Stranger to the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  Elspeth sank back into her chair and propped her chin in her hand, sighing. The perfect gift, and she didn’t dare wear it. How depressing.

  She felt flat the whole rest of the day, her mind circling around the possibilities and continually coming to the same conclusion: she couldn’t wear someone’s declaration of love if she didn’t know who’d sent it. She gave only half her attention to Keswick’s instructions about the letter to send with the token to the Ruskalder embassy, enough to feel confident it said the right thing. Even in her depressed state, she admired what an ideal solution Keswick had come up with.

  That evening, she dressed for a diplomatic reception at the Eskandelic embassy. It wasn’t until she was looking at herself in the dressing room mirror that she realized she’d unconsciously chosen a pale green silk evening gown with a cloth-of-gold cape and shoes to match. Colors the jade bracelet was a perfect match for.

  She removed it from its box and slipped it over her wrist. Its cool, smooth texture felt wonderful under her fingers, which sought out the meditation ritual instinctively: that which is two becomes one, but much must be shed to reach it. Ordinarily, that would take her back in memory to the temple. Tonight it only made her wonder who had reached out to her in such an extraordinary fashion.

  She removed the bracelet and spun it around one finger. Honey, entering the dressing room bearing Elspeth’s wrap, necessary on these chilly early spring nights, saw it and exclaimed, “Oh, that’s beautiful! Wherever did you get it?”

  “I don’t know. It was an anonymous gift.” Elspeth stopped its spinning and held it close to her heart. Then, with a muttered curse, she slid it on. She was tired of letting fear and uncertainty rule her. The person who’d chosen the bracelet, whoever that was, was someone she wanted to know better. If she was wrong, and wearing it encouraged the wrong person, she’d just have to deal with that. Because if she was right…that was an outcome worth the risk.

  The Eskandelic embassy was an unusually short stone mansion, only two stories tall, that its neighbors dwarfed. A man and a woman in traditional Eskandelic formal wear, a deeply pleated skirt and a cropped jacket open over bare skin, greeted Elspeth and Lord Harrington as they entered. Elspeth always wondered if the women disliked being virtually naked in that getup. Surely the fabric must chafe sensitive skin. And suppose a wind came up and blew the jacket open? She fingered her cloth-of-gold cape. The Eskandelics probably thought her native clothing was strange and uncomfortable, too.

  The embassy front door led directly to an atrium, open to the night sky and lit by torches that flickered in the light evening breeze. Its floor was a mosaic of tiny tiles that must have taken months to assemble. Elspeth couldn’t tell what it depicted, not in the torchlight, so she found a passing servant and asked. “It a circle of moons is, Majesty,” the man said. “The phases of the moon symbolic to Eskandel are, that rulers come and go but Eskandel in unity is.”

  That sounded lovely. She accepted a glass of wine she had no intention of drinking from the servant, and with Harrington close behind her, moved off through the crowd, though there really weren’t enough people to call it a crowd. It seemed most of the guests had passed through the atrium into the garden. Elspeth followed them through the giant stained glass arch that caught the torchlight and fractured it into colored swatches that stained the great flagstones of the garden path. This was how she wished her garden looked, none of those pavilion monstrosities. She resolved to tackle the ambassador, Torossian Enzesh, and find out who’d designed the embassy.

  The path led through a series of low hedges defining spaces containing round tables and tall stools, at which sat guests conversing in low voices. More guests drifted along the path, which disappeared into a much taller arrangement of hedge walls. A maze. Fascinated, Elspeth walked faster, leaving Lord Harrington behind, and soon was swallowed up by the hedges.

  More torches lit the living walls at intervals, creating flickering shadows that made strange shapes on the stone path and the narrow strips of grass that grew on either side. It was hard to tell where the walls began and ended, and Elspeth more than once came up short against a hedge wall that turned sharply to the left. Before long, she was pleasantly lost, with the sound of people laughing and talking the only evidence that she wasn’t alone in the maze.

