Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (26 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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“Your loyalty will prove its own vindication,” Gaultry said, swallowing at Mervion’s unexpected honesty regarding her relations with Coyal. “As to the other—killing the point man who attacked Benet—that wasn’t your mistake.”
With a sudden violent sweep with her hand, Mervion sent the basin crashing to the floor.
“Whose was it then?” she asked coldly, across the wreckage of pottery and spilled water.
Gaultry stared back, completely taken by surprise. Her sister never lost her calm like this—never! “That man’s death was no mistake.” Mervion needed her calm now, that much was clear. “And if it needs to be someone’s fault, it is the fault of the sorcerer who set him against the Prince.”
“Look at me, Gaultry,” Mervion shrilled. “Have I ever used my magic to hurt anyone? No!—not once in all of my life. There is no desire in me to see my powers used in this way.”
Gaultry, shaken, bent and picked up the largest basin shard. She wanted to offer Mervion her comfort, but something in her sister’s stance warned that she would reject any such overture. “Benet could have been killed today,” she said. “Whoever set that spell did not expect to find Benet standing between that man Siànne and Tullier. What you did was right. If Siànne had not been wounded, he would have killed Benet.”
“So what if I was right this time?” Mervion said, watching Gaultry gather the basin shards, her hands clenching the drying-towel. She had only partly regained her composure. “I do not want there to be another.”
Gaultry frowned. “We are Brood-blood,” she said. “There will be another. And another. Until we all are dead, or Benet is King.”
THE MONTH OF ANDION SUN-KING
THE DARKEST HOURS
Palamar Laconte, Brood-heir, acolyte to Dervla, High Priestess of
Tielmark, had stood attendance in the funerary chapel for hours. Her feet ached. Her back was tired. The strain of standing so long without relief had exacted its physical price.
The oppressive, low-ceilinged space, with its single slitted window, its heavy stone trusses and smoke-stained carvings, made her feel entombed, forgotten. The incense of the altar’s funerary flame was making her itch, worsened by the ugly funerary costume, with its stifling long sleeves and tar-stiffened skirts. The muffled sounds of the temple bells, which she had heard ringing high above her in the temple’s campanile through two complete changes, had long since ceased tolling. She longed to sit, but her obligation to the ritual would not allow that.
Dervla was overdue to relieve her, but Palamar would outlast her impatience. Everyone imagined that Palamar was weak, that she was ineffectual, that she was the fallen descendent of a great warrior-sorceress—but she would prove everyone wrong soon enough.
Too much had gone forward this day for Dervla not to come. The sacral chamber that lay hidden below the altar would call her. Dervla would come, needing to renew herself.
Palamar would be waiting.
As flame-watcher, Palamar had scoured the altar, had tended the funerary flame, had meticulously trimmed the bouquets of deathbed lilies that jammed every hopper on the arched beams of the little chapel’s sides. She had done everything.
Of course, it would never be enough.
She drew a weary breath, puckering her cheeks. Dervla was a most excellent finder of faults. After the strength of her goddess-magic and the fortune of her birth, it was the trait that most enhanced her power as High Priestess. Palamar was not alone among Dervla’s twelve acolytes in suffering it, though the High Priestess singled her out often enough that it sometimes seemed that way.
She had once thought this was simply the contrast of her own character with that of Elsbet, who had preceded her in Dervla’s service. Palamar’s oldest sister had been like Dervla: talented, superior, confident of her strength. When the call had come for Elsbet Laconte to report to Princeport to pledge herself as acolyte, Elsbet had welcomed it as an expected entitlement.
Palamar’s call had arrived under less auspicious circumstances. After Tielmark’s traitor-chancellor had seen her older sister murdered, Palamar had been brought to court to take Elsbet’s place.
Initially the knowledge that Dervla’s cruelty rose from her mourning of the talented Elsbet’s death had provided Palamar a meager but sufficient comfort. As granddaughter to Marie Laconte, Countess of Tierce, “the proudest woman of her generation,” a sworn member of the original seven Brood-members, Palamar had been bred to know the meaning of duty. Mantled with the weight of her grandmother’s reputation, Palamar had dutifully accepted Dervla’s harsh treatment as her lot.
But that was before Dervla had broken her promises. In the heat of feeling after Elsbet’s death, Dervla had sworn to protect the remaining Lacontes—and then reneged, allowing Palamar’s sole surviving sister Destra, along with Destra’s young family, to be slaughtered by the Sha Muira.
