Return of the Guardian-King

by Karen Hancock

  Carissa shook her head. “I have no idea. She left for Fannath Rill three days ago for the funeral. They’ll hold the investiture afterward. I suppose she’s technically regent, seeing as Leyton’s still alive, so far as we know. . . .” She gave him a rueful smile. “That’s about all I can tell you. I’ve spent most of my time with you, actually.” She paused. “I was so afraid I was going to lose you. . . .” Tears welled in her eyes, and she fell silent. It had been like this often over the last few days—sudden weeping taking her by storm at the most unlikely of triggers. Now that he was well and on the mend, she’d expected the strange emotional vulnerability to end, but apparently it had not.

  His fingers touched the tear track on her cheek, drawing her eyes to his own.

  “Why didn’t you go to Deveren Dol?”

  “Because I couldn’t bear to be that far away from you.” She sniffed and wiped away the tears. “Not the way we parted. Not the way everything was going. Even Fannath Rill felt too far, but I could think of no reason to go on to Peregris. . . .” She studied her hands, nested together in her lap. “Then, the night you were stabbed, I knew something horrible had happened. The way I used to dream with Abramm . . . Only this time it was you and—” She felt her cheeks warm again as she looked up to find his sober gaze still upon her. “I knew I had to come or risk never seeing you again in this life. So I took a post coach. We got here in a little over twenty hours.”

  “We?”

  “Conal’s with me. And Prisina. They’re in the other room.”

  She fell silent, waiting for his response.

  “What about the princes?”

  “They are in Deveren Dol.”

  He snorted. “Well, at least someone listens to me around here.”

  A tap at the door preceded its squeaky opening, and the royal physician joined them, pleased to see his patient awake and alert. He questioned Carissa briefly, then directed his inquiry to Trap, and finally announced that he would do a thorough examination of his patient. As he started to pull back the sheets, Trap stopped him with a scandalized expression and glanced toward Carissa. She stared back at him, feigning incomprehension.

  He frowned. “My lady . . . I don’t mean to be rude, but . . . isn’t there some other duty you must be performing now?”

  She smiled at him. “My duty is wholly to you, my husband.”

  His frown deepened. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. So he closed it, glanced at the physician, then at her again and said, red-faced, “My lady, I have nothing on under this sheeting.”

  “Oh, you have your bandages,” she said sweetly, wondering why she was enjoying his discomfiture as much as she was. He stared at her as if she had said nonsense to him. It was probably the laudanum fuzzing his brain. She took pity on him and explained.

  “I’ve been bathing you, changing your bandages, and helping you use the bedpan for over a week and a half now, sir. I’m afraid I’ve already seen everything there is to see.”

  His eyes widened as his face turned intensely scarlet. He flashed a desperate gaze at the doctor. “I thought I was dreaming all that.”

  “No.” But it was part of my dreams. . . . She smiled but kept the thought to herself.

  Unfortunately, despite her assurances that she had grown quite accustomed to seeing his body unclothed, that was the end of that. He insisted she go down and see about arranging a meal for him and from then on jealously guarded his privacy.

  She, on the other hand, set herself to take Elayne’s advice to flirt to an extreme she doubted the older woman had intended, and that she herself would never have been able to accomplish even a month earlier. But having come so close to losing this man, she found in herself a total lack of pride when it came to making sure he knew just how she felt about him. In the evenings, she made a point of beginning to unbutton her gown while he was still present, or complaining of the heat while lifting her skirts and fluttering them around. When it was time to nurse Conal, she did not hesitate to do so openly, before her husband’s shocked eyes. Sometimes, if he was talking, his voice would strangle off midsentence, and if she glanced up to find him staring, as he always was, he would swallow hard, wrench his eyes away from her, and “go out for some exercise.”

  She always held her giggle in until he was gone; then wondered at her newfound brazenness and worried a bit that she might be going too far. But since he always came back from his walk, and never complained about what she’d done, she didn’t think he minded too much.

