Chapter Twenty

Is That Why You Hate Me?

~*~

 

 

"Well?" Abrizhen asked curtly. "Let's have it."

"Thank you," Kazia said to him with sincerity. "And thank you, Your Majesty. I'll try to be brief."

She swept a gaze over those who remained.

"Mistress Amelys, Master Ilianus, and Lord Meratha are all very accomplished Alchemists. Madame Brandra Giris is quite accomplished in the field of Herbalism. I should like to ask them – if a person presented the symptoms of a flu, later developing darkened fingertips and toes, then blindness and bleeding from the eyes, all persisting for several weeks before they finally expired, what illness would you say they had suffered?"

Abrizhen narrowed his eyes, staring at Kazia as his jaw clenched and his face went ashen.

Everyone in the Hall looked at each other in bewilderment.

"What is the relevance of this?" Sir Aleryl exclaimed. "Your Majesty...?"

"That's not an illness," Madame Brandra's voice rang clearly. "That person was poisoned. Right, Mistress Amelys? Trecine mushroom, grows in Mitria. Quite rare, but that's how it works."

Everyone turned to look at her, except for Kazia and Abrizhen who continued to stare heatedly at one another.

"Lady Kazia?" Tamyn whispered, but she waved him off.

"Abrizhen, do you know that Gorvan killed my mother?" Kazia said quietly.

The Hall went deathly silent.

"Back then, did you know?"

Abrizhen swallowed, keeping still as a statue.

"Your mother wasn't poisoned," he said through his clenched teeth.

"No," Kazia said. "She was strangled, by Gorvan's own hands, while I watched from a cupboard."

Her voice trailed off into almost a whisper. She could feel everyone's eyes on her, taste their astonishment, their apprehension, their curiosity.

"I was still small enough to fit into a cupboard then. I used to hide in them and listen to the servants gossiping. Many of them remembered your mother fondly. They would talk about her last days often. The horror of her last days."

Abrizhen stood suddenly.

"Kazia, what is this?" he growled.

"In my struggles with finding a path in Alchemy, I have sampled and explored many branches of the art. When I was on the farm, I tried to study a bit of medicine, and came across some books on the symptoms of various poisons. Strangely enough, one of them seemed to match to the servants' gossip about your mother."

"Your Majesty," Sir Aleryl said, "she's talking nonsense. Lord Devratha, is this a part of her condition?"

"Quiet," the Queen said sternly.

Abrizhen, on the verge of losing control of his anger, was reminded of the setting and forced a smile at Kazia.

"You have no boundaries, do you?" he asked.

"Do you?" Kazia replied. "You were once one of the few dependable people I knew. I loved you so much, and you seemed to love me. I have never been able to discover what changed."

Kazia's eyes were filling with tears, but she pressed on as her voice broke.

"Is this what changed? Did you discover that your mother was murdered so that Gorvan could marry my mother? Is that why you hate me now?"

She felt Tamyn place a hand on her shoulder and Abrizhen's eyes shifted to him. After a very long time gazing at him, his shoulders heaved and he seemed to relax just a bit. His eyes flicked away to the floor, and he appeared lost in his own thoughts now.

"This is..." Sir Aleryl spoke in confusion. "Your Majesty, we were discussing the steel trade, yes? The internal business of the Devratha family is none of our concern, surely."

"Your Majesty," Kazia said, pulling herself together, "I only posit to you that my brother's slanders upon my reputation indeed are simply a matter of family conflict, and nothing for you pay any heed. The steel trade, I'm afraid I'm unqualified to speak of."

"Well," Queen Inaissa said. "Lord Devratha, Sir Aleryl, might I suggest that we adjourn for now and each consult our advisors before continuing another day? And perhaps let's stick to trade next time, shall we?"

"Your Majesty," Amelys called out. "Might I suggest that we classify this discussion as top secret and urge no one to speak of this outside?"

She glared at Sir Aleryl as she said this.

"Maiandra Devratha was a Princess of Loranar. If she truly was murdered by a Valeskan government official, husband or no, that might produce yet another source of international tension."

"Agreed, and so ordered," Queen Inaissa said. "Lord Devratha?"

Abrizhen turned to the Queen in something of a daze and nodded absently.

"Adjourned then."

Everyone rose with the Queen as she left through her private entrance.

Brandra was patting Kazia's hand again and Amelys regarded her with some concern.

Kelvaran stood behind Amelys, looking a bit lost in thought. He glanced at her and opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but then looked away, lips pursed and teeth grinding.

