He also could be useful. Certainly his skills were more applicable to discovering the intentions of the ambassador and his lady guest than mine. But a memory flashed to mind: my mother, shaking her head at the Marquise of Palova after the latter had suggested enlisting Caulin’s aid in gathering some piece of intelligence. The man is competent, but whenever he gets involved in an endeavor, it acquires a body count.
Perhaps it was best not to mention why I was lurking near this door after all.
“Of course I’m pursuing it,” I said. “The mage-marked deserve the same choices as any imperial citizen.”
“Oh, certainly they deserve it.” Lord Caulin chuckled, as if I’d made a little joke. “But tell me, Lady Amalia, do you truly think the Assembly passes laws to give people what they deserve?”
“It’s our duty to rule for the good of Raverra and the Empire,” I said stiffly. I stopped myself before scanning the room for Zaira.
Lord Caulin inclined his torso toward me in a deferential half bow. “Precisely. And the mage-marked are powerful tools to secure that good. Are they not?”
“People aren’t tools, Lord Caulin.”
He lifted wispy eyebrows. “What a quaint notion. Ah, the idealism of the young.” He shook his head. “You’ll understand someday; you are your mother’s heir, after all.”
He was treating me like a child. A few months ago, perhaps I might have deserved that. But I’d done well enough in Ardence.
I lifted my chin. “Compassion isn’t the same as naiveté.”
“If you say so, my lady.” Lord Caulin bowed deeply. “I pray you do not learn otherwise the hard way. Enjoy your evening.”
I frowned after him as he slipped away, his black velvet coat and breeches remarkable for their simplicity among the colorful brocades and velvets of the dinner guests. But even trying to track him across the room, I lost sight of him almost immediately.
Then a great crash caught my attention. I spun to see a serving boy, flushed bright red, bending to pick up a fallen tray from an impressive spray of shattered pottery.
Zaira tugged my arm. “Don’t you get distracted. Come on.”
I barely had time to return the quill to its stand before she whisked me through a sliver of open door, then closed it neatly behind us.
The room was appointed for exactly the sort of private aside the ambassador had just indulged in, or perhaps for meetings even more intimate. A few chairs formed a tight, conversational cluster around a small gilt table. Luminaries glowed softly in niches on the walls, and an oil lamp on the table provided a warmer, less steady illumination.
I pushed uneasy thoughts about what Lord Caulin’s subtle warning might mean out of my head. We might not have much time before the ambassador noticed we were in here—and I didn’t particularly want to explain myself to Caulin, either.
“Look for the paper,” I urged. Zaira dropped to the carpet and started peering under chairs.
My gaze strayed to a small fireplace with an elaborately carved mantel. A fire had been laid, but not yet lit, the wood arranged neatly in the grate.
Well, I knew what I would do with an incriminating document. I crossed for a closer look, and sure enough, a crumpled ball of paper lay fresh among the ashes.
I pulled it out and smoothed the two wrinkled halves of a list on the table, while Zaira peered over my shoulder.
A blunt hand spelled out perhaps twenty names. A rough line circled the third one.
Istrella Verdi.
“Oh, Hells,” I breathed.
I dashed out of the side room, the list clutched in my fist, to find my worst fear waiting for me: Istrella’s chair empty, her artifice supplies still spread across her place at the table. Marcello sat alone, poking his spoon into his seafood bisque without much enthusiasm. My stomach dropped as if I’d missed my footing on a canal edge.
“Where’s Istrella?” I demanded.
“In the ladies’ necessary. Why?” He stood. “Is she—”
Zaira and I didn’t wait for his question. We ran through the crowded hall, Zaira’s fluttering petticoats brushing against startled diners; I’d worn an ornate brocade jacket and breeches—the party wasn’t quite formal enough to mandate a gown—and had more luck pushing through the narrow gaps between chairs. For once, I pulled ahead of her.
A dressing room served as antechamber to the necessary, its door painted with a quaint border of leaves and flowers. I threw it open on an airy room with tall windows, their gauzy curtains blowing in the pungent evening breeze off the canal. My heart froze to sharp-edged ice in an instant.
