House of Shadows

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Because I don’t wish to be,” the lord said patiently.

  “You’re Kalchesene. Here because of the coming solstice—you intend to murder our prince—maybe our king, too, I don’t know—”

  “I swear to you, Leilis, I did not come here to murder the prince, or anyone else in Lonne. I was grieved to know I might have done harm to that little keiso, and greatly relieved to find I had not. I swear to you, I never meant to harm her. Nor would I harm you. I’ll help you if I can. And I think I can.”

  Leilis could think of no reason in the world she should believe a word of this, and yet somehow this assurance sounded true. More than true: honest. Lord Chontas was a Kalchesene sorcerer: He must be doing something to make her believe him? But he wasn’t using any instrument…

  “Then why did you come to Lonne?” she asked at last. “If it was not to murder our prince—but it was, of course it was, what other reason could have possibly brought you here? Everyone knows blood will wash across the land like the tide across the shore this spring, when the Treaty of Brenedde expires. You must have come to assassinate the prince—or his father.”

  At first she was sure the Kalchesene wasn’t going to answer. He turned away and went across the room to look out the window, though Leilis didn’t know whether he was looking out at the darkening sea or only into his own thoughts.

  He said after a moment, not turning, “The sea goes out forever, doesn’t it? Sweeps in with the tide and washes endlessly out again, iterations on a single unfathomable theme… One could imagine the setting sun drowning out there in the far west. The sea seems more powerful even than light…”

  Leilis wondered where this was going.

  “I used to dream of the sea. I love the high mountains of Kalches, but I dreamed of the sea. The deep music of the tides has pulled at my bones for as long as I can remember… I have lived in Miskiannes as well as Kalches, and traveled through Enescedd to get from one land to the other. My uncle told me I was a fool to enter Lirionne, especially this year. But if I did not come to the coast this year, when would I come? This was my only chance. My grandfather begged me to be content with the countries behind the mountains and leave Lirionne to the Dragon of Lirionne, but he is also a sorcerer and did not call me a fool.” He turned back to face her. “I swear to you, I did not come here to strike at your prince. Indeed, I swore to my grandfather I would not attempt personal vengeance. But then there was Miennes. So I was a fool, after all.”

  Leilis said nothing. Dreams alone hardly seemed adequate reason for a Kalchesene sorcerer to dare the Seriantes ban. Until she remembered the goading power of her own dreams. Though those had been thoroughly crushed. And this man swore he could restore them? Probably he meant to murder her, too, and drop her body into one of Lonne’s rivers.

  But, though she couldn’t have explained why she doubted this, she honestly didn’t think so. “Then why did you give those pipes to the prince?” she asked him, trying to think.

  The foreigner bowed his head a little. “Lord Miennes discovered my nationality and commanded me to cause the prince’s death. I immediately resolved to destroy Miennes, if I could. But I knew there must be a foundation of truth in my actions if I were to deceive him.”

  Leilis tried to think through this. If Lord Miennes had tried to get the foreign lord to murder the prince in the first place, it did seem reasonable for the foreigner to strike at Miennes in turn. Leilis had never liked Miennes; none of the more acute keiso liked him. She knew personally of two who had rejected his offers to become their keisonne. That said something, as wealthy as he was. Had been.

  But if she hadn’t liked Lord Miennes, still Leilis had respected his cleverness. It would indeed have been difficult to deceive him. But Leilis also realized she hadn’t asked the right question—hadn’t yet even approached the right question. She tried again. “Couldn’t you have done something else? Evaded Lord Miennes’s demands somehow?”

  “I should have tried,” the foreigner admitted at once. She thought he spoke honestly, and knew there was no reason for such a feeling, but still she thought so. “There were other reasons why I… thought I was justified to… do what I did. I think now I was wrong. I was glad to find I had done less than I meant to do.”

  Leilis hesitated. She said carefully, “But Lord Miennes did die.”

  The foreigner lifted an eyebrow, suddenly disdainful. “And I’m glad I didn’t fail of my entire aim. I don’t care to have such things required of me.” His tone was edged with remembered anger and something else. Injured pride, Leilis thought. And something beyond that, less identifiable still.

