Greystar

by C. L. Polk

  It wasn’t a question. “Yes.”

  He nodded, once, his gaze falling away from me. It ached to see him fold his hands together and smooth his features into a calm, observing aspect. It was so much worse than shouting or accusations.

  I looked down at the smooth stone floor.

  Finally, he spoke. “Does he advise you?”

  “Only the one time,” I said.

  “Oh, Grace.” His voice was so soft. So understanding.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not like that. I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to hear his voice.”

  “But there’s always a reason,” he said. “You don’t want to, but you climb those stairs anyway.”

  “This is the last time,” I said. “No more.”

  “Did you say that the last time you were up there?”

  I lifted my head. “He tried to kill Avia.”

  Miles’s gaze sharpened. “Why?”

  “She was Nick Elliot’s friend.”

  Miles nodded, listening.

  “She has—had—Nick’s manuscript.”

  “Had.”

  “Father had her flat robbed and trapped. He had the manuscript stolen, along with her research.”

  “Just like Nick,” Miles said. “And you were up there to tell him to stop?”

  “Yes.” He understood. I could breathe again. “I don’t take his advice. I don’t ask him for help. He wants to run the country through me, but it’s my job now, not his.”

  “I don’t think I need to tell you that you should stay away from him.”

  “You don’t. It’s only that I need to keep an eye on him.” How weak it sounded, coming out of my mouth. He called for me, and I came, no matter how much I blustered once I was there.

  Miles nodded. “As much as he needs to keep an eye on you, I imagine.”

  I was playing into his hands, Miles meant. But he turned his head and regarded the door to the cell. “Perhaps we should get on with the interview. But if you need to talk, I’m here.”

  “Yes,” I said. “We should get on with the interview.”

  He leaned forward, unlocking the cell door. Inside was the stink of humanity, rising from a hole in the floor. I sidestepped a tray of food—a bowl full of millet, a wrinkled King Philip Pink, and a waxed wooden cup and matching pitcher, filled with the day’s measure of water.

  I knew them from my own brief stay in Kingsgrave. I had choked down gluey, cold millet, hating every mouthful. I had made the apple last by chewing every bite down to mush, nibbling away at the core. I made the water last until the next meal—a soup without seasoning, watery fish broth, limp vegetables, plain boiled crab, usually cold.

  Niikanis hadn’t touched the tray. He sat on the narrow shelf in his robes with the patched sweater and rough wool gloves to keep him warm, staring at nothing. Miles rolled to a stop beside me, studying Niikanis thoughtfully.

  “Grieving,” he said.

  Did that mean he was innocent, or did it mean that he regretted killing Sevitii? It could have been either.

  “Niikanis,” Miles said, and then continued in Laneeri, his voice even as he asked a brief question.

  Niikanis raised his head and looked at Miles with nothing in his eyes. Slowly, he shook his head.

  “Well, I asked him straight out if he’d killed Sevitii,” Miles said. “I didn’t really expect him to say yes, however.”

  “Why did you do that?” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to try and catch him in a contradiction, or—”

  “She was more than her omen,” Niikanis said.

  I startled at the fluent Aleander. Miles’s shoulders went up. Niikanis looked down at his hands. “She was so much more. My youngest daughter had a face like the moon when she was born. Such a small thing—every finger, every toe perfect. I cast the omen. Halian the Maker and Menas the Just, rising in concert. Harmony with Lilia the Compassionate—and high in the sky, Amael the Traveler, square to Halian, to the degree. To the second. A long journey would be her making. Or undoing, as Halian wills. I thought I knew which it meant.”

  Miles glanced at me, and I kept my mouth shut. “You believed this journey would lead her to greatness. To ascend even higher. But not enough to let her go on her own.”

  Niikanis said nothing, but his shoulders sloped. His spine slouched. His arms wrapped around his middle as if it hurt. He rocked, swaying gently. “I was so proud of her destiny. To be so powerful—and when the Magal consolidated power, she stood on the ninth step to the Star Throne. I was so proud.”

