”
“What has that got to do with anything?”
Blood was powerful for spells. Blood could tie people to land.
But had the Emperor known that? So long ago?
I turned to the next letter. It was even shorter, a single line:
It is expected that a young man, recently bestowed with a great inheritance, will indulge in wild celebration.
Taro’s older brother had been everything Taro was reputed, incorrectly, to be. He’d slept with who knew how many people. He’d abused alcohol and powders. He’d ignored his responsibilities. And he’d done that throughout the almost fifteen years between acquiring the title and dying. He hadn’t been just a young man enjoying new wealth and freedom. He’d been a lifelong parasite.
The next letter said:
We are not in a position to accommodate you. At this time.
Which suggested to me that he thought he would be able to accommodate her at a later time. When he was Emperor?
The next:
We are certain Westsea is safe in your capable hands.
Aha. So the Dowager had been as good as ruling Westsea herself. She had expected to continue to do so when Taro took the title. Instead, he had abjured, and the Dowager had been unsuccessful in running over Fiona. So she’d started campaigning for Taro to take the title back. At least, that was how I remembered the sequence of events.
Only a few letters stretched over the next several years, all very short, all commending the Dowager on her skill with managing Westsea.
And then a letter just after Taro’s brother’s death:
We are sure your second son will need as much guidance as did your first.
The next said only:
That is unfortunate, but not unexpected, given your son’s prior responsibilities.
That was when Taro had abjured the title.
The next letter was dated shortly after the death of the Empress, and it said:
We are and will always be indebted to you for your unique assistance. However, We must be circumspect in our actions at this point.
“What would your mother have done for the Emperor?” I asked Taro.
“I don’t know,” he responded, his voice low. “But I am alarmed.”
The last letter said:
We agree that control of Westsea would be advantageous, but We are not able to dictate resources to its procurement at this time. You must do as you see best.
Had the Emperor really been the one to send Lila to Flown Raven, or had the Dowager arranged it while telling Lila she was acting on the orders of the Emperor? Just as she kept telling Taro it was the Emperor who wanted him to have the title. Maybe his interest in Flown Raven was not, as we’d thought, about getting access to its power for casting. Maybe he had sent the Imperial Guards to cause difficulty for Fiona, because that was what the Dowager wanted.
The Dowager was dead. Was that going to make a difference?
I collected all the letters and shuffled them into a neat pile.
Taro left without saying anything, which was very unlike him. Following him probably wasn’t the best idea, but he had been alone a lot recently. Not off gambling or risking our lives steeplechasing. That was a problem. He wasn’t like me. A lot of solitude wasn’t good for him.
And it wasn’t as though he went anywhere far or obscure. He’d sat on the front steps, his shoulders slumped. If he wanted to be alone, he shouldn’t have made himself so easy to find.
I sat beside him and said nothing for a while.
I didn’t know if I was making him feel better or not.
Once the silence had made me uncomfortable, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am.”
“She was an awful, awful woman.”
“She was your mother.”
“It’s stupid to feel anything for her.”
“Feelings are never stupid.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“It’s something I’ve learned.” I was sort of lying. Sometimes, I felt people’s emotions were disproportionate to their cause. But Taro’s current feelings were not an item in that category. His mother was dead. Her character was irrelevant.
I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to lose one’s family. It didn’t matter that I was an adult, and that I rarely saw them: I was sure that if every member of my family died, I would feel lost.
How could I make him feel less lost? Make him feel less alone? I leaned against him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“If I’d kept my mouth shut and denied Marcus’s challenge, the contract would have remained void, and we wouldn’t have to get married.”
None of this was his fault, not really. “It won’t be so bad.” At least I wasn’t going to have to marry Marcus. “There will no doubt be a certain cachet attached to being the person to wrap the chains of matrimony around the Stallion of the Triple S.”
He glared at me. “I can’t believe you’re still laying that on me.”
I grinned at him, unrepentant.
“I like your brothers better,” he claimed. “Maybe I should marry Mika instead. I’d wager the spell would accept the substitution, given he’s part of the Mallorough family.”
