Bound (22 page)

She was confused. "Why do I need a robe?"

"The Emperor wishes this audience to be discreet, that it will not reach certain ears, your father's among them." He looked at her for a moment, frowning. "No, mine won't do. Too long, it will be noticeable. Lydia, do you still have that one you used to wear in the summer, with the hood?"

Lydia nodded and left the room. Tavis spoke up. "I guess I could use one of yours, then. We're about the same height, I think."

Keari shook his head. "No, you will remain here, with Eliar. A smaller party will be able to enter without notice. I know a way, but the more people we take, the more likely we will be seen and remarked upon. Lydia and I can protect Faylanna sufficiently well, Tavis."

As Keari was donning his own robe and concealing scarf, Lydia returned with a light grey linen robe that she handed to Fay. As she put it on over her dress with Lydia's help, Tavis appealed to his mother. "I should come with you, Mother, but Ki says I have to stay behind. Can't you reason with him?"

Lydia froze and slowly turned to her son. As she did, Fay saw that her expression was one of fear, rather than the exasperation Fay had expected and felt herself. Lydia's voice shook slightly as she answered, "No. Tavis, you can't. You cannot come." She seemed to regain some control of herself and continued, "This isn't a tour or some other lark. It is a serious meeting."

Tavis stared at her in disbelief as they continued to prepare. Keari and Lydia hurried her out of the manor after pulling the hood up over her head low enough to hide her face and partially obscure her vision. Each of them kept a hand on her arm as they led her down the streets to the Imperial Palace that loomed at the heart of the Quarter. They guided her to a side door nearly hidden in a garden and up a narrow set of stairs. The floor of the stairway was coated with dust and the two sets of tracks she saw around, one small and one large, almost certainly belonged Keari and Lydia. Through a side door and onto a broad landing, Fay found herself in what she was certain was the private residential wing of the palace, open only to the Emperor, his family, and their guests. Keari's hand on her upper arm propelled her down the hallway too fast to see anything around her with the hood still in place. She and Lydia were nearly running to keep up with his long strides and she wondered what could have been in the letter to put him in such a rush. Finally they slowed down as they approached several guards standing around an intersection of three hallways, all oriented around a single door.

One of the guards stepped forward as Keari unwound the scarf to reveal himself. The guards all bowed low to him, and the one who had stepped forward, a captain if Fay remembered the insignia of rank correctly, spoke. "We were told to expect you, but I was asked to verify the identity of any visitor, as a precaution."

Fay thought Keari would be angry at what amounted to a question of his word, but instead he turned to her and lifted the front of her hood just enough for the captain to look in from his still-bowed position. When the man nodded, Keari dropped the hood and guided her toward the door, which another guard opened for them. She heard Lydia follow them through it.

The room on the other side was a sitting room more richly appointed than any she had ever seen. Silk panels covered the walls along with paintings and statues. The seating was upholstered in fabrics so expensive her mind reeled. Even the tables were made of the glossy black wood threaded with white veins characteristic of the Asphor tree, one of the rarest and most costly materials she knew of. This room made her more aware of the wealth of the empire than she had ever been before.

Surrounded by this opulence, three men occupied the room. Fay could just barely see them under the rim of her hood. Near one of the long, slender windows, looking out, stood an older man, his hair streaked with gray. His clothes were ornate, as if he had just come from a formal audience. He looked around as the door closed behind her and she recognized the Emperor's younger half-brother, Prince Arovan. His face wore an expression of bored disinterest which did not change when he saw them, though his eyes snapped with curiosity when he took in her hooded state. Fay was certain she had seen him before, but she couldn't immediately recall where.

The second man could only be Keari's brother, Prince Orvios. He was in a chair to one side, and had paused in the act of carefully oiling a sword when they entered. She knew little of this prince, save that he was several years younger than Keari and favored martial prowess over intellectual pursuits. He was neither as tall as his brother, nor as handsome and seemed indifferent to the clothes he wore, which were rich but out of date. His face bore a scar along one side that narrowly missed his left eye. Those eyes hardened at the sight of Keari. He frowned at her but said nothing.

