Shadow Over Kiriath

  The remark would have nettled Trap even more than it did if he hadn’t seen Lady Madeleine, still at Carissa’s side, all but roll her eyes in response to it. Nott, of course, failed to notice—it was questionable whether he knew Madeleine was even there.

  Carissa maintained her icy poise. “Surely you are not presuming to second-guess my brother’s judgment, are you, Oswain?”

  Oswain? When did it become Oswain?

  “Not at all, Your Highness. Abramm did what he thought best under the circumstances.” He paused, then turned to Katahn with a smile. “Whoever could have guessed all these ominous sightings of enemy galleys would turn out to be the vessels of a friend bearing gifts? Galleys, slaves, ponies, gold . . .He has brought the king a genuine trove of treasure.”

  Carissa’s expression did not soften. Instead she turned her eyes to Katahn and said, “If gift is truly what it is.”

  “Your Highness!” Katahn protested. “You cut me to the quick. I swear to you by the power of the Light—all I have done has been only to aid him.”

  “You have yet to convince me, sir.”

  “Oh, come, madam,” Madeleine interjected. “Lord Katahn risked his life to help Abramm kill Beltha’adi. And gave up his place as ruler of the Armies of the Black Moon for the Light. He is a loyal friend.” She turned to him herself. “Is it true you’ve brought some ancient Ophiran books, as well?”

  “Ah, a damsel coming to my aid,” Katahn said with a grin. “How unexpected.” He gave Maddie a short bow. “Princess Madeleine, is it now?”

  “Just lady, sir.” And she curtsied to him rather prettily. Indeed her face was flushed with excitement, her eyes asparkle, and Trap could see why Abramm might find her attractive. He could also see the questions crowding up against one another in her mind, ready to spill out of her mouth, and decided he’d better head her off before she got started.

  “Where is your brother, my lady? I’ve not seen him all day.”

  “My brother?” She blinked, thrown from the current of her thoughts into a momentary eddy. “Oh, I just learned he left this morning to catch up with Briellen.”

  “He left this morning?” Trap asked in mild alarm. Before or after the action took place? he wondered. But he but did not think it politic to ask. Especially not with Oswain Nott pressing against his elbow. If he were still Captain Meridon, however, he’d be heading down to the Jewel House right now. But he wasn’t Captain Meridon, he was the Duke of Northille . . . and the duke had to stay and make polite conversation.

  Madeleine had already dropped the subject of her brother to hone in on Katahn again. “I am amazed at your Kiriathan, sir. You speak it wholly without accent, so far as I can tell. I understand now why Abramm thought you were his friend when he went with you from the villa in Qarkeshan.”

  “You know about that, do you?” He grinned, obviously pleased with himself.

  At Maddie’s side, Carissa’s frown deepened and her chin came up, the gesture a replica of Abramm’s. “You needn’t act so proud of it, sir.”

  Katahn turned wide eyes upon her. “Why not, my lady? Had it not been for my lack of an accent, Abramm never would have gone with me. Had he not gone with me, he’d never have become the White Pretender. Had he not—”

  “Yes, I know the progression. But it was duplicitous all the same, and I can’t see anything to admire in one’s ability to deceive. Certainly not one who claims to live in the Light.”

  Katahn glanced at Trap and murmured in the Tahg, “I see she has not forgiven me.”

  “Well, you did use her rather cruelly,” Trap replied in the same tongue.

  “As you continue to enjoy doing, apparently,” Carissa said witheringly, reminding them both that she, too, understood the Tahg. Her blue eyes narrowed upon Trap. “You especially disappoint me, Duke Eltrap, for you’ve become nearly as boorish as your backward friend. Good eve to both of you.”

  And, straight-spined, she turned and glided away. Madeleine watched her go with patent dismay, hesitating as if giving thought to launching her barrage of questions right now. One look at Trap made up her mind for her, however, and she turned to follow her friend. As they moved off, he overheard her ask the princess, “What were they saying, my lady?”

