“It would seem so…” Did I really?
“Hunh. Well, that’s something.”
If I really believed him, it was more than something. It was huge.
“Are you going to tell me now who told you that I killed him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Just because I apparently … believe you”—the admission felt strange, like a foreign tongue—“doesn’t mean I trust you.”
“Haven’t my actions so far shown you that I’m trustworthy?”
“No.”
He sighed.
“I have to think.”
It took a bit, but eventually he nodded. “I can understand that.”
“Why was my brother exiled to Orania, of all places?”
“I don’t know. The order didn’t come from me.”
“Then from whom? Your father?”
He nodded.
“Why? Does he usually get involved with these kinds of decisions?”
“Sure. Your brother is just the kind of high-level decision he likes to make.”
“Is an exile to Orania common?”
“Nope. I can’t think of anyone else who was exiled there.”
“Over nearly three-and-a-half centuries?”
He shrugged. “Just because I don’t know about it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened lots of times. Unless it relates to the military positioning of my father’s empire, I might be the last to find out.”
I didn’t say anything for a while, thinking how often Teo and I had also been the last to learn about some of Alonso and Rafaela’s important rulings.
I’m sorry it’s like that for you too, I wanted to say. But we would have to be friends to say things like that to each other, or at the very least, we couldn’t be sworn, mortal enemies.
“Have you been to Orania?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“Ah. When you conquered it.”
He leaned farther back into his hands, as if a heavy weight pressed down on him. “Yeah. When I conquered it.”
I waited for more. None came.
“So, what’s it like there? What would it be like for my brother to have been exiled there all these years?”