On the couch in the center of the room sat the ruler of the Rianzire Empire, Valteray of House Mykorro. A worn leather-bound book was open in his lap, but he was looking up at the three of them with the keen gaze she remembered from her previous encounter. He hardly seemed to have changed at all since then, and only the fine creases around his eyes showed evidence of the twenty years between his age and that of his eldest son. His hair was still full with hints of silver peaking through it in places as it fell well below his shoulders. A well-groomed goatee gave his serious face an air of wisdom. She had nearly forgotten the resemblance between the two of them, the same strong jaw, the same narrow nose and high forehead.

As they stood there, the Emperor turned to his younger son. "It seems today is a favored day for you, Orvios. You get to escape from this room early. You too, Arovan. I wish to speak with Keari and his guest privately."

Orvios' lips curled up at the corners for a second as he sheathed his sword and quickly left. Arovan stepped away from the window and bowed to his brother before leaving, though Fay thought she read reluctance in his posture. No one spoke until a few moments after the door had closed behind Arovan. Valteray said softly, "You may remove your disguise now, my dear."

Fay swept her hood back with both hands and dropped into a deep curtsey, remaining there, waiting. There was a creak and footsteps approached, then a slender hand that was almost the image of his son's raised her from her obeisance. As she straightened, she saw the Emperor staring into her face with a gentle smile that she doubted many had ever seen from him. She had always seen him display a stern manner in public. "My, how you have bloomed, Faylanna, more beautifully than any flower in all of my gardens. And yet I still see that young girl I met so many years ago. Please, sit."

His compliments overwhelmed her a bit as she moved to one of the vacant chairs facing the sofa to which he had returned. Still, she remained silent, waiting to hear why he had summoned her for so private and urgent an audience. Lydia took the other chair opposite the Emperor, while Keari crossed the room to stand behind his father. Valteray also remained silent, studying her for several minutes before finally laughing and saying, "Well, you have certainly learned the wisdom of patience since last we met. I expected you would ask immediately why you are here."

Fay smiled nervously. "I assumed you would tell me, your Majesty."

"And so I will." His tone became more formal, as he continued. "I received late yesterday a most unusual petition from your father. I find it odd in many respects, not the least of which being that he is asking a favor of the throne after inexplicably missing his audience with me. I was displeased by that absence, as I had several questions for him. The opportunity to ask them was one of the reasons I granted the audience to begin with." He frowned as he took a folded letter from the table beside him and placed it in his lap. "Further, the request he makes is one for which I am aware of no precedent in all our history. Truthfully, I can find no reason for the request at all, now that I see you before me. In short, your father has requested that I suspend the normal independence due any graduated Magicia and return you to his protection and authority. Further, he has requested that you be found wherever you might be staying at present and delivered to him at Iondis, to remain there until you are properly married to a suitor of his choosing, at which time his authority over you would pass to that individual."

Shock at these words robbed her of her voice and she found it hard to even breathe. Her every freedom curtailed in such fashion was unthinkable. Slavery disguised by flowery words. She hardly heard Keari speaking to his father. She could take in nothing but this proposed horror.

Soft, warm hands clasped her suddenly ice cold ones, shaking them gently. Though aware of this, she found herself unable to respond. The hands moved to the sides of her face, gently pulling it around to stare into green eyes that calmed her with their beautiful familiarity. She focused and saw that Lydia was kneeling on the floor in front of her. Not the eyes she had thought, but someone who cared what became of her. She heard her name being spoken and Lydia's hands fell away from her face. Fay looked up to see concern in the faces of both father and son. Keari's long stride brought him around the sofa in seconds and he folded himself to be on her level at her side, one of his hands on her shoulder the moment he was there.

