Shalador's Lady

by Bishop, Anne

  If she asked Theran to kill Kenjim, would he do it without asking questions?

  No. Not without questions. Even if Theran would do that for her, Jhorma and Bardoc would insist on some justification—and would insist on her leaving Dena Nehele, which would ruin everything.

  Kenjim has already considered that. He knows the knife he’s holding against my throat is sharper than any I can hold against his. I can’t strike against him without hurting myself more.

  “Very well,” she said coldly. “We’ll just say that you’ve completed your rotation as escort and are returning to Bhak to take up other duties on behalf of your Queen. Is that satisfactory?”

  “Quite satisfactory.”

  “In that case, get out.”

  He reached for the door but didn’t open it. When he looked at her, she thought she saw regret, maybe even sorrow, in his eyes.

  “Do yourself a favor, Kermilla. Cut the acquaintance with those two young Warlords. Stop playing these games. Go back to Bhak and start taking care of what is already yours. If you don’t, I won’t be the only man who walks away from your court.” He opened the door and walked out.

  She didn’t go down to dinner that night, claiming a sick headache. And that wasn’t far from the truth, since she had blurred the afternoon with many generous glasses of brandy.

  Tonight she would brood and sulk and get gloriously drunk. Tomorrow, when those Warlord Princes came to dinner, she needed to shine.

  CHAPTER 19

  KAELEER

  *Bastard?*

  Daemon opened his eyes, not sure if the call that had broken his sleep had been real or part of a dream.

  *Bastard?*

  Ebon-gray psychic thread. No doubt now that the call was real. *Prick?* He waited. Didn’t get a response. Just a sense of pain running through that psychic thread. *Lucivar?*

  *I need help.*

  Daemon flung the sheet aside and rolled out of bed, startling Jaenelle. *Where are you?*

  *Home.*

  *Are you hurt?*

  *No. Marian . . .* Pain. Grief.

  Mother Night. *I’ll be there as soon as I can.*

  He rushed into the adjoining bedroom to dress. Jaenelle rushed in right behind him.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” He pulled on trousers and a shirt that he didn’t bother to button. He grabbed a jacket, shoes, and socks, then vanished them. “Something about Marian.”

  “May the Darkness have mercy.” Jaenelle ran back to her bedroom, hollering as she went, “Get one of the Coaches. I’m going with you.”

  He hesitated, even considered arguing with her. She was still in the days of her moontime when she couldn’t use more than basic Craft without causing herself excruciating pain. But she was a Healer, the best Healer in the whole damn Realm, and she was Lucivar’s sister and Queen. If Marian needed more help than the Eyrien Healer could provide, Jaenelle would step in, no matter the cost.

  And this time, as long as her own life wasn’t at risk, he wouldn’t try to stop her.

  “I’ll wait for you downstairs.” He was out of the room and running through the Hall to reach the outer door closest to the stables and the building that housed the carriages and Coaches.

  The footmen who were on night duty didn’t call to him, but word must have passed as they figured out his direction because Beale was waiting at the outer door for him.

  “Because of your haste and the late hour, I assumed the small Coach would be sufficient,” Beale said. “It’s being brought around to the landing web since that would be more convenient for the Lady.”

  Still panting from the run, Daemon nodded. It seemed Beale was thinking a lot more clearly than he was. “Guess I should have contacted you to begin with.”

  “You have other things on your mind.”

  He hurried through the corridors, buttoning his shirt as he went, and reached the great hall at the same time Jaenelle came running down the stairs. They raced out the open front door to the Coach on the landing web.

  Holt waited beside the Coach, dressed in nothing but a pair of short trousers. As Jaenelle entered the Coach, a basket suddenly appeared beside the footman. He grabbed it and shoved it into Daemon’s hands.

  “The best Mrs. Beale could do in the time,” Holt said.

  Daemon handed the basket to Jaenelle and took the driver’s seat while Holt closed the door and moved away from the landing web.

  Jaenelle took the seat beside Daemon, still holding the basket. “Did Lucivar say anything?”

