Warrior (81 page)

Does the world fear me now, the way I once feared it? Am I the despot I so desperately tried to
prevent my sons from becoming?

And how did it happen?
Marla asked herself, trying to pinpoint the exact moment in time when her concern for her family had turned into a callous disregard for anyone else.
At what point did I let my
fear take over and turn me into this terrifying, hard-shelled monster?

No closer to an answer than she had been when she first asked herself the same question as she sobbed over Elezaar’s dying body in her arms, Marla watched, dry-eyed and rigid with self-control, as they buried the dwarf next to Ruxton Tirstone. A light rain fell, warm and sticky as blood, but she barely noticed. As the slaves covered over his small linen-wrapped body with the freshly turned earth, the princess sank down onto the wrought-iron garden seat. Only Marla and her stepson, Rodja Tirstone, had attended the burial. Nobody else understood the significance of Elezaar’s death, and even Rodja, perhaps, didn’t fully comprehend her loss. Or her part in it.

And even if anybody did understand what his loss means to me, who is left in Greenharbour to
grieve for the Fool?

The family was spread across Hythria. She’d had no word from Krakandar since sending Damin the letter containing the note to Mahkas her son had requested regarding his uncle’s futile hopes for a betrothal. There had been a message from Adham, though. Unaware of his father’s death, he had sent a letter through one of Ruxton’s agents in Medalon, advising him of his success in finding somewhere to store their precious cargo of spices and containing the news that Xanda and Luciena were headed for Bordertown and that he intended to meet up with them there and then head home via Krakandar. Rodja came by to tell her about the letter the same day Elezaar returned home. He was the one who had found her with the dwarf, holding his long-dead body to her breast, tears streaming down her face, rocking him back and forth, unaware of how long she had been there, holding him, cursing him, begging him not to abandon her . . .

Fortunately, Rodja had inherited much of his father’s common sense, along with his genial temperament. He’d taken care of everything for Marla. He’d arranged for the
court’esa
to be laid out in the main hall—a signal honour for a slave—arranged for candles to be lit around the house and the gardens to guide his soul to the underworld, organised for the grave to be dug and then stood with her while they sent him on his way.

“Will you be all right, your highness?”

Marla forced down her self-doubt, her guilt, even a little of her grief, before she looked up at him from the garden seat and frowned. “I’ve been your stepmother since you were eleven years old, Rodja. How is it you never call me Mother?”

“I never realised you wanted me to.”

“I’m not sure I ever did,” she replied, thinking this was just another symptom of the woman she had become. The Tirstone children respected her, but they had never warmed to her the way her own children had warmed to Ruxton. “And I’m quite certain I don’t deserve the moniker. If anyone mothered my children, and Ruxton’s, it’s Bylinda Damaran. All of you should probably call her by that name.” She smiled wanly, hoping Rodja just thought her in a reflective mood, not tearing herself apart with guilt and self-recrimination. “It’s just . . . you’ve been such a great help since your father died . . . ‘your highness’

seems far too impersonal.”

“What do you want me to call you?”

She thought about it for a moment. “I think, given the nature of our relationship, I wouldn’t be offended if you addressed me by name.”

“As you wish,” he said, and then added awkwardly, “Marla.”

“It’ll get easier with practice, I’m sure.”

“You’re not going to stay out here in the rain, are you?”

Marla looked up, a little surprised to realise it was still spitting. “I suppose I shouldn’t waste time sitting here doing nothing. I have a lot to do. And you have a wife about to give birth any moment. I shouldn’t keep you any longer, Rodja. But I do appreciate you being here. Elezaar would have appreciated it, too.”

“Elezaar meant a lot to all of us, Marla.” He didn’t seem to have nearly as much difficulty using her name this time. “The others will be devastated when they learn he’s gone.”

“I should write to them about it. Along with everything else on my desk that I must deal with today.”

“Hythria won’t fall apart if you take the day off, you know.”

“I’d not be too certain of that.” She fell silent for a moment. Was her grand notion that Hythria would fall apart if she relaxed her guard for a day simply another symptom of her ruthless megalomania?

Stop it
, she scolded herself impatiently.
You’re going to drive yourself insane if you keep thinking
like that!

She looked up at Rodja, squaring her shoulders a little, as if that small act would drive away her doubts. “Should I tell the others the truth about how he died?”

“As I’ve no more idea of the truth than anyone else, I couldn’t really say.”

Marla wasn’t so far gone in her grief that she missed his censure. “Elezaar poisoned himself, Rodja, because he feared me. That’s the truth you seek.”

The rain suddenly forgotten, Rodja sank down beside Marla on the garden seat, shocked to the core by her revelation. “He
killed
himself? I don’t understand. Why would Elezaar take his own life? Why did he fear you?”

“He feared my anger, because he betrayed me to Alija.”

Rodja shook his head in disbelief. “No. I don’t believe it.”

“You’d better get used to the idea. Things are going to change around here, now that Alija knows all our innermost secrets.”

“You must be mistaken . . .”

“If only I was,” she sighed.

He studied her warily for a moment. “You appear to be taking this news remarkably well,” he said, clearly concerned that she was sitting serenely in the rain, not pacing up and down, or throwing things, or ranting with fury at Elezaar’s treachery.

“I think that’s because, oddly enough, in his own way, Elezaar has done me a favour.”

