Bad Blood
Irris kept pace with Sorrow as they made their way back to Sorrow’s rooms, though neither spoke. The palace, always quiet, now seemed eerily so in the aftermath of Alyssa’s death; the only sound was the fluttering of the curtains as the two girls moved past them, the oil lamps guttering in the breeze they created. It was all Sorrow could do not to break into a run, and to keep running, out of the palace, out of Rhannon. Away from this place, and the legacy she didn’t want. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But what choice did she have? Charon was right – there was no one else. Her family had seen to that, centuries ago. They were clever, her ancestors. Manipulative and canny. They’d paid off the nobles who’d survived the initial purge of the royal family – the Mizils, the Blues, the Marchants and others – buying their support with land and titles, and together they’d disposed of, or discredited, those who wouldn’t join them.
The time had been ripe for revolution, the nation starving while the royals feasted and feted. When the Ventaxis family and their supporters had risen up and overthrown the king, they’d become heroes. And they’d insisted they wouldn’t govern unless legally elected to the post; they didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the monarchy.
They told the people they would get to choose their new leader. Somewhat like the kings, the chosen family would hold office for life, an enduring and stable authority, free from the uncertainties of other countries who changed leaders every five or so years. But – and the Ventaxis family insisted this was the crucial difference – their presence would a democratic one. One the people elected themselves, at the death of each chancellor.
Even though there was only ever one name on the ballot, and it was always a Ventaxis.
The choice, the people were told, was always theirs. And the people lapped it up.
Ironically, Sorrow was the only person who was aware she had no choice in it.
Her chambermaid was in the middle of turning down her bed when she and Irris strode into her apartments. They passed through the sitting room, and into Sorrow’s wardrobe and dressing room. The maid followed hurriedly, but Sorrow dismissed her.
When the door closed behind them, she turned to Irris and took a deep breath.
“What happens next?” Sorrow said.
Irris didn’t hesitate. “My father will summon the Jedenvat to a meeting tomorrow, announce there is a Ventaxis successor willing to take over the chancellorship, and then they’ll vote on whether the present chancellor is unfit to govern. After that, they’ll call you in, give the verdict, and invest you.”
Sorrow swallowed. “What if the vote doesn’t pass?”
“It will pass,” Irris said, offering Sorrow a small, sad smile.
“I don’t think I can do this.” But even as she spoke, Sorrow knew it was useless. From the moment she’d found her father earlier, she’d known, even if she didn’t want to admit it, that she was out of time. That whatever hopes – however pointless, however insubstantial – she’d had for her future, they were over. “I don’t want to do this,” she said instead. “Not yet. It isn’t fair. What about what I want? What about…” She didn’t finish.
Irris gave her a curious look. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know, necessarily.” Sorrow rubbed her forehead. “But my father was thirty-two when he became chancellor. He was married with a child, he was educated, he’d travelled – he’d been to Meridea, Skae and Nyrssea. I’m seventeen,” she said. “There are parts of my own country I’ve never even seen, for the Graces’ sake, let alone anywhere else. I don’t know the people. How can I be chancellor? I barely know Rhannon.”
“So you want to travel?” Irris asked, clearly confused.
“Yes. No. It’s not about that.” Sorrow paused, trying to find a way to explain the maelstrom of anxiety, anger and sheer terror inside her. “It’s one thing to know the storm is coming, but it’s another to be caught in it. And now I’m caught in it. For ever.”
“Row, I know you’re scared…”
“I’m not scared. I’m…” She paused. “I’ve been locked up in this … this dungeon of a palace my whole life. As of tomorrow, that’s all I’ll ever have. This palace. This life. At seventeen, that’s it. My future decided.”
“Sorrow, I know—”
“No, you don’t know.” Sorrow threw her arms wide, as though gesturing to all of Rhannon. “I’ve only ever known Rhannon as it is. This is Rhannon, for me. No one in their right mind would want to be in charge of this. No one in their right mind would want me in charge of it.”
The truth slipped from her before she could stop it, and she turned away, trying to unbutton her gown, her shaking fingers making the task more difficult than it ought to be. “Rhannon is too broken to survive another useless leader.” In her haste to get the wretched dress off she pulled one of the buttons free, sending it flying across the room. And in temper she pulled off a second, flinging it after the other. “Damn this dress. Damn everything.”
It was too much. The weight of a whole country, on Sorrow’s shoulders – a broken, dark country at that. What if Rhannon couldn’t heal from what her father had done to it? Some sicknesses went too deep – Harun was the living proof.
