Grand Conspiracy

  His eyes were the blue of a summer sky zenith, unclouded. Nor did his countenance admit any shadow as he held his station to receive formal greeting from the troop’s commander, Lord Harradene.

  ‘You will have a reason to have supplanted my garrison troops in this mundane duty, old friend.’ His tone was grave, his words pitched low, that only those nearest might hear. ‘Why this show of a public ceremony? My ear has always been yours for the asking. What event under sky could have altered that trust? Think carefully. I would grant you this audience in private.’

  ‘Your Grace, welcome back.’ Etarra’s gruff field captain bent his knee to his sovereign, a man irremediably changed. No one who remembered the spiked, iron force of him failed to observe the startling new diffidence in his bearing. The bear’s glower once turned on his recruits was no more. Under the tissue of lucid, thin sunlight, his rough-cut features were downturned in a wrenching flush of embarrassment.

  The huge, mail-clad arm, which had never shown weakness in the grimmest press of battle, now raised his great sword in salute, marked by unsteady trembling. This occasion would not mark joyful reunion, nor celebrate the recovery of the troops he had led for the glory of the Light into Caithwood.

  ‘My Lord Prince, I speak in the open,’ Lord Harradene insisted. Harrowed uncertainty burred his voice as he reversed the grip of huge hands and offered his sword pommel first to his sovereign. ‘Let no closed door stand between you and your people of Avenor. In plain words, in honesty, I give my confession: I can no longer serve as the terms of my oath to the Light would demand. I speak as well for the men in my company. All who stand with me today will fight no more against Shadow. Whether our lives were undone by sorcery, the future we face is not arguable. We will cause no more bloodshed. I am unfit to carry out your orders on the field, nor are these men suited to bear arms for your purpose of war against the Spinner of Darkness.’

  Prince Lysaer moved no muscle. For the one, sustained instant he seemed a figure spun of glass against the backdrop of Avenor’s state buildings. Under clear sky, pinned to formal duty by the unforgiving regard of public accountability, he had no choice but confront the cruel truth as given. Nor could he mediate the inflexible disposition of crown justice for these men, self-confessed to be forsworn in their oath to the Light.

  ‘Your announcement strikes like a blade to the heart,’ Lysaer said, his hand taut on the rein in bitter regret for the ironies. The cream charger tossed its head. Fast reflex let him gentle his grip; no such small mercy could relieve the attentive focus he trained on the field commander from Etarra. ‘No praise of mine can measure the extent of your loyal courage.’

  For Lord Harradene had chosen to make the break clean. His self-respect as a strategist demanded no less; he would have no ground ceded to the blurring ambiguity of friendship. Rather than risk his sworn prince to an exposure of human weakness, he ensured his last victory to the s’Ilessid cause. Here, in Avenor’s wide plaza, with the commoners his unforgiving tribunal, prince and field commander faced off in the painful, shared knowledge that the high morals of state dared not bend for the sake of personal amity.

  Detached to ice, Prince Lysaer reached out. With a hand that showed the bearing of rock, he accepted the grip of the sword. ‘State your case.’ He inclined his head toward another of the riders, who spurred forward on command to bear witness. ‘The crown seneschal shall make official record.’

  Gone, the option to appeal for reprieve; Lord Harradene plowed on through a torn note of heartbreak, ‘My liege, keep my steel, to break in dishonor as you choose.’ If his voice did not reach the farthest edges of the plaza, his gesture left no shadow for doubt as he fell to his knees, disarmed before Lysaer’s stirrup.

  Nor would the intrigue of governing politics forgive the humane hesitation, as Lysaer weighed options or words. Hand closed on the sword grip, he must not shrink from the crux, or lessen the gravity of due consequence.

  ‘You have called your oath forfeit.’ His magisterial reply carried on the chill quiet, and reached every riveted onlooker. ‘I accept your blade in full recognition that your service is ended. But never in shame. Arise. Stand tall before these, the people your actions at arms have defended at Minderl Bay, at Vastmark, in Rathain’s fell wilds, and not least, here on crown lands in Tysan.’

