Heir's Revenge

Chapter 3

3

SARIANDRA HAD first come to the theatre about a year ago. Ellisandra remembered that well. She sat in the stands with her mother, a timid and thin woman who looked young enough to be her sister.

At first, Ellisandra had not known who she was, but Aleyo had pointed out, not-so-subtly, that this was the High Councillor’s family, so Ellisandra had gone to introduce herself, and offer Sariandra a job in the production, because that was why she was here, right? That question had resulted in one of those awkward silences that so often happened when Sariandra was concerned, like she never knew what to say, and she’d rather say nothing at all than talk to all these women who had worked in the theatre for years.

When the position in the committee had come up, there was an unspoken assumption that Sariandra would fill it, being who she was. Normally Ellisandra didn’t have a problem with that. Tolaki’s father owned the theatre building, so it would be perfectly reasonable for him to expect that Tolaki sat on the committee.

Tolaki was so much fun that they’d become best friends.

But this girl was different.

Thinking about this made her feel a little queasy. Up until now, the committee had been so much fun despite Aleyo. But that was when Gisandra was still part of it. Gisandra overshadowed any of Aleyo’s complaining. Loud, with infectious laughter and never too serious. Unfortunately she was now far too pregnant to bother with the theatre. She wouldn’t be back after her child was born, either.

And damn it, this play wasn’t anyone’s definition of fun. It was deeply serious, tragic, horrid and someone had chosen it for a reason.

That reason was certainly not to let Ellisandra’s last year with the theatre be an easy one.

Same time next year she would be married to Jaeron, and he would want an heir as soon as possible. Apart from the theatre, the Telimar family managed the commercial block and shop rents. There was lots of property involved in their family wealth. Lots to inherit.

With the wedding set for the long spring, this time next year would have her looking like a balloon, staying inside most of the time, receiving only close friends, groaning every time she got up from her seat, and saying that it wasn’t much fun. At least those were all the things Gisandra did. The price of being a highly-valued fertile Endri woman.

Ellisandra walked across the veranda, hugging herself against the cold. All her life, she’d assumed that she’d grow up, get married and be happy, but Mother had been dead so long that she remembered no good examples of how to be married happily. At least she thought Mother had been happy. Although apparently, Father had always had a penchant for chatting up or making inappropriate advances on pretty girls because she remembered her parents arguing about it in a hush-hush kind of way.

That was a scary thought. She had no idea how to be in a successful marriage. Certainly she wasn’t supposed to obey Jaeron’s every word, like Enzo expected? She could refuse Enzo, because he was her brother and an annoying prick, but her husband?

So many uncomfortable thoughts.

She’d better go back inside and check on Father. She glanced over the wall at the ruin next door. Of course the light was gone by now and the man would be safely inside one of the guesthouses. Snow had already covered up his tracks so that only the faintest depressions of footsteps remained. It was as if he had never been there.

Enzo came out of the living room the moment she shut the front door behind her.

“Elli, can you—”

“Has anyone brought Father his tea?”

His face went blank. He blew out a breath through his nostrils and turned around, shutting the door to the living room behind him with a more vigorous thud than necessary.

Yes, Enzo. I have responsibilities.

Why did he always assume that her life revolved around him?

Ellisandra climbed the stairs. The first room to her left was her father’s. In the hallway, she took off the loose vest that she was wearing and hung it over the hook outside the door. The dress underneath had short sleeves and was too cold for the weather, but the bodice drew tight around her upper body, with no loose folds of fabric to grab. Then she rolled up her hair, drew a couple of pins from the secret pocket at her waist and pinned down the bun.

As soon as she opened the door, she braced herself for the too-warm air with the cloying smell of soap that usually hung in the room.

Her father sat by the hearth in his chair, his hands, old and gnarled, on top of the blanket in his lap.

He looked up when she came in. “Oh, there is my dear daughter again. The only one in the house who still comes to visit me. Unless they need something, of course.”

“Didn’t Darma come in to give you your medicine?”

He frowned, his old face creasing into deep canyons. “Which one is she again? A girl came in but I sent her out again. I said I wanted Lina.”

