By Dark Deeds (Blade and Rose Book 2)

by Miranda Honfleur

  Drina kept her gaze on the parlor’s intricate wool rug, a dizzying pattern of red, gold, black, and violet. She had her way into the palace, but now she needed to ascertain it would remain open.

  Lady Vauquelin, Nora Marcel Vignon, paced in her red silk dressing gown, its luxurious length flowing behind her.

  “You’re an apothecary?” Lady Vauquelin placed an elegant hand on her hip.

  “Yes, Your Ladyship,” she answered, as she had for the fifth time already.

  “But… your clothes are so poor.”

  She tried not to grimace. “My usual clientele is of a… less fortunate quality.”

  Lady Vauquelin pursed her plump red-stained lips. Contrary to her facial expression, poverty did not, in and of itself, have an odor. But this fine lady would have rarely left her plush bower to learn the difference.

  “But my understanding is that my lack of connections with wealthy clients such as yourself could be an asset, Your Ladyship.” She ventured a brief glance at Lady Vauquelin.

  Her dark tresses flowed to her hip, shining like polished obsidian, light as silk. Her diamond-shaped face, inlaid with dazzling hazel eyes, could inspire many a bard to song. No doubt the lady had half a dozen maids constantly polishing her to perfection—maintaining that shining hair, smooth face, and high fashion, and calling the fruits of that copious labor good breeding. Perhaps there was a beauty beneath it all regardless, but there was a lot of it to get beneath in order to find out.

  “Discretion,” Lady Vauquelin said softly. “Yes…”

  The lady closed the distance to her and grabbed her arms.

  Lady Vauquelin was lucky she was so clearly harmless. And central to the plan.

  “You must understand, he can never know. If he finds out, I’ll be…” The lady shook her head, her shining locks quivering.

  Divine forbid! She suppressed the urge to laugh, and swallowed. “I understand. I would never betray a client.” She paused. “And I’m so beneath the notice of the Houses, no one would even think to question me.” True enough, and just what a fine lady expected to hear.

  A slow smile spread across Lady Vauquelin’s face. “Yes…” She beamed. “Quite right.”

  “What may I help with, Your Ladyship?”

  Lady Vauquelin released her and straightened, pulling her shoulders back, raising her chin. She sniffed. “Fertility herbs.”

  So Lady Vauquelin intended to hook a man with a child. Recently widowed, she already wanted another husband? And how could she be so certain an Emaurrian man would be so honorable as to marry her rather than let her bear a bastard? She was either clever, naive, or mistaken.

  Drina nodded. “Are there any in particular you wish to order, or would you like some suggestions, Your Ladyship?”

  Lady Vauquelin took a message rolled in leather off the table, closing her fingers around it. She slid the leather through her grip. “First, my mother tells me that there’s a substitute for queen’s lace that lacks its contraceptive potency. Should he look to verify that I was careful, then I wish to maintain the appearance.”

  Cunning. “Yes, Your Ladyship. It’s nearly identical, substituting wild carrot for—”

  Lady Vauquelin clenched the leather in her fist. “I don’t care what’s in it, as long as it doesn’t prevent me from conceiving a child.”

  Haughty bitch. She smiled. “Yes, Your Ladyship.”

  Toying with the leather roll, Lady Vauquelin paced the parlor, red silk catching air, revealing small, delicate feet in fine slippers. “As for the fertility herbs, what do you recommend?”

  “Red raspberry leaf tea, daily, to lengthen the most fertile time of your cycle. Evening primrose extract, during your moonbleed, to render you more accommodating to the seed.” When Lady Vauquelin narrowed her eyes, she added, “And during the first half of your cycle, chasteberry.”

  Lady Vauquelin raised a finely arched eyebrow. “Chaste? It’s not quite what I’m looking for.”

  “Despite its name, it’s had much success.”

  Lady Vauquelin regarded her, playing with the leather roll, then finally smacked it against her palm. Women like her didn’t live such comfortable lives by denying themselves luxuries. She would want it. Have to have it. Demand it.

  “All right. I want all of it. Deliver it here, to my chambers, personally and discreetly, and I will pay double your prices.”

