by Jenna Glass
“So instead of openly making an offer, we help her to disappear instead. I can’t imagine the king would be overly shocked to find his abbess had risked everything to avoid being shut up in the Abbey again. We can hide her until the furor dies down, and then she can quietly take a place at the Academy under an assumed name.”
Chanlix stifled her first impatient answer, pausing to take a deep breath. Unfortunately, that deep breath brought her another whiff of mint, to which her stomach objected more strenuously. It seemed even the tea was more than she could handle at this stage of her pregnancy.
“Your heart is in the right place,” Chanlix said, “but it is simply out of the question.” Chanlix would have liked to tell Kailee not to come back to the Academy any more until Mairahsol was gone, but she knew the girl far too well by now to attempt any such foolishness. She believed that Mairahsol was her friend, and she would not hesitate to attempt to maintain that friendship behind Chanlix’s back. Chanlix had only to look at how readily Kailee had worked around her stepmother to know that.
“By all means, do what you can to give her second thoughts about attempting to undo Mother Brynna’s spell. And continue to tell me about your conversations and what she does with the elements. But don’t tempt her with something she cannot have. That would just be cruel.”
The look on Kailee’s face told Chanlix she was far from convinced, although she offered no further argument. Chanlix swallowed hard in hopes it would keep her gorge down for just a little longer as Kailee rose to leave.
“Please take this with you,” Chanlix said, pushing the nearly full teacup away from her.
Kailee grimaced in sympathy as she reached for the teacup, needing only the tiniest sweep of her fingers to locate it. “Is there anything I can get you instead?” she asked, showing her inherent kindness despite having been refused.
“Thank you, but no. I’ll be fine.”
Closing her eyes and breathing deeply, Chanlix battled the morning sickness for another few minutes before she had to make a sudden rush for the privy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Alys laid the talker on the desk in front of her, carefully adjusting it so that it was pointed directly at her face but would also reveal some of the background, which she had rearranged about twenty times over the course of the day. Her council had been of the opinion that she should hold this “meeting” in the throne room of her new palace, but though it might have been more grand than her old office at the town hall, it was not especially conducive to an intimate one-on-one conversation.
Alys wiped sweaty palms on her black silk skirts, wondering if she had made the right decision when she’d insisted on speaking with Prince Waldmir alone. The council had urged her to at least have Tynthanal with her, and it was more than reasonable for her lord chancellor to attend this first meeting with the Sovereign Prince of Nandel. But she feared that if there were a male in the room with her, Prince Waldmir might be less inclined to see her as the true sovereign, and that might weaken her position. She needed to make it clear she considered herself his equal if she had any hope that he would come to consider her one.
But despite all these logical reasons why she had chosen to meet with him alone in her office once he’d responded to her introductory flier, her nerves were buzzing and her stomach was tight with dread. She did not like it when people around her referred to Nandelites as barbarians, and she’d grown close enough to Shelvon that she would never think to use the term herself, but it was unquestionably true that their ways were very different from those she’d grown up with in Aaltah. And it was also true that in her attempts to protect Jinnell from a forced marriage with the sovereign prince, she had built him up into a monster in her own mind.
She wished she could avoid speaking with him at all, and now that it was too late, she cursed herself for sending the talker instead of carrying out any negotiations that might or might not happen through written correspondence. Communication between sovereigns had been carried out via fliers for all of recorded history, and perhaps she should have deemed that good enough for her and Prince Waldmir.
The talker on her desk chirped, causing her to jump and let out a startled squeak. She shook her head at herself, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly in hopes that it would settle her nerves. The last thing she needed was to show Waldmir any hint of anxiety, or he would lose all respect for her before she even opened her mouth to speak.
The talker continued to chirp as she forced herself to calm—or at least a semblance thereof—and fed a mote of Rho into it to complete the connection. She blinked to close her Mindseye, and when she opened her eyes again, the image of a thin, smiling man was hovering in the air above her desk.
He was dressed all in shades of gray. His doublet was a deep slate gray, and the cloak he wore draped over his shoulders was of a lighter cloud gray and lined with silver-gray fur that was probably fox. Gray hair. White beard. Gray eyes. And a gray crown with no adornment save for a few hematite cabochons.
When she got over the shock of his colorlessness, she noted that in more fashionable garb and with a less fearsome reputation, he would have been conspicuously handsome. His smile was perhaps a little practiced—a court smile rather than a genuine one—but his angular features were pleasing to the eye, and he wore his pale coloring with more grace and comfort than his daughter. Alys examined his face for some clue as to whether the Kai flier carrying Vengeance had ever reached him, but he showed no more sign of hostility in person than he had in his correspondence. Either the flier had never reached him—the mountainous terrain of Nandel and its sometimes violent storms did mean fliers were less reliable there than elsewhere—or he was excellent at hiding his feelings.
Like herself, he appeared to be alone, sitting in an uncomfortable-looking straight-backed chair with a barren stone wall as his only background. Alys knew Nandelites scorned adornment and decoration, but it seemed Prince Waldmir took this scorn to an extreme.
