Mahkas’s fear was a valid one. If Marla decided Mahkas had failed in his duty as Damin’s protector, there was nothing to stop her going to Lernen and demanding the Regent of Krakandar be replaced. She might even try to supplant him with that self-serving, overly smart, far-too-full-of-his-own-importance husband of hers, Ruxton Tirstone.
That makes sense, Mahkas concluded anxiously. It would be just like that glorified shopkeeper to think he could wheedle his way into his stepson’s regency. All that nonsense about the wonderful intelligence he provides, the help he gives her. All those smug looks, the subtle touches, the secret smiles
. . . all of it designed for no other purpose than to let me know that Marla turns to him for advice more often than not these days, rather than me.
Come to think of it, Ruxton may even have been responsible for the attack on Damin, Mahkas reasoned, warming to the notion of a betrayal from within the family. How else would a spice trader ever manage to get promoted to Regent of Krakandar without something dramatic happening?
Something designed specifically to discredit the incumbent regent?
The more he thought about it, the more logical his assumptions seemed. I never liked that snide little bastard . . .
Mahkas reached the door to his study and took a deep breath. He understood what was happening now. Marla wouldn’t like what he had to tell her about her husband, but it made perfectly good sense and he was sure he could convince his sister-in-law of her foolishness in trusting someone so far beneath her.
Bracing himself for the confrontation, Mahkas took another deep breath before he opened the door and stepped inside.
Almodavar was already there, along with Raek Harlen, two other bodyguards flanking the entrance and Damin, who was sitting on the edge of the desk swinging his legs back and forth, as he listened to his mother discussing the attack with the two officers. The boy seemed unharmed, which was a relief.
“Sorry to drag you away from the ball, Mahkas,” Marla remarked, looking up as he closed the door behind him. “But we’ve had an incident I thought you should be apprised of.”
Mahkas nodded, a little surprised to find Ruxton wasn’t here. “Your note said there’d been an attempt on Damin’s life.”
“There was,” Marla confirmed.
“I want the city sealed,” Mahkas ordered, turning to the Raiders. “And the palace guard doubled. Call up every man, even those off duty.”
Neither Almodavar nor Harlen moved to respond to his order. Mahkas could feel his palms sweating as the panic threatened to unman him. Oh gods, has she replaced me already? Is that why I’m here? To be told I’m no longer Krakandar’s regent?
“Belay that,” Marla countermanded, although neither officer had shown any inclination to do as he’d ordered.
“But Marla—”
“Unless you fancy Luciena has an army gathering just over the border to invade us, Mahkas, I’d really rather not draw attention to our domestic problems while Rogan Bearbow and half the noble families in the north are kicking their heels up in the ballroom.”
“Luciena?” he asked in confusion. “Luciena Mariner?”
“That’s who tried to kill me,” Damin announced. He didn’t seem unduly upset or in the slightest bit injured. But then, the boy had taken down Geri Almodavar in the dark. A slip of a girl like Luciena would have presented no problem at all.
“Is that true?”
Before Marla could answer, the door opened behind Mahkas and the dwarf waddled in. “I want you to find Xanda,” Marla ordered the Fool, ignoring Mahkas in favour of her pet. “Tell him I want him to bring Luciena’s slave to me.”
“Shall I tell him why?”
“Only if you can do it quietly.”
“As you wish, your highness.” The dwarf bowed and closed the door on his way out.
Marla then turned to Mahkas and deigned to answer his question. “I’m afraid it is,” she confirmed.
“But . . . why ?”
“That’s something we’d all like to know,” Almodavar replied.
“Didn’t someone think to ask her? Or is she . . . ?” He glanced at Damin with concern, recalling how Almodavar had given the lad forty laps of the training yard for failing to follow through that night the captain had sought to test his ability. Surely, Damin hadn’t killed the girl?
Dear gods, he’s not yet thirteen . . .
But the boy grinned, rather flattered it seemed by his uncle’s uncertainty. “Do you really think I killed her, Uncle Mahkas?” He turned to Almodavar. “See, he thinks I can do it.”
