“Adjutant.” Leth keeps his disgust from his face with long practice. “Are my mother and brother in residence?”
“Your brother is. But I don’t think he’s seeing traitors today.”
“He can tell me that himself.” Leth rests a hand on his sword hilt, and the way Javius’s eyes widen is gratifying. The last thing Leth wants is to lose control and cause a scene, but Javius doesn’t know that.
The yard swarms with soldiers, and Leth sees servants past Javius in the entrance hall. Numerically, Leth is at a disadvantage, but he’s more than capable of humiliating Javius before anyone subdues him. Especially since Javius no longer has Valor to strengthen his sword.
“Kindly let me pass,” Leth says.
Anger spotting red beneath his beard, Javius steps back from the doorway. Leth smells sour beer as he brushes past the man. His shoulders tense, but Javius doesn’t try to stop him.
The entrance hall is busy with travel preparations too. Leth stops a servant and asks where in the sprawling keep his brother is. The answer surprises him; Anton never used to frequent the family library like Leth did.
Leth thanks the servant and heads upstairs, ignoring the two guards following him at a distance. The women make no secret of watching him, and Leth isn’t trying to hide. They can watch him all they like. Far more unsettling is the familiarity of every stone, candle, and tapestry in these halls. After everything, this is still home.
As a child, Leth loved looking at the great heroes in the tapestries. Men and women in gleaming armor, Valor shining from their swords. Today, Leth can’t help but notice the other figures in the tapestries. The vanquished. The dead and dying, demon and human alike.
The guards shadowing him seem winded by the time they reach the fourth floor of the keep. Leth doesn’t slow his pace until he reaches the library door. Resting gloved fingertips on the bronze handle, he glances over his shoulder. Spell beads click in his hair.
“You should probably wait in the hallway,” he tells the guards. “You don’t want to get involved in this.”
The younger woman steps forward. “Our orders—”
The other grabs her arm. She looks like she has a few more years of experience. “He’s not wrong. This is the general’s business, whatever the adjutant says.”
Unimpeded, Leth opens the door and steps inside.
The library is the brightest room in Fort Tarhaeg. Tall windows welcome the pale winter sunlight, and expensive mage-lamps illuminate the neat rows of tall bookshelves. Gray curtains cover the shelves of older books, protecting them from the light. The fireplace is unlit, and the room is chilly.
Anton isn’t in the main room, but the door beside the fireplace is open. Only ka Tariels have keys to the private room where the family heirlooms and arcane texts are kept. Some are simple instructional texts. Some are half-true, half-myth tales of mages who destroyed cities or found immortality in a demon’s contract. Some are histories most ka Tariels would prefer forgotten.
Leth counts his breaths until his pulse steadies. Padding across the plush rugs, he feels smaller and smaller as he passes each tall bookshelf. At the door, dark gray magic flickers at the edge of his vision—wards protecting the valuables within.
The books in this room live in closed cabinets. Anton is locking one of them when Leth enters. Apart from the cabinets lining the walls, the only furniture is a pale wooden table and chairs in the center of the room. A plain leather-bound volume sits on the table.
Anton ka Tariel looks out of place in the library. He’s always been big, a head taller than Leth and twice as broad. Born with the natural strength Leth always had to work for, his hands were made to lift greatswords, not books. His hair is the same light brown as Leth’s, but he wears it cropped short, with a precisely trimmed beard. Dressed for travel, he’s exchanged his usual flashy green cloak for a gray one.
The cabinet lock clicks shut, and Anton turns around. His eyes are the same hazel as Leth’s, and they’re filled with ice. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
By the tone in Anton’s voice, this conversation is already a mistake.
“I heard you were leaving,” Leth tries anyway. “I wanted to talk before you rode out.”
Anton laughs harshly. The bright lamps show new lines around his eyes. Anton is only six years older than Leth—he turned thirty this year—but the past few months have aged him. “Then talk, little brother.”
Leth rests his hands on the back of the chair. “Where are you going? The western border?”
“Not the west.” Anton leans against the locked cabinet. Leth tries to remember what books were in that one. The shelves aren’t labeled. “Feel free to report that to your spying Praian friends.”
Yes, this is a mistake. There’s no hope of having a productive conversation when Anton’s like this. “I’m not reporting to anyone.”
“Cut to the chase,” Anton snaps. “Are you here to gloat, or to apologize?”
Leth’s fingers tighten around the chair back. “I won’t apologize. Breaking the Binding was the right thing to do, and you know it. You’ve learned our history the same as—”
“To gloat, then,” Anton interrupts, with another laugh that doesn’t reach his eyes. Walking around the table, his presence pressures Leth backwards. “You’re still so arrogant, even when you’re slithering in the gutter with criminals and foreign heretics. History? Was that what all this was for—so you could be the next Warlord Prelleth or Kan Aria?”
“It wasn’t for me.” Leth tamps down the ember of guilt at his own greed.
