The noblewoman gasped. Master Piccun coughed. “Cruel, Gwinvere. Cruel.”

41

Jenine had been spending her days trying to decide if Garoth Ursuul’s wives and concubines would die. Dorian waited for her in the black rock halls that she usually lightened with her presence. But today, and for the days since he’d laid the question before her, that sunny presence had been clouded.

“My love,” he said gently, “we have to decide today.”

“Part of me hates you for making me decide, but this is what it is to be a queen, isn’t it? You are wise, milord. If you decided for me, I would doubt you either way.”

He breathed. When she’d said “part of me hates you,” his heart stopped beating. Every Godking for centuries had been cremated with his wives and concubines, save for a few concubines that the next Godking wished for himself. If Dorian kept his first promise to Jenine, every woman in the harems would be obliged to throw themselves—or be thrown—onto Garoth Ursuul’s pyre, with only the dubious reward of getting to spend all eternity as his slaves. The alternative was to claim all of them, which the Khalidorans would see as selfish and dishonoring to the dead, but a Godking was not expected to be selfless.

There was a third alternative, of course. Dorian could outright ban the practice of throwing the living on funeral pyres. In a few years, he intended to do exactly that. But he was already being painted as a soft southerner. The Vürdmeisters were sharks, and mercy would hatch a dozen plots against his life. What would Solon have told him to do? Dorian pushed the question aside: Solon would have told him to get the hell out of Khalidor.

“In some ways,” he said, “if we are to change what marriage is to mean in these lands, it makes sense to let them die. From there we have a blank slate.”

“So we throw away eighty-six women’s lives to prove that women have value?”

Dorian said nothing. He offered his hand and she took it. They began walking toward his apartments. “I don’t know how to take the cruelty out of the choice.”

“I don’t know if it will work, milord.” Jenine always called him milord. She couldn’t call him Dorian, of course. “Your Majesty” was too distant. “Your Holiness” was out of the question, and she knew what Wanhope meant: she refused to call her bridegroom “Despair.” “There’s something wrong with these girls. Did you know they’re taken from their families when they’re nine years old? They’re trained to be exactly and only what the Godking wants. The only currency they know is the Godking’s favor. They’re not allowed to learn to read. They never go anywhere. They never meet anyone but each other and the eunuchs. It twists them. Yet they’re not innocents. They gossip and backstab as much as anyone. Perhaps more, because they’ve nothing useful to occupy them. All the same, they’re not animals either, though they’ve been treated as such. And most of them are just girls. I can’t ask them to all die for me. You must claim them, milord, but I ask this: that you give each the choice. These women have never chosen anything for themselves. Let them choose now.”

“You …you think some of them will choose death?”

“I heard women describe nights with Garoth that left them literally with scars—and they were proud of them. They really believe that your father was a god. Some do want to serve him forever.”

Dorian felt like a stranger in his own land. He said nothing as they walked past a knot of aethelings who’d stopped in the hall, prostrating themselves until he passed. At the door of his apartments, he stopped and said, “Jenine, I swear to you that those women will be my concubines in name only. They will not share my bed.”

She put a finger on his lips. “Shh, my love. Don’t swear about what you can’t control.” He had a sudden sense that he’d done this before. He’d dreamed it, just last night, and had forgotten the dream until this moment. But in the dream, there had been a smell, harsh stench of …what? “If nothing else, I can control myself, my queen.”

She smiled a sad smile too wise for her years. “Thank you, but I won’t hold you to it.”

“I’ll hold myself to it.”

She squeezed his hand, and then the sharp tang of vir hit his nostrils. He turned to the prostrate aethelings too late. Two boys without a mustache between them were standing, twin balls of green fire streaking toward Dorian and Jenine. They were barely five paces away.

Dorian watched, expecting the green missiles to pierce his flesh. He was reaching for the vir, but it was too late to pull a shield together—but then the vir was there, already forming, already acting to protect him, pushing hard from below, only asking his assent.

Yes.

The green missiles were within a hand’s breadth when the vir leapt up. The green fires twisted away, looped behind him and Jenine as Dorian threw his arms around her, and sped back toward the youths. There was a sound like eggs breaking and then sizzling meat as the missiles took each aetheling in the forehead, cracking their heads and scorching their brains, smoke puffing from perfectly round holes before they dropped to the ground, dead.

Dorian’s shields sprang up around him and Jenine only then, though he’d acted as fast as he could. There was no other sound in the hall.

The dead children gaped at him, brains smoking. The living ones didn’t dare look up. Fury rushed through Dorian. They hadn’t just tried to kill them; they’d tried to kill Jenine. He looked at the Vürdmeister who was in charge of these aethelings. The man was cowering, prostrate, at the back of the line. Dorian couldn’t think. The vir lashed out from his hand, yanked the man to his feet by his throat. He gave a strangled yelp, waving his hands in denial, before a huge fist of Dorian’s vir smashed his chest against the rock wall.

Blood exploded over the wall and the aethelings at the back of the line, but no one moved. With effort, Dorian dropped the shields, pushed the vir down. His head was throbbing.

The aethelings had moved against him. It was a stupid, childish attempt, and it had almost succeeded because he hadn’t thought to guard himself against boys who were eight years old. There’d been no follow-up to take advantage of the distraction, so Dorian couldn’t know if the children had been directed by a Vürdmeister, unless it was simply to test Dorian’s strength or to see if the vir would save him. In some ways, it wasn’t important.

What was important was that something had to be done about the aethelings. They were vipers. If eight- and nine-year-olds had already acted, there was no doubt that the older boys were plotting, and a wedding would give them all sorts of opportunities. Delay looked like weakness, and weakness put not only himself but also Jenine in peril. That, he wouldn’t tolerate.

Jenine started crying, and Dorian banished the aethelings and comforted her, but his mind was far away, and every thought was bloody.