Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton

Author:Mark Charan Newton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Murder, Conspiracies, Murder - Investigation, Fantasy fiction, Crime, Fiction, Fantasy, Investigation, Courts and courtiers, Epic, General
ISBN: 9780345520845
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2010-06-29T05:54:19.065216+00:00

CHAPTER 23

THE RETURN OF THE ELDER SISTER, RIKA, BROUGHT THOUGHTS OF HIS own family to Chancellor Urtica. Families were an important issue to him.

After all, he’d killed his own.

They used to ridicule him, and he just couldn’t cope with that, no, not the everyday references to sneering at his shortcomings. Gathered around the table at night, every night, they would start to berate him for his failings, especially his mother. Even when he qualified for the junior ranks of the Council his family would carp at him for not progressing up the ranks quickly enough. They would question his lack of friends, they complained that he didn’t earn enough; it seemed everything he did or did not do became a target, a focal point for savage criticism. Fearing that this constant undermining would ultimately limit his career prospects, the young Urtica decided one night that enough was enough.

Dispatching them had been a joy, a creative wonder, the kind of ingenious ploy to smile about as he remembered it. He contrived a way of tricking them into dropping something lethal in each other’s food. One night just after he had turned eighteen, a treat to rid himself of all the shame and humiliation, the sheer joy of watching them cough up blood, retch bile, yet still take time to berate each other shrilly as they realized what was happening. He had a watertight alibi—paying off several old friends for their word, with promise of power to come—and he’d faked an entry in his mother’s diary. When the Inquisition came they declared it an open and shut case. Sympathy had come pouring in from neighbors, for the poor boy so tragically orphaned. When he finally got away from their condolences, he began to savor the thrill to be obtained from the godlike power to terminate life. While he was engaged in the business of removing his family, he had taken the liberty to forge new wills—with ancient Jamur runes and seals and all—leaving more distant family members ostracized. Charitably, he gave them a little, because he was nice like that, but the majority of the wealth and estates came to him. Forgery, he thought at the time, is such a blissful art.

And soon there were others to suffer at his hand, like his older cousin in a freak sailing accident off the coast of Jokull, whose drowning was followed by a few drinks at the quayside celebrating the sudden inheritance of family estates on the east coast near Vilhokr. A glass to you, dearest cousin, for the comforts with which you’ve provided me. Cheers!

With his new-won independence and income, he had turned to the Ovinists. The traditional gods reminded him too keenly of his pious family. After all, a new faith for a new man!

Vaguely the whore he used last night had looked like his mother, a slender waif of a girl with sharp features. It brought back some complex thoughts to his mind. What does it mean, sleeping with a substitute

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