Jeweled Fire

  “There are other people who covet the throne,” he said quietly. “The empress’s brothers, for instance.”

  “Yes, I always overlook them because they are never here at court,” Melissande admitted. “But it seems they have always been interested in the succession.”

  “Very interested,” Corene said. “Jiramondi told me that everyone thinks Filomara’s two oldest brothers poisoned each other in a fight over the throne.”

  “But there are many others equally invested in the succession,” Foley went on. “Such as the prefect.”

  “Liramelli’s father?” Steff said in outrage. “That’s an insult!”

  “I like Harlo, too,” Corene said to him. “But we have to put him on the list of possibilities.”

  “No, we don’t! We don’t have to put anybody on the list! It’s not up to us to make a list!”

  She watched him steadily. “It is, if we want to survive this particular game. If someone wants to dispose of all rivals to the throne, there’s another list and your name is at the top of it.”

  He threw his cards down, but his expression grew a little calmer. “I don’t mind being in danger so much, but I can’t stand wondering if any of my friends are killers.”

  “Really?” Melissande said softly. “You believe you have made friends at the Malinquese court? I spent most of my life in the Coziquela palace, and there might be five people there I would trust with my life. This is not your father’s circle of steadfast friends, my dearest Steffanolo. These are not people who will come to help you if your barn blows down or your winter crops fail. These are people who would burn your barn and salt your fields and laugh when you lose everything you love.”

  This time the silence was longer and more profound as everyone considered what exactly Melissande had lived through to bring her to that bleak conclusion.

  “Well, that’s cynical,” Steff said at last. “I wonder that you can convince yourself to stay, then, and keep maneuvering to win this crown for yourself.”

  “Because no court is any different,” Melissande said sadly. “It would not matter where I went.”

  “There is life outside the royal courts,” Steff answered.

  Her voice was even sadder. “Not for me.”

  “We’re straying from the main point,” Corene said, her voice a little gruff. “If Sarona was murdered—”

  “Well, she had to be,” Steff interrupted.

  “Then there is a killer living at the palace. And if he killed her because he—or she—wanted to control who will sit on the throne next—”

  “Then the four of us are in danger,” Melissande summed up.

  Corene looked at Foley, whose habitually solemn face looked even more somber. “It might be time to leave,” he said, and she nodded slowly.

  “I’m staying,” Steff said instantly. “I don’t know yet what exactly my place will be in Malinqua, but the empress wants me here and I feel as if I belong. As if I have a part to play. I think we can discover who’s behind the attack and take care of the danger that way.”

  “Well, I might go,” Corene said. “I don’t want to be murdered and thrown down a stairwell.”

  “You will find it difficult to leave,” Alette said in her usual calm way. Her gaze was focused on her cards, and Corene assumed she would make one more devastating play. “The port is closed.”

  “What?” they all cried in unison.

  She looked up in surprise. “Greggorio told me before they left. The harbor is virtually deserted.”

  “But why?” Corene exclaimed. “Because of Sarona?”

  “Oh, no. Because Berringey has declared war on Malinqua.”

  • • •

  It was infuriating and difficult to have to acquire information from scattered and unwilling sources, Corene discovered. She missed living in Darien’s household, where everything worth knowing was always learned first. Darien was annoyingly closemouthed, of course, but Zoe divulged information freely and most of the servants were happy to act as Corene’s spies.

  In Malinqua, no one felt obligated to share the truth with Corene. She had to piece it together from the bits of knowledge she could extract from Emilita and Liramelli’s parents, and supplement it with what Steff learned from Filomara and what Foley picked up from the soldiers he trained with among the royal guard.

  Indeed, the king of Berringey had declared war on Malinqua, which apparently happened with some regularity. The empress had been expecting it. In fact, half the city had—and most merchants and homeowners had laid in supplies against hard times to come. No one expected the “war” to amount to more than a few skirmishes in the waters that lay a few miles off Palminera, but just in case, Filomara had thrown a tight net around the harbor and shored up fortifications along the mountainous region some five hundred miles to the west where Berringey and Malinqua shared a border.

  “Leah tells me there’s a smuggler’s haven where goods can make it in and out of the city,” Foley reported two days later. “But from the sounds of it, that’s not a particularly safe exit. You’d have to slip out in a small boat and hope to connect with a larger vessel in deeper waters—and then hope to not get fired on or captured by Berringese warships. Yesterday, Leah said, two smaller boats were set on fire and only half the passengers made it back to shore. All things considered, you’re probably better off here for the moment.”

  Corene found herself cast in turmoil and uncharacteristically undecided. Part of her wanted to leave right now, shake off the poisonous gloom of the Malinquese court and return to the familiar dissatisfactions of Welce. Part of her was curious to see what would happen next in Palminera, no matter how frightening or dramatic it was. And part of her, oddly, was reluctant to leave her new friends behind: Melissande, Liramelli, Alette, even Jiramondi—and, of course, Steff. She was unused to having friends, even ones she knew as little as she knew these five. At times she thought everyone else in her life had been family or adversary. Sometimes both.

