Hadand sighed. “Because we are guests here.”
“Guests,” he repeated. “Ah, back to politics.”
“To put it bluntly, we are told on all sides that you will make a specific alliance, and Joret has too steadfast a sense of honor to trespass.”
“Ah. Ah!” Valdon felt another of those unsettling shifts in perspective. The Iascans did understand honor, despite what had happened to their leaders the winter before.
And he had to be the one to speak.
He looked up at the peaceful stars, then down, and knew that his next words would commit him forever. “But there is no other alliance, not unless I choose.”
“Is there not talk of some important tax grant?”
Valdon waved a hand. “That part is the easiest to solve. What would be the hardest is what I have to offer Joret: a pair of fretful, greedy sovereigns, a court renowned for its viciousness, where deviousness is regarded as an art. Where consuming everything and anyone good is their only intent. What I noticed first about Joret—well, second— was how free she is of guile. What I’ve discovered of her in company is that she is smart, honest, quick. Kind.”
“All true.”
Valdon held out his hands. “Imagine that! I’ve fallen in love with someone I’ve never had the chance to court. But what happens if we do court? More to the point, if she does want me enough to stay, must she either become worse than they, or else be ground to death by the court’s teeth?”
Hadand watched the graceful winging of a night bird as she thought. The moment was poised to change all their lives. They both sensed it. She must not speak wrong. “She is a lot stronger than you think. Try her.”
It was enough.
When Hadand returned to her room, there she found Joret, her wide eyes so steady the candle flames reflected in them in eerie pinpoints of light. She made no pretence. “He was here,” she breathed. “What did he say?”
“He’s actually free to choose and he wants you. Was afraid of conspiracy, but mostly he’s afraid that the cruelty of this court will destroy you, or remake you into its image.”
The corners of Joret’s mouth deepened. “There’s a third way.”
Anyone familiar with history in that part of the world knows the results of the next morning’s talk between Valdon and Joret, recorded for posterity: there is little point in repeating it, as they were both too guarded, too anxious, for it to have much charm. Their brief words accomplished one thing. They understood one another enough to begin to speak freely.
What he never saw was what happened after, when he hastened, his gait and grin unmistakable, up through the palace to confront his father before the official Rising.
He made no attempt to hide his elation—or the direction he had come from, and so gossip ringed out behind him.
Fansara of Bantas had expected a crown ever since her parents gave her a pony when she was five and said that queens must know how to ride with grace. Everything she had ever done was the action of a future queen.
Everything. There was no room in her mind, or heart, for anything except the prospect of power, and the exquisite anticipation of using it. Years of flattering that disgusting bore of a queen, listening to the wine-sodden beast who was now king, putting up with the neglect of their fool of a son while waiting for her crown: those were the price she’d had to pay to gain power.
But now, when she was about to succeed at last—every-one had said so, and deferred accordingly—there comes, along with that dried-up old raisin of a widowed queen, a blue-eyed daughter of the Deis bent on destroying everything.
Imagine her fury when Fansara saw clusters of courtiers hurrying and scurrying across the public garden toward the queen’s wing for the Rising. She knew immediately something had happened, and paused only for a moment to check her reflection in a pond: yes, her peach silk looked queenly, her hair perfectly coifed, face smooth.
Inside the royal chambers the bright-feathered peacocks of court were circling around that Marlovan mare with her muscular arms and her stride like a quarryman. Glances Fansara’s way, mirthful glances, without any semblance of goodwill, annoyed Fansara; when the others did not defer as she glided up to take the principal cushion, her irritation heated to fury.
The queen wasn’t through with her bath yet—she slept later and later—so the women strolled idly about, or sat and nibbled the fresh bread and fruit laid out for them while they waited—for what? They should be seated around Fansara, as always. What had happened?
A sidelong glance from that fat little butterball from the Ashan plains. “Lady Joret, did the prince have any plans for today’s picnic?” Her voice was shrill with triumph.
“If he does, I believe he will say so,” was the reply, in that ugly accent from over the mountains. Joret sat down on a cushion—just any cushion, as usual, paying no attention to her position in the room—and reached for bread.
Fansara watched in horror as they others promptly sorted themselves out in rank order and took places around Joret. As if she was already forming a court!
Fansara rose again, on pretext of finding something to drink, and took her time cutting through the still-circling women, forcing them to defer. She stopped directly before the barbarian. “Tell me, Lady Joret. Is it true that Marlovan barbarians all eat with knives, like our meanest shepherds grubbing in the hills?”
Listen to that silence! Oh, I have struck hard!
Fansara smiled indulgently at the tittering on the edges of the crowd, rustlings of gowns, whispers. They all looked like frightened mice as they turned from her to the barbarian.
Who moved a hand to her sleeve. When she snapped her hand out again, she was suddenly holding a long dagger.
Women gasped. Some scrambled up, hands at their throats, some squealed and scurried away, leaving Joret alone there on her cushion.
Joret’s wide, lambent gaze, the same color as the morning sky behind them, did not waver. “I will demonstrate how we eat,” she said, her lips parting to show the edges of her even, white teeth.
