76: THE DEFINITION OF TALK

(Teraeth’s story)

When Teraeth returned to the silk farm a week later, he found Khaeriel waiting for him. His first reaction was irritation, because Khaeriel was waiting out in the open. Theoretically, anyone could have seen her. Then he realized his father, Doc, was waiting there as well.¹ His father rested against the railing, looking out into the thick dark of the Manol Jungle. If Teraeth hadn’t known better, he might have assumed his father wasn’t paying any attention. But he did know better, and he knew Doc watched his every move. The only thing he didn’t know was if Doc’s presence indicated Khaeriel didn’t trust him or if Doc didn’t trust her.

The evening was lovely. Silk ants pursuing their daily routines created a pleasant drone that played counterpoint to birdcalls. Something about the silk itself had a strangely fishy odor, which Teraeth only noticed at times like this, when he returned from a mission.

Khaeriel herself might as well have been a statue. She wasn’t dressed in anything regal. Just a very basic silk gown they’d been able to smuggle back into the farm using some flimsy excuse. Teraeth had to admit she made the damn thing seem like the finest court dress.

“How was your trip?” Khaeriel asked with a deceptively mild voice.

Teraeth drew up short. “The trip” had gone well indeed. There’d been a small amount of resistance from his target but nothing he hadn’t been able to handle.

None of which explained why Khaeriel was this furious.

“Everything’s fine,” Teraeth responded. “What seems to be the matter?”

Khaeriel looked to the side. “Terindel, would you mind clearing the room?”

And the scene around them changed. This was, of course, why Khaeriel had asked Doc to be there in the first place. Because if nothing else, Chainbreaker was a remarkably handy way to ensure privacy.

The scene that Doc conjured using the stone was nothing inventive. The platform stood empty, the silk houses removed. A throne room took their place. Strings of lights and floating charms filled the area with a soft glow. Flowers bloomed profusely from boxes that hadn’t been there a moment ago. And of course, there was a throne. Doc had made it look like a living thing, crafted from flowers, branches, and green leaves. Teraeth decided that it must have been a real throne, a real scene that must have once existed, because Khaeriel spared Doc one brief shocked glance before she turned to Teraeth.

“One of the messengers has informed me that Vayldeba is dead,” Khaeriel said. She didn’t bother to hide the iron in her voice. “What on this earth possessed you to think that was a good idea?”

Teraeth blinked. He suspected Khaeriel was upset with him about something, but he hadn’t thought it would be about that.

“Excuse me? You asked me to do that.”

Khaeriel cocked her head and examined him in the same way a hawk might look at a mouse. He fought the temptation to reach for his knives. “No,” she said, “I asked you to do no such thing. What I asked you to do was talk to the man, find out what was needed to turn his vote, and make that thing happen. I did not ask you to kill him.”

Teraeth laughed. “When people ask me to ‘talk’ to someone, what they mean is kill them.”

Off at the side of the platform, Doc sighed.

Teraeth spared his father the briefest glance before returning his attention back to Khaeriel. “If you had meant for the man to live, you should have sent a diplomat.”

Khaeriel rubbed her temples and seemed to be in physical pain. “I cannot believe…” She inhaled deeply and steadied herself. “Teraeth,” she began, “if you ever plan to be a good ruler, it is rather essential you learn to actually talk to people. You cannot kill everyone who disagrees with you, no matter how tempting the idea might be.”

Teraeth managed, barely, not to let out an exasperated sigh himself. “With all respect, Your Majesty, I have no desire or intention to rule anything, least of all the vané people.”

Khaeriel just stared at him, as though he had said something in a language she didn’t understand. “What was that?”

Teraeth ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “I don’t know how to make it clearer. I don’t want the throne. I have no desire to rule. And frankly, since doing so requires one or both of you to die, I shouldn’t think you’d want me to either.”

Silence filled the imaginary antechamber.

Khaeriel drummed her fingers against the throne’s branches. She gave Doc a look of stunned amazement. Finally, she shook her head. “Fine. I suppose that is a matter to discuss at a later date. For now, let us confine our discussion to the fate of Vayldeba. Because I want you to understand what you did and why it is a problem.”

“He was going to vote against you, wasn’t he?”

“That was a distinct possibility. It was not a certainty. I had hoped we might be able to sway his opinion. Now he has no opinion. And worse, I know nothing about the opinions, goals, or ambitions of his replacement. Will the new representative be better? Will they be significantly worse? We have no way to know and not enough time to find out.”

