She was woken by a cool hand on her forehead, and opened her eyes to find Irris Day leaning over her. The room was still dark; Sorrow didn’t think she could have been asleep for more than an hour.
“Your father is here,” Irris said softly.
Sorrow struggled to sit up, rubbing her eyes. “What time is it?”
“It’s a little after four.”
Sorrow was right – she’d finally tumbled into bed at three. Her head muzzy; she stretched, shivering at the chill in the predawn air.
“And Rasmus has gone.”
She was fully awake then, her head whipping around to meet Irris’s concerned gaze.
“You didn’t know?” Irris read her friend’s expression.
Sorrow nodded slowly. “I knew he was going. Your father heard us. Arguing, late last night. About my becoming chancellor. He realized that we’d been…”
Irris sank on to the bed beside Sorrow, her mouth open.
“He’s not going to punish us,” Sorrow continued, surprised at how calm she sounded. “Or tell anyone. But Rasmus is banished and I’m never to see him again.” Her voice cracked as she finished.
Irris said nothing, gently rubbing small circles on Sorrow’s arm.
“I told him you didn’t know,” Sorrow said. “You’re safe.”
“I don’t care about that,” Irris replied hotly. “I care about you.”
Sorrow leant against her friend. “I really hurt him, Irri. He said I never let him in. And he was right.” Sorrow paused.
Irris lowered her forehead to Sorrow’s shoulder. “Oh, Row. I’m so sorry.”
Sorrow’s throat tightened, and she willed herself not to cry. What right did she have to be upset, when this was all her doing? She should have been honest from the start, the moment he’d started hinting at a future. She shouldn’t have slept with him last night; she should have told him what had been decided. She’d behaved like her father, burying her head in the sand and ignoring the issues at hand. This was her fault.
She pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes, screwing them shut, until the tears were driven back. Once she was sure they were gone, she cleared her throat. “Enough. We have Mael to deal with. Where is my father now?”
Irris straightened. “In his rooms, changing. And … Harun knows.”
“He knows?” Sorrow stared at Irris. “About Mael? How? I wanted to be the one to tell him.”
“He arrived with Balthasar. And Samad told Balthasar, who obviously told your father.”
Sorrow swore. “So what do we do?”
“My father wants to meet with the chancellor before he has chance to see Mael, or whoever he is. Hence the very rude awakening. He wants the whole Jedenvat, and you, there.”
“All right.” Sorrow pushed the sheets back and swung her legs from the bed. “Let’s get this over with.”
It was still dark when she and Irris returned to the chamber the Jedenvat had met in the night before.
Charon was sitting opposite the door, so his was the first face Sorrow saw. She nodded to him warily, unsure of the reception she’d receive. But he was as good as his word, and he bowed his head to her as he always had, his expression carefully blank. Beside him sat Tuva, then Bayrum. They all greeted her with small nods of their own, which she returned, as she and Irris moved to take the seats beside them. It was then that Sorrow saw the other occupants of the table.
On Harun’s right sat Balthasar, and he glared at her, hatred burning in his eyes as she took her seat. Samad and Kaspira sat further down along the same side, and it was opposite them that Sorrow and Irris sat.
Sorrow took the opportunity to look at her father.
It had been months since she’d seen him outside of his chambers in Istevar. Somehow, here in the Summer Palace, Harun looked even more ghoulish, his skin sallow and stretched like a corpse, the joints of his fingers pressing hard against the skin as he gripped the arms of his chair.
His nails were stained from Lamentia, lending them the appearance of rotting. His hair was thin, and combed over his skull, held in place with some kind of gel that made it look wet, arranged with a care that made Sorrow feel ill. He’d shaved, but whoever had done it had done a bad job; his beard was patchy and uneven.
Someone had dressed him in his ceremonial robes, and it was only when he stood that Sorrow saw how much her father had wasted away. Harun was a tall man, his shoulders broad; for all his hatred of war he had a warrior’s form. But his robes, robes that had fitted him well enough a few years ago, now hung from him limply, like a shroud. He looked like a child wearing a costume.
“Daughter,” Harun said in a thin, tired voice. “You’re staring.”
Sorrow blushed. “Father, forgive me. It’s good to see you.”
“Tell me about the boy,” Harun said abruptly.
Sorrow had a name then, for the sickly, sharp feeling that kept twisting and writhing inside her stomach.
Jealousy.
Every time she thought of the boy returning to Rhannon, being Mael, her brother, son of Harun, heir to the Ventaxis dynasty, she was jealous. Harun might look like the walking dead, but he’d roused himself, dressed himself, for the first time in months at the mere thought that his precious Mael might still be alive.
He couldn’t even look her in the eye.
“Tell me of him,” Harun repeated.
She swallowed the bile in her throat and glanced at Charon, waiting for his subtle signal before she spoke. “You remember Lord Vespus, Father?” Harun scowled at the name with what Sorrow assumed was recognition, so she continued. “He came to meet with me on the Humpback Bridge, during the ceremony. He claimed he’d found a boy. Found Mael,” she corrected herself.
Harun looked over her, his eyes feverishly bright.
“And had he?”
“I – I don’t know.”
“Show me the picture,” he said to Balthasar, and the councilman rose from his seat, walking over to where a covered portrait leant against the wall. Sorrow hadn’t noticed it before.
Balthasar lifted the picture, struggling against the weight and height of it as he carried it to a bureau at the end of the room. He grunted as he raised it, resting it against the wall. With a clumsy flourish he pulled away the sheet, revealing the painting.
“Did you see him?” Harun asked. “The boy?” He gestured at the painting. “Did he look like this boy?”
“I… There is a resemblance.” She remembered what Charon had said in the coach, about Vespus’s plans. And the boy’s own words about the plan changing. “But that’s hardly proof that—”
“And he is here, now? In the palace?” He spoke over her.
Sorrow lowered her head. “Yes.”
“Your Excellency, there’s no possible way this boy can be your son.” Charon spoke firmly.
Harun turned on Charon. “And why not?”
“A child could not have survived that fall.”