Phoenix Ashes (The Landers Saga Book 3)

by Nilsen, Karen

  "Your Highness?" Merius gripped the armrest of the divan and glanced around as if to make sure he really was where he thought he was--the prince's offhand remark had evidently disconcerted him. I smiled as I remembered Mordric's rant to me after council about the paint, which apparently had even gotten in Merius's hair. "No, no paint," he continued finally, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "My wife is the artist, and she's away at our house in the country at the moment."

  "Indeed. I didn't know she painted--she'll have to bring some of her work to court."

  Merius straightened, seeming to realize too late his slip of the tongue. "Few know. Her father forbade her to learn drawing or painting, so she's rather shy about her work and only shares it with me. Besides, His Majesty doesn't allow women to show such work publicly at court."

  Segar shrugged. "We could have a private show here in my chambers."

  "Thank you for the generous offer, Your Highness. I'll think about it and talk with her." Merius slumped in apparent relief that Segar seemed done discussing Safire's painting.

  Segar's brows arched. "I did wonder how you got covered in the stuff. Odd such a shy woman would use her husband as a canvas."

  Merius grew taut again, his face flushing. I had never seen him blush before, at least that I remembered. The prince chuckled, sounding well satisfied with the result of his wicked wit. Oh no, I hadn't meant for it to go this far. Segar was being bolder than I had expected.

  I quickly said, "Your Highness, do you think that Cyranea could manage the Helles Isles better, or at least more honestly, than her father?"

  The prince started and looked at me, and I breathed an inward sigh of relief that I had managed to distract him. "I suppose," he said finally. "She's intelligent and determined enough, I think, the only Cormalen woman in centuries who's gained a reputation as a scholar." He glanced at his reflection in the mirror, swallowing as he loosened the knot of his cravat. "I admire her a great deal, you know. She hid her abilities from her father and pretended to be a docile daughter, all the while making friends with men like Lord Rankin whenever she was here at court. By the time her father found out she was a scholar, she had garnered the admiration and support of too many powerful men for him to stop her."

  "Until now," Merius said. "I doubt Peregrine will let her continue--he won't allow his wife to usurp him."

  Segar sighed. "Unfortunately, I think you're right. If I could stop their union, I would, but His Majesty my father is the only one with the power to break betrothal contracts."

  "Could His Majesty be persuaded to break it?" I asked.

  "Probably not by me." Segar offered a wry twist of a smile. The relationship between him and King Arian grew more strained with each new responsibility Segar assumed. I wondered sometimes if King Arian suspected his son's true proclivities in the bedchamber.

  "Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but His Majesty seems none too fond of Peregrine." Merius leaned forward when the prince didn't protest. "Cyranea is in a unique position--she likely knows damning information concerning her father's dealings with Peregrine. If we offer her a way out of that betrothal that allows her to keep her inheritance, I bet she would hand us Peregrine--and her father."

  Segar sat on the edge of the table where he kept his silver-handled grooming kit. He cupped his chin with his hand, one finger resting lightly on his lower lip as he watched Merius.

  "Your Highness?" Merius asked after a moment of silence had passed, and Segar had made no answer.

  Segar started, apparently disturbed from a reverie. "So you want me to promise that I will convince His Majesty my father to break the contract between Cyranea and Peregrine and protect Cyranea's inheritance in exchange for her providing information and evidence of Thadeus and Peregrine's duplicity?"

  "Something like that, yes." Merius didn't blink or move, his resemblance to Mordric suddenly jarring as he waited for the prince's answer.

  "I'll do it." Segar's face broke into that crooked-tooth smile. "If I present it to my father as you've presented it to me, it should convince him. He's wanted more control over the Helles Isles for some time, and he doesn't trust Peregrine. He won't like giving so much power to a woman, but if I tell him that her sex will make her more tractable than her father, he'll probably even cede that point."

  "Thank you, Your Highness." Merius inclined his head, then stood.

  "Merius, I didn't give you leave to rise," Segar purred.

