I shake my head. “This is so complicated that only Maraya could love it. Does this mean you are the nephew of one king and the son of another, Lord Thynos?”
“I am Sokorios’s nephew, yes. His sister was my mother. But I am not Elkorios’s son. Several years after my mother gave birth to my sister, Elkorios divorced our mother so he could marry the king of East Saro’s daughter. After the divorce our mother married again. Her second husband was my father, and he raised my sister as if she were his own. He was a good man. He died in the wars.”
“I am sorry for your grief, Lord Thynos. But what is your point?”
“My point, Spider, is that you don’t understand these Rings you’re running through. On his father’s side, through Princess Berenise, Kalliarkos is the great-grandson of Kliatemnos the Third and Queen Serenissima the Third of blessed memory. On his mother’s side he is the grandson of King Elkorios of Saro-Urok and great-nephew of Sokorios the Short-Lived. Such a prince is as rare as rubies and more precious than gold.”
Kalliarkos snorts quite indelicately.
“These matters are far out of my reach,” I protest.
Lord Thynos’s eyelashes flutter as he chuckles, but it’s obviously no joke to him. “You don’t see it yet, do you? You haven’t spun it through your web.”
“See what?”
“Our Kal can inherit two thrones.”
“I just want to run the Fives,” says Kalliarkos, his voice ragged with emotion.
“You and your quiet little dreams, Kal.”
“Let Menoë have the glory,” he says bitterly. “She wants it.”
“Yes, but your precious sister made a mess of her first marriage. A bloody murdering mess. Now she rusticates with humble and lowborn General Esladas in the hope that as his star rises no one will notice how far hers fell. She’s just fortunate Gar didn’t have her bricked into a tomb.”
Kalliarkos mutters, “Even I wouldn’t wish that on her.”
“Never let down your guard, my young nephew,” says Thynos harshly. “Gar will callously discard you the moment he thinks you’re not worth anything to him. He’ll find a way to punish your defiance if you don’t obey him.”
“Do you think I don’t understand?” His anger scorches. “I know Jessamy believes we are fighting a noble war against our implacable Saroese enemies who want to rain fire down upon our cities. But we are really just fighting over the corpse of the old empire. Brother kills brother over the right to rule a strategically located city. A son inherits, and is overthrown by his uncle. A woman marries her brother to consolidate their holdings but afterward divorces him to marry a cousin with better territory and more riches. A wife is murdered so her husband can marry a king’s daughter. Or maybe she gets wind of it and murders her husband first. I refuse to be thrown into that game. I would rather walk through a pit of vipers than go to war!”
The words hit me like a slap in the face.
“I’m not mad at you, Jes,” he says hastily. “Your father is an honorable man.”
Thinking of my mother, I don’t know how to answer him, so I say nothing.
“We’re all tired,” remarks Thynos, glancing around the empty night courtyard. The light has begun to sift from black to gray, heralding dawn. “I’ll have one of Nar’s men escort her back to the stable. You and I can drive together to the palace.”
“Jes and I must arrive at the stable together so that Uncle Gar doesn’t suspect why she was really gone,” says Kalliarkos. “Half the people there already believe we have something between us. Everyone in the palace wonders why I don’t keep a concubine. When Uncle Gar hears of it, he and I can have an argument over why it is beneath me to have a Commoner lover.”
Never in all my life would I have believed a highborn lord like Kalliarkos could speak of someone like me being his lover and not bat an eye nor look ashamed. But when he catches my eye, I know we have passed the point of feeling ashamed because there is nothing to be ashamed of.
“It’s a bad idea, Kal.”
“You don’t have a better one. Uncle Gar can’t be allowed to guess what we’ve done.”
Thynos offers Kal the reins. “Very well. If you wish to become a man, then I suppose I must treat you as a man and let you make your own decisions and deal with the consequences.”
Kalliarkos grasps his hands. “Thank you, Uncle. Blessings on you. But Jes and I are going to walk, as if we’ve come from the Lantern District.”
