That sounded like a reason to not charge blindly forward, but it was a little late for caution. If there was any trap, it was not something Soren could feel and at any rate hadn't blasted her Rathen for trespassing.
As Strake summoned a magelight, Soren followed less precipitately. The clear, steady glow picked out every detail of stairs long neglected, filthy with dust and grime. She'd had at the back of her mind an image of a long corridor stretching all the way to the Garden of the Rose, where literal roots were twisted into some form of spell, but as she descended she saw only a short passage ending in a room with no sign of plant life.
Halfway down the stair, the palace went away.
The simple relief of nothing made Soren pause. Wonderful, how taking one step forward could make her feel human. But then she hurried to catch up. Strake would more likely be protecting her from any attack, but she would observe the forms of being his Champion. She supposed she should start wearing the sword again, though she had grown more wary of the compulsive need to keep it close.
"Stone-deep 'chanting," Strake commented, more to himself than Soren. He was standing in the centre of the chamber, looking around at walls of glossy black stone covered from ceiling to floor in precisely drawn runes.
"What does that mean?" Soren asked, glancing up to confirm that the runes were on all four walls, even above the entrance. The ceiling and floor were bare. There was nothing else in the room.
She touched the stone, and found it cold and slick, almost like glass. The runes, white streaked subtly with pink, were not on the surface, for all they looked painted on. Rather, like the coloured streaks in marble, they were part of the stone itself.
Strake had not answered her question. She wasn't certain he'd even heard it. Brows drawn into a straight line, he moved to the wall left of the entrance and commenced reading.
Runes were one way to bind magic to will. You didn't need to have an inner source of power to use them, just as you didn't really need fingers to paint. Born mages had an affinity which could not be reproduced, not to mention magic on tap, but of all the different breeds of enchantment, runes were the most accessible. All you had to do was learn to read them.
Wryly, Soren left Strake to it. With a kerchief and sufficient application, she was able to clean herself a seat on the stair, just below the point where she was 'out' of the palace. Then she sat in the sun among lazy spirals of dust, taking advantage of the unexpected gift of quiet to think about babies.
The last time Soren had been planning a child she'd been eighteen and convinced she and Tcharen Esten would be together for the rest of their lives. They were going to live happily ever after: the typical girl's dream of an ideal marriage, with only a third to choose to get them with child. Then Tcharen had discovered Vetris Rilmonney and wanted him to be not a third, but an equal partner in a tribond.
If she was entirely honest, Soren would have to admit that Vetris was not evil incarnate. Or ugly, or corrupt, or something other than a sharp-witted merchant Soren's love happened to want as well. But Soren hadn't been attracted to him, certainly hadn't wanted to share Tcharen with him, and it had all been downhill from there.
Four years was a long time. Soren had trysted with a handful of men and women since, but not contemplated marriage or babies. Twice shy, she supposed, or just hadn't stumbled across someone she wanted to set up housekeeping with, let alone a nursery.
Like Strake, it was not a decision she appreciated having made for her.
So early on, she simply didn't feel pregnant. But that bud meant a Rathen heir, and she was fairly certain Strake would have mentioned getting anyone else with child. Wouldn't he?
The image of her King seeding the countryside with Rathens pulled at Soren's spirits. She knew she should not feel so intensely possessive about a man she had known for less than a week, one who had made her no promises and was free to bed anyone he pleased. A tiresomely rude man with a too-quick temper and very evident antipathy. She needed to rid herself of this conviction that he was hers.
Besides, if he wanted to ensure the family never died out, multiple consorts might be a bad tactic. A whole slew of rivals for the throne would create more problems than it solved.
Dismissing suspicion, Soren thought over the formalities she would have to put off until she was prepared for the whole world to know. An offering for the child's health in the Temple of the Moon would be tantamount to a public announcement, and it was unlikely she could write to her mother with news of a grandchild without the contents of the letter being inspected. Lord Aristide already knew, it was true, but there were too many others whose congratulations might be accompanied by more than a knife-edged smile. At least the usual embarrassment about having a child without a partner's bonded support wouldn't count for much – polite social rules didn't count for kings, and the rich never had as much pressure to provide the security of marriage. The Rose handily took care of any possible squabble about paternity.
