Bounded on the south by a stone balustrade lining seaside cliffs and on the north by a stand of mature oaks and elms blazing gold against the hot blue sky, the terrace was a long, graded rectangle, marked out in a network of graveled promenades interspersed with well-groomed plantings. Ribbons of purple flowers swirled with low hedges and close-clipped lawns in embroidery-inspired motifs, and a grand walkway accented by three round, placid pools bisected the terrace’s length.
At this hour the midday sun glared off the gravel with hot, eye-searing intensity and the terrace lay nearly deserted. The two men strode along the sea-cliff balustrade in silence, each engrossed in his own thoughts. Having avoided Laramor all this time with the assurance he would talk to the man when opportunity arose, Simon now faced the reality that he’d said nothing because he feared to widen the gulf that had already opened between them. Ethan had declared himself firmly in Gillard’s camp. He had already warned Simon that Abramm would seek to win him, almost as if he believed it would be accomplished by supernatural means. With his Borderer upbringing and beliefs, that was entirely possible. Which meant anything Simon said by way of defense on Abramm’s behalf would probably be discounted.
The Borderers were a proud and stubborn lot, fiercely loyal to their chosen causes and intolerant of those who chose differently. In matters of religion and politics; schisms, rivalries, and feuds abounded, and though to an outsider their differences might seem so slight as to be irrelevant, Borderers took them very seriously. A large minority of them were Terstan, whole clans in fact, descended in a long unbroken heritage from the days of Avramm the First. The majority worshipped the gods of hill and field and wood, an even older tradition in the mountains along the Ruk Pul. Superstition and black magic were pervasive, and a clan chief might as likely be a powerful warlock— able to summon the dark spirits they called ells—as the leader of a local assembly of Terstans. Since many believed both sprang from the same source, it was hard to understand why they fought. But easy to understand why they all hated the Mataio.
The Holy Brethren had repeatedly sought to “convert” the border clans, then castigated them for refusing. Never having had a Mataian king, however, the Brethren lacked real power to do more than castigate. Lay believers had occasionally marshaled armed groups like Prittleman’s Gadrielites to try to cleanse the borderlands, but it never worked. That didn’t mean they had given up, though. In fact, with the kraggin and the recent influx of spawn, more and more calls had sounded for physical action to be taken against those the Mataio deemed impure.
So Simon could understand the threat Ethan saw in Abramm. He just didn’t think the threat was being realized.
As they reached the terrace’s midpoint, Laramor slowed to a stop, turning toward the balustrade to stare over the bay, now deep blue in the midday light. Vessels of every shape and size cluttered its surface, though most of the bigger ships had already sailed out with the brisk land breeze of the morning, a breeze that had by now died away to the stifling stillness of midday.
Simon stopped at Laramor’s side, leaning his bottom against the sunbaked balustrade—his hip was already starting to ache from the morning’s exertions— and turning his gaze across the terrace. Sweat trickled down his sides beneath his underblouse, and all at once his doublet became so constricting he could not bear it another moment. Yes, it was improper to go about in one’s underclothes, even scandalous out here on the terrace, but he was too old to care about such things anymore, and there was no one to see him anyway. Only those tiny figures on the farthest walkway heading for the stair up to the palace. He began to undo the row of front buttons.
Beside him, Ethan finally spoke. “He’s won you, hasn’t he?” he asked quietly.
Simon’s stomach clenched with nausea and irrational shame. “It isn’t what you think, Ethan.”
“Isn’t it? You’ve been avoiding us ever since the day you had your meeting. Me, Harrady, Gillard—all of us. Almost as if you can’t bear to look us in the eye.”
That wasn’t far from the truth.
“Word is you’ve agreed to become his advisor.”
That took Simon aback. “Who told you that?”
“Does it matter?”
Simon continued with his buttons. “I’m Grand Marshall of the Royal Army. Of course I’m going to advise him in some capacity.” You’re sounding defensive, old man. You did what you had to do. And now, somehow you have to convince him to do it, too.