  "Forgive me, Your Highness. I thought our audience was finished, and it seems rude to linger, given your preoccupation with the arrival of Her Royal Highness Esme." Merius remained standing, as tense as a stag about to bolt. Had he caught on to Segar's flirting? Damn the prince for being so blatant. I hadn't anticipated that.

  "Very well then." Segar caressed the jeweled hilt of his ceremonial sword, his gaze still on Merius. "You may leave on one condition."

  "Condition, Your Highness?" Merius straightened, his back so stiff it looked like his spine had been turned into a poker.

  "My steward has great skill with a blade and would like to face you in the practice salon."

  Merius seemed relieved. Perhaps he had feared Segar wanted to renege on his agreement. "Challenge accepted, Your Highness. I'll leave it to you to name the date. Now, forgive me, I have some business to attend to before the welcoming ceremony this afternoon. I look forward to the duel with your steward, and thank you again for your attention to the matter of Cyranea's inheritance." He bowed, then turned with a swordsman's sharp precision and strode from the chamber.

  Prince Segar finally blinked as the door closed behind Merius. "So his wife's away?"

  "It's plague season in this city, and she's with child."

  Segar glanced at me. "And you're certain he favors only women?"

  I had better nip this one in the bud. "Your Highness, I've known Merius his whole life. I wish I could report differently for your sake, but he's never shown any interest in men as bedmates, and he's madly in love with his wife. Why else do you think he married so low, if not for love?"

  "Pity." Segar shrugged and turned back to the mirror. "You would know, observant of such matters as you are. I suppose I can content myself with watching him duel other men. He certainly knows how to compel one's gaze to follow his every move." He touched his cravat as he examined his reflection. "Can you retie this for me? The knot doesn't look right."

  I twisted the ends around each other. "Do you want me to leave it a bit loose in case the chamber grows too hot again?"

  "Watch it." Segar chuckled. "Or I may just have to seduce your kinsman to see for myself if you speak the truth about him."

  My hand slipped before I could tug the knot tight, and I swore under my breath as I started over again. What trouble had I stirred up now?

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Cyranea's chambers at court were high in the south tower, away from the commotion of the lower hallways. It bespoke her reputation as a scholar that Queen Verna had granted her a quiet place to pursue her studies when she wasn't serving as a lady-in-waiting. Cyranea and I had spoken a handful of times over the years, generally about whatever play happened to be popular at the moment. I had a passing interest in verse (mostly the bawdy variety that Cyranea would never study) and the occasional story, but I loved plays. The pageantry and costumes, the actors and sets--when done well, a play thawed the frozen words on a page and made the story flow. A play swept me into the sensations of the moment, and I floated through the characters' lives as if they were as real as my own.

  Before I had come to court, I had thought of running off to be an actress. However, even at the tender age of fourteen, I had been too practical to entertain such a scheme for long. Often disowned by their families, most actresses died of some wasting disease or the pox, their looks faded, not a copper to their names. Safire had cocked her head and watched me with those unnervingly clear eyes of hers when I confessed my foolish girlhood fancies. "Why don't you try out for some of the plays here?" she had asked finally. "I bet you'd be
a wonderful actress, with your talent for disguises. Anyone who risks herself to play the part of a Sarneth palace maid and pulls it off like you did could easily act in a play."

  It had been one of those moments in my conversations with the witch that left me at a loss for words. All I had been able to do was stare at her as she dabbed some more paint on her canvas, humming an off-key lullaby to herself. Mordric had said one of her most valuable--and dangerous--traits was her wildness, and I began to appreciate what he meant the longer I associated with her. She had little consideration for danger when it came to herself, which allowed her to perform heroic, reckless acts like using her witch talents to save Mordric's life in front of witnesses. She seemed to live in another realm from the rest of us, a realm where time didn't exist, where there was no future to secure, where all was present at once.

  At first this lack of practicality had annoyed me, then left me speechless, and finally intoxicated me as I followed her for brief flights in a sky of endless possibilities. Why couldn't I be an actress? My reputation would be ruined, my position forfeit, but as an orphaned courtesan, I already teetered on the brink of good society anyway. Why not take the plunge? Then I remembered how my favorite actress had died in a hovel, coughing her lungs out, and I landed back on earth with a thud.

