Releasing March 1
Later, M’kar realized she had been planning her days of laziness a
little too loudly, and the universe heard.
Ashrock dropped the bomb over dinner.
“What do you mean, Etrusca and Great-grandfather are missing?” M’kar
put down her mug of seooli tea, grateful he told her before she took a mouthful.
“They’ve vanished altogether from Le’anka,” Jeyn said, punctuated with
a little shrug. “And no, they weren’t assassinated. We’ve been receiving
messages from both sides of the growing battle, asking where they are,
demanding we hand them over, and threatening all sorts of dire punishments.”
“Battle?” M’kar’s brain latched onto that word, among all the other
bad ones.
“Someone tied Etrusca’s emergence from the surbda crater to the
disappearance of the Ancestors’ voices,” Ashrock said, with a shrug that
mirrored his wife’s. M’kar wondered how soon that little gesture would grow
irritating. Her parents weren’t the kind of people to shrug and signal
something was of little importance. Unless …
“What do you know? What haven’t you admitted to those indiferps and
how could … Oh.” She sat back and wished they were eating indoors instead of in
the pavilion by the firefish pond. She needed to shove back a chair and stomp
away from the table and work off the shivers of apprehension as all sorts of
images raced through her mind. It was hard to rise dramatically when she was
sitting on a thick cushion on the tile pavement. “So Etrusca was right, and the
Ancestors’ voices are actual voices, pulled in through the dimensional warping
of the broken Gate. Once we moved most of the pieces off Nisandros, the
dimensional warping stopped, and the voices stopped and …” A chuckle escaped
her. “And all the lunatic prophets have no excuse to do crazy things.”
“Etrusca is uniting most of the worst of the clans by their hatred for
her. Our clan is getting blamed for silencing the Ancestors and disrupting the
totally idiotic traditions and structure of government. Your uncle Rokas sent
you an enormous chest full of family treasures to thank you, by the way.” He
snorted, grinning so half the tattoos on his face twisted or disappeared into
folds in his skin. “All my brothers and cousins and uncles are delighted,
preparing for war, strengthening the clan house defenses, answering honor
challenges. You wouldn’t believe all the apologies I’ve been receiving on your
behalf, expressing regret for trying to kill you when you were a child.”
“Nisandrians are insane.”
“Yes,” her mother said, “but life is never boring when you’re married
to a Nisandrian.”
“I warned you, na’nooshki.” Ashrock reached across the table
and intertwined his fingers with hers.
If her parents started making smoochie noises or even got up and started kissing, M’kar might throw herself into the pond.
“So what’s the other boot you’re about to drop on me?” she asked, to head that off. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy evidence that her parents were still silly, sloppy in love, but she suspected that dropping sensation she got was something like envy.
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