“You’re not at all like Tau. He’s actually got a heart.”
“He’s a Dei,” Fox retorted. “They don’t have hearts. They’re just very adept at making you think they do. Is Barend in yon harbor?”
“Why do you need to know?” Jeje asked. Then, exasperated, continued, “Has Inda made some sort of plan? My magic letter case got stolen.”
“Inda’s got plans, yes. I believe he’s sent Barend to raid the treasure on Ghost Island, and he was to get suitable conveyance here. Inda seems to have decided that we will squander that treasure on his childhood friends.”
“We.” Jeje eyed him. “And you’re going along with it?”
Fox extended a hand. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Jeje squirmed with uneasiness and distrust. She couldn’t write to Inda to get the truth. Oh, but Barend could, couldn’t he? Surely Inda gave him some kind of magical communication thing. “The Brens thought Inda’s fleet we were training was going to be some kind of Marlovan navy. My guess is, they want to get rid of Barend. And us. If you send me ashore, I can report that we’ll be leaving as soon as we have Barend. Then we can go do Inda’s errand. How’s that?”
Fox smiled. “I’ll get Mutt to row you ashore. He’s dying to give the back of his hand to that army glowering at us along the quay.”
The next morning a triumphant Mutt returned with Barend.
The older hands were all glad to see Barend again, which surprised him. His squinty eyes were crescents of good will as he endured hearty buffets on his skinny back, and questions roared out that he hadn’t a hope of answering.
“Good to be on deck again,” he said, over and over.
“Shake the stink o’land!” and like pleasantries greeted him.
Fox stood on the captain’s deck, smiling faintly. Mutt sidled looks around, determining with the antennae of the young that Nugget was not present, and turned in to his long-earned rest. Jeje, aboard the Vixen once again, and floating abaft the Death where she could see the captain’s deck through her glass, eyed Fox’s smile in distrust. There was nothing she could do, so she went back to working the scout craft’s crew as they took it apart almost down to the keel, and restowed it, cleaner and squared to her satisfaction.
Snow started to fall in earnest, blanketing rigging, yards, and the deck. When the crew realized Barend wasn’t going to tell them about his two years away, those who had to returned to duty, the rest retreated to the wardroom below where it was warm.
Fox stood at the cabin door, his manner one of waiting.
Better get it over with, Barend thought, and walked in.
Fox shut the cabin door. “So Inda sent you to fetch the treasure, eh? Does he really believe gold is going to redress five generations of Montrei-Vayir blunders?”
Barend’s hand moved toward his chest, then fell away again. He turned his attention to those angry green eyes. Either two years away had mellowed his memory of Fox, or Fox had got even tougher. And angrier.
Barend said, “You can set me adrift soon’s we’re out of sight of this harbor. I’ll be about my business on my own.”
“No, no,” Fox drawled. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Who better to get you safely to Ghost Island than us?”
Barend did not ask if that was an observation or a threat.
“You can have your old quarters.” Fox extended a hand toward the captain’s deck. “And your place. My shipmaster is presently with Tcholan.”
Barend made a sign of agreement.
He waited through a couple of watches, until midnight. When the lights were out in the cabin, he slipped out to let down a boat. Despite his care, Fox loomed out of the darkness, and reached for him.
The fight was short and vicious. Fox wrenched every joint in Barend’s body before, with calculated deliberation, he broke Barend’s arm. His writing arm. Then turned him loose on the deck, all without a word.
Later—much later—when Barend was able to check his gear, he found the scroll case that Wisthia had given him was gone.
Chapter Fifteen
PRINCE Valdon of Anaeran-Adrani was unforgivably late to the Duke of Elsaraen’s ball, but when you’re a prince, you’re forgiven anyway, even by a duke. He rubbed a finger over a floating strand of silk loosened from the embroidered pattern of leaves and berries on his sleeve. The turned-back cuff had caught against a place where a gilt flourish had separated from the wood carving around the carriage door. He sighed as he vaulted up the shallow marble stairs of the ducal mansion, the sapphires on his dancing shoes winking in the light of blue glass lamps.sap-Footmen sprang to open the front doors, which had been closed when the host and hostess went to join their party; the enormous foyer looked empty. The dragon-wing marquetry doors to the ballroom stood wide, inlaid fantastic patterns gleaming richly in the brilliant beeswax luminescence of two hundred candles.
