Irons in the Fire (Chronicles of the Lescari Revolution)

by Juliet E. McKenna

  "Your Grace." Valesti's voice was sharp with disapproval.

  "A few moments won't leave me irredeemably weather-beaten." Litasse shot the woman a sharp look to remind her who was maid and who was mistress. Then she offered an apologetic smile. With so few allies in the castle, she'd be a fool to alienate any of them. Especially one who kept her secrets. This was her home now. She mustn't forget it. "Forgive me--I've been shut indoors too long."

  The spring festivities had been tiresome enough, as she spent endless hours in tedious conversation with Triolle's vassals' ladies. Still, there had been dancing and banquets and musicians and travelling players. She'd had new gowns and gifts and been paid countless compliments. Even Iruvain had been pleased with everything she had arranged, from the festival garlands for the great hall to the dishes she had chosen for each table.

  But now the entertainments were over and the guests had gone and even the minor celebrations when the season turned from Aft-Spring to For-Summer were forty-two long days away. She was ticking each morning off in her almanac. Meantime, every day dragged as long and joyless as the whole of Aft-Winter. The most exciting thing the stewards had reported today was moths infesting a remote linen closet.

  "His Grace your husband will be expecting you." As Valesti spoke, the clock housed in the tower opposite chimed and the brass arrowhead marking the daytime hours slid downwards to the fourth sunburst on the sloping scale.

  Litasse heard quacking floating across the wide mere that flanked this side of the castle. Peering over the parapet, she saw wind stirring dense clumps of reeds, waterfowl dabbling around them. A dog barked, racing towards a huddle of birds on the steeply sloping bank. A man in a maroon doublet shouted a reprimand, the wind snatching his words away. The birds were already taking wing to soar across the water. Green grebes, Triolle's emblem, so much more elegant in life than in the carvings of the castle and on the pale yellow flags flapping above the gatehouse.

  "Iruvain's still exercising his new hound." As Litasse pointed, the sun struck fire from her gold and garnet rings. "We can take the long way round."

  She began walking, careful where she put her slippered feet. Winter's rains had left a treacherous film of green scumming the uneven stones.

  "Tell the castellan I want this walkway scoured clean," she said with sudden decisiveness. "I wish to be able to take the air up here without needing hobnailed boots."

  "The gardens below satisfied the late duchess, Your Grace."

  "I am not the late duchess," Litasse said tartly.

  "Indeed, Your Grace." Valesti's tone was unreadable.

  Litasse looked down into the broad bailey ringed by this massive curtain wall. From the outside, the castle appeared unchanged for generations. A ten-towered fortress of rugged stone, it had the mere on one side and a rock-cut ditch on the other. The only entrance was defended by a murderous bastion manned by the best troops Triolle's dukes could afford.

  Within the walls, though, Triolle's successive duchesses had insisted on some comfort. The towers around the curtain wall originally had just one room on each level, lit only by arrow slits. Now they had all been rebuilt to offer separate bedchambers and private parlours, and their inner faces had been refashioned with wide diamond-paned windows.

  Looking outward, the cautious narrow slits were untouched. Duchess or not, Litasse had to don hood and cloak on stormy days to cross from her own apartments to her husband's tower, even to reach the dining hall. The lofty wall walk remained the only way to move between each turret without crossing the open bailey. If invaders ever conquered the bastion, Triolle's defenders could still make them fight for every room and every stair of each and every tower.

  If that should happen, Litasse decided, enemy soldiers trampling the garden that her husband's mother had laid out would have her blessing, so that no future bride would be expected to walk in pointless circles following the geometric paths of coloured gravel curling between knee-high hedges. Fragrant shrubs and clusters of herbs dotted the dark earth, waiting for the first spring flowers. At least the former duchess had left her mark on the castle. What would Litasse's legacy be?

  "How diligently do the townsfolk remember Duke Gerone and Duchess Casatia now?" Litasse looked across the mere to the walls of Triolle Town. Beyond the ramparts, shingled roofs huddled close. One building stood out amid the twisted streets. Circular, it was tiled in vibrant blue and yellow, the pattern of Drianon's wheat sheaves glowing in the thin sunshine.

