Internal: Viperpath (volume 1)

(28) Rotten Roots

"This goes way, way back," Mama Viper related grimly, "to when our 'Prime Vazir' was but a governor in the old realm's southernmost district, centered in what is known now as the city o' Mers. Different moral shades, too; what we now presume to call despicable, had then been quite commonplace. In such convoluted times did we--Yasnar, Razin, and myself, to name but a precious few--try to eke out our respective places."

Aska swallowed. "Your Grace, you're making it sound as if the likes of me would not have lasted one day-"

"No joke. A lumpy country bum like yaself would be lucky to even get noticed, back in those days." She did not shout, but the peon winced and opted for the golden path of discretion.

"Yasnar's got'n himself two daughters, see," Mira pressed on. "The elder had died during some plague; unfortunate, but I didn't recall her name all that well anyway. Good riddance. The younger, Kahina, happened to be my playmate since we were ten. Following so far? Good.

"Sometime after my sixteenth name day," the queen continued, her stare becoming a tad melancholic, "I'd begun to notice how I had not seen Kahina for weeks of the time; odd, I thought. Then, when that lass did come to the palace--this very same, by the way, just under a different monarch--she had worn a dark veil and looked very much distraught. From one of her escorts whom I'd managed to take aside, I found out that such a precaution was at her father's behest: that slimy governor had been about to... present... his only living daughter to the king." There was a brief but very tense pause. "Call it a tribute, if ya like; and ya better believe me when I say that His Grace my father, in his veracity, would not have had it any other way. What the king wanted, the king received, detractors be damned."

Aska was already covering his mouth. "The disgrace," he murmured intensely. Then, more loudly, "And... what followed, Your Grace?"

"What followed..." Azalea's lady mother closed her eyes, rather painfully. "The king did what he did best. Kahina never spoke to me again since that day, even as her father gleefully awaited his rewards, curse him. P'raps he'd expected a barony of some sort... but by then rebellions had begun to sprout, north and south alike. Wretched Yasnar might've thought then that maybe allowing Urdin's forces in and currying favor with 'em would be his alternative steppin'-stone... and lo, he's so right. He'd gotten the Prime Vazir-ship, and had stayed there since, while I..." Mama Viper shrugged with an ironic smile. "I'd got'n to wed my dad's killer. Were it not for Azalea and Das, such as they are... I'd probably have taken my own life outta sheer despair, who knows..."

At the end of such a narration, the agent-to-be had paled noticeably, trembling with dawning vexation. Razin's shock had meanwhile morphed to enraged disgust.

"How damnably-well Yasnar has kept such a secret from even his closest maggots..." he remarked bitterly.

"That's what I intend to unravel," his liege replied shortly. "That withered fox's every breath insults me... though let's just say I've been made to understand that there are finer ways to cope with this. If blades won't end him, the sheer guilt from havin' shredded my playmate's personal dignity for a few years' worth of misused authority, might! That, and 'cause I wanted to have another familiar face by my side, after all these years. Therefore, and in case ya two 'aven't noticed, failure's no longer an option here. Neither is turning back."

"If that be the case... Might this Kahina still be alive today, Excellency?" Aska wanted to know.

"They are," Razin confirmed, "and that's where you're supposed to come in, dear Aska. A missive in Kahina's name and seal had been penned, requesting someone 'utterly trusty on the queen's part', to use her words, to get to Nahran, that trading suburb. Thereafter you must bring Kahina, and the 'boy with her', very possibly her long-unmentioned offspring, back here--alive, and most preferably with none on your tail. Is that plain enough for you?"