Only Rhannon Matters
Six hours later, dressed in a heavy silk mourning gown that stuck to her skin, a pair of small onyx studs in her ears, and her hair newly braided into a crown atop her head, Sorrow sat alone on the platform in the banqueting hall. Though the places beside her were set, the cutlery and plates polished to a dull sheen, the chairs were empty.
Sitting at the head of the room always made her feel vulnerable, too aware that everyone could see her, too aware of the swathe of space to her right and left, leaving her a target in the centre. Soon, all eyes would turn to her and she would have to lead the prayers for Mael, a prospect that made her skin feel too tight, stretched thin over anxious bones. She knew the words she had to say; stars, everyone in the room knew the words. But it was the first time she’d have to say them. Take that role. It was enough to send her hand reaching for her glass.
The heat in the banqueting hall was a living thing, a hundred candles sucking the air from the room while adding to the summer heat searing the palace outside, and sweat pooled beneath her breasts and trickled down her spine from beneath her hair. When she tried to raise her glass to sip the bitter wine, the dress clung to her, making it almost impossible to move and sending her into palpitations at the feeling of confinement. She fought the fabric, and the seam in her armpit gave way as she forced the cup to her mouth. For a moment she was grimly satisfied she’d managed to ruin another of the hated gowns, until she remembered she’d have to mend it later.
It was horrible, unnatural, to have a feast in almost-silence. Although it was how it had always been for her, she knew from books, and Rasmus, but mostly from some instinct, that it wasn’t right. There ought to be talking to counter the bone-shuddering scrape of knives and forks against plates. There should be music to mask the sounds of chewing and slurping. Laughter. Flirting. Debating. Even fighting. Instead the dining room was embarrassing: a hundred people, all in black, who must surely want to be somewhere – anywhere – else, instead of sitting playing audience to a concert of each other eating.
Across the room Rasmus sat at the consulate’s table, nodding over the bones of the feast with the Rhyllian ambassador, Lincel: the woman Rasmus was officially in Rhannon to aid.
Once, the table had been full of delegates from other lands: representatives from the desert republic of Astria to the east, vast Nyrssea neighbouring Rhylla, Skae with its one thousand islands, and polar Svarta. Sorrow remembered, back when she was a child, when the tall, pale-skinned envoy from the top of the world had given her a sweet that looked like bark, but tasted like salt. She, Irris and Rasmus had taken turns to lick it until it had made them sick and then they’d hidden it in an old vase and forgotten it.
They were long gone now, the other ambassadors, all claiming illness or family problems, returning quietly to their own lands, no replacements ever arriving. With hindsight, Sorrow was glad of it – she couldn’t imagine how they’d have kept the world from knowing about Lamentia had Rhannon been full of foreign diplomats. But at the time she’d missed them: their accents, their customs, and their stories. Just the Rhyllian envoys had remained, bound by the Peace Accords to maintain a diplomatic presence in Rhannon, come what may.
She tried to catch Rasmus’s eye, but he was absorbed in whatever he and Lincel were discussing. A frown drew his brows together, and Sorrow’s expression darkened in response. Rasmus wasn’t made for misery, it didn’t suit him, and she wanted to go over and rub his forehead until the frown vanished and he was himself again. The moment she had the thought she pushed it away. She shouldn’t think like that.
Instead she glanced around, and saw Meeren Vine, sitting on the furthest table with some of his brutes, looking directly at her. Her stomach knotted as she realized he’d been watching her. Waiting, it seemed, because the moment their eyes met he lifted a hunk of meat to his mouth and tore into it, peeling the dry flesh from the bone with his teeth. Sorrow’s stomach turned as she forced her gaze away, reaching for her wine glass. She drained it, not protesting when a server appeared and refilled it.
An odd, deliberate cough drew her attention to the table directly below hers on the dais, where it became apparent Irris had been trying to get her attention. When Sorrow finally looked down, Irris tipped her a swift wink before saying something to her father. Then Charon turned to Sorrow, though his expression was the opposite of his daughter’s: his brown eyes questioning, his mouth turned down at the corners. Worry, she recognized, as guilt tickled her.
She should have gone to him after seeing her father, instead of seething in her rooms. He’d want to know what happened with Harun, and she ought to have told him what she’d done with Balthasar.
Lord Charon Day was in his late fifties, a decade older than her father, though Harun’s drug use had aged him far beyond what nature had done to Charon. He had risen to his role during Reuben’s time, succeeding his own uncle as vice chancellor in the last years of the warlord’s office. Rumour had it Harun had once intended to replace Charon with his own man. But then Charon had jumped into the Archior after Mael, and when he’d been fished out, alive, but with the bones in his legs smashed beyond repair, Harun had told him his position would await him when he’d recovered. For once, he’d kept his word.