It was not Dervla’s fault—everyone told her it was not Dervla’s fault, Dervla included. Palamar accepted that. It had been hard, but she’d accepted it. The gods did not allow all human promises to be fulfilled.
But she had also learned from what had happened. If the Lacontes were to have protection or vengeance in this world, Palamar would have to do it herself.
She suffered now—oh, certainly, she continued to suffer—but it was no longer because Dervla burned her with the acid of her tongue. She suffered because she had to wait and bow her head; had to hold strong her shaking patience; had to wait until Dervla, all unawares, allowed her
to get close enough to her sisters’ murderers that she could act and finish, for once and ever, this family business.
Palamar plucked up a handful of white lily buds. Her fingers were shaking, ill-controlled, as she placed the furls of petal on top of the embers in the altar-brazier. The bright fire sheathed the slim white forms, like miniature winding-sheets on a cremation bed.
Death images like these followed her constantly now. Her own turn must be fast approaching, she was sure, treading the red path of the Prince.
But she would see her vengeance completed first.
The buds, thick and moist, resisted their impromptu cremation. After the first flare, the licks of flame curled back. Palamar, not liking that, touched the brazier with her magic. With this push, a line of fire flared at the stem-base of first one bud, then another.
A single fallen bud, streaked with immature green and protected by the brazier’s metal edge, continued to resist destruction, defying even magical flame. Watching that lone brave survivor fight the inevitable, tears dampened Palamar’s cheeks.
The funeral rites for the old duchess would be spectacular. The terrible old woman who had lived a full life, who had made her own choices, who had used the people around her more ruthlessly than even the High Priestess.
The traitor-chancellor’s plot against the throne had killed not only Elsbet, but also Dervla’s niece, sweet young Lady D’Arbey.
But neither of those young women would have been put at risk if the old duchess’s arrogance had not sent them to their dooms, careless of their lives as she tried to force out Heiratikus’s secrets. More would have followed in their footsteps if Melaudiere had considered it necessary. Yet for wicked old Gabrielle of Melaudiere, even the Prince would come to kneel at her coffin.
By contrast, Palamar’s sisters, first Elsbet, then Destra, had been laid into cold earth with little fanfare. “The kin of my acolytes never truly die. They’ll live on inside of you,” Dervla had said to reassure her, in a rare offering of pity, as she burned a single votive branch following Destra’s simple funeral. “As my acolyte, as one who may one day even rise to be High Priestess, the smallest tincture of power that Elianté and Emiera vested in your sisters has passed to you—and that at least will not be lost to the grave.”
As if that news should mend Palamar’s grief. The thought that her
sister was dead—that both her sisters were dead—yet that some ghostly shadow of the strength that had lived so brightly within them was forced to linger, forced to feed her power—this made the young acolyte feel the opposite of powerful.
This was something that Dervla could neither understand nor acknowledge. Indeed, the High Priestess’s eyes had gleamed with an emotion opposite to grief as she contemplated her acolyte’s newly fortified potential—fortified by her family’s tragedies. “Your power descends from such a strong line, and just think—with the deaths of your sister’s children, all your granddam’s power has come to empower you. There is no one else left.” The High Priestess, staring into the fire of Destra’s funerary offering, had seemed satisfied rather than mournful. “It has been your fortune to earn your power early. I was fair middle-aged before my mother died, and none of my immediate family preceded her. The title High Priestess was mine before any of my family’s power came to me—as it inevitably did, whether they lived or no, on my ascension.”
Afterward, when it transpired that Destra’s baby girl, Marina, had somehow escaped the Sha Muira slaughter, Dervla viewed this almost as a setback. “How can I use your power when you have yet to claim it?”
What lingering loyalty Palamar had felt for Dervla had died the day she’d said that. The young acolyte continued to work with the High Priestess, dutiful to her vows—how else to gain the chance to set her traps for those who had destroyed her family? She continued to observe all her duties and offices—more punctiliously even than the other acolytes, so that Dervla increasingly looked to her for assistance. Her vows and pledges—she kept them and respected them, but her loyalty to Dervla was gone.
At the young acolyte’s back, the chapel’s door creaked on ancient hinges. Behind her, she heard the distinctive rustle of Dervla’s robes, the signature clink of the silver chain the High Priestess wore at her waist.
Before Dervla could step forward and see what she was doing, Palamar forced her anger to a peak. The glow on the last bud flared black-green with magic, and collapsed into flame. Then—so quickly—the bud was crumbled ash, and the green fire winked out. Turning to Dervla, Palamar tucked her hands, no longer trembling, out of sight behind her back, and curtsied.
