by Carol Berg
“I’d best be off, too,” said Paulo, yawning as he stood and threw his jacket over his shoulder, ready to head for the stables to guard his horses. He paused in the doorway, turning back for a moment, looking at me square on. “Radele’s not wrong about the danger hereabouts, my lady. You wouldn’t think to go to this meeting with the king alone?”
“No. We’ll stay together. And truly, we may be on our way home almost as quickly as Radele wishes. I can’t imagine how Evard expects me to get past the gates at Windham. I don’t know who holds the Gault titles now or even how I’ll find out.”
Paulo hesitated, looking thoughtful, running his long fingers over the tarnished door latch.
“By the way,” I said, “well done at the gates today. We’d likely be there yet, if it weren’t for you. And all the rumors about an early gate-closing… they helped as well. You wouldn’t have seen who started those, would you?”
Paulo’s eyes flicked to Gerick. “I had a bit of help with that part. More than this Dar’Nethi fellow are watching out for you.”
He straightened up and pulled open the door. “And you needn’t worry about getting into Windham tomorrow. Hasn’t been no lord there since the last one was done for.”
“Where did you hear that?”
He colored a little. “All those years when you lived at Dunfarrie, and Sheriff took you to the Petitioner’s Rite… he listened to all the talk about you, and then he’d come back and grouse about how high and mighty you were. I was only a nub back then, hanging about the sheriff where I had no cause to be, but I heard a lot of things. King Evard had the place knocked down and burnt.”
The night passed uneasily. The thought of Evard destroying Windham had me alternately seething and weeping. Rain drizzled mournfully as midnight tolled from the palace clock tower. At least Gerick had finally succumbed to sleep. No nightmares, either. Even a drunken commotion outside in the street didn’t stir him.
About the time blackness yielded to faint gray, someone tapped on the door. “It’s Paulo, ma’am.” I cracked open the door and peered into the gloom. A straw poked out of Paulo’s tousled hair. “Radele asks that you please come to the stable, ma’am. Quiet-like, he says.”
I threw on my cloak and followed him, leaving Gerick curled on the floor. He hadn’t so much as changed position.
The innyard was pooled and pocketed with muddy rainwater. Servants stepped gingerly through the mud, carrying slops jars and water jugs, while boys with soaked leggings staggered toward the kitchens hauling heavy coal hods. Wagon wheels splattered through the muddy streets beyond the fence. Though the gray morning already rang with jangling harness, clattering pots, and orders yelled at the legions of kitchen maids, the stable was dim and quiet when we shut the door behind us. Gerick’s Jasyr nickered softly as we walked past him and Paulo fondled his ears. A mouse skittered past my foot. We found Radele in the farthest corner stall sitting atop a pile of straw in the near dark.
“What is it, Radele?” I said.
As Radele jumped to his feet, the straw seemed to shift. The Dar’Nethi swept the straw aside to reveal a strongly built man in ill-fitting clothes huddled in the dirt. Only after a startled moment did I notice the ropes binding his hands and feet. The man strained against his bonds, twisting around so that he could glare up at me. A purple bruise covered half his forehead, and the unintelligible words trapped by the rag tied around his mouth could be nothing polite.
“When I left your bedchamber last night, I met this fellow skulking about in the passage. Not someone I wanted nearby, so I ran him off. But then, on my rounds this morning, wasn’t he in the stableyard telling another fellow that he’d heard some treasonous gossip that was going to make his fortune if he could just locate a constable to tell? And this time he carried quite an ugly introduction.”
Radele presented me with a long, curved dagger. “His friend seemed to have an antipathy for constables and ran away, so I used the opportunity to snag this one. I wasn’t sure what to do with him. We should probably dispatch the villain, but I thought perhaps a corpse or another disappearance might draw more attention than whatever he might babble.”
Horrified at the thought of our careless conversation last evening - sneaking into the palace, my low opinions of the king, the upcoming meeting, sorcery - I couldn’t think what to do. If the man had heard any of it… “No, of course, we can’t kill him,” I said, shaking off my urge to do that very thing. I’d never faced this particular dilemma before. Danger had always come from my enemies, not balding, inept thieves. “We just want him to keep quiet.”