“Aye,” the captain agreed. “But I’ve yet to see you do much more than brag about it, lad. You should have killed her. The same way you should have killed me.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, Almodavar,” Marla said. “But in this case, I’m rather relieved he didn’t kill Luciena. Like Mahkas, I would very much like to know why she attempted to kill Damin and, more importantly, if she was acting alone or if this is part of a much larger conspiracy. None of which would be possible if he’d ended her life.”
“And I didn’t make the same mistake as last time,” Damin assured them, directing his comment mainly at Almodavar. Mahkas suspected Damin could feel another forty laps coming on and was anxious to avoid them. “You told me I had to kill my attacker because that was the only way to make certain they were disabled. Well, I made certain Luciena was disabled. I just did it by putting my foot on her neck until help arrived, instead of killing her.”
Laran would have done something like that, Mahkas thought. He doesn’t look much like his father, but Damin Wolfblade has a lot of Laran Krakenshield in him.
Mahkas wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“I think we should be applauding Damin’s clear thinking, not chastising him for it,” Mahkas told the captain, quite deliberately siding with his nephew. He made a point of letting Damin see he was on his side, every chance he got. “But . . . Luciena tried to kill him? Why, it’s almost too fantastic to credit! I had a few misgivings about your decision to adopt the girl, Marla, but she seemed to be fitting in so well.
Did she say nothing, even during the attack?”
“Not much,” Damin told him. “She just came in through the slaveways waving that stupid little knife around with this weird look on her face. Even when I asked her straight out what she thought she was trying to do, she didn’t answer me. It was like she couldn’t even hear me talking.” Damin glanced over his shoulder at his mother and added with some concern, “I know you told me it’s wrong to hit a woman, Mama, and I tried to warn her before I laid a hand on her. Truly, I did. She just wouldn’t stop coming at me. And she did have a knife.”
“I know, Damin,” Marla assured him. “You’re not in trouble. Not about that, anyway.”
“How did Luciena get through the slaveways?” Mahkas demanded of the Raiders. “The door to Damin’s room is supposed to be sealed.”
“It was locked when we checked it,” Raek Harlen confirmed. “We don’t know how she got through it.”
“Do you have any idea, Damin?” Marla asked.
The boy shook his head. “No, Mama.”
He’s lying, Mahkas thought, although he couldn’t imagine why. “Has she said nothing since?”
“She’s not said a word, my lord,” Almodavar confirmed. “We’ve got her down in the cells at present, but you’ll not get much sense out of her. It’s like she’s battle shocked.”
Marla frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You see it in battle sometimes, particularly among young soldiers confronted with their first kill. They go into a kind of daze. It’s as if the rest of their body shuts down while their mind tries to deal with what they’ve seen or done.”
“And do they recover?”
“Most of them.”
“And you think Luciena is in some sort of battle shock?”
“I don’t know, your highness. I’m just saying that’s what it looks like.”
“And how long does this recovery usually take?”
“Hours,” Almodavar shrugged. “Days. Sometimes weeks.”
“And sometimes not at all, I suppose.” Marla shook her head, clearly puzzled by the entire incident. “It makes no sense. As you say, Mahkas, she seemed to be fitting in so well.” Marla leaned back in her chair—Mahkas’s chair—and looked at her son thoughtfully. “Have you had any trouble since she arrived, Damin? Before tonight?”
He shrugged and looked over his shoulder at his mother again. “No. I mean, it’s not like she’s my best friend or anything, but she’s always seemed nice enough. Maybe she said something to Rielle or Tejay.”
“What have Rielle Tirstone or Tejay Bearbow got to do with it?” Mahkas asked.
“The boys and I went down to the markets with them earlier today. And Kalan, too. Kal was talking to them just before . . .” Damin hesitated and then smiled sheepishly. “Just before that other . . .
incident.”
“And don’t think I’ve forgotten about that,” his mother reminded him.
“I think we need to interrogate the girl,” Mahkas announced. “Torture her if necessary.”
