“And then you’d resign?”
“If my presence was detrimental to your well-being.”
“What if your absence was detrimental to my well-being?”
“I doubt that situation will arise.”
“It will. It has. We’re in that situation already,” she said.
“If that’s the case, then this assignment has already been too long,” he said firmly. “As soon as we’re back in Welce, I’ll ask your father for another post.”
“And if I tell my father that I don’t feel safe with any guard but you?”
“I will explain to him that I fear you’ve grown too attached to me. I think he’ll be happy to see my services redirected.”
“I hope I don’t find ways to get myself in real trouble when we’re back in Welce and you’re not around to protect me,” she said. “Think how awful you’d feel if you learned something bad had happened to me because you weren’t there.”
He just looked at her for a moment, his face entirely unreadable behind the mask. “I feel certain you are too sensible to take dangerous risks just to prove a point.”
She allowed herself a small smile. “Well, we won’t worry about Welce until we’re back in Chialto,” she said. “For now—let’s go sample some of that fiery punch that you admired so much.” Again she tucked her hand inside his elbow. And this time he didn’t bother protesting or pulling away.
He wants to be a hunti stone, she thought, as they moved through the throngs of people, dodging the drunk ones, smiling at the happy ones. But he has a loyal torz heart. I must turn coru and wear away at him, drop by drop, until he is completely exposed. And then I will be the sweela girl who sets us both on fire . . .
It was such a delicious thought that it made her shiver. He glanced down in concern. “Are you cold?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, I’m perfectly fine.”
They found their destination with no trouble and accepted servings of flaming brew from the footman. Corene had to release Foley to hold the cup in both hands, and she admitted to a little trepidation as she lifted it to her mouth. Foley was watching her, his own glass poised, his eyes narrowed with amusement.
“Are you as brave as you pretend you are?” he asked.
“Are you as impervious?” she retorted, and downed the liqueur in one long swallow. The flame flicked harmlessly at her nose; it was the hot spices that scorched her throat on the way down. She felt her eyes water and her tongue burn, but the taste that lingered was smoky and sweet. “Powerful,” she managed to choke out, “but I like it. Not for every day.”
Foley was sipping his more cautiously, even appearing to roll a mouthful across his tongue. “Probably singe away your sense of taste if you had it too often,” he said. “But I like it, too.”
They finished off the potions and handed their glasses back to the servers. “Now where?” Corene asked. “What else did you want to see?”
“There was a knot of people on the front lawn,” he answered. “I couldn’t tell what they were looking at, but they all seemed pretty impressed.”
“Let’s go find out.”
They strolled around the outer edge of the temporary labyrinth to the very front of the palace grounds, where a throng of people had indeed gathered around some mysterious attraction. A half dozen lanterns hung from nearby poles, but the crowd was so thick that Corene couldn’t tell what they were examining by the cheerful light. Trying to be polite about it, she pushed her way forward, squeezing past lovers and drunkards and squirming children.
When she got close enough to see the prize, she laughed and waved Foley closer. “A smoker car!” she cried. “Nelson said there was one on the boat that brought him over.”
A few of the admirers overheard her and crowded closer. “What did you call it?” asked someone she took to be a young man. She could see a thin beard covering what portion of his face wasn’t disguised by his three-quarter mask.
“A smoker car. An elaymotive,” she replied. “It runs on compressed gasses, so it doesn’t need a horse. It was invented by a crazy man who lives in Welce.”
“Is it fast?” asked a man.
“Three or four times as fast as a horse, I think.”
“Is it dangerous?” asked a girl. “Could it catch fire? Explode?”
“I don’t think that happens anymore.”
“Anymore? It used to?”
“Well—a few times—”
The first young man spoke up again. “Can you drive it?”
She glanced back at Foley. Oh, how much she wanted to say yes. The truth was, she could, but she wasn’t very good at it. Barlow and Jaker had taught both her and Josetta, and she’d practiced a few times on her father’s vehicles. This one was one of the smaller models, roofless and compact, made to carry only four people and only in good weather. She could probably maneuver it around the palace grounds without knocking down too many spectators. Of course, she had no way of knowing if there was any fuel in the tanks; it might not even be operational.
But if it was—Foley could drive an elaymotive. She’d trust him to tool around the fairgrounds without killing anyone. She raised her eyebrows at him in a silent question, but wasn’t surprised when he shook his head. Stealing someone else’s property wasn’t on Foley’s list of acceptable behaviors.
“No,” she said regretfully. “I wonder if the empress imported a driver along with the car.”
“I’d like to learn to drive it,” the bearded young man said.
One of his friends answered him, and pretty soon Corene had lost the crowd’s attention. She could tell it was making Foley edgy to have her standing in such a mob, so she apologized her way back out through the press of people and took his arm again. He didn’t even bother protesting.
“That was fun,” she said. “What else would you like to see?”
“What’s around back?”
“Let’s find out.”