“You were supposed to resign,” Ethan said. “And I’ve heard something about a list of reliable men you’re compiling.”
Simon unfastened the last button and shrugged out of his doublet.
Beside him Ethan stood stiffly. “Gillard is hurt that you are not with him on this, you know.”
Just exposing his sweat-soaked undergarment to the open air brought instant relief and for a moment Simon reveled in that. Then Ethan’s words registered and he looked sharply at his friend. “Is that a threat?”
“A reality.” Laramor had propped both elbows on the balustrade and stared out to sea as he absently twisted the coil ring on his forefinger. “He feels like you’ve betrayed him, and . . . I feel like that myself.”
“And I think the true betrayal lies in encouraging him to oppose the rightful king.” Might as well just lay it out there. “He’s risking his life, his reputation, and the peace and freedom of this land for little gain. Perhaps no gain at all.”
Ethan rounded on him angrily. “How can you say that, Simon! Knowing what Abramm is.”
“What I know of Abramm,” Simon said with deliberate calm, “is that the crown is his by right, and he appears well suited to wear it. Far more so than I ever would have guessed or even hoped.”
Ethan gaped at him. “Gillard’s right. You do admire him!”
The words sparked a strange burst of memory—fiery eyes in a ruined face, a flashing knife, a white-blond curl, and those same condemning words hurled at him. “And you! You admire him!”
Then it was gone, like a dream image popping into the mind and popping out again the moment one tried to seize it.
But although those words had elicited shocked denial from him the first time—How do I know that? How do I know it was even real?—now he acknowledged their truth. He draped his doublet over the balustrade beside him and said, “Why shouldn’t I? He’s turned all of us on our ears, outperforming by a hundredfold every expectation we had.”
“It’s only been two weeks, Simon. Anyone can perform well for two weeks.”
“I don’t believe it’s a façade. The boy’s survived slavery among the Esurhites! Light and Fire, Ethan! Shouldn’t we expect him to have been changed by that?”
“He certainly has been changed. I just don’t think it was slavery that did it.”
And with that Simon’s patience gave out. “Why are you so insistent he’s involved in some mysterious Mataian conspiracy? It’s like you made up your mind beforehand and won’t even consider the facts.”
“Facts are subject to interpretation.”
Simon sputtered an oath. “He’s done nothing but stall them, deny them, and reject them. He’s declared freely and frequently that he’s not only renounced his vows but his beliefs in the Flames altogether.”
“I do not trust a man who gives up one set of beliefs and has nothing with which to replace them.”
“So what are you saying? He has to be Terstan before you would support him?”
An odd startled expression passed across Ethan’s weathered features. Then he frowned. “Not at all. In fact, if he made such a claim I would be more suspicious than ever. Just because a man wears a shield doesn’t mean he serves the power behind it. And there are paper shields, pigskin shields, some even made out of gold foil.”
“Why would anyone pretend to be Terstan?”
“The Gadrielites do it all the time in order to penetrate Tersts and betray their members.” Ethan pulled off his hat and fanned his face. Sweat trickled down the side of his check, turni
ng his strawy hair dark along temple and neck, and staining the upper edge of his cravat. “In Abramm’s case, it would be the perfect way to convince people he really wasn’t in league with Bonafil and powers of the Flames.”
“So the boy has no chance with you at all,” said Simon. “No matter what he says or does, in your eyes he’s guilty and there’s no amending it. And all this without you ever having spoken to him directly.”
“I already know what he is, and if I spoke with him, he would only deceive me—as he has apparently deceived you.” He glanced at Simon, then replaced his hat. “There is much here you do not understand.”
“So enlighten me!”
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
Simon rolled his eyes. “Plagues, Ethan! I’ve never seen you so pigheaded before!”
Ethan stared grimly across the bay and said nothing.
