The Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus(31)

Relad shook his head as if reading my mind. “You can’t protect the things you love, Cousin—not forever. Not completely. Your only real defense is not to love in the first place.”

I frowned. “That’s impossible.” How could any human being live like that?

He smiled, and it made me shiver. “Well. Good luck, then.”

He beckoned to the women. Both of them rose from their places and came over to his couch, awaiting his next command. That was when I noticed: both were tall, patrician, beautiful in that flat, angular Amn way, and sable-haired. They did not look much like Scimina, but the similarity was undeniable.

Relad gazed at them with such bitterness that for a moment, I felt pity. I wondered whom he had loved and lost. And I wondered when I had decided that Relad was as useless to me as I was to him. Better to struggle alone than rely on this empty shell of a man.

“Thank you, Cousin,” I replied, and inclined my head. Then I left him to his fantasies.

On my way back to my room, I stopped at T’vril’s office and returned the ceramic flask. T’vril put it away without a word.





9


Memories


THERE IS A SICKNESS CALLED the Walking Death. The disease causes tremors, terrible fever, unconsciousness, and in its final stages a peculiar kind of manic behavior. The victim is compelled to rise from the sickbed and walk—walk anywhere, even back and forth in the confines of a room. Walk, while the fever grows so great that the victim’s skin cracks and bleeds; walk while the brain dies. And then walk a little more.

There have been many outbreaks of the Walking Death over the centuries. When the disease first appeared, thousands died because no one understood how it spread. The walking, you see. Unimpeded, the infected always walk to wherever healthy people can be found. They shed their blood and die there, and thus the sickness is passed on. Now we are wise. Now we build a wall around any place the Death has touched, and we close our hearts to the cries of the healthy trapped within. If they are still alive a few weeks later, we let them out. Survival is not unheard of. We are not cruel.

It escapes no one’s notice that the Death afflicts only the laboring classes. Priests, nobles, scholars, wealthy merchants… it is more than that they have guards and the resources to quarantine themselves in their citadels and temples. In the early years there were no quarantines, and they still did not die. Unless they rose recently from the lower classes themselves, the wealthy and powerful are immune.

Of course such a plague is nothing natural.

When the Death came to Darr a little while before I was born, no one expected my father to catch it. We were minor nobility, but still nobility. But my paternal grandfather had been a commoner as Darre reckon it—a handsome hunter who caught my grandmother’s eye. That was enough for the disease, apparently.

Still… my father survived.

I will remember later why this is relevant.


That night as I readied myself for bed, I came out of the bath to find Sieh eating my dinner and reading one of the books I’d brought from Darr. The dinner I did not mind. The book was another matter.

“I like this,” Sieh said, throwing me a vague wave by way of greeting. He never lifted his eyes from the book. “I’ve never read Darre poetry. It’s strange—from talking with you I’d thought all Darre were straightforward. But this: every line is full of misdirection. Whoever wrote this thinks in circles.”

I sat down on the bed to brush my hair. “It’s considered courteous to ask before invading others’ privacy.”

He didn’t put the book down, though he did close it. “I’ve offended you.” There was a contemplative look on his face. “How did I do that?”

“The poet was my father.”

His face registered surprise. “He’s a fine poet. Why does it bother you to have others read his work?”

“Because it’s mine.” He had been dead a decade—a hunting accident, such a typically male way to die—and still it hurt to think of him. I lowered the brush, looking down at the dark curls caught in the bristles. Amn curls, like my Amn eyes. I wondered, sometimes, whether my father had thought me ugly, as so many Darre did. If he had, would it have been because of my Amn features—or because I did not look more Amn, like my mother?

Sieh gazed at me for a long moment. “I meant no offense.” And he got up and replaced the book on my small shelf.

I felt something in me relax, though I resumed brushing to cover it. “I’m surprised you care,” I said. “Mortals die all the time. You must grow tired of dancing around our grief.”

Sieh smiled. “My mother is dead, too.”