Declan stopped a few feet from the bars. “I don’t have long, your grace. What do you want?”
“Jaxyn Aranville has issued a warrant for Arkady’s arrest.”
“I know.”
“Can’t you do something?”
The spymaster stared at him in amazement. “Can’t I do something? Tides, she’s in this mess because she married you.”
“You’re the King’s Spymaster, Declan.”
“And you’re the king’s scapegoat, in case you haven’t noticed. What makes you think I can do anything to save Arkady from what you’ve brought down on her?”
The duke was silent for a moment, as if he was struggling with himself about something. Then he squared his shoulders, as if his decision was made. When he spoke, he sounded much less uncertain. “Did you speak to her, Declan, after she returned from the mountains?”
“You know I did.”
“And did she share her ludicrous theories with you? About the Tide Lords?”
Declan kept his expression blank. “Yes.”
“Did you think she was crazy?”
Where’s he going with this? “What does it matter what I thought?”
Again the duke faltered for a moment, before he braced himself to continue. “Jaxyn came to visit me earlier.”
“I’m sure you two had a lot to discuss,” Declan said, growing impatient with this seemingly aimless conversation. “Was that all you wanted to see me about, your grace? I have your trial tomorrow, you know. It’s hard work keeping all these dishonest witnesses in line. I really haven’t the time to stand here catching up on old times.” He turned away, a little disappointed but hardly surprised this meeting had proved so futile.
“Jaxyn said something to me earlier, Declan,” Stellan called after him. “Something that didn’t make sense at the time. But then I started to think about some of the things Arkady said when she returned from the mountains and I’ve begun to wonder…”
Declan stopped, turning back to look at the duke. “That’s all well and good, your grace, and much as I’d like to stand here and chat about it—”
“She knows, Stellan…” the duke said, cutting him off. “That’s what he said to me. She knows, Stellan, and she’s not afraid.”
Declan stepped a little closer to the bars. “Did he say what she knows?”
Stellan shook his head. “He was rambling. Almost incoherent. He said she knows, and then he said something about that not being irritating enough. He said the stupid bitch, after all the chances he’d given her—his exact words, by the way—had run off with ‘that royal cloaca’…” The duke shrugged. “I’ve no idea what a cloaca is, but the royal reference was clear enough.” Declan knew what the Crasii insult meant, and was quite sure a man as cultured and polite as Stellan Desean would never had uttered it, had he any idea of its crude meaning. Stellan stood there, looking at Declan through the bars, clearly hoping for some sort of affirmation that he wasn’t losing his mind. “Jaxyn was talking about the Immortal Prince, wasn’t he?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Yes, I’m asking you, Declan,” Stellan replied, stepping up to the bars. “I want you to tell me what’s going on. You’ve been pulling the strings in this particular puppet theatre all along. You’re the one who sent Arkady to interview Kyle Lakesh. The last time you came here you told me my niece is not my niece. You claimed Kylia is probably dead, and the impostor’s name is Diala. You also claimed she was a great deal older and a lot less innocent than she looks and that she’s known Jaxyn for longer than I can imagine.”
“You scoffed at any suggestion of a plot, as I recall.”
“Arkady claimed Kyle Lakesh was a Tide Lord.”
“You scoffed at that suggestion too.”
“Prison gives a man plenty of time to think,” Stellan said. “And I’ve had Tilly Ponting telling fortunes in my parlour long enough to know the names of her Tarot full of immortal Tide Lords. If Arkady was right; if Kyle Lakesh really was Cayal, the Immortal Prince, as he claimed—and Arkady believes—and my niece has been supplanted by a woman named Diala, then logically, the young man calling himself Jaxyn Aranville is one of them, too.”
Declan said nothing, wondering what it must have cost Stellan Desean to come to such a conclusion on his own.
“It also follows, you’ve known about this for some time, Hawkes,” he continued, “otherwise, you’d not have come here to warn me about Diala, and quite possibly it’s the reason you involved Arkady in your schemes in the first place. You never wanted her help debunking Lakesh’s claim that he was immortal, did you? You wanted her to prove it.”
