AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Though they often complained about those in power, Aurelius never hid those complaints away. He would call the pompous, pompous; the ignorant, ignorant. If someone slighted him, he would ruin them. If someone failed to pay him respect, he would sit away in his opulent apartment with his syrinx pipes, contemplating his revenge. He didn’t just fantasize about it. He didn’t just keep it locked away in his head.
Unlike me...
“Don’t worry,” Aurelius said on his return, “he won’t be treating you like that again.”
“Thank you, Aurie. But you didn’t have to—”
“Darling, please. Nothing is too good for my cousin. Now, what did I miss?”
“You mean apart from the entire ceremony? Only about a dozen dirges.”
“How gloomy, invoking Telos at a time like this? You’d think this was a funeral or something.”
“Shocking,” said Teigra.
The flippancy of her own voice made her chest sink—heavy with the betrayal to her aunt’s memory. But it didn’t matter. Aurelius received more than enough judgment and mockery and sermons on piety from everyone else in this city.
He wouldn’t receive that judgment from Teigra as well.
Aurelius had always been there for her. And she would always be there for him. Even if that meant going against her own wishes and instincts.
She forced a playful smile to her face. “It’s almost as bad as Low Priest Nihal Sacredos missing the start of the procession and having to sneak in through a side door.”
Aurelius appeared to ignore her, craning his neck past a few patrician minotaurs, dark fur the color of pinecones and with their thick togas scented of same. The giant creatures were casually chatting senate politics, one running his fingers through a loose tousle of wiry red hair, the other catching the firelight across her waxed horns with every tilt of her head. They talked of opportunities for exceptional students from the other polities to study music in the shaded woods of Plasios, or history and religion in the ancient halls of Zateniza, or pottery with the finest clay deposits down in Camena, or sculpture in the marble-rich workshops of Katharo, where most of the minotaurs originated.
Both of their snouts were pierced with thick rings of gold—the metalwork seemingly identical, but with each braid spinning a story of lineage and family and status for those who knew how to read them.
She’d read that other polities in Dynosia treated their nonhumans as inferior. Some, like the giants of Ardora, were apparently treated more like farm animals than true citizens.
Though the city hadn’t always been kind to her, Teigra was proud that Mestibes wasn’t like that. Here, minotaurs and even a few sphynx from the Azure Eye towered freely over the rest of the crowd. A few extremely well-dressed centaurs marched proudly through the press, fending off those shameful enough to try to use the occasion to get an inked hoofprint on parchment.
Aurelius was standing on tiptoes now, but it wasn’t the minotaur’s conversation that was engaging him. Instead, he was staring at an unusual patch of attendees up front near the dais—their strange dress only amplified by the sea of white togas around them.
“Nihal Sacredos?” Teigra repeated with a poke of her cousin’s ribs. “I can’t imagine what could have delayed him so!”
“Yes, yes. Hal is a big boy.”
“Very big from what you’ve said.”
“Exactly, cousin. A very big boy. And he is perfectly capable of making his own terrible decisions. Now lay off the guilt trip, you are starting to sound like your mother.” Teigra gave him an exaggerated look of shock, which Aurelius returned. “Now, unless I am mistaken, we have some foreign dignitaries in?”
“Oh yes. From all across the country. It seems that Urosina kept many friends, despite your dislike for her.”
Teigra caught the slight edge of bitterness in her voice, and hurriedly pushed it away.
Aurelius gave a throaty grumble. “It was she who disliked me, Tiggy.”
“That isn’t true! You know Aunty loved you. She just disapproved of some of your choices.”
“It’s the same thing. You saw the way she carried on whenever she was back in town—calling me a confirmed bachelor with her nose in the air. I don’t need someone trying to change me. I possess the rare trait in this city of not actually hating myself.”
Teigra nodded. It was truer than he knew. “Well, anyway, the ones in the white cloaks and bronze armor are some of the more powerful warlords from Rinath. The Commanders of Fort Amtra and Limnaki, I think.”
“Really? They have some nerve showing up here.”
“They’re claiming no knowledge of the murder. They’re blaming some breakaway faction up near the Clawfeather Cliffs. You know how it is—Rinath is barely a true polity, more a collection of warring tribes.”
“Interesting,” he said, unconvincingly.