“Father, don’t be so hard on Darma. She’s coming to help you.” Lina had left years ago. She’d been the last of the old servants to go. She’d cried when handing in her resignation, but she said she just couldn’t take it anymore.

“I don’t like this new girl.”

Ellisandra sighed. He was not making life easy for the staff. “Let me look at you.”

She dragged a chair over to the fire, while fishing up the face cloth from the table next to his chair. The waft of air that enveloped her stank so much that she had to hold her breath. He’d dirtied himself again.

She’d have to deal with that later.

First his face.

This dry weather made his eyes water so badly that the tears ran down his face. It looked as if he’d been crying although he would lash out if anyone asked him what was wrong.

She softly dabbed the cloth on the paper-thin skin. The area under the eyes had already gone raw with the constant wetness. It would only get worse during the coming season.

From amongst the jars of pills, ointments, bandages, and syringes in the medicine cabinet against the back wall, Ellisandra went to get a pot of salve. She sat on her knees and applied it to her father’s skin. His eyes, mellow and cloudy, followed her hands.

It was part of her daily ritual, putting cream on that dry skin. She’d cried a little when they’d had to cut his hair recently. She could still see the white ponytail on the floor. She’d picked it up and put it in the drawer against the back wall, and hadn’t been able to bring herself to throw it away.

While her hands massaged the old skin, she chatted about the theatre. “We have a new member of the committee now. Sariandra Bisumar.”

“Hmph. That Bisumar girl has too big a mouth for her own good. You know what she said to me?”

“I found her very quiet.” He was confusing Sariandra with Mikandra Bisumar, Sariandra’s much older half-sister, who at one stage had told him off for leering at her.

Secretly, Ellisandra liked that story. Apparently, after Mother died, Father had tried to find a new wife. Mikandra carried the curse of Endri infertility and was unsuited as first wife, but could make, as they said, a nice plaything for a man who already had a family. Mikandra, however, had other thoughts about it, bless her heart.

If rumours were true, she was now married to Rehan Andrahar in Barresh, but seeing as it would be his first marriage, and the inheritance of the Andrahar family was a mess, Ellisandra wasn’t sure that she believed that story.

The truth easily got lost in gossip. Miran drowned in gossip, especially about what was going on with its former citizens who now lived elsewhere.

When she finished putting salve on Father’s face, she wheeled his chair out of the room into the bedroom they had modified as a bathroom. When Father could no longer easily walk down the stairs, Enzo had declared that the bottom floor of the house was not to be turned into a hospital. So Ellisandra had, at great expense, employed a builder to add piping and a washbasin, all specially made so that the wheelchair could get in and that one person could bathe her father alone. Because Father tended to make leery remarks if he’d had a bad day, that someone was usually her.

It was warm and stuffy in the room, with that same strong smell of soap that made her feel queasy, not because it smelled bad, but because of the hint of bad smells that it masked.

It was hard work, getting him to stand up from the chair, which he could do very well, but usually made a point of being difficult about. Then she had to pull off his pants and peel the dirty underclothes off him. She chatted about the committee meeting while doing this.

Sometimes useful things bubbled up from his muddled memory, but today, he wanted to know if Gisandra Tussamar was still in the theatre and Ellisandra told him—not for the first time—that she’d married and was expecting a child any time now.

And he said—and it wasn’t the first time he’d said that either—that he always thought that she’d be the first of Ellisandra’s friends to be married “because of her big tits.”

Oh, it was going to be one of those days, was it?

When she leaned over him, he grabbed her wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. He pulled her in his envelope of bad breath and smell of soap, s**t and stale urine.

His hoarse whisper chilled her. “Show me your tits.”

“Did I tell you about the plan I have for the play?” Ellisandra pulled at her arm. For a man his age and with his poor health, he was surprisingly strong, but she managed to get her arm free. Her heart was thudding. He wasn’t strong enough to be a threat to her, at least she didn’t think so, but this behaviour frightened her. This leery, disgusting creature was not the father she knew growing up. And it seemed to be getting worse. No wonder they couldn’t keep any of the servants they employed for him.

She chatted nervously about the theatre or some other thing, she didn’t even know what.

When she had to bend over him again, she made sure that she was careful to stay away from that right hand that still retained surprising strength.

