Lance of Earth and Sky - By Erin Hoffman Page 0,21
the amplifier, the glass device he'd used to magnify his fledgling elemental abilities against the Vkortha, so long ago.
The ninth figure, a young man sitting closest to the glowing sphere, wore a simple gold circlet at his brow.
“Welcome, Captain,” the emperor said, standing and pulling the blue lenses from his eyes with weary hands, “to Val Imris—and the Relay Room.”
At the emperor's words, a murmuring echo passed around the table. The remaining eight people continued to stare into the sphere at its center through their glowing lenses. Though they responded to speech, they didn't seem to realize anyone else was in the room—each still kept up a steady flow of words, all different, all indistinguishable to Vidarian's ears. The emperor smiled ruefully and lifted a finger to his lips, then approached Vidarian from the far side of the table.
Color and light, despite the dim hall, gleamed off of the emperor's embroidered silk robe as he drew closer to the doorway. Vidarian worked to keep his feet under him—the long journey, hunger, and now facing a man to whom his family had owed loyalty for generations. The young, chiseled face and dark eyes held authority weightlessly, and some distant, surreal part of Vidarian observed that his likeness on the coin of the realm was quite true to life.
A moment of panic surged through Vidarian's veins as he flailed after words, but to his surprise, the emperor's eyes went up over his shoulder, focused somewhere behind him.
Vidarian turned and recognized the shining black coiffure and grey eyes that looked back at him. He only just caught an eruption of hate and fury before they submerged beneath a portrait-perfect smile. Her eyes were now so welcoming, her greeting to the emperor so warm, that he wondered if hunger and shock had made him hallucinate. The light here was so damnably dim…
“Ah, Oneira,” the emperor was greeting her with equal satisfaction and warmth, “you're just in time. Captain Rulorat has arrived. You must dine with us.”
Vidarian fought between relief at the idea of a meal and distaste at sharing it with Oneira, whom, when last they met, was pursuing him and Ariadel through the dead of night with capture orders from the Alorean Import Company.
“Your majesty knows I would love nothing more,” Oneira said, her diction cultured to perfection, “but I had come to relieve you at the table.” In clasping the emperor's hands in greeting, she had accepted the blue glass lenses from him.
The emperor waved delicate hands, the flurry of his fingers light and controlled at the same time, like a sparrow's wings. “Easily remedied,” he said, and waved at one of the guards. “We'll fetch Alandrus. He'll not mind, and should gain practice besides.”
Oneira searched the emperor's eyes for a long moment, doubtless gauging whether she could risk resisting him again, but in the end she smiled, all lightness. “Of course, your majesty. As you wish.”
By all accounts the emperor had decided on that moment's whim to dine with Vidarian and Oneira, but in the short time it took them to adjourn to the dining room—the “sable room,” his majesty had mentioned offhandedly, one of fifteen imperial dining rooms in the palace—an elegantly dressed table for four awaited them.
Vidarian waited for the emperor and Oneira to take their seats, then placed himself to the left of the emperor, resting a hand on the chair and looking for his majesty's subtle nod of approval before setting himself down.
All four places at the table—sable oak, matching the frame of a huge hunt scene in oils on the north wall, and the pedestals in lit alcoves bearing massive floral arrangements that filled the small room with fragrance—were set. Confirming that they would await another guest, the liveried servant who came bearing an effervescent pale wine filled four glasses, not three.
“To departed friends,” Oneira said, lifting her glass, and dropping an obscure look on Vidarian just before she did so.
“Indeed,” the emperor replied, lifting his own and then sipping from it. “To those who cannot join us—our poor Justinian included.” At that last, the look he gave Oneira was brotherly with sympathy.
“So it's true, then,” Vidarian said softly, more to himself than the table. Two faces turned toward him. “The Court of Directors,” he said, still absorbing the truth himself—realizing he had not wanted to believe. “We heard…” The words failed him.
“That they fell dead,” Oneira finished for him, and for the briefest of moments her eyes filled with water, but again she mastered herself