The most she could do was think of names, and even that presented complications. She'd long intended to call her first child Shaol. The name had been in her family for generations and would do for a girl or boy, but she wasn't sure she liked it with 'King' or 'Queen' attached. And Aluster Veristace was sure to have an opinion. About too many things.
If he succeeded in destroying the Rose, Strake might choose to take the child and send Soren some place where she could not serve as a reminder of his ordeal. An easier route than struggling with fury every time he saw her.
Soren found that her hands had closed into fists, and forced them to relax. He had not proved a pointlessly cruel man, at least so far. But a flicker of unease still ran through her, something she recognised as being outside herself. The Rose. She hadn't felt it this way since they'd left the Tongue.
Worriedly, she looked down the stair and discovered the room dark, magelight gone. But before she could leap to her feet, her eyes adjusted to the gloom enough for her to make out Strake, watching her from the shadows.
"Can you unmake it?" she asked, when he didn't move.
With the Rose a subdued roil at the back of her head, his dim, shaded figure became a threatening unknown. Why did he just stand there? But then he stepped forward into the sunlight, and though the Rose's unease didn't go away, Soren was reassured by the way he spared a moment to gaze up the shaft of the bell-tower at the dance of light and dust. Her imagination had served her images of a mind-blasted zombie, of her Rathen suddenly run mad or again possessed by the Rose. Whatever he had learned, he was still Strake.
"It's possible."
Without pause for explanation he walked up the stair, swiping at the grit on his boots before re-entering the Treasury. Soren followed, thinking she'd never seen her Rathen so subdued.
The palace came back, and she slowed, distracted by a stand-up fight between two guardswomen in the garrison. Lord Aristide alone in the East Garden, the Seneschal staring at herself in a mirror, Aspen lost as usual in a whirl of gossip. Strake watching her with a shuttered frown as she walked into the Treasury. He ran his hand along the side of the entrance and the wall obligingly returned.
"Possible at what price?" Soren asked, and he looked at her sharply. Not out of anger or fear, but something less easily read.
"It's an atrociously complicated spell," he said. "Different from what I expected. The Rose itself is a construct rather than an entity. A set of instructions." He began lifting dust-cloths from odd, obviously arcane objects and testing the locks on the chests, opening what he could. Prowling about, as if he didn't want to explain.
"Are you saying it's not sentient?" Remembering the struggle of wills at the back of her mind, Soren doubted this very much.
Picking a string of tarnished bells out of one of the caskets, Strake poked at the wadding which prevented them from chiming before setting them on the bench beside a dome of silver and crystal.
"It's not any one thing," he said. "The plant provides a living shell, but it has no 'being'. I understand
now why it created Champions even when there were no Rathens. In a way it can't not create Champions – half its functions seem to rely on interaction with one. Certainly the divinations covering the palace require a mind the Rose doesn't own. So it needs Champions just as much as it needs Rathens. And Rathens... Did you see the colour of the runes?" He waited until she nodded. "Domina Rathen's blood, mixed with I don't know what. She must have bled herself half-dry to finish that room. It not only provides a means of identifying her descendants, it's where the Rose gets its power. It draws it from Rathens."
"Not just the King?"
"Just the King at the moment." Bitterness flashed in his eyes and he continued turning out the chest of bells without really looking at them. "It can store power, so it was still able to create Champions these past two centuries, but even with my return – perhaps thanks to my return, given that Walk – it would be the weakest it has been since it was first created."
"Making it easier to destroy?"
"Very much so." He glanced at her again. "I'd have to look into it further, but pulling it down might be as simple as destroying that room – and dealing with the power left unbound by the structure of the runes."
