no place for a man who does not understand treachery or deceit.”
“Are you certain he does not understand such things? He is Sihar, is he not? Is it possible for a Sihar man to come of age without understanding something of the complexity and cruelty of the world?”
The Sihar, for their practice of blood magic, had long been shunned by the rest of the mage community. And though it was no longer acceptable to openly discriminate against the Sihar, the old bigotry had endured in subtler and sometimes more insidious new guises.
“You would think that the prejudice that surrounds them would breed bitterness in every Sihar heart. And yet I have found that is not always the case. Sometimes the response of those who receive a disproportionate share of the world’s ugliness is a startling beauty of character, a warmth and joie de vivre that one cannot help but be attracted to and moved by. Yet I was convinced that he would wither if she were to make him her consort—it requires a certain sternness, a certain ruthlessness, if I may say so, to successfully wear the crown. Her Highness, as such, did not possess enough sangfroid. If she were to ally herself in marriage with a man even more temperamentally unsuited to rule . . .
“In any case, I recommended that she go about it the old-fashioned way: marry one of her barons to strengthen her position and keep her lover away from the gaze of the public. But Her Highness was an idealist. She didn’t want to follow my advice, even though she acknowledged that it was sound.
“We disagreed strongly over the matter—it was probably the most strained our relationship had ever been. Then one day she came, distraught, and asked that I never seek to harm her beloved. I was hurt that she thought I would overstep my bounds to such an execrable extent, and I told her so.
“For the first time in all the years I’d known her, she wept. She told me that something terrible would befall him and begged me to promise her that it would not be at my hand or my instigation—as I was the only one in whom she had confided his identity, who had the means and motive to remove him from her life.
“To put her at ease, I volunteered to take a blood oath. She declined to bind me with one, saying that my word was good enough. She next agonized over what to do about her father. He was not opposed to a youthful indiscretion or two on her part, but she had kept her affair in extraordinary secrecy because she feared what he might do if he were to find out that her lover was Sihar. In the end she decided not to say anything to Prince Gaius and to marry only after she ascended to the throne, when no one could gainsay her—or arrange for her beloved to meet with an unfortunate accident.
“The second week of January 1014, your father went on his annual volunteering trip abroad. The Sihar community of the Domain is far wealthier than those in many other realms, and the young people of the community often traveled overseas to help their less fortunate kin—this was in the years before the January Uprising, when mages still had the freedom of instantaneous interrealm travel. Though Her Highness missed him desperately, she was glad he was away from the Domain, away from her father’s caprices.
“He was expected to return in a fortnight, before the start of spring term, but he never did. When he was confirmed missing, I spoke to everyone who knew him. His friends who had gone abroad with him agreed that he started his return journey before they did, with every intention of resuming his everyday life in Delamer. But somewhere along the way he disappeared.
“I reported my findings to Her Highness. She rose, pale and shaken, and told me that she had already seen a snippet of my report in a vision—except she’d thought she would have more time.
“She asked me to keep searching. When every avenue of inquiry came to a dead end, she confronted her father at last. They had an awful row. He was adamant that he’d had nothing to do with it—that had he known, he would have indeed done something, but there would have been no secrecy, at least not between father and daughter. He would have let her see exactly how he’d deal with this