In Ashes Lie (9 page)

Lune bit back a curse. Of course he asked; she should have expected it. He was, after all, her savior, the knight most of her court had come to cheer on. For her to refuse him would betray her suspicions. Yet it galled her to show affection to such a viper.

It was the only way to find out what he sought to gain, and who was pulling his strings. For now, she must play his game. Lune pulled off her glove of black lace, and bent to hand it down. Leslic pinned it to his snow-white sleeve, and the crowd applauded him.

Then, at last, they took their places on the hard-packed sand, silver rapiers and daggers glinting in their hands. The amphitheater fell silent.

“Begin,” Lune said.

Cerenel barely waited for the word to leave her mouth. Quick as a snake, he leapt forward, and Leslic recoiled. With a rapid flurry of blows, they crossed the sand, Leslic dodging aside from a thrust to keep from being trapped against the low wall. No question of it: Cerenel was a fine swordsman.

But Leslic had for the last year been tutored by Il Veloce, an Italian faun resident in the Onyx Hall. He had a clever dagger hand, and was quick to use Cerenel’s momentum against him. First once, then again, the dark knight found his accuser unexpectedly within his guard, and saved himself only with a desperate twist away.

The silence that had marked their beginning was long since broken, fae shouting out encouragement to the one they favored. Cerenel’s name sounded but rarely. Leslic was the hero of the moment, but that was not all; listening, Lune identified more of his allies, more fae who shared his views on mortals. Their approval did not stop at one dead murderer.

Below, the blades continued their glittering dance. Whether above or below, the point of a duel was to show oneself willing to defend one’s honor; the outcome was almost immaterial. Almost, but not quite: in the final accounting, Cerenel
had
been negligent. Leslic’s words were true. And so while the audience came hoping for a good show, everyone knew how it would end.

Leslic beat his opponent back to the wall and trapped his sword against it; the swift thrust of his dagger would have maimed Cerenel’s hand, had the other knight not abandoned his sword and pulled away. But however desperately he retreated, twisting and leaping, he could not defend himself long with only a knife, and Leslic closed in for the kill.

“Hold!” Lune called out, just before the blade would have slid home.

Cerenel had fallen to his knees; the tip of Leslic’s rapier stopped a mere finger’s-breadth from his throat. Duels rarely went to the death, but in a matter touching so closely on the Queen’s honor, no one would have faulted Leslic. To proud to cry craven and thus save his life, Cerenel would have died.

But Lune had other plans for him.

“To shed the blood of a fae is an abominable thing,” she said. “Such a fate, we must reserve for true traitors to our realm. The negligence of Cerenel has been proved. Let his punishment be thus: that for a year and a day, he be exiled from the Onyx Court and all its dominions, and his place in our guard revoked. But when that time ends, he will be welcomed back in our halls, and may in time regain the honors he formerly held.”

Did she imagine the brief flash of anger in Leslic’s eyes? It was quickly hidden, regardless; he sheathed his rapier and dagger and said, “Your Majesty’s wisdom and mercy is a great gift to this realm.”

Looking across the sand, Lune caught the gazes of the Goodemeades, who nodded minutely.

“Go,” she said to Cerenel, where he still knelt in the sand. “Your exile begins at once.”

“Would you like more privacy, madam?”

“No,” Lune said. “That will not be necessary.”

She
hoped
it would not. If matters had come to such a pass that she needed to take elaborate measures to protect her secrets, she was in a worse state than she believed. But Lune doubted anyone would be following her movements closely enough to eavesdrop on the comfortable chamber in which she now sat.

Not yet, at least.

Cerenel stood rigid by the hearth, hands locked behind his back. He had accepted the Goodemeades’ offer of shelter; their home lay within the bounds of Lune’s realm, but Rosamund had assured him the Queen would not take it amiss if he tarried there a single night. Lune had watched his face settle into hard, understanding lines when she came down the staircase and threw back the hood of her concealing cloak.

