Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (21 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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Benet cut her outbreak short. “Lady Gaultry. How opportune that you have rejoined us.” She could not tell from his expression if her interruption had pleased or annoyed him. He held out his hand, Tielmark’s blue-and-white shield shining on his signet. Trying to school her expression, she offered him her hand in return, then bent and pressed her lips to the ring.
“My Prince,” she said. “I am yours to command.” Her anger against Dame Julie was his to control, if that was what he wanted. Was this why he had called her here?
He presented her formally to the singer, his pressure on her fingers making her bend her knees and offer the old woman a clumsy bow. “I’m sure you will have recognized your old coven-member Tamsanne’s granddaughter. You must forgive her abrupt address. She has just returned from Bissanty, where I sent her to rescue Martin Stalker, Melaudiere’s grandson, from Tarrin’s altar. The subject of slavery is perhaps too fresh in her memory.”
“Dame Julie,” Gaultry said awkwardly, torn between anger and fresh confusion at the Prince’s words. If he wished to rewrite history, she was not going to protest—but her journey to Bissanty had certainly never received Benet’s prior consent, let alone his permission. “Please excuse my hasty words. I’m honored—”
“Indeed,” Dame Julie said stonily. A glimmer of unidentifiable emotion flickered across her face. “Come into the light where I can see you. It would seem you have inherited something of your grandmother’s looks, if nothing of her patience.”
Gaultry bridled. She knew almost nothing of Tamsanne’s early relations with this woman, but she sensed from the woman’s tone that she was enjoying some private joke at her family’s expense. “I inherited Tamsanne’s blood,” she said stiffly, the impulse to placate this old woman dissipating as quickly as it had risen. “And with it the prophecy of the Common Brood. I know little of my grandmother’s life, but now, having witnessed the Bissanty slave-bonds in action, I do not imagine Tamsanne would have intended any such thing for me. I am surprised to learn that you view your own bond so differently.”
Dame Julie shot Gaultry a second sharp look. “I have not seen a slave for fifty years. How happy that our Prince has you on hand to so vividly refresh my memory.” She rubbed the small of her back, as though sitting had made her stiff, and glanced away from Gaultry to Benet. “So this is the one Dervla wants to string up in court? Good luck to her. I suspect
this one’ll prove harder to pin down than even her grandmother was—as if anyone ever took joy in standing against Tamsanne.”
The Prince raised his brows. “Lady Gaultry understands her place at court,” he said blandly. “She has learned to respect the gods.”
“Respect the gods?” Dame Julie shook her head. “How Dervla must hate her.” She shot Benet an amused look. “You’ve grown sly, my Prince. It’s too late at night for an old woman like myself to think of crossing swords with such an upstart.”
Benet allowed himself a thin smile. “Then you’ll agree to help?”
“Yes, but not with Dervla.” Dame Julie loosed a half-resigned sigh and shook her head. “I’m not the woman to split hairs and ferret out where her accusations have merit. Besides, Bissanty traitors should have a reason to be afraid. Who knows? Perhaps she’ll get past personal vendetta and move on to uncover the real turncoats.” She shifted, a little arthritic in her movement.
“However,” she continued, “the Kingship songs—there I may be able to help. I’ll delve into the old lore. The old ballads are not all prettiness and light. Your own court bards could help me there. They are possessive of the history songs, but perhaps if you would charter them to perform for me I could learn something.”
“My bards?” the Prince said, more than a little surprised. “They are relicts of a past age. Under my father’s rule, much of what they were required to learn was set to parchment by younger hands. I do not know what they could tell you.”
“Exactly so,” said Dame Julie. “And all the more reason to question them.”
“It has been long since they were called to active performance,” the Prince said doubtfully. “But do as you see fit. I’ll command them to obey.”
“I’m an old woman.” Dame Julie rose and made a stiff curtsy, obviously satisfied by this concession. “You’ve had your way with me. Now give me leave to get some rest.”
“You are free to go,” the Prince said. “I would not hold you past your comfort.”
Dame Julie made a sound that was suspiciously like a snort, and curtsied again.
She collected her shawl from the bench, along with a leather-bound songbook. Turning to the door, she stopped for a last look at Gaultry.
The young huntress shuffled her feet under the old woman’s scrutiny. The tamarin, quiet all the time that they had been talking, shifted restlessly,
and she almost dropped it on the tiled floor. Dame Julie watched as she juggled to hold it.
