Oath of Fealty

by Elizabeth Moon

  A grunt from behind indicated that Veksin was thinking about that. Now on the second floor, she led them to her uncle’s study. “That,” she said, nodding at Liart’s symbol on the wall and the bloodstains on the floor. “I am not wise in such matters, but it seems to me this is the worst. Next would be the bedrooms, with blood on the thresholds and bloodmarks under the beds.”

  “Are there simple traps here?” Marshal Tamis asked.

  “Undoubtedly,” Dorrin said. “I have found two hands’ worth at least, so far, and expect to find more. No chair here is completely safe, nor drawer nor cabinet door, and I would not handle those things that look most interesting or valuable. I will show you one trap I have not yet disarmed.” With the butt of her dagger, Dorrin pressed on the back of one chair; a spike emerged from the upholstery, its tip clearly darker than the rest. “That is poison,” Dorrin said. “Anyone who sits in this chair, without the trap being disarmed, looses a spring and that spike will pierce clothing, even leather.”

  “Can you disarm it?”

  “Not without taking the chair apart, which is itself dangerous. On Verrakai’s own domain, I burned such things, which also destroyed the poison. Here, in the city, fire is too dangerous. I planned to have them broken up in the stableyard, and burn the parts containing poison in the kitchen hearth.”

  “Will you wish to observe our work?” Veklis asked.

  “No,” Dorrin said. “As I am required at the palace, I have things to do before then. Call if you need me; I will tell you when I leave for the palace.”

  Downstairs, she gave up on the two difficult chests, and looked into the larder. There she found a plain wooden box, untrapped, and in the linen press off the large reception room, a small tablecloth, heavily embroidered, for a cover. She herself packed the treasure into it, covered it with the tablecloth, and tied the cloth on with blue velvet ropes from the drapes. A certain sullen resentment emanated from the box; Dorrin murmured to it as to a child.

  “You will be safe; you will be honored; all will be well.”

  I am yours; you are mine; no other will suffice.

  “If you are mine, then it is my will you abide here for the time being,” Dorrin said.

  No more blood!

  “No more blood,” Dorrin said. “A place of safety and honor.”

  How long?

  How long indeed? She had intended to live and die as a faithful vassal of the king of Tsaia. Yet the oath she had sworn did not say “until death” as many such oaths did. “I do not know how long,” she said to the treasure. “But for now, abide in peace.”

  Until you come again, but do not wait too long.

  The sense of resentment vanished, replaced by watchful patience. Dorrin laid her hand on the box, and through all the wrappings felt a tingle as if she held one of those treasures in her hand.

  The rest of the morning, as she woke the first three from sound sleep and chivvied them back to work, let the other two sleep, answered myriad questions from the cook, from the escort who were awake, from the Marshals, she felt like someone trying to push a handful of balls uphill—the moment she let go of one problem, two others would roll down on her. Finally she was ready to return to the palace: properly dressed in clean clothes, the box lashed to the pack-saddle of one horse, mounted on a horse she’d had to remind her escort three times to groom. Even as she turned to ride away, Efla appeared, to report that she’d seen a mouse in the larder.

  Dorrin spent the short ride from the house to the palace wondering if she could find any trustworthy house staff for hire at such a time. At the gate, this time, she was recognized and waved through; stable help took the horses and palace servants ran out to help, putting the box in a sling between poles.

  “It is a coronation gift,” Dorrin said. “The prince knows of it.” They nodded and followed her to the entrance.

  “The Master of Ceremonies wishes to meet with you,” said the guard at the door. “He has been summoned.”

  The Master of Ceremonies, wearing a short cape of brilliant red over Kostvan colors, an eye-startling combination, strode down the hall toward her.

  “My lord Duke, welcome! I apologize for not being at hand yestereve when you arrived; the prince bids you to luncheon with him, if you will, and has given me explicit instructions about your generous gift. It is not, I understand, suitable for public display?”

  “As the prince wishes,” Dorrin said. “He knows what it is; it might provoke … comment.”