Declan studied Stellan for a moment and then shook his head. “You’ve picked a fine time to start believing in the cause.”
“Then I’m right, aren’t I? There is a cause?”
“The cause is to stop the rise of the Tide Lords, your grace, something you’ve been doing your damnedest to help along thus far.”
“I’m still not sure I believe it now, Declan.”
“What do you expect me to do?”
“Find a way to save Arkady.”
“I may not be able to. There’s more at stake here than your duchy, you know.”
Stellan gripped the bars angrily. “Aren’t you listening to me? Jaxyn threatened to bring Arkady here, Declan! Unless I agree to confess so he can call off the trial, he’s going to make me watch. He plans to torment her in ways he thinks I can’t imagine in my wildest nightmares. But he’s wrong. I can imagine her fate. Very well indeed. I’m sure with your experience in the darker side of human nature you don’t have to think too hard to know what is going to happen to her, either.”
His promise to Tilly still fresh in his mind, Declan considered the duke, wondering how far he could be trusted. This man—for all that he represented a painful reminder of what Declan had lost—was now the heir to the Glaeban throne. He was the only reasonable rallying point should the Cabal decide to back a resistance movement once the Tide Lords took power and disposed of Glaeba’s credulous and inevitably doomed young king.
“You mustn’t confess, Desean. To anything.”
Stellan shook his head. “I can’t promise that. Unless you can assure me, here and now, you know of a way to save Arkady, I will have no choice.”
Declan hesitated before replying. “What if you had a choice? What would you do then?”
“I don’t see one.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
The duke seemed a little confused. “Are you asking what I’d do if I had a chance to save Arkady? Or a chance to save myself?”
“Both.”
Stellan sighed, shaking his head. “Your optimism is admirable, but I don’t see any way out of this. You must do what you can to save Arkady. I will do what I can to buy you the time you need to do it.”
I ought to let you rot in here, Declan thought, both irritated and impressed by this wretched nobleman’s insistence on throwing everything away for the sake of someone he really wasn’t in a position to help. Arkady’s fate, although hastened by the actions of her husband, was out of his control now. It mattered little to Arkady’s future what happened to Stellan Desean.
But Jaxyn’s words chilled Declan to his core. She knows.
Arkady was in danger for much, much more than being Stellan Desean’s wife.
“Let the trial go ahead,” he advised. “Arkady’s not here and I’ve not heard anything to indicate she’s even on her way from Torlenia, as yet. If you want to buy me the time to help her, that’s the best I can do at the moment.”
Letting go of the bars, Stellan nodded. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, Desean. I haven’t thought of anything yet.”
Declan left the prison on foot, sending his carriage back to the palace without him. He needed to think. He had a decision to make.
It was raining as he turned away from the gloomy prison walls. The storm wasn’t a particularly harsh one. The lightning was sporadic, the t
hunder muted, the rain more of an irritant than a downpour. Declan pulled his collar up, thrust his hands into the pockets of his long coat, and headed away from the prison toward the docks where only a few months ago he’d helped Stellan Desean rescue Prince Mathu from his own folly at the Friendly Futtock.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
His promise to Tilly notwithstanding, Stellan Desean’s importance had little to do with his friendship with Lady Ponting or even his marriage to Arkady. With King Enteny dead and Mathu still childless, Stellan was Glaeba’s heir. It was unlikely Diala was interested in providing her husband with another heir anytime soon, and she certainly hadn’t conspired with Jaxyn to take the throne just so she could hand it over to her own child.
Even if she had planned such a thing, Jaxyn would never stand for it.
No, this plan of the Tide Lords with their eye on Glaeba required the removal of all viable contenders to the Glaeban throne, one way or another.
Which means, Declan realised in a flash of inspiration, that’s all I really need to do to solve the problem.
The answer was so elegantly simple, when he thought about it, he was surprised it had taken him this long to come up with the solution.