  I began to climb the spiral staircase leading up to Cyranea's chambers in the tower, my mind still on Safire and her paintings. If only her paintings didn't move. That painting of Cyranea, for instance. The bright colors and wings would have piqued Cyranea's curiosity and been a good way to open today's conversation. Of course, such was out of the question--if Cyranea spotted the movement in the painting, all would have been lost. I had to hide the portrait Safire had done of me earlier in the summer because of the movement. And it was a fine portrait too, much better than the stiff likeness hanging in Landers Hall. Bridget, who couldn't see the movement, had wondered aloud several times why I hid it. So many secrets we kept, us Landers, even from people we would have trusted with our lives.

  Cyranea's antechamber was almost exactly as I had pictured it. Tidy shelves of books and scrolls, arranged by subject, a sturdy oaken desk with a slanted, hinged top, neatly stacked rolls of parchment, inkwells organized by color, quills organized by size in the pigeonholes over the desk. The only adornment was a very detailed, dull tapestry depicting the coronation of King Guilgard and Queen Isobel, the first royal couple to rule Cormalen after the arrival of the Sarneth settlers. Cyranea's orderly austerity reminded me of Mordric. I felt a momentary pang for my still absent Sir, followed by a sharp mental rap on the knuckles. I had to stop this. He had been gone for little over a week, and already I pined for him like some lovesick fool. A hopeless ewe, destined for the slaughter. We were secret bedmates who enjoyed plotting court intrigue over our pillows at night when we weren't tumbling, and that was all. Not as comforted by this dose of reality as I had hoped, I stepped forward to take a seat on the stiff-backed chair Cyranea indicated with a wave of her bony, ink-stained hand.

  Her spectacles flashed as she spared me a glance. Then she bent over the scroll unfurled on her desk, the parchment crackling as she held down the curling edges with her palms. Sunlight picked out the auburn strands in her dark, straight hair, which she had pulled back in a tightly braided knot at the nape of her long neck. The sight of it gave me a headache.

  "I thought Eratius of Sabers's last play cleverly staged."

  Cyranea didn't even look up. "Perhaps, but his verse dialogue was as trite as ever. All those silly couplets. Only he would pair heart with apart and think it profound."

  "I was too preoccupied with the staging to notice what the players actually said." I grinned. I had also been preoccupied with Mordric's rare presence in the Landers private box that night--he likely would have left in disgust or dozed off halfway through the play if not for me. "The way he draped the red silk over the lantern to symbolize Fedor's passion and later his death at his lover's hand . . . and the pipe music at the end, like the ghost of a distant woodland dance. Eratius composed that music himself, you know."

  "He should stick with composing music then instead of foisting his clumsy attempts at verse on us," she sniffed. Despite her disdain, she finally abandoned her scroll, allowing the edges to furl up as she met my eyes. "You do make a point about the symbolic staging, though. It's too bad God can't combine the literary genius of Sirach with the visual sensibility of Eratius in one man."

  "It's too bad God doesn't allow women to be official theater critics. Or playwrights themselves."

  "It's the king who doesn't allow that, not God," she retorted. "I don't notice either one of us getting smote with a lightning bolt."

  "Perhaps because God is too busy smiting your wicked betrothed instead."

  "I wish God would smite him," she said with exquisitely dry venom. Then she caught my gaze. "I'm sorry--I forget your friendship with the scoundrel."

  "A courtier's friendship, Cyranea, as insubstantial as a reflection in a garden pool. I enjoy flirting with dangerous men, and Peregrine and I have a certain wit together that plays well in public. He knows what he is, yet he doesn't run from it, and I appreciate that quality. That said, just because the viper is an honest viper, does that mean you let him poison you?"

  "Strange--the rumor is you and he are lovers."

  I threw my head back and laughed. "The rumor is I'm every man's lover, including His Highness. And since when do you believe court rumors?"

