III.

“What do you know of Edore?” Lozzell asked. She sat opposite Ash in Spire’s council room. Sunlight capered through the room’s windows and played across a room bare of decoration.

Despite the importance of matters discussed within, it was one of Spire’s smaller rooms, designed to be the complete opposite of the grandiose throne room which sat empty several floors above their heads on a different branch. Doors large enough to accommodate the tallest of hobs were open at opposite ends of the room, kilkinteth soldiers standing guard. The air buzzed with a quiet drone of activity from every direction.

Ash had arrived nearly exhausted from climbing the stairs linking several lower branches. The hob, Dew, had apologized for his sorry state. It was a ruse. Lozzell had wanted Ash weakened and had suggested Dew only ask the druí to teleport them partway up Spire. Even then, Dew had offered to carry Ash up several flights of stairs but had understood when he declined. Male pride generally made such an embarrassing proposition impossible. Perhaps she had meant human pride, for despite his current form, Dew and Lozzell knew Ash to be human. Lozzell knew more about him than he knew of himself.

But not for long.

“I came because you promised answers, Princess.” Ash took long measured breaths between every other word, sprinkling the respect owed to Lozzell with impatience like a chef with shaky hands.

She didn’t fault him. Unlike her, Ash didn’t know his entire story. He had started his own tale somewhere past the beginning, and Krachnis had manipulated the narrative. She wondered how many paragraphs or even sentences of Ash’s life had been of his own creation when all was said and done.

“You shall have answers,” the princess said. “But, to save time I would rather not repeat what you already know.”

Wings aflutter, she breathed deeply of a scented handkerchief. No one had warned her of a city’s odors. The first time she had performed for a crowd, she had almost fainted, overwhelmed by the smells humanoid bodies released. Not that they were unwashed, though plenty were. They released pheromones, unconsciously, until the air felt sticky with fear and desire.

Aside from Ash, the princess, her guards, and Dew--they were alone in the meeting room. The large round table where they sat across from each other could have accommodated a dozen more. Lozzell wondered if Ash had guessed the purpose of the place she had brought him--the most important room in the Radiance--where representatives of each race debated the betterment of an entire world.

The chairs ranged in size, height, and style. Ash’s seat was part stepstool, allowing him to easily climb and sit well above the table’s surface. The princess’ chair was of an equal height, minus any steps. A talented wood shaper had carved a long-stemmed flower, the petals lined with brightly colored pink cloth. It was her mother’s chair, and while it was comfortable, Lozzell didn’t envy the long hours her mother spent listening to reports from throughout the Radiance and debating with the other council members over policy. The princess sat on the edge of the lowest petal, wings folded behind her back.

Ash sighed and recited the little information he knew about Edore.

“The final king of the fae kingdoms, Edore was exiled due to a growing madness. His sister usurped the throne and began a vicious campaign against the humans who had begun spreading into fae territory. A bloody civil war ensued, many of the races fighting against their own on the side of the humans or fae. The first council formed and overthrew the sister. With all the great races cooperating, they were able to mitigate much of the damage done during the war, but Edore could not accept his exile.

“As the civil war ended, Edore began his own campaign against a united but weakened Radiance. He waged war for almost a hundred years, always trying to regain the throne he had lost. Lesser races who were unhappy about their exclusion from the council always flocked to his banners. At one point, Edore reached the walls of Core and would have taken them, if the hobs had not joined the fight. Edore was slain in battle and his forces were dispersed.”

As the princess was about to speak, Ash added, “Of course, I’ve recently learned not to trust the official history.” The princess swallowed her unspoken words and clacked her mandibles together.

He could always choose not to believe her tale. From her source, Lozzell knew it to be one of the truest stories she would ever have the privilege to tell. If he chose to believe, if the telling opened some closed part of his mind, knowing where he had come from might change what he was becoming. Connecting past to present might finally show a future beyond Unmaker.

“None of the stories explain Edore’s madness,” she said. “We call him Edore the Mad King but are given no shape to the madness. Which is a shame because it’s the oldest kind and makes for a richer tale.”

Even in what was supposed to be a candid meeting, the princess couldn’t help pausing for effect. Ash leaned forward in anticipation but caught himself and settled into the chair. The princess noticed the movement and smiled.

“Love drove Edore mad,” she said with a wistful sigh, as if nothing in the world could be more important than loving to extremes. “Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except he was in love with a human. Thelesa. Neither her beauty nor her wit captured Edore’s heart, though she had both in abundance. At a time when the wodenlang were undisputed rulers of the world, Thelesa dared to ask the most dangerous question of all--why? And Edore listened.

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“When the affair threatened to produce a child, his sister, Shoal, intervened. She had allowed her brother his foolish romance, believing it an exercise of his power. When it verged on something she deemed much more dangerous, humans reaching equal footing with the wodenlang, Shoal overthrew her brother and discovered too late that Edore had secreted Thelesa away.”

“So the war against the humans…” Ash thought out loud. He seemed open to the story, not fighting against it. Perhaps because the voice in his head was blocked. Perhaps Gailinn was right, and his time in the Radiance had changed him. If Ash was receptive to new ideas, there was hope, after all.

