Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  Surprise rearranged the shrewd wrinkles pinched at the corners of Raiett’s eyes. ‘I would,’ he admitted, and fell into step. The guardsmen, councilmen, and delegate observers moved reluctantly aside and made space for him.

  So passed the afternoon, the whitewashed wing where the harbormaster’s copyists penned out duplicate records made to serve as the prince’s chamber of audience. Two rows of lancet windows let in the light, a sea-damp spring breeze too sluggish to flush the ingrained smells of charcoal and ink, and a pent-up must of candle smoke and winter woolens. Everything echoed, the floors being wood, and the stone walls devoid of woven tapestries. Rank accorded Lysaer the only leather armchair. The copyist’s desks and benches were occupied by his councilmen and city ministers, which left the royal secretary use of the lectern, vacated at need by the fussy old man who recited the ledgers and bills of lading for Riverton’s half dozen scribes.

  The royal guards were left standing along those walls and corners uncluttered by aumbries and shelves.

  Raiett Raven did not sit, but took station behind the prince’s left shoulder, arms folded, his short hair peppered silver against the jet ruffle of his collar. He remained statue patient, while the room filled and heated with the close, nervous sweat of the craftsmen called in to be questioned. He followed the tedious nuance of each inquiry; watched the laborers brought in, fidgeting and embarrassed in their plainspun, workaday clothing. Some trembled. At first, most evaded the direct gaze of their prince, though his mien was not harsh or forbidding. Lysaer asked them to speak, to tell what they knew, without first defining the subject.

  The young and the brash began with excuses, or hot denials that they knew of any treason. Prince Lysaer listened. He said nothing to alarm, nor did he imply accusation. His manner most subtly failed to fan the flame of fast-spoken, defensive fear. In time, even the most surly men eased and warmed to his presence. The true facts emerged then, the small fragments of happenstance linking into seemingly inconsequential strings of detail that gradually shaded into a wider picture.

  The older craftsmen, the most sensible and steadfast, volunteered the least. They likely recalled more, but were experienced enough not to trust openly. Yet when presented with the suggestion that Lysaer regarded them as victims of malice whose misfortune now could be shared between friends, even the most reticent set down their guard and admitted that Mearn had a volatile temperament and an untrustworthy, secretive character.

  ‘Those two traits make damned unlikely bedmates,’ one bald-headed fastener observed. He blotted his damp palms on the seat of his breeches, and added in frowning hindsight, ‘’Twas strange now I think on it. Master Cattrick seemed inwardly tormented by something until this past autumn, when s’Brydion became his nightly companion over beer.’

  ‘No one overheard anything?’ Lysaer asked, not for pressure, but to jog loose opinions that by now were six months faded.

  The craftsman scraped his profusely stubbled chin. ‘Too much noise in any dockside tavern to hear aught, unless it’s shouted straight into your ear. Mearn and Cattrick were cronies, that I can swear, but not even rumor sprang up to fathom the reason.’

  ‘You’re a good man,’ said Lysaer. ‘Take my blessing home to your family.’ Diamonds flashed at his gesture as he casually granted his royal leave to depart.

  The next laborer stepped in, a young apprentice sawyer who could elaborate on the favors of every shanty whore, and who knew which dives brewed the best hops. ‘Only saw Cattrick up close on pay day.’ His eyes darted sidewards as he shrugged his gangling shoulders. Too plainly, his knowledge of master craftsmen consisted of jocular quips to evade being dressed down for shirking.

  The next man came in, and the next after that, until the chamber grew stale with the penned heat of boredom, and the exhaustive list was completed. No conclusive evidence had been mined from those common southshore accents. By close of day, no craftsman revealed any pact to prove or belie Mearn’s allegiance. The council members and dignitaries dragged in to bear witness shifted in their hard seats, grown restive in crushed velvets and silks.

  In the end, the florid envoy from Erdane voiced the dismal conclusion, his voice tight with frustration. ‘The proof we could have examined for veracity was deliberately sunk beyond reach.’ Incontestable truth: the executed bodies of the primary culprits now rested fathoms deep in the sea.