“Princess Alysoon, I presume?” Waldmir said, shaking his head, his eyes filled with wonder.
“Prince Waldmir,” she said with a nod of greeting.
“Your invention is…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head again. “I’d heard tell of these talkers of yours, but even when I received one from you, I could hardly credit that they would work as they do. Amazing.”
His praise sounded genuine, but Alys had to believe it cost him something. When she had sent him the talker, she had made sure her letter emphasized that the talker was powered mainly by Zal, a feminine element that was exceedingly rare anywhere but in Women’s Well. A part of her had been hoping he’d turn up his nose at the use of such obviously feminine magic, but here he was praising it instead.
Of course, considering he had accepted the cargo of trade goods Delnamal had stolen, he clearly was capable of getting over his prejudices with the right inducement.
“The magic here at Women’s Well is unique,” Alys said. And although her plan was to make this a pleasant and diplomatic conversation, she couldn’t stop herself from continuing. “Although if my understanding of the customs of Nandel is correct, your people would be largely unwilling to use any of our spells or magic items because they are women’s magic.”
Instead of looking insulted at her tone—which admittedly had been less than entirely respectful—his smile broadened. “You do indeed understand our customs correctly. However, I have never seen or heard of a women’s magic item that has quite the usefulness of these talkers of yours. They would be especially useful here in Nandel, where travel is rather more difficult than elsewhere in Seven Wells. During the winter months, the roads are nearly impassable in much of our principality, and most communication must be done by flier-borne letters, which naturally have significant limitations.”
Alys imagined the talkers would indeed be quite useful in such a mountainous principality. She made a regretful
face. “Unfortunately, we have an exclusive trade agreement with Rhozinolm for the talkers, so I’m afraid I cannot offer you a supply. We do have other magic items you may find equally useful, however.”
“I’m sure you do,” Waldmir agreed, though Alys did not think she was imagining the hint of condescension she heard in his voice. “But before we speak of such mundane topics, I wish to offer you my deepest sympathies on the loss of your daughter.”
For reasons that now eluded her, Alys had not expected condolences from Prince Waldmir, of all people, and his words stole the breath from her lungs as the pain of Jinnell’s death stabbed through her.
“She was a truly lovely young woman,” Waldmir continued in a surprisingly gentle voice. “King Delnamal told me she was being recalled to Aalwell for the sake of her health, and I had no reason to doubt him. It seemed to me at the time that the poor girl would be better served in a land where she had access to women’s magic that might have cured whatever ailed her. If I’d known what danger she’d be in, I would have told him that she was too ill to travel.”
Alys’s hands clutched at her skirts, and no amount of court training could keep her anguish from showing on her face. But when the first shock of pain eased, her thinking mind caught up with what her ears were hearing, and she snapped back into herself.
“Ill?” she said, her heart fluttering in her chest. She had never sought out any information about Jinnell’s fateful visit to Nandel and her meeting with her would-be bridegroom. She had not wanted to imagine what her daughter had been through during those terrible days and weeks before Delnamal brought her back to Aalwell to murder her for sheer spite.
Prince Waldmir nodded. “I’d wondered if you’d heard anything about her visit. It seems that you haven’t. Jinnell apparently fell ill with a stomach ailment as soon as her entourage left Aalwell. Her illness delayed her progress and necessitated an overnight stay at an inn. Coincidentally, your son and my daughter slipped away from Aalwell at the same time, and thanks to the overnight absence of the king, they were not discovered missing until they had enough of a head start to reach Women’s Well.”
Alys could do nothing but stare stupidly at the man from whom she’d tried so desperately to protect Jinnell. His gaze was sharp and keen, but not unkind. He did not on the surface look like a man who would marry and discard—or even execute—pretty young women of noble families with the same carelessness with which he would change horses. Alys might even allow herself to think there was a trace of kindness and compassion in his eyes, though she could hardly credit it.
“I cannot say I came to know your daughter well over the brief course of our acquaintance,” Waldmir said, “but she struck me as a girl of remarkable courage and spirit.” A small smile lifted the corners of his mouth, and his eyes went momentarily distant at some fleeting memory. “I would not be at all surprised to learn that her illness was self-inflicted.”
Alys nearly choked on the memory of Jinnell’s ill-fated attempt to replicate a healing potion on her own when she got impatient with the pace of their magic lessons. Jinnell hadn’t told her about it until well after the fact, but the healing potion she’d created had been missing a crucial element she couldn’t see, and while it had healed a small scratch exactly as a normal healing potion would, it had also made her violently sick to her stomach. Alys could almost see her precious daughter coming to the conclusion that making herself ill and delaying her travel to Nandel would give her brother and Shelvon a greater chance of escape. And she could also see Jinnell reaching the grim conclusion that sickening herself might be the only way to escape a forced marriage to Prince Waldmir.
“She made herself sick hoping she wouldn’t be forced to marry you,” Alys said, in too much pain to keep her loathing to herself. She was no diplomat, and it had been the height of folly for her to think she could have a civil conversation with this man.