In order to save Stellan Desean, Declan decided, and with luck, thwart the plans Jaxyn and Diala had for Glaeba’s throne, the former Duke of Lebec was going to have to die.
Chapter 56
When Arkady regained consciousness she was no longer surrounded by a terrifying vortex of swirling sand. It was dark when her eyes flickered open. From the feel of the hard stone beneath her, and the muffled, distant howling of the wind, she realised she was in some sort of cellar. She could hear the sandstorm raging beyond the thick walls, but she was safe from it.
She opened her eyes a little wider. A torch flickered fitfully in a bracket on the wall above her head, another near the entrance to the cavern, leaving the room in as much shadow as light. She was half sitting, half lying on the floor of a dark, cavernous hall, her head resting against someone’s shoulder, strong arms holding her safe from the nightmare. She closed her eyes again, relishing the feeling for the moment or two it took to register the fact that someone was holding her and then she sat up in a panic. On the floor beside her lay Tiji, her shroud discarded, apparently asleep. There was a bruise on the Crasii’s cheek and a trickle of blood leaking from the corner of her mouth.
“Careful!”
She scrambled free and turned to find she hadn’t been hallucinating earlier.
“Cayal? What happened? Where are we? What’s wrong with Tiji?” Arkady leaned over and shook the Crasii, to no avail. “Tiji?” The Crasii didn’t respond. Worriedly, Arkady shook her a little harder. “Tiji? Can you hear me?”
“I had to knock her out.”
The Immortal Prince was sitting with his back to the wall he’d been leaning against, holding Arkady while she slept.
“Why?” she asked, not sure if she should be thankful or afraid to discover he’d rescued them.
“She’s a Scard.” He pushed off the wall, climbed to his feet and walked to the corner where the luggage sacks they’d left tied to their saddle on Terailia were lying. He tossed the sacks aside and picked up the waterskin.
Arkady rubbed her gritty eyes and leaned over to feel Tiji’s forehead. The Crasii’s scaly skin was smooth and cool to the touch and she seemed to be breathing normally. Arkady turned to look at Cayal. “Was being a Scard reason enough for you to knock her unconscious?”
“You were the reason,” he said, in a tone that made her want to squirm with the memory of him finding her in the storm. He walked back to where she knelt over Tiji and squatted down beside them. “Don’t you remember? You were frantic and wouldn’t move without her. Your little Scard here got hysterical when I tried to dig her out of the sand, so I had to quiet her down. How are you feeling?”
Arkady hoped he was talking about her physical condition. She certainly wasn’t in the mood to discuss the conflicted emotions she had to deal with every time she confronted this man. “Like I’ve been scrubbed raw with a hasp file. Where are the others?”
“They’re probably dead by now.”
Arkady stared at him. “Dead?”
“I suppose.”
“But you don’t know for certain?”
Cayal shrugged. “If this storm keeps up much longer it wouldn’t make any difference, even if I did know.”
Cayal’s calm and detached appraisal of the fate of the rest of the caravan left her breathless. She scrambled to her feet. “Can’t you help them?”
He looked genuinely puzzled by her question. “Why would I want to?”
“Because you can?” she suggested, reminding herself as she did, this is why he’s so dangerous. The reason he wants to die. He doesn’t feel things like a mortal. He doesn’t feel some things at all. “Because you can walk through that storm with impunity and they can’t?”
He shook his head. “You’re crediting me with heroic abilities I don’t have, Arkady. That gale’s been blowing sand over your travelling companions for the better part of a day and night. They’re nothing more than featureless lumps in the sand, by now. Tides, I only found you because you panicked and tried to leave the only shelter you had.”
“But you found the camels,” she said, pointing to the sacks. The idea the rest of their caravan—Farek, with his endless “hurry-hurry,” the boisterous cameleers and the nervous young acolytes heading for Brynden’s abbey—might be dead already was too unbearable to contemplate.
To think she might have survived when the others didn’t was more troubling. That she survived because Cayal, with his god-like powers, had decided that she could live while the others would have to die, was even worse. That notion came with a burden of guilt she wasn’t equipped to deal with.