“By betraying us? That’s a kinder way of putting it than I’m thinking, right now.”

“He’s finally forced my hand, Rodja. There’ll be no more dancing around with Alija. No more pretending. No more hiding. No more suffering her smug superiority or acting like a simpering fool, thanking her for her advice, calling her a friend.”

“I can see how that might appeal to you, Marla, but with everything going on . . . the plague . . .

Gods! Could he have picked a worse time to do this?”

“There was never going to be a good time.”

“I still don’t get it,” Rodja said, shaking his head. “
Why?
Why would he betray you? Or any of us, for that matter?”

“Elezaar betrayed us to save his brother.”

“I didn’t know he had a brother. Still, it’s no excuse.”

“You think not?” she asked with a slightly raised brow. “What would you do to save Adham from being tortured before your very eyes?”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

“Well, for one thing, Adham’s not—”

“A slave?”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know,” she assured him, patting his arm. “And I know what Elezaar did seems unforgivable.

But when I think of some of the things I’ve done these past twenty years that are just as questionable, simply to save my brother from the consequences of his own foolishness, I find it hard to condemn Elezaar for the same crime. And that’s the tragedy of Elezaar’s death, Rodja. I never got the opportunity to tell him that. He was so certain I would turn him out once I learned of his treachery, he killed himself without giving me a chance to prove him wrong.”

Rodja fell silent. As his father’s right-hand man these past few years, her stepson was more familiar than most with some of the things she’d done. He’d even aided her on occasion, when she required the resources of his father’s intelligence network and Ruxton was unavailable.

“Do you fear me too, Rodja?” she asked, when he offered no reply.

“A little bit,” he admitted.

“It’s a very lonely feeling, knowing you’re feared.”

“You’re not alone, Marla.”

“I am now that Elezaar’s gone,” she replied. They were both getting soaked by the rain neither of them seemed to notice.

“What are you going to do?” he asked after a while, when the silence began to get uncomfortable.

“Bring Alija down. I have no choice now.”

“That’s not going to be easy.”

“I’ll need your help.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Knowledge is power, Rodja.”

Her stepson smiled thinly, which made him look disturbingly like Ruxton. “Elezaar’s Tenth Rule, if I remember his lessons correctly.”

Marla nodded. “And I intend to apply Elezaar’s rules like never before. I want information. I want to know everything Alija does, Rodja, and who she does it with. I want to know who she speaks to and who she doesn’t speak to. I want to know who she’s sleeping with. I want to know what she eats for breakfast. I want to know what undergarments she wears. I want to know everything that happens in her household right down to the colour of her bowel movements.”

Rodja nodded and then frowned a little. “That’s going to cost a lot of money.”

“I can afford it.”

“Then I’ll arrange it for you.”

“Thank you, Rodja.”

He hesitated, and then looked at her with concern. “Are you
sure
you’ll be all right, Marla?”

She paused before she replied and then nodded. “Oddly enough, yes, I think I’m going to be fine,” she said.

Rodja left her in the garden after a time, the gently falling rain like a heavy mist around her.

Marla sat by the fresh grave, her own guilt slowly giving way to anger as she pondered the motives behind Elezaar’s willing betrayal. She thought she understood, now, some of his reasons at least. And she intended to make it up to him. She would give Elezaar in death the one thing he had craved in life and she had been too preoccupied to notice. She owed him that much at least.

For years, Elezaar had urged Marla to be more overt in her dealings with the High Arrion. Marla had resisted, determined not to do anything to force the issue until Damin would safely come of age.

Her reticence frustrated the dwarf, Marla knew that, but the decision was hers to make and she had chosen to preserve the status quo.

Marla no longer had that luxury. In death, Elezaar had managed to manipulate her into doing what he hadn’t been able to make her do in life.

Well, you’ll get your wish, Elezaar
, she promised him silently.
I will bring Alija down. You’ve left
me with no other choice
.

Fortunately, even with everything Alija now knew about Marla’s plans for the future, with all she would have learned about Marla’s actions in the past, one thing she couldn’t know—because Elezaar hadn’t known it, either—was just how far Marla was willing to go to get what
she
wanted.

Alija is probably still patting herself on the back for being so clever
, Marla realised.
I wonder if
she has any idea how far I’m willing to go to make this country a safe place for my son to rule?

Or just how far
, Marla admitted silently to herself,
I’m willing to go to unburden myself of this
intolerable guilt
.

It might be lonely, knowing you were feared, but Marla consoled herself with the idea that vengeance was an all-consuming pastime. It should keep the loneliness at bay. Because it was vengeance that began to fill Marla’s thoughts, pushing away the guilt and the grief.

Alija had forced Elezaar to betray his mistress, something he would never have done willingly.

For that, as much as anything else, Marla decided, Alija Eaglespike must die. The murder of Ronan Dell and his household, her attempts on Damin’s life, stealing Nash from her, the plots Alija stirred up against the High Prince every chance she got, her plans to raise first her husband and now her son to the throne—there were plenty of reasons to bring Alija down, but Marla had always been able to convince herself that waiting until the right time was better than taking action at the wrong time.

But Alija had crossed the line when she made Elezaar betray Marla, and for that she would die—

Marla was determined about that. The dwarf was the sad casualty of a battle between two powerful women who were about to step out from behind their civilised façades to face each other down.

Alija had drawn first blood. This wasn’t a battle of wits any longer. It was war.