Istrella lay sprawled on the floor, like a wilted flower. A faint whiff of peppermint hung in the air.
The cold-voiced Vaskandran woman knelt over her, a dagger shining in her hand.
Chapter Three
The Vaskandran woman rose to her feet, drawing a second dagger to pair with the first.
“Lady Amalia Cornaro.” Her eyes met mine with the readiness of a cat preparing to spring. “How convenient.”
My pulse jolted, and I grabbed my flare locket. But at that moment, Zaira burst into the room.
Istrella’s attacker cursed and bolted for the window in a swirl of dark coat and blond braid.
I didn’t care. I threw myself down by Istrella and laid a hand on her neck. Warm and alive, with life pulsing and breath flowing. Dizzy relief washed through me.
Zaira bounded to the window, knife in hand. She threw back the curtains and leaned out into the night air. “Demons take you, coward!”
An oarsman called back something rude from the canal below.
“Can you still see her?” I asked, my chest tight. “Should I release you?”
“No.” Zaira spat on Lady Aurica’s rug. “She’s gone.”
Marcello arrived at the door, pistol out, and emitted a strangled cry, his eyes locked on his sister.
“She’s fine,” I assured him quickly. “Just knocked out with some sleep potion.” I chose not to mention that I’d heard this was common practice among assassins who didn’t want their targets’ screams to give them away.
He came and cradled her head off the floor. “I should have gone with her.”
“Into the ladies’ dressing room?” I clasped his shoulder; his muscles were rigid under my hand. “She’s all right. Nothing happened.”
But it would have, in another minute. She might have been dead as poor Anthon, a week in the water. A shudder traveled down my spine.
I had no doubt Marcello was thinking the same thing. I’d never seen him so pale. He shook his sister gently. “Come on, ’Strella, wake up,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”
A thin trail of drool trickled down her cheek, but she didn’t stir.
I crouched down beside him, then hesitated. What was the appropriate thing to do to comfort an upset friend, when that friend was someone you’d kissed but declined to court? The space between us had once been charged with forbidden possibility; now any attempt to navigate those few inches presented a maze of complications.
I settled for patting his shoulder. “She’ll wake up soon. She’s all right. You’re taking care of her.”
He nodded, his lips thinning to a determined line. “Do you know who did it?”
“Vaskandar. And there’s more.” I uncrumpled the list I still clutched and spread it out on a nearby vanity. The plain, clear pen strokes spelled out name after name, some of them more than a little familiar.
Jerith Antelles. Terika. Istrella Verdi …
I swallowed. “You’re on here, Zaira.”
She crossed from the window to see. “What? Where?”
I pointed to her name. She couldn’t read yet, but Terika had been teaching her letters and a few words, so I was reasonably certain she’d recognize it.
Zaira frowned. “Is that Terika’s name, higher up?”
“Ah, yes.”
She swore. “Nobody threatens Terika. I’ll burn them till their teeth melt. Who else?”
“High-value Falc
ons. All the warlocks are here, and the Master Artificer. Marcello, you should check to make sure these people are well and accounted for.”
“As soon as we get safely back to the Mews,” he promised, a grim edge to his voice.
I scanned down the list, recognizing Falcon after Falcon, to the last name. My eyes stopped as if they’d hit a brick wall.
Amalia Cornaro.
Zaira must have seen something in my face. “What is it?” she demanded.
“I’ll tell you later.” I kept my tone as light as I could, despite the alarm singing its piercing song in my veins, and glanced meaningfully at Marcello. He didn’t need more to worry about quite yet. Zaira grunted acknowledgment.
I folded the paper up and stuffed it in my pocket. “How’s Istrella?” I asked Marcello. “Any improvement?”
He didn’t lift his eyes from her face. “Maybe a flutter. She’s still asleep. Whoever crafted this potion had some power.”
“You stay with her, then.” I straightened my jacket and checked the flare locket hanging at my throat. “I need to have a little talk with the Vaskandran ambassador.”