  “Then come with me to the treasury, and we will see it safe housed.” He signaled to the servants and led them all deep into the palace, again confusing Dorrin’s sense of direction. “This is not the old treasury. The old treasury was found to have a tunnel entrance, from the days when it was the cellar of the original tower. That tower fell in the Girdish war, its secrets lost until, after the attack on the prince, we looked more closely. The new treasury is above ground, in the interior.”

  Guards stood at the door; the Master of Ceremonies signed a book on a stand to one side, then unlocked the door and led Dorrin and the servants with the box inside. It looked much like the bank vaults Dorrin had seen in Aarenis—a windowless room with shelves, boxes, heavy leather sacks, ledger books.

  “Does the prince know what this contains?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Dorrin said. “He, Duke Mahieran, and High Marshal Seklis.”

  “It must be inventoried,” the Master of Ceremonies said. “That is the Seneschal’s task.” To one of the guards he said, “Fetch the Seneschal.”

  The Seneschal and the High Marshal arrived together, and shooed the Master of Ceremonies away. “You can instruct Duke Verrakai on the ceremony when we’ve inventoried the gifts.” Dorrin unwrapped the box, opened it, and then unwrapped the gifts, opening the box to show its jewels still intact. The Seneschal, with no change of expression, wrote down a description of each one. Then he and Dorrin rewrapped, retied, and finally she was able to leave and attend the Master of Ceremonies, a few paces away from the door, waving his arms and giving directions to the servants.

  “There you are! I must conduct you to the prince’s dining hall for luncheon, and on the way, explain the details of tomorrow’s ceremonies. You will need—” He looked at Dorrin. “—you will need a ducal robe—do you have one?”

  “Yes,” Dorrin said, stretching her legs to keep up with him, and trying at the same time to understand where in the massive pile she was. “I do—you mean the long one with fur at the cuffs?”

  “Yes. And shoes, not boots. Your sword will do, but it must have a tassel, in silver, the length of your hand; if you do not have that, you should seek out the royal outfitters in Bridge Street. Short breeks, tied at the knee with ribbons of your family colors, with a rosette. The shirt to be adorned with lace—wider than that on your shirt today. A velvet cap, with a feather—silver pheasant is best.”

  He kept on, all the way down a set of stairs Dorrin was sure she had not seen before, then announced her at the door of a room that overlooked the front courtyard. After a moment, she recognized it from the evening before, but now the long table was covered with a green cloth, centered with bouquets of roses, cream and pink and red and yellow, their scent filling the room. Besides the prince and Duke Mahieran, she saw other men and women in the dress of nobles … by the colors and insignia, this was the Regency Council.

  “Be welcome, Duke Verrakai,” the prince said. One by one he called the others forward to introduce her. Dorrin knew Marrakai had been Kieri Phelan’s friend; the burly man wearing the ducal chain gave her an appraising look and finally nodded.

  “You look like one of Kieri’s men—and it was you who rode through here like the winter gale to come to his aid, was it not?”

  “Yes,” Dorrin said. If he would not give her an honorific, she would not either.

  “You’re very different from the previous Duke Verrakai.”

  “I should hope so.” Dorrin smiled at him. “Whatever I am, my lords and ladies, your princ
e, tomorrow our king, found me worthy. If you have a quarrel with his judgment, do not bring it to me.”

  “Well said, Duke Verrakai,” Duke Serrostin said. “I have no quarrel with you, but with your family I had several.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The next morning, Dorrin arrived at the palace to find that she had been assigned a dressing room and two tiring maids to help. The tiring maids, used to helping noble ladies into their dresses, stared at Dorrin in her trousers and boots with some dismay. “But—you’re a lady …”

  “I’m a duke,” Dorrin said. “And I’ve spent my life as a soldier. I brought the clothes I was told to bring.”

  Giggling, the tiring maids helped her into them: the elaborately ruffled shirt with its lace collar and cuffs, the striped, bloused short trousers, the slashed doublet through which the shirt’s sleeves had to be carefully tugged to make symmetrical puffs, the stockings, the ribbons tied at the knee, the formal high-heeled court shoes, silver buckles decorated with yet more jewels in the Verrakai colors. Everything had ruffles or lace or jewels or some combination of these.

