David Weber - Hell Hath No Fury

Andrin's eyes widened once more in fresh surprise. People told her father-and her, to some extent-

that sort of thing every day. Sometimes they even meant it. But coming from Kinlafia, it was … different, somehow. There was an echo almost of what she often sensed from chan Zindico and her other personal armsmen, and yet that wasn't quite correct, either. Chan Zindico and the others were her family's loyal retainers-her servants, when it came right down to it. Even though it would never have occurred to her to think of them as such, they were always aware of that relationship. It helped define not simply how they regarded her, but who they themselves were.

Darcel Kinlafia didn't see her that way. She'd never been "his" grand imperial princess, although she supposed that was technically going to change in about eighteen hours. There was no institutional, dynastic sense of loyalty in what he'd just said, and in a way Andrin doubted she would ever be able to explain, even to herself, that made the sincerity of what he'd just said indescribably precious. He meant it when he said he would be honored to help her, and there was no reason why he had to be. No basis for her to simply expect him to be.

"Voice Kinlafia, I-"

She paused, her eyes burning strangely, and he reached across the table and very gently took her hand. It could have been a presumption, an intrusion, but instead of drawing back, her wrist turned as if of its own volition, meeting his hand palm-to-palm, and as she felt him squeeze her fingers, something clicked almost audibly deep down inside her. The bumblebees buzzed louder under her skin, the sound almost deafening, and something seemed to literally flow from her fingers into his hand. She'd never experienced anything like it, never heard of anyone experiencing anything like it, and she inhaled sharply, her nostrils flared.

"Your Highness?" She heard chan Zindico say from behind her, his voice sharpening with the instinctive bristle of the deadly guard dog he truly was. "Are you all right, Your Highness?"

"I'm fine, Lazima."

She turned her head to smile reassuringly up at him, then looked back at Kinlafia. The Voice must have recognized chan Zindico's flare of suspicion, but his expression was calm, almost tranquil.

"Voice Kinlafia, I think-" she began, only to break off abruptly as Alazon Yanamar jerked upright in her chair.

The Privy Voice might have been carved from ice, so still she sat, as she Listened to whatever message had arrived with such abrupt, brutal unexpectedness. And then, her eyes filled suddenly with tears.

"Alazon?" Andrin said quickly, urgently. She took her hand from Kinlafia's, reaching out to the older woman as Alazon's pain reached out to her. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Alazon closed her eyes, her face wrung with an anguish so deep, so bitter, that Andrin literally flinched.

She saw Kinlafia responding to his beloved's grief, as well. He reached out towards Alazon, and only later did Andrin realize that he'd reached out towards her, not Alazon, first.

Andrin leaned towards Alazon across the table, unable to imagine what had hurt the older woman so.

And then, abruptly, she realized the music had stopped. That an ocean of utter silence was flowing out from the ballroom, sweeping over the entire Palace. She turned her head, looking through the arched colonnade back into the ballroom, trying to understand the sudden stillness. And then, at last, Alazon spoke.

"Your Highness," the anguish, the grief, in Alazon's beautiful voice ripped at Andrin like a knife. "Your Highness," the Privy Voice said, "your father needs you."

Darcel Kinlafia followed Andrin and chan Zindico back into the ballroom. It was one of the hardest things he'd ever done, and his right arm tightened protectively around Alazon as the sledgehammers of shock, disbelief, grief, and fury hammered at their Voice's sensitivity.

Yet if it was terrible for them, it was still worse for Andrin, for she knew what her father was about to tell her.

He saw it in the way all color had drained out of her face, felt it in the emotional aura trailing behind her like a fog of smoke and poison. Yet she crossed that ballroom floor tall, straight, and graceful.

"Yes, Papa?"

Her voice cut through the stillness, the silence, with an impossible clearness as she stopped before her parents. Her mother's face was as white as her own, but Empress Varena's eyes were filled with the dark terror of the unknown, not the even darker ghosts of foreknowledge inflicted. Emperor Zindel's right arm was about his wife's shoulders, and his face was strained.

"Andrin." His deep, powerful voice sounded frayed about the edges, and his arm tightened about his wife. "We've just received word from Traisum. From Division-Captain chan Geraith. It's-"

His voice broke, and his left hand rose. It settled on the back of the Empress' head, cradling it protectively, as he turned her and folded her against his massive chest. His own head bent as he bowed over her slenderness, and the tears of a strong man gleamed in his eyes.

"It's Janaki," Andrin said. Her father looked up, and she met his eyes levelly, steadily. "He's been killed."

The Empress stiffened convulsively in her husband's arms. There was no word to describe the sound she made. It was far too soft to call a wail, yet too filled with pain to be called anything else. She shuddered, and the sound she'd made turned into something else-shattering sobs that filled the hollow silence.

"Yes," Andrin's father confirmed in a voice which had been pulverized and glued unskillfully back together once more.

Andrin swayed. Her regal head never drooped, yet Kinlafia could literally See the wave of agony that flowed through her. He stepped away from Alazon quickly, offering the princess his arm, and she took it blindly, without even looking at him.

Gods, he thought. Dear sweet gods. If Janaki's dead, then Andrin is-

"We have to go," her father told her across her sobbing mother's head.

"Of course, Papa." Andrin straightened her spine with a courage which made Kinlafia want to weep, and despite the tears which streaked her face and fogged her tone, her voice never wavered. "Razial and Anbessa will need us."

"How is she? How are they?"

Alazon looked up at the harsh, angry question, and shook her head.

"I don't know, love," she replied quietly. "The Empress and Razial are sedated. His Majesty is holding himself together-I don't know how. And I don't believe Anbessa really understands what's happened.

Not yet."

"And Andrin?"

"She's just … sitting there," Alazon said sadly. "Sitting there in the nursery, beside Anbessa's bed.

Razial's asleep in her arms-she cried herself out, poor little love, after the herbalist sedated her. Andrin

– " Alazon's voice broke, and she raised gray eyes, soaked with tears, to Kinlafia's. "Andrin … sang them both to sleep," she managed to get out.

She began to weep once more, weep with deep, tearing shudders, and Kinlafia put his arms around her, hugging her tightly while his own eyes burned.

Again, he thought. The bastards have done it again.

His jaw clenched so tightly he thought his teeth would shatter as memories ripped through him, and white-hot rage boiled in their wake. The same Arcanan butchers who'd murdered Shaylar and all of his friends-his family-at Fallen Timbers. They'd done it again.

Despite his earlier conversation with the Emperor, or perhaps because of it, the pain of Janaki's death was like some huge, jagged splinter buried in his chest. And with that pain came the anger, the fury, that the Arcanans could wreak such carnage on the hearts and souls of those for whom he cared even here, even in the very heart of Sharona.