Nightsworn | The Whispering Wall #2

Eighty One: Two Evils

"I can't piss, Whisperer, and you fluttering about behind me like an anxious hen is not making it any more likely." Harkenn's voice was hoarse and low, but still conveyed his annoyance very well. Nova remained perfectly still so as not to draw attention to her presence by rattling her chain. She wasn't convinced that Harkenn remembered he hadn't sent her out. As Nika took the empty chamber pot from him, the lord sighed and eased himself back into the bed. "I'm concerned that we haven't heard anything from the boy. Or Yddris."

"I am too, my lord," Nika said softly. Yddris had gone out hours before to try and track down Ethred, protecting the search party from any plague victims or demons they might encounter. Thorne had gone too, but to search the Orthanian temple instead. Nika's aura was sickly with worry and frustration. The Unspoken adjusted the pillows behind his charge and then returned to his worktable; Harkenn had given over the writing desk in his bedchamber to Nika's desperate research into what else he might have been dosed with. Nova thought that the task might have been the only thing keeping the man from climbing the walls with agitation.

For herself, she was drained, emotionally and physically. Cael's barrage had been a constant all day and her head throbbed with the effort of holding up her defences. A shimmering blind spot had begun in one eye, and the only thing in the world she would have asked for was to be in bed with Grace instead of stuck up here. Imagining the girl's face, the smell and feel of her, was only further torture – not only because she couldn't have it, but because the slightest slip might reveal that desire to Cael.

For a while, the only sound was the soft slip of turning pages as Nika flipped through one of the many books he had brought up from the library. Harkenn lay as if dead in the bed, grey against the white pillows. She didn't think he slept.

"I'm going to have those bastard Angels arrested the minute you figure out what's wrong with me," the lord muttered after a while. Nika glanced up, and his aura was not promising.

"Yes, my lord. I think that would be best."

"And the next thing I'm going to do is get myself a dark-damned heir."

Surprise registered in Nika's aura. Nova was just as shocked, though she supposed she shouldn't have been.

"You're going to nominate someone?" Nika asked. "No one's done that since..."

"No, Whisperer, I'm going to father one. I'm sure there's a woman out there who would carry a child for me at the right price."

No matter how much Faellian had hated his father, Nova thought wryly, tradition always won out with Harkenns. She had read enough of the history. Harkenns only ever fathered sons, and never once had the mothers been acknowledged. No Harkenn who had ever sat the Reach throne had married. At some point in each generation's rein, an heir always appeared, marked by the orange eyes and pale skin of their line, and whichever poor woman had begotten them vanished into the annals of history unremarked. At least this Harkenn was going to pay the poor girl for the dubious privilege – and if he intended to pay her, then at least he didn't have Nova in mind as a candidate.

"Do you have plans to marry?" Nika asked, without any expectation of an affirmative, and Harkenn scoffed weakly.

"No. I'll pay the woman, see she's looked after until she births him, and then preferably never hear from her again. You'd be surprised, Whisperer, how many offers the right amount of money would get me."

"I'm sure I would, my lord." Though his voice concealed his distaste, Nika's aura showed it very clearly. Nova was inclined to agree with him.

"But first, figure this out," Harkenn waved a bony hand at the pile of books.