liking, but it seemed the best way to be. He was out of his depth here amid these glitteringly beautiful people, and he reckoned it would be wise to present them with the front they expected to see. The voices whispered that it was always best for people to see what they expected. He kept the smile on his face with an effort.
'Nonetheless,' said the Captain, 'far as it is from my part to second guess our Queen, I suspect that she will show truly regal gratitude.'
The officer and Lady Sardontine exchanged secretive smiles and he wondered if he was being mocked, or the Queen was.
'We have not been introduced, sir?' Rik said. Lady Sardontine touched his hand intimately again.
'I am remiss in my duties as hostess, Captain Talarion, this is Rik. Rik this is Captain Talarion.' They bowed to each other and the Captain helped himself to another drink from a passing tray.
'I understand you used to serve in the same unit as Lieutenant Sardec?'
Rik sensed a trap here but was uncertain how he could avoid it. Surely they all knew he had been an enlisted man, and Sardec an officer. Was Talarion reminding him of that? 'That is the case,' Rik said.
'I hear he fought a duel over some wench,' Talarion said. His smile widened a fraction. It was like watching a sword being slowly drawn from a sheath.
'That sounds very romantic,' said Lady Sardontine.
'A human wench,' said Talarion. There was silence for a moment and an exchange of smirks. Talarion waited for a heartbeat and finished his attack. Rik saw it coming. 'It seems that taking human lovers is all the rage in Talorea these days.'
Rik looked from him to Lady Sardontine and smiled back as coldly. He held the woman's gaze as he said; 'Perhaps it will become fashionable here in Halim as well. You never know.'
She smiled back at him. 'You never know,' she said.
Seeing something pass between them, Talarion raised his eyes to the ceiling. A small pulse of what might have been anger beat on his forehead. 'If you will excuse us, Captain,' said Lady Sardontine, 'I must introduce our young hero to my other guests.'
'By all means, my dear, I can see I have wasted enough of your time already.'
'Ignore the good Captain,' Lady Sardontine said, once he was safely in their wake. 'He is of the old school and can be something of a boor. Do not judge us all by him. Some of us in Kharadrea understand that the world is changing.'
There was a note of apology in her voice, and something else, perhaps it was fear. He realised that Lady Sardontine very much wanted to stay on his good side, or more likely that of Lady Asea. Or perhaps she is simply trying to be friendly, he thought, and discounted the possibility immediately.
The voices told him that was wise.
They entered the orbit of another group. This one consisted mostly of women surrounding a tall Terrarch male so slim that he looked positively sickly, an impression reinforced by his constant coughing into a handkerchief. He was unusual in that he was not wearing a military uniform but a dress coat of heavy purple velvet, and a number of silk scarves.
All of them gave him glances that were quite welcoming, even the male. Introductions were made. The usual questions asked. The sickly Terrarch, by name Petron, by profession an author, by blood Lady Sardontine's brother, spoke: 'I, for one, will be glad to have Kathea seated properly on the throne, and the Taloreans here. For too long Kharadrea has languished in the shadow of the Dark Empire.' He paused for a moment. Rik guessed that the word shadow had a resonance for Terrarchs that it simply did not have for him, something to do with the powers that had evicted them from Al'Terra. 'Now we shall see some progress. Our backward land will wake up.”
The ladies emitted small shrieks of scandalised outrage, although Rik suspected they were really quite enjoying Petron's words.
'My brother is a radical,' murmured Lady Sardontine in Rik's ear. 'He is a great admirer of your patron. Our father disinherited him because of his Scarlet outlook.'
'My sister is doubtless informing you of the skeleton in the family closet. My father is an old tyrant. He regrets the days of the Conquest ever ended and that he can't take the whip and lash our humans to death as he used to do in the old days.'
Petron smiled at Rik warmly, a thing that made him as uncomfortable as the coldness of some of the other Terrarchs. Petron was trying too hard to be friendly, to show he had no prejudice. He was not seeing Rik as himself but as a human, any human. This conversation was not about Rik, did not include him and never would. It was all about Petron, and how radical he was. Rik smiled back. He was becoming quite expert at playing the hypocrite.
'I understand that still happens in Sardea — the beatings to death, I mean.'
'My dear fellow it still happens here in Kharadrea. Not all of our landowners are enlightened. King Orodruine's edicts may have made it illegal to kill your humans for all but capital crimes, but somehow word of those laws never reached our larger estates. Khaldarus means to repeal the edicts anyway; he has said so publicly many times. That is why it is imperative — imperative! — that Kathea is our Queen.'
Rik felt the old slow, smouldering anger start to build within him. The outrage he had felt even as a boy against the injustice of the world was still there despite his current hypocrisy. As the anger mounted the whisper of the voices in his head became louder. There were times when he thought he sensed even the presence of the Quan, swirling somewhere in the depth of his mind, lurking there like a shark below the surface of placid waters.
Petron's words reminded him that the order of the world was still wrong, that murder was still being done legally, that people were still being killed at the whim of the world's Terrarch masters, and that it would only get worse if the Dark Empire won. From what Malkior had told him, worse things than that were happening in Sardea, and for once Rik saw no reason to disbelieve his putative father.
He kept his face a mask, determined that these people would never see the way he really felt. Sometimes it was hard, he thought, caught up in the cynical politics of the Terrarch factions and his former comrades lust for plunder, to keep sight of the fact that, despite everything, the conflict they were engaged in really did have a meaning beyond the goals of the protagonists, that the world really could be a better place if one side won and another side lost.
He brought his attention back to Petron who was still enumerating a list of his father's crimes against his serfs. Another realisation hit him. Easy as it was to be cynical about Petron and his motives, the Terrarch probably was a real ally to the cause of humanity.
The night moved on in a whirl of drinking and music and conversation. Rik mostly listened, told tales of his life as a soldier, avoided all questions concerning what had happened in the Serpent Tower or in Harven. He drank far less than those around him, afraid that if he did the voices would become louder. His reticence seemed only to stand him in good stead, to add to the aura of mystery that surrounded him. He began to feel that things were different here, that these people knew nothing about his past, they seemed to take him more or less at face value, as part of the conquering army, as a hero who had saved their future Queen, as the mysterious putative lover of an Elder World sorceress. It was a seductive feeling. He had come a long way from the streets of Sorrow, from their soiled terrors and grubby triumphs.
All these people saw was his nice coat and his Terrarch features. They did not know and need never know about his thievish past. He grinned. They did not, but he always would. He was marked by more than being a Shadowblood. He was his past and it would set him aside from these folks for as long as he lived.
At some point during the night, he noticed that a few couples had discreetly vanished, unmissed amid all the drinking and music. He was not in least surprised when Lady Sardontine took his hand and led him from the chamber through a maze of passages into a dark cavernous room. Her breath was scented by alcohol. Her lips tasted of old Kharadrean wine.
The voices whispered beware, and he drew back. He sensed another presence in the room, and swung Lady Sardontine around so that she was between him and whoever it was. It was only a matter of moments before he noticed a figure standing in the shadows. He recognised her at once.
“Tamara,” he said. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
A blade glittered in her hand. He felt a small stab of fear. “I see you are armed with something more than a