  “He’s scared, he’s grieving, and he’s in pain.”

  She didn’t ask anything else.

  He raised the Coach off the landing web, caught the Black Wind, and raced to Ebon Rih as fast as the Black could take them.

  “Wait until I set this thing down,” Daemon snapped as Jaenelle started to rise from her seat. “If you fall off the damn mountain, you won’t help any of us.”

  She gave him a look that normally produced a cold sweat. He ignored the look, just as he ignored the odd way his hands trembled when he remembered the way Lucivar sounded.

  Couldn’t think about that. One of them needed to be the warrior who could draw the line and defend it. It didn’t sound like Lucivar was in any shape to defend anything, including himself.

  Especially himself.

  Daemon opened the Coach door, and they both rocked back from the emotions flooding from the eyrie above them.

  “Can you deal with him?” Jaenelle asked.

  “I’ll deal.”

  She left the Coach and raced up the stairs. He stayed a couple of steps behind her so he wouldn’t trip her. She ran past Lucivar, who was standing in the flagstone courtyard in front of the eyrie—standing so perfectly still, as if even a deep breath might shatter him.

  Daemon approached his brother slowly, cautiously. “Lucivar.”

  Lucivar continued to stare straight ahead, but one tear slipped down his face.

  Daemon did a fast psychic probe of the eyrie and surrounding land. Marian and Nurian, the Eyrien Healer, were inside with Jaenelle. But the other two people he’d expected to find were missing. *Father?* he called on a Black spear thread.

  *Daemonar is with me at the Keep,* Saetan said. *Take care of Lucivar.*

  *Done.* Knowing the boy was safe, he focused once again on his brother. “Lucivar?”

  “Miscarriage.” Lucivar’s voice broke. “We lost the baby.”

  Mother Night. “I’m sorry.”

  Daemon brushed a finger over Lucivar’s shoulder, an offer of contact with no expectations. A moment later, he was holding on to a sobbing man.

  “Is it my fault, Daemon?” Lucivar asked. “Is it my fault?”

  “How could it be?” Daemon stroked Lucivar’s hair and added another layer to the soothing spells he was wrapping around his brother.

  “Sh-she got pregnant during the rut. You know what we’re like during that time. You know. Maybe I damaged her inside. Maybe . . .”

  “Shh.” Daemon rocked him gently. Rocked and soothed. He had a feeling Saetan was doing much the same thing with a frightened little boy. “Shh.”

  He wouldn’t let Lucivar say it, wouldn’t let Lucivar keep thinking that. But it was possible, and they both knew it. That was part of the pain. Until Nurian—or more to the point, Jaenelle—said otherwise, it was a possibility.

  The tears finally eased, but Lucivar still clung to him. Since he was facing the eyrie, he saw Jaenelle first.

  “Prick,” he whispered.

  Lucivar straightened up, wiped his eyes, and turned toward her. Jaenelle studied Lucivar. “If you’ve been out here grieving, that’s fine. If you’ve been out here blaming yourself, you’re going to piss off your wife as well as your sister.”

  “Cat . . . ?” Lucivar looked so vulnerable.

  “There was nothing you had done before—or could have done now—to change this,” Jaenelle said gently. “The babe didn’t form right. It couldn’t survive, so Mari
an’s body released it. A simple and natural thing, despite how much the heart hurts because of it.”

  “Marian?” Daemon asked.

  “She’ll be fine in every way,” Jaenelle said, still looking at Lucivar. “She needs to rest for a few days—and she needs to grieve without feeling that you see her grief as a kind of blame. Marian lost a baby tonight. So did you.” She turned her head toward the eyrie. “Nurian has everything cleaned up. Go be with your wife, Lucivar. She needs you.”

  Lucivar hesitated. Then he gently touched Jaenelle’s cheek and went into the eyrie.

  Daemon slipped an arm around her waist. “Did you tell him the truth?”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “Why would I tell him anything else?”

  “To spare him if he was responsible for the miscarriage.”

  The air around them chilled. “A smart man wouldn’t call a Healer a liar,” she said too softly.