  Nott’s voice prevented him from hearing more. “Well, I guess she’s put the both of you in your places.” He looked at Trap with that supercilious expression that was so infuriating. “I’m surprised at you, Northille. I thought you had courting on your mind, but apparently I was wrong.”

  Courting?! While Trap reeled at that unexpected and outrageous accusation, Nott directed his remaining comments to Katahn before finally excusing himself and drifting away toward the food table. At least he was not so obvious as to drift in the direction of the princess.

  In the lull that followed his departure, Katahn said, “Courting?”

  “It’s Nott who’s courting,” Trap said. “Not me.”

  “Yet he clearly sees you as a threat.”

  Trap gaped at him. “She’s the Crown Princess of Kiriath and I’m just a—”

  “Duke?” Katahn supplied.

  Trap frowned. “Swordmaster’s son. Duke or not, I’m still a swordmaster’s son and hardly fit for the likes of her.”

  “From what I understand, she’s a divorced woman. Surely that—”

  “Means nothing whatsoever,” Trap said sharply.

  Katahn’s brows flew up in surprise. He changed the subject at once. “Well, it’s nice to see she’s reconciled with Abramm, anyway.”

  Realizing how strongly he’d just reacted, Trap felt suddenly foolish and wondered at himself for his sudden prickliness. Probably fatigue. He had been up since before dawn, after all. “She’s taken the Star, as well.”

  “That is welcome news. And explains, I would guess, her remark about duplicity.” He grinned. “What about the other one? That Lady Madeleine—”

  “Ah, beware of her, my friend.”

  “So she is on familiar standing with the king.”

  Trap glanced at him uneasily, chagrined his friend’s thoughts would go in that direction. “You could say that,” he said warily.

  “Yet you all looked so uncomfortable earlier when I made that very observation.” Katahn paused, dark eyes fixing upon him. “Rather like you do now.”

  Trap loosed a long, weary breath. “Lady Madeleine is . . . a problem.”

  “She seems a bright young woman.” Katahn turned to look at the object of his commentary, who stood across the room with Carissa and Kohal Kesrin. “Inquisitive, alert . . . not intimidated by social convention.”

  Trap loosed a dry chuckle. “No, not intimidated at all!”

  “I know they look nothing alike, but she reminds me of Shettai.”

  “Exactly.”

  Katahn flashed him a puzzled, penetrating look. Then, after a moment, he nodded. “The Kiriathan prejudice toward Chesedhans jeopardizes this union, doesn’t it?”

  “There is more acceptance of it than you might think. That’s not the problem.” He hesitated. “She’s not the one he’s marrying.”

  Katahn stared at him. “But . . . did I not hear her introduced as the daughter of the Chesedhan king?”

  “The Second Daughter . . . the one given to Eidon and through whom Chesedhan lines of inheritance do not pass.” He fell silent, watching the object of his discourse. “It’s the First Daughter Abramm is bound to marry.”

  At that moment the musicians burst into the piece that heralded the king’s arrival, and shortly the doorman’s deep voice announced his presence. After a brief flurry of greetings, Abramm made his way around the room to the dais that had been set up at the room’s far end, Trap and Katahn following. There he and his guest settled into the two high-backed chairs that had been placed there, and the three of them soon fell into a lively discussion regarding the possibility of an Esurhite stronghold on the Gull Islands.

  An hour or so into the event, Katahn was formally introduced, stories were exchanged, and then the
y sat down to enjoy a performance of the Ballad of the White Pretender. Arranged and performed as a duet, the song’s normal singers had both fled with the others yesterday and had not yet returned. Thus, to Trap’s surprise, Madeleine had agreed to sing the piece herself. She had changed into a traditional balladeer’s costume and now wore a white, short-sleeved peasant’s smock with a wide, scooped, ruffle-edged neckline and a blue tunic over top, its bodice tightly cinched to a slim waistline that completely belied the gossips’ insinuations of pregnancy. Her hair was arranged in the looser peasant style of plaited and unplaited locks looped on her head, tendrils of it trailing down beside her face and onto her neck. She sat on a chair atop a small platform that had been set up at the midst of the space before the king, her lirret in her lap.

