Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [37]
Jeryd looked to his aide. “You mean Ghale, our administration assistant?”
“Yes indeed, the very same.”
“Ah, too soft-skinned,” Jeryd muttered, pushing open the exit door. “You need to get yourself something tougher. Something more like a rumel girl. They’re built to last, you see.”
“And when are you going to get another one, now you’re a free man?”
Jeryd squinted up into a sharp beam of sunlight, as he stepped outside, and Tryst closed the door behind them. He couldn’t think past Marysa: it was too soon since she had gone. There was too much for him to learn again. “Too old for those sorts of games.”
“You’re never too old,” Tryst said.
“Well, I was never much good at all that stuff, anyway.” He remembered immediately all the things Marysa had done for him, and how unfinished he was without her.
He headed off along the street, his thoughts returning to the prostitute and the dead politician.
CHAPTER 7
BRYND WAITED PATIENTLY ALONGSIDE EIR IN THE CORRIDOR OUTSIDE THE Council Atrium, the chamber where all the plans and schemes for Villjamur and the Empire were debated. They had sat there for hours. Brynd understood then that, as a servant to the Empire, his life was spent either arriving, departing, or waiting.
The two of them sat in a miserable silence, and he pitied Eir for having to witness her father’s death when she was still so young. He tried to convince her that it was not her fault, that it was an accident. She hadn’t wept openly, but when Brynd had gone to fetch her earlier that day, he could hear her sobbing behind the closed doors of her chamber.
However she stepped out to greet him as elegantly composed as could be expected.
After her sibling Rika had left, all those years ago, the younger girl had become more quiet, rather withdrawn. She shouldn’t have had to cope with Johynn in his deteriorating state, not at her youthful age. Brynd wondered if she’d eventually come to see her father’s departure as a release from his powerful emotional grasp over her.
Eventually, the large quercus doors of the Atrium were opened and they were both summoned inside.
The Atrium itself was a high-domed white chamber about fifty paces wide. The twenty-five councilors, each representing a sector of the city as stated by the old maps, sat in a circle of benches, ranged above them.
The Council had already been locked away for most of a day, anxiously deliberating the consequences of Jamur Johynn’s death. They had ordered that the Emperor’s mortal remains be cleaned up rapidly. As yet no one in the general population of Villjamur realized that their Emperor had killed himself. Palace servants had been threatened with torture and execution if any rumors were traced back to Balmacara.
Brynd and Eir took their seats silently in a wooden podium at one end of the chamber for esteemed guests, although Brynd felt more like a prisoner. On it was carved the emblem of the Jamur Empire: a seven-pointed star.
A low-level muttering rippled through the Council.
Eir was dressed soberly in a dark red shawl covering a black gown of mourning. Brynd took the opportunity to rid himself of the scars and dirt and memories of military ambush, and wore a freshly cleaned all-black uniform.
Though Brynd had earned the Emperor’s trust over the years, he was never quite sure how this parliament reacted to his being albino. Brynd had his own suspicions about these councilors because of what had recently happened at Dalúk Point. If he scrutinized them carefully, perhaps one of them would betray guilt in his or her eyes.
Silence fell as Chancellor Urtica stood up.
Brynd glanced at him with secret disdain. You couldn’t really trust a man who, it was rumored, had spent a year of his youth mixing poisons as an apprentice to a senior torturer for the Inquisition. Urtica was a swarthy, handsome man in his forties, his graying black hair cropped close to his ears. The Council uniform of green tunic and gray cloak fitted his slim body well.
“Jamur Eir. Commander Lathraea, welcome to the Atrium,” he began in his smooth