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23
~
The room was washed white, the near-circular moon just a few days past bronze. It was the time of the month the figure enjoyed most. The time of the month they felt most in control.
The room itself was grand, as befitted their immense stature in the kingdom of passion and fertility. Beyond the walls of the room were almost a hundred thousand people in the city, swirling with strengths and weaknesses, with passions and proclivities.
And the figure could feel them all, even now. To them, every person’s gifts sparkled like distant stars, twinkling in desperate hopes of being noticed. Of being liberated. Of yearning for someone who truly deserved them.
And then, amongst all that delicious glint, right at the edge of recognition, came something entirely unexpected. Something that gleamed new and bright. Something that commanded the stage of the figure’s observation.
And right at the core of that brilliance, hidden within the corona of its light, was another glimmer still. A tiny seed waiting to grow into the tallest of twisting trees.
The figure smiled, its teeth glinting in the celestial shine. When it spoke, its voice was as soft as the spring that had just passed. As warm as the summer that lay ahead.
“Welcome to Ardora, Aurelius Savair.”
24
AURELIUS
Ardora was nothing like Mestibes.
In fact, there was only one word that came to mind as they entered the ramshackle city, nestled at the crown of an enormous, blue-twinkling bay.
Chaos.
Half-naked children chased after wild dogs and stray cats. At all angles, horses dug deeper grooves through the rich, red mud of the unpaved streets. Rough-skinned men in red uniforms and young women in dark green tunics elbowed each other around hissing charcoal grills, billowing smoke laced with lemon and lamb fat. On two separate occasions the carpentum was diverted into winding side streets to avoid a dispute between carts pulled by colossal, one-eyed giants, easily double his height and as broad as Aurelius was tall. Those massive creatures mulled around the carts, overladen with vegetables and freshly slaughtered meats, with their human owners dismounted in the middle of the road, hurling the vilest insults Aurelius had ever heard. And rather than trying to break up the uncivilized display, passersby were forming their own little mobs, arguing with extravagant gestures about which driver was clearly in the right.
It seemed that in every clanging, shouting, singing, cackling direction was a scene that would never occur in Mestibes.
And a smell that would never occur in Mestibes, he thought, ducking his nose beneath the hem of his tunic.
It was overwhelming. It was maddening.
Tiggy didn’t seem to share his fascination, however. All morning, she had sat morosely in her seat, grunting perfunctory agreement when he’d pointed out the sights, trying to get her into the excitement of their new home.
The attack must have really messed her up.
He felt the smallest hint of regret for the part he played in that.
Just on midday, they finally clattered through the gates of the embassy compound—deep in the center of the city, beyond the parks full of green-tunicked families, the acres of grass and trees as big as whole suburbs of Mestibes, past extensive barracks where every man, woman, and steed seemed to be uniformed in blood-red.
He’d kept a lookout in those soldierly suburbs in case he caught a surreptitious glimpse of Calix. He was unsurprised, though a little disappointed, that he didn’t.
The U-shaped, two-story embassy was large and unpainted, the raw, clay bricks on full display and supported with wood of all things. The courtyard it surrounded was as green as the countryside: edged with towering sword lilies, a grand pomegranate tree in the middle, and blanketed everywhere with fluffy grass.
Waiting outside the main doorway was someone who stood in contrast to all this easy vibrancy.
The name “High Envoy Ms. Ramuna Securia” might have conjured a certain image among people who had never met her. One of hunched malevolence and deep, life-worn grooves across her face. But Aurelius knew the Securia bloodline far too well to fall for that stereotype, and was not shocked to find someone entirely different.
She was older, yes, fifty perhaps, but as far from wizened as someone that age could be. Her bright-yellow stola hung confidently from slender shoulders, her back straight and her waist narrow. Her face bore the lightest wrinkles yet retained a firmness, and was set against long, straight hair of dark ash, swept back behind her ears and flecked with gray.
She was as stunning as she was striking. She could have walked into any training school for young priests or artists or philosophers and still turned heads and hardened groins. She had the sharp, aristocratic, and womanly bearing that probably made the baby-boy senators want to present their asses for a good smacking.
And her eyes had the menacing focus of a cat upon a wayward sparrow.
He had wrangled with the middle child of her house before—Cornel Securia, senator and chief designer at the family’s famous glassworks. He was a coldhearted son of a bitch. The sort who, even in laughter, looked as if he were wishing some horrid curse.