  "When I hoped you'd take the honest viper off my hands." Her mouth pursed as if she'd tasted something sour, and I realized she was on the verge of tears. She regarded her fingers clasped in her lap. "What should I do, Eden?" she asked quietly. "I don't want to marry anyone, though I wouldn't have minded Whitten. Peregrine, though--he disgusts me."

  I slumped back in the chair, suddenly limp at how fantastically well this was going. I vowed then never to disregard Merius's instincts, no matter how outlandish they might seem. "Have you spoken with your father?"

  "When my father looks at me, he sees all his dead sons. He resents me for living."

  "Your mother has no recourse with him?"

  "Are you in jest? He resents her even more than me. If she died, he could marry again and have a chance at siring more legitimate heirs. He interprets the mere act of her breathing as cruel mockery."

  I raised my brows. "Sounds charming," was the only comment I could manage. I pictured my own parents, their dusty portraits hanging in Landers Hall, the lichen blossoming on their stones in the Landers graveyard, my only memories of them. They had both been younger when they died than I was now. Mordric remembered them, but I hadn't dared ask him any questions, seeing it as an uncomfortable reminder to him of the difference in our ages. That left the older servants at Landers Hall and Selwyn's mother Talia, neither of whom were reliable sources. I had no idea what they would have thought of me, these mysterious parents who had given me life and then promptly died. I had occasionally envied other people's fond memories of their mothers and fathers, but listening to Cyranea had rapidly evaporated any lingering envy.

  "I can't think of a way out of it, aside from running off, and I'm not the sort to run," Cyranea was saying as I returned to the present. "Besides, if I run, I lose my inheritance to that scoundrel, and God knows what evils he'll perpetrate on the world with it. My father's been bad enough . . ." she trailed off, as if realizing she spoke aloud.

  "Cyranea, the whole court knows about your father's smuggling. It's no secret you have to keep from me."

  Her dry eyes blazed, the whitish blue of the sky on a hot summer day. "I'm not a dutiful daughter. Sometimes I wish His Majesty would arrest my father and Peregrine."

  "He needs more evidence to do that. You're in a unique position--you could get the evidence the king needs . . ."

  "Yes, but at what cost? My father's lands would be forfeit to the crown if he's convicted of a crime. My mother and I would be paupers."

  "His Highness Segar could convince His Majesty to
allow you to keep your inheritance, even if your father is convicted."

  Her eyes narrowed. "You think so?"

  "I know so."

  "I want it in writing, Eden, signed and sealed by the prince and His Majesty himself. Then I'll do it."

  I grinned. "Wise woman."

  Chapter Twelve--Merius

  Royal Palace, Corcin, Eastern Cormalen

  July, 3 years ago

  The porcelain mantel clock in Queen Verna's reception chamber chimed twice. The cherubs parading around the base smirked at me as I stifled a yawn. How much longer would this take? Despite the heat and light of a brilliant summer afternoon blazing through the giant windows, fellow courtiers and their ladies swarmed near the double doors which opened to the outside steps, presumably where Esme would make her grand entrance. The clamor of voices and laughter pierced my ears, a vague pounding against the inside of my skull, and I touched my temples and closed my eyes, the light blinding pinpoints against the back of my eyeballs. Damn that witch. I'd had this headache since she left. She had been healing my headaches for so long now that I'd forgotten how bad the pain could be. Only when I had been drunk had the pain vanished, along with my good sense.

  "Where's your father?" Cyril demanded gruffly.

  I opened my eyes and looked sideways. He loomed near my elbow, bristling like a gray-haired hedgehog. "You know he hates public events, sir."

  "That's not what I meant."

  I sighed. "He's at Landers Hall." I wanted to tell Cyril about the peasants, but not here, not where everyone could hear.

  "Does he know you've missed council the last four days?"

  "Could we discuss this somewhere else, sir?"

  "You look like you've been drinking. A lot," he hissed.

  I glared at him, the pain cleaving my skull like a dull axe. "Maybe I have. What's it to you?"

  "God, you really are just like him sometimes," Cyril snapped. "The last thing I want to do in my elder years is mentor a young Mordric, so learn some respect or else forget about ever having my support again."