CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Crisis
Aloran felt sympathy for his Lady and young Master Tagaret, untrained as they were in the art of waiting. News from the Round of Four was late, and they’d progressed from silence to tense talk and back again for at least an hour. Tamelera was impatiently twisting a lock of hair she’d loosened from her jeweled pins. Understandable—but his own feeling was more like fear. How might the voting results influence the Master’s mood? Would the bedroom door burst open on forced celebration, or on rage?
There was a quiet knock.
Tamelera swished to her feet.
That couldn’t be the Master, though; the Master never knocked. Before Aloran could move to answer, the door opened on Serjer. A message? But look behind him: Keeper Premel was here—and his partner Dorya, too?
Aloran caught his breath. There was only one reason the entire Household might leave the Maze empty. He returned to his station, with a horror in his stomach that was almost hope.
Serjer bowed. “Mistress, forgive me for interrupting you with this news . . .”
“What is it, Serjer?” Tamelera asked.
“Master Garr has had a heart attack and been rushed to the medical center.”
Tamelera’s entire body jerked. But she made no sound, nor did she sway into Aloran’s hands when he raised them to support her.
“Mercy!” young Master Tagaret cried, leaping to his feet. “Oh, Mother . . .”
“We must go to him, of course,” said Tamelera. Her voice was cold and distant. “Where is Nekantor now?”
“With Master Garr, Mistress.”
Lady Tamelera nodded. “Aloran, my jacket, please.”
She’d never asked for a jacket before. He picked one to match her dark blue dress. As he slid it over her bare arms and shoulders, Aloran could feel her bracing herself, as if he were girding her in armor. He, too, must become part of that armor: the worst had come, yet Garr was still alive.
They crossed the Eminence’s gardens, cutting diagonally toward the medical center building, which stood across from the Grobal School. The windows of the ballroom floated dimly away on their right, and they followed a single bright globe in Heile’s green, which hung above the medical center door.
A Kartunnen woman with a matching green lip let them in.
“Tamelera and Tagaret of the First Family, to see Garr,” Tamelera said.
“Yes, Lady.” The Kartunnen beckoned them forward.
An Imbati recordkeeper, wearing the bureaucrat’s pierced oval Mark, sat tucked behind the entry door—but he was the only predictable thing in a facility more advanced even than the Academy’s. The triage chairs on either side of their path were hinged and jointed so a noble arrival could be attended to quickly, shifted to lying position at need, and wheeled inward for treatment. The nurses, who stood ready by the walls, were each equipped with a diagnostic unit on a wheeled cart. Aloran glimpsed tubes, wires, even glowing image-screens—specialized classical technology that he would have longed to examine had circumstances been different. They passed beneath a pale gray curtain into a long hall, and approached a treatment room on the right.
“Shall I enter first, Lady?” Aloran murmured.
Tamelera raised her head. “Thank you, Aloran, no.” She allowed young Master Tagaret to take her arm, and they walked in together.
Aloran gave a nod to the woman who had accompanied them. “Thank you, Kartunnen.”
“May your honorable service earn its just reward, sir.”
Aloran closed the door. The entire room throbbed softly with the sound of the Master’s heartbeat, projected by the heart monitor. Before he’d even released the handle, Aloran found the flaw: an extra beat at the tail of the pattern.
He turned, and found Garr’s Sorn standing up from a steel side table, with a look of personal menace that jabbed him straight in the chest. Sorn now had plenty to punish him for—but he wouldn’t attack here. Aloran moved to his Lady’s shoulder as she approached the bed.
“Garr?” Tamelera said.
The Master lay in a voluminous patient’s gown of green silk that mostly hid medical indignities like the heart monitor’s electrodes, the blood pressure cuff, and an intravenous insertion site in his left arm. It didn’t hide the oxygen tube under his nose.
“He can’t hear you,” said young Master Nekantor’s voice from the corner behind Arissen Karyas.
Tagaret gently touched his father’s hand. “He’s cold.”
Grobal Garr roused at the touch: the stuttering heartbeat gained speed, and he opened his eyes. He stared up at them.
A muscle flexed in the Lady’s jaw. “Gnash you, Garr,” she said. “I told you this would happen.”