The Rose was no longer jittering at the back of her mind, but Soren was less than reassured. Strake was not behaving like a man who had discovered his enemy was weak. She wanted him to declare that the Rose would be gone within the day, wanted to have her head her own and her Rathen provided the vengeance he needed to stop hating her. And she saw no sign in his face that she would be given these things.
"Do you think it will try and stop you?" she asked, and her voice came out small.
"It might not recognise the threat." He made an impatient gesture at her incomprehension. "It's not a person. It's a list of orders. Defend Rathens, the palace, the borders themselves in a way. Divine the proper heir, a suitable Champion. It would stop anyone but King and Champion from entering that room, but preventing the Rathen Ruler from dispelling it isn't its function."
"But I could feel it. Fighting against itself."
"Two rules conflicting. And the stronger – protect the bloodline – won out against the weaker."
"Protect the King."
That goaded look was back. It gave Soren barely a moment's warning before he suddenly swept bells, casket, packing, and the rest of the contents of the bench to the floor. Crystal shattered, muffled bells clunked, and a black sphere rolled slowly away. Outside, Strake's guard glanced toward the door, plainly uncertain what if anything they'd heard.
Soren had taken a step back, her stomach a roil of anger without focus. Sun send her a better-tempered Rathen, or at least some way of dealing with this one without being constantly pitched into storms. Or some way to touch him he would accept.
He was standing frozen now, face blank, watching the sphere as it disappeared under a bench. Outside, the younger of the pair of guards pressed her ear to the door. Soren watched Strake's hands, already closed into fists, contract even tighter.
Then he bowed his head. With an exasperated grimace, he righted the fallen casket and knelt on the near side of the crystal shards, picking up the largest fragment.
When Soren bent to help, he spared her a fraction of a glance, and said: "Leave it." The tone was curt and he looked down before continuing. "An exercise of my mother's. I clean up whatever mess my temper causes."
But you're King now, Soren thought, staring at the blue-black crown of his head. His expression was intent as he worked, attention given entirely to bells and slivers of crystal. If possible, she felt more shut out from his thoughts than ever before. What was going on?
Holding her tongue, she stood discreetly back as he filled the casket, then swept up the smaller shards with one of the dust cloths. Outside, the two guardswomen had stopped trying to listen at the door, and were now talking earnestly. It did not seem they would risk bursting in.
"Where is Aristide Couerveur?" Strake asked then, fetching the black sphere from beneath another bench.
"In the East Garden." Soren spared a moment to watch Jansette curtseying before a seated Lord Aristide. Pale and golden, their hair shone in the late morning sun. Lord Aristide was looking particularly amused.
Depositing the sphere in the top of the casket, Strake unbarred and opened the door, walking between two guards who had leapt frantically into position a moment earlier. He strode off purposefully, with the air of a man going to perform an unpleasant task. There was little Soren could do but close the Treasury door and follow, pretending not to notice the looks exchanged by the guards falling in behind her. He was heading directly toward the East Garden.
Was he actually going to discuss the Rose with Lord Aristide? Talk about what it had done to them? Soren sorted her options, for her one resolve since she'd learned she was pregnant had been that her child would never know how it was conceived. She would rather be thought ambitious, or a tool in some pragmatic plan on Strake's part to ensure the Rathen succession. To have anyone else know the details of that last night in the Tongue was doubly distressing, for it would only increase the chance of the truth making its way to her child.
He had said that he could unmake the Rose, that it was possible, but quite obviously there had been some snag in the detail. Some unanticipated complication more difficult to accept than the loss of the Rose's protections. What had he discovered?
Chapter Fourteen
The quadrangle known as the East Garden was a lonely place. With the palace's water drawn by enchantments, the well in the centre was a neglected decoration, and the until-recently sealed doors to the southern buildings had long meant there was no through-traffic. The carpet of grass was bisected by a path and circle of stone around the well, lined with white standard roses. Sparsely-stocked beds ran along all four walls, subdued in Autumn but still sprinkled with spots of red and yellow. One wall was cut by tall spears of cypress, drawing the eye toward roof and sky, and there were rows of windows in every direction, behind which a small audience was already pausing to watch the King come to visit. But still there was a sense of isolation. Emptiness.