She came out in secret, not even informing Sir Prigurd of her departure. It was easy enough to ensure she would not be disturbed in her chamber—all it took was a protest of exhaustion, after the excitement of the duel—and wearing a crown had not made her forget how to sneak about.

Lune arrayed herself in the chair Gertrude provided, and judged whether or not to offer Cerenel a seat. No; he was too stiff with anger, and might refuse.

“I will be brief,” she said. “For I suspect you wish not to see me just now.”

A shift in the tendons of his neck was her only reply, as he clenched his jaw.

“You were negligent,” she went on, and saw him flinch. “It was obvious before the duel, and proven with it. But I tell you now what is
not
obvious: that the mortal you brought below was bait, for a trap you unwittingly sprung.”

Cerenel was far from the stupidest of her knights. He paled in anger and spoke for the first time since he knelt at her arrival.
“Leslic.”
His hands came free from behind his back and flexed, wishing for the hilt of the sword he had laid aside. “Madam, let me but stay a moment to challenge him—”

Lune cut him off. “You may not. Did I wish Leslic exposed, I had done it myself. There is no proof, nothing direct. And though you could fight him again, this time with right on your side, that would simply remove him from play, with nothing gained. I am not concerned with Leslic. I am concerned with those who gave him his orders.

“This murderer was part of a pattern. There have been attacks on the Onyx Hall—subtle ones, not those of armies. Subtle enough that I have, until now, kept them secret. I must know more of their source.” She held his gaze. “The Unseely Court of Fife.”

The knight’s body stilled. Lune watched his face, trying to read his expression through the shadows that flickered over it, cast by the fire’s wavering light. He licked his lips before speaking. “You suspect my brother?”

A wry smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, born of bitter amusement. “No more than others in the Gyre-Carling’s court. Cunobel holds no love for me, I know. But he left here in peace—which I cannot say of another who once called this court home. Presumably he has told you that Kentigern Nellt is there as well.”

He said, with a touch of bitterness, “Another exile. Like me.”

“Not like you.” Rosamund’s voice came from the corner; by the twitch of Cerenel’s shoulders, he had forgotten the Goodemeades were listening, quiet as mice. “Her Grace exiled him permanently.”

“And for better cause,” Lune added. “You made a mistake, Cerenel—a foolish one, for which you are duly shamed. But I do not consider you my enemy.”

His relief spoke plainly. “Then you suspect Kentigern.”

Lune laughed. “Of subtlety and intrigue? He is no more capable of it than a thunderstorm. No. Someone else is the architect of these new troubles.

“Ever since the coalition in the North dissolved, Nicneven has lacked the military might to strike directly at us, and she has never had the subtlety for more insidious attacks. The worst she could do was to encourage the baser elements of my court—fae such as Leslic. I believe someone else must have come to her, someone with both the mind and the will to craft this new malignance. I wish to know who.”

Only a blind man would not see where she aimed. “You wish me to spy.”

“You have the justification you need. Exiled from London, disaffected with our court—who is to say you would not journey north to Fife, and throw your lot in with Nicneven and your brother?”

Cerenel’s eyes glittered in the firelight. He said quietly, “How do you know I would not?”

Because you ask that question.
Lune stood from her chair and took one of his hands in her own. His fingers were very cold. “I know you nearly followed your brother,” she said. “You stayed because you wished to see what manner of Queen I would be, and in time you came to believe in my ideals. I do not doubt your honor, and when the year and a day has passed, we shall welcome you back with open arms. If you can bring us the information we need... you will be richly rewarded.”

He knelt and pressed his lips to her hand. “I shall do as you bid, your Majesty.”

Excellent.
Cerenel was not the tool Lune would have chosen for the task, but he had the pretext she needed, to get someone close to the Gyre-Carling. Still, she must be cautious.

Laying her free hand on his head, she said, “Then swear it.”

His fingers tightened involuntarily on hers. The dim light darkened his eyes to deepest amethyst; in that instant, they were guileless, speaking eloquently of his surprise.

“If you swear it,” Lune said, “then I need not fear a misstep on your part. You will let slip no accidental word that might endanger you, or us here in London. Give me your vow, and I will know for certain we are safe.”