  I looked to Miles. Miles listened. He watched as Niikanis kept his gaze on the floor.

  “How I wish she had been ordinary, now.”

  “Halian’s touch made that impossible,” Miles said. “She had been negotiating, you know. She wasn’t going to tell us a thing unless we acknowledged Laneer’s right to be independent. She was brave. Ambitious. But she was going to betray the Star Throne to do it.”

  Niikanis shook his head. “She would not.”

  “The orders to the temples had to come from the Star Throne,” Miles said. “It was a formality, asking who had told your Star Priests to ensorcel your warriors, laying the snare that would possess the Aelander who killed them. Who else would the temples obey for such a monstrous thing?”

  Niikanis shut his eyes, shut out the sight of us.

  I put my hand on Miles’s shoulder and spoke. “If Sevitii had succeeded in negotiating Laneer’s freedom from our rule, it would push her higher. If she had brought down the Star Throne, would she be chosen to take that seat?”

  Niikanis went tense as I spoke. He peeked at me. He nodded. “She would have ascended.”

  Miles leaned his elbows on the armrests. “She bribed a guard to deliver her star bangle to you. To let you know she was all right, to give you a way to know if she was safe.”

  Niikanis shook his head. “No.”

  “And when you realized she was going to betray the Star Throne, you weren’t proud of her anymore,” Miles said. “So you used the hair as a link. You used magic to kill her. And then you dropped the bangle in the privy.”

  His face twisted. “She was my daughter.”

  “That’s what made it hurt,” Miles said. “That moment when you realized that she wasn’t who you made her to be.”

  “No.”

  “She shattered that pride when she betrayed Laneer,” Miles said. “When her ambition outstripped her loyalty and became a betrayal.”

  “No,” Niikanis said.

  He’d pressed enough. Miles was the club. Therefore, I was the honey. “She died two days ago,” I said. “And you had no idea. You didn’t have her star bangle. You didn’t know if she was alive or dead, if she was safe or in torment. Isn’t that right?”

  “No one would tell me where she was,” Niikanis said.

  “What happened that day?” I asked. “What did you do, what did you see?”

  “There is no amusement,” Niikanis said. “A day in a cell is a year. I ate the sorry gruel and the apple. The Blessed One came to see if we had enough comforts. I saw guards. I saw your Prince, passing up to the tower stairs. I ate the watery soup. There were three pieces of fish. I was lucky. I watched the Prince come back after it was done.”

  I glanced at Miles. He caught the look, trading it for one of his own. “You saw the Prince before luncheon, and then you saw him again after you were done?”

  “Yes.” Niikanis said. “Why?”

  “It’s important,” I said. “Did anything else happen after that?”

  “Another wretched meal. Sleep,” Niikanis said. “The Prince again, the next day. He had guards search my cell. He had me taken here. He accused me, just as you accused me. Now my days are nothing.”

  He raised his head and met my gaze. “There is nothing else to say but this: it should have been me.”

  It made something near my heart break open. This man had loved his daughter. He would have given everything for her; his life before hers
.

  Father loved me. But he would never do that.

  He turned his face away. “I would like to be alone now.”

  Miles unlocked his wheel brake and paused just before the door. I pulled the cell door open, and Miles went through, passing me the key.

  I locked the cell. “We’ll have to give this back.”

  “And check the duty roster. I need to know when Niikanis and the other Laneeri got their lunch.”

  I nodded and walked beside Miles, who propelled his chair to the guard station. “Because Severin couldn’t have killed Sevitii if he was in the tower when she died. But the timing would have to be exact. Prisoners only get twenty minutes to eat.”

  Miles halted his chair. “Do you know why Severin was in the tower?”

  I licked my lips. “Yes.”

  “Is he visiting Father?”

  Sick with it, I nodded. “Yes.”

  Miles watched me silently for a moment. “Do you know why?”

  “He’s taking Father’s advice,” I said. “I don’t know the details.”

  Miles stared at an unseen distance. I bit my lip and waited. Severin, talking to Father. How often? About what?