  The lights were put out save for the cluster of kelistars netted and hung from the ceiling above her. As everyone found their places, she sat utterly still, hands on the lirret’s gold frame, head bent as if she were gathering her nerve. Or praying. Or, most likely, both.

  After a moment she drew a deep breath, lifted her head, and placed her fingers on the lirret’s many strings. The audience fell silent, and now Trap found himself praying, as well, uneasy at the prospect of listening to an amateur and reluctant to see the woman embarrassed. Her fingers danced over the strings in an opening glissando and she began, astonishing Trap and everyone else in the room with her clear, sweet soprano voice. In fact, her rendition of the song was the most moving he had ever heard, calling up feelings he had known himself during his own times in the southland. She sang of the longing for freedom and home and the love that waited there as if she had experienced it herself.

  And her voice was incredible, holding notes of pure tone that seemed at times more like light than sound. Little sparkles—miniscule kelistars—danced from her fingers as they moved across her harp, and the Light glowed in her face. Though she started the song with her eyes focused downward, halfway through he noticed they’d come up to fix upon the king and did not leave his face thereafter. All the fear and longing and mythic heroism of the Pretender’s journey was there, and yet she sang it like a love song, as if he were the only one in the room. And the yearning that threaded it tore even at Trap’s heart.

  Abramm sat utterly spellbound.

  When she finished, no one moved nor said a word for a long, long moment. Then the king gave her a single grave nod of approval, and his courtiers burst into enthusiastic applause. Within moments she was mobbed, everyone talking at once, astonished that so entrancing a voice could reside in the body of such a plain-looking woman.

  Trap kept his own gaze on his king, who sat quietly on his throne, lost in thought, looking almost as sad as Madeleine had sounded.

  Then, before the courtiers’ enthusiasm had even begun to wane, the doorman was calling out in his loudest voice the arrival of Princess Briellen. And barely had his words been spoken when she swept into the room, trailed by Lady Leona, both of them haggard and travel weary. As silence clamped down on the gathering, she strode to face the king upon his dais.

  “So it was a false alarm?” she burst out before he could say a thing. “You did not wait to be sure? Our wedding means so little to you that you couldn’t even give it a thought?”

  He frowned. “The wedding is over a week off.”

  “You could have waited. You didn’t have to ruin everything.”

  He glanced around the room, stone silent now, no one moving, every eye fixed on the two of them. “You are clearly tired, my lady,” he said calmly. “We’ll discuss this in the morning.”

  She stamped her foot. “Do not put me off, sir! We’ll discuss this now. I demand an apology. You had no right to do this to me! Do you realize what you’ve just put me through? Do you realize what everyone is going to think? Don’t you care at all? Of course you don’t!” She feigned a brittle, highpitched laugh. “Why would I think that? You’ve never cared about me from the start! And don’t think I don’t know why!”

  By now her brows had drawn down into a grimace, her fists were clenched at her sides, and her voice was escalating into hysteria. Words tumbled out in a chaotic stream, a pastiche of wild accusations combined with viciously personal attacks of the sort that shouldn’t even be spoken in the back rooms, much less screamed in the face of the king of the land. Maddie and Carissa gaped from the edge of the crowd beyond her. And they weren’t the only ones. In fact, Trap had never seen a woman so . . . unhinged.

  When she finally ran down, he could only thank Eidon for the blessing of silence and pray it would last.

  She stood there panting and rigid as her audience divided its attention between her and the king, waiting breathlessly to see which of them would speak next.

  Abramm appeared entirely unfazed, looking down at her in the same bland way he had looked at Rhiad that day aboard the ruinedWanderer when the holy man had accused him of being a heretic. Only when it became apparent she would say no more did he finally speak.

  “My dear, you are clearly overwrought. Exhausted, I’m sure, from the stresses of the last few days. Forgive me for having put you through it all. Please, do not think you need do anything save recover your strength this night. Duke Eltrap will escort you to your apartments so you may rest and refresh yourself after your ordeal.”

  Briellen’s eyes bulged with astonishment. The high color that had drained from her pale features now rushed into them again.

