Standing to one side of the throne, Soren was forced to adjust her opinions. Tzel Damaris, as she had previously observed, was a handsome man, moderately tall for a human but smaller than most of the Fair. Brown hair, grey eyes and a fine creamy skin were pleasant, but hardly extraordinary. Yet palace-sight had not begun to convey some quality of his composition, a way of holding himself, or simply a way of being which trapped all attention. It was, Soren felt, the difference between the floor Damaris walked upon, and a true sunset. One was beautiful, the other: fathomless.
Caught up herself, Soren missed Strake's reaction. By the time Tzel Damaris halted before the throne, her Rathen was austere and thin-lipped and his words of greeting sounded grudging. He wanted, Soren thought, to simply bark "Can you kill it?" and be done.
The Tzel Aviar's response was formal and measured, his light tenor carrying no hint of warmth as he passed on a decorous message of congratulation from The Deeping's Queen. Then, as if he also had no taste for further niceties, he moved directly on to business.
"The area of the death shown to me has been distorted by a powerful force, one which has the taste of the Moon about it. This meant I could not reconstruct the death by scrying the past, and no standard tracking method is effective. Possibly this is a natural defence."
"Can it be overcome?" Strake's question trembled on the edge of an explosion. It was clear at least to Soren that he wavered on the verge of holding the Fair responsible for past and present murders.
Tzel Damaris had the steadiest gaze. Unlike Captain Vereck, obviously suppressing all expression, and Aristide with a ghost of that glitter-smile, the Fae showed no sign of tension, of pleasure, even of concern. He was a pool without ripples.
"It is unlikely we will be able to follow it by magic," he replied. "There are possibilities I will pursue."
Watching Strake, Soren thought that his jaw had locked. That he wanted nothing more than to throw something or shake the Tzel Aviar until his teeth rattled and he promised miracles. Instead, he shifted his gaze, focusing on Captain Vereck. His lips were white, and the muscles of his throat stood out. Then he said in a reedy thread of voice: "Find it for me, Tzel Damaris. The resources of Darest are at your disposal."
It was a dismissal, abrupt after such a short-lived audience, and a profound relief. The Tzel Aviar bowed, Aristide and Vereck closed around him. A gesture sent Fisk and the rest of Strake's satellites into belated retreat, until only Soren remained to watch the King control his disappointment.
Wondering what she'd do about standing stalwartly at her Rathen's side when she was heavily pregnant, Soren shifted unobtrusively from foot to foot. Strake's face had become angular, full of planes, and he stared straight ahead at nothing, cold death in his eyes.
Eventually he turned to look at her, resplendent in black and silver. "In the histories there's a great deal made of the idea of a Deeping curse."
"One of the explanations for why everyone died," Soren acknowledged, resisting an impulse to stand up straighter. At least he had his own voice back. "A lot of things in Darest are blamed on Fae curses."
"The Fair don't talk of Darest's distant past, even if you ask them – why it was left empty so long, what happened to its inhabitants." He was staring straight at her stomach, hidden as it was by her uniform. As if she and everything around him were some strange nightmare, and he couldn't credit the evidence of his eyes. "Do you believe in this curse?"
Tricky. Soren waved a hand equivocally. "I think that Darest has had more than its share of ill luck since Torluce died. It's too soon to know whether your return will change the cast of its fortunes. But before – more than Rathens died in the plague that took the majority of your family. More than Darest suffered. Some of the other major deaths happened after Queen...your aunt died, and they were ascribed to a power play among the family itself. The accidents were not inexplicable, and seemed mainly due to a Rathen tendency to fling off after things with a lack of due caution. Do I think that someone assisted the decline? It's possible. How would we prove it? If you're asking me whether I think the Tzel Aviar will be more interested in concealing some truth, or ensuring your death, than tracking down this killer – I don't have an answer for you. I find myself giving no-one the benefit of the doubt any more."
He shifted that stare out over the Hall of the Crown. "What is he doing now?"