  A scintillant sparkle of gemstones marked time as Prince Lysaer laced his ringed fingers on the studded arms of his chair. He looked inhumanly fresh. The shimmer of his gold-and-white silk became a disjointed patch of refinement against the lymed stone at his back. ‘No man can be justly arraigned on suspicion. Nor can a trial be held without grounds. Therefore, we shall adjourn until tomorrow, and take the necessary steps to make plans for closer security in the future.’

  Hot opinions notwithstanding, Lysaer was firm. He fielded the smattering of vehement protest and quashed outright one guildsman’s insistent demand to incarcerate both s’Brydion brothers for additional questioning. The predictable clamor arose over slave oarsmen, and the looming prospect of more forfeited profits with King Eldir’s ban backed by sorcery.

  ‘I will make disposition through policy,’ Lysaer assured, his dismissal inarguably final. ‘No guild will lose its prosperity. Enough said. The solution will keep well enough ’til tomorrow.’

  The councilmen filed out, grumbling among themselves, the last and most heavyset slowest to go, arising to the creak of overtaxed benches and the sigh of rearranged clothing.

  When the doorway finally emptied, Raiett Raven remained, unmoved at the prince’s shoulder.

  Lysaer turned and regarded him. Legs crossed at the knee, one relaxed elbow hooked over the chairback, he appeared all serene equanimity. His hair gleamed in the light of crude candles like the bias burnished on gold leaf, while his grave glance encompassed the statesman from Hanshire. ‘You look like a man with something to say.’

  ‘You want my opinion?’ Raiett countered, prying, even jabbing at that lordly veneer to test what sort of man breathed beneath it.

  Unblinking, Lysaer said, ‘Do you have one?’

  The mock insult sparked Raiett to the raised ghost of a smile. ‘You could start there. With one.’

  Lysaer dispensed with formalities then, linking his elegant, capable fingers and stretching his arms over his head. ‘What do you think I should say to my council tomorrow?’

  But Raiett ignored that venue. He started to pace, the crisp snap of his footfalls marking the measure of a suddenly private conference. ‘I would send a man to the stockyards and slaughter pens asking if s’Brydion silver had been spent on bull’s bones, legs of carcasses, even wax.’

  ‘Then you think they hung effigies to shield living men?’ Lysaer raised an eyebrow, apparently amused. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I think there’s conspiracy and deep treason, yes, masked behind effusive clan bluster and arrogance.’ Raiett paused by the windows, a stark, faceless outline against the bruised colors of sunset. ‘Why else should Cattrick and his close henchmen have removed their families from Riverton last month? If you cast your net wider, you could have that war to key the next stage of your empire.’

  Lysaer s’Ilessid laughed outright, his delight the expansive bright edge of reflection thrown off a sliver of crystal. ‘You’re a treasure. What made you think I want war?’

  And Raiett stopped again, poised in stunned reassessment. ‘No one knows you,’ he demurred.

  ‘That’s no viable truth. Everyone knows me.’ Lysaer stood up, his silk and his gold and his diamonds a flame of moving distraction. ‘I am the land’s hope of the light to triumph and banish the darkness.’

  ‘So men say,’ Raiett said, calmly neutral. ‘I might ask for the truth.’

  ‘You’ll settle for the gift of my confidence.’ Lysaer did not wait, nor allow further opening to deflect the bent of his offering.

  ‘I will not seek to expose the s’Brydion.’ Unemotional as his jewels, he met his Hanshire a
dversary’s pale eyes with his most disconcerting directness. ‘They have made a public issue of their honesty, and no definitive fact has arisen to defame their true name. For my part, I shall show royal grace and believe them. They remain my cherished allies until the day someone brings me incontrovertible proof of their perfidy. On that hour, if it comes, my judgment will fall as the spear from the hand of the almighty.’

  Raiett said nothing, but stared, cold still, while the indrawn breath of revelation chilled all the restless conjecture from his mind. ‘No one knows you,’ he repeated as he strove to grasp the fragmented gist: that if Cattrick were ever to be seen alive, the wave of blind outrage would catalyze an emotional explosion, and unleash fuel for war on a scale to make today’s resource seem a pittance. ‘You’re saving the stab in the back for much later, Dharkaron pity us. I can’t fathom the reason. I’m not sure I wish to know anything else.’ Then, struck to a flash insight, the point-blank demand, ‘What do you want of me?’