Simon felt at his wit’s end. It was as if his old friend had turned into someone else. “What if you’re wrong?” he asked finally. “What if Abramm has come in good faith and is not in league with the Mataio at all? Do you truly believe there’s no possibility you could’ve been deceived? Or merely have misperceived events as they unfolded? Are you that infallible in your judgments?”
Laramor kept his gaze fixed stubbornly upon the bay, his jaw set, his fingers once more twisting the coiled ring on his left hand.
“Light and Fire, man!” Simon exploded, goaded past all thoughts of diplomacy. “You’re engaging in treason! That’s an execution-worthy crime. At least talk to him face-to-face, one on one if you can. At least give him a chance to prove himself to you.”
Finally his friend moved, scowling fiercely down at his hands, the silver ring gleaming in the sunlight as it twisted round and round beneath his fingers. “I’ve tried,” he said finally. “He refuses to see me.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Ethan looked at him askance. “You think I’m lying?”
“I think you may have been told that. I don’t believe he refused.”
The other man turned with a sigh to face the terrace, squinting out over its brightness, then shutting his eyes and massaging his temples as if his head hurt. It was some time before he spoke. “I was told he was angry with me because of Carissa.”
“Carissa? You had nothing to do with that mess! Besides, everyone knows you and Rennalf are practically in a blood feud.” Sudden suspicion hummed like a hive of stirred bees. Could someone in the palace be deliberately driving a wedge between Laramor and the new king? Gillard, perhaps? It seemed a bit subtle for him, but he surely stood to gain the most.
“Talk to him, Ethan. If they refuse to admit you, demand to see him. Prittleman does it all the time. Go and see him today. Before you go too far to back out.”
Laramor had gone back to his ring, not twisting it now, just rubbing his fingers along its coils while the sea gulls wheeled overhead, their raucous cries sharp in the still, hot silence. Finally he looked up. “No, Simon. It’s you who’s wrong. In the end, perhaps you’ll see that. I just hope it comes before you lose everything you really care about.”
He pushed off the balustrade and strode away. Simon followed slowly after him, frustration bitter on his tongue.
CHAPTER
22
As Simon was leaving the Hall of Fence, Abramm stood at the largest of the three desks in the royal study and let a gray-green bracelet slide off the tip of his dagger into a narrow-necked flower bowl. The flowers it had recently held lay piled in disarray upon the desk, their wet stems spreading a wrinkled stain of moisture across the papers scattered beneath them. The water he had dumped into the mostly empty ash pail and sent off with Jared to be disposed of.
The bracelet hit the bottom of the bowl with more of a click than the clank it should have made, were it really metal. But it lay there all the same, unchanged and benign, trapped without knowing it. Or at least Abramm hoped it was, counting on those still-wet glass walls to prove too steep and slippery to climb. He set aside the dagger and glanced up. After sending Jared away, he’d dismissed the other servants and told them to close the doors behind them, that he did not wish to be disturbed for a time. He was alone.
Returning to the palace from his meeting with Everitt Kesrin shortly before dawn, he’d skipped his usual morning routine for the sake of a few hours’ sleep. The fact that he was keeping his courtiers waiting, that a nearly hysterical Darak Prittleman was terrorizing everyone out in the antechamber, had disturbed him—until he remembered he was king and could elect to see supplicants or not, as he chose, regardless of the fits they threw. And at the moment, he had no desire to face Prittleman and his demands. After last night, he was more inclined to throw the man into the royal dungeons and lose the key. Nor was that his only reason for delay. Kesrin had provided him a portfolio of notes, which he had started reading as soon as he had awakened. In them was a brief discussion of the technique for striking shadowspawn with the Light from a distance.
Now he eyed the creature in the bowl, still looking like a harmless heavy bracelet rimmed with gold scallops, a piece more suited for a man than a woman. Which made sense seeing as it had taken on the guise in a man’s quarters. To see it in its true form, he had to see it through the Light, a concept he still didn’t entirely understand. Trying to apply it, though, even if he failed, would surely teach him something.