“Pay him, maybe?” said Paulo, scratching his head.
I pulled my cloak tighter. “We don’t have much to offer. And bribes are unreliable. Too easily overbid.”
Straining grunts and growls had the veins in the man’s beefy neck bulging. His eyes blazed in the dusty light.
“But silencing is easily done.” Radele cocked his head thoughtfully.
“We should question - ”
The teasing, unmistakable telltale of enchantment filled the air, as Radele laid his hand over the captive man’s eyes and murmured a few words. The man’s struggles grew feeble and then ceased; his wordless protests fell silent. When Radele removed his hand, the stranger’s eyes no longer burned, but wandered over the stall, the straw, and our faces with equal disinterest. Radele motioned us to step back as he untied his prisoner and dragged the fellow to his feet - a big man, dressed in the kersey tunic and shapeless trousers of a common laborer.
“My grandfather taught me this,” said Radele, straightening the man’s tangled clothes and nudging him toward the stable door. “It’s designed especially for those who have dangerous mouths.”
Without so much as a word or a glance, the man stumbled away, straw sticking up from his rumpled hair and clothes as if he were a scarecrow come to life. Paulo and I followed as far as the stable door, watching as the man walked into the busy lane and halted uncertainly. A woman bumped into him. He staggered, but stayed upright. And then a wagon narrowly missed knocking him flat. Soon he was being brushed from one place to another like a splinter of driftwood floating on the tide.
“What have you done, Radele?” I said, uneasy. “We should have questioned him, found out what he heard, what he was after… ”
Radele stood at my shoulder, arms crossed, his face sober. “It would have taken us three days to sort out his lies. This is much better. Your secrets will be quite safe. Unless he can recite a list of names he has no possible reason to know, he’ll be able to tell no one anything about what he’s heard. And you needn’t trouble yourself about him. He’ll remember how to eat and drink, just not much beyond that. My family is very good at these things.”
“Shit,” said Paulo, quietly.
In slightly less earthy terms, I echoed his sentiments.
“We must leave this city, madam,” said Radele. “You’ve seen the risk.”
“We’ll set out for Verdillon the moment my meeting with King Evard is done. And, Radele, I thank you again for protecting us, but what you did here… I can’t think the Prince would approve.”
“Your safety is imperative. The Prince was most emphatic.”
“But in this world some things are not permissible for even the best of reasons. Some things are not right in any world.”
Radele dropped his hands to his sides with an exasperated sigh.
Leaving Montevial and its poisonous atmosphere behind us felt like walking out of prison. We abandoned our disguises. Paulo had sold the pony trap and his extra horses, and we rode our own mounts through the southern gates of the city in early afternoon. Only after a wide detour did we circle northward toward Windham. The shadows were long when we first caught sight of the towers rising above the leafy sea of its vast parkland. A host of chittering blackbirds heralded our approach from the spreading beech and lime trees that lined the road.
Windham’s graceful towers symbolized everything joyous in my girlhood. For a girl of seve
nteen, they had represented the stimulating company and unending entertainment so at odds with sober Comigor. For a naive young woman of one and twenty, romantic encounters with Martin’s mysterious and charming protégé. For a worldly matron of five and twenty, a haven of friendship, the one place Karon and I could go where there need be no secrecy, no deceit, and no fear. Windham had been the most beautiful place I knew, welcoming the wide vistas of the world through its tall windows, just as its master welcomed the vast landscape of ideas into his great heart. How my cousin would have relished our strange adventures.
A little way into the park, just beyond iron gates that hung bent and broken from rusted hinges, sat a brick gatehouse where the housekeeper and head grounds-keeper had once lived. Though its windows and doors gaped, its wood trim had splintered and peeled bare of paint, and vines had overgrown the front stoop and garden wall, the shell of the gatehouse remained intact. We halted at the weedy semicircle of the carriage park just in front of it.