  No. I knew what.

  Miles shook his head. “Severin’s trying his best with negotiations. It would be easier if—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  But he didn’t have to. It hung in the air, loud enough to fill my mind: It would be easier if Severin were King.

  Miles wheeled to the guard station, signing the receipt of Niikanis’s key. “I’d like to look at the duty roster,” he said. “I need to verify when meals were served.”

  The clerk on duty handed over a green clothbound ledger, and paper slid and crackled as my brother flipped pages. The smell of boiled millet hung in the air. Miles bent his head and scanned a page.

  “Here it is,” Miles said.

  But I already knew before he told me. “It clears him.”

  “Yes,” Miles said. “Niikanis just gave an alibi to our other suspect.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Tea and Correspondence

  We kept silent as we passed through the prison, but my thoughts tumbled around, each of them competing for attention over the last. Severin was no longer a suspect, and for that I was relieved. But Niikanis’s grief had been real. I feared we weren’t even close to finding the truth.

  Miles led me through the chilly passageway between prison and palace. Halfway between destinations, he stopped, spinning his chair around to face me. I stepped off to the right to give him a view of the door at the end of the passage, and I kept an eye on the door ahead of us.

  He glanced at me, and I braced myself for another talk about dealing with Father. Instead he said, “Do you have a busy day today?”

  I pulled a notebook from my pocket and consulted it. “No session,” I said as I turned to the relevant page for my schedule. “No appointments. I am expecting some people will drop in on me, but nothing set on the schedule.”

  “That’s better than I hoped. I need a favor from you, but it will take hours.”

  “Anything,” I said. “What do you need?”

  “I need you to be an accomplice,” Miles said. “Aife wants to leave the palace.”

  “And she needs my help?”

  “She wants you to come along,” Miles said. “Will you do it?”

  “I’d be happy to,” I said. “But the Grand Duchess can’t simply walk out of Mountrose Palace. You want to smuggle her out.”

  “Yes. Will you do it?”

  “You know I will. Let’s move; it’s cold.”

  “Push me,” Miles said. “We don’t have time to dawdle.”

  A few minutes later, we were passing through the double-guarded doors that led to the Amaranthines’ apartments.

  “Straight on to the solar,” Miles said, and I pushed his chair to the glass-and-iron chamber. I heard Aldis’s voice as the door cracked open, and I squared my shoulders, prepared to wade into a fight.

  “You are too tolerant,” Aldis said, and stopped as the door opened all the way, his face turning to stone as he saw me. “You.”

  “Me,” I said, striding along with Miles in front of me. “Were you just telling Her Highness how you attempted to control my will by dropping your glamor and interrogating me?”

  Aife blinked. I did too, for Aife was not garbed in the shimmering, storybook gowns fit for a monarch. She stood tall and sharp in an Aelander chalk-stripe suit, her hair contained in a tall, intricately folded headwrap, bold in mustard yellow, orange, and black geometric patterns. Her blouse was of the same material, sporting a draped bow at the neck. She looked like a fashionable advocate on her way to an important meeting with a subcommittee at Government House. “Aldis?”

  Aldis bowed his head. “At the time, I asked her what had become of one of the Laneeri delegation. Sevitii an Vaavut had gone missing from her cell at the base of the Tower of Sighs, where they were being unlawfully detained.” Aldis shot me an ugly look. “I wished to hear Chancellor Hensley tell me where Sevitii was, and how she fared. The Chancellor used her power to threaten and intimidate me instead of telling me the truth.”

  I couldn’t shout. I clenched the handles of Miles’s wheelchair and kept my voice even. “And that’s justification for exploiting mortal weakness in order to get what you want? First you ask me to reveal information that I had no obligation to give you. Maybe that was out of concern for Sevitii—”

  “Spare me your circumlocutions,” Aldis snapped. “When I asked after Sevitii, she was already dead. Murdered. And you didn’t tell me. I had to hear it from a guard when I returned to the tower to speak to Niikanis an Vaavut.”

