Juliet McKenna - Western Shore

'Father.' Sirket stepped forward. 'I don't know—'

'I'm sorry.' Finding himself unable to look his son in the face, Kheda concentrated on nursing the fragile flame. 'Sirket, I am so sorry for everything I've put you through, you and your brothers and sisters. I had to save Daish, for all of you. Can you believe me when I tell you I couldn't see any other way of doing that?'

Could I have seen some other path if I hadn 't been blinded by staring at portents and omens?

'You were talking to my mother just now.' Sirket's voice was raw. 'Were you as cruel to her as the last time you met?'

'We've made —' satisfied the lamp was well alight, Kheda blew out the burning spill '- a truce, if not our peace.'

'She's tired and she's worried.' Sirket's own voice shook with anxiety. 'You may as well know sooner rather than later. The Daish pearl harvest has failed again.'

'No!' Kheda stared at his son, aghast.

'Do you know what the travelling seers are saying?' the youth said roughly. 'I'm sure you can guess. It seems my rule is proving inauspicious. They're not giving up on me just yet, though. Evidently this new family of yours is

giving some of them ideas. Plenty of soothsayers are seeing unmistakable signs that I should be looking for a wife, to bring a new beginning to the Daish domain.' He drew a long, shaking breath before going on, his words tumbling over each other in an unstoppable torrent. 'They don't care that would deprive me of my mothers as well as my father, never mind the grief that would bring Mesil and Dau, never mind we'd see the littlest ones taken from us, to wherever Janne and Rekha and Sain chose to go. How will the middling ones ever forgive me if my marriage means that Sain must leave them all alone, handing them over to some stranger who's probably only married me for power and status and will soon find she's made a startlingly bad bargain?'

He broke off and looked abruptly away, composing himself with visible effort. Then he glared at Kheda, accusing. 'How is the domain supposed to flourish if Janne and Rekha aren't managing the trade? It wasn't supposed to be this way, father. I should be able to wed at my leisure, and learn to rule by watching your example, just as my wife should learn what will be asked of her by travelling with your ladies. What am I supposed to do?'

'Have more faith in the people of Daish, for a start.' Seeing the gleam of tears in Sirket's eyes, green as his own, Kheda felt his throat tighten. 'They will trust you to make the right choices, over when and how you marry, whatever the soothsayers are muttering into their beards. Ruling is difficult. I always told you that. When you next make your progress around the domain, have Telouet take the spokesmen of a few key villages aside, to point out how Daish trade would suffer if you were to marry. You're hardly likely to find a wife the equal of Janne or Rekha.'

'You always told me to look for the signs and portents that would guide me.' Sirket scrubbed angrily at

his eyes with the back of one hand. 'You never foresaw this.'

'No.' Kheda looked steadily back at the young man. 'Just as no one foresaw my father's death in the collapse of his own observatory tower, least of all himself. I wasn't that much older than you when I had to learn to rule alone without his guidance. Plenty of seers were claiming that his fate was a deadly omen for Daish, within our own waters and in neighbouring domains. I was lucky no one saw some portent encouraging them to invade us.'

There are probably some even now who are harking back to that catastrophe as the start of all these misfortunes. At least now I'm no longer tempted to agree with them.

'That was different,' snapped Sirket. 'You were already married to my mother for one thing.'

'The right wife is a great comfort in such difficult times,' Kheda agreed. 'The wrong one would be worse than no wife at all. Don't rush into anything because that's what you think the people want. Take your time and make your choice when the time is right for you. See what me and your mothers got right in our marriages, and see where we went wrong. Try not to make the same mistakes,' he added ruefully.

Try not to find yourself married to a widow half your age because you feel guilty for the death of her husband and it's the only way you can protect her.

'If I marry, Janne and Rekha and Sain must leave—' Sirket protested.

'Why?' interrupted Kheda.

'Why?' Sirket stared at him. 'Custom—'

'Custom says that you're the warlord, Sirket, and that means the power of life and death and everything up to that in Daish is yours to use as you see fit.' Kheda cut the youth's words off with a sideways sweep of his hand. 'Custom is for customary times. There's nothing usual

about the days we're living through. You said yourself that no one predicted any of these catastrophes. If you choose to marry, for the sake of the domain or for love or for something in between, ask Janne, Rekha and Sain to stay. If you refuse to deprive your sisters and brothers of their mothers' love and support, who's to gainsay you?'

'What—' Sirket's mouth hung open for a moment.

The lamplight in the hallway enclosed them, the stairwell and the open arches to the halls on either side black voids framed by vines painted on the plastered stone work.

Kheda made an abrupt decision. 'I need you to hold Daish securely, my son. I need you to be Chazen's ally. I need you to be the warlord I raised you to be, the man I have always known you would become.' Kheda rubbed a hand over his beard. 'I have to go on another journey, alone. I'm glad of this chance to tell you ahead of anyone else, even Itrac. I'm leaving here, tomorrow or someday soon. I don't know quite when I'll return but hopefully I won't be away for too long.'

'You're leaving again?' cried Sirket. 'Why?'

'The first time I left you, I was looking for some means to fight the wild men who brought such destruction out of the southern ocean. I can't tell you the whole truth of what I found and what I did but I won't tell you any lies.' Kheda looked steadily at his son. 'I came back with the means to kill their wizards and it wasn't just that blend of narcotics to stifle their magic that I showed you and Redigal and Ritsem. It was what gave me the means to fight the dragons when they came last year. It's what has helped me learn why the wild men came here. They came to wait for the dragon. That's why their wizards were fighting among themselves, to see who would be left, who would be strong enough to harness the evil of the dragon's magic for his own fell purposes.'

'You killed the dragons.' Sirket's emerald eyes were rimmed with white. 'Both of them.'

'I cannot be certain another one won't come flying out of the open ocean.' Kheda's face was as grim as his words. 'There are hints that we could see another wave of wild men come ahead of another such beast, driven by the same lust for the unbounded power of magic. I don't think Chazen's fragile prosperity will persuade the domain's people to stay and face such disaster again. If Daish confidence is balanced on the knife edge you tell me it is, such a calamity will throw all its islands into chaos. I won't stand idly by and let that happen, Sirket. There's a chance I can learn whether this danger truly threatens to return to plague Chazen and Daish and all the other domains of these southern reaches. Or if we can look to a future free from such fear.'

'And you can only do this by going away on your own again?' Sirket's incredulous words echoed back from the white walls washed with golden lamplight and floated away into the darkness beyond the empty doorways.

'I won't be wholly alone.' His hands behind his back, Kheda clenched his fists. 'But don't ask me who I'm going with.'

'My mother Janne shared certain suspicions about that dead slave of yours,' said Sirket slowly. 'Was she right?'