Domi stared up at Comitas from his uncomfortable chair in the tablinum, his heart hammering in his chest as the protocol handler's words echoed in his mind.
Six and Thirty Days. You must perform the Rite of Six and Thirty Days.
He shook his head hard. "No." His body felt tense and coiled, ready to spring up from his high-backed, stiff chair and stomp away from the office. Away from Comitas and duty.
Pursing her lips, the protocol handler studied him. She looked annoyed, and for a moment he wondered if she was still pissy about his Pullati workforce idea. She'd been so dismayed earlier that morning when he told her about his plan and informed her he intended to put Merula in charge of the project.
After a moment he realized it was not true irritation he saw. Lately, he had started to figure out that her face often looked all pinched and sour whenever she felt unsure about how to deal with him. Comitas didn't like when things were out of place, out of control, or beyond her understanding.
And though she cared about him in her stuffy way, Domi knew that at the end of the day that's what he was to her. A thing. Just one of the candles or mirrors in Radix's contraption, or a spoke in the wheel of royal government. A thing she must keep in its place and working the way it was supposed to function.
And right now that meant making him perform the Rite of Six and Thirty Days, and he just couldn't.
Comitas seemed to decide on how to deal with him. Domi saw it in her face as she sighed and relaxed her expression, allowing empathy to radiate past her cold and stern exterior. "Basilicus, I understand your feelings, but--"
Anger and the old, old hurt flared, a crimson sun seething in his chest. "No, you don't."
"I do, Basilicus. I--"
"Oh," he snapped, "did your parents abandon you on the streets, too?" He balled his hands into fists where they were supposed to be folded, prim and proper, in his lap. "Did they steal your magic and make you sick from birth? How can you possibly understand what that's like?"
Comitas closed her eyes. "Yes, Basilicus," she said, and something about her soft voice made him frown in unease. "It is true that no one stole my birthright." She shook her head and opened her eyes, looking down at him from where she stood, graceful and imposing, before him. "Nature itself deprived me of my diopetes. My parents gave me to the Pyrrhaei civil service rather than raise a sub-Lightless themselves. So while I have not suffered as you have suffered, I do understand some of what you are feeling, Basilicus."
Domi swallowed. If she was the abandoned Pyrrhaei kid of Promethidae, she should understand a little, then. So how could she expect this of him? "Then don't make me do this, Erus," he pleaded. "Someone else can honor her. I can't. I won't."
"You will, Basilicus," she said, voice crisp and firm. "It is protocol."
<>
Domi had never visited an eidolon pillar before. One month ago the only people he knew worth remembering when they died were all Pullati, and no Pullatus could afford to have an eidolon made.
He had done the Rite of Six and Thirty days though, far too many times. The most recent time had been at the end of last Germinating for his aunt, Cissos. Tooth rot had taken her, spreading infection from her mouth to her heart. But there had been many others over the years, Pullati dead of beatings, diabetes, freezing, hunger, bad teeth, bad falls, bad water, you name it.
Domi had never gone to an eidolon pillar for any of those Rites of Six and Thirty Days or the annual Rite of Remembrance since there were no eidolons to visit. Instead, he and his Ma talked to the Eternal Radiance, asking it the questions they could not ask the dead. And they talked to each other, sharing stories they could not coax from the deceased.
He'd always wished he could ask his questions and request his story at an eidolon pillar. But now that he had his chance, it was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do.
A mindholder Empowered carrying some kind of lyre with ten strings led the procession, with Domi trailing behind in his heavy paenula. The thing was hard to walk in, but he had help. For this procession, and this one only, the Princeps Worldholder was allowed to lean heavily on an attendant. Expected to, in fact. He wasn't supposed to cry, because Comitas said that was childish and demeaning. But he should plod along in grim, self-controlled gravitas, the perfect picture of dignified grief. It was protocol.
Everything, it seemed, was protocol. Who could and couldn't wake him or have the honor of dressing him. Which morning prayers he said on which days. What foods he ate at different times of the month. The colors of the ribbons fastening his tri-braid, the words he was supposed to use to greet night-side versus day-side praetors, the forks he was expected to use. There was even a special protocol for how to use the chamber pot, a conversation he wished he could burn from his mind forever.
"You don't look very mournful, Basilicus," Radix whispered, grimacing at the lyre player. For some reason, they hated the man.
"Yeah, well, I don't feel very mournful," he grumbled under his breath, hissing a curse that had Comitas huffing a warning cough at him as he tripped over his black opal-crusted ceremonial paenula. She might be Pyrrhaei, but he swore the sharp-eared woman inherited her Promethidae parents' hearing.
Radix patted his hand as he leaned on them less out of a show of dignified grief and more out of a desire not to stumble and fall flat on his face. They were wearing all four colors of Domi's royal Penna Igneae curia, black and silver embroidered with fiery masculine copper and yellow wings. "Don't you want to honor her?"
"She does not deserve it."
Radix's heavy sigh told him they still didn't understand. But how could they? They were a law-orphan. They had lost their parents to a debtor's prison before they were old enough to form memories of their Ma and Pa. Of course they had no qualms about honoring people who'd done them no wrong.
The procession reached Arx Luminosa's remembrance odeon. The notes of the lyre faded into the hush of the small crowd that had accompanied their mourning ruler.
Fingers clenching around the bouquet of snow roses he carried, Domi glared at the domed observance building.
At least he got to go in by himself. Electi were already completing their sweep of the dark chamber, emerging out into the flickering Trellis light.
Sidus met his eyes, expression sober, and Domi sighed as the older boy stood at parade rest by the door, face filled with pain. At least someone grieved the deceased.
Grimacing and hoping it looked mournful, he strode into the chamber and cringed as the door closed behind him.
One hour.
The circular odeon was dark and vast. A small beam of golden light shone down from an opening in the black ceiling, the only illumination in the shadowed place. It cascaded over a pylon in the center of the chamber. Humming with promenia, the eidolon pillar glittered like black opal in the dark.
Gritting his teeth, he stalked up to the tall stone and tossed the thick-petaled blue snow roses at the thing's base. No one was around to see. Comitas assured him even his interaction with promenia here would not be recorded except by the eidolon itself.
"Well, you might as well come out," Domi snapped, crossing his arms.
The promenia's humming changed, sliding to a slower vibration and a lower pitch. A new lightsong, Radix had called it.
Domi braced himself as the pillar's surface wavered, like ripples passing over a black pool. The ripples brightened, a wash of gold in the opal, and then an image began to appear in the stone.
A silhouette, at first, of smoke and glitter. A woman's figure, tall and regal. The first hints of a face, jaw, and lips of warm, dark gold, hair of dark brown, pulled up in a tri-braid with unruly curls escaping.
The eidolon's brown eyes, warmer and brighter than his and Daedalus's own, opened and settled on his face. Heartbreak and joy alike warred in the smile she gave him, and a hot trembling settled deep into Domi's muscles as they looked at each other.
Hazy and indistinct, and yet far more solid than the dead had any right to be, the eidolon stepped from the stone.
"Hello, son," Princeps Verita Adurere said.