  "There are always fresh garlands laid before their funerary urns, Your Grace," Valesti confirmed.

  Hammering echoed across the glassy green water and Litasse noticed figures moving between the crenellations of the town walls. The militia must be repairing the wooden hoardings after the winter storms, lest spring and summer bring man-made destruction. She had better go and hear what tidings the freshening winds had brought Master Hamare.

  Movement caught her eye. Duke Iruvain was striding across the bailey, the young dog wayward at his heels. His duties always seemed to leave him time to indulge his own pleasures, she thought resentfully. Everyone excused him, saying he was so young to be shouldering the rule of the dukedom. He had seen twenty-three summers to her twenty-two, and yet everyone said she was lucky their mothers had made this marriage before she grew too old to be a bride.

  Seeing Iruvain enter a doorway below, she walked more quickly.

  "Your Grace." The man-at-arms eating a meat pasty on the top of the Messenger Tower choked. His coughing startled the dozing pigeons into petulant fluttering against the bars of their cages.

  "The door, if you please." Litasse favoured him with her sweetest smile as she discreetly twitched up her poppy-red gown to keep her lace-trimmed underskirts out of the muck.

  "Of course." He sprang forward.

  "Your Grace." The men on the floor below were as startled as the sentry. One of them swept the rune bones they'd been gambling with under a chair.

  "Good morning." Perfectly poised, Litasse swept through to the stairs beyond.

  Valesti followed, demure in brown gown and linen cap. When they reached the landing below, her manner was anything but meek. "Your Grace! Your hair!"

  Litasse stood still while the maid's deft fingers subdued whatever wisps the wind had teased out of her crown of black plaits. "Well?" She arched one finely plucked brow, her blue eyes challenging.

  Valesti nodded with limited approval. "Fresh air has improved Your Grace's complexion."

  "Let's hope my lord and husband appreciates that." Whatever Iruvain might think, Litasse was pleased. The reflection in her looking glass that morning had been pale as whey. She moderated her smile as they reached the foot of the next flight of stairs.

  "Your Grace." The man-at-arms on duty stiffened in salute and opened the door. "Master Hamare, Her Grace Duchess Litasse requires you."

  Hamare bowed low, nevertheless continuing his conversation with a lean young man with light hair. "Did you ever find out who they were?"

  The youth shrugged. "A governess and a tutor who'd been turned out when Lord Berneth's children outgrew their schoolroom. They were on their way to beg charity from some half-Tormalin cousins in Solland."

  "We may yet find a use for them. Well done, Karn." Master Hamare, a slender man of no great height, leaned across the paper-strewn table to find a pen and make a note. "There's no sign as yet that this business with the bridge is anything but an opportunist attack by mercenaries?"

  "None," the young man assured him.

  Litasse was untying the ribbon securing her short cloak. She handed it to Valesti. "You may return to your duties in my chambers."

  "As you wish, Your Grace."

  To Litasse's surprise, the maidservant smiled and hurried to the door, slipping through it just as the youth, Karn, was about to close it behind him.

  "Hamare." Before Litasse could say anything more, boots thudded on the boards outside. "I hope he hasn't brought that half-trained pest of a dog," she muttered.

&nbs
p; "Let's hope." Hamare's quick smile was gone by the time the man-at-arms opened the door for Duke Iruvain.

  "Thank you. See that we are not disturbed." As the door closed, the duke brushed a kiss against Litasse's rose-petal cheek. "My lady wife, good day to you."

  Leaving Litasse to seat herself by the round table, Iruvain walked over to study the tapestry map hanging on the far wall. "Hamare, what's this new quarrel between Draximal and Parnilesse?" he demanded as he bent to look more closely at the embroidered border dividing the two easternmost dukedoms.

  "The Duchess of Draximal visited several Tormalin noble houses during the course of Aft-Winter and For-Spring, all of which are well placed to lend support if Dalasorian horsemen resume their raids on Draximal once the weather clears." Hamare sounded sceptical. "However, Her Grace was also accompanied by all her daughters."

  "She can't marry off the rest until she has the eldest settled." Iruvain considered this. "What's she planning that's put Parnilesse's nose so far out of joint?"

