Page 3 of The Jasad Crown
Save for a bottle of talwith and two glasses, the table lay empty. Arin uncorked the bottle. In each glass, he poured two fingers’ worth of the lavender liquid. Rodan watched the bottle, wiping his knuckles across his chin. A smear of blood from his thumbnail caught on his whiskered jaw.
When Arin placed both glasses in front of Rodan, the High Counselor blinked. “None for you, my liege?”
“I have had more than my fair share as of late,” Arin said genially. “I presume you’re familiar with talwith?”
The High Counselor regarded the glasses with transparent unease. “The Orbanian beverage. Quite difficult to import to Nizahl, isn’t it?”
A teasing voice cut across Arin’s thoughts like a well-aimed blade.Wait, are you important or something?
Arin’s fingers curled.
“Your Highness?”
Arin sat back in his chair, elbows balanced on the armrests as he folded his hands together. Rodan still hadn’t touched either drink. It always amused Arin how careful fickle men became when it was their own life on the line. “You’ve worked for the Citadel for many years. Since the start of my father’s reign.”
The High Counselor nodded, relieved to be back on familiar footing. “Nearly twenty-four years.”
Arin considered the man sitting at his table with the same level of interest he might afford an insect on the bottom of his boot. He’d rarely had cause to deal with Counselor Rodan in the past. The High Counselor’s role positioned him as an advisor to the Supreme and gave him a seat on the council—powerful privileges, but not ones that made him notable to Arin.
Twenty-four years. Decades Rodan had slithered around the Citadel, privy to the secrets of the most powerful kingdom in the land.
Arin couldn’t fathom it. Nothing about the High Counselor marked him as anything more than another dull, crown-kissing sycophant. Age lined his narrow face, and his hairline’s backward march had reached his ears. He was thin as a stalk of barley. Just as easy to snap.
Utterly unremarkable.
“I see.” Arin tilted his head. “And how many of those twenty-four years did you spend molesting little girls?”
The question hit the High Counselor with the force of an open-palmed slap. His breathing changed, turning shallow and quick. Arin’s vaguely bored expression did not change.
“S-sire, a grave misunderstanding is afoot.” Rodan’s trembling voice steadied. Just as abruptly, the lines carving across his graying skin eased. As closely as Arin was watching, he still couldn’t see them. The signs of his deception.
In any other situation, Arin would be impressed. Long and sustained deceit required a certain finesse. The fidgety man in front of him hardly seemed capable of it.
“I cannot imagine what tales that licentious, traitorous Jasadi spoke, but you must know better than to believe her.”
Arin heard the words the High Counselor didn’t dare say:You should have known better than to believe anything she said. You should have known better. You should haveknown.
There was a time when the provocation would have evaporated on contact, dispersing against the unyielding wall of Arin’s focus. A time when nobody but Rawain had the right weapons to get under Arin’s skin.
A time before a dark-eyed Jasadi became the fastest blade under which Arin could bleed.
Arin took one breath, long and slow. Anger needed embers to catch—stone against which the flint might strike. The most efficient way to dispose of an inefficient reaction was to keep moving. Crush it underfoot and never look back.
Until five days ago, the strategy had worked. Arin devoted a lifetime to designing the lay of his own mind—crafting every valley and bend.
But now, there were breaches. There was the blade.
Arin reached into his coat and extracted a tiny bottle containing four ivory beads, each roughly the size of a fingernail.
“Why did Sayali Barakat flee your home when she was fourteen?”
A flash of surprise, wiped in an instant. The High Counselor opened his mouth, and Arin lifted a finger. “Think through what you say next. I offer you one chance, and one chance only.”
Rodan’s palms flattened on the table, leaving Arin with no choice but to observe the dirt creased into the other man’s knuckles. “I have nothing to think through, my liege. She is a thief. She abused my kindness and broke her mother’s heart. She stole everything I’d saved for her future to run away with her fair-haired lover.”
One bead rolled from the bottle into Arin’s palm. “Strange. Your wife told a different story.”
Leaning over the table, Arin dropped the bead into the glass on Rodan’s right. It dissolved with a hiss. The two of them watched ivory flecks settle at the bottom of the glass.