Zaira and I stormed out of the dressing room, past our uneaten seafood bisque, between tables of diners craning their necks to see what all the fuss was about, and straight up to the ambassador’s table. He faltered in the middle of telling his companions some anecdote as he saw us coming; the grins slid off their faces, and they inched their chairs back from him.
Good. Let him be afraid.
He attempted a strained smile and half rose. “Lady Amalia Cornaro! What a pleasure.”
I leveled a hard stare at him. “Ambassador, we need to talk.”
His features stilled to a wary blankness. Then his shoulders slumped, and he let out a long sigh.
“Very well, very well. Come, Lady Amalia; let us have this discussion in private.”
I closed the door to the side room myself, to make sure he didn’t slip an artifice seal on it. Ambassador Varnir bowed us toward the chairs, bending nearly in half.
“Please, my ladies. Make yourselves comfortable.”
I put my hands on my hips. “I think I’ll stand. What is the meaning of this assault on Istrella Verdi?”
“Why, I have no idea what you mean.”
“Don’t spout bilge at us,” Zaira snapped. “We know you were chatting up that ice-eyed bitch in this room right before she attacked.”
He grimaced. “Ah, that assault. Such a terrible thing. It failed, I hope? Yes?”
“If it hadn’t, you’d be on fire now,” Zaira growled.
“Of course.” He swallowed. “I believe Lady Aurica keeps a bottle in here. Do you mind if I …? Would you like some?” He turned toward a decorative cabinet and rummaged in it, coming out with a bottle and three glasses. His bald spot gleamed with sweat.
“Ambassador Varnir,” I chided, “you’re stalling for time.”
“Of course I am, Lady Amalia. As would any gentleman contemplating how best to keep his head on his shoulders.” He poured himself a glass of red wine, took a long draft, and then filled it again. “I did not endorse any action against your Falcon friend. In fact, I opposed it most vigorously. But you must understand, I have no power over what a Witch Lord sends her own agent to do.”
“So you admit Vaskandar has stooped to assassinating Falcons.”
“Vaskandar? Oh, no, not at all.” He passed me a trembling glass of wine. I took it, pressing it against a certain ring wrapped in wire and graven with artifice runes; the ring stayed cool on my finger, and its central stone remained dark. No alchemy present, but that said nothing about mundane poison.
“Don’t lie to me,” I said sharply. “I know that assassin was sent by the Lady of Thorns.”
“Ah.” Varnir wiped sweat from his brow. “Such a bold accusation! I wouldn’t dream of saying yea or nay to it. However, if you think the action of one Witch Lord represents Vaskandar as a nation, I fear you’ve fallen prey to a common misunderstanding about my country.”
“I’m aware that the Witch Lords are each separate sovereign rulers of their own domains,” I said icily. “You don’t need to school me in the basics of Vaskandran government.”
“Then perhaps you realize,” Varnir said, “that every action you ascribe to our country—from the unfortunate and ill-advised attack on your friend, to trade deals, to the troops gathering on your border—is in fact the doing of one particular Witch Lord or another. Or a cabal of them, sometimes. But you cannot ascribe credit or blame to Vaskandar as a whole—or, thus, to its ambassador, I hope.” He laughed nervously.
I frowned. “Wait, even the troops on the border? Are you telling me that’s a single Witch Lord’s gambit, and Vaskandar isn’t preparing for war with the Empire?”
“Oh, my lady, as to that, I couldn’t possibly say.”
Zaira pushed back her lace-trimmed sleeves. “Say the word, and I’ll light him up.”
He raised his hands, wine sloshing out of his glass, eyes wide. “No, please! I’m not trying to be coy! I couldn’t say because they haven’t held the Conclave yet.”
I exchanged glances with Zaira. “Conclave? Isn’t that the Vaskandran ruling council?”
