Brent Weeks - Beyond the Shadows

Luc met his eyes and Kylar weighed the young man’s soul.

Kylar cursed loudly. “You’re no killer, Luc Graesin. You marched right up here, didn’t you? Walked past a dozen witnesses? I thought so.”

“What are you doing?” Terah demanded. “Help me.”

Kylar looked into Luc’s eyes again and saw a young man bound in chains not of his own making. Luc was no saint, nor purely a victim, but he didn’t deserve death.

“Tell me one thing,” Kylar said. “If you could take the throne, would you?”

“Hell no,” Luc said.

He was telling the truth. “Then I give you these, Luc: first, knowledge: you’re no killer. These wounds won’t kill your sister. Second, your life. Make something of it. Third, I spare you a sight that would never leave you.”

“What?” Luc asked.

Kylar punched him in the forehead. Luc dropped like a stone. Kylar rubbed Luc’s bloody hands against his own. He cut Luc’s tunic in two places with the dagger and finally stabbed him in the meat of his shoulder, shallowly.

Terah was aghast. “What are you doing?”

Kylar drew the mask of judgment over his face. “I’ve come for you, Terah.” He let the ka’kari sink back into his skin.

She screamed. He grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled her to her feet. He planted the dagger in her shoulder, and with his right hand free, pressed it against her wounded stomach to get it bloody. He wiped the blood on both sides of his face and pulled the dagger out of her shoulder. He stood behind her, using her body as a shield between him and the door. She was begging, screaming, cursing, weeping, but Kylar barely heard her. He sighed and when he inhaled, he smelled her hair. It smelled of youth and promise.

There was the sound of jingling armor and heavy footsteps pounding up the hall. A dozen Royal Guards burst into the room, bristling with weaponry. Behind them Logan Gyre and Duke Wesseros and their guards pushed into the room. In seconds, they’d formed a half circle around Kylar and the queen. Dozens of weapons were leveled at Kylar.

“Put it down!” a royal guard yelled. “Put it down now!”

“Help me. Please,” Terah begged.

“By the gods, Kylar,” Logan shouted. “Don’t do this. Please!”

For the job, it was perfect. Now dozens of witnesses had seen Logan command Kylar to stop. There remained only one thing. Kylar painted a desperate expression on his face. “Luc tried to stop me, and he couldn’t,” Kylar raved. “And you can’t either!”

Kylar slashed the dagger through Terah Graesin’s throat, and all the world screamed.

Mother,” Kaede said, coming into the study, “how are the wedding preparations coming?”

Daune Wariyamo raised her eyes from the papers spread all over her desk. She loved lists. “Our responsibilities are well in hand. Everyone has been informed of their precedence and the expected protocols. I only worry about Oshobi’s mother. I’d say she has the brain of a hummingbird, except hummingbirds can hover for a moment or two. I expect the Takedas’ half of the ceremony to be an unmitigated disaster.” She pulled off her pince nez. “I heard some lunatic arrived, claiming to be a Tofusin.”

A Tofusin, she said. As if there were more than one.

“He’s nothing. Some white-haired freak,” Kaede said, waving it away. “Mother, I want your opinion. An insult’s been done to our family honor that may be on some people’s minds as we go into this wedding, so I think I have to deal with it now. One of the cousins cuckolded her husband. She swears it was long ago and brief, but its effects continue. What should I do?”

Daune Wariyamo scrunched her eyebrows, as if the answer were so obvious that Kaede was stupid for asking. “A slut can not be tolerated, Kaede. A whore dishonors us all.”

“Very well. I’ll see it taken care of.”

“Who is it?”

“Mother,” Kaede said quietly, “I’m going to ask you a question, and if you lie to me, the consequences will be harsher than you can believe.”

“Kaede! Is this how you to speak to your mother—”

“None of that, mother. What—”

“Your tone is so disrespectful, I—”

“Silence!” Kaede shouted.

Daune Wariyamo was too stunned for the moment to begin the usual tactics.

“Did you or did you not intercept letters that Solon sent to me?” Kaede asked.

Daune Wariyamo blinked rapidly, then said, “Of course I did.”

“For how long?” Kaede asked.

“I don’t remember.”

“How long?” Kaede asked, her voice dangerous.

The empress’s mother said nothing for a long moment. Then she said, “Years. Letters came every month, sometimes more often.”

“Every week?”

“I suppose.”

“What did you do with them, mother?”

“That Solon was worse than his brother.”

“Don’t you ever speak to me of that monster. Where are the letters?”

“They were a tissue of lies. I burned them.”

“When did he stop sending them?” Kaede asked.

Her mother’s expression went blank for a moment, then she said, “I don’t know, ten years ago?”

“He didn’t stop, did he? Don’t you dare lie to me, by the gods, don’t you dare.”

“It’s only a few times a year now. For all I knew, it was some impostor, hoping to break your heart again, Kae. Don’t let this stranger ruin everything. Even if it is Solon, you don’t know him. If you postpone this wedding, it could mean the end of you. Harvest is the only time for a queen to marry, and if you delay, the seas will be impassable. The lords from the other isles won’t be able to attend. You need this. We can’t offend the Takedas again.”

Clan Takeda had been a thorn in Kaede’s side since she’d taken the throne. They had angled and manipulated for years for this wedding, and if as a younger woman she had sworn she would never marry Oshobi, now she knew there was no other way. “Mother, is there anything else you haven’t told me? Anything you want to confess?”

“Of course not—”

Kaede held up a finger. “I want you to think very carefully. You’re not as good a liar as you believe.”

Her mother hesitated, but the look on her face was that of a woman aggrieved that she could be suspect. “There’s nothing.”

Kaede had been wrong. Her mother was an excellent liar. Kaede turned to a guard. “Summon my secretary and the chamberlain.”

“Kae, what are you doing?” Daune asked.

The officials stepped into the room in moments. Kaede had had them waiting outside. “Mother, the woman you called a slut and a whore is you. You betrayed my father and dishonored us.”

“No! I never—”

“Did you expect to get away with it? You fornicated with an emperor—a man surrounded by bodyguards and slaves at all hours, and you the lady of a high house, with bodyguards and slaves of your own. Did you think no one would notice?”

There was real fear in Daune Wariyamo’s face for the first time Kaede had ever seen. “It didn’t mean anything, Kae.”

“Until you got pregnant and didn’t know who the father was.”

Daune Wariyamo stood transfixed, as if she couldn’t believe all of her secrets had yielded their rotten fruit on the same day. Around the room, officials and guards stood with mouths agape, barely daring to breathe.

“I wondered for years, Mother, why a woman so ambitious wouldn’t want me to have anything to do with Prince Solon. It’s because you were afraid he was my brother. You were afraid that your whoring would lead me, innocently, to an incestuous bed. Apparently your sense of honor is only diseased rather than nonexistent.”

Tears were rolling down Daune’s cheeks. “Kaede, I was young. He said he loved me.”