Happily, breakfast here seemed to be quite a subdued affair, in a relatively normal room and with relatively normal food. From the lamps flowed a thick golden stream of light that covered the ceiling, but I was rapidly becoming used to it. It seemed as much a part of this place as the angles that did not quite mesh with my perceptions.

Apparently I was the first one up today; though large trays of food sat ready on the sideboard, they hadn't been touched yet. Lifting the lids, I peeked into each. About half the food was recognizable. I helped myself to eggs, chops of some kind, and small honeyed rolls. To drink, pitchers of iced juices sat to one side, but I motioned a serving girl over and instructed her to find me a bottle of red wine, and this she did immediately.

Just as I was settling in at the head of the table, Aber strolled through the door.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Hi,” he said. “Bad night?”

“Why does everyone keep asking that?” I said, thinking of both Horace and Port. “I couldn't have slept better.”

“You look awful.”

“I feel better, though.”

“That's good.”

I thought of Rhalla and hid my smile behind a bite of a honeyed roll. She, more than anything else, had to be responsible for my quick recovery. Nothing like love to raise a man's spirits.

Licking my fingers, I changed the subject. “Have you seen Dad this morning?”

“He's not back yet,” Aber said. He began heaping his plate with egg-shaped purple fruits, tiny pink berries, and some kind of stringy cheeselike dish.

“What! Are you sure?”

“I'm quite sure.”

I couldn't believe it. He must have returned—hadn't he sent Rhalla last night to tend to me?

And if he hadn't… who had?

Aber joined me at the table, taking the opposite seat. He seemed his usual cheerful self.

“He must be here,” I said firmly. “You missed him.” That had to be the answer.

“I checked this morning. I thought he might have used a Trump to get back late last night, but his bed hasn't been slept in, and neither the doors nor the guards saw him come or go. He hasn't come back.”

No audience with a king would last so long, I knew. Something had happened. Something had gone wrong.

Chapter 12

“I took a deep breath. “He's been gone too long.”

“Probably.”

“Aren't you concerned?”

“I am,” he said. “At least, a little.” He looked at me seriously. “You don't think he'd abandon us here, do you? I know he's not particularly fond of me, and I forced myself on you both for the trip here. But if he saw things going badly, do you think he'd run off into the Shadows and leave us here?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. After all, everything I'd grown up believing had been an elaborate lie. And he had lied to me repeatedly in Juniper. I thought he cared about me—about us all—to try to protect us. But would he abandon us if it was the only way to save himself?

I took another bite of my honeyed roll, trying to work through the problem. Our father had powers I couldn't as yet even imagine. He might be anywhere now, from just outside the dining room door to hidden in a secret castle a thousand miles away… or he might not even be on this world. He could just as easily be hiding on a different Shadow where no one would ever find him.

Would he abandon us? If things went badly, would he leave us sitting here, alone and unknowing, while he struck off on his own for safety?

I remembered all the trouble he had gone through to rescue me in Ilerium. It would have been safer to leave me there, to let me die at the hands of the hell-creatures. And yet he had risked his own life to rescue me—and the life of his favorite daughter, my half-sister Freda. Those were not the actions of a man who would abandon his offspring.

And yet, pressed for time, feeling threatened, I could also see him dumping Aber and me here. If he convinced himself we'd be safe in the Beyond—why not leave us here? He might be my father, and he might be a powerful sorcerer, but he had lied to me for the last twenty years about my life. Everything I'd ever believed about the universe had been wrong. I realized now that I didn't know him, not really, nor could I predict his actions.

Could he abandon us? Yes.

Would he abandon us? I didn't know.

“Besides,” Aber went on between bites as he dug into a plate of steak and eggs a servant set before him, “we don't know that anything happened to him.”

I said, “Then where is he?”

“Maybe he's visiting with friends at the court.”

“I thought he didn't have any.”

“Oh, he must have a few… even if they aren't openly supportive. Maybe he's trying to rekindle old alliances.”

“Did you try his Trump?”

“Are you crazy? The last time I did, he nearly bit my head off. I ruined some sort of delicate experiment. He made he swear I'd never do it again.”

I chuckled. “I made no such promises. After breakfast, I'll try to reach him.”

“Better you than me.”

“Maybe he found an old girlfriend after his audience…”

“More likely an old wife.”

I raised my eyebrows. “How many has he had?”

“By my count,” Aber said, “at last six from the Courts and two from the Beyond… though I've heard at least one wife didn't last out the wedding night, so perhaps she shouldn't count. And who knows how many in Shadows. Your mother among them, I assume?”

“Nope.”

“Bastard.”

I didn't ask which one of us; it was literally true in my case, figuratively true in Dad's, and on occasion entirely true of us both.

“When he gets back,” Aber said, “you can ask him for an exact count. Assuming he's kept track.”

I gave a snort. “He's lied to me my whole life. He's still lying to me, as far as I can tell. I can't trust anything he says.”

“True.” Aber shrugged. “Everyone in the family knows his hold on the truth is slippery at best. It's part of his charm.”

I sighed. “So we're back where we started. We don't know where he is, what happened during his audience with King Uthor, or when he might come home.”

He shrugged again. “That about sums it up. I don't think you ought to try to contact him yet, though.”

“If you have a better plan,” I said, “I'd like to hear it.”

“Unfortunately, I don't.”

After that, we ate in silence. I noticed Aber studying me from the corners of his eyes, and I began to shift uneasily in my seat. I had never enjoyed close scrutiny. It always made me nervous.

“All right,” I finally said, after putting up with it as long as I could. I set down my fork and looked straight at him. “You've been staring at me for ten minutes. What's wrong?” I patted the top of my head. “Am I sprouting antlers or something?”

“I keep thinking about that vision you had yesterday,” he said, “and how you killed the lai she'on guards. That sounds like a Logrus trick. And when the serpent knocked you back to your own body—he used primal Chaos.”

“What's that?”

“An essential force. It's dangerous to summon and hard to control, without practice and patience. It's something he would not have done except as a last resort.”

“Dangerous—how?”

“You can control it, up to a point, but it almost has a power and a will of its own.”

“Treacherous?”

“Yes. If it gets away from you, it will destroy everything and everyone it touches, feeding on death, growing larger all the while. If it gets big enough, it can destroy an entire Shadow.”

I gulped. “And the serpent threw this stuff at me?”

“Luckily your physical form wasn't there. You would be dead now.” He studied my face. “Clearly he fears you. That trick with the Pattern… what other powers might you have, I wonder?”

I gave a dismissive wave. “None that I know of.”

“Maybe you should try to master the Logrus,” he mused. “If you could control it…”