“Promises, promises,” Darzin replied. He reached out and grabbed for the young man, but Kihrin ducked under the hand. Darzin pushed out his leg for Kihrin to trip over, and as the boy stumbled he grabbed the back of Kihrin’s shirt, and when that ripped, the back of Kihrin’s hair.
Kihrin screamed, and flailed back an elbow, but didn’t hit anything important. He was all too aware that his father held an unsheathed dagger in his free hand and was contemplating where best to use it.
“Let’s cut that face a little,” Darzin said. “It’ll give the healers something to practice on.”
Kihrin threw himself forward. He felt the hair on his scalp start to rip, but it gave him the leverage to kick back with one leg and catch his father in the groin. Darzin’s hold on him let go, for just a second. Kihrin ran through a side door, every bit as afraid for his life as if he were still a Key running from the Watchmen.
Darzin was through the same door a few seconds later, but he stopped and frowned. The parlor was empty and dark, with only the moonlight from the Sisters shining in from the window to give any real illumination. He paced around the room several times before looking out an open window. Darzin D’Mon noted the long drop to the ground as well as the climbing trellis that would have made descent safe and easy for someone trained in a life of crime. He cursed.
“You can’t treat him like Galen,” a stern voice called from the doorway.
“He’s mine to do with as I wish,” Darzin said as High Lord Therin stepped into the room.
“Just as you are mine, my son, and what you are doing is unacceptable. If you want someone to abuse, buy a slave for the task. Since you have decided to bring that boy into this house as your heir, you will treat him appropriately.”
Darzin stopped and looked at his father. “Did I imagine the ‘or else’ at the end of that sentence?”
“You have excellent hearing.”
“Or else what?” Darzin’s expression was spiteful. “Perhaps you have forgotten—it is this family’s good name and rank that I am protecting here.”
“Oh, you’re protecting something,” Therin said, “but I have my doubts that it is the honor of House D’Mon.”
Darzin’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t threaten me. I know secrets you would rather leave buried.”
Therin smiled. “Go ahead. Tell the world. I’ll be the talk of a few social clubs—a bit of salacious gossip to fire the cold blood stirring in harpy veins. My secrets are merely embarrassing—they are not treasonous.”
“Pedron was your father,” Darzin snapped. “Where was your loyalty?”
“Pedron was nothing but a villain who cuckolded the man who raised me,” Therin corrected. “I showed that dastard as much loyalty as he deserved.”
“You don’t know—”
“You may have been just a child during the Affair of the Voices, and so your role was not suspected, but don’t think for a moment that I didn’t realize where you were spending your nights. My own son. I willingly and gladly handed over Pedron, but not my own child, something which you have given me cause to regret on numerous occasions since.”
“You would be just as culpable,” Darzin said, after a long and shocked pause, “for hiding me.”
“Perhaps so,” Therin admitted. “The difference is that I can quite easily be pushed to the point where I no longer care. You, on the other hand, will always be the most important thing in your world. If we must play a game of bluff, I will win, for the simple reason that I am never bluffing.”
Darzin clenched his teeth together. “I should have killed that slut myself when I realized she was pregnant.”
Therin slapped his son across the face. “Be gone from my sight,” Therin whispered, harsh and furious. His anger was trademark D’Mon: lethal, deadly menace.
Even Darzin was taken aback. He stared at his father for a moment, before turning on his heel and walking out the door.
The High Lord watched him go, then walked over to a side table. He poured himself a glass of sasabim and stared at the glass for a dozen or so seconds. Then he sat down by the fireplace. He didn’t drink at first, staring at the unlit woodpile.
After a moment he said, “You can come out now. I know you’re here.”
Kihrin stood up from where he had sat motionless, his shadow blending with the curtains behind him. He pressed a handkerchief against the side of his face, which was swollen and bleeding.
“How did you know?” the young man asked.
The High Lord shrugged. “When I was younger I befriended a man who had a similar magical talent. I’ve learned to recognize the way the mind slides away from a corner of the room. Also, the dogs.”
“The dogs?”
“Yes,” Therin said as he gestured toward the open window with his drink. “Dogs. They patrol the open court, and you are too new for them to be used to your scent. Had you left by the window, I would have heard them barking.”
“What was the Affair of the Voices?” Kihrin asked.
Therin sighed. “Something that happened before you were born.”
“I think I need to know.”
Therin stared at the boy for a moment, before nodding. “The various Royal Families are known as the Court of Gems. Or rather we like to call ourselves royalty, but we are not true rulers and have not been since the founding of the Empire. We did something. No one is sure what anymore. It’s a secret lost to the ages.* All anyone knows is that it was terrible, so terrible that the Eight Immortals spat down a curse on us, and a fate. They decreed that no member of a Royal Family would ever rule in the Quuros Empire, save those few who could win the right to be Emperor. If so much as a single member of a family breaks this taboo, the gods have promised to come down and wipe out that family down to the last babe. So the Court of Gems rules by proxy, through the Ogenra we push into power with granted lands and titles, and through the representatives we elect to be Voices. We are merchant princes, our strengths economic and our politics republican. It is enough for most of us, but some pine for old days so long ago when we made the laws—and we decided who lived and who died ourselves. Twenty-some years ago, a secret cabal formed to change this status quo. They believed they were the culmination of a prophecy, fated to destroy the Empire.” Therin’s mouth twisted. “Presumably to make it over, gloriously renewed. People are always so willing to plow under fertile crops and murder nations if they can convince themselves they’ll be planting the seeds of something better.”
“Wizard, thief, knight, and king, the children will not know the names of their fathers who quiet the Voices’ sting. That prophecy?”
Therin frowned, and leaned forward toward Kihrin. “Where did you hear that?”
“It was a rich man’s idea of graffiti. Which one was Pedron? The wizard?”