She resolved to talk to him after the meal, tell him everything then. Perhaps he could be persuaded to lead the memorial tomorrow…
Almost as soon as she’d thought it, she realized there was more chance of Harun cartwheeling into the hall wearing rainbow-coloured clothes. Charon would insist she took up the mantle. He’d been doing it more and more since her grandmother had died – he’d even handed over the majority of the funeral plans to her. The past four months had been a ceaseless parade of things she had to deal with now – papers to be signed, meetings to attend, protocols to learn – at Charon’s insistence. She hadn’t realized how much her grandmother had protected her from it all. “Irresponsible”, Charon had called it, in a singular show of open criticism when Sorrow revealed she didn’t know how the Rhannish tax system worked. And that was only the tip of the iceberg…
As the feast went on, Sorrow eyelids began to droop, the heat, the quiet and the wine lulling her into a daze, and twice her head fell forward, jerking her back into awareness. She picked at the remains of her food, the meat overcooked and chewy, the bread blackened, designed to bring nothing but base sustenance to the eater. Graces forbid she accidentally enjoyed a meal. Rasmus had told her about the bread at his aunt’s court, fluffy and steaming, the smell alone enough to draw you to kitchens to beg for a little. Stars, what she wouldn’t give just to try it…
The people began to stir, lowering their knives and looking to the dais. Sorrow didn’t notice, lost in her thoughts. It was wrong to wish her father dead, though she’d heard him beg for Death to restore his golden son and take his dark daughter instead. Even so, like her hatred for Mael, sometimes the desire to be rid of her father rose like a snake inside her. But she always tamed it, locking it back in a box inside her mind. She’d have to govern if he was gone. Submit her name, and be elected. Take control of Rhannon… Try somehow to repair the shattered land, and people… Be responsible for it all. The people, the land… All on her.
Suddenly even the thought of Rhyllian bread wasn’t enough to whet her appetite.
“Sorrow?” She was so lost in her thoughts she hadn’t heard Charon approach. He sat in his wheeled chair, looking up at her, the worried expression returned to his face. “I think it’s time, Sorrow. It’s getting late.”
Sorrow dipped her head guiltily, the motion buying her a second to recall herself. From the corner of her eye she saw Charon shake his head as he turned his chair abruptly and wheeled back to his table. When she looked up Rasmus’s eyes were gleaming, not with tears but amusement at her distraction. She looked away, rising to her feet, her hands clasped before her.
“My father wanted very much to be with you tonight,” she lied, her voice deadened by the endless drapes. “But this night, of all nights, is hard for him. To remember that eighteen years ago, Mael still walked among us, is unbearable for him. For us all. This land has lost much, and is poorer for it. If you would pray with me now.”
She paused to allow them time to push away from their tables, for those who were able to kneel on the stone floor, heads bent, hands clasped before them. “Our beloved Grace of Death and Rebirth, we beseech you today to care for Mael, our dearest son.”
The speech was a modified version of the one her father, and later her grandmother, used to give, and the words were scored across her brain, and that of everyone there, she could see them now, their lips moving as they mouthed along with her. A woman sitting at the Jedenvat table had covered her face with gloved hands, her chin lowered to her chest, praying.
“… and we pray that one day soon we will be reunited with him in the kingdom of—”
Before Sorrow could finish a scream rent the air, and everyone turned to the sound.
It was the praying woman, head still bent, clutching at the hematite beads around her neck, as though they were the cause of her malady.
Everyone around the woman recoiled suddenly, scrambling over benches to get away from her. She turned towards Sorrow, her hands outstretched as though pleading. Her hands were covered in blood. And her eyes … her eyes…
The woman’s eyes were sliding down her face, like the albumen of an egg, blood and pinkish fluid coating her cheeks. Her screams were now silent, her mouth gaping as she continued to tear at her necklace.
Fear wrapped icy fingers around Sorrow’s heart as she vaulted over the table, running towards the woman. What was this? Some disease?
But no, as Sorrow got closer she saw the redness around the woman’s nose, like it had been around her father’s. She saw the small vial that she must have dropped. She hadn’t been praying. She’d been taking Lamentia. Inhaling it, as Harun had. And it had done this…
The necklace broke, sending dozens of small, shining dark beads to the ground, the sound like hailstones against the tiles.
“Call a physician.” Sorrow’s voice was shrill with fear. “Someone do something!” For a moment, no one moved, then two of the guard stepped forward, their faces grey as they edged towards her.
The woman saved them the need to aid her. She took a great gasp that sent those who’d been nearest her tumbling even further back and then she slumped to the floor, spasming briefly before falling unnaturally still.