“What are you doing here?” Dervla greeted her sharply. “Didn’t Ilary come to relieve you?” There was something in her tone. Grief, anger, and
fear. Palamar’s heart raced. She dared for a moment to hope. Someone was dead. Someone—
She stepped away from the altar, giving Dervla a glimpse of the funerary flame, flaring ordinary white-yellow and orange in the ornamental brazier. “Veneracy,” she said aloud, a tremor in her voice. The little tremble would distract the old woman, and Dervla would not look closely at the altar, would not see the marks of Palamar’s angry strength. “The flame is almost done and I am very tired. No one came to relieve me, and I could not desert the flame. Isn’t Ilary watching at Her Grace’s body?”
The High Priestess jerked the bronze-strapped door shut, granting herself privacy to loosen her temper. Without further ceremony, she strode briskly across to the young acolyte and slapped her face. “You stupid child.” Her fingers caught a handful of Palamar’s soft hair, tearing it. “You can’t do anything right. Not even a simple task.”
“The flame—”
“I am not talking of the flame. I am talking of Siànne. All I asked was that you convey a simple message, stopping him. Why couldn’t you get even that right?”
“He had taken his men and gone,” Palamar said softly—in the quiet, faintly bewildered tone that best stoked the High Priestess’s impatience. “You told me I was not to draw attention, not to inquire—”
Dervla slapped her again. “Stupid, stupid,” she raged. “Benet might have been killed. Siànne almost killed him! Twins in me! I charged you most particularly to stop them.”
Palamar ducked her head, and made herself whimper. A hand raised to fend the blows completed the picture of submission.
Yet elation pounded in her heart. Someone had died in Siànne’s attack. Dervla would not be so angry or alarmed if no one had been killed. It was not Benet, of course. Dervla would be in sackcloth, if her beloved Prince was dead. Who then? Whose death could have made Dervla so upset? The assassin-boy? The dart of hope that ran through her was almost enough to ruin her cover of fear. “What has gone wrong?” she asked. “I did as I was told. You charged me to speak only to Siànne—”
“They killed one of the Stalkingman’s house servants. A noble girl, scion to the Caris family. Worse, they got themselves butchered, and failed utterly in the abduction.” Dervla wrung her hands. “Twins in me, more fool I, trusting to your competency.”
Disappointment flooded her. “Mistress,” Palamar said, smoothing the
disorder of her hair. “From what little you say, it is your purpose that has gone astray, not mine.” Oh, she should not have said anything so provoking as that—but the disappointment! For a moment, it was too strong even for the iron of her control.
“You don’t understand anything about purpose!” Dervla spat back. Oblivious to Palamar’s slip, she seized a stalk of lilies from the nearest hopper and flung it onto the brazier, still dripping wet. “Burn for Gabrielle,” she told it, passing her hand in the Twins’ sign. “I at least honor the ceremonies. Honor
all
for Benet. Burn!” For a single searing moment the blossoms shone red with fire, a shocking burst of light that brightened the chapel’s darkest corners before dying back. “I do it all.” Dervla struck the hot edge of the brazier with the palm of her hand. “No one can match me for the sheer power from the Twins!”
Watching Dervla play with the fire, her attention half to her call of power, half to the impression she was creating, emotion twisted angrily within the younger woman. The efforts Palamar took to conceal the full extent of her powers—they were hardly needed, with one so self-absorbed as Dervla.
Palamar arranged her features in an appropriate expression of respect. “What happened, Veneracy? Please tell me.”
Dervla hesitated. Then anger outpaced the impulse to secrecy. “Benet got between Siànne and the boy who killed your sister. Then Siànne attacked the Prince like one possessed, trying to reach the Sha Muira.” Dervla frowned. “Attacked him. Did you put something in the spell to make him go after the boy’s protectors?”
Too close to the truth. Where Dervla wanted to make the boy her secret prisoner, Palamar just wanted him dead. She pressed her hands to cheeks still hot from Dervla’s blows. “The men had gone before I reached their quarters,” she said tearfully, returning Dervla’s attention to this other fault. “You told me not to call attention, going after them. You should have told me Benet had gone. I would have followed them.”
“But why did Benet even go there?” Dervla muttered, dismissing Palamar’s explanations as tedium. “What did the Glamour-bitch say to draw him?” She sketched the spiral sign of the Great Twins over the altar and threw a pinch of fresh incense into the brazier. “We will go below, to discover the answer.”

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