The Carnelian Way

29.1

"Absolutely not!"

What was she doing? Gods, she'd lost her mind. So had Mai, it seemed, in calling this meeting.

He had chosen to announce their union in his palace receiving room, at the very top of the city, to eight representatives of the Magisterium council. Mai sat atop a throne of rainbow obsidian that both drank the light and bled it out again in bands of oily colour. Face granite, wearing his briar crown, the ruby flecks in the deep, deep red of his formal robe catching the sun. He appeared a god.

Below the dais in ebony chairs sat four high-magisters, including the judge from the courthouse and Pilo; two magisters, Ro and Nab; and one acolyte: Anat.

There was also a Denese representative. Her. Not below Mai but beside him. This was what angered Ro.

Magister Ro continued her tirade. "How dare you? She doesn't belong here!" The former high-magister was now dressed in red robes to reflect her step down in status. Her blonde hair glinted under the domed-glass ceiling that hung above them.

"You forget yourself, Magister Ro," growled Pilo, his age-spotted hands gripping the side of his chair.

Rina peered from the corner of her eye. From the side of the raised dais, Olav's black eyes swept back and forth across the room like a rake across a gravel path. He shifted his feet. The leather of his full armour creaked, and a bead of sweat trickled down his face.

There were no walls to the room. Instead, fluted marble columns stretched to the sky, sprouting out into carved palm leaves that held up the roof. Outside, date palms and cypress trees mingled with oleander to create a living fence. The air flowed through the room, filling it with floral scents.

Ro's white finger pointed at Rina, and ice spiked through Rina's veins like sprigs of hoarfrost. "She forgets herself. The Arkis-spawned whore!"

A cold hand slid into Rina's. She looked up to her right, from where she sat on an ornate golden chair beside Mai. There hadn't been time to find another throne—not one that Mai believed would be sufficient for her. Mai's steady cobalt gaze held Rina's a moment, then he returned his attention to Ro.

"You forget yourself, yet again, Magister Ro." The words slipped between Mai's clenched teeth like winter air through cracks in a window casing.

The temperature plunged. Diamonds of refracted light danced across the floor, a shard of it across Ro's face. Ro's eyes were ice. "No, Your Magnificence, I fear you fail to recall The Devastation."

Mai barked a laugh. "Don't be a fool, Ro. As an eyewitness, I am the only person alive who is incapable of forgetting The Devastation." The fingers of his left hand curled tighter about Rina's. She sensed his sneer through the thread between them, heard it in his words. "I was Denese before I was Euran, magister and then your emperor."

Ro stiffened, swallowed. The veins in her slim white neck were chords of rope. "You speak heresy. Sacrilege. You know what happens to heretics, Your Magnificence, emperor or not."

A stone of dread fell into Rina's stomach at the threat. Mai had talked of rebellion in his ranks, but this was the first outright demonstration of it she had witnessed. He couldn't let this go—to do so would show him as weak. Worse, it would be the beginning of his downfall. For though the Magisterium controlled what information reached the outer provinces, something like this would slip through their grasp. Rebels, like her uncle, would learn. Worse, leaders in foreign kingdoms—kingdoms now far more martial than Eurora since their country relied on the Carnelian Way—might learn, and—

Was this what he feared—invasion?

Yet, she told herself, if Mai made an example of Ro, it would be okay. Surely.