Imladrik met his gaze evenly. ‘You know nothing of them.’
‘So you have always told me, but by Khaine, brother, your piety riles me! You speak of mystical nonsense and then expect me to take you seriously, and in the meantime there are real wars to be fought. My gold buys the making of a thousand warships. Every day we ferry more soldiers to Elthin Arvan – you think it happens by itself? And all the while you commune with your… creatures in the hills.’
‘I will not go.’
Caledor rose from the throne. Imladrik saw the brittleness there: the raised veins in his neck, the tight line of his jaw. So it had ever been with him, always just one step away from battle-rage.
‘Then I order it,’ said Caledor through gritted teeth. ‘I order you to Elthin Arvan. You will wage the war against the dawi. You will not return until their forces are broken and the colonies are secure.’
‘We do not need to fight them!’ Imladrik shouted, struggling to curb his exasperation. ‘You provoked them, time and again. They are proud, they do not suffer slights, and you shamed them. You shamed them in the worst possible way, and you do not even know it.’
By then they stood only inches apart. Imladrik was the taller, the leaner, but Caledor was the stronger. Thus it had always been with them – the older brother staring up at the younger.
‘And what of you, brother?’ Caledor spat, his eyes flat. ‘You will speak up for anyone but your own kind. They killed thousands at Kor Vanaeth, thousands more at Tor Alessi. At Athel Numiel they butchered infants for sport. What would you have me do – roll over for them? Beg for mercy?’
Imladrik shook his head in disgust. ‘The war is a sham. It always has been. Our father would never–’
‘Do not mention him!’ Caledor’s voice rose in fury, skirting hysteria. ‘This is not his time! It is my time! It is my time!’
Imladrik pulled back as if burned. The frenzy in Caledor’s voice was disconcerting. ‘Gods, listen to yourself. What has happened to you?’ He forced himself to relax, his fists to unclench. ‘Just think. We can take the war to the druchii, just as we were always meant to: my dragons, your ships. There need be no jealousy between us. I have always been content to follow you. Come, you know this.’
Caledor hesitated then. His face remained taut, locked in outrage, but something else flickered across it: embarrassment, perhaps. Imladrik hardly dared to breathe.
Then Hulviar’s silky voice broke the silence.
‘This is false policy,’ interjected the seneschal. ‘We will lose the colonies. My liege, recall the determinations made–’
Imladrik whirled on him. ‘Silence!’
Hulviar recoiled, raising his hands in self-defence. By then, though, the damage had been done; Caledor’s resolve returned.
‘You will go to the east,’ Caledor ordered, his voice firm again. ‘Either you will go by your own will or you will be sent there under the custody of more dependable subjects. You are mighty, brother, but even you cannot defy the will of the Crown. If you try, it will break you.’ His voice lowered, just a little. ‘I do not wish to break you.’
Imladrik’s heart beat hard, the blood thudding in his ears. The twin swords in his hands felt heavy. He felt the potential in them, and for an instant imagined the storm he could unleash if he chose to.
Caledor did not waver. Imladrik stared down at him, his mind a torment of emotions, his face a mask. Then he looked away.
‘You are the Phoenix King,’ he said, softly.
‘And your brother,’ added Caledor, relenting a little with a half-smile.
Imladrik turned away, ready to stride back down the length of the hall. He shot a withering glance at Hulviar, then started to walk.
‘For what’s it’s worth,’ he said.
Chapter Seven
Thoriol lay back against the cushions, feeling his muscles relax. Soft lute music filled the background, calming him, easing the tensions that had filled his mind during the long descent from the mountains.
He didn’t like to think back over the journey. He had taken a steed from one of the hardscrabble settlements just outside Kor Evril and ridden along stony tracks down to Lothern, weathering incessant salt-thick wind until Eataine’s gentler land had taken hold.
The country of Caledor had always left him cold, and he had never understood what his father saw in it. To his eyes, it was all black rock and smouldering craters, scoured by the elements and beset by legends of past glory. In comparison to Cothique, his mother’s land, where grass-crowned cliffs stood proudly against the ocean and the air was sweet from the woodlands of Avelorn, it seemed a meagre, desolate place.
As a child Thoriol had been proud of his father’s lineage. He had boasted to his playmates about it, enjoying it when they had stared back at him, mouths open, as he had told them stories about the great dragons. Some of them had even been true.
Thoriol smiled as he remembered. It was hard not to smile. After nearly half a decanter of heliath the whole world seemed essentially benign.
He looked around him. The house of pleasure was much like most of the others he had spent time in, though, this being Lothern, more richly appointed. Long drapes of diaphanous silk hung from high ceilings, wafting from the gentle movement of bodies. The tinkle of a fountain sounded from somewhere close by, part-masked by the hum of conversation. He saw lissom figures drifting in and out of the various private chambers, both male and female, all with the flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes that spoke of exotic consumptions. The light was subdued; a dim cloud of reds and purples, thick with curls of smoke.
Thoriol shifted on his couch, enjoying the give of it against his skin. After so long in the saddle it felt good to be somewhere more civilised. You had to be discreet – such places