The Master definitely heard her now. His eyes glittered. He heaved a breath, but didn’t respond to her. Instead he said, “Nekantor.”
Young Master Nekantor startled out of the corner. He walked to his father’s head, clasping both hands tight behind his back. “I need all the votes, Father,” he said. “All of them. How can I get them all?”
“Nekantor,” Lady Tamelera scolded. “That’s hardly an appropriate topic right now.”
Young Master Nekantor glared at her. Tagaret stared at his brother in exasperation.
The Master took another breath. “Sorn.”
That couldn’t be good. Aloran shifted onto his toes as the senior servant moved silently to Garr’s other side.
“Nekantor,” the Master wheezed. “You must . . . write an inquiry. For Sorn.”
Young Master Nekantor stared down, so tense he quivered.
“Keep it with you. If I die . . .” He paused for breath. “If I die—take him.”
Take Sorn? Aloran held his breath. As a candidate, Nekantor was eligible for service. Naturally, the man who possessed a weapon as deadly as Sorn would wish to bequeath him to his son. But to this son?
“But you can’t die,” Nekantor said. “You won’t. The doctors will cure you, and you’ll vote in the final Selection. I need every vote.”
“Vote—Sorn will bring. If.” Grobal Garr coughed weakly. “Write inquiry. Tonight.”
“Yes, Father.”
Imagine ruthlessness and pathology working together. One letter handed across this hospital bed—that was all it would take.
A knock startled him back to breathing. The door to the room opened, and Grobal Fedron walked in with his Chenna behind his shoulder.
“Lady,” Grobal Fedron said. “Tagaret, Nekantor—I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you, Cousin,” said Tamelera.
“What a terrible shock this has been. How is he doing?”
Aloran felt in his bones the effort it took for his Lady to maintain her air of graciousness. She gave a wan smile. “I couldn’t say. He has been awake and speaking.” Though he wasn’t now—after the effort of his commands, Grobal Garr had closed his eyes again.
Grobal Fedron offered his hand to Tamelera, and when she clasped it, he leaned nearer to pat her shoulder comfortingly. In the instant their convergence blocked his view of Sorn, who had returned to his seat, Aloran found Chenna at his ear with a sly whisper.
“Sorn’s awfully nervous, standing on the cliff.”
What? Aloran twitched in surprise. He’d noticed only Sorn’s anger—but anger could hide fear, and Chenna knew Sorn better than anyone. He turned his head slightly toward her.
Grobal Fedron moved away before he could ask any questions, calling out the door to the doctor for an update on the patient’s prognosis. The doctor answered Grobal Fedron’s inquiries carefully but optimistically, suggesting the Master might recover enough to attend the final Selection events, perhaps in a skimchair with medical attendants, so he need not be far from his son at such a critical time.
Wait.
Aloran’s skin prickled. Not far from Nekantor at a critical time?
That was the cliff Chenna meant. Sorn was in terrible danger if Garr died without Nekantor present. He would lose the cloak of privilege, and could be questioned freely by nobles or by the police. More importantly, until the moment he received a new inquiry, his past acts would become his own—punishable by the Imbati.
That was what Master Ziara wanted. Not information, but justice.
During the hospital visit, Tamelera had wound herself into such a state of tension that she hardly ate or spoke at dinner. It wasn’t until she’d said goodnight, and Aloran had escorted her to her room, that the other aspect of this change truly struck him. With the Master gone, his Lady would be safe.
Oh, Sirin and Eyn, she would be safe!
To his shock, he discovered tears in his eyes. He covered them by crossing to the bed, closing the curtains at its foot and on the Master’s side so his Lady couldn’t be reminded of dangers past.
“Aloran,” Tamelera said. “Will you brush my hair?”
“Yes, Lady.”
She sat in the lounge chair, facing toward the door of his own room. One by one, he took out her jeweled pins and let her hair fall down. He tried to brush peace and reassurance into her hair with every motion. When, after some time, he lifted her hair to brush from beneath at the back of her neck, she gave a sigh and her shoulders finally fell. Thank Sirin his care had allowed her to share his sense of safety—but too soon, some new trouble came to her mind, because she sat up.
