Council of Four Armies is disbanded,” Jalas said, and for a fleeting second, his expression was sly.
Israel frowned. Perhaps Jalas was merely feeling the strain of his illness. “I wouldn’t use the term disbanded when ‘at peace’ is more appropriate.”
“Oh?” Jalas’s eyes narrowed on him. “Do you maintain the army you had summoned for the battle with the Harborym?”
“Not the full force,” Israel answered, a sense of something in the air—suspicion? Resentment?—making him wary. “But I always have need of a standing army. The Fireborn are, on the whole, a reasonable people, but it does not mean they are willing to live in complete harmony. You must know how important it is to remind your people of the repercussions should they cross you.”
Jalas murmured it was so, drinking from the flagon as he did so.
The next half hour left Israel with a definite idea that something was very wrong with Jalas. Although he expressed interest in Darius, he appeared distracted and didn’t once inquire what Hallow and his fellow arcanists were doing.
It wasn’t until later that evening, when Idril had escorted him from her father’s chambers that he gave voice to the concern that most bothered him. “Your father is a changed man.”
“Yes.” Idril stood in front of the fire in the great hall, her demeanor as mild as ever, although her shoulders rose in a slight shrug. “He did not take our divorce well.”
“Considering he knew our marriage was one in name only, it was unrealistic of him to expect us to continue it.”
“My father has ever been a man who follows his own counsel,” she said evenly, her gaze still on the fire. “Even when he knows he is in the wrong.”
Israel frowned, remembering the thinly veiled barbs that the older man had cast at his daughter. “Does he maintain no control over the Tribe any longer?”
“No. He claims he is too weak for it.” She turned to him, her gaze as steady as her seemingly unruffled emotions. “The clans are threatening to form their own leadership. He blames me for that, but will not allow me to do anything to assert my dominance, much though I would like to. A more ungrateful, obstinate group of men I have yet to meet.”
“Your father?” Israel asked in confusion.
“The Tribesmen.” She clicked her tongue and corrected herself. “And yes, my father, too.”
He searched her face, looking for signs of distress, but despite her bitter tone, her expression was as placid as ever. “Is there no other way of rallying the Tribe to your banner without your father’s blessing?”
“Of course there is. It’s simply a matter of whether I wish to fight my father at the same time I bring the Tribe to heel, which is what will happen if I try to claim control.”
“Idril…” He stopped, not sure what he could say to her. He had not wished to marry Idril, but had agreed when it became clear that Jalas would remove himself and his people from the Council if he did not do so. Neither Idril or he had ever believed the marriage was anything but a temporary legality, one that would allow Jalas to save face, and Israel to keep from having a contentious neighbor to the north.
He picked his words carefully now. “I don’t know why your father has changed so much since the Battle of the Fourth Age, or what estrangement is between you and him beyond the dissolution of our marriage, but I feel obligated to offer you sanctuary should you require it.”
“Sanctuary?” Surprise flickered through her eyes. “From what?”
“The Tribe. Your father has ruled your people for many centuries, but it has not been an easy rule, and if you find yourself unable to keep them in control—”
“It is not the Tribe from whom I need protection,” she answered.
“What do you mean by that?”
Her gaze went past him, causing Israel to turn to see who had entered the hall.
It was Marston, who gestured a question that clearly asked if he was needed. Israel shook his head, and the other man left the room as silently as he’d come.
Idril turned and fetched the wine from where it had been mulling on the hearth, pouring him a goblet of the steaming liquid. “You did not endure the hardships of snow and travel just to see how I was faring leading my father’s people. Yet you spent two hours with Father and did not ask him anything. It makes me wonder why you would go to so much trouble to be here at Ilam.”
Israel smiled and sipped at the spiced wine. Although he’d changed into dry clothing earlier, the memories of the cold passage to Ilam were all too fresh in his mind, and he relished the warm burn of the wine. “I see the six months we’ve spent apart have done nothing to dull your astuteness.”
She raised an eyebrow a fraction of an inch. “Did you think I would fade away to a colorless drab in your absence?”
“No,” he said, turning his mind back to the question of Jalas’s behavior. “I assumed you would fare as you always do. Since you have guessed as much, I will admit that I am here for a specific reason. You took note of what I said about Hallow?”
She seated herself in a wooden chair that seemed to be made up of elegant curves. “That he is concerned about Darius? Yes. What I found puzzling was what you did not say: exactly what it was Hallow did with regard to Darius. You simply mentioned them, and then encouraged my father to be distracted with gossip about the priest.”
“You haven’t lost any of your shrewdness, either. Tell me, do you really have an interest in Deo, or is that yet another of his wild imaginings?”
“Deo,” she said, smoothing the fabric of her gown. Her gaze was averted so that he couldn’t look into her eyes, and as usual, her expression told him nothing. “Deo is lost to us.”
“He is in Eris,” Israel corrected.
“Which we cannot get to.” Her fingers traced the golden threads embroidered on the creamy white fabric of her gown. “No one has ever been able to sail to Eris without perishing most violently.”
“No one has been able to sail to it, but there is another way to travel there,” Israel said.
She slid him an unreadable glance, the single wrinkle back between her brows for a moment before it smoothed out. “Ah. The portals. But those were created by the Harborym.”
“Not by them…but their leader.” Israel fought the sense of anger that followed whenever the memory of Dasa rose in his mind. “Their captain, Racin, is the one who sacrificed many Harborym in order to generate the power needed to opened the portals, or so the queen told me years ago. I can’t imagine that has changed.”
“Indeed.” Idril appeared to consider this. “I conclude you are not planning on inviting the Harborym leader back to Aryia simply so that you will have access to his portal leading to Eris, and yet, I can see no other method of getting there.”
“I assume that if he had the means to open portals here or on Genora, he would have already done so. Regardless of whether or not he has regained the ability to open a portal, I have not spent the last eleven months reassuring the people