  It was ridiculous, Dorrin thought, and yet … she did feel different, inside that magnificence. She fastened Falk’s ruby to the lace of the collar, one drop of red in all that blue and silver and gray.

  A knock on the door. “A half-glass, my lord,” came a voice through the door. Dorrin picked up the blue velvet cap with its silver-pheasant feather and put it on, then looked in the mirror as the tiring maids lifted the formal robe and held it for her. She slipped her arms into the sleeves. In the mirror, she saw the transformation completed. No more Dorrin the runaway. No more Dorrin the student at Falk’s Hall. No more Dorrin, cohort captain in Phelan’s Company … but Dorrin, Duke Verrakai. This was what people would see, now and in the future … not her past, but her present.

  She smiled at the tiring maids, and thanked them for their help. Another knock on the door. “Time, my lord.” The door opened. The Master of Ceremonies looked her up and down. “Excellent,” he said. Behind him, a servant with a flat box. He opened it. “Your court chain of office.”

  Unlike the ducal chain the prince had sent before, this was all gold, the links beaten into the shape of the Tsaian rose. She bent her head and he lifted it, then laid it on her shoulders. “Come along,” he said, as if to a child, and she followed him.

  In the corridor near the Grange Hall, Knights of the Bells stood on either side, their mail shining, their swords belted on. The other nobles were milling about, chatting. Dorrin looked around. Duke Marrakai caught her eye and waved her over.

  “We need to stay at this end, we dukes,” he said. “You’ve met everyone, I believe.” By “everyone” he meant the other dukes, Dorrin understood. Behind them, clusters of counts, and beyond that, barons. The dukes were easily the most resplendent.

  And the hottest. Barons, Dorrin had noticed, had sleeveless court gowns, showing the puffs of their shirts, and only a narrow edging of fur at the neck. Even counts had less fur than the dukes, who were all, by now, fanning themselves. She had not brought a fan. Duke Marrakai offered his, but she shook her head, and in a moment a palace servant came up and handed her one.

  The Master of Ceremonies reappeared, having gathered up some laggard barons, and chivvied them all into the right order. Dorrin was appalled to find herself at the head of the line, beside Duke Mahieran and behind the Lord Herald with his beribboned staff. “Don’t worry,” Mahieran said. “Just do what I do, only on the other side of the hall and right after.”

  Then the Bells of Vérella rang out, chime after chime, followed by the blare of trumpets; servants pulled back the doors, and they went in. At the far end of the Hall, the crown prince, all in white, stood below the throne between—Dorrin blinked, not having expected this—the Marshal-General of Gird and the new Marshal-Judicar. Dorrin led her file of nobles to the right, around the roped-off area in the middle of the hall; when Duke Mahieran stopped, she turned to face him.

  She had not imagined that a trial of arms would be part of the coronation ceremony, but the prince and Marshal-General exchanged blows that could be heard clearly throughout the Hall. The Marshal-General stepped back and saluted. “He is sound of body and skilled in arms,” she said loudly. “The Company of Gird accepts his sword.”

  “Accepted,” the nobles said.

  Then the lowest-ranking baron spoke up. “Is he without blemish, as a king must be?”

  “Let it be shown,” Duke Mahieran said.

  Servants stepped into the central area, folding the prince’s clothes as he took them off. He stood before them, bare as at birth, and turned. Dorrin could not take her eyes off that fair young body.

  “He is without blemish,” the baron said. “The company of barons accepts him.”

  The prince had dressed again. The lowest-ranking count spoke up. “Does he know the rule of law, or the rule of passion?”

  “Let it be shown,” Duke Mahieran said again.

  The Marshal-Judicar came forward. He asked questions, so many that Dorrin lost count.

  “He is a man of law,” the count said finally. “The company of counts accepts him.”

  Duke Mahieran turned to the dukes beside him, and then across from him. “What say you, Dukes of the realm: Do you accept this man, Mikeli Vostan Keriel, as your king?”

  “We accept him!” they said, Dorrin as loud as the rest.