  "Duke Orlin of Parnilesse has learned that Duke Secaris of Draximal proposes to wed his eldest daughter to a Tormalin prince, the Sieur Den Breche, handing over a sizeable portion of Draximal's flax harvest as her dowry," Hamare explained. "Which leaves Orlin of Parnilesse standing at the castle gate, empty cap in hand, with his own flax and linen unsold."

  "My heart bleeds for him." Iruvain's scorn was withering. "Duke Secaris of Draximal should be more concerned with Duke Moncan of Sharlac's displeasure. Have we had any answer to our letter conveying Spring Festival greetings to the old Jackal?"

  "Not as yet, Your Grace," Hamare said slowly. "But the recent wet weather hasn't favoured our couriers."

  Iruvain shot a glance over his shoulder at Litasse. "How do you think your father will take this news?"

  "Lord Jaras has been dead for more than two years." She swallowed the dull ache of sorrow that still tightened her throat at the thought of her lost brother. "His tie to Draximal's eldest daughter was still informal as no actual betrothal had been blessed by a priest. My father is a pragmatist."

  "Write to your mother and find out," Iruvain ordered her, "and ask again why your father's been lying as low as a whipped cur for so long," he added with some irritation. "Did she say nothing of interest when she wrote to you at festival?"

  "She sent me a mother's love and an aunt's blessing for you." Litasse's smile covered her hurt. She had never imagined she would be so cut off by her family, even when her mother had said that marriage meant she must forget Sharlac, turning all her attention to Triolle's concerns.

  "I imagine Duke Moncan is determined to avoid offering either Duke Garnot of Carluse or Duke Secaris of Draximal any pretext for attack," Hamare suggested, "until Lord Kerlin is old enough to take Jaras's place both as heir and captain-general of Sharlac's militias."

  It never seemed to occur to Iruvain that Litasse might still be mourning Jaras. She wondered how he could dismiss such grievous losses so easily. It wasn't even a year since he had fulfilled an heir's most painful duty by lighting his own parents' funeral pyre.

  Iruvain went back to studying the tapestry map. "Is Draximal set on stealing trade with Tormalin from Parnilesse?"

  Hamare nodded. "I hear rumour of a new agreement between Draximal and the border lords on tariffs along the Great West Road."

  "More of your innkeepers' tattling?" Iruvain queried with faint distaste.

  "Intelligence is intelligence, whatever its source." Hamare shrugged.

  Litasse looked through her lashes at the spymaster and then at her husband. Hamare had pleasing, regular features, but no one would call him handsome, not while Iruvain was in the same room. The duke's clean-shaven jaw was firm and square, his lips full and sensual, high cheekbones lending distinction to his countenance. Where Hamare's hazel eyes were deceptively mild, Iruvain's dark gaze was compelling.

  Hamare wore a black doublet and breeches of indifferent tailoring. Richly clothed, the duke was half a head taller, with broad shoulders and muscular legs. Hamare still wore his mouse-coloured hair and beard as close-cropped as any scholar. A touch of grey at his temples and around his mouth indicated the ten years' advantage he had over his lord. Iruvain's dark-brown curls gleamed with scented pomade.

  "Parnilesse has another quarrel with Draximal," the spymaster said with a thin smile. "Hostile letters are being nailed to shrine doors at night."

  "Again?" Iruvain shook his head with mild disbelief.

  "What are they saying this time?" Litasse demanded.

  "As before, that the dowager duchess poisoned her late husband to speed Duke Orlin's accession to his father's honours," Hamare said carefully. "And now, that she did so with all her sons' full knowledge, not just Orlin's as heir-apparent."

  Iruvain whistled. "That's bold. Duke Orlin believes Duke Secaris is behind these rumours?"

  There was no doubt about the marsh fever that had killed Iruvain's mother and father. Litasse was grateful for that.

  "Many drops make a puddle," Hamare observed. "Many puddles make a flood. If enough Tormalin nobles suspect Duke Orlin of Parnilesse of having some hand in his father's unexpected and untimely death, they'll prefer to trade with Duke Secaris and Draximal."

  Iruvain surveyed the whole map. "Do we know what Duke Garnot of Carluse makes of this?"