Across the room, Abrizhen rose from his seat and slowly moved toward the exit, but paused at the end of his table, staring aimlessly at the floor.

Brandra took Kazia's arm gently.

"Lady Kazia, we should go quickly," she said. "Let's avoid any further confrontation today."

She nodded and followed along with the others.

As they passed Abrizhen, he suddenly reached out and grasped the long draping sleeve of Tamyn's robe.

"Tam,” he said, half a plea and half a demand in his dry voice.

His eyes filled with tears when, without looking at him, Tamyn wrapped a hand around his fingers and gently pried them away.

Without a word, he dropped Abrizhen's hand, then turned away and made for the door.

As Brandra and the others pulled her along, Kazia looked back to see Abrizhen frozen to the spot, watching them go with a mournfully lost expression.

~~~*~~~

Amelys, Brandra, and Kelvaran quickly caught up to them and Kazia was herded along with the group into Amelys' office.

The sum of volatile auras around her were making Kazia dizzy – Brandra's fearful concern, Tamyn's bewildered heartache, Kelvaran's wavering between dark suspicion and tentative compassion, favoring the suspicion.

Amelys turned to her with a stern face and a raised eyebrow.

“Explain,” she demanded.

“I should think it was rather self-explanatory,” Kazia said.

“How could you pull a stunt like that without informing me beforehand?”

Kazia closed her eyes and nodded with contrition.

“I know,” she answered, “and I'm sorry for that. I wasn't sure I could really go through with it.”

“It was rather callous of you,” Kelvaran said, “dropping such news upon him. Quite the ambush.”

“He clearly had no idea,” Amelys added while Kazia shot a dark glare at Kelvaran.

“Well, if he's going to play so viciously, then so shall I!” Kazia fumed. “Threatening Caedra with economic sanctions? Really...”

“Was it all true?” Tamyn asked quietly.

“Every word,” Kazia snapped.

“You saw him that night in town,” Tamyn said, a tight restraint betrayed in his voice. “You seemed worried for him then. Are you no longer?”

He was clearly unhappy with her actions and Kazia was startled by his ire. She gave a long sigh as her anger dissipated at his aggrieved expression.

“I'm trying to use this opportunity to drive a wedge between him and Gorvan,” she explained. “I don't know how long he'll stay. I may not have time to proceed softly.”

“I would think today should do it,” Brandra said. “Though I do hope you weren't planning a happy reunion with him after that.”

Kazia shook her head.

“That doesn't matter,” she said sadly. “If only I can bring him over, that's enough.”

She sounded to the others as if she were struggling to convince herself.

“And what benefit will that be to us?” Kelvaran asked. “It seems to me you've used the Court today for your own gain.”

“What benefit?” Kazia asked incredulously. “Gorvan is Halany's most trusted ally. Abrizhen is Gorvan's son. Can you really not see the value of bringing someone of his status over? What he must know? How could you question it?”

“It seems unlikely, though,” Kelvaran countered. “Perhaps your time would be best spent doing what you were brought here to do. Leave the work of taking Halany down to those best suited and just get us the tools we need to do so. Unless there's a reason you're dragging your feet on-”

“Has it ever occurred to you that your little invention is simply a failure!?” Kazia shouted. “Or do you think so highly of yourself that your every idea must be borne of Heavens-descended genius? I'm so sorry to disappoint you but some experiments just don't pan out, and if you can't live with that then you're in the wrong line of work!”

“Can we please calm down?” Amelys intervened, as Kelvaran brushed past her and left the room, letting the door close heavily behind him.

A weighty hush fell over those remaining as they all cast dismal glances at each other.

“I need rest,” Kazia said quietly.

Amelys waved a hand to them all.

“Go on, all of you,” she said. “I suppose only time will tell if this truly was the disaster that it feels like now.”

Kazia and Tamyn departed to the hallway. They should be going in the same direction, but Kazia felt that he wasn't in the mood for her company just now.

“I really am sorry,” she said to his despondent half-smile. “Perhaps I should have thought more carefully. I'm sorry.”

She leaned against the wall and looked at the floor.

“When he goes back it will be too late to stop him,” she said.

“Stop him...”

“From going back,” Kazia whispered.

She turned around and made a hasty retreat down the hallway, fleeing the sensation that pieces of Tamyn's heart had flown like slivers of shattered glass to pierce her back.

 

~~~*~~~