The Unholy Consult (Aspect-Emperor #4)

The boy concentrated on the shanks glistening across his plate. Even meat had its own Unerring Grace. He exhaled slowly … as slowly as he had exhaled while spying on the Narindar in the Andiamine Heights.

His sister continued. “Mother is forever beyond you now, Kel. Do you understand?”

He continued staring at his horseflesh, lest the will to murder breach his pouting facade—lest his grand and ruthless sister see.

“She plotted Father’s murder,” he said, more to vandalize her insufferable self-assurance than anything. “Did you know that?”

Serwa looked at him carefully. “No.”

“She lies beyond Father now.”

You giving too much away! Samarmas cried.

Serwa’s eyes lost focus for but a single heartbeat, then returned as iron nails.

“And you think you can regain his affections because of this? I know you’re not such a child as you look.”

The Prince-Imperial continued gazing at his horsemeat, fairly trembling for the savagery of his fury—all of it, so plain for his sister to see!

The Grandmistress of the Swayali crouched before him. “You are precisely as Father says,” she said, her face slumber blank. “You love our mother as a human boy would, but your scruples and attachments are D?nyain in every other respect. Mother’s love is your sole study, the only mission you could possibly pursue. All the World is but an instrument, a means to dominate her passion for you …”

The boy glared down, chewing as loud as he could manage. He could feel her watching, a presence malevolent for being so angelic, so ruthless.

“You are a creature of darkness, Kel, a machine, even more than they are.”

Now that was funny.

What does she mean? Samarmas asked.

The World had yielded too decisively too many times for him to be cowed by a cow’s assessment of him …

He looked up to her, trusting the purity of his hate to wipe the slate of his expression clean. “Can you smell them?” he asked. “Our sister and the Wizard?”

Serwa graced him with a small grin of sibling triumph, then popped to her feet with an ease that reminded him of her greater speed and strength. Humouring her little brother, she closed her eyes and breathed deep, striking a profile that was at once beautiful and weak.

“Yes …” she said, her eyes still closed. “So she simply wandered in from the Wild?”

Kelmomas nodded about a gargantuan swallow. How ravenous he had been!

“As quick with child as that tapestry from the Feast Hall.”

Serwa fixed him in her cold gaze.

“Is Father at all concerned?” the boy pressed. “She says she’s come to judge him.”

“Mimara was always mad,” Serwa said, as if pointing out a mountain with no passes on a map.

She terrified him for a premonition of altitude at that moment. Was this what rendered souls inhuman, the hitching of too many cares to things too vast to resemble the particulars of life? Too much resembling God … As Inrilatas had said.

“What do you think Father will do with me? Lock me up like Inri?”

She pursed her lips in thought, or the simulacrum of it.

“I don’t know. Were it not for Mother, he would have had Inrilatas put to death—or so I think. Kay?tas disagrees.”

“So he would kill his own son?”

His sister shrugged. “Why not? Your gifts are too fearsome to be trusted to the whim of passion.”

“So you would have me killed?”

She paused, awaiting his gaze. “Without hesitation.”

Something seized and twisted his innards; something like reality, as if everything had been just another nasty game up to now …

What would death be like, I wonder.

Shut up!

“And Kay?tas? He would have me killed as well?”

“I have no idea. We are rather busy.”

He affected the pose of a glum child. “You resent this, having to attend me?”

“No,” she said in a distracted voice. She set aside the blanket once again, allowing her eyes to linger. “I trust Father.”

“You would trust a father who would murder his own son?”

Her gown whisking, she occupied the position directly before him, glared down in her mild and damning way. Light winked across the golden Kyranean wings—the root of each blooming from the tip of another—embroidered across her billows.

“You imply I shouldn’t trust Father because Father doesn’t love,” she said. “But you forget we are D?nyain. Common purpose is all that we require. So long as I serve Father’s ends, I need never fear or doubt him.”

Kelmomas tore a mouthful of meat from the cold joint, chewed while staring up at her. “And Proyas?”

The name caught her like a hook. He knew very little of what had transpired upon their arrival—but he had guessed enough, apparently.

“What of Proyas?” she asked.

“Some ends wreck the tools that accomplish them.”

An air of renewed appraisal tainted her look.

You show too much.

Let her see. Let her see how sharp a knife her little brother can be.

“So be it,” the famed Grandmistress of the Swayali said.

“You would die for Father?”

“No. For Father’s end.”

“And what is his end?”

She paused again. Of all his siblings, the little Prince-Imperial had always found Serwa the most inscrutable, even more so than Inri, but not because of the Strength. She saw neither so deep nor so far as he—but she remained fairly impossible to read nonetheless.

“The Thousandfold Thought,” she replied. “The Thousandfold Thought is his end.”

Kelmomas frowned.

“And what is that?”

“The great and terrible design that will deliver the World from this very place.”

“And how can you know this?”

Yes. Be relentless …

“I cannot. I can only know Father, know the peerless glory of his intellect.”

“This is why you would render up your life?” he cried with naked incredulity. “Because Father is smarter?”

She shrugged. “Why not? Who else should guide us, if not he who sees the deepest … farthest?”

“Perhaps,” he said upon a swell of pride, “we should chase our own ends.”

A pained smile. “There is no better way to remain small, little brother.”

Unless, the once-secret voice said, one compelled the very World …

Curiosity darkened her expression.

“Samarmas … He really is there inside you.”

Kelmomas dropped his gaze to his plate.

She was genuinely wary, now, he could tell, though no single sign betrayed it.

“You are mistaken, Kel, if you think you own the ends that impulse brings yo—”

“But I do own my ends! How ca—?”

“Do you now? Why then this interrogation, little brother? What is your end, pray-tell?”

Anas?rimbor Kelmomas stared down at his greasy thumbs, the flecks grey tissue, white fat.

What was he attempting to accomplish?

His sister nodded. “Desires arise from the darkness, the darkness that comes before. They own you, Brother. To indulge in them is to exult in slavery, to make blind appetite your mas—”

“Better a slave to the Thousandfold Thought?”

“Yes!” she cried, invested at last. “Better a slave to the Logos. Better a slave to that which delivers mastery over life!”

He glared at her, quite dumbfounded.

Clever bitch!

Shut up. Shut up.

“And that is why you would kill me,” he cried heedless, “becau—”

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