  “A smart man also knows that Healers sometimes lie.” He looked in her eyes and waited.

  “Healers sometimes lie,” Jaenelle acknowledged. “But not this time. Blaming himself for something that wasn’t his fault and wasn’t anything he could have changed is an indulgence his wife and son can’t afford. Neither can he. If you can’t help him see that, his father will.”

  Interesting. Especially since she sounded absolutely sure of that.

  Nurian walked out of the eyrie, looking tired. “I have a healing brew simmering on the stove. Needs another ten minutes.”

  “I can finish it,” Jaenelle said.

  “I took the linens,” Nurian said, lowering her voice. “Marian asked if I could get them cleansed, but . . .”

  Jaenelle shook her head. “A Black Widow might be able to cleanse the psychic residue out of the cloth enough to be acceptable to Marian, but no one is going to be able to cleanse those linens enough for Lucivar to tolerate. We’ll get them replaced.”

  “I thought that would be the way of it.” Nurian paused. “Should I wake Jillian and send her to the Keep to watch Daemonar?”

  “Let her sleep. It would be better to have her help later in the morning when the High Lord needs to rest. You get some rest too. We’ll be here to look after them.”

  “All right. I’ll be back in the morning.”

  Spreading her wings, Nurian flew to the eyrie she shared with her younger sister.

  “I’d better keep an eye on that brew.” Jaenelle gave Daemon a quick kiss and walked into the eyrie.

  He was still standing outside an hour later when Surreal showed up.

  “I heard, more or less,” she said as she climbed the last stair and joined him in the courtyard. “So who needs to be babied and who needs to be bullied?”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Something is wrong with Marian. Lucivar is distraught. Daemonar is staying with Uncle Saetan.” Surreal hooked her hair behind one ear. “And you’re in trouble, by the way. Mostly forgiven because it was clear you had left your brains somewhere between the bedroom and the landing web and couldn’t be relied on right now.”

  He stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Apparently there are rules when there is a family crisis. You broke the rules.”

  “I wasn’t aware of any,” he said coldly.

  “Uh-huh. Uncle Saetan is, and after you arrived here, he contacted Beale, and Beale then informed Mrs. Beale of where you were and why. Rainier is on his way, but he has to wait for the first round of food Mrs. Beale has prepared. Chaosti is also on his way, but he’ll stop at the Hall for whatever wasn’t ready when Rainier headed out.”

  Hell’s fire. Was any of that supposed to make sense? “Surreal.” “Don’t snarl at me. You’re the one who pissed off your cook by not telling her there was a family emergency and asking her to prepare food so none of us needed to think about that.”

  “Marian lost the baby. No one gives a damn about food right now.”

  “Shit.” She looked out over the mountain. “Shit.”

  He didn’t like being jabbed about it, but there were going to be a lot of people coming and going over the next few days to give whatever help they could, and they would need to be fed.

  Surreal drew in a breath and huffed it out. “All right, then. You and Uncle Saetan can baby Marian until she starts snarling at you, and Jaenelle and I will bully Lucivar.”

  He bristled. “Don’t you think Lucivar deserves a little pampering too?”

  She gave him an odd look. “Sugar, to an Eyrien male, being bullied is a kind of pampering. Don’t ask me why, but sometimes nothing says ‘I love you’ to a male better than getting a whack upside the head.”

  She walked into the eyrie, leaving him out there to ponder the perversity of his own gender and the mystery of hers.

  CHAPTER 20

  TERREILLE

  After renting a horse at Grayhaven’s Coaching station, Ranon headed for the parts of the town where he’d spent some time. He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be wasting a day pursuing something Shira couldn’t explain. But she’d gone all hissy cat on him last night and insisted that he come to Grayhaven today.

  That wasn’t fair, Ranon scolded himself as he rode through the streets and felt a grim uneasiness settling over him. Saying she had been a “hissy cat” diminished the power of the feelings Shira had last night. And remembering the tightness in her face, the worry in her eyes . . . Something was pushing her to push at him, but this time her tangled web only gave her a sense of when something was coming and not what was coming.