Immediately everyone in the room froze too, their eyes on the body. Irris stepped forward then, removing the cape from around her shoulders and placing it tenderly over the woman’s head. Her movement broke the spell, and Sorrow heard someone begin to sob.
“Return to your lodgings.” Charon took charge as Sorrow stared at the now-covered body. “Add your prayers for –” Charon paused, searching for the woman’s name “– Alyssa’s soul to those for Mael’s. Pray for them both.”
Alyssa. Charon’s words penetrated Sorrow’s stunned horror. Balthasar’s new wife. So he’d dragged her into his addiction with him. And now she was dead.
The court began to leave, but Sorrow couldn’t take her eyes from the covered mound on the floor. She kept seeing Alyssa’s empty eye sockets, the remains of them glistening on her cheeks as she collapsed. Irris moved to her side as the room emptied, leaving the two of them and Charon behind. When Irris slipped an arm around her shoulder, Sorrow leant into her friend’s touch.
Behind her Charon was now giving orders to the guards. “Remove the body to the infirmary. Find her husband.”
“He’s in the cells,” Sorrow said in a low voice, and Charon turned to her sharply. “I found him earlier when I went to see my father.” She paused then, watching the guards lift Alyssa’s ruined body and leave with it, waiting until they were out of earshot before she continued. “He’d … he was under the influence of Lamentia.”
“Balthasar? Or the chancellor?”
“Both. I had Balthasar sent to the cells. I didn’t know what to do with Father.” She immediately imagined Harun as Alyssa had been, tearing at himself, the empty sockets of his eyes as he lay dying in front of his paintings.
Charon took a deep breath, and spoke quietly, mindful of the people still hovering ghoulishly at the door. “Sorrow, this drug is a disease, and we are losing the fraction of control we have on it. We can’t contain this any more, not if people like Balthasar and Alyssa are using it. The Graces know who else might be secretly under its influence.”
“I know…”
“Do you? Sorrow, if the people heard about this, if they knew your father – our chancellor – was in the grip of it… If our neighbours found out how weak we are… Astria and Nyrssea particularly might be inclined to try taking advantage of it. You know that. We can’t coast on your grandfather’s reputation for much longer. Harun is not Reuben Windsword, and frankly we’re lucky we’ve been able to hide it thus far. I fear those days are over. We must act.”
Sorrow couldn’t speak, managing only to nod her head. She couldn’t stop seeing Alyssa… Her hands clawing at her chest, trying to rip her clothes away… Her eyes…
“Father, I don’t think now—” Irris began, but Charon silenced her with a look.
“It has to be now.”
“What has to be now?” Sorrow asked, her voice colourless as glass.
“It’s time to have the chancellor declared unfit to govern and for you to be sworn in, officially, as chancellor presumpt until we can arrange a formal election.”
It was enough to shock her from her torpor. “I can’t. I can’t be the chancellor.”
“We can have the Jedenvat pass an emergency addendum that waives the law in light of extreme circumstances and you being the only heir. We’ll pass something that says you’ll co-preside with the Jedenvat until your twenty-first birthday. You’re eighteen in three days, so the part about residency will be fulfilled.”
“That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean legally. I meant… I can’t…” Sorrow pleaded with Charon. “Charon, I can’t…”
“You have to. Sorrow, you must have known this was coming.”
She shook her head. Despite what Rasmus had said, she hadn’t believed it. Hadn’t wanted to.
Charon continued, his tone deliberately soft. “If it had been your father who died tonight, you’d have to take his place. Sooner or later it will be you anyway. This way, we have a fighting chance at helping him. We can find doctors to treat him – maybe it’s not too late to save his life. If we act now, we have the advantage. Better that than waiting for the chips to fall and then scrambling to pick them up.”
Irris’s arm tightened around Sorrow’s waist.
“I don’t want this,” Sorrow murmured.
“It doesn’t matter what you want; there is no one else,” Charon snapped, before taking a breath. “A woman died before your very eyes tonight. Before the eyes of two Rhyllian representatives and Meeren Vine. If something isn’t done, not only will it keep happening, but it will make the entire country vulnerable. I’ll call the Jedenvat to order. Tomorrow morning, before we leave for the bridge. We’ll vote on it.”
Irris’s arm tightened around Sorrow, and she was grateful for it. The bones in her legs had turned to liquid, her stomach aching with fear. It was happening too fast … she needed a moment to think, to plan. To breathe.
“It should be you,” Sorrow looked at Charon. “You should be the chancellor.”
“Sorrow, you know the laws. Only a member of the Ventaxis line can become chancellor.”
“I’m not ready,” she said finally. “I’m not ready for this.”
“Sorrow.” Charon’s voice was tender then, his dark eyes full of pity. “It doesn’t matter. Only Rhannon matters, and there is no one else. It’s you, or it’s no one.”