“Does the king have no power?”
“The king has the power to command the army, the queen controls the treasury, and the priests intercede with the gods and interpret their wishes. Maybe when the current High Priest dies I can appoint a man of my own choosing, one willing to institute small steps. And not just in the temples. General Esladas already agrees we must arm and train Efeans as well as Saroese. We can expand our troop strength quickly by allowing able men to become soldiers. I will not even be breaking with tradition but merely restoring a change first set in place by Kliatemnos the Fourth of blessed memory. That there is a precedent will make it easier to convince the royal council that such action is not only necessary to defeat the enemy but good for Efea.”
His tone grows more lively as he warms to the subject of reform.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Of course the Seon priests and the council and bureaucrats will resist but with careful maneuvering it may eventually be possible to change the law to allow all people to marry as they wish. Even perhaps to allow Commoners to own businesses in the city rather than rent licenses from Patron owners. After I have established myself I can change a few of these laws by royal proclamation. Not too many too fast, of course, but—”
“How can you bear to let a single girl or woman remain in that prison for even one more day?”
“What prison?”
“Eternity Temple!”
“It is restrictive, it’s true. But it’s an honor for a family to dedicate a daughter to the temple—”
“Restrictive! An honor! Did you not see what I saw inside Eternity Temple? Could you not taste the misery in the air? Didn’t you hear Serenissima? What terrible things might they be doing to those caged, mistreated girls?”
“Jes! Don’t blaspheme the holy priests.”
“Holy? The High Priest must have colluded with Lord Gargaron to brick up my family in a tomb. They knew Mother was pregnant, that it was blasphemous to brick her up with the oracle. How can you call them holy when you have proof they aren’t?”
A claw rakes at my heart, tipped in blood and fury. It opens, traps spilling one into the next as words pour out of me.
“Dead kings and dead lords like Lord Ottonor walk to their tombs, propelled by a spark the holy priests have poured into the body. What if the girls condemned to the temple aren’t just raised to be buried alive as oracles and their attendants? What if some are sacrificed for the funeral rites? Their sparks forced into a dead man’s body for the sake of their ugly ceremony?” The instant I speak the words, I know in my gut it’s true; it’s the only explanation that makes sense. “The men who do this are monsters, Kal. Monsters!”
The darkness hides him from me. All I see is his shape along the bed and how he doesn’t move at all, as if he’s just absorbed a killing blow.
“Good Goat,” he whispers, and in his shocked tone I hear that he can’t dismiss the possibility that I’m right. “If the girls dedicated to the temple are killed and perhaps even abused while alive, that would explain how Uncle Gar is able to control the High Priest. He could have forced the High Priest to entomb your pregnant mother and your sisters by threatening to reveal whatever foul misdeeds go on.”
“Then it should be easy to end the tradition! Just tell the truth about it.”
“You don’t understand how this works. Every Patron in Efea will revile me for suggesting the Inkos priests are corrupt. Uncle Gar and my grandmother will undercut me by telling people I’m deluded and perhaps even insane. They’ll block me at every turn the instant they decide I’m not their puppet. It will take years of quiet work building my own alliances before I can have a hope of managing the smallest of these changes.”
My patience expires so fast it’s like a flame snuffed out. “If you don’t change things, Kal, then the Efeans will!”
“The Efeans? They can’t rule themselves, much less Efea. If they could, my ancestors wouldn’t have conquered them.”
“That’s what my father says. Do you also think Efeans are weak and incompetent?”
“No, that’s not what I mean! But these gauzy dreams have no more substance than a dawn mist that will dissipate under the harsh light of the sun. If Efeans try to rule themselves, then the Saroese from overseas will just attack again and again until a new Saroese king takes over.”
“Attack again and again? Like they already do, with your endless wars?”
“We have to defend our home.”
“The home you stole!”
“You don’t mean that.” Despite how close we sit, we no longer touch. The cautious delicacy in his tone lights a fire of anger in my heart. “Have you been listening to Ro-emnu?”
What Kal and I just shared was so sweet that the sweetness itself is the knife that cuts me. He doesn’t think of himself as the enemy, he doesn’t want to be the enemy, but he can’t let go of what his people took so long ago. To him it is just the natural way of things, the outcome the gods intended. I used to think that too, but I know better now.
I see the truth: he has always been my adversary on this court.
And I love him.
“You know what you mean to me, Kal.”
“Jes…” He shakes his head, warning me against speaking words I can’t take back.
“Hear me out.” How cold my voice sounds. But I have to make the break clean, because my heart is shattering. “I hate Serenissima for sacrificing her son for ambition. But even so—even so—you let her be imprisoned in that vile place—”
“My other choice was to kill her!”
“Why are the only two choices confining her in an unspeakable prison where girls live in darkness before they are bricked into tombs, or killing her? Why would she think it necessary and even acceptable to lead her son to the slaughter just to stay in power? How can Nikonos think it better to be beholden to foreigners so he can sit on a throne instead of next to it? Everything about this is wrong. It will always be wrong even if you institute tiny changes that, after all, are only made to benefit and solidify Saroese rule over a country your ancestors conquered. Your dynasty was founded on murder and treachery. You can never escape that.”
“You have been listening to Ro.”
“Don’t act as if you are jealous! I’ve never—”
“Never kissed him? Kissing is the least of it. I’ve seen the way Ro looks at you, and now you talk and talk about the poet’s justice and the poet’s history and the poet’s grievances, and you haven’t asked me a single thing about… me.” His voice chokes off, and he takes in a breath thick with emotion before speaking more hoarsely. “Not a single question about how I am doing now I am forced to take on the burden of king, which I never asked for, never wanted, and still don’t want. But I can’t refuse.”