The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,220

Flick for sense and clarity. ‘We’ll find Flick. You’re right. He’ll know what to do. Come on. Some horse rustling is in order.’

Chapter Thirty Two

Flick’s only intention that night was to put a stop to the madness, to try and put right all that had gone wrong in his life. He hadn’t learned from his own mistakes and now was the time to change that.

He had seen Pellaz maybe half a dozen times since the first meeting, but what sent him out into the mountains, day after day, wasn’t pre-arranged engagements, but only the hope of finding Pellaz in the place where they’d meet. It was like an addiction, destructive and selfish, and recently Flick had had the sense to admit to himself it was similar to how he’d felt about Cal. Pellaz wasn’t damaged by the secret liaisons: Flick was. Their friendship wasn’t about love, as Lileem had suspected, or even aruna. It was as if a mighty fiery angel had descended from the centre of the universe to talk with Flick alone, and he craved it. His senses wanted to feast themselves upon the Tigron, not Pellaz Cevarro. Because even sitting near Pellaz, Flick was filled up with his power, his light, his energy. The sad thing was, he couldn’t enjoy the fruits of this proximity, because it had to remain secret, when all he wanted to do was climb on to the roof of the house and shout it out to the whole of Shilalama. If he spoke at all, he would betray himself. So, it was better to be uncommunicative and moody, to hide behind that disguise. Keeping this from Ulaume was the hardest thing of all. But Pellaz was determined on that point. And, oh, how he needed to talk.

The Tigron had some firm friends in Immanion – Vaysh and a har named Ashmael – whom he trusted implicitly. He had loyal friends in the House of Parasiel too and was especially close to Seel and Cobweb. But all of them were intimately connected with the schemes and affiliations of the court of the Hegemony. All of them had their own views on the Tigron’s affairs, and were not totally impartial. Flick was free of all this. He could bring a new eye to Pell’s dilemmas, and because it was Flick’s nature to help and seek solutions, Pellaz came to him more often than he’d originally intended.

So, now Flick knew all the intimate and miserable details of the Tigron’s relationship with the Tigrina, Caeru, if such a hostile situation could ever be given that name. He knew that Pellaz feared that his own son, Abrimel, despised him, despite the fact Pellaz had done all he could to prove to the har that his feelings for Caeru were separate and complicated, and soaked in bitter memories. Abrimel, apparently, wouldn’t accept that. He and Caeru were very close. Pellaz confessed he’d tried to build something with Caeru, but it was impossible. For all his good intentions, he’d lose the desire for harmony the moment Caeru did something to annoy him, which was fairly consistently.

After a couple of years playing the grieving victim at court, Caeru had since begun to build his own connections and gather allies. He gave more public appearances than Pellaz did, and courted the devotion of the common hara. Most infuriating to Pellaz of all was the fact that Caeru sucked up to Thiede and that Thiede, apparently, indulged him. Caeru now owned a lot of land in Almagabra, as well as choice areas of Immanion itself. He was a har of substance and independence. He did his job well, and never spoke ill of the Tigron, all of which showed Pellaz in a bad light. When they appeared in public together, Caeru’s smile appeared genuine and he would make a display of small but affectionate gestures towards his consort. Hara noticed that Pell’s was the sour face, the stiff posture. Hara in the street knew the rumours, and none of them could understand why their Tigron was so cold to the Tigrina. Any one of them would give an eye to have Caeru at their side and in their bed.

What had begun as a personal issue – an issue of bruised hearts, sleepless nights and the smell of lost years on the evening air – had turned into a political one. A few members of the Hegemony had opposed Thiede’s plan for a Tigron, thinking more along the lines of a republic. Most