Forbidden by Ted Dekker Page B

leader’s seat upon the inauguration of your sister and find it unconstitutional. The Order decrees that your sister—ordained by the Order and by birth closest to one of three eligible birth cycles during the reign of our current Sovereign—shall elect her own senate leader from among continental prelates past and present, or the house overseers, past and elect, to serve on her behalf and at her leisure in all matters of Order public, private, political, and religious. As you are neither prelate nor overseer, nor have ever been, you are strictly…ineligible.”
    Saric’s vision clouded, but he maintained his composure and looked away. Pravus had anticipated this. They both had. And yet, hearing it roused his ire.
    “And the fact that you were prelate for a mere nine days before your own appointment qualifies you for this post above me, the son of the Sovereign?” he demanded.
    Rowan didn’t rise to the insult. “I quote the book,” he said. “‘And so these successions are prescribed, that no man should proclaim himself, and no man should endanger his fellow or himself for the sake of attainment or gain. And so no man need aspire beyond his state, or fear the loss of his place in this world. The Maker has made it as it should be. All is well beneath the Maker.’”
    “All is well beneath the Maker,” Vorrin said softly. Saric, too, intoned the words, his gaze coming to settle at the hollow of Rowan’s throat.
    “Thank you, Rowan,” Vorrin said. He sounded weary, his voice slightly warbled with age and the decades of demands put upon it. The hourly audiences. The speeches made from the great balcony, the privy meetings in his council chamber. The hearings in the senate.
    Too used, so worn. He should have been removed years ago.
    Rowan bowed his head, his hands folded before him, backed up three steps, and left by the inconspicuous side door.
    Saric said, “Father—”
    “It is a fair evening, one of too few,” Vorrin said, as though he had not heard. He sounded tired. “Will you walk outside with me, my son?”
    Impatience snapped inside Saric like the jaws of a great reptile. But he gave a tight nod and followed his father past the cushioned seats where prelates and heads of geopolitical houses had sat too many times to be counted these last forty years, past the giant desk with its claw feet and stone top, where so many acts of the senate were signed into existence as though by will of the Maker himself.
    They walked out onto the balcony that wrapped around the corner of the chamber office. The long, columned portico that led to the senate ran directly below, so that every senator, on his way to the Senate Hall, might pass beneath the blessing of the Sovereign. Megas, it was said, had designed this building for that reason, so that he might look out at them, and they might go into their assembly with the face of their Sovereign foremost in their mind.
    Vorrin looked up at the clouds, luminescent where they obscured the moon. “Perhaps when your sister’s inauguration is complete, we will stand on a night such as this and talk of small matters. And Feyn will be the one to carry our fears on her shoulders, to take them with her to her bed in the evening, to rise to pace in the middle of the night. And Rowan will either be relieved to walk the porticoes as a senator himself or shall serve as senate leader at her leisure, as he has at mine.”
    Saric turned to grasp the balcony’s railing. Beneath his cloak, his wet shirt clung to the muscles of his back. “It’s all well for you, and for Feyn, and even for Rowan. But what of me?”
    Vorrin turned his clouded blue eyes on his son. “You? You will reside here, with her, and with me. She will have need of your loyalty then.”
    “Loyalty. A dog is loyal.” He couldn’t suppress the tension in his voice. “Tell me: How should my loyalty serve her? What of my intellect, my charisma, my vision—what of them? Should they go to waste in loyalty to my