He drew a deep breath and laid his hands flat around the belly of the bowl, cradling it between them, the nearly healed cut on his left palm still tender at the contact. Kesrin’s notes said it was a matter of perception. A matter of recognizing the fabric of deceit, for it was the same pattern with all things born of Shadow. Recognizing it with hand and eye and soul and spirit, all of them. There should be a slight pressure, a sense of vibration—yes! He did feel that, though so faint it might be only imagination. Except now, knowing how to look, he also saw the shivers of the illusive cloak the staffid had wrapped around itself, the sickly throbbing luminescence of the green. He felt a strong wave of revulsion, and suddenly the lines and shadows came together in a new way—like the old vase/face puzzle—and he saw the staffid in the bracelet. At the same moment a thread of light shot from the index finger of his right hand, penetrated the glass, and struck the creature in the center of its back.
Immediately it whipped out of its curl, arching back as if in pain, its many legs wriggling into view. He zapped it again without even thinking to do it, and the thing flashed up the side of the bowl, undulating like something that should be under water. But the slick glass sides defeated it, and it fell back, rolling and arching and writhing about the bottom.
“Your pardon, sir,” came a familiar feminine voice from the doorway behind from him. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”
He jerked around in horror. “Lady Madeleine! What are you doing here?”
“Oh, Jared let me in the back way.” She swept toward him, as if completely unaware both of his horror and the fact she should not be here. “Lord Prittleman is making such a scene in the antechamber, I knew if I wanted to see you before tomorrow, I’d better go around.”
“And did it happen to occur to you that the reason for Prittleman’s distress was that I am not receiving visitors?”
“Jared said you’d been up for a while. I only wanted to make a quick check of your titles here.” She gestured at the book-lined shelves around them. “And Master Getty sent me with a message. I promise not to bother you. How is your hand, by the way?”
“My hand? It’s fine. Why would it not be?”
“I was afraid you might have reopened that cut on it,” she said, looking around. “It’s awfully dark in here. You’ll ruin your eyes trying to read like this, you know.” Her own eyes fell upon the staffid, quivering now on its back in the glass bowl. “What happened to that?”
“It, uh . . . seems to be injured.”
Her gaze climbed to meet his, one brow lifted. “Injured?”
“I think someone might have stepped on it.”
/> “So you scooped it up in a vase and set it here? For what purpose? A desk ornament? I think the flowers were more attractive.”
He frowned, giving up the contest in a wash of annoyance. “I don’t see that it concerns you, my lady. You said you have a message from Master Getty?”
She shook her head, half smiling. “You are a terrible liar, my lord.”
“I beg your pardon?!”
“Never mind. Yes, Master Getty sent me to tell you he doesn’t have the book you asked for.”
He frowned at her, suspecting a deeper story here. She was not, after all, the lackey of the royal library. “The university said he does.”
“And he says the university has it.” She paused. “It is not the first book to go missing in this way. And I’ve been through both libraries, top to bottom. The Histories of the Hollyhock, The Journals of Ravelin, The Records and Forthtellings of the Kings of Light—” “Kings of Light?” Abramm asked, startled out of his annoyance.
“That’s what they called your ancestors in the early days of your family’s reign. You didn’t know that?”
“No.”
“I think it’s because they were Terstan, though that’s not widely known anymore, either. Back then it was the Terstans who were called Guardians. And Guardian-Kings, if you can believe that. Unfortunately, all records that would confirm that have gone missing in this ridiculous back and forth between Masters Getty and Dewes. They have no love for one another, you know. Each believes he should be the sole custodian of historical texts.” She paused, her gaze shifting around the room again. “So I thought I’d have a look at your personal library and see if the books got moved here.”
He recoiled, taken aback once more by her forwardness. “I think I can look through my personal library myself, Lady Madeleine.”
“Yes, but you are so busy, sir. And there appear to be a number of fascinating volumes here.” She was already moving toward the nearest wall of books.