  Though the physician had warned him to rest, once he was on the mend and able to get up and walk, Trap would have none of it. She accused him of being a worse patient than Abramm had been, but it made no difference. He wanted to be up and moving, walking around, seeing how the repairs were going, seeing how the fleet was shaping up, wanting to hear the latest gossip from the southland. He had no doubt another assault would come soon. Already the Shadow had crept back over the wide blue sea.

  Belthre’gar would return, he promised her.

  “But not immediately,” she pointed out, chiding him gently for his disregard of the doctor’s recommendation. He only shrugged and claimed the more he moved, the faster he would heal.

  “Doctors don’t know everything,” he said. And in the end, the only harm his method caused him was to tire him out by day’s end.

  Since she couldn’t fight it, Carissa took advantage of his restlessness by inviting him to walk with her each morning along the garden wall. He always seemed surprised she would make such a request, even when she asked him every day and even when he agreed. It was the best part of her day, as they walked together, enjoying the fresh breeze whether the sky was clear and blue or cool with fog, and talking as they had not since before Rennalf had intruded into their lives. When one day she dared to slide her hand into his and he did not shake her off but clasped his fingers firmly about hers, she all but shouted for joy.

  As they walked she often studied him covertly—reveling in the familiar freckled profile with its upturned nose, the red-gold glint of stubble on his cheek above the trimmed-back beard, the curls of russet hair that kissed the top of his ear and brushed the leather collar of his tunic. With the glow of health returned to his face and the sparkle to his eyes, it was sometimes all she could do not to throw herself upon him. Whatever she had felt for him in the past seemed nothing to what she felt now.

  “You’ve changed,” he remarked one day, turning to meet her gaze.

  She blushed but kept her voice light. “Oh? How so?”

  He came to a stop, regarding her thoughtfully. “You’re more relaxed, I guess. Softer, somehow. Happier.”

  She smiled at him. “I am happier. You’re alive, you’re awake, and you’re walking out here beside me.”

  His expression altered slightly, from thoughtful to vaguely troubled. For a moment she thought he would say something; then a bell rang out in the harbor and the shouts of men drew his attention from her. The moment was lost, but even that couldn’t tarnish the golden haze of her pleasure.

  More than three weeks after he’d been stabbed, as he complained for what seemed the hundredth time of the soreness and itching on his back, she pressed him—as usual—to let her take the stitches out. His wound was long closed by now, and the doctor had been too busy with other patients to come and remove them. She thought he expected her to do it, and rightly so. Trap was reluctant, by turns saying that it didn’t need doing at all, and that the doctor should be the one to do it. But finally she convinced him he was making much out of nothing and would be far more comfortable if he’d just let her do it.

  “I’m getting weary of your constant complaining about it,” she teased him.

  Thus he pulled off his shirt and sat on a stool with his back to her, pointing out as she brought her embroidery scissors to bear that this was not embroidery.

  “No,” she agreed. “It’s not. It’s a simple cutting of threads. I’m sure you’ve done it a hundred times.”

  “But
you haven’t.”

  “Of course I have.” She gestured at the hooped fabric with its halfstitched design and told him to stop worrying.

  For a time she worked in silence, exquisitely aware of the warmth of his bared back, and from time to time letting her eyes drift over the strong shoulders and the tight, corded muscle. All too soon she pulled the last thread free and dropped it into the pan with the others. She should have stood then and stepped away. Instead she let her fingers travel up the flat plane of his back, tracing the curve of his freckled shoulder up to his neck and the locks of red hair curling at his nape. She toyed with the curls for a moment, her breath held, aware of him holding rigidly still beneath her. Then she slid her palm along the firm ridge of muscle topping the opposite shoulder, and down over the curve of the joint . . .

  With a gasp he shot out of the chair, kicking it aside as he whirled to seize her by both arms, a terrible look on his face. He loomed over her, shirtless, and she had never seen his eyes so dark. He seemed angry and desperate and filled with something she couldn’t quite read but which held a repressed violence that recalled to her the fact he had fought in the Esurhite Games right alongside her brother. That he had been the mighty Infidel to Abramm’s unvanquished Pretender.