  A pause, while Lysaer transferred the weapon’s cold weight. He extended his hand to the man who knelt at his stirrup. As Lord Harradene was raised to his feet by divine strength, the prince’s final disposition reechoed throughout the plaza. ‘Let no one in Avenor speak your name in dishonor. Your service to the Light has ever upheld truth and right, and that record shall stand untarnished. Go home. Live in peace until the day you pass the Wheel. For what befell you in Caithwood, cherish my promise: I will one day deliver my revenge upon the Sorcerer who has dared to curtail a career of flawlessly dedicated service. Your sword I will keep, and bestow upon the man who succeeds you. His first charge shall be an undying pledge to break the unholy alliance between the Master of Shadow and the minions who practice the corruption of free minds through spellcraft.’

  Lysaer released his gloved grip, saying softly, ‘Live well, old friend.’ Then he dug in his spurs and wheeled his charger, and addressed the captain of his honor guard. ‘Detail someone to collect the arms of these men. Let them gather their kit. Then assemble an escort from the garrison to see them safely on their way through the city gates.’

  His cavalcade moved off then, stately in the grime of their travel, with the banners bravely snapping in the wind. They vanished behind the grilled archway of the state palace bailey, while the crowds screamed and cried adulation. Throughout the short distance completing their march, neither the Divine Prince nor his guard accorded a look back at the proud, polished field troops from Etarra, honored, but stripped of trust, and excused from loyal service to the Alliance.

  Restored to the comfort of his personal chambers, Lysaer s’Ilessid allowed his valet to remove the yoked weight of his cloth-of-gold tabard. He tossed off silk gloves and cast himself in a chair, while a page rushed to unbuckle the straps of his spurs, and another as eager removed his splashed boots, to be cleaned and buffed with fresh blacking. Stripped to his hose and a tinseled silk shirt, the prince rammed ringed hands through the hair at his temples to contain the fierce throb of a headache.

  ‘Damn the man’s stiff-necked pride! What would it have cost to have told me in private?’ Still raging at Lord Harradene, the prince let his hands drop limp on the chair arms. Head turned toward the figure who stood, stilled in shadow, outside the ubiquitous bustle of the servants, Lysaer reopened limpid eyes. ‘For pity, if he had, I could easily have arranged for an honorable early retirement. He’d the record in service to support that reward. At least then, if he wants to grow old farming earth, he could have collected a pension.’

  When no answer, and no sympathy was forthcoming, Lysaer shoved half-upright and sighed. ‘You advised Harradene to broach his dismissal, beforehand. The public presentation was yours all along?’

  ‘It was necessary because of the men,’ confirmed a voice of fruity, round vowels, and consonants of crisp authority. Cerebeld gestured to the page boys with the boots, and the valet, who hovered uncertain. ‘Go. I shall serve your prince with my own hands tonight.’

  Lysaer allowed his servants to be chivvied out the door. As the panel closed to the touch of Cerebeld’s scrubbed hand, he loosened the braided gold laces at his throat. ‘I did ask for a bath.’

  But Cerebeld had made the arrangements already. His suave gesture encompassed the archway that led through the tiled foyer. ‘The tub and the water are waiting. You object?’

  ‘No.’ Lysaer tugged the shirt off over his head. His grimace as he stretched showed all of the weariness he kept masked before all others. ‘After thirty leagues in the saddle over damnable, bad roads, I will gracefully let you handle my toilet and towels.’ He pushed to his feet, fighting the lassitude which had seeped into his muscles from even th
at short interval of rest. ‘You don’t trust a whole troop of men not to talk? That’s probably wise. For myself, I doubt I could have found the stone heart to turn them off with no pay and an uncertain future. Most haven’t a pedigree family to fall back on, unlike Harradene and his high-ranking officers.’

  Cerebeld shut down pity with surgical logic. ‘The treasury will fare better without the unnecessary burden.’ He held out his palm.

  Prince Lysaer removed the regent’s ring with its massive, cut-sapphire seal. Cerebeld received the signet, then the diamond-set collar of state, and placed them in the velvet-lined tray the valet kept at hand for the purpose.

  ‘Oh for the days when the flow of cold bullion did not rule our every move.’ Lysaer stripped his hose. The lines of firm muscle in his buttocks and thighs as sculpted as the haunch of a lion, he walked unabashed into the next-door chamber, and stepped into the steaming bath. ‘You’re right, of course.’