"Listening to Aristide." Who was evidently being his most exactly polite, with the malicious glitter restrained. Tzel Damaris gave him precisely the same amount of focus as he'd awarded Strake and, though Captain Vereck had left them in the empty guest apartments, there was still no sign of conspiracy between the pair.
As she watched, the Tzel Aviar slowly turned his head, looked across the room and then up, until he was facing the very angle Soren used to observe him. His face didn't change, became neither annoyed nor interested, and after a moment he returned his attention to Aristide.
Warden of the Borders. Even among the Fair it was a role few could aspire to. The Deeping was an empire: ancient, enduring and vast. Its people were singularly gifted with magic and that power was woven through forest and farmland, stone and river. The individual charged with resolving the disputes and troubles of such a land's borders could be nothing less than a consummate mage, steeped in centuries of lore. And, with the tiniest amount of effort, he'd just pointed out to her what that meant.
Disconcerted, Soren had drawn her focus away. Now she returned it. While he was in the palace, he would be part of the parade through her head, whether she willed it or not. She assured herself that it was hardly likely that the Tzel Aviar could observe her in return.
"What do you want to do with the rest of the day?" she asked Strake. She wanted to remind him that he'd that morning promised not to take out his anger on her, or perhaps just to hold him while he so obviously bled, but was half certain he'd throw her across the room. "Go through the rest of the Treasury?"
"No." Strake rose, but only to stand unmoving, still staring across the room. "Have Vereck give you more detail on the death. About the – this carter. Find out precisely why they could find nothing."
After a pause, Soren obediently headed for the garrison. But her attention stayed on her Rathen as he stood alone in his throne room. And she was not altogether surprised when he headed out through the palace and, for the first time since their return, visited the Temple of the Moon.
Chapter Twenty
Well past midnight and Soren watched incredulously as a cloaked figure crossed Fleeting Hall, skirting the very edge of the Garden of the Rose to avoid the attention of the guards at the opposite end of the room. Jansette. Again.
This time, using every shadow available, she flitted past the Royal Mage's apartments and paused to fit a key to the Champion's door. Fuming, Soren slid out from the warmth of her blankets, and snatched up a mageglow on the way to her receiving room. With conspiracies and killers to worry about, bed-climbers were beyond tolerance. She would not be waiting till morning to speak to the Captain of the Guard.
When Jansette slipped into the receiving room, Soren was standing in its centre, arms folded and expression leagues from welcoming.
"Can I help you, Lady Denmore?"
After a frozen moment, Jansette surprised Soren by laughing, an appreciative chuckle. "Should I clutch at my chest and cry 'Undone!'?" she asked, lowering the hood of her cloak. Her hair glimmered in the light of the mageglow, but it did not seem Soren was to be treated to the shrug and tumble, or that there was only a tantalising wisp to reveal beneath the cloak.
Soren suddenly wished she'd brought her sword. The tone of voice, the words, the dry twist to the beautiful lips, the assessing gaze all belonged to a different person to the one she'd expected. And this time Halcean was safely sleeping, not ready to rush to the rescue.
"What can I do for you?" she managed.
"I know my response here – 'It's what I can do for you, Champion.' With a sultry purr, don't you think, and perhaps a hint of lowered eyel
ashes?" When Soren didn't respond, busy trying not to gape, Jansette's smile widened and she moved forward so they were standing chest to chest. Light perfume tickled senses. "I'm being shockingly unprofessional," Jansette added, and laughed again, soft and full of excitement. "Don't worry, you're quite safe – assassinations were never my taste."
"You're–" The conclusion was obvious. A professional, an agent. A spy. And a consummate actress, for Soren still could not quite credit that this was the same person. "What is it you want?"
"Well–" Jansette had somehow moved forward again, her presence quite overwhelming. "Now that I'm not in the bed of someone worth my wages, and failed so miserably last night, my posting's been recalled. And there's only one thing it'll really burn me to leave Darest without doing. I don't like regrets."
Amazed at how much not being a ninny improved the former favourite, Soren moved abruptly away. "Do you have other keys the Captain of the Guard missed?" she asked, trying to erase all hint of temptation from her voice.