“I didn’t need to find the camels,” Cayal said. “They found this place on their own. Camels are smarter than humans in a storm. They have enough sense to find shelter and stay there.” He thrust the waterskin at her. “That was a really stupid thing you did, by the way. If I hadn’t found you, you’d be dead, too.”
If you hadn’t found me, I might be safer. And the others might have lived.
“I thought I was suffocating.”
“You probably were. Didn’t make trying to wander about in a sandstorm any less dangerous, though. We’re less than a mile from where you were standing, by the way. Why didn’t your guides just bring you here when they saw the storm coming?”
“I can’t believe you just let them die.”
Cayal didn’t answer her. Clearly, he didn’t feel the need to justify anything he’d done. She glanced around, only now thinking to wonder where she was. “What is this place, anyway?”
“Brynden’s old palace.”
Arkady understood now, why Farek and his cameleers had refused to seek shelter in the ridge so close to where they’d dug in to weather the storm. “They feared it was haunted.”
“Idiots.”
Arkady frowned, recalling Cayal telling her of this place when they were still in Lebec. Of his meeting here with Brynden and Kinta. With Lukys.
And of making love to Medwen in the chill darkness of Brynden’s austere fortress.
She forced that image from her mind and looked around again, afraid Cayal might guess what she was thinking. “How can this be Brynden’s old palace? You said it was on the edge of the Great Inland Sea. We’re a hundred miles or more into the desert here.”
“I emptied the sea the better part of six thousand years ago. The desert’s spread, since then.” He squatted down beside her, pointing at the waterskin. “Drink it slowly or you’ll make yourself sick.”
She lifted the waterskin, tipped her head back, letting the tepid water stream into her mouth. It was stale and faintly metallic and tasted better than the most prized wine ever served in Lebec Palace. When she was done, she lowered the skin and looked at Cayal, as another thought occurred to her. “Are you responsible for this storm?�
�
The Immortal Prince shook his head. “No.”
“Can you stop it?”
“It’d be safer to let it run its course.”
“Safer for whom, exactly?”
“Everyone living in the southern hemisphere of Amyrantha, actually. Messing with the weather’s a dangerous thing, Arkady. Believe me, I know.” He examined her more closely, reaching out to brush an errant strand of hair from her face. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Instinctively, she flinched from his touch. “I’m more concerned about Tiji.”
He dropped his hand. “She’ll come to. Eventually.”
“Are you sure?”
Cayal sat back on his heels, frowning. “You think I want your Scard to die?” Despite his words, the contempt in his voice when he spoke of the Scards was disturbing.
“How do you even know she’s a Scard, Cayal?”
He glanced down at the unconscious Crasii before answering. “Better than half of all the reptiles were. The behavioural compulsion to obey us never really took with them. That’s why we didn’t pursue them as a species. Too hard to control. I was surprised to find you had one, truth be told. They were rare, even back when we were experimenting with them. Tryan thinks he got rid of all the Scards. He’ll be peeved to realise he didn’t.”
“She’s not mine, Cayal. Quite the opposite. Tiji’s the diplomat. I’m the servant.”
He shook his head, as if such a circumstance was beyond his comprehension. “That’s just wrong.”
She smiled wanly. “How very Tide Lordish of you to think so.”
Cayal ignored the jibe and pointed at the waterskin. “Drink some more.”
She did as he instructed, letting the moisture work its own particular magic on her parched throat, and then glanced around the cellar, wondering how long they would have to remain in the ruin. The danger of being effectively alone in this place with Cayal notwithstanding, she felt exhausted, dirty, gritty and yet—contrarily—safe for the first time since Stellan had left Ramahn. That was a dangerous thing to allow herself to feel. Cayal wasn’t her knight in shining armour. In reality, she was trapped in a long-forgotten ruin in the middle of a sandstorm in the Torlenian desert with a self-confessed mass-murderer who couldn’t decide whether he loved her or hated her.
The Gods of Amyrantha Page 41
