14. THE EDGE OF A KNIFE

Kalindra’s story

The Soaring Halls, the Upper Circle of the Capital City of Quur

One hour after the attack on Jarith Milligreest

Kalindra admitted to being a little taken aback when she discovered that she couldn’t just walk into Tyentso’s room, in spite of the fact that she was in theory staying in the woman’s own living quarters. That space was divided up in such a way that there was a further subdivision where the empress apparently slept, and that was guarded by a small man in Devoran robes whom Kalindra unfortunately recognized.

Caerowan. A Voice of the Council. And also a man obsessed with the damn prophecies.

Considering that she now knew that some of those prophecies weren’t exactly complimentary of Kalindra, she also understood why Caerowan had always treated her so coldly. There were quatrains out there that made Kalindra sound like the Queen of Evil. Devoran priests had literally tried to murder her over them.

Which made her request less than ideal.

“Is Tyentso in? I’ll just be a second—” Kalindra hoped that rolling over any objection might be the smart way to play this.

No luck.

Caerowan managed to be in front of her with a speed even she found impressive.

“She’s not in the Capital at the moment,” Caerowan said, smiling. It was not a sincere smile. That thing his lips were doing didn’t even live on the same continent as a sincere smile. It was flat and sharp and used entirely to underline the unspoken “you bitch” at the end of his statement.

“She is,” Kalindra said. “I saw her this morning. I know she’s back. It’s important.”

He bowed his head to the side. “Perhaps you’d like to make an appointment?” He was infuriatingly calm.

Kalindra inhaled. “Listen to me, you sanctimonious piece of shit. I need to talk to her right now.”

Caerowan raised an eyebrow. “My earliest open appointment is next week.”

“Since when are you her secretary? You’re a Voice of the Council!”

“We’re short-staffed everywhere,” Caerowan replied placidly. The smile tightened, though, overlaying a barely-concealed glare that vacillated between threat and insult.

“Gods-damn it! I’m not—”

“Caerowan, it’s fine,” Tyentso said. “I asked her to come around. I have a few minutes before I leave.”

A flash of sour irritation moved over Caerowan’s face, barely there before it was hidden behind that peaceful expression and calm voice. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

Gods. Kalindra fought back the temptation to stick her tongue out at the odious man when she passed him.

As Kalindra stepped inside the woman’s private (more private?) rooms, she couldn’t help but glance around, if only because the rooms were so different from the rest of the palace. A lot more flowers, for one thing.

“Was this the harem?” Kalindra asked before she could stop herself.

“No, but it was the only room Kandor shared with his wife, Elana, I’m told.” Tyentso gave Kalindra a dry look. “Who happen to be Teraeth and Janel in this life, so don’t let Teraeth ever try to tell you he’s not a romantic fool.”

Kalindra ignored the obvious attempt to remind her that they were supposed to be on the same side, knew all the same people, had both been angels of the Goddess of Death. “Can anyone hear us? No servants hiding in secret niches? I know how palaces are.”

Tyentso’s mouth flattened. “I suppose I owe you an explanation.”

The Black Brotherhood assassin scowled as she met the empress’s gaze. “I don’t know. Do you?”

Someone had left out several small cups of coffee, which either had just been made by ghosts or someone had kept magically warm. Tyentso claimed one. Then she frowned. “This isn’t about me upsetting your son,” she mused. “You fell in love with Jarith? Really?”

Kalindra felt a flush of heat along her neck, rising up over her cheeks. But like hell she was going to let this woman be the one who shamed her. “Fuck off,” Kalindra snapped. “I don’t need your judgment. But you almost made a serious damn mistake back there, and you need to know—”

Tyentso sighed and poured herself a drink. “Jarith’s a demon, but not a bad demon. Yes, I’ve been told.”

Kalindra frowned. “Who told you?”

“Kihrin,” Tyentso said, looking at Kalindra over the rim of her cup as she drank. “He explained it.”

Any embarrassment Kalindra felt very quickly transformed into anger. “If you knew, then why did you attack him? Do you have any idea—?”

Tyentso made a cutting motion with her hand. An invisible hand squeezed Kalindra’s throat and then released, leaving her coughing.

Kalindra contemplated what her chances would be if she just knifed the woman. Unfortunately, not good.

Tyentso seemed to know it too. She leaned toward Kalindra, scowling. “I’m going to have to do a lot of things I won’t enjoy before this whole fucking mess is over.” Absolutely nothing about her expression was apologetic. “But this isn’t my fault, Kalindra. Why the hell did you bring Jarith with you? You don’t think there aren’t people here smart enough to put the clues together and come up with the idea that Jarith must not be … Jarith? A mimic or a demon or something? And when someone comes to me with their suspicions—and someone did—I have to act on it or it seems suspicious. And precisely no one who understands what the Crown and Scepter lets me do would just shrug and ignore it if I blindly overlooked a fucking demon roaming the imperial halls!”

Kalindra floundered for how to respond to that. So she didn’t. Instead, she said, “You missed on purpose.”

“Of course, I fucking missed on purpose!” Tyentso snapped. “I’m a bitch, not a fool.”

Kalindra blinked at her and said, “My mistake.”

“You don’t have to sound so damned shocked about it.” The new Empress of Quur flopped herself down on a heavily embroidered and even more heavily bejeweled chair and said, “You need to leave.”

“You invited me here—” Kalindra started to say.

“Not leave my parlor,” Tyentso said. “Leave the damn palace, the damn city. You and the rest of the Milligreests need to leave the Capital. It’s not safe for you here. Don’t tell me you can’t feel it.” She sighed and waved a hand. “Whatever the fuck is in the air?”