  Lysaer never wavered, never lowered his searingly candid blue eyes. ‘Your trade contacts in Etarra, your connections in the east, your superb network of informants, and lastly, whatever means the Koriani say you have of hiding your plans from the eyes of arcane scryers.’

  Raiett jerked back with unvarnished surprise. ‘You know me too well.’

  ‘I attend the ranking subjects in my kingdom,’ Lysaer stated, his natural candor enough to knit back a seam cracked into primal bedrock. ‘There lies my heart, and my focus of interest until the hour the Spinner of Darkness breaks the peace. You are the Mayor of Hanshire’s brother. He has no love for the reinstatement of s’Ilessid monarchy, I know. But as I am the appointed regent for the next crown prince of Tysan, it is my place to ask: will you serve the wider cause of this land, for the Light, and for the sake of continued prosperity?’

  The pull was enormous, to give way in trust, to join with the serene power of this prince and win the absolute security of his protection. Raiett Raven was no green boy. He had the hardened years to resist starstruck awe; should have owned enough grit and world-weary cynicism to avoid being swept off his feet. All the same, the blind fervency ignited him anyway.

  ‘State your needs,’ he said, shocked for the slip of giving his outright consent before even a pause for reasonable thought, or a grueling discussion of terms. Then, more surprising, the gush of relief that irresistible instinct had leaped past all sensible constraints. More honest in word than he had been in years, Raiett Raven completed his pledge. ‘My resources might not be as deep as you think, but if Hanshire can benefit, you’ll have them.’

  Two hours later, in circumspect talk with his nephew, Sulfin Evend, Raiett shook his head in bemusement. ‘Your Blessed Prince had better have real gifts to back up the divine guidance he’s claiming. For if he does not, his powers of persuasion are dauntless enough to set all this world marching in the blood and fire of his designed cause.’

  Spring 5654

  Inner Cabal

  The s’Brydion state galley docked at Avenor under the safe conduct of royal favor and disarmed the tense prospect of war. Fresh dispatches and news followed daily.

  Prince Lysaer sent word of his pending return amid a flurry of planning, his bellicose trade guilds and disgruntled craftsmen soothed over by his letter of decision to transfer the royal shipworks from the Riverton estuary to the close-guarded harbor of Hanshire. The crotchety mayor there had changed heart and become his close crony, rumor held.

  Princess Ellaine had no better means to gauge the contrary currents of politics. Her mannered requests to share in the contents of crown correspondence had seen swift rebuff by Gace Steward. Quietly persistent, she stood on her rank, until a more forceful refusal from Lysaer’s High Priest of the Light, Cerebeld, forbade access to the council hall’s secretaries. Too well bred to attempt obstructive argument, Ellaine retired, still determined.

  She engaged her woman’s resources. Word filtered down from the merchant’s servants, through the dressmaker’s seamstress, that the crown train from Avenor now moved about in a flock of new advisors, all of whom deferred to the black-cloaked presence of Raiett Raven. Never a wayward spirit, but too intelligent not to chafe at her enforced state of ignorance, Ellaine sought the sage advice of her maid, and eschewed the colors of state that would be no boon to her complexion. She chose to greet her royal husband on his homecoming, gowned in a masterwork of damascened peach silk, a wrap of pearl lace on bare shoulders.

  The hour the s’Ilessid state galley reached port, the sun fell like thin honey from a sky of washed blue. The dockside pageantry of bunting and banners was snapped by a capricious westerly. The war fleet hove in, chased by that same brisk tail wind. Ellaine waited inside the lacquered royal carriage while the galleys shipped their flashing, wet oars and dropped anchor. The flag vessel, under command of her stout captain, completed her dashing run to the wharf. Dock lines were secured to a bustle of orders. The heralds stationed on shore for the fanfare battled the fierce tug on the banners draped from their shining brass horns.

  Ellaine bided, hands clasped, until the clarion blast from the trumpets announced Lysaer’s presence on deck. Her soft voice delivered firm orders to the footman, and the liveried grooms held open the carriage’s star and crown blazoned door. They bowed to her as she swept down onto the wharf. Then her guardsmen and entourage closed about her to shield from the buffeting press of the onlookers who crammed the harborfront breakwater. Behind, enclosed in a cordon of men-at-arms, the rowed carriages and the caparisoned horses were held ready for the prince and his high-ranking councilmen.

