Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [105]
“You were saying?” Elandra prompted the chief physician.
Holding his beard in one hand, he bowed low to her. “It is our concerted opinion,” he said, his gaze flickering slightly as the guards put a sobbing Lady Lyticia outside the room, “that nothing can be done. When a man is crushed inside, he may live for several days in terrible pain, but his life force cannot be contained.”
Grief stabbed through Elandra. “This is unacceptable.”
The man bowed again. “Sometimes, Majesty, our desires are not sufficient to change the way things are.”
She whirled away from him and swept from the room, barely aware of the guards saluting her. There had to be a way to save her father, some means other than feeding him opium for the pain and saying nothing else could be done. She knew only one person who might know what to do.
An empress did not run, but Elandra was past caring what anyone thought of her actions. Holding up her skirts, she strode through the corridors and down a series of steps.
When she passed a pair of guards standing at attention before a passageway that led to the kitchens, she paused.
“You and you,” she said crisply. “I require your attendance.”
Looking startled, the men approached her. They were much alike in appearance, both wiry and dark-skinned. Both wore sleeveless jerkins with dagger belts crisscrossed over their chests. They carried ceremonial pikes. They looked like brothers.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked.
Her tone was abrupt and harsh, not at all womanly. She had no idea as she stood there, fuming with anger and impatience, how much she sounded like her father at that moment, how her jaw was clenched just like his, and how fiercely her eyes were snapping.
The men bowed low. “Aye, verily,” one replied. “Thou art the daughter of our lord. Thou art the wife of our dead emperor, a woman of full rights and property, unveiled.”
Her chin lifted in satisfaction. “Protect me as you would Lord Albain. I will endure no more insults beneath this roof. I will have no one stand in my way.”
The men straightened. Their dark eyes gleamed with understanding, and before they spoke, she knew she had their absolute loyalty.
“Give me your names.”
“I am Alti.”
“I am Sumal.”
“We are twins,” Alti said.
“You are now my men,” Elandra said. “Let replacements be found for your post. Let the word be passed through the barracks that I need a personal guard from any who will volunteer. When the hour of danger struck in Imperia, the elite Imperial Guard could not protect me from harm. Never again will I go forth without Gialtan fighters at my back.”
Alti and Sumal grinned and looked as though their chests would burst. She knew their type, plantation-born, brought up to hard work, fearless, and incredibly loyal.
“The word shall be given, Majesty,” Alti said.
She nodded. “Let the word also be passed that I want a jinja of my own. A real one, young and unbonded, from the wild. Not one retrained in the sorcerer’s market. I trust my father’s soldiers to find this for me. I will not ask a nobleman to perform this service.”
Alti and Sumal exchanged glances, and their grins faded away. Somberly they nodded, understanding her meaning, respect increasing in their eyes. After all, she was Albain’s daughter before anything else, and like Albain she understood that the true strength of Gialta lay in the hearts of its common fighting men.
“It shall be done, Majesty,” Alti said.
Elandra smiled briefly. “Come, then. I wish to find Lord Caelan, the tall man who came here with me.”
They frowned and again exchanged glances. “That is a difficulty, Majesty.”
Impatience surged through her. “Why?”
“No one said he was a lord. There was trouble in the gallery, and now he has been taken to the whipping post.”
Chapter Nineteen
Forgetting dignity, she whirled around and ran down the steps all the way to the gallery.
But the long room stood empty except for a trio of women gossiping in one corner and a pair of elderly men. The crowd of warlords and