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"If Her Highness trusts your discretion, Prince Howan, then certainly I do, as well," he said. The prince looked at him for a moment, then inclined his head in a small bow which mingled acknowledgment and appreciation of the implicit compliment. He sat back down, and Kinlafia turned to Andrin.
"Actually, Your Highness, I don't really think you were wondering about campaign strategies at all, were you?"
Andrin's eyes widened. Despite what she'd just been thinking, his directness—and perceptiveness—
surprised her. No wonder Alazon was so attracted to him!
"You're right," she admitted. "I suppose I'm just not used to asking such questions directly."
"With all due respect, Your Highness," Alazon put in, "you should get used to it." Andrin looked at her, and the Privy Voice shrugged. "You happen to be Heir-Secondary, Your Highness. Yes, you're young.
But don't let the natural deference of youth keep you from asking the questions you need to ask and demanding the answers to them."
Andrin glanced at Prince Howan, the only other person at the table remotely her own age. His expression gave away very little, but she thought she saw a trace of agreement in his almond eyes as he looked at the Privy Voice. And as Andrin considered the advice herself, she remembered that Alazon Yanamar was far more than simply her father's privy voice. She thought about it for several seconds, then nodded in acknowledgment and moved her eyes back to Kinlafia.
"Taking Alazon's advice, Voice Kinlafia, am I just imagining that Father—and First Councilor Taje—
both seem to be treating you much more as if you'd been a family adviser for years than like someone who just got back from Hell's Gate less than two weeks ago?"
"I—" Kinlafia began, and paused. He looked very thoughtful for a moment or two, then he gave a little shrug of his own—very much like Alazon's had been—and nodded.
"I wouldn't say they regard me as any sort of adviser, Your Highness. And they certainly don't regard me as any sort of retainer, or as some sort of official member of your household or administration. But there have been certain ... developments, since your brother sent that flatteringly inaccurate letter of recommendation to your father. I'd really rather not go into all of them at this point, but—" he looked into her eyes once more "—some of them, at least, concern you."
"Me?" Andrin's pulse fluttered ever so slightly as she remembered her own thoughts during the Unification Parade. "Is it something Father's Glimpsed?" she asked.
"To some extent, yes."
She could tell Kinlafia hadn't really wanted to admit that, yet she felt strangely certain he'd never been tempted to lie to her, however diplomatically. The front of her brain told her she should take her cue from him, let it rest where it was. She'd already learned more than she'd really expected to, after all.
"Can you tell me what he's Seen?" she asked, instead.
"No, Your Highness. Not without his permission, I'm afraid."
Andrin felt a quick, brief flicker of anger—a spike of almost-rage, made far stronger by the background of her endless days of anxiety and fear for Janaki—and Kinlafia was a Voice. She knew he'd felt her anger, but he only looked back at her steadily, and anger turned into respect.
"I can ... appreciate your discretion, Voice Kinlafia," she told him after a moment. "That's not to say I don't wish you could be more forthcoming." She sipped from her lemonade glass once more, then lowered it. "I'm sure you're well aware that Father and I have been experiencing an entire cascade of Glimpses for the past several days. It's a very ... uncomfortable sensation. It worries me. No, it scares me, and I suppose that makes me more anxious than usual for some kind of reassurance."
"I do know about the Glimpses, Your Highness."
He looked across the table at her, his eyes filled with a compassion which seemed somehow only warmer and deeper because of her awareness of what he himself had endured. He was like her father in some ways, she realized. From a different sequence of causes, perhaps, but with that same i
Was he always like that, I wonder? Or did what happened to him at Fallen Timbers change him that deeply?
"I will tell you this, Your Highness," he continued. "Your father—as I'm sure you need no one in the multiverse to tell you—loves you very, very deeply. I haven't known you very long myself, but I can already understand why that is. I've told your father that if I win election to Parliament, my opinions will be my own, and that if I disagree with him, I'll say so. I meant that then, and I mean it now. But since then, I've been privileged to come to know him—and you—far better than I ever expected I would. And speaking as Darcel Kinlafia, not Voice Kinlafia, and not Parliamentary Representative Kinlafia, I would count it an honor if you would call upon me for anything you need."
Andrin's eyes widened once more in fresh surprise. People told her father—and her, to some extent—
that sort of thing every day. Sometimes they even meant it. But coming from Kinlafia, it was ... different, somehow. There was an echo almost of what she often sensed from chan Zindico and her other personal armsmen, and yet that wasn't quite correct, either. Chan Zindico and the others were her family's loyal retainers—her servants, when it came right down to it. Even though it would never have occurred to her to think of them as such, they were always aware of that relationship. It helped define not simply how they regarded her, but who they themselves were.
Darcel Kinlafia didn't see her that way. She'd never been "his" grand imperial princess, although she supposed that was technically going to change in about eighteen hours. There was no institutional, dynastic sense of loyalty in what he'd just said, and in a way Andrin doubted she would ever be able to explain, even to herself, that made the sincerity of what he'd just said indescribably precious. He meant it when he said he would be honored to help her, and there was no reason why he had to be. No basis for her to simply expect him to be.
"Voice Kinlafia, I—"
She paused, her eyes burning strangely, and he reached across the table and very gently took her hand. It could have been a presumption, an intrusion, but instead of drawing back, her wrist turned as if of its own volition, meeting his hand palm-to-palm, and as she felt him squeeze her fingers, something clicked almost audibly deep down inside her. The bumblebees buzzed louder under her skin, the sound almost deafening, and something seemed to literally flow from her fingers into his hand. She'd never experienced anything like it, never heard of anyone experiencing anything like it, and she inhaled sharply, her nostrils flared.
"Your Highness?" She heard chan Zindico say from behind her, his voice sharpening with the instinctive bristle of the deadly guard dog he truly was. "Are you all right, Your Highness?"
"I'm fine, Lazima."
She turned her head to smile reassuringly up at him, then looked back at Kinlafia. The Voice must have recognized chan Zindico's flare of suspicion, but his expression was calm, almost tranquil.
"Voice Kinlafia, I think—" she began, only to break off abruptly as Alazon Yanamar jerked upright in her chair.
The Privy Voice might have been carved from ice, so still she sat, as she Listened to whatever message had arrived with such abrupt, brutal unexpectedness. And then, her eyes filled suddenly with tears.
"Alazon?" Andrin said quickly, urgently. She took her hand from Kinlafia's, reaching out to the older woman as Alazon's pain reached out to her. "What is it? What's wrong?"
Alazon closed her eyes, her face wrung with an anguish so deep, so bitter, that Andrin literally flinched.
She saw Kinlafia responding to his beloved's grief, as well. He reached out towards Alazon, and only later did Andrin realize that he'd reached out towards her, not Alazon, first.
Andrin leaned towards Alazon across the table, unable to imagine what had hurt the older woman so.
And then, abruptly, she realized the music had stopped. That an ocean of utter silence was flowing out from the ballroom, sweeping over the entire Palace. She turned her head, looking through the arched colo
"Your Highness," the anguish, the grief, in Alazon's beautiful voice ripped at Andrin like a knife. "Your Highness," the Privy Voice said, "your father needs you."