“Aloran, I—” She made as if to look at him, but didn’t. “I’ll be in the bathroom.”
“Do you wish to bathe, Lady?”
“No—at least, not now.”
While she busied herself alone with the running water, Aloran laid out her white silk nightgown on the bed. He took a place beside the bathroom door and waited. At last, she emerged.
“May I take your jacket, Lady?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.”
When he had replaced the jacket in the wardrobe, he returned and found her standing beside her nightgown. Moving to her back, he lightly touched the top button of her blue dress, between her shoulder blades. Lady Tamelera nodded, and he began unfastening the long line of buttons.
While he worked, a strange feeling came over him. Without the Master and his shadow, the room seemed to have grown larger, the air more spacious. Breathing felt easier, each breath deeper and more sweet. He closed his eyes and savored it, continuing the buttons by feel until the last one fell undone. Then he straightened, found the straps of his Lady’s dress and slid his fingers beneath them to pull it off her shoulders.
Tamelera shivered.
Aloran froze.
Alarm raced down every nerve. She wasn’t supposed to do that. She was leaning into his touch—even her breath had changed. And what of his own? Hadn’t it just slipped out of his control without him noticing?
Distance yourself. Your mistress’ flesh is the province you guard, whose health and convenience you keep in charge. Distance yourself.
Mechanically, he pulled the dress down; blue silk deflated against the rug, and her feet stepped out of it. Aloran swept it over his arm and walked away. Here was the wardrobe door, made of cold smoked glass. Here was a metal hanger padded with silk. He aligned her dress straps on it. Pushed aside magnificent gowns that he had dressed her in day after day. Hung the dress. It was all service.
Love where you serve—nothing else will matter.
Yes, the Artist was right. It was all service. He must have tickled her accidentally; next time he would do better.
Lady Tamelera wasn’t looking at him. She stood perfectly still in her underclothes, as if watching the bedpost. While he removed her brassiere, he focused on making precise movements with his hands. He prepared her nightgown and raised it over her head, but if she sought his eyes, he lowered them beneath her notice; if she was graceful in stretching her arms into the gown, it was only the beauty to be expected of nobility. The silk fell into place on its own, whispering over her hips and down to her knees.
“Aloran,” she said softly.
The tone of her voice softened his stomach and sharpened his fear.
This was all service. He began a breath pattern. “Lady, may I be excused?”
“Why?”
He scrambled for a reason, then found one: Garr’s Sorn. “I have an errand, if you will forgive me, Lady.”
She turned around and looked at him. Aloran kept his gaze lowered, on her skeptical mouth.
“I apologize,” he said. “It’s an errand I’ve been unable to complete because of my duty to your safety, but I assure you it is of utmost importance.” Indeed, if there was one thing he must do tonight, without fail, it was to take his information to those who could use it—before young Master Nekantor could make Sorn untouchable.
“What is this errand?” Tamelera asked.
The question stung. He tried to be polite. “I don’t know.”
Tamelera winced and looked away. “You are excused.”
Aloran bowed and gratefully escaped to his room. Here it was dark except for the stray illumination of the city coming in the window. He flicked on his service speaker; in the room he’d left, his Lady remained silent. Thank Heile he had somewhere to go, because he was too agitated to sit down. He left through the Maze, found an exit that led into the rock gardens and ran all the way to the Academy.
How long it had been. The gate wardens passed him through, and he entered the main building through its large front doors, crossing the deserted foyer and turning left into the hall of the Masters’ offices. Let Mai the Right grant that Master Ziara would be working late tonight. A line of light around her door gave him hope. He knocked.
Master Ziara opened the door. Her lily crest Mark wrinkled between her brows. “Good evening, Aloran . . .”
He bowed. “My apologies for disturbing you, sir. I bring information.”
“Then by all means, come in.” She closed the door behind him.
Aloran took a deep breath. “Garr’s Sorn is guilty,” he said. “I saw—”
Master Ziara quickly raised a hand. “Aloran, pardon. You must only speak this once, and not here. I’ll call the Headmaster.”
He nodded.
Master Ziara entered a code into the intercom unit on her desk. A moment later, a solemn, restful voice answered, “Moruvia.”
“Ziara, and Tamelera’s Aloran,” Master Ziara replied. “Urgent exchange of information, Headmaster.”