“If everything looks safe enough when Radele returns from his reconnoiter, he and Gerick will remain hidden here,” I told the three of them. “I want Paulo patrolling outside the walls. The king will have attendants and bodyguards, but I would expect them to be a small number and remain in the courtyard in front of the main house when he enters the garden. Anything beyond that, and I want to know about it.”
“There’s fresh tracks all over,” said Paulo. “A number of people have been here today.”
“I’d expect nothing less,” I said. “And very likely ten spies along the road watched us ride in. But if he brings in a large party, or if they move to surround the house and gardens, or do anything that looks remotely suspicious, before, during, or after the king’s arrival, Paulo, you’re to warn Radele. And, Radele, you will get Gerick away, using whatever means necessary.”
“But, madam - ”
“You have no other duty.”
Radele jerked his head irritably and rode away.
“One of us should be with you,” said Gerick, the first speech beyond single-word responses he’d offered us all day. “You’ve said again and again that the king is a treacherous villain. Tennice has told me - ”
“Yes, Evard is a despicable bastard, but he’ll not touch me. I know this seems illogical. He’s had a thousand opportunities to do so over all these years, but he promised Tomas he wouldn’t, and, whatever else he may be, Evard keeps to his word. He loved Tomas like a brother; I witnessed his grief when he heard Tomas was dead. Truly I’d not have been afraid to confront him in his own palace today. But on no other matter do I trust him. It’s you must stay out of sight.”
Gerick looked very young in that moment, too much worry creasing his slender face. What kind of mother was I to bring him into such risk? I brushed his smooth cheek. “Be alert, dear one. Stay safe, and we’ll see our road more clearly.”
Half an hour later, Radele returned from his survey of the gardens. Having reassured me that no one lurked anywhere on the grounds, Radele tethered our horses behind the gatehouse and took up a position in a tree where he could watch both the gates and the gatehouse.
The sun dropped behind the forested hills. Gerick watched from the hollow doorway of the gatehouse as Paulo waved and rode back through the gate the way we’d come, and I walked up the carriage road through the tunnel of trees. Shorter footpaths led from the gatehouse to the main house and gardens, but I was still a bit early, and I wanted to approach the house from the front.
At the point where the road emerged from the trees and skirted a wide, open lawn gone to weeds, I got my first look at the ruin of the main house. Every window was broken. The south wing, all the guest bedrooms and the great ballroom, lay in charred rubble. The north wing, including the drawing room where Karon and I had wed in the light of five hundred candles, looked as if a ram had been used to cave in one wall.
Astonishing that Evard would pick his murdered rival’s house for us to meet. Did he think I would feel safe in a place so familiar? More likely it was a pointed reminder of his power. Whatever his motive, the ruined house only served to remind me of everything I despised about Evard, a shallow, arrogant, ambitious man who had destroyed Martin and his friends because he was not fit to be one of them.
As the last glow of red dulled to gray in the west, I circled the skeletal house and strolled into the back gardens. The plantings had gone wild, of course, only the hardiest left to compete with thistles, brambles, and encroaching forest. I could find no remnant of the rose garden, and all the ponds and streams were dry. Surprisingly, the arched bridge remained intact, overlooking a choked oval of knee-high weeds where a reflecting pond should have been. Only a few birds and a lonely frog mourning the loss of his lily pads disturbed the quiet dusk.
A warm breeze riffled my hair as I waited. Not a long wait. My every sense was on the alert, so I heard the muffled hoofbeats long before the solitary rider reached the edge of the gardens. A horse nickered softly. Light steps crunched on the gravel, only to hesitate next to a wild mass of honeysuckle that had overgrown the path. Through the tangled shrubbery glimmered the faint beams of a lantern.
“Straight through. Angle right. The gardeners have been sorely lax. You’ll have to mention it to the lord.” My voice sounded harsh against the subtleties of the evening. Despite my resolution to be open-minded, I couldn’t hide my bitterness at the desolation this man had wrought.
