Priest of Lies by Peter McLean

Author:Peter McLean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

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The invitation had been for two days’ time, and Ailsa had spent those days drilling me like a raw recruit on the basics of Alarian manners. I had a feeling she wasn’t looking forward to this afternoon’s visit any more than I was, but now we were finally in the carriage on our way to her parents’ house and she was still lecturing me.

We had left Billy behind with his tutor, of course, so it was just the two of us and a pair of footmen sitting up top with the carriage driver, and three guards on horseback. Apparently it would go ill enough that Ailsa had married a man who wasn’t Alarian, never mind that she had also adopted a son with him. Telling them about Billy was going to have to wait for fairer weather.

“Now remember, they call me Chandari and you’re to do the same in their hearing,” she said yet again as the carriage rolled down a broad avenue. “They never did accept that I took a western name when I came of age. And be respectful, Tomas, especially to my mother. In Alarian households the wife is always in charge.”

I looked sideways at Ailsa and smiled. That piece of news hadn’t surprised me one little bit the first three times she had told me, either.

“I know,” I said.

“All you need to say to her after ‘hello’ is ‘yes, Madame Shapoor,’” she went on. “My father may speak to you, but Mother will be furious with me that I didn’t marry an Alarian man, and even more furious that she wasn’t invited to the wedding that she wouldn’t have approved of, nonsensical as that sounds. And remember, they have absolutely no idea what I do and it has to stay that way. I’m just a courtier, as far as they know.”

“I know,” I said again. “We’ve been over and over this. Just tell me what your father does and I’m sure I can find some sort of common ground with him. You never did tell me that.”

“What? Oh, he’s retired, they both are. I’m a good deal older than I look, don’t forget, and my parents are not young. Before that he was a merchant trader, with a fleet of ships that sailed the tea route from Alaria. He found it better for business to base himself here in Dannsburg, where I was born. Tomas, you will be respectful, won’t you?”

I looked at her again, sitting there on the bench beside me and twisting her elegant silk shawl in her hands. It came to me then that this terrible and murderous Queen’s Man who was prepared to face torture with no possible avenue of escape, this lioness of stone and iron, was actually nervous about seeing her own parents.

“Yes, of course I will,” I said, and put a hand on hers for a moment.

I had only meant it to be reassuring, but to my surprise she gripped my hand and gave me a smile that actually looked genuine.

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