Page 43 of The Half King
“All right,” she said, “but if the priests thought it was unnecessary to question me, doesn’t it make you wonder who else they failed to investigate?”
Daerick smiled at her like a proud parent. “Now you’re thinking like a Calatris who no longer believes in the Silent Soul.”
“You taught me well,” she told him.
Kian sat on the arm of the sofa and exhaled a bitter laugh. “Padron lied to me. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”
“But how can any priest lie to you?” Cerise asked. “They’re compelled to obey you.”
“To obey my direct commands,” Kian said. “I can’t control the way their minds work. I can’t compel them to respect me or to support my rule. Even if I order them to speak only the truth, they can choose words that are misleading. Trust me, my lady of the temple. The priests are dutiful to me in body but not in spirit. All it takes for them to disobey me is creativity, and they have it.”
Cerise instinctively checked over both shoulders before she asked her next question. “Coulda priest have set the fire?” she whispered. “Or turned the panther loose?”
Kian shook his head. “The first order I give every priest is to take no action that could result in my harm. The actual command is longer than that. I worded it in a way to eliminate loopholes. They can’t hurt me directly. I made sure of it.”
So if the priests weren’t trying to kill Kian, then who was? Cerise couldn’t think of any group that stood to gain more from Kian’s death than the priests who resented their bond of service to him. “Who else benefits?”
“Anyone who wants my throne,” Kian said. “Take your pick.”
But an empty throne would lead to war, and Cerise refused to believe that any of the noble houses wanted that, not even the Petros dynasty. A firstborn Petros would certainly enjoy the bloody battles, but their victory wouldn’t win them control of the priests. At least she didn’t think so. The Mortara dynasty had used their dominion over the priests to unify the four lands and create the Allied Realm. Without magic, the Petros dynasty would have to use their own troops to hold the realm together and to enforce peace. The cost, both in coin and in lives, would be more than the throne was worth.
“What’s the point of killing you and stealing your throne if the new monarch won’t have command over the priests?” she asked.
“Who says they won’t?” Kian countered. “We don’t know what would happen, because we have no idea why they’re bound to me in the first place.”
Daerick made a noise of disagreement. “I think the priests have an idea. They must believe that your death will set them free. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be making a play for the throne.”
“What?” Cerise asked. “What play?”
“Kian knows,” Daerick said, peering somberly at the king.
“He’s referring to the recent deaths in Calatris,” Kian told her. “General Petros thinks the murders were facilitated by the Order to eliminate competition for my throne.”
“What evidence does he have of that?” Cerise asked.
“It’s circumstantial,” Daerick said. “The heads of the two most powerful families in Calatris were summoned by the Order to attend a meeting, supposedly to discuss temple taxes or some such. But when the men arrived for the meeting, they found no one there…except for an assassin who just so happened to be waiting for them. The priests arrived too late to stop the killings. They claimed a wheel had broken on their carriage.”
“A wheel that any priest could mend with magic,” Cerise murmured. If the story was true, then General Petros was right. The priests had been complicit. “I was there when General Petros confronted Father Padron about the deaths.”
“Oh?” Daerick asked with a lifted brow. “And did Father Padron apologize on behalf of his men? Did he happily agree to control the priests who follow his every whim and worship him like he’s a god?”
“No,” she said. Father Padron had paralyzed the general in a show of dominance.
Cerise chewed on the inside of her cheek. She absently stroked Blue’s head and remembered what Kian had told her when they first met.Youwillfind evil here, in the most unexpected places. By the time the shadows consume me and I dissolve into nothing, you’ll wish you could forget all the things the temple has hidden from you.
His prediction had already come true. She wished she couldn’t believe that the Order coveted the throne, because it upended everything she had known about the world. But she couldn’t ignore what she had seen of the Order since she’d come here. Was that what the Reverend Mother had been trying to tell her? She knew there had to besomepriests who were loyal to the goddess. But what were their numbers? Were they willing to stand against their brothers? No second-born given in service to the temple had been raised to question the Order’s teachings, only to follow them.
One thing was certain: any person, priest or otherwise, with unchecked power on the throne would be a nightmare.
“Your Majesty,” Cerise said. “I need to ask you another uncomfortable question.”
Kian swept a permissive hand. “If you must.”
“Is Lady Champlain carrying your heir?”
Kian parted his lips, momentarily at a loss for words. “No. And that information is not to leave this room. Do you understand?”
Cerise nodded. She could see why he would want the Order to fear the possibility of having a new commander. “It seems to me the only way to stop a priest from taking the throne is to keep you on it—and to make sure your bloodline continues. And to do that, we have to put all of our focus on breaking the curse before it takes you. We have to make it our only goal. Because if we fail and the Order has no master…”