  The dukedom of Triolle sat at the centre of the tapestry. To the right lay Parnilesse, with the borderlands of Tormalin beyond it. Marlier was on Triolle's left-hand side, with the Caladhrian marches stretching out beyond the wide blue course of the River Rel. Across the upper half of the map, Draximal sat above Parnilesse, and above Marlier, Carluse reached out along the Great West Road dividing Triolle from the northernmost dukedom of Sharlac. Tufts of green wool sketched in the untamed grasslands of Dalasor still further north.

  However skilfully the long-dead weavers had ornamented the tapestry with gold thread and marked its towns with garlands of enamelled silver, there was no disguising the unwelcome truth that Triolle was the smallest of Lescar's provinces and the only one without a border to a neighbouring country. Leaving without crossing some other duke's territory meant taking ship from the paltry stretch of coastline to the south, running the gauntlet of privateers' ships when storms weren't lashing the Gulf of Lescar.

  "Duchess Tadira of Carluse will always support Parnilesse," Litasse asserted.

  Hamare nodded. "She sees any suggestion that her brother was involved in poisoning their father as a personal insult."

  Though it was probably true, and who knew, Tadira might even have been involved herself. Litasse could believe anything of a woman wed to that murderous villain Duke Garnot. How could Iruvain be so blind to the man's duplicity, so taken in by his compliments?

  "As long as Parnilesse and Draximal keep their squabbles within their own borders, I don't see that they need concern us. As long as Duke Ferdain of Marlier keeps out of it?" Iruvain looked at Hamare, brows raised.

  Litasse looked at the map apprehensively. The dukedom of Marlier was half as big again as Triolle. The quickest way for Duke Ferdain to attack Parnilesse would be to send an army straight across Iruvain's dominion. It wouldn't be the first time a Duke of Marlier had ridden roughshod over Triolle.

  "Duke Ferdain is wholly concerned with improving Marlier's trade with the Caladhrians and the Relshazri," Hamare assured Iruvain.

  "He hasn't acquired enough gold to satisfy him yet?" The duke scowled.

  "Your Grace, we could always consider improving our own rivers, thereby offering the northern dukedoms an alternative trade route to the sea." Hamare's hand went unerring to a map of the rivers that marked out Triolle's borders to east and west. "If we were to strengthen some embankments here on the River Anock--" his finger moved across from the right-hand border to the left "--and renew these bridges here and here on the river Dyal."

  "No." Iruvain shook his head. "Those swamps and floodplains have been Triolle's defence too often. We cannot sacrifice them."

  Irritated, Litas
se spoke up. "There have been grievous floods along the upper reaches of both rivers this spring. The planting season has been sorely disrupted. If we have another poor harvest, we will have to buy in wheat from Caladhria again."

  Iruvain waved her away with an impatient hand. "Then we buy in wheat. I take it our mines are still producing ore?"

  Hamare nodded. "But the proportion of silver to lead has decreased sharply over the past year."

  "Again?" Iruvain sighed. "Oh well. It all looks the same when it's stamped into coin." He turned his back on the map. "Is there anything else to discuss?"

  "There's the question of your brother's betrothal," Hamare said slowly.

  Iruvain hesitated before shaking his head. "Our mother may have wanted to see him wed one of Duke Garnot's daughters, but that's all ashes along with her funeral pyre. He weds within Triolle's nobility or not at all, like our sisters."

  Litasse breathed more easily. Iruvain might flatter himself that Duke Garnot of Carluse was his friend, but he still wasn't going to let any other dukedom establish a claim on Triolle through a mingled bloodline. Not for the first time, she suspected Iruvain would have repudiated their own betrothal if the tragedy of his parents' death had befallen Triolle before their marriage.

  "Anything else?" Iruvain went to the window and squinted up at the clouds scudding across the sky.

  "The weather hasn't been kind to my poor pigeons." Hamare began tying up sheaves of paper with black ribbon. "I have had several reports of a merchant in Vanam disrupting some Guild celebration with an appeal for Lescari unity, but it will take time to decipher all the dispatches."

  "I have no interest in exiles." Iruvain glowered. "Cowards and sons of cowards who abandoned their birthright rather than fight for it."

  "As you say, Your Grace." Hamare concentrated on securing a troublesome knot.