I introduced Ectar to Jovan, watching the jump of interest in the man’s face as he realized he’d been quarantined with two members of the Oromani family he’d traveled here to bargain with. Lazar’s obvious panic and discomfort seemed to have a steadying influence on the Talafan; any tension he had harbored toward the process seemed to dissipate. His gray gaze swept the austere hospital room without apparent judgment, and he took a pallet and endured the physic’s examination as politely as I did. His servants spoke only in direct response to the physic’s questions, with Ectar translating from the pallet in a lazy tone.
Lazar, uncharacteristically, seemed too distraught even to talk. He lay down on the farthest pallet, his back to the rest of us, and his drunken snores soon filled the room. Jovan, too, lay still, though to someone who knew him well it was clear he was concentrating deeply rather than relaxing. We were trapped in a room with people who might have caused the Chancellor’s death; here was our chance to learn whatever we could from their reactions.
I was exhausted, but so well-practiced at masking it that it was no trouble to pretend enthusiasm for a late-night conversation. For his part, Ectar seemed genuine. If he knew about our uncle’s death, he was an excellent liar, because he spoke readily and easily about Etan as he relayed his excitement to supply the Emperor with our tea. For a time, I could pretend I didn’t know, either.
“You are related to the Emperor, I understand?”
“He is my…” He paused, searching for the word, then must have remembered there was no equivalent term in our language. “Grandfather,” he said in Talafan. Then a smile warmed his face, making him seem younger. “But I am very far from the throne. The youngest son of a youngest son is not likely to inherit.”
“How many brothers do you have? One seems sufficient to me,” I said, shooting a sidelong smile at Jovan.
Ectar laughed. “One would be sufficient to me, also yes! Alas, I have eight older brothers.”
“Eight!” Jovan exclaimed. “What bad luck for your family.”
I glared at him. The only thing he studied about other cultures was their use of poisons; I doubted he’d understood the reference to Ectar’s “grandfather.” Here, to have sons instead of daughters was indeed bad luck. Women could continue the bloodline and family name, while sons had to find some other way of distinguishing themselves and adding value to the family. In the Empire, parenthood was illogically granted to men, and bloodlines supposedly—and probably inaccurately—followed through males.
I reframed my brother’s clumsy comment. “It must be challenging to distinguish yourself among so many. You’ve obviously become a trader of some esteem.”
Ectar puffed up. The more we spoke, the more expression seeped through his careful Talafan mask. “I … er, cultivate my grandfather’s taste for foreign goods. When I was a child, you may not consume a food product in the Imperial City that was grown outside the Empire. Now, I bring him Sjon tea for his cups, and Doranite furs for his bed. He wears a bloodstone necklace from Perest-Avana! He hungers for new things to surprise him. It is a new world. A good world for a man like me.” He leaned closer to me, eagerly, his gaze darting to Jovan and back. “I desire much to make a most beneficial deal with Credo Etan. Oromani tea is the very best, and my grandfather hungers only for the best.”
I seized the moment. It took little effort to summon tears; the mention of my Tashi’s name had burned anyway, and the memory of his body being carried away from us was enough. I let them splash down my cheeks and dropped my head. Though he was behind me, Jovan was doubtless watching Ectar closely as I said, in a tiny voice, “Oh, Lord Ectar. I … I have tried to be brave, but…”
He knelt closer to me. “What is it? What has happened?”
“Credo Etan. My uncle. I didn’t want to frighten you, but I’m afraid he was infected. It was fatal.”
“Fatal?” Ectar scrambled to his feet, reverting to Talafan as he spluttered, “You mean we are infected with something that might kill us? Why did no one inform me of this? This is unacceptable!” Now he was shouting. The solicitous merchant persona abandoned, he reverted to pure nobleman. His servants hovered about him like bobbing flies, convincingly fearful and unsure. “This is an outrage! I will not be treated like this. Call your physics, woman, and summon me a messenger at once! My grandfather will hear about this.”
Exchanging glances with Jov—he would understand the sentiment if not the words—I tried to calm the Talafan. “Lord Ectar, please.”
But he was having none of it. Lazar woke, spluttering and red-eyed, and stared at the furious Talafan. Jov stood. “Lord Ectar,” he said firmly, “you should also know that the disease that apparently killed your animal was passed to the Honored Chancellor himself.”
Ectar broke off midrant, and his already pale skin went alabaster. Tiny muscles around his mouth worked. Rage subsided into the bone-deep politics of nobility; he was from a different world, but politics were not so different all the world over. He knew what the death of the Chancellor meant. “I am … deeply grieved to hear this,” he said in Sjon, bowing his head. “Please forgive me, Credola Kalina, Credo Jovan, Credo Lazar. The Chancellor! I … I did not know.” Still shaking, he stepped back a few paces. “How could I know? The leksot was perfectly healthy, you believe me. I bought her from the best breeder. I beg you, please understand. This was not my doing.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Credo Lazar said tearfully. “Word is already spreading. The whole city will know by the morning. I brought you into my home! My family’s honor will never recover. To have had a role in the death of our most beloved Chancellor and his closest adviser … the shame of it.”
“It was healthy,” Ectar insisted. “I would never have gifted an animal that had so much as sneezed in my presence.”
“Yet the creature scratched our uncle and the Honored Chancellor,” Jovan said, his tone cold and his face still. “Now they are dead.”
“And we are going to die also?”
I suddenly realized he was not much older than we were, and not nearly as controlled as he’d appeared. If this fear was not genuine, he’d best make an appointment with the Performers’ Guild, because I believed it. “I’m sure we are not in true danger,” I reassured him. “The symptoms came on fast, so we are only here as a precaution.”
But the Talafan, still white and shaking, closed himself off once more. He mumbled another apology and then lay down with closed eyes. I would get no more from him. Jovan and I shuttered the lamps without speaking, and we lay down on our pallets in the darkened room, holding on for just a bit longer in the darkness to the illusion that this was all a terrible nightmare. He held my hand as I fell asleep.
* * *
Morning dawned without symptoms and the physics cleared us to leave. Lord Ectar was asked, in the politest possible terms that could be backed up with a sword, to accompany the Order Guards who had guarded our room to the Manor.
“I’ll go with them,” Jov told me. The creases around his eyes and brow and the redness of his irises gave away his lack of sleep. My heart ached for him. Sleep had been a brief escape for me; my brother would have spent the whole night trapped in his own head, imagining things that he could have done differently, berating himself for the path of his own thoughts. “You go home and rest.”