Prince-Imperial with the troubling sense that he was there, his cheek pressed against the far side of his door, listening to their comings and goings. The fact that he never heard Inrilatas doing this troubled him even more, for he was quite fond of hearing things. Theliopa once told him that of all his brothers and sisters, Inrilatas possessed his father's gifts in the greatest measure, so much so they continually overwhelmed his mortal frame. Though Kelmomas did not begrudge Inrilatas his insanity-he celebrated it, if anything-he did resent his greedy share of Father's blood.
And so he hated Inrilatas as well.
Mother's body-slaves rushed from their antechambers to line the hall to either side, kneeling with their faces to the floor. The Empress brushed past them in distaste, pushed open the bronze doors to her apartments herself. Kelmomas never understood why she disdained using people-Father certainly never hesitated-but he adored the way it gave them more time alone. Again and again, he got to hug her and to kiss her and to cuddle-cuddle…
Ever since he had murdered Samarmas.
Sunlight rafted through the airy interior, setting the white-gossamer sheers aglow. A sycamore stood dark and full in the light beyond the balconies, close enough to glimpse the limbs forking through the shadows behind the bushing leaves. Sandalwood scented the air.
Capering across lavish carpets, the Prince-Imperial breathed deep and smiled. He swept his gaze across the frescoes of Invishi, Carythusal, and Nenciphon. Around a corner's fluted edge, he glimpsed the tall silvered mirror in her dressing-room. He saw the chest with the toys he pretended to play with when she was preoccupied. Through the propped doors to her sleeping chamber, he saw her great bed gleaming in the murk.
This, he thought as he always thought. This was where he would live forever!
He assumed she would seize him in a hug and spin in a pirouette. A mother finding strength in the need to be strong for a beautiful son. A mother finding respite in the love of a beautiful son. She always held him when she was frightened, and she literally reeked with fear. But instead she wheeled him about by the arm and slapped him hard across the cheek.
'You are never to say such things!'
A tide of murderous hurt and outrage swamped him. Mummy! Mummy had struck him! And for what? The truth? Scenes flickered beneath his soul's eye, strangling her with her own sheets, seizing the Gold Mastodon set upon the mantle and 'But I do!' he bawled. 'I do hate him!'
Maithanet. Uncle Holy.
She was already holding him in a desperate embrace, shushing and kissing, pressing her tear-slicked cheek against his own.
Mommeee!
'You shouldn't,' she said, a thumb's breadth from his ear. 'He's your uncle. Even more, he's the Shriah. It's a sin to speak against the Shriah-don't you know that?'
He fought her until she pressed him back.
'But he's against you! Against Father! Isn't that a si-?'
'Enough. Enough. The important thing, Kel, is that you never say these things. You are a Prince-Imperial. An Anasurimbor. Your blood is the very blood that flows in your uncle's veins…'
Dunyain blood… the secret voice whispered. What raises us above the animals.
Like Mother.
'Do you understand what I'm telling you?' the Blessed Empress continued. 'Do you realize what others think when they hear you disputing your own blood?'
'No.'
'They hear dissension… discord and weakness! You embolden our enemies with this talk-do you understand me, Kel?'
'Yes.'
'We have come upon fearful times, Kel. Dangerous times. You must always use your wits. You must always be wary…'
'Because of Fanayal, Mommy?'
She held him tight to her breast, then pressed him back. 'Because of many things…' Her gaze became suddenly absent. 'Look,' she continued. 'There's something I need to show you.' She stood and with a rustle of silk moved across the bed chamber, paused before the frieze on the far wall, belts of mythic narrative piled one atop the other.
'Your father raised two palaces when he rebuilt the Andiamine Heights,' she said, gesturing to the sun slanting through the unshuttered balcony. 'A palace of light…' She turned, leaning forward on her toes to peer at the top panel of the marble frieze. She pressed the bottommost star of a constellation Kelmomas had never seen before. Something clicked elsewhere in the room. The Prince-Imperial literally swayed with vertigo, so surprised were his senses. The marble-gilded wall simply dropped away and swooped out, rotating on a perfect central hinge.
Light only filtered several feet into the black passage beyond.
'And a palace of shadow.'
| 'Your uncle,' Mother said. 'I don't trust him.'
They sat where they always sat when the Empress took her 'morning sun,' as she termed it: on divans set near the heart of the Sacral Enclosure between two of the taller sycamore trees. A thin procession of clouds rode high in the blue sky above. The Imperial Apartments surrounded them on all sides, colonnaded walkways along the ground, verandas on the upper floors, some with their canopies unfurled, all forming the broad, marmoreal octagon that gave the Enclosure its famous shape.
Theliopa sat immediately next to Mother, a distance that suggested mother-daughter intimacy but was really an artefact of the girl's blindness to the rules that governed proximity. Her face, as always, was pale and sunken- skin stretched across the tent-poles of her bones. She wore what looked like several luxurious gowns sown into a florid motley, as well as dozens of jewelled broaches set end to end along the sleeve of either arm. Tree shadows waved across her, so that she seemed continually ablaze with reflected sunlight.
Wearing only a morning robe, Mother looked plain and dark in comparison-and all the more beautiful for it. Kelmomas played in the adjacent garden. With blackened fingers, he had started forming walls and bastions, a small complex of dirt structures he could strike down, but had quickly stopped when he discovered a stream of ants crawling from the earth to the blue-tiled walkway, hundreds of them. He began executing them, one by one, using his thumbnail to chip off their heads.
'Wha-what do you suspect?' his sister asked, her voice as dry as the air.
A long breath. A hand drawn to the back of her weary neck. 'That he is somehow behind this crisis with the Yatwerians,' his mother replied. 'That he intends to use it as a pretext to seize the Empire.'
Of all the games he played, this was the one the young Prince-Imperial relished the most: the game of securing his mother's constant attention while at the same time slipping beneath her notice. On the one hand, he was such a sad little boy, desolate, scarred for the tragic loss of his twin. But he was also just a little boy, too young to understand, too lost in his play to really listen. There was a time, not so long ago, when she would have sent him away for conversations such as this…
The real ones.
'I see,' Theliopa said.
'Are you not surprised?'
'I'm not sure surprise-surprise is a passion I can feel, Mother.'
Even watching from his periphery, Kelmomas could see his mother's expression dull. It troubled her, the little boy knew, filling in what was missing in her children. Perhaps this was why he didn't despise Theliopa the way he had that bitch, Mimara. Mother's feelings for Thelli would always be stymied by the girl's inability to reciprocate her love. But Mimara…
Some day soon… the secret voice whispered. She will love you as much… More!
'Have you conferred with Father-Father?' Theliopa asked.
His sister was a face reader. She had to see Mother's bewildered heartbreak as easily as he could. Did Thelli lack the heart to grieve this as well? Kelmomas had never been able to read much of anything in his sister. She was like Uncle Maithanet that way-only harmless.