  “I suppose I’m safe enough as long as you’re close by,” she said at last. “At least no one’s likely to slit my throat and shove me down to the storeroom.”

  “Unless they slit my throat, too.”

  She grimaced. “Thanks for that thought! Well, at least our corpses will keep each other company.”

  He offered the briefest of smiles. “Seriously, I think there is a danger here at the palace. But I think the danger is greater outside its walls.”

  She slanted a sideways look at him. “Is it time to write my father and beg for rescue?”

  “You could, but Leah assures me she has already sent messages to Chialto. I would imagine half of the Welchin navy will be on hand within two ninedays.”

  “I can leave then, I suppose.”

  “I think you won’t have much choice.”

  Back in her father’s hands, under her father’s protection. A failed adventure behind her and a pointless existence before her. Corene knew there were disasters in Alette’s life—and apparently Melissande’s as well—but from her perspective, her own situation didn’t look much more appealing.

  Still, better than being murdered, she thought.

  “Till then—I suppose we just go on as we have so far,” she said.

  “With more care, perhaps,” Foley said.

  “And infinitely more questions.”

  • • •

  She sprung some of those questions on Jiramondi the next day during their language lesson. She had improved enough at speaking Malinquese that she could read and understand complex passages, but she had trouble when she encountered unfamiliar words. She’d started bringing short lists to their tutoring sessions, and he would define them and walk her through the pronunciations.

  This time she waited until the end of their lesson before producing five new words. “I overheard a few conversations in the halls, and thes
e are the phrases that kept coming up,” she said. “I might not have spelled them right.”

  “Let me see,” he said, taking the paper from her hand. “Blockade . . . warship . . . battle . . .” His voice trailed off and he gazed at her ruefully.

  She tried to keep her own expression guileless, but it had never been her most convincing look. “It all sounds very ferocious,” she said.

  He sighed and laid the paper down. “What do you know?”

  “Berringey has declared war on Malinqua, the Malinquese navy is patrolling the waters, and nobody has even mentioned it to me. Or any of your other royal guests, as far as I can tell.”

  “We didn’t want you to be alarmed.”

  “I find it even more alarming to be lied to.”

  “You’re safe as long as you stay inside the walls.”

  “Unless Berringey defeats the Malinquese navy and destroys the harbor and comes storming through the city, setting the whole place on fire.”

  “That won’t happen. You’re safe here,” he repeated.

  She decided to push him, just to see what he’d say. “I don’t feel safe. I feel like it might be time to return to Welce.”

  “You can’t leave,” he said.

  “Because I can’t get past the Berringese blockade?”

  He didn’t answer, just began rearranging the papers and books on the table. She waited a moment, feeling a growing sense of consternation.

  “Or because the empress won’t allow me to leave?” she asked quietly.

  He glanced up quickly enough to meet her eyes, and then dropped his gaze.

  “So it is as it seems,” Corene said. “The empress’s men are so assiduous not merely to keep us from harm but to keep us here. And why is that, I wonder?”

  He just shook his head. Corene leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms, and surveyed him. Her mind was racing; she was startled to find that she was more intrigued than dismayed.

  “So we’re hostages—Alette, Melissande, and me,” she mused. “But hostages for what?”

  Again, he didn’t answer, so she continued thinking out loud, “I don’t know how Melissande’s mother will react, but as soon as my father hears that I’m being held against my will in the middle of a war zone, he will send the Welchin navy here with all speed.”

  “Yes,” Jiramondi said.

  Corene straightened up so quickly she felt the bones in her spine snap in place. “You wanted Welce and Cozique to send their warships!” she exclaimed. “You’re tired of Berringey’s constant petty attacks and you thought a show of force would discourage them once and for all from harassing your borders.”

  “But we’re a small nation with no additional resources for war,” Jiramondi said tiredly.

  “And when Filomara made the rounds, looking to drum up military support, none of the other nations of the southern seas were interested,” Corene supplied. “So she found a way to get them interested.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t think that will work,” Corene said. “If you’re holding us captive, my father and Melissande’s mother will join with the Berringey army, not yours!”

  “Maybe they would,” Jiramondi said, “if that’s the way the situation was presented to them.”

  “But since you are monitoring all our communications—”

  “Yes.”

  “All they know is what you tell them,” Corene finished up.

  “Yes.”

  “Although you must be aware that I can find ways to communicate with my father in secret,” she said. “And I presume Melissande must have similar channels open to her mother.”

  “No doubt,” Jiramondi said. “But it doesn’t matter what you tell them now. The Berringese navies are already here. If you are at risk, it is from Berringey, not Malinqua. They have to come to our aid.”

  She sat back in her chair and regarded him, still so surprised that she couldn’t summon outrage, though that was, she knew, the proper reaction. “You’ll start a war that embroils four nations of the southern seas—and for what?”