  Double? The palace had been worth the effort, in more ways than one.

  “How soon will it work?” Lady Vauquelin paced. “Will it work after one time?”

  One time? What did she plan to do to the father, that she’d only bed him one time? Or perhaps she planned to catch him in a moment of vulnerability? “It depends whether the difficulty lies with the man or the woman—”

  Lady Vauquelin threw her hands up. “How am I supposed to know?”

  “There are herbs a man might take to—”

  Lady Vauquelin shook her head. “No. I don’t have access to his food or drink. And I won’t.”

  No access to…

  The king. She plans to conceive the king’s child.

  She bowed her head, hoping she’d successfully suppressed the grin. When Favrielle discovers the duplicity of the man she loves… Oh, the joy of that day. Almost as good as the day she would discover his death. After that, making the trip to Sonbahar would be priceless, just to see the look on her face, the understanding of what Marko had meant.

  She cleared her throat. “If, after one cycle of lying with the intended father, you are not yet with child, I’ll be quite surprised, but we’ll work on him then.”

  Lady Vauquelin bobbed her head and laid the leather roll back on the table. “Very well. I look forward to the delivery.”

  Another opportunity to move about Trèstellan. “As do I, Your Ladyship. It is my pleasure to serve your needs.” My own.

  Lady Vauquelin dismissed her, and when the hall emptied, Drina cast a shadow cloak over herself, keeping to dark corners, and to the untrained eye, she would look like no more than a shadow herself. She would find the chambers of the Master of Ceremonies and copy his parade plans.

  But first, it was time to acquaint herself with a possible field of battle.

  The map of Trèstellan had indicated rooms on this floor that led into a passageway—probably intended as a mistress’s quarters. Finally, she found them and, when no one was about, unlocked the door with the recondite skeleton key and slipped in.

  Unoccupied. Gratefully. Although she was no stranger to killing out of necessity, when courtiers went missing, people noticed.

  The map had indicated a passage on the other side of the bedchamber, and therein, a massive tapestry covered an entire wall—The Claiming of Solis, wherein Terra, as the Maiden, conceived the next sun god with the current.

  She raised an eyebrow. Subtle.

  She moved aside the tapestry, ducked between it and the wall. A panel, smaller than a door. Such a small door for such a big step closer to her ends. Taking a deep breath, she pushed it in.

  With a soft brush, it opened into darkness.

  She listened, and when no sound came, she spelled her eyes to see in the dark and entered. Tonight, she would take all the resonance she wanted from her conjurer-lover.

  Obscurity had claimed this passage. She entered and closed the panel behind her. Dust and cobwebs filled the narrow space, only a couple unlit sconces upon the wall. She followed the corridor to a narrow stair, and another passage. Generations of kings and mistresses had traveled these well-worn paths to each other, keeping scandalous trysts secret from the rumormongering court and jealous queens.

  If not for the undisturbed layer of dust, Jonathan Dominic Armel Faralle could have made use of these paths yet himself. Would Lady Vauquelin, beautiful as she was, have to work much at all to claim him for herself?

  Before another panel, she stopped. If memory served—and it always did—this was the entrance to the king’s bedchamber. She should have come here while the Crag were in control
, but who could have predicted that a penniless paladin bastard would become king?

  She shook her head.

  He’d left for Bisclavret, as Max had related, but would a chamberlain or valet be skulking around, taking routine care of the quarters?

  She rested her ear to the wall, listening for any disturbance. When none came, she pulled the panel’s knob slowly. Quietly.

  A dense wall of clothes blocked the entry. The king’s wardrobe. After laying her apothecary satchel in the passage, she brushed the clothes aside, paused to ascertain no one had stirred, and then entered. Vast, it already brimmed with clothes, more than one man should rightfully own, but that was being king. An armor stand stood bare, mountings for weapons on the wall empty.

  Light of foot, she crept to the doorway and peeked into the king’s opulent bath. It was practically empty but for a plain olive-oil bar and that woodsy shaving soap from Monas Tainn.