Oh no, he wasn’t a cripple, not at all. He just enjoyed the attention.

He now grabbed the cleaning cloth, but she had become used to that, and had a supply of them ready, so she just picked up another one. The only thing was that she’d just cleaned his s**t-covered backside with it and he was very sensitive to getting stomach infections. He would gnaw his fingernails sometimes.

“Give that to me, shall we?” She pulled the cloth out of his hands but then had to wash his hands with water from the basin on his other side, while avoiding being grabbed again. That was why she always wore dresses with a tight bodice, because once he’d torn all the buttons off a looser dress. She had screamed and then he’d stared at her in her underwear and started crying what have I done? That was so awful, she never wanted to go through that again.

Sometimes, he would go really clear-minded, as if someone had snapped their fingers and the haze lifted for a short while.

Washed and dressed in clean clothes, she wheeled him back to his room, where Enzo was waiting, seated on the couch, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees while clasping his hands together. As soon as she came in, he rose.

The goings on in the bathroom had left her hot and sweaty despite the cold weather. Enzo looked clean, aloof.

He nodded to his father and wrinkled his nose.

Ellisandra wanted to shout at him, Yes, I know he smells of soap. You try to keep him clean. But that would only make him angry. She did not want him to be angry because he threw things and then she would have make sure they were all cleaned up, too. And maybe the servants would say that Enzo was going the way Father had, and she did not want any of that kind of gossip.

So she said nothing.

She parked the wheelchair in front of the fire, passing Enzo who didn’t move out of her way to let her get through. Oh, how she longed to tell him to f**k off. One day.

While she had been in the bathroom Darma had come in to bring dinner, so Ellisandra dragged a chair over to the fire, put the tray on the table next to her father’s wheelchair, covered his chest with a napkin and proceeded to cut his bread into pieces which he could pick up and put in his mouth with his crooked and gnarled hand. One thing Father genuinely hadn’t been able to do for a long time was control the fine movements of his hands, so eating was a messy business.

Enzo snorted and sat down again on another chair further from the hearth.

He began in a tense voice, “I’m doing this for you, all right?”

“Doing what?” This sounded like it was going to be one of his manipulative power schemes.

“Working hard, making sure that we’re in good standing with the high council, making sure you have nothing to wish for at your wedding—”

“Why don’t you just tell me what you want?”

She could really do without his I’ve got it so hard, why don’t you run for me when I tell you to? rant.

He said nothing, which probably meant that whatever he wanted to say to her wasn’t something he thought Father should know.

“Can you talk to me when you’ve finished here? I don’t have much time.”

“We have all night.”

“The Citizen’s Group is coming tonight. I need something. Why are you . . .” He spread his hands and rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

“I’ll look into whatever it is you want. After I’ve finished here.”

“Let Darma do it.”

“Just be patient, all right?”

With a sigh, he sat back on the couch.

Father’s hand trembled. He spilled some soup on his face. It dripped onto the cloth, and Ellisandra wiped the rest off his chin. She held the cup to his mouth, making an effort to keep her hand still. Why had Enzo let himself be roped into joining a Citizen’s Group? All they did was spread gossip and fear. Spy on other people, the rumours went. After friends or family members joined Citizen’s Groups, suddenly the council or guards knew about things that family members did that the council didn’t like. They got warnings and were quietly told to stop doing whatever they were doing.

Who was Enzo trying to impress by being with this group? Was being in the council as the family representative not enough?

Slowly, Father ate his soup. Enzo fidgeted. Ellisandra wiped Father’s chin whenever his hands shook too much to keep the soup on the spoon. The fire crackled in the hearth.

After a long silence, Father said, “Do you know that the last time Changing Fate was performed was the night before Nemedor Satarin was elected as High Councillor? He was the one who had the biggest decision in choosing the play. I don’t think most of the councillors like it very much. In fact, I don’t either. To be honest, it’s an awful play.”

His eyes were clear when they met hers. “I told him so, but he just laughed at me and ordered the play performed anyway. It was very meaningful, he said.”

This was the father she knew and loved, the tiny shard of normality in the decrepit chaos of his mind that kept her going.

Was he trying to tell her something?