Irris reached for her hand. “Sorrow, you have an opportunity anyone else would die for. People have, in the past. You can remake the world how you want it to be. You can make all your dreams come true. You can make everyone’s dreams come true. You have that power, it’s right there – take it.”
“What if I can’t?” She couldn’t meet Irris’s eye as she pulled her hand away. “What if I’m not enough?”
She hadn’t been enough for her mother to live for. She hadn’t been enough to keep Harun away from Lamentia. How could she do anything except make it worse?
She’d heard the legend of how she’d been named, what her mother had used her dying words to proclaim. It wasn’t a name at all, but a threat. Sorrow is all she brings us. Wasn’t that a sufficient warning to Charon? She was cursed. She was a curse.
There were days that she was so full of darkness she couldn’t speak in case it spilled from her, coating, ruining, drowning everything she loved. It was inside her sometimes, the same need her father had to destroy, and to self-destruct. The way she had destroyed her mother, and any final hopes that Harun might have recovered. The way she ran to Rasmus, even as she knew she could never give him what he wanted and it would break him. What if she unleashed that on Rhannon? There was no one to depose her. No one to stop her.
“What if I make it worse?” Sorrow said aloud, without meaning to.
“You can’t talk like that,” Irris warned her. “People will see it as a sign of weakness—”
“I am weak,” Sorrow bit back at her. “That’s what I keep trying to tell you. I’m not strong enough to do this. You’re all backing the wrong horse.”
“You’re the only horse, don’t you get it?” Irris finally lost her temper. “Fine. So be it. Let your father carry on as he is. Until he dies, and there’s no one to take his place. And then sit back and watch as civil war breaks out, with people like Lord Samad or Balthasar trying to take over. Or when Nyrssea decide to invade, because they’ve figured out we don’t have the money or troops to stop them. Or when Meeren Vine stages a coup and kills us all, before turning the country into a prison state. Is that what you want? Is it?”
“You know I don’t,” Sorrow said in a low voice.
“And do you think you are the only young woman who’s had to step into a role she didn’t expect to, and make the best of it?” Irris’s eyes blazed. “Put aside her own plans and make do, because it was for the greater good? Remember, Sorrow, I had a life before I came back here. I had plans of my own.”
Sorrow hung her head, ashamed. Lost in her own anguish, she had forgotten.
Eighteen months earlier, Irris had been enrolled at the university in Istevar to study conservation. She’d spoken about it as long as Sorrow could remember: her dream of becoming an archivist at the state library, specializing in the old scrolls, the ancient history of Rhannon, before the Ventaxis family and their allies had overthrown the king and taken the country.
She was three weeks into her studies when Harun had dismissed her brother, Arran, and another councillor, Coram Mellwood, from their places on the Jedenvat, due to some imagined slight. Balthasar had taken over from Coram, and Charon had immediately proposed Irris as Arran’s replacement. Luckily Harun had accepted.
Irris had stepped into her brother’s shoes easily, and Sorrow had been so wrapped up in the new situation with Rasmus that she’d never thought to ask if she regretted what she’d lost.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Irris, I’m so sorry…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Irris said stiffly. “But I get it, Row. I know what you mean. And I agree, it’s not fair. A seventeen-year-old should not be shouldering this burden. But … what choice do we have? You can fight it, or you can lean into it and make it work. Trust me.”
Sorrow nodded sheepishly, and Irris continued. “Your grandmother would want you to do this, you know.”
Sorrow almost laughed then, shaking her head. “Would she? Then why didn’t she teach me any of it? She taught me about the old festivals and rites, showed me colours and books and told me tales, but she never taught me about taxes, or office, or anything that would help if this day came. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”
Irris sighed. “She was trying to give you a childhood. Didn’t you know?” Sorrow looked at her blankly. “She and my father argued about it all the time. He wanted you to start attending meetings and she told him not before you were eighteen. She said she owed you that, at least, and it was worth pawning her retirement if it meant you had some kind of youth. But she had planned, after your birthday, to teach you. And…” Irris paused, taking a deep breath before meeting Sorrow’s eye. “She promised my father that if yours hadn’t pulled himself together by the time you were twenty-one, she’d have you depose him. I think she’d agree that after tonight, none of us have a choice.”
Sorrow was stunned. Was it true? She’d always assumed her grandmother had kept her away from the council because of her mother’s dying words. Sorrow hadn’t minded, because it’s what she believed too – in fact there had been a relief to her beloved grandmother agreeing with her, however unspoken the agreement was. But it wasn’t true, according to Irris. Though it explained why the vice chancellor and the dowager disliked each other.