  Beyond lay the bedchamber, massive floor-to-ceiling windows allowing in the evening ambient glow. It illuminated a sprawling purple-heartwood four-poster canopied bed, two matching nightstands, and a vanity and washbasin. The Code of the Paladin, massive tome that it was, sat atop a bedside table with a jar of dry yellow flowers. Farther in were tables, armchairs, a fireplace. Above it—

  Favrielle Amadour Lothaire looked down at her smugly from a portrait.

  Drina’s vision clouded. Even across the Bay of Amar, on another continent, the bitch laughed in her face, Marko’s killer, a dim-witted girl who would have cowered beneath the broom of her ungrateful family, the Lothaires who spat in the face of the Divinity that had taught them true power.

  If not for Corbin’s mulish wife, Sylviane, the Lothaire children would have been alive, learning their craft in the Tower, serving magic and all mages and the Divine. And Marko—if not for Sylviane and her ignorant daughter, Marko would have never been sent to correct the imbalance, and would yet walk this earth—

  Love of my heart.

  But the bitch peered at her with that smug grin.

  Happy.

  Marko’s murderer had no right. Ever. Drina smiled tightly, slowing her breathing.

  Silent as death, she walked the king’s chambers, absorbing their dimensions and orientation. They were clearly laid out in the maps, but standing here, taking it all in, she could close her eyes at any moment hereafter and see these rooms. Always have a backup plan. When she returned, she’d know her way around.

  She exited through the panel in the wardrobe into the darkness of the passage. She shut it, retrieved her satchel, and followed the passage to another stair, far and lower, near the quarters of the Master of Ceremonies.

  Outside the room, she listened.

  The shuffle of footsteps.

  Unmoving, she waited. The footsteps continued—purposeful, quick. A chambermaid, perhaps. A door closed, then quiet filled the time, undisturbed. After a few minutes, she pulled the knob, paused to ascertain the dark room’s emptiness, then entered.

  Another bedchamber, modest compared to that of the king. She crept along the wall to the study and on to the parlor. No sound came from the hall.

  Cloaked in shadow, she emerged and locked the door behind her with the skeleton key.

  While the hall was empty, she hurried a few doors down, to the Master of Ceremonies’ rooms, no more than a shadow to any passerby.

  Beneath the door, firelight glowed from within into the hall. He was in. Or someone was.

  Night had fallen. And so, too, its darkness would fall in her favor. If she remembered the layout correctly, the door led into the parlor, then a study, and finally the bedchamber, with a small garderobe off the room.

  No voices. No steps. Unlikely that anyone would sit alone in the parlor. The Master of Ceremonies, if it was he, had to be at his desk, in his bedchamber, or in the garderobe.

  Under the veil of silence, she could steal into the parlor and navigate through the shadows until she found what she needed. And if she drew suspicion—

  No killing tonight. If the Master of Ceremonies was found dead, the parade plans might be changed. The whole scheme could fall apart.

  No, the Master of Ceremonies had to live.

  She removed a carefully sealed sachet from her belt pouch. It contained a soporific sponge, soaked in the juice of flax, unripe mulberry, lettuce seeds, ithara, mandragora leaves, ivy, lapathum, sen’a, and hemlock with hyoscyamus.

  Pressed to a man’s nose, it would weaken him, render him free of pain, and throw him into a dreamlike state. He would wake within some hours, drowsy and uncertain whether the scattered images in his mind were reality or fantasy.

  And all would proceed well.

  While the hall was empty and no sound came from within the rooms, she removed the skeleton key again. Exhaling, she inserted it into the lock and, painstakingly slow, turned it.

  A click. Unlocked.

  She swept off to the side, away from the hall’s sconces, and waited. Would that there were some way to cast sound magic without an incantation. A cantor could have rendered an area soundless with a gesture, but the non-innate casting by incantation usually frustrated the very purpose of the spell.

  Time ticked by. Guards walked past. Maids. Couriers.

  No one emerged from the quarters. She crept to the door and listened. Footsteps striding nearer.

  She leaped away to a dark corner. The knob turned. The door opened.

  A man exited. Old, balding, fat. Dressed in peacock-like turquoise-and-violet velvet.