“You have served to turn my mind tonight, but you have no understanding of what the Prince is asking. Asking of us, of the Brood.” Her dark hazel eyes were cold, even angry. “With half the old witches gone, it will take much to uncover that answer.”
“You’re still alive,” Gaultry said uneasily. “And Gabrielle of Melaudiere, and Tamsanne. Rumor has it that Richielle may be too. Perhaps she knows something.” Richielle, the seventh member of the original coven, was a mysterious figure reputed to have been old even at the closing of the last cycle.
The old woman thumbed the edge of her songbook and drew a heavy breath. “Richielle—if the gods favor us, the goat-herder’s safely dead and in the ground with all her secrets. Rediscovering the Kingmaking secrets should prove terrible enough without her.” She pushed abruptly past the young huntress and was gone.
The Prince sank onto the bench Dame Julie had abandoned, and pulled his wife down beside him. Though the Princess’s face was carefully expressionless, her fingers sought his for comfort. Looking down at his young bride with tender concern, he drew her hand close to his heart, unconsciously revealing as he did so how much had been at stake in this interview.
“She seems afraid,” Gaultry said softly. She averted her gaze and studied the door, giving her rulers a moment to compose themselves. “Why did my talk of slaves alter her so?”
“She wanted to change her mind,” the Prince said. Giving Lily’s hand a last caress, he rose from the bench and returned to the princely chair near the candelabra. As he took his place, he assumed a cool expression, the straight dark brows quirking sternly. Gaultry’s heart sank. The cramped space of the room, which had grown increasingly warm throughout Dame Julie’s interview, seemed suddenly stifling. The time had come for her own scolding.
“I crossed paths with the Stalkingman in Melaudiere’s sick-chamber,” the Prince began, as if conversationally. “Somewhat reluctantly, he informed me of the circumstances of your arrival in Princeport, as well as the number of your present company.” He shook his head. “Your unsanctioned absconsion from my court, as a murder enquiry opened, would have been insult enough to my authority—even if you had not carried the prime suspect away with you. What am I to do? Your return now,
with that selfsame murdering boy in your train, only flaunts your disobedience.”
Gaultry dropped to her knees. “Your Highness,” she said hastily. “Disloyalty to
you
was never my intention. But a life was at stake. Martin—”
“If you were speaking only of the Stalkingman, I could commend you,” the Prince said dryly. “I owe the man my life. The least I would have done was send you in his train, and I certainly would have done more, given the opportunity. But your flight was only partly to rescue Martin. Against prudent council, you decided to protect the boy—the young monster who killed innocent members of your own Common Brood.”
“Martin’s safety was foremost,” Gaultry protested. “And Tullier—the boy was never more than a pawn. On great Elianté’s honor, I swear with clear conscience that he did not commit the murders of Destra Vanderive and her children. That was his Sha Muira master. A man Tullier himself killed in his turn.”
Benet shook his head. “The boy was Sha Muira-trained. The murdering taint was in him. But this is by-the-by. How do you think the facts appeared to my court? Even if the boy did not kill the Vanderive family, my entire court bears witness that he is guilty of a greater sacrilege. On Emiera’s Feast Day, he sought to defile the love that the Goddess-Twins bear me. I could have despoiled the harvest of an entire summer that day. Can you wonder that my High Priestess calls you traitor?”
“No, my liege.”
“Well then—explain yourself!”
“My Prince,” Gaultry said softly. “The plot to which the boy was party on that day was certainly a sin against the gods. But I was the first to call warning. If you can but believe me—”
Benet cut her short. “The boy drew a knife on me before all my assembled nobles. How can he be forgiven?”
“I don’t ask that you forgive him,” Gaultry said, panicking a little as she tried to keep pace with the rapid questions. This was leading toward Tullier’s worst fear—return, and a summary trial and execution. “But I would beg you pardon him. Tullier was Bissanty’s tool. You can wound Bissanty severely by wresting that tool from them—”
“You risk your own reputation by protecting him,” Benet said, unrelenting. “My own restoration to power is fresh, and we have not done with hunting Bissanty traitors. Yet here you are, back at court, the boy
still under your protection, and what is your first public action? Cozying up to the Vaux-Torres girl right where I cannot possibly ignore you?”
Gaultry stared up, appalled. “What does Elisabeth Climens have to do with this?”
