feelings were a mirror of his own.
Durzo took them into a small, dusty house with a thick door. Kylar noticed that his eyes and his master’s checked all the same things: doors, narrow windows, rugs, plank flooring. Durzo was satisfied. He opened the bureau and lifted out the bottom drawer to reveal a false bottom. Kylar pooled the ka’kari in his hand. I’m really going to miss your wit.
~If I wanted sarcasm . . . ~ it began, but Kylar willed it to cover Retribution. ~Wait!~ He dropped the sword into the space beneath the bureau. Both Retribution and the ka’kari were magical. He couldn’t bring either to the Chantry. They would stay here until Kylar left.
Durzo replaced the bottom drawer, locked it into place, and took a few minutes to place a trap on it. In the meantime, Kylar worked on his disguise as Durzo had taught him. After he’d finished with the trap, Durzo studied him. “Not too bad,” he admitted.
Minutes later, their little punt had scarcely docked next to a fishing boat flying two black flags when a familiar face turned up.
“Sister?” Kylar asked.
“There’s a king in Cenaria!” Sister Ariel said, making it an accusation.
“Is this a password?” Durzo asked.
“Glory to his name,” Kylar said. “Can we get out of the boat?”
“In Torras Bend, I called you arrogant. You said we’d discuss your arrogance when there was a king in Cenaria,” Sister Ariel said, unamused. “Was that your doing?”
“Me? Who am I to meddle with kings?” Kylar said, smirking a yes.
“What’s your name, young man? I seem to have forgotten. And who’s this?”
“Kyle Blackson. Nice to make your acquaintance again, Sister Airy Belle, right?” She gave him a glare that could curdle milk. “This is Dannic Bilsin, Uly’s dad.”
“Seven hells,” Sister Ariel said.
“Nice to meet you, too,” Durzo said.
Kylar got out of the boat and Sister Ariel stepped close to him and sniffed. She stepped back, confusion rising sharply in her eyes. She looked around the docks to see how far away the other Sisters were. “What have you done to yourself?”
With Durzo’s instruction, Kylar now appeared to be a man with a vast and untapped Talent. Otherwise, he smelled and looked like any man. As long as he didn’t use the ka’kari or his Talent, his guise would remain in place.
“I’m here to see my wife,” Kylar said.
“Vi’s studying, but I can have her brought to you after lunch.”
“I meant the wife I chose, not the one you did.” Kylar smiled thinly. Sister Ariel’s face drained.
“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” she said.
“Maybe I’m not the only one.”
“And you?” Sister Ariel asked Durzo. “Do you have demands that will cost lives, too?”
“I’m just here to see my daughter,” Durzo said.
64
The funeral came before the wedding. Dorian didn’t want the first thing he saw with his new bride to be insane women throwing themselves into a fire, shrieking as they burned to death. Nor did he want her to see the dozens of tiny bodies his men would throw on the fires first. He’d told Jenine that he’d purged the aethelings who’d been plotting against him, but he’d told her that he’d merely sent the younger ones away.
Well, hell counted as away, he supposed. Heaven certainly did.
Dorian, of course, had never seen the cremation of a Godking, but some of the older meisters had. There was a ritual to be observed, despite the fraud at the center of it: rarely had the body being cremated actually belonged to a Godking. But Garoth Ursuul’s pyre wouldn’t hold a substitute. Garoth had been a man deeply committed to evil, but he had been a great soul, too, a horror who could have been a wonder, and he was Dorian’s father.
Only meisters were allowed to attend the divine funeral, but that restriction meant little, for nearly every ranking official in the Khalidoran government was a meister. Generals, bureaucrats, the masters of the treasury, and even the chiefs of the kitchens stood in attendance. Tax collectors and soldiers watched according to their rank. Dorian uttered the meaningless words of praise to Khali, and they uttered their meaningless refrains of devotion. The fires were started and Dorian could read the vir of every meister making a weave to block the acrid stench of human fat burning. When the fires roared hottest, Dorian had the harem brought before him and claimed almost all of them. There were raised eyebrows, but nothing more. A Godking was expected to be voracious. The