“I find torture is rarely necessary, Mahkas,” Marla informed him, clearly displeased by his suggestion.
“I just meant—”
“Yes, I know what you meant.”
Before Mahkas could defend his statement, the door opened again. This time it was his nephew, Xanda Taranger, who entered the office, followed closely by the slave Luciena had brought to Krakandar. The plump blonde’s eyes were swollen and red-rimmed. She had obviously been crying.
“Your highness,” Xanda said, bowing to his aunt quite formally. A few months in Greenharbour had taught Mahkas’s nephew some court manners, it seemed.
Marla bowed her head in acknowledgement of the greeting and turned her attention to the slave. “Your name is Aleesha, isn’t it?”
“Yes, your highness.”
“Do you know what’s happened here tonight?”
She nodded, tears filling her eyes.
“Would you care to enlighten us as to why?”
“Your highness?”
“I’m assuming you know when your mistress joined the Patriot Faction.”
“I . . . I don’t understand . . .”
“Your mistress attempted to kill the heir to the throne of Hythria this evening, Aleesha,” Marla pointed out. “Unless she was acting out of some misguided notion of vengeance at the way she’s been mistreated, I can only assume the attack was politically motivated. I am offering you the opportunity to provide us with the information we require, to save your mistress.”
“Save her?” Aleesha looked warily at the unsympathetic faces surrounding her. “Save her from what?”
“Lord Damaran was just asking for permission to torture the information from your mistress, and Captain Almodavar has been chastising Prince Damin for not killing her. If you wish to save your mistress from those who feel high treason and attempted murder should not be punished by anything less than hanging, I suggest you tell us what you know.”
The slave shook her head as the tears spilled down her cheeks. “I know nothing, your highness.
Truly. There must be some mistake. Luciena would never do anything like this.”
“Who are her accomplices?” Marla insisted. “Her friends?”
“There’s nobody—”
“Her mother’s friends, then?” the princess demanded. “She was a wellknown court’esa. Who were her customers, her regular clients? Was this plot hatched in Katira Keyne’s bed and left to her daughter to follow through when the opportunity arose?”
“No!” Aleesha sobbed, becoming more distressed by the minute. “No! No! No! You have it all wrong! Katira retired when she had Luciena. She never entertained another man after she became Jarvan Mariner’s mistress. He insisted on it. There were no clients, your highness. There is no plot!”
“Maybe it was the debts,” Xanda suggested.
Mahkas turned to look at him. The young man seemed almost as upset as the slave. “What debts?”
“Luciena was in dire debt after her mother died. Maybe Elezaar didn’t find them all. Maybe there’s another debt we didn’t know about? One where the payment was going to be settled in return for Damin’s life?”
“I hope it was a big one,” Damin remarked brightly. “I’d hate to think my life was traded for the few rivets left owing on the cobbler’s account.”
Mahkas sighed inwardly. The boy really should learn to take things more seriously.
“Damin!” Marla snapped at him in irritation, apparently of the same opinion. “Be quiet!”
“Please, your highness,” Aleesha begged, sniffling back a fresh round of tears, “I don’t know why this happened. All I know is that my mistress would never try to kill anyone, and especially not a little boy.”
“I’m not a little boy!” Damin objected to nobody in particular.
“Damin, shut up or leave the room!” his mother barked angrily.
Aleesha fell to her knees, as if her subservient pose gave weight to her words. “Please, your highness. If this really happened, then something is dreadfully wrong. Luciena’s not plotting with anyone! And even if she wanted to, who would plot with her? Until you offered to adopt her, Princess Marla, my mistress was the penniless, baseborn daughter of a court’esa. Even if someone knew you were planning to invite her here to Krakandar, there was no time between when you made the offer and when we left Greenharbour for her to plot anything with anybody.”
“She spoke with Ameel Parkesh,” Xanda reminded the slave.
“And you were there, Lieutenant!” the slave retorted impatiently. “And you saw what he wanted of Luciena. You were the one who sent him packing! The only other person we saw before we left Greenharbour was the High Arrion and you’re not going to accuse her of plotting against the High Prince’s heir, are you?”