  She came to an open area containing a statue of a nude woman, her back arched painfully, thrusting her hips and breasts to the sky. It had such pent-up power Elspeth set her glass down at its base and looked at it for a while, thinking about the artist and what she or he had felt in creating something so beautiful.

  She heard someone emerge from the maze and turned, wanting to share her thoughts with the newcomer. The man was Ruskalder, dressed neatly in the suede shirt and trousers Elspeth now recognized as Ruskalder formal wear. His flat, emotionless demeanor sent a shiver of fear through her that she dismissed. Just because the Ruskalder ambassador was angry with her and with Tremontane didn’t mean every Ruskalder she encountered would be hostile.

  She summoned up a smile, and said, “This isn’t the kind of art Tremontane goes in for, but it’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

  The Ruskalder smiled back at her. His smile wasn’t nearly so nice. One of his teeth was gold, and it glinted in the torchlight. Then he brought his right hand out from behind his back, and to the glint of gold was added the gleam of silver as the torchlight illuminated a long, wicked knife.

  19

  Elspeth screamed and ran. There were four exits from the maze center, and she took the nearest one. It wasn’t the one she’d entered by—that was blocked by the assassin—but the one next to it. She had no idea where it went, or even if the random turns she took were bringing her closer to the exit. All she could think was a mind-numbing chorus screaming run, run, and her feet thudding out a bass counterpoint to that melody.

  She heard someone coming after her, close enough that she could hear his heavy breathing, and she screamed again. Surely someone would come to her rescue. Her pursuer grabbed her cloth-of-gold cape and dragged her backward, choking her. Desperately, she fumbled with the pins and freed one of them, allowing her to tear free of the assassin’s grasp before his knife could fall.

  She ran again, her breath sobbing out of her, and crashed into a wall. She couldn’t help it; she turned to see how close the assassin was, and screamed again at the sight of him rounding a corner, far too close. Where the hell was everyone? She could still hear laughter nearby, as if her screams meant nothing. She pushed off from the wall and ran.

  She stumbled around yet another corner and tripped over the edge of a flagstone that was slightly tipped out of true. This time, voices exclaimed, and hands supported her to a standing position. She wrenched free and staggered away from the maze. That assassin might not care about bystanders, if all he needed was for her to be dead.

  Then there were screams, and Elspeth turned to see the assassin silhouetted against the opening to the maze, his knife held high. He surveyed the crowd, then fixed his gaze on Elspeth and snarled. She recoiled. The man turned and bolted back into the maze.

  “Follow him!” someone shouted, and servants ran after the fleeing assassin. Someone new came to stand by her side. “They will catch him,” Torossian Enzesh said. He laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “You shaking are,” he went on. “Please, sit. Bring wine for her Majesty.”

  Elspeth realized he was right, and she was shaking hard enough that her knees couldn’t support her. She sank into a chair the ambassador pulled out for her and accepted the glass he pressed into her hand. Without thinking, she drank, and barely managed not to make a face at the taste of the alcohol. But it warmed her all the way to her core, and she found the shaking had diminished. She set the glass aside and said, “I’m all right. He didn’t hurt me.”

  “I apologize, your Majesty. I cannot express how devastated I am, that an attacker here in my own embassy able you to attack was.” Torossian’s normally tan face was pale, and he wrung his hands like
a fainting maiden in a melodrama. “We will find him. And the Ruskalder ambassador will explain himself to you personally.”

  Elspeth really didn’t want to face Larssin, but this wasn’t something she should pass off on Lord Harrington, wherever he was. She looked around at the gathered crowd, most of whom looked as if they thought this was great entertainment. Anger surged through her, and she stood. “I am not here for your entertainment,” she said. “Where is Ambassador Larssin? I insist on speaking with him immediately.”

  A murmur went up as the crowd tried to shuffle away. In the distance, Elspeth heard shouting in Ruskeldin. Two voices. That might be Lord Harrington, berating the ambassador. She walked in that direction, the crowd parting for her like the sea in the wake of a battleship, and soon saw Lord Harrington and Larssin facing each other, shouting over one another so none of their words were intelligible.

