Page 58 of The Ragpicker King
“Are you all right, Lin?” Mariam said. “You seem troubled.”
“I had a dream two nights ago. A bad one. It was so vivid.” Lin recounted the substance of her dream to Mariam, though she did not mention that the words she’d heard the man in her dream speak had also been said to her by the King in the tower.
“He burned everything he touched?” Mariam said curiously when Lin was done. “I think I know why you had that dream. It’s one of the stories from that book of yours. The one you lent me.”
Lin frowned. “Which story?”
“I wish I had the book with me. It was one of the Sorcerer-Kings.” Mariam lowered her voice. “The others called him the Phoenix King because he harnessed the power of fire. He cursed his enemies so that everything they touched would burn away. All sorts of odd things we read turn up in our dreams, Lin.”
“Yes,” Lin said slowly. “In fact, something a patient said to me turned up in my dream. It was Malgasi, I think.Hollazekyer di niellem pu nag.”
“What an odd thing to say.” Mariam looked puzzled. “It’s Malgasi, yes. It means ‘They are trying to prevent me from becoming what I am.’”
Before Lin could reply, she was interrupted by a familiar hissing voice.
“Goddess,” said Oren Kandel, his dark eyebrows beetling. “Pardon me for interrupting. There is an angry woman at the gates, looking for you.”
“An angry woman? Did you get her name?”A patient?Lin wondered.
“No.” Oren looked at her haughtily. Ofcoursehe hadn’t gotten a name. “I believe she is from Geumjoseon.”
Ji-An?Lin thought. She didn’t have any current patients from Geumjoseon, so who else could it be? But wasn’t Ji-An supposed to be in the Arena today, with Kel and the others?
Had something gone terribly wrong? Bidding a quick farewell to Mariam, Lin hurried from the Kathot. She thought she could feel someone watching her as she went. Aron Benjudah, most likely, but when she turned to look back over her shoulder, he seemed engaged in the business of judgment, and as utterly unaware of her as if she had been a passing moth.
“Here we are,” Conor said. He was sitting back against the cushions piled on the bench in the royal box, a half-full wineglass in hand. “Like old times. Before I became, you know.Responsible.”
His tone was light, but Kel wondered if there was a sadness underneath it. It was hard to tell with Conor. He had always been able to retreat from unpleasant realities—into drink, into courtesans, into games of chance or indoor archery. Now that he was no longer allowing himself such strategic retreats, hard truth seemed to sink in at unpredictable times.
“You seem to have taken to those responsibilities,” said Kel. He tried to force himself to focus on Conor—though it should not be a matter of force. Conor should be the center of all his thoughts. But his mind kept returning to Merren and Ji-An and Jerrod, and their broken plans. “I think far more than you imagined you would, at first.”
At first.Kel knew what had brought on the great change in Conor, even if no one else did. He remembered the moment, outside the Gallery full of the dead, when Conor had taken hold of him as if he needed Kel to keep him standing upright. How he had whispered, every word edged in grief:I went behind their backs out of vanity and pride, and now that pride is paid for in other people’s blood. This—this is my mess. Mine to clean up.
“Out of necessity,” Conor said now, twirling the narrow stem of the wineglass between his long fingers. “Not out of choice. I wonder if the fact that it is a necessity limits how good I can ever be at it.”
“Con. Everyone who takes on the responsibility of ruling does it out of some kind of necessity.”
Conor raised his eyes to Kel’s. They were ringed with kohl today, which made them look larger. More as they had when he was a boy—when he and Kel had been boys together, and Kel had dreamed of seeing as those gray eyes saw.
“Most people would not listen to my complaining sympathetically, Kellian,” he said. “I am, after all, regretting the responsibilities that power confers. Look how quickly Artal Gremont came running back to Castellane once he knew the power of the Charter was within his grasp.”
It was painful to hear Gremont’s name. But before Kel could say anything, a grinding sound came from the center of the Arena. The Empire’s system of hydraulics and pulleys still functioned, tended to by a team of engineers. Two slabs of earth drew back, revealing a watery pit below.
Savagely, Kel said, “Gremont is the sort who wants power for the worst reasons. Antonetta told me he plans to exercise his right of First Night when they marry. I suppose you know—?”
“I know,” Conor said quietly.
Kel flung himself down on the bench beside Conor. “Then why don’t you put a stop to it?”
“You think a man like Gremont will be angry with me if I tell him no,” said Conor, “but you do not understand his mind. He will be angry with Antonetta. He will take that anger out on her.”
“Antonetta said she was not worried he would harm her,” Kel said, though he knew he had said too much as soon as the words left his mouth.
Conor only lifted an eyebrow slightly. “He will not hurt her physically—she is a noblewoman of the Hill, and they are not yet married. He would be a fool to do such a thing. But there are otherways to harm. He could plan a lifetime of humiliations and cruelties we might never see.” He looked into his wineglass. “Better to let him have that one show of power. You understand? It is not possession of her body he wants. It is power, and wielding it in front of others.”
“How do you know that?”
“I understand him,” said Conor, his voice sharp, but the cutting blade was turned inward, against himself.