A deathly silence descended over the room. Marla visibly paled.
“Your mistress visited Alija Eaglespike before you left Greenharbour?” she asked in a voice devoid of all emotion.
“The day before we departed,” the slave confirmed. “And it wasn’t Luciena who went to visit her. It was the other way around. In fact, when Luciena tried to get in to see her the first time . . .” The slave hesitated, realising how damning her statement seemed.
“What did the High Arrion want with your mistress?” Mahkas demanded.
“I don’t know, Lord Damaran. Lady Alija sent me to fetch drinks. They probably spoke about Luciena’s cousin in Fardohnya.”
“So your mistress is in league with the Fardohnyans then,” Almodavar concluded. “And they’re the ones behind this attack.”
“No!” Aleesha cried. “She’s not in league with anyone. I don’t know what they spoke about. All I know is that when I returned with the drinks, Lady Alija was gone and Luciena was lying on the floor in a dead faint.”
Marla’s expression hardened. “Captain Almodavar,” she said, without taking her eyes from the slave. Her voice chilled Mahkas to the core. Even Damin turned and looked at her askance, seeing a side of his mother he’d not seen before.
“Yes, your highness?”
“I want you to go down to the cells and kill Luciena Mariner.”
There was another moment of thick silence before Almodavar responded. “Your highness?”
“I want you to kill her, Captain. I don’t care how. I just want her dead.”
The merciless order left even Mahkas gasping. “But shouldn’t we investigate—”
“Her mind has been tampered with,” Marla informed them. “She is a threat while ever she continues to draw breath. I want her dead.”
“You can’t!” Xanda objected.
Marla turned her icy stare on her nephew. “I can.”
“Then you mustn’t!” he corrected. “If Luciena’s mind has been tampered with—if the High Arrion has done it—you can’t just kill her out of hand.”
“You don’t seem to understand, Xanda,” Marla replied. “She is a puppet and somebody else is pulling the strings. It might be the Fardohnyans or it might be the Patriots. I don’t really care. I will not leave a threat like that alive and anywhere near my children.”
“I do understand,” he argued. “Better than you think. And that’s my point. If her mind has been tampered with, you need to know why. And more importantly, why now? What’s changed in Hythria’s political climate recently? Why choose now to remove Lernen’s heir? Was this planned long ago or just an opportunistic attack? There’s more going on here than just a girl we thought we could trust suddenly turning into an assassin, Aunt Marla, and you’d be a fool to ignore it.”
He’s smarter than he looks, Mahkas decided, having never given Xanda much credit in the past for his intellectual capacity. Then again, Mahkas thought dryly, maybe he wasn’t so clever, after all. A smart man would think twice before accusing Marla Wolfblade to her face of being a fool.
“And how do you suggest I do that, Xanda?”
“Wrayan Lightfinger.”
“But Wrayan’s gone to Fardohnya,” Damin announced.
They all stared at him.
“Or so I’ve heard,” he added hastily, when he realised what he’d just revealed.
“We’ll discuss how you know that later, young man,” Marla warned her son with an ominous glower, and then she turned her attention back to her nephew. “But Damin is right, Xanda. Wrayan’s not here. Do you propose I leave Luciena free to wreak what havoc she wishes until the head of the Thieves’
Guild chooses to grace us with his presence again at some indeterminate time in the future?”
“Of course not, Aunt Marla. Keep Luciena confined, by all means. But don’t kill her out of hand.
Not yet. Not without giving Wrayan a chance to probe her mind and find out what’s really going on.”
The princess thought about it for a moment and then nodded reluctantly. “Very well, she lives—
either until Wrayan gets back or I leave for Greenharbour at the end of summer.”
“And if Wrayan Lightfinger determines that her mind hasn’t been tampered with?” Mahkas asked, privately sceptical about the thief’s ability to wield any sort of magic, but wise enough not to challenge Marla on the issue.
Warrior Page 24