  The more difficult factions in Erdane would pay generously to kill clansmen. But all the mavens in the trade guilds would shut their purses like oysters before lending even one coin weight to fund pensions. Already, the doubled bounties for headhunters drove Eilish to hand-wringing fits.

  ‘There could be compensation,’ Cerebeld allowed.

  ‘When my plan for Etarra reaches fruition?’ Lysaer frowned. ‘Perhaps.’ The Alliance would soon begin its campaign to recruit farmhands for armed service. Harradene’s veterans would not lack for work in the fields, as younger sons were called to leave their family steadings. ‘Though I warrant the Etarrans’ wives will be sharp for the uncharitable change in their station.’

  Immersed to the neck in hot, soapy water, Lysaer tipped his head back against the bronze rim of the tub. He closed his eyes, at boneless ease as Cerebeld poured a dipper of water over his golden hair. As his high priest massaged perfumed soap into his scalp, he murmured, ‘Give me the news. Were you able to uncover any links into the Shadow Master’s correspondence network?’

  Cerebeld plucked up a warmed towel from the rail by the hearth and delicately blotted his pink hands. ‘Very nearly. The carrier evaded my informant in Shand, but the crown examiner you had billeted with the recruits from Jaelot picked up a strong resonance of spellcraft. Someone needed to shelter their activity from the eyes of Koriani scryers.’

  Spurred to sharp impatience, Lysaer ducked his head and immersed, splashing suds over the rim of the basin. He emerged, rinsed and dripping, and fixed his regard upon Cerebeld’s inscrutable features. ‘There’s more.’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Cerebeld passed a dry towel. His meticulous, polite pause let the Prince of the Light blot the streaming scented water from his face. ‘The trail we followed was muddied by the antics of Parrien s’Brydion. He’s been dispatched to sea by his duke to pay Alestron’s respects upon the occasion of your forthcoming wedding.’

  ‘No hard proof of collusion with Shadow?’ Lysaer lapsed back again with closed eyes, while the heat worked its magic with his kinked muscles.

  ‘None. I suspect, nonetheless. Parrien’s flamboyant escapade was unlikely to have innocent origins. Coin smoothed the loose ends much too well. The parties involved shared no talk, and no one else paid much notice. The s’Brydion penchant for colorful mischief was dismissed by the southcoast officials as an embarrassing irritation. Unless you wish tactless pressure brought to bear, they’ll stay reluctant to take such routine brawling seriously.’ Cerebeld laced his hands over the beautiful worked emblem of the sunwheel gracing his belt buckle. His stance was the only relaxed aspect to him; his eyes on the prince kept the gleam of analytical steel. ‘Did you seek this intelligence? You had other plans for that family, I thought.’

  Lysaer stayed expressionless. Serene as a masterworked sculpture in alabaster, he engaged in a sharp change of subject. ‘If news from Shand is running to schedule, we must know by now how each town has responded to the invitation to attend my wedding.’

  ‘Gace Steward has made lists.’ Cerebeld’s slick complexion showed no frown line, the linked rapport he shared with the Divine Prince enough surety his inquiry had not met with rebuff. Secretive as the trained statesman, Lysaer enjoyed the close privilege shared with his high priest; in Cerebeld’s company, he never needed to smooth over small gaps in dialogue with the meaningless honey of diplomacy.

  The man knew his royal preferences well. When the Prince of the Light was ready to share confidence, or exert his will to examine the irregularities that flawed the s’Brydion promise of loyalty, he would do so in forthright conversation. In respect for planned timing designed for the greater good of the Light, High Priest Cerebeld steered the discussion toward the arrangements for the Erdani bride and her escort. Her cavalcade would depart for Avenor once the passes through Tornir Peaks were opened and made safe for a wellborn lady to negotiate.

  ‘Expect her arrival just after the equinox.’ Cerebeld bowed, prepared with the large towel as his sovereign lord arose to step from the bathtub. ‘The girl’s mother’s no fool. She’s overseen every aspect of her daughter’s disposition. Expect to trip over a bevy of aunts who are almost as difficult to please. My new acolyte in Erdane sends news every fortnight. You knew the chit had written you in her own hand?’