“She is the Duchess of Vaux-Torres’s daughter. Vaux-Torres, the woman at the center of Dervla’s accusations—”
Fortunately for Gaultry, the Princess intervened. “You can’t blame Lady Gaultry if Sieur Ronsars escorted her to the Climens girl’s side,” she said. Taking the seat by her husband’s side, she fussed with the fine cloth of her gown, smoothing it over her belly with a delicate pat. “And as Lady Gaultry is newly returned to Princeport, she couldn’t have known about the High Priestess’s newest denunciations.”
The Prince glanced at Gaultry. “Well?”
She took a deep breath. She would have to speak without heat to convince him. “My Prince, I truly believe Tullier has earned your clemency. But beyond that, when you have heard all that I have to report from Bissanty, I am sure that you will see it would be politic for you to treat him with mercy. I can only ask that you hear me out before you decide his fate.
“As for Elisabeth Climens—without evidence, she cannot be held responsible for her family’s alliances, whatever they may be. I’m not ashamed that I spoke with her. If you want my opinion, I’d say she has a loyal Tielmaran’s sense of justice. What has she to gain by staying at court if the rumors are true?”
The prince smiled wanly, looking suddenly careworn. “Elisabeth is a good girl,” he said. “It remains to be seen if the same can be said of her mother.”
He waved for her to rise and take Dame Julie’s old seat on the bench. “Get off your knees, Lady Gaultry, and make yourself comfortable. If Dame Julie is right in her gloomy forecasts, in the coming days you will need your strength.”
The Prince took his wife’s slender hand in his own, gathering strength from her nearness. When he returned his attention to Gaultry, his eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “Now,” he said, “I want you to tell me everything that you learned in Bissanty.”
The corridors of the summer palace were cool relief after the heat
and activity of the twin palaces. No guards here, no petitioners, no loitering courtiers. Just Gaultry and the flickering oil lamp she’d picked up in the building’s spare, stone-paneled foyer. She walked quickly, her steps loud and purposeful on the time-worn stone tile, the light casting weak shadows on the pale plastered walls. Her arms felt empty with the weight of the tamarin gone. The Princess, she’d been relieved to discover, had been delighted to accept the animal as a gift—or, more properly presented than Gaultry had managed, as a tribute to her stature.
The interview with the Prince had gone better than Gaultry had dared hope. Her disobediences had been pardoned. Even more unexpectedly, Benet had entrusted her with his sigil, a small blue-and-white leather shield embossed with his personal seal and her marker, to allow her free passage within Tielmark, in case she should again need it. “I’ll not be leaving this in your hands indefinitely,” he had told her, sternly. “But for now, if you should need to go hieing off again without warning, I don’t want the trouble of explaining to my ministers.” Gaultry was grateful for this physical evidence of his trust.
Most importantly, for now Tullier was safe. There had been an unusual note of dissention on this count from Lily, who took a hard line against anything Bissanty, but Benet had not been blind to the political advantages of offering the protection of his court to a runaway Bissanty heir. He agreed to withhold judgment on the boy, at least until he had a chance to give Tullier a personal hearing. For now—the boy was safe.
Gaultry passed through a stone archway and bobbed briefly to the little shrine there, a fresh double-twist of the Goddess-Twins’ oak and ash.
Once again, for delivering me,
she intoned.
And for delivering those I love.
The Prince had commended her for freeing Martin from Bissanty chains. Her cheeks warmed. The image of the Prince, so sober and calm, superimposed itself on the memory of Martin as she had found him, chained in the darkness of the Bissanty temple, the grey wolf bound in shadows at his side. The Prince had spoken of her mission so solemnly, but the Princess—Lily’s dark eyes had stared into hers knowingly.
You have served your Master well,
those eyes had told her.
But you can’t pretend to me it was for Benet that you chased after the Stalkingman.
Gaultry squirmed, embarrassed that the Princess found her feelings so obvious. But the Princess, she knew, was timid and bold together. She could hope that the shy part of Lily’s nature would prevent further discussion with her husband of her own and Martin’s sorry case.
She turned a last corner, approaching her own rooms. In front of her, the red glow of a torchère left to burn itself dry sparked up, sudden and fierce, startling her. “What idiot—?” she exclaimed, darting to tamp the flames down before the wall behind it scorched. She crushed the flames with the base of her lamp, near burning her fingers. The red coals winked evilly, then died back.
Staring at the deadened torch, she began to tremble, the significance of her recent interview with Benet finally coming home to her. “It’s madness,” she muttered. “Midsummer madness.”