  “To push back hard at Berringey,” he said. “To give ourselves a little breathing room against a most aggressive neighbor.”

  “Who came up with this strategy? Filomara?”

  He was silent.

  “She can be crafty, I know, but this seems more convoluted than her usual style,” Corene said. “Was it Garameno? Oh, I saw you flinch when I said his name. So it was. Were you in the room as this plan was being hatched?”

  “No,” he said, as if he couldn’t help himself. “I thought it was a terrible idea.”

  “So then is the whole notion of a royal marriage simply a ruse?”

  “That’s the beauty of the plan,” Jiramondi said. “Both parts of it are true. You’re collateral and you’re potential marriage partners.”

  “As long as we don’t realize the bit about being collateral. Which would probably make all of us less interested in being marriage partners.”

  Jiramondi stared at her hopelessly. “Right.”

  “You must realize that I’ll repeat our entire conversation to Alette and Melissande.”

  A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “They won’t care, of course. You were always the only one who would be offended.”

  She was about to offer a hot retort, but a moment’s thought convinced her he was right. Melissande would merely shrug her dainty shoulders—Well, each one of them was an imperfect husband all along, so this hardly matters—and Alette had no illusions to begin with. She had always expected to be the lowliest game piece on a complex and brutal board. She had always expected to be misused.

  “I am beginning to hate you all,” Corene said.

  “Really?” Jiramondi replied. “I would have thought you would have hated us from the beginning.”

  • • •

  Corene could hardly wait to repeat the entire conversation to Foley the first chance she got. Which wasn’t until later that evening when dinner was over and everyone had finally scattered. She motioned Foley to follow her inside her room, then flung herself onto the settee. He more gracefully sat in a chair across from her, and listened attentively while she poured out the tale.

  “Now many of the empress’s actions make more sense,” Foley said when she was done. “But it’s still outrageous.”

  “My father will be furious,” Corene said. “I know ships are already on the way, but I don’t think I’ll share this information until I’m safely onboard. It would only make matters worse.”

  “You don’t seem as angry as I might expect,” Foley said.

  Corene considered. “I’m disgusted more than angry,” she admitted. “And part of me is not even surprised. This is always how schemers behave at court—any court. Always looking for the slim advantage, and not caring who gets hurt in the process. It’s so distasteful. I’m starting to think I don’t want to marry a prince after all.”

  “Maybe you don’t want to marry one from Malinqua,” he said. “But there’s a prince or a high-born lord somewhere in your future.”

  “I like that future less and less.”

  “You’re just tired,” he said. “You’ve run headlong toward that future ever since I’ve known you.”

  “Well, I think it’s time to slow down and think about it a little harder,” she retorted. “Some people never marry, and they have very good lives. Maybe I’ll be one of those people.”

  Foley looked doubtful. “Maybe.”

  She was tired of talking about Malinqua and her own increasingly dismal prospects, so she changed the direction of the conversation without even trying to be subtle. “What about you?” she asked. “Are you one of those people who might never take a wife?”

  He was silent a moment, then he shrugged. “Maybe,” he said again.

  “But royal guards are allowed t
o marry, aren’t they?”

  “Of course they are. Or no one would ever sign up to be a royal guard.”

  “So that isn’t something you’d want sometime?” she asked. “A little house, a pretty wife, a few kids running around in the gardens, picking all the flowers and knocking over the wheelbarrows?”

  He grinned at the description but shrugged unenthusiastically. “I guess. Sometime. It seems awfully settled.”

  “But you’re such a settled kind of man,” she argued. “So calm and steady.”

  He looked affronted. “You make me sound boring.”

  She laughed. “I didn’t mean to! It’s just that you’re such an orderly person. I’d think you’d want an orderly life.”

  He shook his head. “Maybe that’s why I don’t mind when there’s chaos churning around me. It makes my world considerably more interesting. If I’m on my own, life is too dull.”

  “Well, I think there’s plenty of chaos when you’re raising children,” she pointed out. “They’re always making messes and getting into trouble. Zoe says that she’s not so much raising a daughter as making sure Celia doesn’t inadvertently kill herself.”

  “From what I’ve seen of small children, that’s a good description,” he agreed.

  “And since your whole job for years and years has been to make sure people don’t come to harm, you’d be an excellent father.”

  “I hope so,” he said, still without enthusiasm.

  “Of course, you’d have to find the right wife first.”

  “Not quite ready for that.”

  “But if you were,” she prompted. “What would she be like?”

  He looked at her helplessly a moment. She could see him wondering how he had ever allowed her to get him on this topic to begin with. “I haven’t given it any thought.”

  “Well, what kinds of girls have you been attracted to in the past? Tall? Short? Plump? Thin? Talkative and friendly, or quiet and shy?”

  “I haven’t—there have been different—I don’t think this is even something we should be talking about,” he floundered.

  It was a rare treat to see Foley at a loss, and she pressed the advantage. “Let’s imagine a tall girl with blond hair and a quiet manner. Is that the kind of woman you would like?”