  “What are you trying to do to me, Carissa?” he choked. “Do you think I am made of stone?”

  She gaped at him. Then took a breath and felt the blood rush to her face as a giddy joy soared within her. He does notice. And he’s not unaffected. . . .

  His expression softened. “Do you have any idea how sorely you tempt me, my lady? How much I want to—” He cut off the words, but not before she’d heard the tremble in his voice. Now he released her arms and stepped back. “Why do you do this to me?”

  And there it was. The question asked. The moment of truth. Did she have the words and courage to answer? She lifted her chin to meet his gaze, feeling weirdly fluttery, and said, “Because I want to know if things between us can ever be . . . like they’re supposed to be between a man and his wife.”

  When he stared at her uncomprehendingly, more words tumbled nervously from her lips: “The night you kissed me at the coronation ball, I thought maybe it could. . . . But you were so careful, and when you pulled away . . .”

  “You thought I didn’t mean it,” he said.

  She must have shown her surprise, for he added, “Maddie told me the night we went to meet the Esurhites. She said I wasn’t ‘bold’ enough. I didn’t believe her.”

  Carissa refused to let herself look away, though embarrassment now pressed her to do so. “Maddie was right,” she said sturdily. “What I wanted that night is what I want now. What I’ve wanted since the day you married me: to be your wife, Trap Meridon.”

  Then it seemed he really did turn to stone, staring down at her with an expression as blank as one of Abramm’s best. She held his gaze for a few seconds, then, heart pounding madly against her breastbone, whispered, “And not just in name.”

  And still he stared at her, unmoving, unbreathing, until finally her courage deserted her and she was gripped by the old familiar conviction that she had read him wrong, that Elayne had misled her and all her worst fears were true. She had let her longings lead her into a place she never should have gone, forcing him now, at last, to tell her baldly and bluntly the horrible, scalding truth that he really didn’t want her, and—

  He seized her by the shoulders and kissed her, and there was nothing polite or proper about it. His lips were hard and hot and urgent, tasting sharply of the wine he had drunk at lunch and cutting through the miasma of her fears to ignite in her a firestorm the likes of which she’d never known. And that afternoon the Duke of Northille made very sure his wife would never again doubt the depth and fire of his love for her.

  Four weeks after the sea wave demolished Peregris and took Queen Ronesca’s life, Fannath Rill was finally settling back to normal—the triple funeral for Ronesca and her sons observed, and the investiture of Madeleine as queen regent completed within days of that. Now, at last, Maddie was able to get back to business.

  At midmorning she dismissed the first cabinet meeting she’d been able to hold in a week and departed, grimly aware that once more she had in some way shocked or offended every man among them. They were competent men, and respectful, but they struggled still to accept her as their queen. Or rather, to accept the fact she had ideas of what was to be done that ran contrary to their own and, worse than that, was as liable to act on those ideas as she was to act on theirs. She’d already sent off a team of men to rescue her brother in direct opposition to their counsel, and brought a portion of the army up to Fannath Rill to begin the emplacement of the defensive works she knew would eventually be required. She had also initiated preparations for a siege, despite their unanimous agreement that it was a complete waste of time and resources.

  She returned to her quarters for her midday meal, lunching with several of her allies from her days as persecuted First Daughter, then sought out her secretary of appointments to see what awaited her for the afternoon. Lord Umberley was not in his office off her sitting chamber, but the roster of daily supplicants was. She was scanning through it when he returned.

  Seeing her, he exclaimed in surprise and directed her to the ledger of her official appointments, which typically held only about a third of the names on the daily roster. She glanced cursorily at the ledger, then to a name on the roster. “Why does this Marta Brackleford keep moving down this list instead of up it? I’ve noticed her name now for several days.”

  He peered at the name and sniffed. “Well . . . I imagine because other supplicants’ concerns are more urgent, madam.”