And with slow, deliberate, delicate care, she sliced that dagger through the bread so it fell into wafers. Then she brought the steel to her lips and licked it all down its length. A long, slow lick, so long and so slow it was unnervingly sensual, as was the way she used the dagger to flick butter over the bread. Then she cut it into tiny pieces, which she speared on the point and ate with that same slow, deliberate, measured care—the blade glinting this way, that way, and then again that shivery licking, now on both sides, all the way up to the tip.
The room was profoundly silent, the women watching with unwavering gazes of horror and fascination—several with a covert, though growing, admiration—until she finished.
They were shocked to discover that the queen was there, had been there for some time. She too had watched in appalled and fascinated silence. She was even a little afraid, as Joret calmly pulled back her lacy cuff to reveal the sheath, and slid the knife home with an audible click.
And so, a week later, while the Iascan queen was closeted with the Grand Council over the wording of her treaty, Fansara found Valdon at her shoulder in the evening, inviting her to dance.
She had dreamed about that long silver dagger for a week, and about Joret’s blue, unwavering gaze. There had been no more comments about sailor’s walks, or brick-layers, or really much of anything, and the dagger had made no reappearance, but all the women of court now knew it was there in her sleeve. In fact she carried two.
And so, when Valdon asked Fansara while they danced the length of the room to consider an appointment to Sartor as ambassador—as Lord Jasil was getting old and wanted to retire from the severity of life under the current Sartoran queen—she bowed to the inevitable and said yes.
Chapter Twenty-six
HARVEST moon hung great and yellow above the horizon on the first of the month. A late-autumn burst of summer weather had scoured the sky. Evred-Harvaldar’s windows stood open to the soughing of the hot wind around the
towers and down the stone canyons of the city. Hot, dry wind: good. His thought ranged eastward beyond the border mountains as he fingered the scrap of paper just arrived via the locket-magic.
Then he untwisted the paper.
Hadand’s square, neat writing, a faint trace of her favorite scent—distilled from aromatic herbs—all brought her oddly near, yet reinforced her distance. He missed Hadand. Longed to talk face-to-face. And yet he had not brought himself to tell her that his father had actually had a set of three lockets. The third had been loaned on occasion to Runners trusted by the king and Jened Sindan; Pavlan, Sindan’s cousin, had returned from the Land Bridge with it some weeks after Hadand left for the east. Evred pensioned the man off, sent him home, and hid the locket in the casket.
The reason he had said nothing stemmed from his ambivalence about the discovery of Ndara’s lockets: a thirty-year-old-secret brought by his own mother, not to his father, but to Ndara-Harandviar, a woman Queen Wisthia had not even met. Implicit was a worldwide conspiracy among women—denied by them all—because it never occurred to Evred that the lockets could have had another purpose besides military.
Together, last spring, he and Hadand had tested his father’s pair and Ndara’s. They found that they were not interchangeable. The spells for the two sets varied slightly, and the magic only worked with the lockets and not outside of them. They could send objects tiny enough to fit, but they could feel the corresponding cost in magic. They’d agreed if they ever had to part on kingdom affairs, they would use the lockets—and so it had come to pass.
He frowned, considering his ambivalence; he trusted individual women, and yet he felt they had enough secrets.
He held the paper closer to the lamp and read the message.Treaty: Valdon will get king to agree to send our mages back! But no warriors to our aid. Local dukes have only small forces to ride borders. Crown has none. V. says it wd. take years to muster an army, after separate agreements w. each duke. But V. promises they will not let Venn through their land for strike from east. I hope to leave sn., once everyone agrees on the exact terms: we await word from M.C.
M.C.: Mage Council. Evred twisted the note into a wick and touched it to the flame in the lamp, watched it burn, and realized he’d gotten used to lamplight, the glowglobes now saved for emergency use such as a Venn attack, their clear light being more reliable than fire. When the paper twist had burned nearly to his fingers he stooped to lay the smoldering fragment in the cold fireplace, then walked back to the window to gaze toward the northwest.
He should be triumphant, or at least glad, about the prospective treaty, yet his emotions were distinct: relief and melancholy.
Why was human nature so absurd? There was no other term, except maybe foolishness, for the way his mind stubbornly reverted to that single glimpse of Inda he’d had that day—the day of murder and assassination—in Lindeth Harbor. One glimpse, no words spoken, even. He had told no one, not even Vedrid, whom he’d sent off within a day to Bren to try again to contact Inda.
Disgusted and impatient with himself, he acknowledged this much comfort: at least no one knew what a fool he’d been.
The bell tolled the changing of the watch, and rhythmic clanks and clatters of sentries trading places syncopated the susurrus of the wind. Evred stared out at the sky, wondering if Inda saw the same stars that he did.
Disgusted by such asinine sentiment, he turned away from the window, but the self-loathing moved right along with him.
He strode to the door, yanked it open. Felt relief that Nightingale was the Runner on duty. “Heat Street, House of Roses,” he said, without any preamble. “Dyalen. Request an interview.”
