“Yes.” Not so sure. Wondering how she could be jealous of this child. “What did he say? It looked like he actual y expressed a thought.”
Ekaterina nodded, eyes a tad remote. “It was almost a conversation. He said, ‘I swam. Al the way. The dolphins helped. Sahmaman was waiting. Where did she go?’ Then the Old Man smiled like he just got the most wonderful gift.
He said, ‘I’m so glad.’ And then he said, ‘I don’t think she was ever more than a happy dream, even when I loved her.’
Then the light went out and he was just confused til his friend came and said they should go play shogi.”
“My,” Nepanthe said. “Oh, my. I didn’t know it was that big a breakthrough.” She let go of Ekaterina’s hand. “Ice wil help keep the swel ing down.” And, “Your mother was right about bringing them together.”
Warmth and shared happiness left the girl. She shoved her hand behind her, retreated to where Ethrian watched the drifting, glowing symbols in the Winterstorm.
“What just happened?” Nepanthe asked in a whisper, lost.
The bel on the portal clunked. Lord Yuan came through. His companion was several hundred pounds of equipment instead of another human being. Only his Empress seemed inclined to greet him.
Scalza let out a yelp. “Hey! Some excitement is about to start.”
Nepanthe went to watch over the boy’s shoulder.
...
The King Without a Throne had been within visual range of Al Rhemish for weeks, lurking, eavesdropping, staying out of sight as resolutely as he had while coming out of the Dread Empire. He knew he was being cautious at a level explicable only by raging paranoia.
He reminded himself that he was alive because he trusted nothing. He was not pleased by what he saw.
When the Disciple was master there Al Rhemish had enjoyed a
renaissance. Aqueducts had been built to bring water down from the southern hips of the Kapenrungs, into the great crater where the city sat. A lake, which became a broad moat—and, unfortunately, a cesspool—came to life in the deepest part of the basin. The crater wal s had been terraced for crops or planted in orchards. The entirety had become green and gardenlike. Haroun had seen that at its peak.
Megelin bin Haroun had not seen fit to maintain what his enemy had created. The young king lacked al foresight.
Some orchards and farms had not yet gone to waste but that would happen considering the inadequate care shown the land and the aqueduct system. Given the rains and snows of the past year there was no excuse for Al Rhemish not being amply wet.
Haroun, looking nothing like any king Royalists would remember, grew increasingly bold. Cleanly shaven, facial tattoos restored, wearing a tiny glamour meant to make him look older, he made brief appearances in places outsiders would be expected to visit, such as the Most Holy Mrazkim Shrines. He listened attentively.
He stayed away from places where he could run into someone who knew him. He failed at that but did avoid recognition and confrontation. He heard himself mentioned once in a while, nostalgical y, not in any “The king walks among us” context. In the main the commentary denigrated the fool who insisted that Haroun bin Yousif had murdered Magden Norath.
Haroun bin Yousif had to be dead. If Haroun bin Yousif was alive he would not be missing. He would be in the middle of everything, imposing his wil . He would be breathing life into the Royalist cause. He would have ended Megelin’s feckless reign. He would not have wasted a moment once he took the wicked Norath down.
Haroun did not run into it himself but there were veteran minds less fixed in attitude, a few old men who had been around for ages who recognized the possibilities of deeper concerns.
The amateur yammer smiths never plugged the Star Rider into their calculations. Nor did they consider the fact that the King Without a Throne had a wife who actual y meant something to him.
No one expected to see Haroun in Al Rhemish so no one saw him.
An old hero named Beloul lived in Al Rhemish, amongst other retired heroes. Once a general, Beloul’s pitiful pension and the bile of the current king forced him to live in an adobe hovel shared with an equal y decrepit former aide and that man’s middle-aged il egitimate daughter. Beloul had been one of Haroun’s most devoted and bril iant commanders. He had been the same for Haroun’s father before him. Haroun was amazed to see how poorly Beloul was treated but more amazed to find him stil alive. He suppressed the urge to contact Beloul immediately.
There were few rootless men around Al Rhemish. The current regime discouraged the presence of the crippled of mind, body, or soul. Megelin found those people distasteful.
Those who pandered to the king drove off anyone so dim or il -starred as to have become disfigured in service to his cause.
Haroun liked his offspring less every day but not once did it ever occur to him to put the boy aside.
He made quite sure that neither Megelin nor his henchmen were watching before he went to visit Beloul.
Trouble was, he could not shake the fear that he was being watched himself. He suffered this constant, creepy paranoid certainty that never discovered a fleck of sustenance. It went way back. Random and seldom during his flight from Lioantung, lately it had become a fixture, and much more aggressive. It had to be a product of his insecurities, grown fatter after the Norath incident and his wastrel spending of good luck during the sojourn at Sebil el Selib. Not once, even employing al his shaghun skil s in the privacy of the erg, had he apprehended any genuine observer.
In bleak humor he wondered if God Himself was not the watcher.
Reason suggested that a genuine observer would have to be Old Meddler but the sense of being watched antedated that point—the encounter with Magden Norath—when the revenant would have garnered the interest of that old devil.
Before that Haroun bin Yousif was dead to the world.
One cool evening, while street traffic was heavy, bin Yousif went to the general’s door. A woman answered, which rattled him total y. Women did not do such things. They did not show themselves to strangers. Their men folk did not al ow it. But… Here she was just another fel ow in the household?
Beloul and El Mehduari must have been poisoned by outside ways while they were in exile.
The woman looked him straight in the eye, bold as any warrior confident of his prowess. She intimidated him. He was amazed.
“Wel ? Can you speak? No?” She began to close the door.
“Wait. I’ve come to consult the general.”
“The general is retired. He doesn’t contribute anymore. He isn’t al owed to contribute. In return for his silence we are provided a stipend sufficient to hold starvation at bay. I wil not jeopardize that. Go away. Consult someone else.”
“Beloul ed-Adirl! Present yourself!”
She had rattled him that much. And now she was about to make him hurt.
“Admit him, Lal a,” came from the gloom beyond the woman, in a voice like dead insects being rubbed across one another.
The woman did as instructed, eyes locked with Haroun’s, assuring him that he faced plenty of pain if he gave her an excuse.
Wow. Never had he encountered anyone whom he knew, instantly, was as hard as this woman. She might be as hard as him.
The setting sun had been in Haroun’s eyes. He entered the house as good as blind, but eventual y did make out an amorphous shape amongst cushions against a far wal , too smal to be Beloul or El Mehduari— though, at this remove, he surely remembered them larger than life.
That shape extended a pseudopod, gestured, suggesting he take a seat. “I have heard your voice before. Who are you?”
Beloul became more clear as Haroun’s eye adapted. He did not like what he saw. Beloul in his mind was Beloul thirty years ago, powerful, confident, a champion fit to contend with the Scourge of God. This Beloul… “You do not know me?”
“I cannot see you. These eyes betray me.” That might explain the darkness, some, though not for the fierce