  Ellaine gathered her skirts in cool hands. Given no better recourse for her time than frivolous entertainment, she had arranged those arenas left to her control with meticulous practicality. Her mahogany tresses had been done up in combs, a judicious few ends set in dangling, pert ringlets that the wayward gusts finished to a look that was artfully saucy. Image was the only weapon she had, and, undaunted, she prepared to wring every advantage.

  Across the weathered platform of the wharf, men made the galley’s lines fast to the bollards. Gulls screamed and wove overhead, while the officials on board gathered in impatience for the deckhands to run out the gangway. Acutely aware that the hats and high plumes showed no fair head among them, Ellaine stayed poised, willing her stilled hands not to fidget and wishing her gloved palms were not damp with anxiety.

  The plank with its posts and rope railing thudded home, shivering the wharf underfoot. The crowding officials did not press to disembark, but parted with sudden, obsequious energy as a figure emerged from the deckhouse behind them.

  This one wore white satin and ermine, and a presence to dazzle the unwary.

  The roar of acclaim from the onlookers rocked the waterfront. The Prince of the Light acknowledged the tribute with raised hands. Then he stepped out, the woven chain clasped at the waist of his doublet shining pale gold in the glancing fall of spring sunlight.

  Ellaine swept forward as he moved down the gangway, her curtsy pooling a billow of peach silk across his egress to the shore. ‘My Lord Prince,’ she addressed, her dulcet syllables thin as scratched crystal against the coarse adulation of the crowds.

  Prince Lysaer reached out a ringed hand and raised her. His clasp of embrace scarcely impressed any sensation at all through the thin cloth of her bodice, and his lips missed contact with her upturned cheek by an invisible fraction. His affection pure show, he guided her in step, no doubt intending to pass her off to her attendants with a sparkling flourish of mimed gallantry.

  Except that Ellaine had foreseen, and obstructed retreat. Her strategic forethought had positioned the s’Ilessid royal carriage such that her husband must take public leave and abandon her if he wished to go mounted to the palace.

  The prince accepted the defeat with equanimity, his smile gracious, and his poise tempered steel. He turned his head, said something to the dignitaries still on the galley that raised a spontaneous burst of laughter. Through the dazzle
thrown off his sun-struck diamonds, and the matchless strength of his confidence, Ellaine searched for the object of his concern, no doubt the same circumstance that had his seneschal and his Lord Commander standing shoulder to shoulder in disapproval.

  Her gaze caught on a figure in sable whose lean face she did not recognize.

  ‘You will not have met the man who was once the Mayor of Hanshire’s First Counselor,’ Lysaer said, as though he had read her searching thoughts.

  Ellaine flashed him a quick, nervous glance. ‘Not Raiett, the one known as Raven?’

  Lysaer tipped his head in acknowledgment, then caught her elbow to draw her away. At his heels, the man who claimed that fearfully powerful name remained to oversee the off-loading of an ironbound trunk that appeared to carry something precious, or an item of extreme fragility to judge by the number of men who clustered to nursemaid its arrival.

  Ellaine had heard Raiett’s reputation linked with sorceries, as well as the darker policies set in place by the Mayor of Hanshire.

  Again Lysaer read her, plainly as if her thoughts were inscribed on fresh parchment. ‘You have nothing to fear.’ He steered her up the carriage stair, quick hands gathering her lavish skirts and bundling them clear of the doorway as she sat on the velvet upholstery. The presence and the beauty of him, in that thoughtless courtesy, could not but sear her woman’s heart. Nor could she stop the sped beat of her pulse, or the quick stab of longing that caught her as she observed him at close quarters, his effortless bearing as fluid as light as he settled himself by her side.

  No expression, no courtesy, no casual handling betrayed his seemingly chance-met intent to touch her as little as possible.

  Nor did he fail to smile at the groom who closed the carriage door, granting Ellaine the fleeting victory of a hard-fought few moments of privacy. She responded, hands folded to keep her humid gloves from imprinting telltale ripples in her silk. ‘Do you really believe your fear can be helped by keeping me in total ignorance?’