  Reluctant, but determined, Trap stepped quickly to her side and said quietly, “If you’ll come with me, Your Highness?”

  She ignored him, glaring now at Abramm, while Trap marveled that a woman so beautiful could become so thoroughly repulsive in but a few moments. Then, instead of erupting into more fireworks, Briellen’s anger crumpled into dismay. Her lips trembled and her eyes filled with tears as the harridan transformed into a crushed little girl. She turned away without ever looking at Trap, jerking her elbow out of his reach as if she expected he might clasp it to help her on her way, and strode for the door.

  He followed, exchanging the briefest of glances with Madeleine as he strode past her. The princess walked briskly down the gleaming corridors, and he had to strain to keep up with her, glimpsing courtiers and servants hiding behind columns and in window embrasures, and ducking out of sight into side corridors. The only sounds were that of her skirts hissing, her heels snapping across the marble, and the counter rhythm of his own boots.

  Then to his everlasting gratitude, he heard the clatter of footsteps behind him, rapidly catching up. Maddie came abreast of him, then stepped ahead to place herself between him and the First Daughter.Wordlessly they trooped up the stairs to the Ivory Apartments on the second floor of the east wing.

  Trap left them at the door, breathing a quiet sigh of relief as he turned back and headed down the stairs. Prince Leyton passed him on his way up. The Chesedhan flashed him a tight look that could have been inquiry or anger, but was definitely awkward. They might have spoken had not that screaming shrew voice, muffled by at least one door, suddenly echoed again through the marbled hall.

  ————

  Maddie had never been happier to see her brother walk through the door in all her life, for immediately, Briellen shifted her ire from her sister to him.

  “Where have you been?” she screamed. “This has been the most horrible day of my life and where were you?”

  Maddie had never seen her so upset. She alternated between hysterical crying and fomenting rage, going on and on about Abramm and what a heartless monster he was. “How could he have done this to me? Bad enough I have to marry him. At least the wedding could have been special. Now he’s ruined it. For nothing.”

  She threw herself into a chair and buried her face in her hands. “I will never be able to show my face in court again.”

  “Oh, Bree, come now.” He knelt beside her and wrapped his arm about her shoulders. “It’s not as bad as all that.”

  “It is. We should just leave. He hates me! He must, to have humi
liated me like this!” Then the tears gave way to fury again, her back stiffening as she pulled away and turned to glare at him. “You must put things to right. He cannot be allowed to talk to me like that!”

  “Oh,” Maddie said dryly, “but you can shriek at him like a madwoman with all his courtiers looking on? He arrested Father Bonafil for much less.”

  “I wasn’t shrieking. I never shriek. I was being forceful.”

  But Maddie had turned to address their brother. “She was completely out of control, Leyton. If you ask me, Abramm showed remarkable restraint.”

  “Restraint!” Briellen squeaked.

  “You called him a hideous monster. Screamed at him to his face. Struck at his most vulnerable spots without the least bit of remorse and certainly no idea of how hurtful you were being.”

  “How hurtful Iwas being?”

  “Those words will not be easily forgotten. By anyone, least of all him.”

  “I’m sure he’s forgotten them already. It’s obvious he cares nothing for me.”

  Maddie frowned at her, trying to understand what had set all this off. It couldn’t be the simple inconvenience of having left the city to flee a possible invasion . . . she’d made that choice herself and packed lightly. The wedding was barely affected. Perhaps it was getting near the time for her monthly bleeding. She had always been especially difficult right before that. Maddie drew a deep breath. “Well, even if you have no respect for him as a man—”

  “I don’t and I never will!”

  “—you should at least respect his office. And be thankful he called it exhaustion and took half the blame.”

  “He should have taken all of it. And to dismiss me like that is inexcusable!”

  Leyton looked from one to the other, and from the expression on his face, Maddie knew he must have heard other reports before he’d come. Now he frowned at Briellen. “I’m sorry this has happened, but if Abramm has credited your behavior to exhaustion, I believe he is right.”

  “I will not leave this go, Leyt.”

  He frowned at her. “What is wrong with you? Are you trying to destroy this treaty?”