Kingslayer (37 page)

His steward approached in a steady stride, cane making a staccato sound against the smooth tile. “In the time that I have known you, I have never once heard you ask for time to think by yourself. On the contrary, you are constantly surrounding yourself with people. You always talk through your ideas with anyone that’s at hand. To see you seclude yourself like this with such a defeated posture troubles me.” He stopped directly in front of Darius, forcing him to crane his neck upwards to meet a pair of dark, thoughtful eyes. “I can only think,” Sego continued softly, “that whatever it is troubles you so much that you don’t want to admit it, even to yourself. Am I right?”

Darius’s eyes flitted away to the shadowy corners of the courtyard, the tile under his feet, anywhere but Sego’s eyes.

“Ahhh. I thought as much.” His voice gentled into a mellow, inviting tone. “Darius.”

He froze. Sego had never called him by his first name before. Swallowing, he looked up hesitantly.

“Darius,” Sego repeated in that same tone. “We have shared bread together many times. Will you not confide in me?”

For a moment, he lost his voice and couldn’t respond. Then he blew out a breath and rubbed at his eyes, feeling defeated. “You shame me, my friend. I should have come to you sooner.”

“Yes, you should have,” Sego agreed calmly. He sank onto the bench beside Darius, bad leg stretched out. A slight grimace passed over his face as he settled himself.

Darius caught the expression and frowned. “Did you hurt yourself?”

Sego waved the concern away with a careless hand. “I have been on my feet most of the day. It’s of no consequence.”

You mean,
Darius translated with an internal sigh of resignation,
that you pushed yourself too hard trying to get the truth of what happened today and hurt yourself in the process.
He’d find a way to make it up to Sego, later. Subtly, less the man get offended and bite off Darius’s hand.

“Alright, what’s wrong?” Sego prompted.

Darius once again rubbed a hand wearily over his eyes, wondering where to even start. “I don’t…it’s just…,” he puffed out a breath and started over. “My entire life, I’ve been focused on
achieving
something, whether that was under my father’s tutelage or in my career as a soldier. Maybe too focused. I’ve enjoyed the attentions of a woman many times over the years but…for the first time, I’ve met someone that truly captivates me.”

Sego abruptly sat up straighter on the bench, a half-formed smile of delight and relief on his face.

“You’re no doubt happy to hear this,” Darius drawled.

“You have
no
idea,” Sego responded, this time smiling more openly. “I thought I’d never hear those words out of your mouth. But…,” his smile faded into a worried frown. “You’re troubled by this instead of pleased.”

Darius found himself staring intently at the tiles. Tiles were nice. They didn’t demand complicated explanations out of you. The words were like acid in his mouth as he answered shortly, “She’s betrothed.”

“I think…I know who you are speaking of.”

“You probably do.” He almost smiled for a moment, ruefully. “I know very well the folly of tangling with an oath,” he rasped, still unable to look up into the other man’s eyes. He didn’t need to look up to know that Sego was intently watching him. “I was raised to respect any oath made, but especially the oath that bound the lives of two people together. If I knew that she was happy with the match, I’d leave her alone.”

“She’s not,” Sego said decisively.

“When she looks at her betrothed, there is only fear in her eyes,” he responded steadily. “It hurts me just to see it. Sego.” He abruptly turned, words tumbling out of his mouth as his control cracked. “In all honor, I must leave her alone and not try to separate her from the man she is sworn to. But my heart screams in denial. I feel like I am abandoning her for even thinking of looking the other way.” His voice fell again into a bewildered whisper. “For the first time in my adult life, I do not know what to do.”

“Fortunately, I think I do. But I must be sure we are speaking of the same woman. Tell me her name.”

Something about the way he said this made Darius pause and really look at the man. The condemnation that Darius half-expected to see didn’t appear in Sego’s expression. Instead, his steward seemed to be calculating something at high speeds. Darius’s eyes narrowed and he demanded suspiciously, “What do you know that I don’t?”

“Tell me her name,” Sego reiterated, “and then I’ll explain.”

Heart in his throat, nerves jangling, he answered, “Raja Amalah Sebresos.”

Sego gave a satisfied smile. “I thought as much. Still, it surprises me in a way. I knew that you enjoyed her company, but I never thought it went deeper than that. Odd, that’s not the type of woman that I thought would catch your attention.”

Momentarily sidetracked, Darius rolled his eyes. “What did you
think
would attract me?”

“Someone a lot more sociable, to start with,” Sego answered frankly. “I’ve met Raja Amalah several times. She’s quite lovely, and intelligent, but she’s very shy. I don’t think I’ve heard her say more than a sentence or two at a time.”

“You should have gotten her one-on-one.” Darius shook his head, not surprised at Sego’s impression of her. “Away from a crowd, with someone that she trusts, she’ll talk your ear off. But answer my question. What do you know that I don’t?”

Sego still gave him an odd look, as if some internal calculation had just been skewed, but he answered. “There is a custom here, seldom used I might add, that a man may challenge another of equal station for anything that he owns. This can be something as large as a piece of land or something as trivial as a teaspoon. The challenger does have the right to refuse with grace, but most of the time it’s accepted.”

Darius had to swallow hard around the lump in his throat. “Even betrothals?”

“Challenge for a betrothal is actually the most common,” Sego admitted with a wry shrug. “It’s a perfectly honorable way to break a betrothal and change it to a different partner.”

He’d never heard of such a thing and the very concept seemed beyond odd, but…if there was a chance….

Sego raised a warning hand. “There’s just one problem.”

He didn’t like where this was going. Sego’s tone alone said that he wouldn’t. “Yes…?”