  How had Lord Miennes missed this man’s pride? Perhaps Miennes had protected himself against magecraft and thought that would suffice against sorcery as well. Leilis, in contrast, was under no illusion that she could protect herself.

  Lord Chontas added with more humility than she would have expected from him, “The prince lived because he gave the pipes away. I was relieved, though I could hardly blame you if you don’t believe me now. I… I had been willing to destroy the heir of Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes. But then I found that outcome less desirable than I’d expected, after all. Particularly after the enchantment went astray. I’m very glad it landed nowhere else to ill effect.”

  There was a deep sincerity in his tone that compelled belief. This was part of his bardic skill, Leilis understood, and yet she felt that beyond the deliberate sincerity lay, well, genuine sincerity. She heard both: deliberate earnestness layered over truth like a descant line above a melody.

  She said after a moment, “I think perhaps that is even true. But you might have been more careful, then. Or do your enchantments often go astray, Lord Chontas?”

  The foreigner relaxed a little. He even almost smiled. “My name is Taudde, if you will. ‘Lord Chontas’ is several of my uncles and a handful of my cousins, and we may be less formal, surely, under these circumstances? I grant you may not believe this on the evidence you’ve seen. But no. Not often.”

  Leilis found she did believe him. “Then why did Karah live?”

  “Truly, I do not know. I understand that her sister is an apprentice of Mage Ankennes? I don’t know that her sister saved her, but it seems likely.” Now there was a note of—shame, Leilis was almost sure—in the man’s voice. In the deeper part of his voice, the part she thought was most true. He bowed his head and spoke slowly, one word coming after the last as though each took a physical effort to pronounce. “You need not say it: I know perfectly well I should never have made a sorcerous weapon that mischance might so easily turn to harm the innocent. Like a fool, I never considered that the prince might give away those pipes. My grandfather would call me a hasty, ill-tempered, arrogant, unthinking fool, and I could hardly deny any of that.”

  There didn’t seem much Leilis could add to this. She said nothing.

  “You might give me those pipes,” coaxed Lord Chontas. Lord Taudde. “At least go back to Cloisonné House without showing them around. Let me try to remove that strange half-magecrafted curse that’s wrapped itself around you. I swear I’ll deal with you honestly and not harm you in any way. Or anyone else in Lonne, except perhaps Ankennes, though that may be beyond my power.”

  Leilis understood the unspoken message: Don’t you become an obstacle. But she was so surprised by the mention of the mage that this barely registered. “Ankennes?” she exclaimed.

  “Didn’t you know? He constrains me. I can’t leave Lonne until he is distracted. I merely hope a distraction will prove sufficient.”

  “But Mage Ankennes is one of our close clients and friends!” Leilis protested.

  “Whatever his relationship to Cloisonné House, he was also conspiring with Lord Miennes,” Taudde told her. His voice was soft, but the certainty in his tone was compelling. “You may blame me for those pipes, Leilis, and I am to blame, yes, but you should look closer to home for the ones who wanted them made and then brought them to life.”

  Leilis found that she b
elieved this, too. She hesitated.

  Then the big man, Lord Taudde’s servant, suddenly came into the room and gestured urgently for their attention.

  Lord Taudde turned in alarm, but so did Leilis—uneasy, now, at an intrusion that half an hour earlier she would have welcomed gladly. She was aware, even at that moment, of the irony. Besides, there could be no real reason for alarm. Probably there was a guardsman there, maybe one of the King’s Own, come to escort her to some minor functionary so she could make the accusation she’d come here to make. She would simply tell the guardsman she’d changed her mind—had she changed her mind? All her priorities and fears and hopes had been thoroughly disarranged—

  But it was not just guardsmen who followed the servant into the room. It was Lily. She wore her black deisa overrobe with its tracery of keiso blue, and there was no need to wonder why her three guardsman escorts looked dazed: She was stunning. Fine boned and effortlessly poised, Lily was graced by a wonderful fall of straight black hair, a soft pouting mouth, lovely sapphire eyes, and a commanding presence. At the moment, her beautiful eyes were alight with satisfied malice.

  “Why, Leilis!” she exclaimed in her soft childlike voice, and laid a hand delicately on the arm of one of the men with her. The guardsman smiled down at her and then glowered at the rest of them. The other guardsmen looked envious of their fellow.