They skirted the outer edges of the displays until they made it to the back lawns of the palace. Here among the flower and vegetable gardens, the layout was much less formal. No labyrinth replica, just clusters of furniture and banks of candles set up amid organized activities. These included everything from archery contests to foot races, which meant the mood was more boisterous and it was harder to hold a conversation. Corene supposed that was a relief to Foley, but she didn’t mind. She kept her light grip on his arm with one hand, and with the other pointed out sights he might have missed.
They’d never caught up with Nelson or Melissande, Steff or Liramelli, but now she rather hoped they didn’t. She was enjoying herself much more without them. She did catch a glimpse of Lorian, prowling through the gardens with a trio of footmen at his back. He wasn’t masked, and his face was drawn in its usual serious lines; he appeared to be patrolling the festival to make sure everything was going smoothly, and he looked ready to dispatch servants to fix anything that went amiss.
“Do you want to try your luck in the archery contest?” Corene asked Foley, but he shook his head.
“I’m not very good with a bow. Better at close combat.”
“Maybe they have wrestling matches somewhere.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t want to be distracted.”
She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t press. She would save her persuasions for when they mattered.
The crowd thinned out and the noise died down as they moved farther and farther from the palace. The night grew darker as well, since there were only a few lanterns hung from low branches or clustered around arrangements of benches.
By the time they reached the hedge maze at the back of the property, they appeared to have left every other fairgoer behind. Lorian apparently hadn’t expected many people to walk the maze when there were so many other delights to explore, because he had barely bothered to light it. Corene could spot a single white la
ntern glowing in the very center of the maze—probably swinging from the doorway of the gazebo—and four more were hung at strategic spots to shed dim illumination across all of the tangled pathways. Even so, the walk would be mostly in shadow.
“Let’s go to the center,” she said, tugging Foley toward the opening in the tall shrubbery. “Maybe there’s something special set up in the gazebo.”
“And maybe there isn’t,” he said. He resisted a little, to show his disapproval, but he allowed her to pull him inside.
Corene moved swiftly through the well-trimmed greenery, remembering the pattern—one left and then a series of right turns. Foley followed close behind her, so silent she looked back twice to make sure he was still there. As soon as she made the final turn to the central clearing, she saw that there was indeed a lantern hung from the gazebo, and by its light she noticed two things: All the colorful summer flowers had disappeared, and someone was there before them.
Two someones, actually, and neither of them standing. One was stretched out before the little fountain, lying on the stone apron with ominous stillness; another was kneeling beside him, a hand on the first one’s chest. Both wore dark clothing and full face masks. The one on his knees turned to look at Corene as she started forward with a cry of distress.
“Is he hurt? What happened to him?” she exclaimed, dropping beside them.
“I don’t know. I just found him like this,” he replied.
At the sound of his voice, she glanced at him sharply, though she couldn’t tell anything by looking. It was the man she had encountered earlier, the one who was dressed all in black and had spoken of complacency and risk. Alarm sent a runner of fire down her spine and she turned her head to make sure Foley was there. Yes. Of course he was.
“Is he hurt?” she asked again, her voice warier.
The stranger nodded slowly. “I think he’s dead.”
She sucked in a sharp breath and touched her hand to the injured man’s lips. She could feel no air coming in or out.
“Who is he?” she whispered.
The masked man hesitated before saying, “I don’t know.”
She wondered if that was true. She could peel the mask off, but if he was a stranger to her, his face would tell her nothing. She pushed back to her heels and looked around for clues. If he had come all the way to the center of the maze, perhaps he’d had a reason. Perhaps he’d thought this would be a safe place to cache a weapon or a document or a bag of stolen jewels—
A slight breeze set the lantern to dancing, and its moving light illuminated a shape just a few feet away. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make it out in the shadows, and Foley stepped closer.
“Corene,” he said. “It’s Garameno’s wheeled chair.”
“Garameno!” she exclaimed, and scooted closer to the body. “Oh no, no, no—”
“You shouldn’t—” the stranger began, but he was too late. Corene had already teased up the bottom edge of the mask and now she rolled it over the dead man’s chin, his nose, his brow, his hair.
For a moment, as she gazed down at him, his features didn’t make sense. The slack jaw was too slim, the cheekbones too smooth. This wasn’t Garameno.
“Greggorio,” she whispered.
TWENTY-FOUR
Corene stared down at Greggorio’s pale face, feeling as if the world had tilted and would never right itself again. “I don’t understand,” she said.
Foley was at her side, pulling her to her feet. “You don’t have to understand. Just go find a guard. Then the empress.”
The stranger also stood, brushing his hands along his trousers as if to scrub away the scent of death. “Not yet,” he said, his suave voice sounding suddenly urgent, a little desperate. “Let me work out what happened first.”
“Why should you figure it out? Who are you?” she demanded.
“It doesn’t matter,” Foley said, trying to drag her away even as she planted her feet. “We have to go get help.”
Suddenly the man grabbed her other arm in a grip that bruised, and for a moment Corene was stretched between them. “Stay,” he growled. “This is more complicated than you realize.”
