Free The Seer - eARC by Sonia Lyris

feel underfoot of the heavy metallic click on the stone, the bird quickly sidestepped away from him to the edge. He stepped back.
    Cern reached forward and brushed the small, dully gleaming statuette with her fingers.
    Four-fingers high head to shoulders, it was a passable rendition of Nials esse Arunkel, the Grandmother Queen, judging by the portraits that hung in the Great Hall. Cern picked it up, held it wonderingly.
    “Pohut died for this?”
    No, his brother died because he had crossed the line between competition and betrayal.
    And because Innel had gotten to the girl first.
    But he could say none of that.
    “I’m sorry, My Lady,” he said, knowing it was the only thing he could say, and resenting the part of him that meant it.

    Innel found himself jolted awake from dreams of struggles in frozen mud, unable to get hold of his brother, grasping and slipping. Then suddenly, somehow, he had Pohut’s head tight between his locked arms and twisted hard to the sound of a crack.
    He was fully awake now, considering the split-second decision that saved his life, and the advice that had made it possible.
    If he knew of her, others would. Of those who had heard the rumor, who else might care enough to go to Botaros to find out if it were true?
    Innel now keenly regretted not having done something about the girl that night.
    But what? He could hardly have dragged both his brother’s body and a resisting child through the mountains and then into the palace, never mind the question of the sister and the baby.
    It dawned on him then, the obvious, brutal solution: to slay her there and then, that very night. This problem would now be solved.
    His thoughts flickered back to the candlelit shack. He considered the distance from the nearest neighbors and how far her screams might have carried in the gusting wind. The sister would likely have fought him, so he would have had to kill her, too. And then what? The baby as well?
    He wondered if it was in him to do such a thing, to take sharp steel to the three of them, in order to keep the girl from whoever else might want her predictions.
    Well, it didn’t matter if it was in him or not. He hadn’t. He would simply have to find a way to have her quietly brought to Yarpin, where he could control what she said and to whom.
    Once she was here, he would have more options. For example, he could have her tongue cut out, solving the problem of her talking without any killing at all. He wondered if she knew how to write.
    In any case, this could wait no longer.

    Innel drummed his fingers on a table of dark wood into which was inlaid a scattering of paler woods showing the sigils of the oldest of the Lesser Houses. Bolah, warming spiced wine in the corner, filling the air with anise and cardamom, was adept at services quieter and less showy than the Great Houses might inspire.
    Which was why he was here.
    He realized he was drumming on House Finch’s sigil. What was their motto again? Loyalty through winter. He considered that and paused in his drumming.
    “Twunta, Captain?” The small white-haired woman offered him a long, silver pipe from a red mahogany stand.
    With a head shake he declined. Wine only clung to his breath, while smoke clung to his clothes. He found it better not to have his indulgences so easily determined.
    Getting away from the palace tonight had been no small feat. On this cold, overcast evening, Srel stood outside a soaking bath as if Innel were inside, where instead Nalas enjoyed hours of late-night soaking while a hooded Innel snuck out into the frigid city to meet with Bolah.
    Now his eyes wandered the room, taking in the glinting, colorful, polished clutter. On one wall a thick tapestry hung on which people and animals feasted and fornicated, their bodies mingled and twisted together so that it was hard to tell where one limb began and another ended.
    Bolah had a reputation for being able to offer the unusual.
    On the table between them she set two tall circular