  The prince walked back to the throne and turned; servants lifted the robe, deep red embroidered in silver, and he put his arms into it. Then he sat.

  Mahieran stepped forward; the Marshal-General met him, and together they lifted the crown of Tsaia from its stand. Together they held it over his head.

  “All here witness the High Lord’s blessing, Gird’s grace, and the consent of nobles of this realm, of the crowning of Mikeli, King of Tsaia.” They lowered the crown to his head and stepped back.

  The Marshal-General handed him a different sword, this one obviously old, in a battered scabbard. “Gird’s sword: may you wield it to defend your realm.” He took it, kissed it, and handed it back to her.

  Mahieran handed him a scepter. “The staff of law: may you wield it to defend the right.” Again Mikeli took it, kissed it, and handed it back. The Bells pealed again, a great clamor, and trumpets blew a deafening fanfare.

  When silence fell again, Mikeli, now king of Tsaia, waited while servants removed the pillars and ropes. Then the nobles closed in from side to side, the two lines slightly offset so that Duke Mahieran was a half stride in front of Dorrin. As each knelt and gave the oath of fealty, he clasped their hands, and bent to kiss their heads as they kissed his hand. Dorrin found it more moving than she had expected.

  After returning the court chain of office to the Master of Ceremonies and putting off the great robe, she mingled with other nobles and their families in the airy second-floor reception room before the formal procession. She’d been allowed to invite her distant relative Ganarrion Verrakai, cleared of any suspicion of conspiracy and freed from prison only a few days before she arrived in Vérella. He wore his Royal Guard uniform. They’d never met; they fumbled some time for a common topic before she mentioned Paksenarrion, and he brightened. “I met her, on her way to Lyonya,” he said. “Were you her commander, in Phelan’s company?”

  Dorrin explained, and from there they chatted easily about military matters, horses, and the strange ways of the gods. The king had suggested Ganarrion as a possible heir; the more she talked to him, the more she was inclined to agree. They did not mention the Order of Attainder or the continuing search for their fugitive relatives. “Come stay with me in Verrakai’s city house,” she said.

  “My pardon, my lord Duke, but I cannot. I am on duty, as we all are—this leave of a few hours is all I can spend with you. Please understand, it is not lack of respect.”

  “Of course not,” Dorrin said. “But we should know each other better. Perhaps you can visit in the east—for Midwinter Feast, if that’s allowed. If not
, I will understand.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” he said. “When do you return to the east?”

  “In a few days,” Dorrin said. “I have much to do there. I will return for Autumn Court, of course. I will be presenting an old friend, Jandelir Arcolin, who was Phelan’s senior captain and is now to gain a title and take over that domain.”

  “I will try to come, though if I’m assigned once more to the northeast, I doubt very much it will be possible,” Ganarrion said. “I would like to meet—do you know his title?”

  “No,” Dorrin said. “You should meet him, however; we’ve been friends a long time, and fought many campaigns together.”

  A servant in the palace livery came up to them and handed Ganarrion a folded note. He read it and shook his head. “My lord, I’m sorry—I’m called for. I hope to see you again before you leave.”

  “Go safely—I need not tell you to be careful.” She watched him go, and sent prayers after him.

  Duke Mahieran bore down on her. “I didn’t want to interrupt while you were talking to your relative, but we need your advice about something.”

  “Certainly,” Dorrin said. “What is it?”

  “Let us find a quieter place.” He led her to a smaller room. A moment later, Duke Marrakai joined them; Dorrin felt a sudden tension.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “You reported that some of your relatives could change from one body to another and thus go undetected—and that you had found a few such. How did you know?”

  “I found the first evidence in the family rolls,” Dorrin said. “But those do not give the names—never the full name, and often no name at all—of the person whose body is taken. Those who make the transfer are marked as deaths in the rolls, with a special symbol.”

  “But how did you find those who had transferred? You sent word you had killed some—killed them permanently?”

  “Yes,” Dorrin said, thinking of the children buried in the orchard. “Those are definitely dead. How I knew them—as you know, the prince—the king—gave me leave to use my magery as I needed. That let me see something wrong about their eyes and spirit.”