Kalindra paused. Did she feel something? No. Not as such. But that meant nothing. “Jarith said there was something wrong.”

Tyentso nodded emphatically. “Jarith’s right. You saw how Qoran behaved back there.”

“You didn’t have to order him to kneel.”

“He didn’t have to do it! But whatever is happening started about a week ago, and it’s getting worse. Everyone’s short-tempered, everyone’s violent. Everyone hangs on my every damn word, no matter what I tell them to do. And you have a child now, Kalindra. You can’t stay here.”

Kalindra was getting tired of people demanding she uproot herself and retreat to some other location for her own “safety.” After all, Devors had turned out to be so safe, hadn’t it?

“You have no idea why this is happening?” Kalindra asked. “If we can find the cause, maybe we can stop it.”

Tyentso nibbled on the edge of a nail. “Not a clue.”

Kalindra took the opportunity to really look at the other woman. Her appearance had changed a great deal even in the six months Kalindra had spent with her on Ynisthana. Now she was a strong-featured woman with lavender-gray cloudcurl hair and midnight-black eyes. And even though she looked considerably younger than the “hag” Tyentso had been playing at when they first met, her eyes were so much older. She was tired and jumpy, a person it would be unsafe to surprise.

Tyentso raised her head. “The other day, I lost my temper at one of my generals and suggested he kill himself. Which he promptly did.”

Kalindra fought back a violent shudder. “You’re joking.”

“I wish,” the empress agreed with a tired, shaky laugh. “Right in front of me. He didn’t fucking hesitate. That asshole hated my guts, Kalindra. He’d have sooner stuck that sword in me than take his own life just because I suggested it. But when I’m not ordering them around? Well. People are fighting each other at the drop of a glass. Lashing out, accusing each other, losing their tempers—often to the point of violence. Those riots? As far as I’ve been able to tell, those riots are happening because every citizen of the Lower Circle has taken it upon themselves to dispense a little street justice against those ‘traitors’ in the Royal Houses. I’ve actually had to send out a list of ‘good’ houses versus ‘bad’ to keep them from killing random people in the street.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Kalindra said.

Tyentso barked out a laugh. “You don’t say.”

The woman’s insistence that Kalindra leave was starting to sound like wisdom. Certainly, Kalindra had no desire to see Qoran Milligreest go from his normal short-tempered self to someone with magically enhanced anger. Or Jira. Or Eledore. Hell, there wasn’t a single member of that family that didn’t have a terrible temper if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, there was a problem. “And go where, Ty? If the morgage are invading Khorvesh and there’s a civil war in Marakor…”

Tyentso rolled her eyes, exasperated. “There are more dominions in the empire than Khorvesh and Marakor. Maybe the Academy in Kirpis. If you aren’t safe surrounded by a thousand wizards, I don’t know where you would be.”

Kalindra narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you hate the Academy?”

Tyentso nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, with all my black, twisted little heart. But I don’t…” She sighed. “Qoran might be targeted because of me. And through him, you. I’m sure we would both feel a lot better if you knew your family was safe.”

“Targeted because of you?” Kalindra blinked as she realized what that had to mean. Oh hell, Tyentso was one of Qoran’s trysts? She choked back a laugh. “Tyentso! You never said that you and Qoran used to be an item.”

“Because we weren’t,” Tyentso said. “We weren’t anything at all.”

Kalindra studied the older woman. Nothing the woman had said made a relationship impossible, just bitter and full of bad memories. Kalindra remembered Jarith once telling her that people were always trying to blackmail his parents over their affairs. Enemies were always shocked to discover what they assumed to be dreadful marital secrets were anything but. That Qoran and Jira were never going to leave each other, no matter who they took as lovers on the side.

“Right,” Kalindra agreed.

Tyentso took Kalindra’s dry answer as skepticism of the entire conversation. “I understand how you feel, Kalindra, but please just take my advice and go. Whatever is causing this takes a little while to ramp up, but I haven’t seen anyone who’s immune.”

“You seem to be immune,” Kalindra pointed out. “Although you look like shit.”

“Fuck you too. Anyway, I’m the eye of the hurricane, the Empress of Quur. I am the empire.” She tossed out the words like ingredients on a shopping list or a nursery rhyme recitation. Not like something believed but something she’d heard so many people around her say that it had become an insincere mantra. “Everyone’s sudden bout of patriotism is directed to my benefit.”

Which was a problem. Certainly, Kalindra didn’t want to keep her family around it. At the same time … “You’re dealing with an invasion and a civil war. You’re seriously complaining because everyone’s following your orders without question?”

“The assholes back at the Academy always had a saying: never drink a potion you didn’t brew yourself. Now in their case, it was because the seniors had an ongoing contest to see who could trick the most freshmen into accidentally drinking magical laxatives, but the point stands.1 Yes, it’s convenient. But I can’t control it, and I don’t know why it’s happening, so I can’t trust it.”

“Yeah, fine. Makes sense.” It did. Kalindra hated it. Now she had to both find someplace to take the family (yes, perhaps the Academy as Tyentso had suggested) and also convince the rest of the Milligreests to come with her. She didn’t expect that to be an easy sell.

Tyentso waved a hand in dismissal. “Now would you kindly fuck off? I have two wars to win.”

Kalindra was on her way to the door when a thought struck her. She turned back to Tyentso. “Qoran won’t leave with me, you know. He’s going to insist on staying by your side.”

The other woman sighed. “I know. He was always an asshole when it came to duty. But at least you can get everyone else out. And, Kalindra?”

“Yes?”

Tyentso smiled, a little apologetic, a little wan. It was a real smile, if ill-nourished and sad. “Nice to see you again.”

Kalindra nodded. “You too.”