"It will not happen, Faylanna. I promise you," he said in a quiet, flinty voice. Turning to his father, he said, "You cannot mean to grant this... request."

Valteray continued to stare at Fay for a moment before answering. "Indeed, I do not. Faylanna, be at ease about that. In normal circumstances, I would not become involved, letting my brother decide the matter in his capacity as Minister of Justice instead. In this instance, though, I question his ability to be impartial. He is, to my mind, too close to Viscount Derrion. In fact, it was Arovan who conveyed to me your father's request for an audience and he made a great effort on your father's behalf to persuade me to grant it. I am also mindful of my son's interest in the matter. I have been aware for some time that he has acted to protect you, watching over you as your father should have done." Keari turned to his father in surprise. "I have said nothing to this point, Keari, because there was no need. I agree with your actions and the way you have conducted yourself in this matter. Calder's behavior has been most unsettling, and you have ever been discreet in this."

Fay began to calm down, the Emperor's words easing her worry, but something nagged at the corner of her mind. This petition spoke of desperation, which seemed to fit her father's state when she had seen him in the Gardensia Memoria, but there was more. It had never been likely that the Emperor would interfere in such a heavy-handed fashion in the affairs of the Magicia, and her father would have known that. The fight the Emperor would have from the Council over such an action would never have been worth it, particularly on the behalf of a mere Viscount. Something about the situation didn't fit. She began to wonder if it was merely a diversion from some larger play her father might have been engaged in. Or perhaps someone else's play entirely, she thought, realizing for the first time since leaving Keari's manor that no presence lingered in her mind as before.

"Your Majesty, please, may I see the petition?" she asked, trying to think of another alternative.

"Certainly." He held it out and Keari took it and placed it in her hands.

The moment she unfolded it, she knew she had been right. She read it through once, and then again to be sure of what she was seeing. "He didn't write this."

There was such a silence in the room that she looked up to see the Emperor staring at her, polite shock on his face as well as a faint skepticism. "How can you be sure, my dear?"

"For one thing, he doesn't write this way. These aren't the kind of words he uses, and it's too short. My father is a verbose writer. He has always loved the sound of his own voice and it translates into his writing. Given how important something like this would be, and how much he's asking for, there's no way that he could have written this letter in less than a few pages, and certainly not this, a single side of a single sheet. If you received a request from him for an audience, you've seen his writing. Even something as simple as that would have taken him at least a full sheet, probably both sides." Valteray nodded slowly, thoughtful. Fay continued, "It's also not his handwriting. He taught me to write, and it still shows to this day. We form certain letters the same way, like the letters s and g. I see those letters on this page, but none of them are drawn the way we write them."

The Emperor stood up and walked to a small writing desk tucked into a corner of the room. He returned with a sheet of paper, quill and ink pot. First, she considered what to write that would illustrate her point, then dipped the quill. She quickly wrote 'The golden sun will never set on the glory of our empire,' and passed it over to him without a word. He smiled when he read the words and then examined them closely. He held a hand out for the petition and examined it also, holding it next to her parchment. He then resumed his seat on the sofa.

"And you would swear to the similarity of your writing to his?" was all he said when he put both sheets down on the table beside him.

She nodded. "In those two letters and a few others, yes, your Majesty."

"Then this may be worse than we thought. When the petition was delivered, I merely thought it was Calder being his usual, somewhat odious self, but this suggests something else."

"It's also not the first time he has tried to force me to Iondis." She explained to them about the confrontation at her graduation in greater detail than she had given before.

"How could you have risked going to meet with him, after that? No information, no need was worth that. If I had known, I would never have let you out in the city without a guard of some kind, not even when you went with Tavis," Ki's soft voice beside her made her turn. "Why didn't you tell us all of this before?"

"At my graduation, it didn't strike me as either significant or unusual. When I mentioned it before, I guess the details still seemed unimportant, his usual need to control my life."