Nothing. If he’d signed anything declaring Mael was his son, it had already gone to Istevar.
Sorrow stood, and looked down at her father. She knew the rules of grief, knew that she ought to be crying. He’d demand it of her, if he could. Force a pipe into her hand and insist she martyred herself for him. She thought back to last night, to the last thing he’d said to her: Mael is here now. She’d wished him dead, she remembered. She hadn’t meant it. Not really. But now it had come to pass. The second time one of her wishes had come horribly true.
Sorrow gave the room a quick once-over before she allowed the drapes to fall back into place.
Charon, Vespus and Mael had remained in the passage outside, and they all turned to her as she left Harun’s room.
“Are you all right?” Charon asked.
“Yes.” She spared her father a final glance as she paused in the doorway. Already he seemed to be sinking in on himself; already there was a hint of decay in the room, something she hadn’t noticed until opening the door had allowed fresher air into the room. “I think we’ll need to move him, soon. It’s going to get warm in here.”
Charon’s mouth pursed and he nodded. “There are ice chambers in the cellars; we’ll have him taken there.”
“Can I see him too?” Mael said then, a bright edge to his voice. “I’d like to say goodbye.” When Sorrow nodded mutely, he strode past her, shutting himself in with Harun’s body. Sorrow met Vespus’s gaze.
And recoiled.
There was violence in his violet-coloured eyes, and in the faint curve of his mouth, horribly at odds with the situation.
“My condolences to you,” he said, the right words, the tone so very wrong. “To lose two parents, eighteen years apart, on the same day. What a tragedy.”
He bowed his head, then looked up suddenly, with the air of someone remembering something. It was so theatrical, so hammy, that Sorrow knew it was deliberate, and braced for whatever would follow. “And if memory serves me, today is your birthday too. Terrible. What are the chances? Still, at least you have your brother now.”
Sorrow was determined he wouldn’t get the last word.
“Yes, I do,” she said as she stalked past him, her legs shaking despite the lightness of her tone. “So save your pity for Mael. For he only has me.” She was barely aware of the hiss of Charon’s wheels following her as her heart thundered inside her.
She knew Vespus’s gaze followed her, and she was relieved when she turned the corner, out of his sight. She made her way back through the palace until she reached her own room.
The moment Charon closed the door behind him, Sorrow began to pace. “I couldn’t find any papers, but I think we can assume that at the same time he signed the Lamentia decree, he will have signed a declaration that recognizes Mael as his son. Which makes Mael the obvious candidate for the chancellorship. And we know that will serve Vespus.”
Charon nodded his agreement.
“Do you think…? Do you think it’s possible they killed my father? I mean, once the papers were signed, they wouldn’t need him any more…”
Charon looked thoughtful, and when he finally answered, his tone was measured. “I don’t know. And because your father died as he did, we can’t prove it. I don’t like that Vespus kept the boy under wraps for two years, only to thrust him forward as we were about to depose Harun. And I don’t like that Harun has died hours after declaring Mael his son. It – like all of this – is too sinister to be a coincidence. But your father is – was – an addict. We can never prove he didn’t kill himself, albeit accidentally. Especially because we don’t know where Lamentia came from in the first place.”
Sorrow stopped pacing and pulled out a stool, sitting down so she could look into his eyes. “So … what do we do? When Mael says he wants to run for election – which he will – Samad and Kaspira will almost certainly support him over me, and so will Balthasar. If Bayrum, Tuva and Irris back me, it’ll be a tie. You’ll have to choose who gets to be on the ballot.”
Charon paused. “No. You’ll both run. You’ll both be on it.”
The skin on Sorrow’s arms prickled. “There has never, ever been more than one name on the ballot.”
“There have never been two eligible bloodline candidates willing to campaign. And unless we can prove he’s not really a bloodline candidate, he’s entitled to do so. I can’t stop him. The rules are clear. And Vespus will fight to see that’s acknowledged, mark my words. So you have to run against him.”
Sorrow swallowed. Two candidates. One female, and newly eighteen. One unknown, and more Rhyllian than Rhannish. One reluctant competitor, and one likely imposter.
If only there was proof that he wasn’t Mael Ventaxis.
There had been the moment in the inn where she’d felt a spark of … something. When she’d wanted to believe that the mark and the clothes and the portrait were cold, hard evidence. But that need was selfish, she knew that. The portraits could have been painted to look like the boy, and not how the real Mael might have looked. The clothes were Rhyllian crafted, and that made them unreliable – Vespus could have bribed or threatened the maker into creating a duplicate set. And the mark might be a tattoo – they weren’t uncommon in other realms. None of it was true, unarguable proof.
For her own part, she was almost sure he wasn’t Mael. But her almost-surety wasn’t enough. Charon’s absolute certainty that he couldn’t be Mael wasn’t enough. Harun had declared he was, and the only way to discredit that was to admit that Harun had spent the last two years under the influence of a substance, and that that had killed him.
The Jedenvat would be ruined. She would be ruined.
Charon fixed his dark eyes on her. “You said you didn’t want to be chancellor. That you weren’t ready. This could be your only chance to escape that fate, if you want to. This boy could take your place.”
It was so close to what Rasmus had said to her: “if that boy is your brother, it looks a lot like you might have a choice.” It would mean freedom. She could travel to the lands she’d dreamed of: Svarta, Skae. Rhylla. She could take time to decide who she was, and what she wanted to do. Maybe even try again with Rasmus, give him the chance he’d wanted. For one glorious moment she allowed herself that possibility…
And in doing so she would leave Vespus in control of Rhannon, with an imposter acting as his mouthpiece.
Vespus, who was so desperate for power, for Rhannish land, he made a play for it time and again. Vespus, who’d wanted the war to continue to secure it. He had no regard for the customs or people of Rhannon.