Righteous Anger (Okal Rel Saga #2)

Part 1.1: The Third Child

11 Years later (175 Americ Era)

Beryl Nesak knelt to buckle a sword on her four-year-old son and sat back on her heels with a worried look. "Must you take him, Hangst?" she pleaded. "He is frightened."

Horth looked up at the large man dressed in a long, admiralty cloak. He liked the red dragon that clawed at Hangst Nersal's collar and swept down one side of his body, embroidered in russet and crimson. The dragon's tail went all the way around the back, ending near the tip of his father's sword.

Mother felt firm and sheltering, standing behind Horth. He resisted the urge to back up into her skirts and hide there. He was fearless at sword practice, according to his trainer, Hara; and his brother, Zrenyl, who had taken him up in a rel-ship a few times, said he took to it so naturally it was irksome.

But what he faced now was neither swords nor ships — it was a court reception.

"Horth's biggest risk," Hangst told Beryl cheerfully, "will be dying of boredom, listening to the Ava's heralds recite every one of baby Amel's Demish ancestors." He grinned. "I suspect they'll leave out the dash of Red Vrellish in the child. I am surprised they haven't dyed Amel's hair blond and found a way to make his eyes blue instead of gray." Father was amused by his own cleverness.

"There will be too many people there," Beryl insisted.

"Branst will keep an eye out for him," Father promised her. "And so will Zrenyl."

He did not mention Hara, but Horth was not surprised by that. Father had given up talking about his retainers and staff in front of Mother, because Mother didn't like anyone who wasn't highborn. Hara belonged to the nobleborn challenge class, which meant that in Mother's terms, she wasn't Sevolite enough to qualify as an "eternal."

Mother's hands began to dig into Horth's shoulders. "Let me keep Horth apart, to myself, Hangst! Please. Just Horth. He isn't suited to the sly ways of your Ava's court. Horth is too honest!"

"Honest?" Father laughed the way he did when he felt more threatening than threatened: a rough, aggressive sound. "How would you know, Beryl? Does he talk to you more than he talks to us?"

"I know his soul," Mother insisted.

"Neither his life, nor his soul, will be in any jeopardy today, I promise," said Father. "It is just a genotyping, even if it is an imperial one. Your own Nesak priests test children to confirm how Sevolite they are! You have told me that yourself."

"Priests are not gorarelpul," said Beryl. "Gorarelpul practice Lorel arts."

"We won't settle our differences on this or other matters today, my Nesak," said Hangst. "Nor in our next dozen lifetimes should we be doomed to spend them together, as you insist we are." He pulled her away from Horth into his arms. "But I like arguing with you," he said, smiling at her worried expression as he stroked her heart-shaped face with one large hand.

She let herself be held a moment before grief distorted her features and she pulled back, shaking with hard emotion. "Go," she said. "Take him! And go please your Vrellish sluts!"

Father sighed. "Beryl, so far it has only been the one. And it's political. I've explained that."

She listened in stony silence. Horth, like his brothers, was perfectly aware how she felt about Father resuming a sexual relationship with Tash Bryllit, an important vassal.

Father put out his hand. "Horth, come."

With a last glance at his mother, Horth left her side to take his father's hand. It was a good, strong hand. It filled him with confidence. He was afraid, yes, but he would conduct himself with honor because his family was there, to watch. It was a family that extended backwards and forward in time, spanning the living and the dead, with the living ones merely the happy few riding the curve of the rel symbol's S-shaped arc between the barbed hooks that symbolized birth and death.