  As she drew near, Larssin shook his fist in Lord Harrington’s face and shouted, “Is not true! Ruskald does not want Queen dead!”

  “Ruskald would benefit if Tremontane were in turmoil—or do you still deny you are poised to attack the Riverlands?” Lord Harrington shouted back.

  “No proof that assassin was Ruskalder. Lies!”

  “I saw him myself, Ambassador Larssin,” Elspeth said coldly. She didn’t raise her voice, but it cut across the argument and silenced both men. “He was one of your men.”

  Larssin’s eyes widened. “You lie.”

  “I nearly died, ambassador!” Elspeth shouted, feeling the shakes return at the thought. “I know what I saw. A Ruskalder tried to kill me. Don’t you dare try to weasel out of this.”

  Larssin looked confused. Possibly he didn’t understand the expression. “I swear on my life,” he said, breathing heavily, “we do not do this thing. If it is Ruskalder, is not mine.”

  “When we catch him, we’ll see,” Elspeth said. “But I say you’re the one who’s lying.”

  A commotion from the direction of the hedge maze drew Elspeth’s attention from the ambassador. Eskandelic servants rushed past her through the atrium and out the front door. “Your Majesty,” Torossian said. “They have found the man. He dead is.”

  “Dead? They killed him?” Elspeth felt irritated. Faraday needed to interrogate him.

  Torossian turned to one of the servants—no, he was an armed guard—and spoke to him in liquid Eskandelic that sounded like rainfall. The guard responded with a few words. “He says the man fell from the wall and broke his neck,” Torossian went on. “They will bring him, but your Majesty should return to the palace. It not a good thing is, death to witness.”

  Elspeth wanted to protest, but her knees were still weak and the shaking was getting worse. “I want to know everything you learn,” she told Lord Harrington. “Get Mister Faraday down here immediately. And you—” she pointed at Larssin, who took a startled step back— “if I hear one word out of you, I’m sending you back to Ranstjad, and damn the consequences.” She strode rapidly through the atrium, hoping momentum would carry her to her carriage without letting her fall.

  Safely inside her carriage, surrounded by guards, she curled up in a corner and hugged herself. The guards on the carriage had stayed with it because it would have been an insult to her Eskandelic hosts to bring them inside, implying she believed she wasn’t safe there. Well, she clearly hadn’t been safe. Faraday would be furious when he found out she’d been unattended, even though it was standard procedure. And it wasn’t Eskandel’s fault if a member of the Ruskalder diplomatic party, one who hadn’t been obviously armed, had turned out to be an assassin.

  Though…Elspeth remembered how Larssin had looked, fighting with Lord Harrington. That had been fear, not just anger. And Larssin might be many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. So why had he arranged such an obvious attack? Even the Ruskalder national trait of boldness couldn’t excuse that.

  She let her guards escort her to the east wing, where Honey helped her undress. Honey exclaimed over the ruined cape and listened in horror to her mistress’s story. “Your Majesty,” she said, “if they’d killed you—”

  “We wouldn’t be having this conversation,” Elspeth said wearily. “It’s all right, Honey. I wasn’t even hurt, and I’m not scared anymore.” This was true. She wasn’t scared; she was angry. Angry with the Ruskalder for being so obsessed with war, angry with herself for her carelessness, angry with Francis for dropping dead and mixing her up in this mess.

  She put on her nightgown and then her dressing gown, and put the bracelet away in its box. She’d almost forgotten she was wearing it in the terror of the attack. Funny how your priorities changed when you were running for your life.

  She declined Shirley’s offer of chocolate or herbal tea or even water. Her stomach still churned with agitation even though the shakes had stopped. She walked on steady feet to the drawing room, pulled a chair closer to the fire, and waited. She’d never seen the fire be put out, though surely they must extinguish it during summer. Though this room might be cool even on Midsummer. If she managed not to be assassinated, she would find out. She laughed, realized she sounded hysterical, and made herself stop.

  Eventually, she heard the east wing door slam, and someone hurried down the hall, someone whose heavy footsteps sounded as if he wanted to trample his enemies under his feet. She continued to face the fireplace. When she heard the footsteps stop, she held up a hand and said, “I didn’t take guards because that would have insulted Ambassador Torossian, so if you want to shout at someone, he’s your man.”