  ‘I knew.’ That subject caused Lysaer a swift, fair-skinned flush, immediately masked into a pallor he buried in the nap of the towel. Through the brisk strokes he used to dry his gold hair, he said, ‘Your thinking is noisy. Girlish fancies and sweet talk, I gathered? You’d approve. I had one of my young secretaries answer her in like-minded, flowery language. She won’t need intelligence to bear Tysan an heir, and for that saving grace, I expect you and my council will all be suitably thankful.’

  ‘Her strict westland upbringing should hold her in line.’ Cerebeld bowed, soothing over the difficult topic with ceremony.

  Lady Ellaine of Erdane had been carefully chosen for her retiring, sensible temperament. Hot blood and passion, and the pressures of state politics were unlikely to drive her to the outspoken independence which had bought the late princess Talith her downfall.

  Lysaer smiled, reassured, then stretched, and regarded his high priest with disarming humor. ‘Now that you’ve tested my prenuptial nerves and plumbed after the source of my motives, I trust I may summon my valet with fresh clothes?’

  Cerebeld laughed. ‘My interested adulation was never intended to leave you stranded and naked. I’ll call your servant to attend on your Grace as I let myself out.’

  Late Winter–Early Spring 5654

  Setbacks

  Far out to sea, strapped restless in splints, Arithon s’Ffalenn rejects Dakar’s latest posset in a testy explosion of anger. ‘You can leave off the nursing. I’m not going to order this brigantine about! Whatever war and mayhem Mearn’s sparked in Tysan, you’ll have worse right here if someone doesn’t fetch me my lyranthe …!’

  On the cresting spring tide, the night after the newly launched Alliance ships were invested and sailed on their maiden voyage down the Riverton inlet, a fire breaks out in the royal shipyard that reduces every stacked plank and rope, and levels the craft sheds to ashes …

  The following morning, when Cattrick and his senior craftsmen are not found in the city, an Alliance rider is dispatched northward to Hanshire, bearing word of the sabotage and the suspicions cast upon the names of possible arsonists; and en route through the lowlands to the west of Mogg’s Fen, the courier falls from his horse, dead as he lands, from an arrow dispatched by a sharpshooter clansman …

  Spring 5654

  VI.

  Marriage

  The ill news arrived at Prince Lysaer’s chambers in Avenor on the hour the royal valet shook the sweetening herbs from the indigo tabard his Exalted Grace would wear for the afternoon ceremony. No sunwheel device, but the star and crown blazon of Tysan would commemorate the marriage of the Mayor of Erdane’s eldest daughter to Tysan’s time-honored s’Ilessid bloodline. By midday, the squalling, gust-driven clouds had not given way to fair weather.
Rain seeped in tinseled runnels down the casements, steamed gray on the inside from the close heat of foreign envoys and celebrating courtiers.

  The best vintage wine from Carithwyr had been flowing all morning. Through loud, raunchy jokes and backslapping laughter, the recent arrival passed unregarded until the discord at the entrance to the royal apartment turned heads. Hat feathers aligned like grass in high wind; the pedigree highborn and those few merchants privileged to attend the prince’s robing looked down their noses, perturbed.

  ‘Invitations bedamned,’ cried a leather-clad man with a commoner’s middle coast accent. ‘I bring urgent news!’

  The tussle crescendoed. Lysaer’s flustered chamber steward lost the upper hand, and the intruder barged in, mud spattered, reeking of soaked wool and lathered horse.

  Overdressed courtiers cleared from his path in a breaking flurry of velvets. ‘Where’s Sulfin Evend!’ The man’s shout clove ahead through the bedlam. ‘I seek the Alliance Lord Commander!’

  Chain mail glinted through the flower petal brilliance of brocades as the taciturn captain who laid claim to that title tossed off his gloves and slid like a ferret through the crush. ‘To me! Now!’ His hardened fist caught the courier by the shoulder. ‘Whatever your news, the whole world shouldn’t hear. You’re from Hanshire?’

  ‘The north quarter, yes.’ The man caught his breath, his face pinched with exhaustion. ‘Word will fly, soon enough. Four of the launched vessels from the new Alliance fleet just foundered themselves down the coast.’