The duke’s gold marble ballroom had been built in a time when straight lines were unfashionable; complicated curves and vaultings led upward from turnip-top notched archways. The ceiling was midnight blue at the highest point, fading to pale blue at a marble ledge marked by carved festoons of gilt laurel leaves. The great chandeliers had been taken out. Two hundred candles formed a galaxy of tiny floats of cut crystal and mirror. A vigilant mage kept them in a slow pattern of movement, so it was like looking up at a sky full of dancing stars.
As Prince Valdon crossed the foyer, gazing through the twin archways of the door to those moving lights, movement on his periphery warned him that he was not alone after all.
Lord Randon Shagal had seen his cousin’s carriage arrive at the royal palace earlier in the day. Assuming that Valdon would attend the ball as his wife was here, he had decided to get the worst over with.
On Prince Valdon’s arrival he strolled out to intercept him.
Valdon paused, noting the ironic near grimace on Randon’s usually pleasant face. “Trouble?”
Randon lifted a hand, tossing back the lace at his wrist. The diamond on his little finger described an arc of winking lights. “Yaska.”
“Not you, too! Half the court has been writing busily to me about how he’s been laying siege to Joret while I’ve been gone. Half worried, half gloating. What can I do?”
“Nothing.” Randon shrugged elaborately. “No gloat, and no worry, either, but I thought you’d want to know going in.”
“It was inevitable.”
“So don’t drink anything. That way you won’t choke at the disgusting sight.”
“It won’t be disgusting.” Prince Valdon gave his cousin a mocking smile, and kissed his fingers. “You know it won’t be disgusting at all. Excepting only Elsaraen’s new duchess, they will be the two handsomest people in the room.”
They stepped inside. Valdon swept a glance over the glitter and gleam of gems and rich, bright fabrics of the dancers on the ballroom floor. At the very center, two dark heads contrasted with the whirl of color.
Footmen had run ahead to fetch the ducal pair, and here they were, smiling and bowing—the deep bow setting the pattern for the entire room full of people, including the dancers in the middle of the floor.
The musicians stopped, accustomed to the needs of protocol. Valdon straightened from his bow, lifted a hand, and the musicians recommenced.
He followed his host and hostess to the refreshments, answering their polite queries out of habit as he gave the floor another sweep. From this angle he could see down the ever dividing and reforming lines.
There they were. The sight of Joret’s clean, straight movements, so unlike the fluttering grace of the courtiers, jolted him with sweet anguish. Every time he had to go away on duty journeys, he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing her on his return. His chest hurt. He tried to breathe.
Beyond her floating shades of rose and mauve and cream, Lord Yaskandar Dei circled, tall and elegant in those Colendi clothes made up of darkwood brown and a difficult-to-define shade that probably had some stylish name in Colend but reminded Valdon of antique pewter.
>
Valdon caught both their gazes. How different were those wide, long-lashed Dei eyes: his wife’s happy smile below her blue gaze, and Yaska’s slack-lidded golden challenge, about as warm as a pair of new-struck coins. Go ahead and get half my court to wear those tight pants, Prince Valdon thought as he flicked a hand in casual salute. I’m not going to yip at your heels. He had to admit the long paneled robe slit up the sides moved well if you had the shoulders for it, and though Valdon had rarely glimpsed the ocean, he was certain sailors did not wear hip-snug pants with those wide legs. They didn’t look like you could sit down in them without serious damage where it would hurt the most.
A shift of silken fabric, a slight, well-bred cough, and he realized his fleeting look had turned into a stare. Yes, and everyone was aware of it. Damn.