"Not many." Jansette's smile was challenging, but she didn't immediately press her attack. "I'll offer you a trade, Champion. Some information I'm sure you'll be interested in."
"For?"
"Do you want me to be crude?" The toss of the head was a nice mix of invitation and teasing mockery. "Nothing this past month has suggested you'd regret paying."
"You won't get anywhere trying to blackmail me," Soren said, and immediately recognised an echo of Strake in her stiff tone.
"Oh, rot." Jansette's retort was derisive, her eyes still sparkling with obvious pleasure. She was thoroughly enjoying this. "Take the poker out, Champion. Soren. Ever since you arrived in Tor Darest you've been looking at me like I was the wettest of your dreams, fatally flawed. Believe me, if circumstances allowed I'd have been quick to oblige. That sober, statuesque dignity thing you've got going – I've been wanting to test that since I first saw you. Women like you shouldn't be allowed to put on uniforms."
Somehow, Jansette had neatly closed the distance between them, and backing away again only brought Soren to a wall. "Who do you work for?" Soren snapped, trying to delay. She wasn't the least surprised when the woman just shook her head.
"Don't you want to know what I saw?" Jansette asked, leaning in so the words were a thread of sound in Soren's ear, so that breast pressed breast and thigh slid against thigh. "I'll bargain low – a kiss, that's all. One kiss and I'll tell you just the thing you want."
And, for the moment at least, Soren didn't care about bargains or spies, but the discovery that Jansette's skin was just as soft as it looked and her hair spider-silk tangling fingers as Soren clasped the nape of her neck and did as she was asked. Jansette had no intention of just one kiss, though, and her hands were everywhere. But, for all the woman's beauty, for all that her exquisite form had been the subject of fantasy, Soren found she didn't want to go where this was taking them.
It wasn't a fear of consequences, or even the thought that Strake would be hurt if he knew. It was a realisation that a spy sleeping her way to secrets, calculating and intelligent, was rather worse than a pretty fool trading on her looks. And Soren liked that woman even less.
A shaky halt, but she held Jansette back, shook her head and said in quite a firm voice: "No."
"In love with your King?" Jansette, blue eyes displeased, possessed more acuity than Soren had ever dreamed. "Who's to know?"
"I will."
"Forget that," Jansette said, shortly. She pressed forward, but Soren would not respond.
"I'm happy to let him join in," Jansette added. "Sun, I'd ride that one raw any day."
"I don't think I'd enjoy that."
Jansette drew back, frowning at the tone. "I could wear you down if I had time," she said. "But that's the one thing I can't spare."
"Leaving on the dawn tide?" Soren asked, almost normally. Her skin was flushed, breath fast, but she was glad to have said no.
"Oh, well before, Champion. I've no taste for earning myself a cloak of feathers. I must say that for the Diamond: these salutary lessons are always so memorable there's none in the Court who don't think twice in their misdeeds. At least for a while." Jansette reassembled herself, then sat primly on a chair. Her bright, assessing gaze swept the room before settling back on Soren re-tying her robe. Jansette the ninny, bed-toy of the Regent. Naïve, ingenuous and blatantly ambitious and – nothing like.
Kicking her thoughts firmly away from half-fulfilled fantasy, Soren crossed her arms as a shield. "Tell me."
With a small nod, Jansette gestured toward the eastern portion of the palace. "Some nights ago I was returning from an assignation with a very talented little man." She paused, felt in her pocket, then dropped a key on the floor. "Married, sadly enough, and pretending to be faithful. But there's a useful window, and those blockish sills dotting the New Palace are wide enough for my purposes. I was working my way around over the stable yard when I heard–"
She paused, for dramatic effect or out of uncertainty, her fine brows drawing together. Soren, who had been expecting some secret of Lady Arista's, clenched her hands into fists, desire forgotten. Vixen. Jansette had been there when Vixen was killed.