  “I have already shouted at Torossian Enzesh, who was gracious enough not to make it an international incident,” Faraday said. He came forward to stand next to her chair. “And I agree that no one could have prevented Ambassador Larssin from bringing the assassin as part of his entourage short of insulting Larssin with the implication that he was not trusted.”

  “Except we didn’t trust him, and ignored that, and look where it got us,” Elspeth said bitterly. “Ruskald is doing everything they can to incite a war except actually sending troops. Do they have some reason to want us to act first? Or is King Osjan just a madman, and nobody knows it?”

  “I agree it makes no sense,” Faraday said. “Again, the actions of this assassin as they were described to me indicate that he intended to make you afraid or injured, not kill you. Whoever is behind this, your being incapacitated is key to his plan.”

  She looked up at him. He was staring into the fire as if he could read the answers to the mystery there. “It all seems too easy. Assassination attempts that aren’t. A would-be killer who happens to fall and break his neck trying to get away. Ruskald moving troops in just the right way to force us to retaliate. I don’t understand any of it.”

  “Neither do I,” Faraday said. “But there are really only two possibilities. Either Ruskald is so desperate for war they have become stupid, or someone wants us to believe Ruskald is behind the assassination attempts when they are not.”

  Elspeth sat up. “Is that possible?”

  “It fits all the facts. Particularly the attempt tonight. All we know about the assassin, thanks to his broken neck, is that he was blond and blue-eyed and wore traditional Ruskalder garb. That does not make him Ruskalder any more than it would make Master Keswick Veriboldan to put him in a silk robe and lacquer his toenails.”

  “But that’s even more confusing. Why would someone want to frame Ruskald for my death?”

  Faraday shrugged. “Someone who wanted you dead and realized they could use the tensions between Tremontane and Ruskald to conceal their involvement. There are families who might not care about civil war if it meant the chance of gaining the Crown. Or it might be an anti-government group who wants to sow discord. Or you might have made a personal enemy.”

  “I don’t think Lady Harrington would bother with such a convoluted plan if she decided she’d finally had enough of me. And I don’t know enough people here to have made any other enemies.”

  “You’d be surprised at
how quickly people in the capital develop animosities for real or even imagined slights. It could be someone you don’t remember meeting.” Faraday sighed and lowered his head. “And I’m back to having too many suspects.”

  “That makes me wonder,” Elspeth said. “Could one of those families, the ones who want the Crown, think starting a war with Ruskald would destabilize Tremontane enough to give them an advantage in taking it? That ties up all our loose ends neatly. I don’t know. Maybe it’s too neat.”

  “No,” Faraday said, his voice distant as if he were thinking hard, “no, that’s actually an intriguing possibility. And it narrows my list of suspects to those who would have the resources to pull it off. I think you may be on to something.”

  “Which means we have to prevent war at all costs,” Elspeth said, “because whoever it is is sure to be prepared to act as soon as we’re committed to fighting Ruskald. Which further means—”

  “You need to negotiate with Larssin,” Faraday said. “You have an advantage in that he’s probably tearing his hair out trying to find out which of his people attacked you tonight. And when he finds that no one is missing, he’ll be even more confused.”

  Elspeth stood. “I’ll send a message asking him for a meeting first thing in the morning. Send the message, that is. I’m not sure I can stomach facing him early in the morning.”

  Faraday smiled. “The things you do for your country.”

  “Indeed.” She yawned and covered her mouth with one hand. “So—meeting with Larssin, emergency meeting with the Council…am I forgetting anything?”

  “If you are, it can wait. You look exhausted.”

  “So do you.” Faraday did look dead on his feet, with dark circles under his eyes and his hair disordered. “Thank you for coming to me immediately. I don’t think I could have slept, not knowing what you’d learned.”

  “I know.” He bowed and walked off toward the door. As soon as she heard it shut behind him, she wearily crossed the drawing room and trudged off toward her suite.