Chapter Twenty-One
It was rare for Talasyn to regret losing her temper, least of all when Alaric was involved, but by the next morning she had to admit that she’d messed up. There were only eleven days left until the eclipse, and she was nowhere close to weaving a decent shield.
As she marched into the council room after breakfast, Talasyn resolved to be on her best behavior. Not only during the negotiations, but also during the training in the afternoon. As far as promises went, she deemed it rather noble of her. However, it was a promise that took a severe beating when Urduja announced that there would be a banquet later that night with all the noble houses in attendance, to celebrate the Lachis’ka’s engagement to the Night Emperor.
Still, Talasyn managed to give a stiff nod of acquiescence and do nothing more impolite than avoiding Alaric’s eyes, which were regarding her dispassionately from across the table, with no trace of his own outburst yesterday.
Remembering that outburst elicited a most peculiar feeling in the pit of her stomach. Alaric usually had supreme control over his emotions, unlike her. The only times he’d appeared truly furious with her were yesterday and that night in the bamboo cell at the Belian garrison. In those instances, she’d needled him about Ozalus and Gaheris, respectively. His family was clearly a touchy subject.
And, yet, no matter how furious he was, he had never shouted at her. In fact, the angrier he got, the lower his voice became. Now that she thought about it, it was the one trait of Alaric’s that recommended him to her. Yelling meant the orphanage, the caretakers. Talasyn yelled when she was angry because yelling for her was what anger was, how she understood it. There was something fascinating about Alaric’s quiet rage, about how easily he could restrain himself.
It made her feel—
Safe?
All around her, the negotiators were talking. Bartering, compromising, laying out the road for the future. Talasyn was barely listening. Her new epiphany pounded in her ears like blood.
Yesterday, when the Shadowgate had roared forth from Alaric, she’d moved away slightly, but only so that she’d have enough ground to fight back if it came to that. But those had been a soldier’s instincts. She hadn’t flinched. She hadn’t, even just for a moment, been afraid of him.
Talasyn darted a furtive glance at Alaric, hating that she was physically incapable of stopping herself from doing so. All of his attention was on Lueve Rasmey as the daya talked the Kesathese contingent through each step of the wedding ceremony and its corresponding cultural significance in Nenavar, fielding questions and objections from Commodore Mathire all the while. Alaric’s black-gauntleted fingers drummed idly on the table, the motion a focal point with the rest of him being so still. For Talasyn, nonsensical observations and memories began to creep in—the sheer size of his hand, the way it had felt clamped around her waist the time he lifted her away from the edge of the pool—and she hurriedly shifted her focus to Lueve before these could consume her.
Lueve’s multitude of opal rings glinted in the sunlight as she held up a piece of parchment covered in gold-flecked, wavelike script. It was her marriage contract, which she’d retrieved from the Dominion’s archives high up in the mountains for the panel’s edification; Alaric and Talasyn would sign a similar document at the dragon altar on their wedding day.
“The contract is in Nenavarene, so allow me to translate,” said Daya Rasmey. “Lueve, daughter of Akara from the Veins of Cenderwas, daughter of Viel from the Fastness of Mandayar, daughter of Thinza’khin from the Sundered Plains, is joining hands with Idrees, son of Esah from the Banks of the Infinite, daughter of Nayru from the Serpent’s Trace—”
“I think that Kesath has gotten the idea,” Urduja interrupted. “Anyway, the gist is that it goes back three generations along the matrilineal line.”
Alaric was already shaking his head, even before she’d finished speaking. “My mother was a traitor to the Crown. Her house was expunged from the Kesathese peerage and both my father and I have renounced all affiliation with her. It would be dishonest to enter into a marriage on those terms.”
Talasyn was bewildered. As infuriated as she was with Urduja and Elagbi at present, she couldn’t imagine reaching a point where she would actually renounce them, not when she’d been looking for her family all her life. The only thing that she knew about Sancia Ossinast, Gaheris’s wife and the former Night Empress, was that she had disappeared a few years before the Hurricane Wars began. There were even rumors that Gaheris had killed her. And now Talasyn wondered what Sancia had done to make her son so clearly repulsed by the mere mention of her name.
Alaric’s family really was a touchy subject for him.
“I believe that it would be for the best if we skipped the contract.” Prince Elagbi broke the uneasy silence. “Hanan and I didn’t sign one, either, because it isn’t the custom on the Dawn Isles—”
“And because you were married in a witch’s hut, with only one member of court to bear witness,” Urduja groused, narrowing her eyes at her son.
“Perhaps a simpler version of the contract?” Commodore Mathire suggested—to the room at large, but her gaze lingered on Alaric and it seemed all too knowing, and Talasyn was so, so curious, but she’d vowed to behave and that involved keeping her mouth shut rather than demanding answers. “Just the names of the imperial couple and their titles?”
The Nenavarene side of the panel begrudgingly accepted Mathire’s proposal. From there, the talks dragged on well past noon. Once they were adjourned, Talasyn left the council room, both glad that today’s negotiations were over and uneasy about once again having to spend the next few hours alone with her confusing betrothed and all the secrets that lurked in his gray eyes.
Talasyn was about to head into the orchid garden for the afternoon’s training session—truly, she was—when one of her guards came knocking on her bedroom door with an announcement, in compliance with the only direct order Talasyn had ever given since she settled in at the Roof of Heaven. The order to let her know when—
“The pudding merchant is here, Your Grace.”
Even though she’d made a vow to behave, it took Talasyn exactly the length of a heartbeat to decide to let Alaric wait a bit longer. With the contingent of Lachis-dalo trailing after her, she scurried out of her wing of the palace, through the marble hallways, and down the front steps of the Roof of Heaven, where a small crowd of servants had gathered to greet the merchant who sailed up the limestone cliffs on his dugout twice a month.
He was a skinny man who wore a perennial betel-nut-stained smile beneath his wide-brimmed straw hat. On his spry shoulders he balanced a bamboo pole with large aluminum buckets dangling from each end. One bucket contained fresh soybean curds kept warm by a Firewarren-infused aether heart; the other, tiny pearls of palm starch suspended in brown sugar syrup.
Most of the nobles within the palace were too stuffy for street fare, but Talasyn had no such qualms. Servants bowed and curtsied to her, but they had long since learned that she preferred to wait her turn like everyone else. They did become a little quieter, though, a little less rowdy as they chatted among themselves and with the merchant. Talasyn rather suspected that they’d been bringing him up to speed about news from the palace and the upcoming wedding before she arrived.