“No, no.” Varnir pushed the idea away with both hands. “You Raverrans always want it to be like your Council of Nine, but Vaskandar has no ruling council. No one stands above the Witch Lords; their rule over their own domains is absolute. But when they need to resolve disagreements or band together for a common cause—such as war against the Serene Empire, for instance—the Witch Lords call a Conclave. Nothing will be decided until it takes place, about a month from now.”
I set down my glass lest I squeeze it too hard. “So this Conclave might decide not to invade us at all?”
“Oh, no, no, no.” He laughed politely, as if I’d made a dull joke. “There are a sufficient number of Witch Lords set on a course of conflict to render it inevitable, I fear, as I have tried to advise your doge. There are others who have asked me to assure Raverra of their commitment to peace; but each Witch Lord controls their own army. Those who wish war require no additional backing.” He smiled indulgently. “You Raverrans seem to enjoy your certainty that Vaskandar cannot threaten you, but your Empire has never faced all seventeen of our Witch Lords at once. What you call the Three Years’ War, that took place fifty years ago? That was three Witch Lords attacking on their own, with no support from the other fourteen.”
A delicate chill tiptoed between my shoulder blades. Raverra had definitively won the Three Years’ War, but it had wreaked devastation on the border lands that had lasted for decades. “And how many are bent on war now?”
Ambassador Varnir raised his eyebrows. “The Witch Lords do not include me in their councils, my lady. They merely each convey their will to me, and I do my best to fulfill their commands and negotiate their agreements without incurring anyone’s ire.”
“That’s a rat’s ass of a job,” Zaira observed. “But don’t expect mercy from us. One of your people just tried to kill our friend.”
“Terrible idea, that. But I had no part in it.”
“I can tell you were shaken up about it,” Zaira said. “Fumbled that joke you were telling your friends. Barely had appetite for your soup. Forgot to warn us, even.”
“I couldn’t.” He licked his lips. “Some of my masters are more reasonable than others. The Lady of Thorns would have me dragged back to her domain and impaled on a briar tree if I interfered directly with her plans.”
I remembered where I’d heard of the Lady of Thorns, now. My paternal cousins in Callamorne, a client state of the Serene Empire, which bordered her domain, had kept me up staring sleeplessly into the darkness as a child with their grisly stories about what happened to children who strayed into her forests. I’d pulled the quilt of their guest bed up over my head and told myself that the Lady of Thorns wasn’t real. But Ambassador Varnir apparently took orders from this creature of my childhood nightmares.
“Then I sug
gest some indirect interference now, if you wish to avoid being sent home in disgrace.” I kept my tone reasonable, and refilled his glass for him. “Why would the Lady of Thorns target a fourteen-year-old artificer?” Istrella was an uncommonly strong artificer—one of the Master Artificer’s rare apprentices, in fact, and one of only a handful who could craft the Empire’s most powerful weapons—and her brother was now second in command at the Mews. But Vaskandar shouldn’t know all that.
Ambassador Varnir accepted the glass gladly enough but shook his head. “I don’t know. The Witch Lords don’t confide their plans in me, my lady. I am what you would call a vivomancer, but I do not bear the mage mark; as such, they consider me beneath them. And I’ve found that a professional lack of curiosity into the affairs of the Witch Lords is a vital quality for a man in my position.”
“You’re lucky your position isn’t in the dungeon,” Zaira growled.
“My ladies, please. I have no power to stop the Lady of Thorns from carrying out her plans.” He spread his hands. “I’ve given you all the information I can. That is the preferred currency in Raverra, yes? Was it not enough to buy me some consideration?”
“Enough that I’ll permit you to walk out of here alive and free.” That had as much to do with my urge to get back to Marcello and make sure Istrella was all right as any sense of gratitude, but let him think what he would. “The rest is for my mother to decide.”
The ambassador paled. “La Contessa,” he breathed. He groped for the wine. “Perhaps I’d better finish the bottle.”
“Ambassador Varnir is a man with a great deal to lose,” my mother told me the following evening, over a plate of buttery pauldronfish polenta. “It’s making him both eager to cooperate with us and terrified to do so effectively.”
The Defiant Heir Page 3