The Headmaster’s restful tone did not change. “Four minutes, please. I’ll meet you in my office.”
“Yes, sir.”
After cutting the connection, Master Ziara took a moment to look Aloran up and down; he kept still, hoping he didn’t look as un-Imbati as he felt. “I confess, Aloran,” she said. “I didn’t believe I would see you pursue this matter. Yet I’m glad, very glad, to see you here.”
“My Mistress would wish me to pursue it,” he replied. “I’m glad to see you, too.”
They walked down the hall together. Master Ziara matched step with him, her strides natural, long and silent. So different from walking with his Lady. Had the unpredictable currents of the nobility dragged him so far from what he knew? The manservant’s vocation was not easy: to brave immersion in the swirling water for the sake of those unable to escape it.
Headmaster Moruvia received them in his office off the main foyer. His flawless calm lent him a stature far beyond his small size, and his faded lily crest tattoo, framed with white hair, spoke of a lifetime of service. He had brought another man with him: a man marked with the diamond-within-diamond of the Courts, gray-haired and impressively muscled.
“You’ll forgive me,” said the Headmaster in his restful voice. “This information is the province of Officer Warden Xim as much as it is mine.”
Catching Master Ziara’s prompting glance, Aloran bowed. “Yes, Headmaster. I have come to bear witness that Garr’s Sorn of the Household of the First Family is guilty of the murder of Grobal Dest of the Eleventh Family, and the attempted murder of Grobal Gowan of the Ninth Family.”
The Headmaster glanced toward Master Ziara but said nothing.
“Aloran, sir.” That was the Officer Warden—he had a deceptively gentle voice. “We have long suspected Garr’s Sorn of breaching his vocation. Please elaborate upon your witness.”
Aloran raised both hands before his chest, one palm facing his listeners, the other turned upward in invocation of Mai the Right. “Sir. I entered Sorn’s room on an errand, and discovered the bolt of a Venorai crossbow there. This bolt was identical to the one photographed in Grobal Garr’s documentation from the Grobal Dest assassination. Furthermore, at the Round of Eight, Garr’s Sorn was absent from his Master’s side at the same moment that I observed a Venorai crossbow upon the Academy roof, aimed at the candidates. I’m sure you are aware of my actions in the matter of Grobal Gowan of the Ninth Family—and of the current health of Grobal Garr.”
“Yes, thank you,” said the Officer Warden. “Your information is timely. Headmaster, thank you for contacting me.”
The Headmaster inclined his head. “Aloran, Ziara, you have our gratitude. We request your silence as to the matter of this meeting, which has not occurred.”
Aloran bowed low. “My heart is as deep as the heavens,” he said. Master Ziara delivered the oath alongside him, with a hint of pride. “No word uttered in confidence will escape it.”
Afterward, Aloran hesitated inside the iron gates. Here, Xim’s wardens protected Imbati from all but their own kind. The sense of peace and order tempted him to return to the dormitory, to try to find his bunkmate Endredan, or Kiit.
No.
This was no longer his place. Instead, he must take something of this place with him: a resolution not to lose sight of his own nature. With that thought, the silence of the night became an embrace of black silk, and he could walk out; when he reached the Maze of the First Family’s suite, it felt like home. He must ask his Lady to release him to his own room tonight. And he’d been neglecting his relations with the rest of the Household—no more.
It was too late for Household dinner, but his empty stomach grumbled. Aloran walked into the kitchen, where Keeper Premel was preparing something, swiftly plucking ingredients from the cabinets. At the sight of him, Premel stopped working.
“Aloran, sir! A rescuer you are, returning now.”
“Rescuer?”
Premel raised his eyebrows. “You must to the Mistress, sir, she’s in a state. I haven’t seen such since . . .”
Garr.
Aloran was out the door and halfway down the Maze hall before he knew it. Now he could hear Tamelera shrieking—the awful sound echoed around his bedroom door and struck deep into his chest. He leapt for the door with the crescent-moon handle, half expecting to find her cornered, Garr miraculously healed and lumbering toward her, Sorn watching with perverted pleasure . . .
