“What would you do with one?” asked Norathar.
“Ask me when the Cycle changes.”
“Eh?”
“I,” she said, “am currently the Dragon Heir to the Throne. Morrolan used to be, before I arrived.”
I remembered being told about Aliera’s “arrival”—hurled out of Adron’s Disaster, the explosion that brought down the Empire over four hundred years ago, through time, to land in the middle of some Teckla’s wheat field. I was later told that Sethra had had a hand in the thing, which made it more believable than it would be otherwise.
Norathar seemed faintly curious. Her eyes went to the Dragonhead pendant around Aliera’s neck. All Dragonlords wear a Dragonhead somewhere visible. The one Aliera wore had a blue gem for one eye, a green gem for the other. “E’Kieron, I see,” said Norathar.
Aliera nodded, as if something had been explained.
I asked, “What am I missing?”
“The lady,” said Aliera, “was no doubt curious about my lineage, and why I am now the heir. I would guess that she has remembered that Adron had a daughter.”
I said, “Oh.”
It had never occurred to me to wonder how Aliera came to be the heir so quickly, although I’d known she was since I was introduced to her. But sitting at the same table with the daughter of the man who had turned an entire city into a seething pool of raw chaos was a bit disconcerting. I decided it was going to take me a while to get used to.
Aliera continued her explanations to Norathar. “The Dragon Council informed me of the decision when they checked my bloodlines. That is how I became interested in genetics. I am hoping that I can prove there is a flaw in me, somewhere, so I won’t have to be Empress when the Cycle changes.”
“You mean you don’t want to be Empress?” I asked.
“Dear Barlen, no! I can’t imagine anything more dull. I’ve been looking for a way out of it since I’ve been back.”
“Oh.”
“Your conversation is really gifted today, boss.”
“Shut up, Loiosh.”
I worked all of this over in my mind. “Aliera,” I said at last, “I have a question.”
“Hm?”
“If you’re the Dragon Heir, does that mean your father was the heir before you? And if he was the heir, why did he try the coup in the first place?”
“Two reasons,” she said. “First, because it was the reign of a decadent Phoenix, and the Emperor refused to step down when the Cycle changed. Second, Daddy wasn’t really the heir.”
“Oh. The heir died during the Interregnum?”
“Around then, yes. There was a war, and he was killed. There was talk of his child not being a Dragon. But that was actually before the Disaster and the Interregnum.”
“He was killed,” I echoed. “I see. And the child? No, don’t tell me. She was expelled from the House, right?”
Aliera nodded.
“And the line? E’Lanya, right?”
“Very good, Vlad. How did you know?”
I looked at Norathar, who was staring at Aliera with eyes like mushrooms.
“And,” I continued, “you have been able to scan her genes, and you’ve found out that, lo and behold, she really is a Dragonlord.”
“Yes,” said Aliera.
“And if her father was really the Heir to the Throne, then . . . ”
“That’s right, Vlad,” said Aliera. “The correct Heir to the Throne is Norathar e’Lanya—the Sword of the Jhereg.”
The funniest thing about time is when it doesn’t. I’ll leave that hanging there for the moment, and let you age while the shadows don’t lengthen, if you see what I mean. I looked first at Cawti, who was looking at Norathar, who was looking at Aliera. Sethra and Morrolan were also looking at Aliera, who wasn’t focusing on anything we could see. Her eyes, bright green now, glittered with reflected candlelight, and looked upon something we weren’t entitled to see.
Now, while the Cycle doesn’t run, and the year doesn’t fail, and the day gets neither brighter nor darker, and even the candles don’t flicker, we begin to see things with a new perspective. I looked first at my lover, who had recently killed me, who was looking at her partner, who should be the Dragon Heir to the Orb—next in the Cycle. This Dragonlord-assassin-princess-whatever matched stares with Aliera e’Kieron, wielder of Kieron’s Sword, traveler from the past, daughter of Adron, and current Heir to the Orb. And so on.
The funniest thing about time is when it doesn’t. In those moments when it loses itself, and becomes (as, perhaps, all things must) its opposite, it becomes a thing of even greater power than when it is in its old standard tear-down-the-mountains mood.
It even has the power to break down the masks behind which hide Dragons turned Jhereg.
For an instant, then, I looked at Norathar and saw her clearly, she who had once been a Dragonlord. I saw pride, hate, grim resignation, dashed hopes, loyalty, and courage. I turned away, though, because, odd as it may seem to you who have listened to me so patiently and so well, I really don’t like pain.
“What do you mean?” she whispered, and the world went back to its business again.
Aliera didn’t answer, so Sethra spoke. “The Dragon Council met, early in the Reign of the Phoenix this Cycle, before the Interregnum, to choose the heir. It was decided that the e’Lanya line should take it when the time comes. The highest family of that line were the Lady Miera, the Lord K’laiyer, and their daughter, Norathar.”
Norathar shook her head and whispered again. “I have no memories of any of this. I was only a child.”
“There was an accusation made,” said Sethra, “and Lord K’laiyer, your father, challenged his accuser. There was war, and your parents were killed. You were judged by sorcerers and your bloodlines were found to be impure.”
“But then—”
“Aliera scanned you, and the sorcerers who made the first judgment were wrong.”
I broke in, saying, “How hard is it to make a mistake of that kind?”
Aliera snapped back to the present and said, “Impossible.”
“I see,” I said.
“I see,” said Norathar.
We sat there, each of us looking down, or around the room, waiting for someone to ask the obvious questions. Finally, Norathar did. “Who did the scan, and who made the challenge?”
“The first scan,” said Sethra, “was done by my apprentice, Sethra the Younger.”
“Who’s she?” I asked.
“As I said, my apprentice—one of many. She served her apprenticeship—let me see—about twelve hundred years ago now. When I’d taught her all I could, she did me the honor of taking my name.”
“Dragonlord?”
“Of course.”
“Okay. Sorry to interrupt. You were talking about the scan.”
“Yes. She brought the results to me, and I brought them to the Dragon Council. The council had a committee of three do another one. Lord Baritt was one—” Morrolan, Aliera and I exchanged glances here. We’d met his shade in the Paths of the Dead, and had three completely different impressions of the old bas- . . . gentleman. Sethra continued. “Another was of the House of the Athyra, as the expert, and someone from the House of the Lyorn, to make sure everything was right and proper. The committee confirmed it and the council acted as it had to.”
Norathar asked, “Who made the accusation?”
“I did,” said Sethra Lavode.
Norathar rose to her feet, her eyes burning into Sethra’s. I could almost feel the energy flowing between them. Norathar said, between clenched teeth, “May I have my sword back, milady?”