The newcomer pushed through the branches until I could make out a shadowy figure at the far end of the arched bridge. Odd… Evard was never as tall as my brother, only average in height, much to his youthful disgust, but this person was not even as tall as me.
“Who’s there?” I said, retreating a few steps. “Speak or I’ll be away from here before you can blink.”
I listened until I thought my ears must crack and whipped my eyes from side to side, searching the gloomy plantings for any sign of stalkers, but I sensed no one else about. The figure moved closer, and I backed away.
“Wait. Don’t go!”
A woman! Her voice was low and mellow, yet bore such authority that my feet stopped moving of their own accord. My eyes stopped their suspicious search and riveted themselves to the slight form that followed the lantern beams up the arching span.
“The conditions of this meeting are not changed,” she said. “You’ve agreed to it, and I’ve endangered myself and others to come here. You cannot leave.”
She wore a lightweight cloak of the deepest sapphire, its full hood draped gracefully about her face, keeping it in deep shadow.
I walked to the foot of the bridge. “But the person I agreed to meet - ”
“Is unavailable tonight. I speak for him.”
“I cannot believe he would permit anyone to speak for him, especially… ”
“Especially a woman?” She set her lantern on the stone parapet. “Perhaps you don’t know him as well as you think you do, even after such long acquaintance. And, of course, you don’t know me at all.” With slender, pale hands, adorned with a single, slim band of sapphires that gleamed in the lamplight, she lowered her hood. On her brow she wore a gold circlet, graven with a dragon and a lily - the crest of the Queen of Leire.
CHAPTER 7
Mariel Annalis Karestan Lavial, Princess of Valleor, had been a child of eight when her father’s kingdom fell. She had witnessed the beheading of her father and brothers, and the rape and execution of her mother, who had vowed to lie with the first Vallorean man she could find and so produce a new heir to rival the Leiran conqueror. Princess Mariel alone was allowed to survive untouched, secured in the virginal captivity of a remote temple school in case the Leirans ever found a use for her. She was the living symbol of Valleor’s subjugation. I, as so many other Leirans, had never thought of her as having any other identity, even when she was brought from her childhood seclusion to wed the Leiran king.
“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long while” - the queen raked cool green eyes over me as I sank into a genuflection I would
not have offered her husband - “the Lady Seriana who threw away a kingdom for a sorcerer. The woman to whom I was forever being compared and beside whom I was always found wanting… by my husband, as well as everyone else at court.”
“Your Majesty, I - ”
“I decided early on not to hate you. After all, you’d given me a life. If you’d married him, I would have been dead by seventeen. And even if you’d never existed, he would not have cared for me in the beginning. A Vallorean princess was no more to him than a looted castle or captured horse. But he doesn’t speak of you in that way any more.”
The queen’s light hair was piled on her head in smooth coils, and her features were ivory in the lamplight, an impassive courtier’s mask that revealed little of the person beneath. Though her face was too long and angular to be called beautiful, and her stature unimposing, she carried herself with assurance. Her age would be somewhere near five and thirty.
“Why am I here, Your Majesty? How did the king know I was alive?”
She moved a few steps closer. “As you surely know, our people have suffered some… disturbances… of late that have left them in great fear. No science or philosophy offers any explanation. And so my husband’s thoughts turn to other unbelievable tales he has heard. To sorcery. To you. Who else in this land knows anything of magical beings or would be bold enough to speak of such to her king?” Her manner was businesslike, her voice clear and intelligent. “And, despite his many faults, Evard is not a fool. He said he would not believe you were dead unless he saw your corpse.”
But I refused to allow her easy manner to dilute my caution. “To speak of sorcery is forbidden, my lady. By His Majesty’s decree, I have been pardoned of my earlier offenses, but I would not bring the hand of the law around my neck again.”
“I’m not here to entrap you, Seriana. I know everything you told my husband: about this other world and the magical passage between us, about the sorcerer prince and his enemies and their war that somehow affects our own lands. If I wished to arrest you for speaking of such things, I’d not need to come to this wilderness and set about playacting. When I tell you the whole of these matters, you’ll understand why the king seeks your advice.”