Sego’s mouth flattened in an annoyed line. “You are not
quite
Grygotis’s equal in station. You have the position, certainly, but you are not landed. In order to be an equal challenger, you must possess land that is granted to you by the queen.”

He stared at the other man for a long second, waiting for the words to make sense. When they did, he felt like going to the other bench and banging his head against the stone, repeatedly. “
Darr take me for a fool.”

Confused, Sego ventured, “What?”

Not sure whether to scream or cry, he responded hoarsely, “Queen Tresea offered me an estate when I came back from the front lines and I turned her down.”

“WHAT?!”

“She said it was a reward for the battle won,” for some reason he felt like defending himself even though he was mentally screaming, “but the look on her face said she was scheming something and I wouldn’t like it. So I turned her down, saying she should reward me with that when I won the war. It…seemed like a good idea at the time,” he finished lamely. Never before had he regretted a past decision like he did this one.

Sego’s eyes were large enough to fall out of his head. After a terribly long moment of silence he managed to croak, “New rule: you are not allowed to make decisions of this significance without me.”

He could hardly disagree, not under the circumstances. “What are the odds that I can get her to change her mind?”

Sego sat back with a thump, stroking his cane absently and clearly thinking hard. “I think…,” he started only to pause for a long moment. “I think that if we put a romantic spin on it, we might stand a chance. She’s still bent and determined to tie you more firmly to Niotan.”

For some reason, Darius’s darker sense of humor found this funny. “What, me wanting to break another’s betrothal to have a bride isn’t romantic enough?”

“Add a line of ‘love at first sight’ and you’ll set the hook more firmly,” Sego advised dryly. “I’ve seen it work before with her.”

He almost protested that it hadn’t been love at first sight, and should he really say something like that? But then his mind recalled that moment when he first set eyes on her. Maybe…maybe it had been, and he’d failed to realize it.

“Wait,” Sego studied him carefully. “
Was
it like that?”

Not wanting to answer that question, he just cleared his throat. “Alright, do you think you can get me an audience with her tomorrow?”

Sego clearly wanted an answer but he set his curiosity aside. “I think so, considering. I’ll certainly try. What will you ask for?”

“Just land granted to me. Err…the size of the land doesn’t matter, right? Just an acre will suffice?”

Sego raised his eyes to the heavens, clearly praying for patience. “You wouldn’t really ask for a simple acre of land, would you? I know that you don’t really care for material things, but think of your future! You’ll need more than an acre to support a family with.”

“If I want a house and land, I can pay for that myself,” Darius pointed out patiently. “The income of a lead general is very generous. It’s why I turned her down to begin with.”

“I’m going with you tomorrow,” Sego concluded with a tone of finality that brooked no room for disagreement. “I can’t trust you in negotiating, obviously.”

There were so many cultural quirks that he could run afoul of that this insistence seemed more of a blessing than a hindrance. “Fine. But Sego…this is truly alright? She won’t be dishonored by this, will she?”

“No, it’s fine,” Sego assured him patiently. “Rather, since she’s tied to that brute Grygotis, you truly are saving her from a dreadful future. Um…,” he hesitated and openly searched for the right words before venturing, “I feel I must ask. Does she return your regard?”

“I don’t know,” he was forced to admit. “I know she prefers my company over
his
, but more than that? I don’t know.”

“That’s not much of a compliment, considering who you’re being compared against.”

“I know.” Darius left it at that.

“Well.” Sego thumped his cane against the ground and gave his general a confident and supportive nod. “It’ll be fine. If you can win an impossible war, surely you can win over one woman.”

Give me a battle any day.

Darius took more pains with his appearance that morning than he normally did. He had sent a carefully penned request to meet with the queen off with Payam before breakfast. He had received a reply almost before he could finish eating. It had been set for an hour later, giving him plenty of time to dress.
Too
much time, actually. He’d tried working some in his study but couldn’t focus. Now he just wandered aimlessly around the central room, picking things up and setting them down again without much interest.

Sego tapped his cane against the floor and gave him a stern look. “It doesn’t do any good to pace around the room. You look like a caged tiger.”

I feel like one too,
Darius grumbled to himself. “Can’t we leave yet?”

“Yes, General, we can leave,” Sego responded like a parent indulging a child.

Relieved, he headed directly for the door, avoiding the curious eyes of everyone else. He didn’t want to talk about it, not yet. He feared jinxing himself.

At this early hour, most of the palace was still asleep. They passed some of the palace staff but none of them paid any attention to the general heading for the queen’s study. He often saw her, so his visit with her wouldn’t seem remarkable to anyone.

The guards, queued to his appointment, nodded to him respectfully before opening the door and announcing him and Sego.

Tresea sat in her usual seat at the head of the table, but this time she had only one book out instead of the stacks that normally cluttered the surface. She set the volume aside as he stepped in, her eyes studying both of them carefully. “Darius, Sego, welcome. I admit that I am surprised by your request for an audience. Is something amiss with my army?”

Darius swallowed hard and forced his voice to be even and not crack. “I’ve come regarding a personal matter, My Queen.”

“Oh?” She waved them both to a chair, her manner sharp and alert. “Do continue.”

He took the chair, clasping his hands together on the surface of the table to keep them steady. With a deep breath for courage he started, “My Queen, may I be perfectly blunt with you?”

Tresea adored bluntness in all forms so her eyes lit up at this request. “I thought you’d never ask. Please do.”

“I have known for some time that you wish for me to create firmer ties with Niotan,” he stated with no trace of accusation. “One of the methods you thought of was finding me a bride. Another was giving me an estate.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Hooo so you
were
aware of my plans. I suspected you were, as you evaded me so neatly each time.”