  He stood, turning the knob, a frown etched into his plump face. Curious about the lock. She held her breath, straining to hear what he murmured.

  “…incompetent…” A few more unintelligible grumblings, and he locked the door.

  Scowling, he walked right past her.

  When he rounded the corner, she dashed to the door, unlocked it, entered, shut it without a sound, then locked it.

  A fire blazed in the hearth in the bedchamber. He’d return soon.

  She rushed to the study, to the desk, and riffled through the papers there. Gatherings, a ball—a ball for Veris? She paused, examining the dance suite.

  A lengthy night of dancing, all while the king’s so-called beloved was missing? The world, it seemed, went on. Either the king was very devoted to maintaining a charade of seeking a bride, or he didn’t love the bitch after all.

  She set it aside and searched the other papers.

  A map. She pushed the rest of the documents aside. Courdeval.

  At last, the parade route. The Joyeuse Entrée would begin in the Chardon District, then meander through the bazaar of Dandelion, traverse Violette’s middling residences, Alcea and Orchidée’s rich merchant districts, then finally proceed through Azalée. She traced the route through her mind again and again until it rooted firmly.

  Lists of guards, a requisition of two hundred barded horses, dancers, and so on… Such pageantry. A waste. The people—children—starved in the streets, while the royals and nobles spent coin like breaths on frivolity. And people expressed shock at the assassination of kings?

  She studied the parade route twice more, rearranged the papers as they were, then headed for the antechamber.

  A rasp of metal. A key inserted.

  She dashed to the bedchamber, to the windows. Three stories. She opened it, climbed out, and lowered herself to hang from the ledge, gently shutting the window behind her.

  Although hidden from view, she couldn’t afford to wait. Her gloved fingers strained to hold her against the stone.

  “Wings of wind, heed my call, / Bear me down, catch my fall.” She released the ledge.

  A sheet of wind caught her, slowing her fall, bringing her to the ground like a feather.

  She rolled toward the palace wall, taking cover in its shadows. Her satchel remained secure. Her shadow cloak had held. Her anima had dimmed, but she’d have resonance with Max tonight.

  Checking for her entry documents—they were in her shirt—she headed for the service gat
e. Once outside the walls, she’d find a place to put her mind to paper and plan a regicide.

  Chapter 14

  Barefoot, Rielle followed the crowd of slaves from the bath house around the outside of the villa. The high-noon sun’s blinding light caught the silken threads of a cobweb in a latticed window. Where were they going? The bath house was situated at the back of the property, behind the villa, not far from the barracks. She had a rough, if incomplete, layout, and a hazy schedule of some patrols.

  They proceeded around the side into the courtyard with the white-bottomed pool, where Farrad had killed a man. The red stain was gone.

  The immaculate flagstones burned her soles. Far in the corner, a cluster of pomegranate trees shaded a woman clad in a balaustine-red thiyawb, long hair shining in the light. She blinked.

  Two guards walked by, clad in black thiyawb, eyes narrow with watchfulness.

  The woman was gone.

  The crowd shuffled into the shade, and Rielle with it. Next to her was the Sileni woman she’d arrived with, wearing little more than modesty demanded—a red silken bra and a belt of skirts. A pleasure slave.

  Rielle rearranged her own robes—the upper and lower sandy-colored roughspun of a house slave. Praise the Divine she’d been spared the fate of this poor woman. Their path took them beneath the palms and their soothing shade, then under a colonnade. At the change of direction, she bumped into someone on her other side.

  “Pardon me,” she said quickly in High Nad’i as the walk continued past another set of guards at a door. Relief cooled her feet. The shaded walk under the colonnade.

  A girl of no more than fourteen smiled up at her, tossing a thick black braid over her shoulder. “Are you new?”

  Rielle nodded, mirroring the smile. “I just arrived today.”

  The girl inclined her head. “I am called Samara. I serve in the apothecary.”

  Rielle was about to give her name, then cleared her throat. “Thahab. I’m a… scribe, I’m told.”

  Samara’s eyes followed the path of two young shackled young men being escorted through the gate, led on a line held by a guard. “You’re fortunate to end up here, Thahab.”