“A decade of bloodshed to find a single woman and her child,” the princess said, ending with the softest of sighs.

Her sisters had criticized the romantic sentiment coating so many of her stories, comparing it to the heavy film on unwashed wings, holding the story to the ground when it should have flown. Lozzell disagreed. By believing in the story so fully, desiring to experience some part of its adventure and elevated emotions, her words brought it to life for the distance between her tongue and the audience’s ears.

Of course, she employed other tricks as well.

“To her credit, Thelesa tried many times to rejoin Edore, but Balancers hunted her. Thelesa had no choice but to disappear. She raised her child in the Flourite Caverns.”

“With the burrowers?” Ash asked.

He had fallen completely under her story’s spell. She recognized the glossy sheen of his eyes and the slight way his mouth hung open. Nor was he alone. Dew had taken a seat on the floor, her head still higher than Lozzell’s tiny antennas, and she leaned forward until her body resembled a question mark, begging for more information.

Like all members of her race, Lozzell possessed means of communication immensely more complicated than other humanoids. Most races had a spoken language of a few dozen sounds, which they combined into complaints about the weather, haggles over fresh produce, veiled threats, and proclamations of love. To Lozzell, they were chefs specialized in a single type of food, like a baker who could combine a few staple ingredients into an array of goods.

Kilkinteth produced thousands of sounds. They spoke with mouth, mandible, wing, and leg. In the hive or during a hunt, they had an entire language of dances. The combined recipes of every chef in the world couldn’t have stacked up to the smorgasbord of kikinteth communication.

Upon joining the council, finally recognized as a greater race, the kilkinteth had shared much of their culture and history, but there was one skill they had kept hidden. Pheromones.

They filled the air like the varying scents of a banquet. Love was a sweet and sugary dessert. Shoal’s betrayal was a bitter vegetable alongside the palate cleanser of Thelesa’s escape. Pheromones communicated the truth of her story to Ash, not to trick him into believing, but to assure him she believed in the validity of every word she spoke.

If other races learned of the kilkinteth’s subliminal communication, their ability to influence the emotions of other beings, Lozzell feared there would be repercussions. It was a knife they only intended for protecting themselves but one that could as easily be used against them.

“Thelesa’s child grew up in the Flourite Caverns. She was a precocious young girl named Senga. Like her parents, love proved to be Senga’s downfall. She fell for a young burrower.” For the first time, Lozzel hesitated in the telling of her tale. She knew a truth she’d been forbidden to tell and could think of no greater injustice. At the behest of three great women, she now had to tell a lie.

“At the height of the civil war, he was slain,” she said, forcing each word out in a steady tone as they ate her up inside. Nor were the lies finished, but at least the next part was unfettered truth. “As one of the first races to be part of the council, the burrowers turned on Thelesa and Senga. With no one to protect them, mother and daughter fled.”

“Was Senga shaping a stone?” Dew asked in the silence between words.

“Yes, she was pregnant,” Lozzell said for Ash’s benefit. Apparently unfamiliar with hob expressions, he had passed an inquisitive gaze between the two females. “Unions between fae and humans have always been rare, and the same is true between burrowers and the other races. Senga gave birth to a girl who held the blood of three of the great races.”

There was the final lie. Ash couldn’t be allowed to know that Senga had birthed twins.

Lozzell had to credit Ash--he was being more patient than she would have expected. The further her tale unwound from Edore, the less attention she had expected him to pay. Even her pheromones could only do so much.

“And the council, the newly created ruling body of the Radiance hunted her without mercy. They waged war against the Ashen Lands, distracted by Battlemother Sineck’s rise to power and entrusted Balancers to find what they had lost. For above all else, the blood of Edore flowed in her veins. But she had no interest in the titles her blood could have afforded her. She only wished to survive.”

“Her name was Einar. Your mother.”

Lozzell watched Ash closely during this revelation. He tasted his mother’s name on his lips and for several moments seemed overwhelmed by emotions and his struggle to contain them. Though his eyes glistened, no tears fell.

“She was to be Krachnis’ greatest champion but forces he hadn’t foreseen found her and protected her from his agents. A handful of rogues, beholden only to themselves, did what no others in history had–they defied both Gailinn and Krachnis.

“With the help of that small group, Einar learned to take care of herself. Among that group was a man who mentored her. He was a Balancer who turned against others of his kind and taught your mother all the druí arts. Especially how to kill. She lived her life as less than a shadow, her existence proven by the lives she ended. And would you believe your father was a Mender? Andres was his name. For all the darkness in your mother, Andres bathed the world around him in light and hope.”

“I don’t know the circumstances of their meeting and falling in love. For that, I’m truly sorry. It was a secret–a warm fire concealed from the encroaching darkness. You were born of that love, and your parents evaded the Balancers hunting them for several years. It was a tumultuous period for the Radiance, the height of Battlemother Sineck’s power, which kept you safe.

“For a while.

“Edore’s blood had been elusive in the past, unlikely love affairs keeping it alive and always just beyond the Radiance’s reach. It remained so. Einar and Andres fled to the edge of the Radiance. There my knowledge of them ends.”