An alteration of rule such as Prince to King was a task for the gods. The Prince’s sights were set high, if this was his goal. She belatedly realized that the lucky gold foil suns being dispersed to the Midsummer celebrants were a discreet hint that Benet’s ambitions lay with attracting the Andion God-King’s notice. Would this have been equally obvious to everyone at court who had a shrewd understanding of religious politics? Perhaps the hint had not been so discreet. “Urging so great a woman as Dame Julie to play Kingmaker. Imagining that I could serve my Prince, and play the game myself … Dame Julie said it herself. I don’t know what I’m doing.” An image came to her of Benet crowned King, the red sun of Andion risen over him. It was at once delightful—and a terror.
She crushed out the last ember in the torchère and turned for her own door.
It was easy to nod obediently when a fierce old woman like the Duchess
of Melaudiere told her Benet must be made King. It was easy, in another way, to journey to Bissanty, and see with her own eyes the cruel fate that would overwhelm all Tielmark if Imperial power regained possession.
But to hear Benet declare himself to Kingship’s bloody path, to learn that he considered her, and the Brood, so pivotal to aiding him on that journey—that was not a charge to accede to carelessly. It was not a charge that she had expected him to set upon her so privately.
She had expected—had dreaded—being questioned before his council of ministers. This private audience suggested a desire that these plans not be revealed, a trust in Gaultry herself that she was not confident she merited.
By the time she reached her own familiar door, these thoughts had deeply fatigued her. She was grateful to spy the reassuring green copper of the Great Twins’ double spiral hung from the latch of her own room’s door. The salon beyond was warm and tidy, a banked fire in the grate, a red robe laid welcomingly across the somewhat threadbare divan. A large copper tub, sealed over with a warming towel, had been prepared on the tiles in front of the fireplace, evidence of current occupation. Gaultry’s heart leapt. Only one other person would use this space so familiarly.
“Mervion?” she called. “Mervion, I’m home!”
There was no response to greet her. The door that led to the private bedchamber the sisters shared was closed and locked, the door to the workroom a little ajar, but the room beyond unlit. Puzzled, Gaultry crossed the main salon to the room’s long terrace doors and stepped through to the shallow terrace that overlooked the deer park. “Mervion?” she called again.
The moon, now in descent, cast the landscape into deep shadow. A flash of movement caught her peripheral vision—a doe, darting behind a row of trees. Beyond the rough curve of the park wall, far, far below, the gleam of the night sea beckoned. She stood quietly on the terrace, assessing. The distant crash of the surf, at the base of the cliff below the wall, did not obscure the soft noises of a park ground at rest under the moon. Crickets and the gentle suggestive sounds of deer grazing were carried on the gentle breeze.
Nothing to intimate that Mervion was anywhere out there beneath the trees.
Leaving the door open to the night, she turned back inside. It was
too late to return to Martin’s town house. She’d sleep here, and perhaps meet Martin in the duchess’s chambers the next morning before she rejoined the others.
Unraveling her hair from its dressing, she kicked out of her slippers and threw herself full-length on the divan.
Her sister’s perfume clung to the folds of the discarded robe. A chill of loneliness touched her, and she drew it over her own clothes as a makeshift blanket. It seemed such a very long time since she had seen her sister.
Mervion could not be far. She would not have ordered a bath—an indulgent luxury on a night when the castle staff would be mostly engaged in their own celebrations—and then abandoned it. It would not be long before their reunion.
Gaultry covered her face with her palms. She did not know what role her sister might play in the Prince’s plans. Benet had mentioned nothing of it, so she did not even know—had not even asked—if he had a role for Mervion. That thought bit her, like a new betrayal.
She had always depended on Mervion. As the younger twin, she had imagined herself always a step behind.
Her self-knowledge was greater now, and nothing was so simple.
As children, Gaultry had been shy, Mervion outgoing—and thus Gaultry had avoided many tasks she regarded as unpleasant. On Market Days in Arleon Forest, when the young twins had emerged from the protection of the greenwood, Gaultry, too shy even to speak, had clung to old Tamsanne’s skirts. Those days, Mervion, by default, had ended up doing most of the real work.
Gaultry had imagined herself the grateful recipient of Mervion’s support, but she had little considered how she had grown to expect it, grown to rely upon it.
Now, her recent escapade with Tullier revealed how she had come to demand it, irrespective of Mervion’s own will.
The Prince might credit her with saving Tullier, and it had indeed been Gaultry who had been seized by the impulse to save his life.
But in the end it had been Mervion who had supplied both the power and the means.