Nightingale saluted, palm against chest rather than fist, indicating he was well aware that this was a personal and not a kingly matter. He left and Evred prowled around his rooms until Nightingale returned, this time with a thin woman in riding dress, her hair short and curly. The few years since they’d seen one another last had aged her subtly in the way some women aged—she looked less like a boy and more like a girl, not in build, but in the softened contours of her face. She must be ten years older than he, at least.
She saluted. “Evred-Harvaldar.”
Dismissing Nightingale with a look, he said, “Never mind that. Sit down.”
She did, and waited with her customary patience. During their time together, though it had been sex for pay, she had treated him like a person, not an object of business. And she had taught him to use the same courtesy toward professionals, something he’d come to appreciate only later, with experience. So, though he had no interest in her personal life, he said, “How have you been?”
A brief smile, a gesture of her strong hands that was curiously masculine—and he felt the faintest spurt of attraction. It had been far too long. Half a year—not since the murder-assassination—and all his experiences had been up north.
She said, “I’m retiring this year. The sex business is for the young. Going east to Nelkereth to raise horses. You?”
As always, brief, empathetic—and direct.
And so he said, “I want sex but I do not want favorites. I don’t even want to know their names.”
She put her hands on her knees. Down to business. “Male or female?”
“Male.”
She asked some blunt questions which he answered as bluntly, then she stood up, saluted, and said, “Want someone today?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll set it all up.”
He thanked her, she left and returned by unobtrusive byways to the House of Roses, where she went straight to the proprietor, her great-uncle. Because it was so late at night, the place was busy; she entered by a back way, listening with experienced ears to the sounds of merrymakers in the public rooms as she made her way upstairs to the office. “King,” she said, when they were alone. “Discreet, no one with ambition,” and she went on to describe what he liked in sex—not just from his words, but her own experience during her time with him, and she was far more accurate than Evred. “Someone now,” she finished.
Her uncle tapped his fingers on the table, then said, “Who do you suggest we send as a trial?”
Dyalen said, “I considered that on the way over. There’s something missing, something he didn’t tell me, but I strongly suspect his heart is given. But no sign of to whom.”
“Too bad. He might want a look-alike.”
“No. Mistake. He’s too much like the old king in other ways. If there is a someone else, the king may well be heart-fixed. No matter. Whoever the someone else is, he’s not here. I think the king would hate a look-alike, so it’s as well we don’t know who.”
Her uncle opened a hand. “You know him best.”
“So try Fedran first, isn’t he on duty tonight? He’s not talky. Evred is quiet, though he has a sense of humor and Fedran’s quick-witted. Evred relaxes if you catch him with a joke.”
Her uncle summoned his Runner, sent the message. When he looked up, it was to see Dyalen at the window staring out at the moonlit sky, her expression not pleased so much as pensive.
He said, “Why the long face? We have the young queen’s custom, and if we are careful, we might now gain the king’s as well. The house will be made for this generation—and you will be getting your share, having set us up with the king.”
Dyalen shook her head. “I’ve always liked Hadand-Gunvaer. And I liked Evred-Harvaldar when he was only the second son nobody paid the least attention to. Now he’s king, and you know the first thing out of his mouth? It was to ask about me.”
“Good custom,” her uncle said. Smiling. “I wonder if there’s any chance we can find out who the secret desire is.”
Dyalen faced him, frowning. “You’re not going to get into politics.”
Uncle Kenrid laughed. “Politics! Anything having to do with human beings is politics. No, my ambitions have nothing to do with governments, wars, or lands. But if this mystery man shows up, everything will change. It would be as well to know who he is
and plan for it.”
She sighed. “It’s not us I’m thinking of, but those two young hearts. Human nature being what it is, Evred-Harvaldar’s mystery man is probably an utter snake. I hate him already.”
Uncle Kenrid laughed. “Life will be interesting if the snake ever slithers in.”
Thunder rumbled overhead and the rain turned to sleet as smoke rolled over the water from the burning galleys in the Fire Islands’ main harbor. Dasta was, as usual, oblivious to the cold as he stood on the foreyard and watched intently. Far more galleys than he’d expected . . . boarding attempts repelled so far—too many, too many . . . Eflis, where are you?
In the west the sky was clear, the warm pale blue sky contrasting dramatically with the dark grayish-green thunder cell overhead. The distant sparkle of light on the sea made Dasta’s eye tear; he blinked, and, yes! From the northwest a slanted line bisected the horizon. He blinked, and the line resolved into a tall, rake-masted schooner, impossibly fast, throwing up a magnificent feather.
The galleys noticed moments later—individual captains on the galleys recoiled, yelled, plied sticks or whips with fear-driven vigor. But no matter how hard they flogged the hapless prisoners chained to the benches in the galleys, none of them were as fast as Eflis with a wind at her back. Sable’s crew was lined along the upper rail of the sharply slanted deck, making the schooner even stiffer. It was Eflis’ best maneuver; she judged the strength of those tall spars and the taut sails to a nicety.
Joy coursed through Dasta. He wanted to dance right there on the yardarm as the schooner slipped behind the galleys, cutting them off from the shore.
The Sable’s fire teams joined the steady and deadly stream of arrows: draw/shoot, shoot/draw. No falter, no flaw in aim. Pirates, never the galley crews.