  Now that he was here, he wished he’d asked Archerr or Shaddo to come with him.

  This town didn’t feel right anymore. Or more to the point, it was starting to feel the way the towns and villages had felt for the past several generations: discouraged, resigned, wary. Angry. He rode through the shopping district and had the odd sense that shopkeepers were letting their windows stay dirty and weren’t bothering to sweep the walks as a deliberate way to discourage the interest of some customers.

  Like aristos. Or Queens.

  You don’t have to go up to the mansion, Shira had said. Just go to the places in town where we’d shopped or visited. Then listen to your heart.

  He could have used something less cryptic. Then again, maybe the messages were here. The women who sold them plants when Gray was working on the gardens at the mansion asked him if the Rose Queen was coming back to Grayhaven. Some of the shopkeepers came out of their stores to ask if the court was returning. He heard the hope in their voices when they asked, and he saw the dull acceptance in their eyes when he told them Cassidy and her court were remaining in Eyota.

  He stopped at a tavern for a short glass of ale. It was late morning, too early for a drink as far as he was concerned, but he’d gone in because you could usually get a feel for what the men were thinking—and there were too many men there for the time of day. That in itself was not a good sign.

  Why wasn’t Theran seeing any of this? The man was supposed to be ruling this town. Why wasn’t he heeding warnings that were so clear? Grayhaven was the capital of Dena Nehele. When Cassidy left a few weeks ago, there were signs of people shaking off the years of war and the decades of abuse at the hands of twisted Queens. Now shops that had been open were closed, empty. Now people hurried along the walks with the same hunched wariness that had been typical of the people everywhere in Dena Nehele.

  What was Theran doing that people were reacting this way? Ranon didn’t like him, but that was a clash of personalities. It didn’t mean Theran wasn’t a good man or a good Warlord Prince. So why wasn’t he doing something to fix whatever this was?

  Ranon continued riding through the streets, becoming more and more edgy. Enemy camp. Enemy ground. His instincts shouldn’t be telling him those things, but he could feel himself preparing for a fight.

  When he reached the guardhouse that marked the line that separated the landen part of town from the Blood, he hesitated for a long moment before he urged his horse forward and continued down
the street.

  There was an ugly feeling here. As he rode toward the craftsmen’s courtyard, he created a skintight Opal shield around himself. Where were the craftsmen? Where was the merchandise?

  He looked over at the area that had been occupied by the weaver family and saw James Weaver step toward him, looking grim, angry, and battle-hard.

  “Prince,” James said, “I would speak to you.” He caught himself, as if just realizing he’d issued a kind of challenge. Then he added, “If you will permit it.”

  Ranon stared at the man, assessing the temper he saw in those eyes. He and Shira had come here often while Shira was healing JuliDee’s face and checking the eye that had almost been lost because of two Warlord pricks. Those sessions, and his and Shira’s presence among these people, had become cordial enough that Shira would have a cup of tea with the wife and daughter while James shared a glass of ale with him.

  So what would put that look in a man’s eyes? Why would there be so much tension just because one of the Blood rode by?

  The answer came to him. He was off his horse and grabbing James’s arms so fast the other man didn’t have time to react.

  “Is something wrong with your family? Is that why they aren’t with you? Your wife? Has something happened to your daughter, your son?”

  James relaxed. “They’re all well, Prince. I thank you for asking.” Then he looked uneasy, so when he stepped back, Ranon let him go. “The Rose Queen stood up for us landens, and your Lady healed my little girl. You helped me and mine, so I thought . . . fair warning, like.”

  “Fair warning about what?” Ranon felt a chill settle in his gut.

  “When Prince Grayhaven’s bitch takes control of Dena Nehele, there’s going to be another uprising. And this time it won’t end until all of us are dead—or all of you.”

  Ranon stared at James, shocked speechless. Then he shook his head. “Cassidy’s court stands. She rules everything but this town, which is under Prince Grayhaven’s control. Kermilla isn’t going to rule Dena Nehele.”