Looking back, Gaultry could see that her sister had not wanted to save Tullier’s life. Where Gaultry had seen a suffering child, Mervion had seen a Sha Muira assassin, so dedicated to his craft that he had poisoned himself before entering battle to prevent any chance of himself falling
alive into enemy hands on his mission’s completion. Mervion, unlike Gaultry, had been willing to let that poison run its course.
That poison was the Goddess Llara’s gift to the Sha Muira: a toxin so baneful that even the strength of her Glamour-soul was not enough to stop it. But with Mervion helping her—with the power of two Glamour-souls combined, there had been a chance.
She had not given Mervion much choice about helping.
The fact that together they had had the power to stop the poison in him, but that this success had demanded more of both their powers than Gaultry had predicted … that only made what Gaultry had done worse.
Request or demand—whichever it had been, gaining Mervion’s support to help Tullier had been a coercive act.
Gaultry stared into the banked fire, wishing Mervion would return.
In Bissanty, she had watched Tullier’s half brother and sister—twins, like herself and Mervion—scrap for the power that they could have shared, and in so doing, destroy themselves. In appropriating Mervion’s power so heedlessly, she feared she had taken the first steps along the same track.
She needed to speak to Mervion soon—if only to apologize.
The warm salon was comfortable and familiar. Gaultry drifted on the edge of sleep, nightmare images from the past weeks flowing before her: Martin bound to the enormous wolf; the white twin Columba, angry passion in her dark eyes as she accused Gaultry of sucking strength from her own twin; the long empty stretches of marsh they had traversed, struggling to reach Tielmaran shores; the marsh slaves of Bissanty, up to their thighs in black water as they harvested the rice … .
A hand touched her shoulder, and a man’s lips brushed her cheek, gentle yet insistent. “You should use that bath,” a voice whispered affectionately against her ear. “Or I’ll have to apologize to Helène and Jene for calling it for you.”
Gaultry, snatching her hand up to protect her face, shot fully awake, and recoiled along the couch. “Coyal!” she blurted. “Elianté’s Spear! What are you doing here?”
To his credit, the young knight recoiled almost faster than Gaultry. He was also quicker to recover his composure. “Lady Gaultry.” He backed away, a forced smile on his face. “I beg a thousand pardons. When did you get back to Tielmark?”
Coyal Memorant. Gaultry had last seen him on Emiera’s Feast Day, before and during Tullier’s attack. First he had strutted like a golden
gamecock—and then he had fought like a lion. She remembered now, he had saved her life, taking on his face the dagger thrust Tullier had intended for her back. The scar, a neatly healed red line, ran from his brow to his ear, catching at the corner of his left eye. It hadn’t spoiled his looks, Gaultry noticed, with odd resentment. On another man, it might have looked rakish. On Coyal’s boyish face, beneath his mop of curling golden hair—it made him look vulnerable and kind.
Quite a transformation for a man who had sided with the Bissanty enemy in the recent conflict.
She sucked in her lips, mind spinning, trying to think what to say.
Repeating herself was all she could manage. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you knock?” Besides the obvious. Balling up Mervion’s robe, she threw it behind the tub. “Where’s my sister?”
Coyal gave her another forced smile. “I take it you got past Ronsars to attend Dame Julie’s command performance. The rest of us outsiders were not so lucky.”
“Mervion wasn’t invited?” she asked, stunned. Then she was stunned again—at herself. In her preoccupation with her report to the Prince, she had failed to attribute any such significance to her sister’s absence. “What’s going on?” she said. “Martin told me she was with Benet on his ship. You’re telling me she has to beg for invitations? Gods in me, who’d dare cast Mervion as outsider?” Then she remembered Ronsars, and frowned.
Coyal gave her an unfriendly look. “She has had no easy time here at court since you abandoned her. Don’t pretend you didn’t think of that. You have the Prince’s ear. Your sister—she does not.”
“That’s not so. Without our magic, he and Lily would never have married. Benet trusts us—” In a horrible moment of clarity, she understood that this was not true: Though both twins’ powers had been engaged to form the magic at the wedding, Gaultry had withstood the traitor Chancellor’s spells; Mervion had not. To Gaultry’s mind, that was a matter of small importance—after all, Benet himself had fallen thrall to those same sorceries, and it was only Gaultry’s love for her sister that had girded her with the power to resist them. But from Benet’s view, perhaps with court folk such as Dervla and Ronsars at work on him, Mervion’s failure had not been so easily excused.

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