  “Rue told Bluefountain,” Lily said softly, “that something had happened to Karah’s pipes, the pipes Prince Tepres so generously gave her, and then you’d gotten all worried and taken the pipes and disappeared. Isn’t that strange, that you’d get all fussed about those pipes? And Bluefountain told Featherreed, and Featherreed happened to mention something about it to Seafoam, and Seafoam told Meadowsweet once everyone started wondering where you’d gone, and Meadowsweet, clever child, thought perhaps I’d be interested to hear the tale. Which I was.”

  Leilis didn’t say anything. She had never thought Lily was stupid.

  “I’m not stupid, you know,” Lily added in her sweet little voice, childlike and yet, to Leilis’s ear, sparkling with malice. She turned to the guardsmen. “It’s obvious—the man there must be a spy from Kalches, perhaps even an assassin. And this servant of my House is clearly in his employ.”

  The problem was, Leilis thought, that when a girl as lovely as Lily said something, even something outrageous, she just naturally sounded credible. Her beauty and her keiso-trained manner made her believable. And this winter, well, nobody would be surprised at a flood of spies and assassins from the north trying the Dragon’s defenses.

  The three guardsmen, after the first startled instant, clearly took Lily’s accusation seriously enough. The one who’d been escorting Lily shook her hand off his arm and put his hand on his sword. The other two also reached for their swords, casting wary looks at Lord Taudde and his big servant. The servant only gazed at them blankly, either too stupid to recognize the implicit threat or at least playing the role persuasively. Lord Taudde did nothing. He might be a sorcerer, but perhaps it would be asking too much to expect him to do something sorcerous here in the Laodd itself.

  Since no one else seemed ready to do anything, Leilis straightened her shoulders and looked down her nose at the younger girl with her best keiso manner, her plain slate-blue robe notwithstanding. “Lily,” she said coolly. “Skipped out on your kinsana lesson, have you? Avoiding your assignment for this evening? Planning to whip up a bit of excitement? You’d best reconsider. Practical jokes in the Laodd itself won’t please Mother.” She turned regally to the leader of the guardsmen, distinguishable by his manner and because he’d been the one escorting Lily. “You must pardon the child,” Leilis told him. She borrowed a keiso’s regal disdain for an uppity deisa and continued with kind superiority. “The deisa have lately been overcome by tedium, and I’m afraid that Lily has a tendency to enjoy flights of fancy. Normally she confines herself to pranks within the House, however.”

  Lily, lovely eyes glittering, said with silken fury, “Such airs you have, Leilis, for a servant.”

  Leilis sighed tolerantly. She added to the guardsman, in the tone one adult would use to another in the presence of a pettish child, “The Mother of Cloisonné House will certainly assure you, captain, that I am definitely not a spy nor in the employ of spies. Lily’s imagination has run away with her—if this is not, in fact, a deliberate prank. To which, I fear, deisa are rather inclined.” Her tone suggested, Girls will be girls. She turned slightly to include Lord Taudde in the circle of presumptive adults.

  The foreigner had, thus far, seemed content to let Leilis speak for him. But now he stepped forward and, following her lead, said smoothly, “I shouldn’t like the girl to get in any trouble, you know, guardsman. But I’m afraid she’s speaking rather wildly. I can easily produce documents proving that I’m from Miskiannes, that I’m in Lonne on business for my uncle, and that my uncle has long-standing business acquaintances in Lonne and in the rest of Lirionne.”

  None of the guardsmen had relaxed, although all three were now looking a little doubtful. Men had such touchy pride. They could just imagine a pretty girl trying her hand at inventing a story, and how long they’d hear about it from their fellows if they fell for a prank like this.

  “Nonsense!” Lily’s voice was taut with anger, her confidence only a little shaken. “What of those pipes?”

  Leilis tried to look impatient rather than nervous. “Lily, really,” she said, in her kindest tone. “What pipes? I came here to meet, well—” she cast a glance of womanly appeal through her eyelashes at the senior guardsman “—a friend. Lord Chontas merely happened across me here, and as we are acquainted, of course he stopped a moment.”

  “A ‘friend’! You!” Lily said scathingly. She turned in pretty appeal to the guardsmen. “Search her, and then let’s see if there are or aren’t pipes!”