  “Deciding the venue for next summer’s Hashnut Festival was an urgent concern?” She referred to a supplicant she’d met with yesterday.

  He grimaced and said nothing.

  “Brackleford sounds like a Kiriathan name.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He frowned. “But you know how so many of them are coming these days, hoping to trade on some alleged relationship to your husband. You cannot help them all. And not all of them deserve it.”

  “No. But I should like to make the decisions as to whom I help for myself. It says here she has a gift. But it doesn’t say from whom.”

  Umberley looked dismayed. “From your husband, I would imagine. That’s usually the claim.”

  “And you have deigned not to inform me?”

  “Your Majesty . . .” He sighed and spread his hands helplessly. “So many of them are obvious frauds. And you have so much to do.”

  “Well, you’re right about that.” She set down the roster. “But find out what she wants, anyway. And where she’s from.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He left, and Maddie strolled to the window. She’d inherited the queen’s apartments, which included a great semicircular receiving chamber, with a stunning view that overlooked the east branch of the Ankrill and offered perspectives that let her look almost straight down the river toward Peregris or out toward the eastern deserts. She could not gaze upon either aspect without thinking of Abramm, out there somewhere, waiting for Eidon’s perfect time.

  Since her brief time with the Esurhites, she had thought often of the vision she’d been given. Not a vision, really. Maybe more a glimpse into some other reality, her husband going about their Father’s business. And the reports that had been coming out of the southland gave an inkling of what that might be. The wave that had swamped the Esurhite fleet before it could annihilate the Chesedhan navy had been generated by a massive earthquake in Oropos, on the North Andolen coast where the Salmancan Sea flowed into the Strait of Terreo. The Esurhites’ great temple of Laevian, site of a huge etherworld corridor and almost continuous troop transfers, had completely collapsed. Stories of damage from tidal waves had come in from the Chesedhan coastline all along the Salmancan Sea, and recently she’d heard there’d also been a quake in Xorofin, though details on that were sketchy. Tortusa was said to have been inundated,
but unfortunately, most of the fleet that harbored there was on the open sea—moving in force upon Kiriath.

  All three events coming at almost the same time led her to conclude they probably had the same trigger.

  And the trigger just might have been Abramm. But if so, there was no word about him, unless she was to believe the stories of yet another tall, blond man with twin facial scars leading a group of rebels out in the northern end of the strait. But she did not. Whatever he was doing, it was bigger than that. She’d given up on his coming down the Ankrill, but she’d not given up on his coming. It would be in Eidon’s time and from Eidon’s direction, wherever that would be. It was not a thing she chose to share anymore, for she knew it would only resurrect all the doubts about and criticisms of her mental state. Which no one needed right now, least of all her. She knew what she knew. And if no one else believed her, so be it. Perhaps one day things would be different.

  Umberley returned. He paused, then added stiffly, “Serra Brackleford’s gift is a book, which she will only surrender to you personally.” He paused, then added stiffly, “She says she came through the Kolki Pass and spent the winter at Caerna’tha.”

  Maddie snapped up her head from the list as the floor lurched beneath her. “Caerna’tha?”

  “Yes, madam. She said she has come down with a group along the Ankrill through Trakas.” Umberley looked thoroughly chagrinned, for it was common knowledge this was the same route Maddie claimed Abramm had traveled last year. He should have questioned Marta Brackleford sufficiently to have discovered this when she’d first requested audience.

  Maddie saw no need to reprimand him, though, for he was well aware of his fault. Besides, she was too intent on finding out what Marta Brackleford knew to be distracted by lesser matters. “Trakas,” she murmured. Trakas was south of Obla, and just west of the Great Sand Sea.

  Dismay tempered her surging excitement as she recalled the terrible storm, and her husband’s body lying half buried in sand. Was the vision in the amber real, then? No, he could not be dead. She had seen him afterward. He had sorrowed at not being able to come to her. Then her heart clenched as a new thought occurred: What if she had seen not her living husband but Abramm gone on to the realm of Light? There had been light all around him. . . .