Foley swung his free hand to punch the stranger hard in the chest. The man grunted and released Corene just as Foley flung her across his body, back toward the path of the maze. “Go!” he roared.
Corene stumbled a few feet forward from momentum before spinning around. She’d finally recognized the voice. “Foley!” she cried. “That’s Garameno!”
Garameno had recovered his balance and was poised on the balls of his feet, looking as if he wanted to run or pounce. “Something’s wrong here,” he said, still in that urgent voice. “I don’t know why anyone would kill Greggorio.”
She stared at him. “You’re standing—you’re moving so freely—”
“Maybe he doesn’t need the chair,” Foley said.
“Maybe he killed Greggorio.”
“I didn’t!”
“Corene, go! Get help,” Foley ordered.
“No, stay and listen to me,” Garameno pleaded. “It’s true, I don’t need the chair—but that’s not the point right now—”
She came a step closer, still staring. “You don’t need it at all? Then why—all these years, pretending—”
“I had my reasons. But tonight I left it back here so I could walk the fair without being recognized—”
“So you could find Greggorio and kill him!”
“I didn’t kill him! Maybe nobody did! There’s no blood—maybe he just fell—”
“There are bruises. Around his neck,” she whispered. She had seen them when she peeled back the mask.
As if he couldn’t help himself, Garameno started toward her, only to be shoved violently back by Foley. “I didn’t hurt him!” Garameno shouted over Foley’s shoulder. “I found his body when I came back for the chair! That’s the truth!”
He lunged forward again, and this time Foley knocked him to the ground with a blow that left Garameno gasping with pain. “Go,” Foley commanded with such intensity that Corene dumbly nodded. “I’ll keep watch over him.”
She turned around and blundered into the ill-lit maze. She was so stunned and confused that at the second or third turning she paused, trying to remember if she was supposed to take a left or a right. Panic threatened to overwhelm her and she fought it down. Stay calm, stay calm. She was still deep in the maze, so she should still be making lefts. All lefts until the very final turn—
While she followed the twists and tangles of the maze, her mind scrambled down equally intricate pathways. Garameno could walk! Why had he spent so many years pretending otherwise? It made no sense. It was clear his disability had practically knocked him out of the running for Filomara’s throne. Why would he disqualify himself that way? Unless he wanted people to perceive him as vulnerable and weak—while he plotted against all of the other contenders.
He could have killed Sarona and carried her body underground. He most certainly could have hired Dhonshon soldiers and sent them after Alette. And Corene had no trouble believing that he could have strangled Greggorio tonight and left him for dead.
But there the probabilities petered out, like a maze pathway leading to a dead end. It seemed impossible that he would have been the one advising Filomara to marry Subriella off to her murderous Berringese husband. Equally unlikely that he could have poisoned Aravani and her whole family—he would have been only fifteen at the time. But when his two uncles died a few years later, he would have been about twenty, an age when he was certainly old enough, and ambitious enough, to start coveting the crown.
Corene came to a stop to catch her breath and get her bearings. Maybe Aravani’s death had truly been due to illness, and maybe no one had advised Filomara to send Subriella off to Berringey. Maybe it wasn’t until Filomara’s daughters were dead that Garameno started eyeing the t
hrone with so much longing. Maybe chance eliminated his first two rivals, and only then did Garameno decide to start improving his odds . . .
He was smart enough to plot a whole series of murders. That she believed without question. But ruthless enough? Cruel enough? She wouldn’t have thought so. But I have been wrong about so many people in my life, she thought.
One final turn and she was out of the maze, sucking in air as if she’d been underwater, blinking at the festive lights as if she’d been feeling her way through an underground passage. I can see again, she thought idiotically.
Her next unbidden thought: What if Garameno was telling the truth?
What if he hadn’t murdered Greggorio?
Say he’d left his wheeled chair at the heart of the maze so he could walk freely through the party, unrecognized by anyone who knew him. She could understand why that would appeal to him, and the maze made a perfect hiding place. Once he had had his fill of the fair, he returned to the gazebo—to find his cousin dead.
But what would have brought Greggorio to that isolated place during the height of the celebration? The very fact that it was isolated, she decided. Greggorio had never recovered his usual good spirits after learning of Sarona’s death; he’d been even more subdued once Alette disappeared. He might not have been enjoying the party at all, though he’d dutifully made an appearance to please his aunt. But when the lights and the laughter became too much for him, he sought out a place of silence and solitude. She could still hear Liramelli’s voice in her head. Greggorio and I used to come here all the time . . .
At the heart of the maze, he found his cousin’s chair. Corene tried to imagine the sequence of events that had happened next. Maybe he paused a moment to wonder why the chair was there when Garameno was nowhere in sight—or maybe, being Greggorio, he didn’t even wonder. He just saw a place to sit, and he sat. Maybe practiced wheeling himself around the fountain once or twice. Heard a noise in the bushes—looked up just in time to see a masked stranger creeping up in the patchy lantern light. He probably grinned—being Greggorio. Hey, look, this is kind of fun, he might have started to say, moving his hands to the big wheels.