  “I am, of course, a foreigner in your city,” Lord Taudde murmured. “But that suggestion hardly seems proper.”

  “Sea and sky! I only mean, check her pockets!”

  “If we might speak to Jeres Geliadde—” Leilis suggested, since it was clear the guardsmen were going to pass this problem along to someone.

  The senior guardsman rolled his eyes. “I don’t get paid enough to handle you lot. Geliadde, eh? Come along, then, and just let’s all be calm.”

  Jeres Geliadde listened to the guardsman’s rather garbled account with an expression of dour patience. “Now, let me see if I understand,” he said eventually, tenting his hands before him on his desk and gazing at them all over the tips of his fingers. “This foreigner, Lord Chontas Taudde ser Omientes, ostensibly from Miskiannes, is accused by this deisa, Lily, of being a Kalchesene assassin who has aimed sorcerously at Prince Tepres’s life. An ineffectual assassin, evidently, as the prince was perfectly well when I last saw him, a scant hour past. This accusation owns no evidence save the set of twin pipes originally given by Lord Chontas to Prince Tepres and subsequently given by the prince to the young keiso Moonflower. Moonflower, notwithstanding possession of these pipes, also currently enjoys good health.”

  Lily drew an angry breath to speak, but at a calm look from Jeres closed her mouth without saying a word.

  “Meanwhile, Lord Chontas maintains that he is an ordinary man of business and a nobleman of Miskiannes. Tarre,” he added to a waiting guard captain, “please send someone to Lord Chontas’s house and bring me the papers we are informed exist. Lord Chontas, does your servant know where these papers are located? Tarre, have the servant accompany your guardsman. Lord Chontas, if you will indulge me by accepting the hospitality of the Laodd for an hour or two while we examine these papers?”

  Lord Taudde inclined his head graciously, and Jeres Geliadde said, without a trace of irony in his tone, “Thank you, my lord.”

  Then the prince’s bodyguard transferred his attention to Leilis. “Also, the woman Leilis, staff of Cloisonné House, is accused of having been suborned by Lord Chontas. As it happens, the woman is known t
o me. As well as the regard in which she is held by the Mother of Cloisonné House. Also, I am familiar with the keiso and deisa of Cloisonné House.”

  He gave Leilis a small nod of acknowledgment. Of course, Leilis realized: The prince’s senior bodyguard would have carefully studied the personnel of Cloisonné House after the prince had become infatuated with the House’s newest keiso. It hardly sounded like Jeres Geliadde meant to take Lily’s accusation seriously.

  The prince’s bodyguard continued, “This accusation is certainly irregular. I should have expected a young deisa to make her suspicions known to the Mother of her House, not directly to me.” The look he turned on Lily was not sympathetic. Then he transferred his gaze, now neutral, to Leilis. “However, I will inquire as to your purpose in coming to the Laodd today. You asked first for Koriadde, and then for me, I believe? Koriadde is not here, but as I am here and attentive to this matter, we may as well examine these pipes. Do I correctly surmise that you are able to produce this instrument, young woman?”

  Without hesitation, Leilis extracted the pipes from the interior pocket of her robe.

  “You said—” the senior guardsman began, and stopped, looking embarrassed. Lily was plainly outraged. Lord Taudde maintained an inscrutable neutrality.

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to have them disappear into the court bureaucracy,” Leilis excused herself blandly, and Jeres Geliadde gave her a grave, faintly amused nod.

  “I think—I’m certain—Mage Ankennes is responsible for these,” Leilis told him.

  “A serious accusation,” the prince’s bodyguard murmured.

  “I’ve reason to make it.” Leilis realized this was true even as she spoke. She knew now what had been bothering her about, well, everything—something Lord Taudde had said had made things fall clear in her mind. She explained to Jeres, afraid she would sound incoherent but trying to be clear, “Moonflower’s sister Nemienne is Mage Ankennes’s apprentice, did you know? Nemienne must have told Mage Ankennes everything about hearing the pipes. Of course she told him. It’s a strange story, but Mage Ankennes must have heard it almost as soon as I did. Why didn’t he come to see us? He should have come to see that Moonflower was all right and look into what had happened. I know it may not seem like a good reason—perhaps I shouldn’t have come to the Laodd—I must sound like a fool—”