  Aife turned her gaze toward me, now. “I would like to know the reasons for these removals.”

  “We were interviewing Sevitii,” I said. “We had her moved to a different location in order to keep the subject of our discussions secret. We kept her under guard, but that wasn’t enough to protect her. Someone wanted her silenced. They succeeded.”

  “And the reason for taking Niikanis into your protection?” Aldis hammered the last word full of skepticism.

  I addressed my remarks to the Grand Duchess. “We suspect him in connection to her murder.”

  “How?” Aldis said. “He’s locked in a cell.”

  “Recently, you requested that the Laneeri be given back their personal effects, along with warm clothing, blankets, and other comforts. We complied,” I said.

  “And warm blankets lead to murder?”

  “We also struck off the copper-plated shackles we keep prisoners in. Niikanis is a powerful mage, made even more powerful with the addition of nine witchmarks bound to his will,” I said. “Our examination of Sevitii’s body raised the possibility she had been killed by magical means. We’re questioning him in connection to her death.”

  “We have only your word on that,” Aldis said.

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s correct.”

  “You can’t be trusted with the safety of the Laneeri delegation,” Aldis said. “You must release them.”

  “Aldis,” Aife said. “I recognize your perspective on the people of Laneer. You are their tireless advocate. Perhaps Grace can take suggestions on how they can be better protected. But for now, I believe I set you a task.”

  “You did. I’ll take care of it,” Aldis said.

  He stepped away from Aife, dressed in the same wide-legged, calf-high trousers and padded jerkin. Armed with his bow, a sword, and multiple daggers, he stepped aside and waved a hole in the air. He walked into a scene by the seashore, the tide all the way out to the horizon. I let myself breathe a sigh of relief when the Way into the Solace irised shut.

  “My apologies,” Aife said. “Aldis is deeply attached to the Laneeri. He blames you for the war.”

  “That’s fair,” Miles said. “We’re to blame, after all.”

  “And we are investigating her murder. We need to know that as much as we needed to know what she was go
ing to tell us.”

  Aife’s eyebrows rose with polite curiosity. “And that is?”

  “I’m so sorry, Your Highness. Aeland wishes to level an accusation against Laneer, but we can’t do it without proof, and I have no wish to make accusations without evidence to support me.”

  “And you’re hoping to use it to negotiate with my requirements surrounding Aeland’s treatment of Laneer.”

  I nodded. “Yes. So you see—”

  “I do see,” Aife said. “I see Miles has brought you. Does that mean you will help me?”

  “I will. I know how important this is to you. And maybe it will even be fun,” I said. “What do you wish to see? I’d be happy to show you around.”

  “I have a destination in mind,” Aife said. “I’ve accepted an invitation to lunch in a citizen’s private home. She also extended the invitation to my party, but I wished to keep it small.”

  A citizen’s private home. Well. I suspected I knew who.

  The door opened behind us, and Tristan sauntered into view. He cut a fine figure in a deep gray wool flannel sack suit and handmade shoes that gleamed with a painstaking polish.

  “I know that suit,” I said. “I designed that suit for Miles.”

  “You have a gift,” Tristan said. “And the tailor you selected is a visionary. I am the height of fashion, and I could fight a duel in this.”

  “Do you anticipate fighting a duel?”

  “It’s my job to always anticipate fighting a duel,” Tristan said. “But I don’t think we’ll come to any mischief.”

  “I am relieved to hear it,” I said. “Actually, I need a favor from you. I need to hide Avia Jessup. Are you using your residence?”

  “Only a little.” Tristan reached into his pocket and produced a key. “I’ll send a note to Mrs. Sparrow when we’ve finished our mission.”

  “Ah yes, the mission,” I said. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Simply lead us through the palace to your sleigh, and then accompany us for an outing.”

  “In Riverside?” I guessed.

  “That is our destination,” Tristan said.

  “Oh, I knew it. You’re going to have tea with a revolutionary.”

  “And you’re invited,” Tristan said with a twinkle. “Isn’t that wonderful?”