"A nightingale, I think. Or a lark of some sort. One of those birds that sing, anyway. I don't waste my energy knowing animals. The moon was high and waning, not too long past full. A scatter of clouds kept blocking and unblocking the light. It made for uncertain shadows, and then sharp ones, and though I could see the yard clearly enough, the stable was in darkness.
"The song was coming from there. Just a bird I thought, but still I stopped and waited and stared. Because it – pierced. And it was moving, coming out into the yard. And there was – nothing." Jansette lifted one hand to wind a finger through one of her tendril-curls, twisting it tight and then pulling free. "It – I'm not telling this at all well, am I? But I was frightened, and I'm not very often. Hardly ever. And this was for so little reason; a bird, a sound. No threat at all. I told myself that it's easy to mistake where noise comes from, that a little bird would be easy to miss, down there in the night. And then–"
This time she tugged the curl, jerked it and stopped herself, smoothing it into place. "The light changed, the clouds moving across the moon, so everything became less sharp, less perfectly clear. And there he was – sunlight on dust."
"What?"
"You know – when sunlight at just the right angle picks out all the dust in the air? It's there all the time, but usually you don't see it? Well, he was there all the time, standing in the middle of the yard. Whistling. He moved away, and – it was very fragmentary, the image, as if he was walking between the moonbeams. I don't think I saw all of him, all at once, but I saw enough."
She fell silent again, then shook her head and stood up. "Dark hair and dark clothes, a pale face and little more to see from that height. But his hands, Champion. They glittered like they were sheathed in glass. Like they could cut."
"Was he Fair?" Soren asked as Jansette headed toward the door.
"Who can tell? He didn't have the height. But he looked young." She shook her curls back, and lifted the hood of her cloak so that only the curve of jaw and honey-stung lips remained. "That's all I saw. Are you going to call for the guards?"
It hadn't even occurred to Soren to do so. She should. Keep Jansette in Darest, question her about the Deeping killer until there was no possibility she was keeping anything back, and then start in on such interesting questions as who she was working for and what she had told them. But Jansette had volunteered the information about Vixen. There had been nothing to stop her leaving Darest secrets intact. Stolen kisses aside, she had exposed herself to pass on news of the killer. It was not something Soren could ignore, even to know who was taking such an interest in Darest.
"You wouldn't have come here if you'd thought there was a risk," she said.
Those lips curved. "There speaks one who doesn't know me at all. But I'll take the forbearance with thanks. I think I should dislike you f
or refusing me. What's the good of being so virtuous you won't even take the things you want, when they throw themselves in your face? But – instead, I think I'll give you something, just for free. The Diamond Couerveur–"
"Yes?" Soren's voice was tight.
"Ask him if he's missing a knife."
-oOo-
"Fisk, present my compliments to Lord Aristide and the Tzel Aviar and ask them to join the King to breakfast. Have Lord Aristide arrive a little earlier."
Strake's secretary might be growing used to organising the lives of important people, but he still looked a little daunted by this order. Strake had made it abundantly clear that he did not like business brought to his breakfast table, and his mood had been anything but mellow following yesterday's disappointments.
Aristide was the only one of the three awake, staring as usual at the ceiling. She watched him receive her message and rise, unhurriedly following his morning routine until he was the shining pattern of perfection which was awarded the name of Diamond. He hadn't varied his behaviour since learning of her palace-sight, but there was something very deliberate in his manner as he dressed, as if he could not quite forget the possibility of observation. Still, little difference. It made her wonder if yesterday was the first time she'd ever seen Aristide in an unguarded moment.
Watching someone dress became embarrassing if they knew for certain you were, so she pulled her attention away when Tzel Damaris was woken. There was little to be learned from watching him, anyway. Another one for habitual masks, or did he truly feel so little about whatever task he'd been set?
She joined Strake in his breakfast room, and found him frowning at a larger than usual table, set for four.
"Have they made some progress?"
"No. Well, not that they've said. This is something else." It was a cloudless morning, and she looked out into the garden thinking of Vixen, of the carter, and all those who came before. She wondered how far Jansette had travelled during the night. And where to.
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