Waldmir sighed heavily and with what sounded like genuine regret. “That may be the case. But I believe she and I came to understand each other over the course of her visit. I assured her that I would not wed her against her will. I am too old to risk having yet another wife who cannot bear me a son. I don’t know whether she would ultimately have accepted my proposal or not, but of course she did not have the chance to decide before she was recalled to Aalwell. If I’d had any inkling she’d return to a treason charge…” He sighed again.
Alys couldn’t think what to say, could hardly think what to feel. The wound of Jinnell’s death was still open and bleeding, and the most she could ask was that time would ease the sharpness of the pain, for she knew that no amount of time would cause the wound to heal.
“Then again,” Waldmir continued, “I’m not sure remaining in The Keep would have saved her in the end. This is pure conjecture on my part, but King Delnamal has never struck me as a man of great courage or strength of will. I am not certain her ‘execution’ didn’t occur after her illness had taken her life. She was already so frail when she left here, and the long journey could not have helped.”
The savage snarl that rose from Alys’s throat surprised her, and she wanted to reach through the illusion in front of her and wrap her hands around Waldmir’s throat. “If that’s the case, then she died because of you,” she spat. Diplomacy be damned! She should have listened to her first instinct, which had told her there was no point in establishing communications with Nandel at all, no matter how desperately Women’s Well needed more resources. She could not regard him with the eyes of a sovereign, could not quell her maternal rage enough to be prudent.
Waldmir’s eyes turned hard and flinty for just a moment, revealing a glimpse of the fearsome creature that lurked beneath the almost kindly façade he’d been showing her. But his emotions were under far better control than Alys’s, and the hint of anger disappeared so quickly she might have thought she’d imagined it.
“Perhaps I should have kept my theories and opinions to myself,” he said, “but I thought it best we lay our cards on the table from the beginning. We are neither of us fully ready to sit at the negotiating table at this time, but the world being as unsettled as it is, that may not be the case indefinitely. I hope we may speak again when you’ve had some time to come to terms with what I’ve told you.”
Alys highly doubted such a time would ever arrive.
* * *
—
Chanlix did not really want the cup of tea she held clasped in her hands, and she suspected Tynthanal was equally unenthusiastic about his own, despite having asked for it. They sat together on the sofa in her cozy parlor on the eve of his wedding, and neither of them seemed inclined to suggest a move to the bedroom. Chanlix stared into her cup of tea, feeling shy and nervous in a way she hadn’t since the earliest days of their courtship.
“Will it bother you if I come to the wedding?” she found herself asking, still staring into the tea. “Kailee was rather insistent about it, but I don’t want to make things any more…uncomfortable than they already will be.”
Kailee had been more than insistent; she had, in fact, extracted a promise. “You are a part of this marriage, too,” Kailee had said earnestly, “even if only we three know it.”
“I don’t imagine the Grand Magus of Women’s Well can gracefully bow out of attending a marriage of state even if it would bother me,” he responded.
She looked up and met his gaze with a wan smile. “Probably not,” she agreed. The gentry of Women’s Well all knew about their love affair, of course, and it was possible that Lady Vondelmai and her entourage had heard the rumors by now. Likely no one in attendance would be surprised by her absence, and there would be whispers whether she was there or not. But Kailee’s father and even Queen Ellinsoltah were planning to attend, as it were, by means of a talker, and it would not do to offend them.
Tynthanal put down his tea, reaching over to take her hand and giving it a warm squeeze. She squeezed back, her th
roat tight with emotion. She had resigned herself to this marriage long before he had, but she was far from eager to see it happen. And she was painfully aware that something had subtly changed between them in the time since he had signed the marriage agreement, that a distance had appeared and was growing wider. Instead of cuddling in his arms as she used to, she sat an arm’s length away from him on the sofa, and though they had kissed in greeting when he first arrived, this squeezing of hands was the first physical contact they’d had since then.
“Would it be all right with you if…” She cleared her throat. “If we don’t sleep together tonight? It would feel…disrespectful, on the night before your wedding.”
Tynthanal sighed heavily, and Chanlix thought she detected a hint of relief in the sound. “Of course it’s all right,” he replied. His thumb rubbed gently over the back of her hand. “I don’t suppose it matters how convincingly Kailee tells us she approves of our relationship. It seems clear to me that neither of us approves of it, as much as we’d like to.”
Chanlix closed her eyes and laid her head against the back of the sofa, realizing that he had just put into words what she’d been refusing to see. She had told herself repeatedly that their love would continue unabated despite his marriage, and she’d professed not to care about the official trappings of matrimony. And yet in the ceremony tomorrow, Tynthanal would make vows that—being the man he was—he could not help but take seriously.
“You realized all along, didn’t you?” she whispered, shaking her head at herself for her unwillingness to see the truth. “That’s why you resisted as long and as hard as you did.”
Tynthanal snorted softly. “You give me too much credit. I resisted because I wanted to marry the woman I love, not a stranger. It certainly never occurred to me that empty vows might matter to me. To either of us.”