Surprise gave way to anger, mounting with her every word. Lune had known it would offend him, but she could not afford to do otherwise. Cerenel was no practiced spy, and though she was confident he would not turn traitor
now,
she could not trust what would happen after a year and a day spent among those with cause to hate her.

For him to refuse would cast his loyalty into doubt. He could imagine for himself the consequences of that. She watched him struggle with it, swallowing his fury down, and did not move.

At last the knight bowed his head, and repeated in a dead voice the words she proposed. “I swear to you, in ancient Mab’s name, that I will seek out the malignance in Fife that sets itself against the Onyx Court, and neither by speech nor by action betray to another my purpose in being there.” His fingers never once relaxed their stone-hard grip on her hand.

“Learn what you can,” Lune said when he was done, her tone as gentle as she could make it. “Then return to us for your reward.”

If there was one decision that could have made the dissolution of Parliament in May seem an even graver error, it was the choice to summon it again six months later.

There was little joy this time, except of a fierce and battle-ready sort. All over England, supporters of the Crown went down in resounding defeat. And although Antony did not consider himself a King’s man, he was not godly enough, and not sympathetic enough to Pym’s cause, to win reelection easily. Publicly, he said he regained his seat through the grace of God; in truth, he owed it to the fae. Lune had not said one word of complaint when he asked her for aid. It was the only way to keep the Onyx Court represented in the Commons.

So in the bleak days of November, they gathered once more in Westminster Palace, to fight over the governance of England. Damply unpleasant winds blew in through the broken windows of the chapel, causing the men who gathered within to shiver and wrap their cloaks more firmly about their shoulders. The windows had been as badly off the previous spring—victims of the long years when the Commons was disbanded—but no one had minded them then. Now, in the chill grip of an early winter, they added a grim touch to grimmer proceedings.

Arrayed along one wall were the King’s opponents, with their officers all in a row. Antony doubted anyone did not see John Pym as a general in this political war, leading Hampden, St. John, Strode and Holles, Hesilrige and Secretary Vane’s fanatical son, against the Crown’s own disorganized forces. They would cripple the King if they could, paring away slivers of his power until it all rested in their own hands; indeed, they had already begun. Now they prepared for their next move.

Antony watched Pym unblinking from the moment the opening prayers concluded.
Without question, he knows what has happened. His intelligence is at least as good as mine.

And if Antony had learned anything about Pym in the three and a half disastrous weeks last spring, it was that the man was a master of timing. Unlike his subordinates, he never let the passion of his beliefs carry him out of the course of effective action. Though Penington was chafing at the bit to attack the bishops and destroy the episcopacy, root and branch, Pym held him back, lest such Puritan zeal alienate more moderate members of the House. But when his time came ...

Antony, not attending in the slightest to the debate currently under way, saw Pym receive a message and rise with his hat off.

He must have taken his seat.

Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, had arrived in London the previous night. Parliament was nearly a week into its new sitting, but Pym delayed his attack, waiting for his enemy to arrive and take his place in the House of Lords. Now, at last, Pym could move against the King’s “evil councillor”—the man he would make a whipping boy for all the troubles in Scotland and Ireland both, and England, too. Pym could not strike directly at Charles, but he could harry the King like a dog at a bear, inflicting a hundred small wounds to bleed and weaken him of his power.

Lenthall, the weak-willed man who had succeeded Glanville as Speaker, gave Pym permission to speak. “I have something of gravest import to say,” Pym told them all, “and so I call upon the sergeant-at-arms to clear the antechamber, and to bar all doors from this House.” He waited while this was done, while the rumors ran up and down the benches, and then commenced his assault.

From tyranny to sexual misdeeds, he laid a whole series of crimes at Strafford’s feet. Nor was he alone: his minion Clotworthy succeeded him with another speech, far less coherent but far more inflammatory, and then more after him. All riding hard toward the same end: the impeachment of the Earl of Strafford, on the charge of treason.