“Perhaps you can tell me. This is your place, not mine.” Arko tapped his finger on one of the amber windows. “I’m starting to think all this”—he waved a hand around the chamber—“is nothing but a joke at my expense.”
It was the first time they had been together in ten years, since the day Sarra had left her husband and daughters to join the priesthood, the only place a woman in her position—married but apart from her husband—could go. Arko was calm; perhaps the years had dulled his anger, or at least his resentment. At any rate he seemed unsurprised to see her here, almost as if he had been expecting her. As if they were simply continuing a conversation that had started an hour before instead of a lifetime ago.
“Like me,” she said, her voice full of stone. “I was a joke at your expense, wasn’t I?”
“You weren’t my idea,” he said. “Suten Anu was the one who arranged our marriage, not me. A punishment of sorts, for Harkana’s rebellion against the empire. At least, I preferred to think of it that way.” Arko met her gaze, his eyes repentant. “But you felt differently. I know that.” So he knew she had loved him.
“Only at first. I learned my lesson.”
He gave her an appraising glance and she drew herself up, her long red hair flowing over her shoulders, her chalk-white robe cloaking her like a suit of armor.
“You look well.”
“And you look like shit,” she said.
Arko left the amber window and slipped around the table, but instead of coming to embrace her, the way she feared, he walked around her and shut the doors through which she had entered. “You’ve done well for yourself, Sarra. I knew you would. You were always smarter than I was.”
“Are you trying to make me laugh?”
“It’s the truth. Your upbringing in the Wyrre may have been modest, but you have a gift for flattery, for knowing how to make people do your bidding, sometimes without even realizing they are doing so.”
“Flattery never worked with you.”
“It did sometimes. You know it did, especially when it came to the children. Telling me how much they loved me, how desperate they were for my attention and approval when what you were really after was keeping me away from—” Her old husband stopped, his eyes distant.
“I merely told you what you wanted to hear—that you were a decent man, a good enough father—and turned it to my advantage.”
“I could use a bit of that cunning myself. It would be useful, in my position.”
“Now you are flattering me. Learned a few things since coming to Solus, have you? Finally figured out that you cannot subdue a problem by hacking it to bits?”
He rubbed his forehead. “I’m an old man who’s come up against his own regrets, that’s all.”
He never used to speak to her this way, never with such openness. Perhaps he was telling the truth, that he had grown something like a heart in the years since she had left him. “Do you regret me, then?” she asked.
He raised his eyes to look at her. His look was haunted, hollow. “I should never have married you. I should have dared Suten’s disapproval and refused. It would have been better for you, for me. For all of us, if you had never come to Harkana as my bride.”
Sarra felt the sting of his rejection once again. In spite of herself—in spite of all that had happened in the years since she had left him—it still hurt, that he did not want her, that he had never wanted her. The girl she had been, the poor, ignorant child who had come across the sea to marry the great and formidable king of Harkana, the girl who had wanted so badly to be loved—she was still in there, buried deep, and she still wept for what might have been. Why? cried that young girl, who despite everything was not dead yet. Why give your love to that whore and not to me?
“I know you never wanted the children,” she said, keeping her voice steady.
He gave her a mirthless little smile. “You’re right. But I loved them all the same. I tried. Sarra, have you ever thought that your own ambition took you from Harkana as much as my indifference? You were made for Solus, for Desouk. You would never have been happy in Harkana, ordering around waiting women in the scullery.”
She started to feel her blood rise, the pulse of it in her ears, in her face. How she hated this man. Hated him because he was both right and wrong, because what he said made up for none of what he had done. She had never disliked anyone as much as Arko Hark-Wadi, claiming it was not in his nature to be a husband, a father, when the truth was he’d never even tried. He had been more interested in pleasing himself than seeing to his responsibilities. He hadn’t changed, not in the ways that mattered. He was only saying the truth out loud now, admitting it openly instead of pretending to be noble, putting on the face of a loving father and a good king.
“How are the children, by the way?” she asked through clenched teeth. She had been forced to leave Merit and Kepi behind when she left Arko. While they slept, she had kissed them goodbye before she departed. Sarra had known she could not take her girls with her. The heirs of Harkana remained with the kingdom, mother or no mother.
“Are they well?” she asked.
“Well enough, anyway. They’ve missed you, Kepi especially. She’s turned into quite the tomboy. She would have done better with a mother’s love than with mine, but she’s a smart girl, tough as her father and clever too. Merit I think has not forgiven you for going, or me for being the cause of your going.” He fixed his gaze on the ceiling, his thoughts moving toward the past. “Ren I can’t speak for—I don’t know. I’m worried for him, though. Whether he’ll manage Harkana all right on his own.”
“Has the Priory damaged him much?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not as much as I’d always feared.” He gave a great sigh. “Is this what you came here for, Sarra? To have a chat about the children? What do you really want?”
“I wanted an audience with the new Ray. Suten and I used to meet often.”
“So? If you have business, let’s hear what it is.”
“I wanted to ask if our lord and emperor is well.”
He laughed. “That’s what you want? To ask after the emperor’s health? Want to find out how often he moves his bowels, whether his digestion is good?”
“Tolemy’s proclamation has caused quite a stir. Has he offered any explanation for it?”
Arko just shook his head. “I couldn’t say.”
“No? Doesn’t Tolemy confide in the Ray? You simply carry out his orders?”
“Sarra—”
“Did the emperor tell you why he had chosen a man from Harkana, of all places, to be his ears and eyes? Has he forgotten your father’s war so quickly?”
“I can—I will not say,” Arko said. “Dammit, woman, is there a purpose to this audience, or have you come only to badger me?”
“You haven’t changed at all, Arko. Not even a little, not since the morning I found her name engraved on that white stone.” Arko’s hand twitched. Was the rock still dangling from his neck? After all these years, he still held her close? Serena. The girl her husband had loved. The girl her husband would have married if it weren’t for the emperor’s decree. If it weren’t for her own arrival in Harwen.