Shortly before midday, the sun was directly overhead, but the day was not warm and occasional clouds even dared to dim the garden's sole occupants. Lord Aristide was seated on the furthest of a cluster of garden benches nestled in the south-east corner, and Jansette stood before him, wearing a prettily earnest expression as she spoke. When Strake strode in, Lord Aristide turned his head a fraction, but Jansette did not seem to notice until the Regent's son rose and swept into a bow. Turning, she made an appealing picture of confusion, suddenly confronted by the King.
As ever, Jansette inspired in Soren a mix of desire and dismay. Such beauty wasted on such an idiot. It was different to see her in person rather than palace-sight, to experience the full effect of her perfume and that peach-milk skin. Soren was not the least bit surprised when Strake stopped to survey her as he would a sunset or swallows.
Today she contrived to look astonishingly young in white and pale yellow, with high neck and long sleeves. She curtsied less gracefully than usual, peeking up at Strake's closed expression, and then past him to Soren as if appealing for help. Exquisite, delectable.
It was Lord Aristide who stepped forward, while Soren tried to dislodge the memory of Jansette and the Regent's last night together, along with a few past fancies of her own. She refused the inevitable image of Jansette and Strake.
"Your Majesty," Lord Aristide said, "may I present Lady Jansette Denmore? One of the lights of the Court." He looked truly appreciative, as if introducing Jansette to his King was something he only wished he'd thought of sooner. They were themselves a pair, Soren realised – both displaced from power by Strake's return, both seeking new roles. Perhaps even the same one?
Strake, however, was not in the mood for flirtation, no matter how beautiful the woman. "Denmore?" he repeated. "A relation of Baron Lucas?" He was already looking impatient.
"Only distantly, Your Majesty," Jansette repl
ied, and proffered up a charming, tentative smile. "I should, I mean I wish to, would like to say welcome home. Your Majesty." She sank immediately into another curtsey, this time with weightless ease, then hurriedly extracted herself from the encounter, whisking past the guards now stationed at the garden's entrance.
Soren watched Jansette's face as she paused to glance back, then moved so she could watch the encounter through one of the many windows. Pleased with herself. But Lord Aristide had already switched to a more formal stance, and Strake was gesturing for him to sit back down, so Soren could not spare the attention to try and analyse a past favourite's false fit of nerves.
"What can I do for you, Your Majesty?" Lord Aristide asked, as Strake planted himself in the middle of the bench opposite. Soren, who had no mind to be eternally standing in a corner during Strake's conversations, chose a third bench and smoothed her surcoat over her knees. This all felt too calm, after her expectation of epic confrontation. The morning had been set aside for vanquishing the Rose, not sitting in a garden opening manoeuvres with Aristide Couerveur. It conjured an entirely different sense of peril. Why wouldn't Strake tell her what he'd discovered? Why was he suddenly here, apparently planning to take the most difficult hurdle of his short reign?
For an overlong moment both men indulged in intent, critical survey, to which Lord Aristide added splendid insouciance. His ease suggested a gathering of friends indulging in some particular pleasure. Since Strake's return he'd had time to consider his situation, speak to his allies, judge whether it would be possible to take the throne. Strake had not so much as offered him a conversation, which many had read as Lord Aristide not being in the new King's favour. Now, turn-about – the King had come to the Diamond Couerveur. Darest's future would ride on this encounter.
"I suppose," Strake said finally, "the question is not should I appoint you Councillor of Mages, but whether you would accept the position."
Fascinating to watch the subtleties of reaction. Lord Aristide's ever-glittering smile turned almost wry, star sapphire eyes searched blue-black, and he sat slightly back. It was re-evaluation.
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