Teraeth felt the barest trickle of something like to dread wrap its way around his lower intestine and squeeze. The part of him that always had and always would hate failure clamored for attention.

“I see,” Teraeth said.

“Because of his death, our job is made more difficult. Please do me the honor of not assuming I speak in innuendo or metaphor. When I give you an order, I am giving you an order. I am not afraid of telling you to kill someone if that is what I want you to do.” Khaeriel inhaled deeply and stared off into the distance for a moment. “Understand, Teraeth. This failure is mine. I should have made certain you understood me. I should not have assumed you did.”

Teraeth swallowed. “Thank you, Your Majesty. That is very gracious. However, I believe we both know that the fault is mine.”

Her gaze was molten gold, scalding. “Then it will not happen again.”

“No, Your Majesty.”

Khaeriel stood up from the throne and looked in Doc’s direction. “Would you be so kind as to make me a door?”

Doc waved a hand, a thoroughly unnecessary gesture, and the door appeared in midair. Without waiting on either of the other two, Khaeriel left. The door closed before Teraeth could step through.

Teraeth turned to his father.

Doc lowered his foot from where it had been resting against the railing. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought we might talk.”

“Do we have anything to say to each other?” Teraeth resisted the urge to fidget, or pace, or start sharpening weapons. He wasn’t at all comfortable being in the same space with this man. But he was damned if he was going to let it show.

Doc studied his son. “When did she tell you I was your father? Before or after you remembered being Kandor?”

Teraeth looked upward toward the height of the tree canopy and sighed. “Is that really what we should be focusing on right now?”

“Before? Or after?”

Teraeth stared at the other man. “I—” Teraeth spun on his heels. He wondered if it would work if he ran. Would Terindel stop him? Would he go right over the edge of one of these balconies? Plummeting to his death was starting to sound quite appealing.

Teraeth turned back around. “We don’t have to talk like this. Take down the illusion and we’ll go have a drink or something.”

Instead, the room vanished around them. A sea of blank white stared at Teraeth in every direction. Doc and he both stood in endless glowing void.

“That’s not better, you know. Stop this.”

Doc ignored him. “Before or after? Simple question. Did you grow up thinking you’re the son of Terindel the Black, the traitor who slew the entire Kirpis Star Court, nearly damned the vané through his hubris, or did you grow up knowing you’d been reincarnated as the son of your mortal enemy, the man you forced to flee his homeland along with his people?”

Teraeth’s throat went dry. His father waited for an answer. “It was that first one,” Teraeth finally said. “I didn’t start remembering my past life until I was a teenager.”

Slowly, the color started to come back into the world. Form and texture began to leak back in around them.

“Of all the reasons I occasionally curse your mother’s name,” Doc said, “I think the worst is that she gave me a son as the punch line to a joke.”

Teraeth flinched.

He hadn’t expected that to hurt as much as it did, but the words were numb and cold and very sharp. He couldn’t say his father was wrong, could he? Not when the irony twisted so tight around their screwed-up, multilayered relationship, any chance they might have had to mean something to each other had long since been choked to death. Perfectly garroted. Assassinated.

Teraeth’s hands slowly clenched into fists.

“I’m not Kandor,” he finally said.

“Bullshit.”

“No, it’s not. You think he didn’t die neck-deep in regret? Do you think he died proud of himself, thinking he had lived a life worth living?”

“You were the greatest emperor Quur’s ever known.”

“And if that’s not an indictment of Quur, I don’t what is. Kandor was a miserable bastard who should have been a potter. And when I remembered, when I finally remembered who I’d been—” Teraeth scowled and looked away. “I never tried to relearn his magic, you know. I could’ve. I remember the spells, but I’ve never practiced a single one. I learned new spells. My own spells. My own skills. I don’t want to be the person that people bow down before. Who only sees people as casualty numbers in a report. As something to be conquered or won.”

“So you’ve gone from being a wizard to being an assassin. I don’t see much improvement,” Doc said.

It was too close to what Janel had said. And Teraeth could not, would not, let it stand. “I kill evil men,” Teraeth said. “I kill people who deserve their fate.”

“No,” Doc said, “you kill people your mother has told you to kill. And because you don’t trust yourself to know the difference, you believe Khaemezra when she tells you they deserved it. So let me ask you this: Who gave Khaemezra the right to decide who lives and who dies?”

Teraeth blinked. “Are you serious? Who gave her the right? She’s the Goddess of Death!”

