158 - There Was Steel in Her Voice

Nadian’s face felt frozen.  There was all Dark breaking loose in the Emperor’s bedroom and his mother was actually showing herself in public.  He seized her elbow through the veil. He could feel her tense as he felt her bones rub under his grip but she didn’t make a sound; he didn’t see it until it snarled, but the little dog on her arm yapped and he dropped his grip, stepping back as the little monster lunged open mawed, trying to chew through her veil to get at him.  She set her hand over its muzzle and he snapped “I thought I told you to have that rabid pest put down.”

In a maddeningly calm voice she said “No, my son. I heard you.  I refuse.”

His head whipped between her icy silhouette and the uproar happening in bedroom, the doctor calling for zardukar assistance of all things.  What on the planet was going on in there? The little zardukar wasn’t letting anyone in.  The old man could be dying and his mother and her vermin were blocking him.

“It is right and proper that I be here, my son.”

Nadian stood, torn between rage at his mother and the need to appear in control in front  of the rest of them.  Hive Lords.  She’s just distracting me.  She’s stepped out of her place and her time.  She’s stepped out of my control, out of my hands.  How did this happen? The old man is dying and I’m losing control! He could feel their eyes on the back of his neck, on his back. The spot in the middle of his back itched as if all their knives were aimed at it.  He straightened a tiny bit, as if to shake off the automatic defensive crouch.  “Of course, Mamman.” He bowed and offered her his elbow.

She hesitated a moment, before letting her grip on her dog loosen.  It hadn’t stopped growling at him the whole time but didn’t lunge for him. She put her hand out of the veil and laid fingertips on his shirtsleeve.  “There we go, son.  Very correct.”  There was steel in her voice that he'd never heard before in his whole life and was shocked  to  the core.  Where had his delicate as a flower mother disappeared to?