“May I be blunt?” she asked.
“By all means,” said Josiri.
“That I am free, let alone that I sit at this table, comes as a direct result of your actions last year. Others present were spared from the gallows by those same deeds.”
With an effort, Josiri kept a motionless expression. Tressian history was a fluid thing, sculpted by those in power. Josiri hadn’t fought for the Republic, but for friends. For Malachi, and for… A name surfaced. One he strove to forget just as diligently as the Council’s historians strove to erase Ebigail Kiradin from history, lest another find inspiration in her treason.
Josiri scarcely recognised the official record of that day. It placed him in the forefront of the battle that had wrested supreme power from Ebigail Kiradin’s grasp. His own memory recalled a more modest contribution. But Malachi had insisted. Easier to sell the idea of ending the Southshires’ occupation if its most notorious son was known to have redeemed himself.
And it had worked. At Josiri’s inauguration, the Grand Council had cheered him as one of their own. Him. The son of Katya the Traitor. He’d have laughed, but for a heart heavy with grief for a sister slain and a home burnt to ashes. He’d saved his enemies, but failed those who’d trusted him. Erashel’s use of the ducal honorific was a deliberate barb to remind him of that, even if she didn’t know the whole truth. The fate of Eskavord and its dukedom was one painstakingly concealed. Or at least the cause. The fate was known by all. A vibrant town become a haunted and forbidden place.
“Too much is made of that,” he said. “Others fought far harder than I.”
“The herald who greeted me at the docks didn’t believe so. There was I, fresh off the ship in a borrowed dress – because I could hardly be presented to the Grand Council in a farmer’s rags, could I? Do you know what he asked me? Was it true that my father had fought beside the great Josiri Trelan?” She laughed without humour. “I said that your mother had gotten him killed at Zanya. He didn’t know how to reply. Lessons in etiquette have their limits.”
“I am not my mother,” Josiri bit out.
“Are you not? You attend council only when it suits you. You otherwise embroil yourself in matters better left to others. Settling guild disputes. Interfering in constabulary business. And now this morning, you provoke the Crowmarket? That sounds very like Katya Trelan.”
“If I hadn’t, more of our people would be dead.”
A little of the fire slipped from Erashel’s eyes. “I know. But this isn’t about individuals. We can’t afford it to be. The Crowmarket’s actions are reprehensible…”
Lord Lamirov nodded sagely. “Indeed.”
“… but this council must be seen to act as one. United. The Grand Council worries at what you might do next. Yesterday, they loved you. Today they tolerate you. What comes tomorrow? How long before they see only an upstart southwealder to be put in his place? Your mother’s recklessness nearly destroyed our people. Don’t repeat her mistakes.”
Josiri opened his mouth but found no voice with which to offer reply. Erashel’s onslaught, precise and considered where Lord Lamirov had offered only hollow cleverness, strayed close to uncomfortable truths. If Lamirov was Jack, all directionless, self-satisfied malice, then Erashel was the Raven. Remorseless, methodical… and above all resentful for a life spent in shadow, toiling to another’s purpose.
Strange to think of Jack and the Raven embracing shared purpose – as embodiments of life and death, no two could be more different – but no stranger than finding accord between the landed and wealthy Lamirov family and the near-destitute daughter of Beral. A shared enemy made common cause faster than friendship.
Again, Josiri heard Ebigail Kiradin’s disdainful laughter, this time directed at him.
Still an outsider, even now.
“What would you have had me do?” he asked softly.
“No one doubts your intentions, Josiri,” Erashel replied. “But if our people are to have any chance at all of regaining their place in the Republic, they need you and I to set an example. To respect how things are done, and in so doing prove we are not our parents.”
Josiri didn’t miss the subtle shift in language that bound them back to common purpose. They need us. We are not our parents. Erashel was far better at this, and Josiri wondered how she’d honed the knack while tilling crops on Selann. Rhetoric and wheat fields made for an unlikely combination. Or perhaps it was simply that the father she so plainly disdained had done a better job of preparing her for the future than she’d likely admit.
Maybe it would be better to back down. Mend bridges. “What if I can’t do that?”
A chair’s creak marked Lord Lamirov rejoining the fray. “If the last year has proven nothing else, it is that a place on this council is no longer a birthright, but a privilege.” He gestured to the empty chair. “We have two worthy candidates for the one seat that remains. If you were to step down, it would save us all a difficult choice.”
“Would it indeed?” asked Josiri.
The twitch of Erashel’s left eyelid might have suggested she’d not intended matters to escalate as they had, but could equally have been a tell-tale of satisfaction. Malachi looked pensive. Were the matter set to a vote, he could of course overrule the result – the position and power of First Councillor had been created specifically to serve as a brake on infighting – but doing so would undercut the neutrality he strove to present. As for the others, conspicuously silent as they’d been throughout the exchange…?
Lady Messela Akadra sat apart as she always did, eyes downcast and shoulders drawn in – the epitome of one seeking to draw no attention. A vain hope, for she’d have been beautiful if only she didn’t always look so worried. As it was, the silver ribbons plaited into her black hair did little to shake the impression of a woman mourning a lost husband – if one rather too young to be so beset, as indeed she was not. At seventeen years old, she’d barely come of age when the family seat had fallen vacant following her uncle’s disappearance and her cousin’s self-imposed exile. No one – least of all Messela herself – had expected the responsibility to fall as it had. And so she attended every meeting, hearing everything but saying nothing. The goddess Endala, too cowed by her peers to wield her influence, save in secret ways?
Lord Evarn Marest and Lady Rika Tarev were scarcely better prospects for support.
The Tarev family owned dozens of farms across the Marcher Lands. Farms whose workforce – and therefore whose profits – had received a dolorous blow since the Settlement Decree. By nature distant and calculating, Rika was a force for good or ill as the mood took her, and ill more often than not. Much like Ashana, Goddess of Evermoon and patron of the Hadari Empire.
As for Lord Marest, though an heir by adoption rather than blood, he’d famously inherited his great aunt’s piety along with her estate and council seat – though rumour suggested that piety arose more to meet the terms of said inheritance than out of any great love for Lumestra. So like cruel Tzal of myth, who never did anything for anyone save himself.
That left one other.
“Bugger that.”
The speaker wasn’t so much sat in his chair as draped across it, a wiry, blond man taking his ease and very much bored to be doing so. In his way, he was as much an outsider as Josiri, first for his tan skin, which belonged more to the eastern borderlands than to the paler flesh common in the city, and second for his dress. Council was a place for respectable attire, not chamfered plate, steel circlet and a knight’s surcoat of hunter’s green. To Josiri’s knowledge, no one had broached the topic with Stantin Izack, Master of the Knights Essamere. He suspected no one ever would. No godly mantle suited Izack better than that of Astor, the bellicose and plainspoken Forge-God.