“No!” Doc said. “No, she’s not. She is not a goddess. None of the Eight are gods. She is an all-too-fallible woman who has been tied to a cosmic force. Yes, that force is death, but nobody told her she was responsible for judging the dead or making sure anyone stays that way. Nobody told her she had to police death. Nobody demanded she should only Return the special chosen favorites she thinks are worthy. Nobody—nobody—gave her any kind of moral responsibility for punishing the wicked as defined by Khaemezra. She’s taken that on all by herself.”

Teraeth felt something twist inside him, an emotion he couldn’t name tugging at his chest. “She’s protecting us,” he finally said.

“That’s what she says,” Doc said, “but I want you, my son, to think about this: you may have tried to distance yourself from what you were as Kandor, but you’re still taking orders from someone who sees people as numbers in a report. If Thaena and Kandor didn’t get along, it’s only because they were too much alike.”

“If you hate her so much, why did you sleep with her?”

“Because Elana died in childbirth.”

Teraeth could only stare at his father, mouth open in shock.

“What?”

Doc shook his head and threw up a hand. “Elana and I met on the edge of the Manol Jungle. She was coming back from Kharas Gulgoth, from the middle of the Korthaen Blight. I was trying to escape … everyone. As far as I knew, my daughter was dead and my wife might as well have been. And here was this brave, beautiful girl, pregnant with the child of the man I hated, but that was hardly her fault, was it? As much as I loathed Kandor, as much as I’d wished my sword could have been the one to kill him, I couldn’t take it out on her. I guess I’d finally reached my limit.”

“Weren’t there … I don’t understand. Weren’t there—” Teraeth stumbled over his own words. He knew perfectly well there wouldn’t have been any healers in Khorvesh. He’d conscripted them all. There might’ve been a few witches who escaped Kandor’s attention, but every legal healer in the region was dead on the floor of the Manol Jungle by that point.

“I was in a brand-new body,” Terindel continued. “I couldn’t cast any spells—and there were complications during the birth. She delivered a healthy son and then bled out right in front of me. I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t stand to be witness to one more tragedy, one more life cut short in the story where everyone else I cared about had already died. So … so I prayed. I prayed to Thaena and offered my life for Elana’s. I mean, why not? What was my life worth by then?”

“You didn’t even know her,” Teraeth said. “She was just a … human. Nobody to you.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Absolutely nobody. What was the life of a woman who’d at best live another sixty years compared to my immortal life span.” Doc started laughing. “But it was too much. Just … too much. Thaena accepted my offer. She just didn’t take payment in the way I expected.”

Teraeth grimaced. Somehow that was even worse than he’d imagined when he’d grown up assuming he was conceived through necromancy.

“After that, we were on-again, off-again for a few centuries.” His smile was self-deprecating and cruel. “I don’t think she ever forgave me for not falling in love with her. Boy, did she ever teach me.” He gestured toward Teraeth.

“Right.” Teraeth found himself grinding his teeth and forced himself to relax. “Thank you,” he finally said.

“For what?”

“For Elana. Thank you.” Teraeth shut his eyes, fighting the dull ache of it all. “I don’t think Janel remembers that part.”

Teraeth immediately opened his eyes again as he realized his mistake. “I meant to say—”

Doc raised a hand. “Valathea told me. I’m not getting anywhere near Janel or that situation for so many reasons, I could open up my own store and sell wisdom.”²

Teraeth hesitated. “Then thank you for that as well.”

“It’s bad enough I might one day have to explain to Qoran that my son is getting involved with his daughter.”

“I don’t think they’re on speaking terms.” Teraeth almost asked Doc if Khaeriel had approached him about that arranged marriage, but he thought better of it. Doc might agree with her about it being a good idea. No matter how much Teraeth wanted it, he didn’t want it like that.

“Neither are we.”

They both stood there, letting the silence lap around them.

“If it’s any consolation,” Doc said, “I’d have made the same mistake.”

Teraeth wasn’t sure exactly which mistake Doc was referring to. A lot of possibilities had been left on the table. “Oh?”

“I’d have assumed Khaeriel wanted me to kill Vayldeba too.” His father shrugged amiably. “And although far be it from me to contradict my niece, I happen to think there’s at least one person we’d be much better off just getting out of the way right now before we have to face him in parliament.”

Teraeth found himself starting to smile. “Is that so? And who might that be?”

“Oh, don’t be coy. Don’t tell me your mother hasn’t already given you the assignment.”

“Just to be perfectly clear, though—”

“Kelanis,” Doc said. “You should assassinate the king.”