The corner was empty. But the bed-curtains had been torn down, a pillow flung against the far wall, Garr’s watch tray broken and the watches scattered across the floor—
“Gnash you, Aloran! Where in Varin’s name have you been?”
He turned around.
Tamelera seized the ceramic rabbit from the windowsill and hurled it at his head.
Aloran flung up his hands as the rabbit hit. Hands stinging, he set it gently on the writing table. Then he fell to his knees and lowered his head to the floor.
“Lady, please forgive me.”
“I called you.” She breathed hard, half-sobbing. “I called you, and you weren’t there . . .”
She’d known where he was. She hadn’t specified a time for his return. She was too smart not to realize that; clearly it didn’t matter. “I was remiss,” he said. “I admit my fault.”
“You can’t do that! What if—oh, gods—Aloran, what if he lives?”
“I will not fail you, Lady. I apologize for my absence. I thank Heile and Eyn for your safety.”
For several ragged breaths, she didn’t respond. “I’m evil,” she moaned softly. “I want him to die. I’m—I’m inhuman.”
Behind his closed eyes flashed a vision of bandaging her: handling smooth pale skin marred with bruises. His throat ached.
“Aloran, won’t you speak to me?”
Nothing he could say was safe. He took a deep breath. “You are human, Lady.” So human . . .
“I’m cruel—as cruel as Plis the Warrior.”
“Lady.” He spoke toward the carpet. “When we saw the Master tonight, he was at your mercy, yet you took no inhuman action against him.”
“You are at my service, and I tried to hit you with a rabbit.”
“You would have done the same had I been the Master himself.”
She was silent.
He searched for her with his ears, but didn’t dare move. Close by, the carpet shifted, and her voice sighed above him.
“Aloran—I need to tell you . . . I haven’t been very noble tonight.”
He risked a glance to one side. Caught a glimpse of white.
Lady, sometimes we can lose sight of our nature. But he dared not say so; the private thought of a manservant was not the province of his mistress.
“I’m sorry,” said Tamelera. “Please come up.”
Aloran straightened, just onto his knees. That was her nightgown he’d seen; she was sitting on the floor beside him. On the floor? She didn’t belong at his level, and he almost put his head down again.
“When you were gone, I got—impatient,” she said suddenly. “I called you, and called you, but you didn’t answer.”
Why would she tell him what he already knew? And why did she sound like she was confessing to something shameful? He refused to look her in the face, but even her neck was blushing.
“Yes, Lady. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve never been alone. Not like this. There was always someone—if not my Eyli, then Garr.”
“I shouldn’t have insisted upon my errand.”
“It’s not that. When you didn’t answer I—I handled it badly. Aloran, I missed you, and I—” She broke off, and took a deep breath. “I looked into your room. I know I shouldn’t have. I’m really sorry . . .”
His mind whirled. Her hand had pushed aside his curtain, touched the handle of his Maze door—her eyes, accustomed to the light, had looked into the dimness . . . because she missed him? His chest flushed thick and warm. He began a breath pattern, but the air wasn’t cold enough. At last he forced his voice to function. “It is my Lady’s privilege.”
She pulled back. “My privilege?”
He didn’t trust himself to answer.
“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded.
He stared down at his knees.
“I didn’t tell you that so I could force you into pretending it was normal! I told you because you’re my manservant, and I should have no secrets from you. I wasn’t even hoping you’d forgive me. How can you have no comment at all? Even Dorya would stand up to me, if just to say what rules I must follow while in servants’ territory! Have you returned in body, but left yourself behind somewhere?”
Breath choked him. “I serve you, Lady,” he mumbled. Imbati, love where you serve: it cut two ways. His love must needs be service, but service without love was false—and now he had failed miserably in both.
“Oh, dear gods—I’ve hurt and insulted you, trespassed where I must not, and now I ask too much,” Lady Tamelera said. “I don’t deserve you, Aloran. You are excused. Good night.”
Half-blind, he got to his feet. Managed to bow, to push aside the curtain, to open the door and close it again. He sat on his bed with his head in his hands, blood racing too hot and too fast. He tried to feel again the solitary stillness, the comforting embrace of black silk.
He felt only disgrace.
Through the service speaker, his Lady began to cry softly. She did not call his name.