“A glass of punch,” Valdon said to the footman with the golden scoo per poised over a crystal cup. “Thanks.” And turned to the waiting duchess, who he knew would soon make him laugh.
Joret saw him catch himself, and smiled at her partner. “You were saying?” she asked.
Yaska found Joret’s smile puzzling. So far, this delicate pursuit was not progressing according to well-practiced habit, but he would have been sorry to find even so distant a relation predictable. They were both Deis, after all. Even if the western branch of the family had gone regrettably provincial.
“Is this conversation or flirtation?” he asked, giving her a teasing glance.
“Whatever you like.”
“Under the eyes of your husband?” The dance took them apart, but brought them back again. Yaska’s smile was rueful. “A surprising twist that I have to admit I find delicious.”
“Good.” Joret’s earrings glinted as she dipped under his arm; the corner of her eye quirked in amusement.
“Good?” His eyelids lifted in a semblance of surprise.
Wrists arched, toes pointed, they separated, pacing sedately down the dance. He was so used to being the center of attention he went on the alert only when it shifted elsewhere; she was aware of eyes everywhere, darting glances half-hidden by fans; in the lingering gazes of the two closest women Joret perceived their appreciation of Yaskandar’s perfect combination of muscle and grace as he posed, turned, and bowed.
“And so?” he prompted as they pressed their palms together to make the dancer’s bridge, his voice so low only she could hear.
Joret waited. The couple at the top of the dance minced down the line under the archway of jewel-decorated hands. Every nerve was alive, sensitive to Yaska’s proximity: the silken swing of his hair, the whisper of fabric over long muscles, his breathing. His scent. The cat-tawny complexities of his eyes.
“And so?” he repeated.
She knew her palms were damp.
His hands were cool and dry, his clasp light.
She looked up, and he tipped his head, giving her a slow, intimate smile before turning away; from the angle of his head, she knew that he’d shot a questing glance in Valdon’s direction.
When the dance brought him back to her side, he bent his head and, his lips a hairsbreadth from touching her ear, he whispered, “And so?”
He was being deliberately provocative, that she’d known from the beginning; the question was, who he was trying to provoke. “And so I’m glad you’re enjoying our flirtation now that Valdon is here,” she said, amazed at the tight spiraling of disappointment and hilarity within her. “Surely that ought to be plain enough.”
“Shift your mind for a moment from your Valdon.” The dance separated them.
She whirled around in a small circle, palm to palm with the laughing red-haired daughter of a baroness. Two weeks Yaska had been talking poetry with Joret, playing music for her (and he was very good, too), riding in company with her, dancing with her, racing over the hills on a garland hunt. Talking poetry and plays with others as she listened.
Once he began discussing the hidden meanings of the minor key flute flourishes that the Nare Daraen musician-spies put in the middle of traditional melodies. That had occurred during the bad old days when the Sartoran world empire was breaking up.
Most of the company had not learned this bit of history, but she had—and she noted the quick flash of eyelids betraying his surprise at her knowledge. She didn’t know the flute-code as music, but as markings on paper; she did not tell him that Fareas-Iofre had trained the Castle Tenthen girls to use them in the coded letter writing that all Marlovan women used to a greater or lesser degree.
Joret knew that as Yaskandar entertained them with stories about how he and his friends used to put the symbols in songs just to flirt under the long, grim nose of the Sartoran queen, he was testing her. Not just her thinking, but her training.
Joret was intrigued and attracted; she liked the tingle when he brushed against her, the thrill of his brief touch. Amazing, how as simple a thing as attraction made the senses sharpen.
Now he was trying to seduce her right under Valdon’s eyes.
Exasperation ran through her, chased by laughter. She could not understand Yaska’s whim—it had to be whim—but it seemed related in some unfathomable way to how Valdon found it far more erotic to watch her perform her morning knife drills than to view a scantily clad fan dancer trained in the arts of seduction. There was something of competition here, and danger, and even a hint of restrained violence. As if part of the allure was the very act of restraint.