Irris smiled sadly. “Besides, as I keep saying, no one is asking you to do this alone. I’m behind you, my father’s behind you. Bayrum Mizil and Tuva Marchant will back you. That’s more than half of the Jedenvat. And the rest will fall in line when they realize they stand to profit from it. So, one last time… You can do this. You will do this. And you will excel at it.”
Sorrow was silent as she finished unbuttoning the gown and shivered as it fell to the floor, the air temporarily cooling her skin. “Do you really think they’ll accept me as the chancellor?” she said, the question declaring a truce.
“Are you joking?” Irris paused. “They’ll be delighted. Well, Lord Samad might not be thrilled. Nor Kaspira. And Balthasar won’t easily forgive you for locking him up, although losing poor Alyssa will hopefully make him realize how damaging Lamentia is. But what they all value most are their lands and their money. If they think opposing you might ultimately lead to them not being appointed to your Jedenvat, they’ll bend over backwards to support you, whether they like you or not.”
“I meant the people,” Sorrow said. “Not the Jedenvat. I know who my friends are there. Will the people accept it?”
Irris picked up Sorrow’s dress and handed it to her. “It will be odd for them, to begin with. Your age, even your sex will concern some, I suppose. But the bright side is anything you do after the last eighteen years is going to be a relief to the vast majority. I think once they realize that you don’t mean to govern like your father, they’ll be happy.”
Sorrow looked down at the garment in her hands.
Back when she was twelve, Sorrow had burst into her grandmother’s bedroom unannounced, and found her standing before an uncovered mirror, a sapphire dress held against her body. In fright she’d shouted at Sorrow, then ushered her into the room.
“You can’t ever tell anyone,” she made her granddaughter promise. “Your father would be very, very angry.”
“I won’t.” Sorrow had reached for the fabric. “It’s pretty.”
The Dowager First Lady had bundled both Sorrow and the dress into her arms. “One day there will be colours again,” she’d said. “This isn’t for ever.”
Sorrow wanted colours again. Since that day, there had been nights when she had lain sweltering in bed, unable to sleep, and her mind had wandered into the future, a future where she had more control. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t fantasized about having power, even as the reality of it terrified her. She’d imagined a future where she might not have to lie inside a curtained room at the height of summer. A future where sun was allowed to shine through windows. A future where there might be joy in the land once more. As her grandmother had promised.
Sorrow left her friend and entered her wardrobe, crossing to the short railing of formal dresses, all black and austere, and began to thumb through them.
Irris came to stand by her side, her own gaze falling on the clothes before them.
“It would be nice to wear something a little more colourful,” Sorrow said.
Irris rubbed her arm gently. “Something really garish, like, I don’t know. A dark grey? Maybe even a navy blue. You’d look good in sapphire blue.” Irris echoed Sorrow’s earlier thoughts. “It’d work well with your skin. I quite fancy pink. Hot pink.”
Sorrow tried to imagine what her friend would look like in hot pink. Irris was lovely, with her heart-shaped face, deep brown eyes ringed with masses of dark lashes, a strong nose, a generous mouth. In hot pink she’d be devastating.
“Why are you staring at me? Do I have something in my teeth?” Irris asked, snapping Sorrow out of her imaginings.
“I was thinking how very beautiful you are.”
Irris opened her mouth, then closed it, her cheeks flushing a little darker. “Well,” she said, smoothing down her own dress to cover her surprise. “You don’t have to flirt with me, you know you have my vote.”
Despite her mood, Sorrow smiled. “You’re right. I’ll save it for Samad, then.”
Irris gave an unladylike snort. “Indeed. Well…” She began to rifle through Sorrow’s wardrobe. “For tomorrow… Might I recommend something in … black?”
“What else?” Sorrow reached for a tunic and matching trousers.
“Why don’t I send for some wine, and I’ll help you draft some ideas on what we want the new Rhannon to look like?” Irris said.
“We?”
“I said you didn’t have to do it alone. I meant it,” Irris replied. “Besides, the sooner you’re all settled, the sooner I can get back to university.”
“You’ll leave, once I’m chancellor?” A new surge of panic gripped Sorrow’s heart.
Irris’s eyes sparkled as she replied. “Well, that all depends on my pay rise.”
Sorrow jostled her friend out of the way. “Perhaps I’ll make a law that means all students have to wear salmon pink and lemon yellow,” she said slyly. “Salmon-pink and lemon-yellow wool.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Irris said.
“Watch me. If you thought my father was bad, you just wait for the hundred and fifth chancellor.”
Hoping her words weren’t tempting fate, Sorrow sashayed out of the wardrobe, leaving Irris laughing softly behind her.
But Sorrow couldn’t help wishing that Mael had lived. That he was standing where she stood now, facing what she faced.