“He wouldn’t have you. He’s madly in lust with Linder.”
“He has excellent taste.”
“That he does.”
We sat there, watching what movement there was, mostly the house staff crossing to and fro performing one task or another. They all saw us, and many nodded or tugged a forelock, but no one spoke to us. After the chaos of the past few weeks, it was restful. Pleasant.
At around dusk, Dias clattered down the steps. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he complained.
“You couldn’t possibly,” Taro responded. “We’ve been here for ages.”
“Well, I didn’t know you’d be lazing around on the steps, did I?”
“I’m quite comfortable here,” Taro informed him.
“But we’ve got chocolate.”
That made me smile.
He took us to our suite and locked the door behind us. Mika was sitting on the floor, of course, surrounded by covered dishes and plates. There was the promised chocolate, and Mika was sipping wine. He raised his goblet in a toast. “All hail the betrothed couple.”
I rolled my eyes and said, “Really, what is it with you and the floor?”
“Are you the type of person who needs to be told something twice? Sister, I’m so disappointed.”
“You really think you’re cute, don’t you?”
“Surely you’re not implying that I’m not.”
I sat on the floor. I never really found sitting on the floor comfortable. I’d rather sprawl on a settee. I accepted a goblet of chilled wine and wondered where my brothers had gotten it. I hoped they had paid for it. Members of the Triple S could requisition goods. So could their partners, as long as they remained partners, and children, until they were adults. That was it. But many regulars didn’t know precisely where the line was drawn, and my brothers might be able to get away with procuring goods without paying for them.
I didn’t ask, though. That would be rude.
“So,” Mika said as we cut into beef—no fish, thank Zaire—and potatoes. “Start talking.”
“Excuse me?” Taro asked.
“Where did you go that year you disappeared?”
Well, that was blunt.
And neither of us said anything.
“Clearly you haven’t had enough wine.” Mika reached over to pour some more red for Taro.
Taro put his hand over his goblet. “I won’t have my mind dulled again.”
“Are you trying to get us drunk so we’ll tell you what you want to know?” I accused them.
“It’s not so much that we want to know,” Mika objected. “I mean, aye, we want to know. Things have happened to you. But it is more that I think you need to tell us.”
“There was a light about you, after your Matching,” Dias added. “It’s much dimmed, now.”
I didn’t know what to think about that. I didn’t believe I was the sort of person who exuded any kind of light. That just wasn’t my nature. But I had certainly become disillusioned about certain things. Except Taro. He was the only force in my life that had never let me down.
Suddenly, I felt tired. Bone weary, my limbs weighed down, my eyelids heavy. I wanted to curl up on my bed and pull the covers over my head and just not think about anything, sleep until everything was normal again.
Mika tucked a few strands of my hair behind my ear. “You’ll feel better.”
“I have no way of knowing that. I’ll probably regret it.”
“You’ll have no reason to,” Mika promised.
He didn’t know what I had to tell him. Breaking into an office and destroying a family’s business, while horrific, was nowhere near as bad as killing someone.
“If you were to disappear, we’d like to know where to start looking.”
I looked at Taro.
He looked back, giving me no indication of what he thought I should do. Prat.
The weight on my chest suddenly grew heavy and hard. It made it difficult to breathe, though that made no sense. I wasn’t ill. There wasn’t anything physical pressing against me. It was all just emotion. It was a bad, bad idea to base decisions on emotion.
But I was tired and I couldn’t breathe.
So I told them. About killing Creol and how we did it, about killing a Reanist during the attack on the aristocrats at Yellows’ manor. Looking for Aryne, and who she was.
And this was when Taro, who had been letting me do all the talking, made a contribution of his own, one I’d known nothing about.
“The Empress decided to preserve Aryne’s status as a possible heir,” he announced. “A sort of second plan, should Gifford prove to be . . . inadequate.”
I stared at him. “She thought Aryne was useless!”
“She certainly wasn’t impressed. But she wasn’t impressed with Gifford, either. She had great concern over his opinions, his companions, his actions and his plans. She predicted that he might not live very long.”
“He was threatening his own health?”
“No. She thought someone was going to kill him.”