When the circle brought her back to Yaska she smiled. “But that’s the point. I don’t want to shift my mind from Valdon. Isn’t that supposed to be signified by this?” She lifted her hand, where the ring glinted on her heart finger.
Step, step, whirl, step step, whirl, clasp of hands. She felt through the subtlety of his grip that he was aware of her sweaty palms. The dimple at the corner of his mouth deepened.
“The topic was just you and me,” he said mildly. “And not in the context of marriage.”
“I don’t believe Valdon’s inclinations run toward triangles.”
His brows lifted as she turned under his arm. Once again he bent, and this time his lips just brushed her ear. “Do yours?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Skip, twirl, and back again. “Because his don’t. Part of the ring vow is accepting each other’s boundaries.”
“I enjoy excellent wine—”
At least he plays fair, and didn’t say porridge, she thought, a laugh bubbling inside her chest.
“—but I wouldn’t make a diet of it.”
The obvious response to such an obvious comment was to point out that he’d never tasted the wine of marriage, but surely he knew all that. Besides, the dance was ending and she wanted this discussion over before they parted; she’d discovered that prolonging intimate conversations in public was often taken as a signal for dalliance. Time for Marlovan bluntness . “I enjoy flirting, but I made a vow. I intend to keep it.” There, that felt good—though she had to laugh at herself, knowing from childhood that the moral high ground always felt good.
But only if your auditor recognized you up there above them.
“What about family necessity?” he asked, and she tumbled down.
“Necessity?” she repeated, stung. Surprised to discover herself stung.
Have I come to expect everyone’s devotion as my due? “Well at least you don’t chatter about love,” she said, trying for balance.
“Love.” He exhaled the word, short and sharp. “Acquit me of the tedium of hope-driven self-destruction.”
The words were soft, quickly spoken. Her heart knocked against her ribs.
For a single thumping heartbeat she saw past his smiling mask to the tangle of anger and pain he hid behind it. The next heartbeat brought the conviction that she was not the cause, but neither was she the anodyne: his mask was in place again.
His gaze met hers during the three remaining encounters of the dance, clasp, turn, step, and bow. She sensed challenge.
The dance ended. At random she accepted the next partner who asked, and so
the evening lurched along until at last Prince Valdon had finished his round of the older folks, answering questions and smoothing political ripples. He joined his wife for the last dance of the evening.
“We need to talk,” she murmured as they bowed.
He waited until they were doing hands round, then it was his turn for covert commentary, “Please don’t kill him in a duel. Would cause such a diplomatic mess.”
She choked on a laugh. He smiled at her, aware of the court seeing her laughter, and set himself to enjoy the remainder of the dance.
At last it was over. They said their farewells to the duke and duchess, whose house was being unpacked by an army of servants as the tired guests drifted out; by the next evening the ducal pair would be on the road to their castle in the north.
“Shall we walk?” Valdon asked. “Or are your feet tired? You’ve been dancing all evening.”
She chuckled. “That’s not tiring. A full day and night of castle war games is tiring.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t have fun doing those war games.” He waved to his carriage driver, who lifted his hand in salute then drove away from the best spot in front of the front steps; though the last to arrive, he always had precedence. He grinned, liking the royal pair and loving his job.
“War games were great fun.” She laced her fingers with Valdon’s, swinging their hands as they walked past the drivers and footmen in their various liveries standing about in small groups, chatting and drinking from flasks. One noticed them and hastily bowed, followed by the others, like wheat in the wind. Valdon waved a casual hand and they returned to their conversations.
The two paced to the end of the road then started up the hill that curved around behind the ducal manse. Valdon gazed upward in pleasure at the sight of the peaceful stars overhead. Then he smiled at Joret, but her head was bowed, her attention on the bricks of the road. “You wanted to talk.”
Her head lifted, her eyes a dense blue in the faint light from the top windows of the Elsaraens’ manse, which was now just below the level of their feet. “I liked flirting with Yaska. I thought it was the same with him. But I had the sense he wanted more. He saved his question all these days, until you were watching. And I found myself disappointed by his motivations.”