Sasharia En Garde (33 page)

“Yes there does, because your father has Randart as his
right arm. He likes killing,” I retorted. “And your father lets him do it.”

“That’s why the guises, don’t you see? If I can just hold
off Randart while finding Math, maybe, maybe, there is a solution without
another Khanerenth bloodbath. But as Jehan, I have no freedom.”

“A
prince
with no
freedom? Then it must be really tough to be a peon!” I could see how much my
words hurt him. Or did he want me to see that? “I’m sorry for my sarcasm. I’m
not trying to be a crank. It’s just that everything you say, I hear my mom
warning me . . . and more questions sprout like tentacles in my
mind. Like, why didn’t my father tell you where he was going, if he really
trusted you?”

He did not answer, just stared at me, grim in expression,
his mouth a white line.

My righteous anger vanished like the heat in the sudden
thunder, leaving me just as unhappy. “Don’t you see, Jehan? I
wish
I could believe you. I wish I could
trust
you, because there’s no denying
we’ve got some major chemistry going between us.”
Chemistry
didn’t have a translation any more than
peon
had. He didn’t seem to need it.
“But all I can think of are my mother’s stories about Canary trying to seduce
her over to his side. And, well, there we were a few minutes ago—”

“I follow.” He flung up a hand. Looked out to sea. “You’ve
said enough.”

He lifted the other hand, turned away, and I heard his quick
steps crossing the deck and the door to the cabin shut.

Leaving me standing there in the dark, with about as toxic a
Pyrrhic victory as anyone ever . . . lost. Because I sure did
not feel like a winner.

After a couple thousand years I crossed the deck, which was
silent except for the creaking of the wood, the wash and hiss of the restless
sea, and the distant mutter of thunder. I shut myself into my cabin.

And sat there, waiting—arguing both sides for when Jehan
came back.

But he didn’t come back.

The next noise I became aware of was the thump and swish of
the boat being lowered. I moved, aching and cold, to the leaded glass window,
in time to see him drop down into the boat and raise the single sail, which
filled and carried him toward the shore on the making tide.

Behind me, in the east, dawn smeared, a bleak smudge, against
the horizon.

King Canardan was still thinking about Atanial the next
morning, when he was supposed to be looking over Randart’s requisitions for the
army war game. When an aide announced that Magister Zhavic had just appeared by
magic transfer, Canardan decided to use his appearance as an excuse to find
her. He was certain he knew where she was.

The aide held open the door and the gray-haired mage dropped
unceremoniously into a chair to recover from the sickening wrench of being
yanked out of one space and thrust into another. As soon as he drew a deep
breath and looked up, Canardan forestalled the usual amenities and said, “Let’s
take a walk. You get over it faster. Report as we go.”

Zhavic was not about to say anything to a king about his theories
on recovery from magic transfer. “Very well, your majesty.” He struggled to his
feet again, breathing deeply against a surge of reaction nausea. “You wished me
to report when War Commander Randart departed. He has just done so.”

Canardan nodded and walked out of his private chamber.

With a rustling of papers and a thumping of feet, all the
aides and runners in the outer office leaped up and bowed. Canardan waved a
hand in a big circle, acknowledging and sending them back to their tasks. A
very long time ago he’d loved these signs of respect. Showed in outward form
everyone knew who was king. Now he wanted them back at work. Work that was
always
behind.

Through the barracks command office he paced, and again the
leaps—this time military salutes—the wave of the hand. Into the hall looking
onto the back court, and there she was, with the kitchen helpers.

Atanial was laughing, wisps of her hair coming down around
her face and shoulders as she churned butter. He grinned, remembering when she
first came, and she’d shown a tendency to go around to the servants and lecture
them on workers’ rights and women’s liberation, asking excruciatingly personal
questions with the earnest air of a crusader. Math’s pride and embarrassment.
And her delight and then chagrin when she discovered that whatever “rights”
she’d been extolling had long been a part of life here. Delight, chagrin, but
no pride, no affront. Skewed as some of her notions were, she really had been
an idealist.

“She obviously has no communications device,” he said to
Magister Zhavic.

“No, we’re fairly certain now that the magical object she
keeps hidden has to be her World Gate transfer, given her by Magister Glathan.”

“As long as she cannot get to the old castle tower she
cannot use it, so we can safely let it be, I think.” Canardan knew he was
disappointing his head mage, who badly wanted that little bit of powerful magic
to use for his own purposes. Canardan regarded it as safer where he knew the
mages couldn’t get their hands on it, but he could if he really had to.

He watched Atanial working away, laughing and chattering, as
everyone went about their business. At the sight of her shapely arms and her
long body, he was aware of the familiar tightening of desire. He quashed it.
Don’t look at her, look at what she’s doing
.
The problem was, she wasn’t really doing anything but talking and being her
usual friendly self.

Impulse again. “I think I’m going to give her a party. No,
let’s make it a grand ball, a masquerade. She used to love those. My chief
allies will like it, she can think it’s a courting gesture if she likes, but I
want them all to see her being obedient and content under my hand.” Another
thought occurred. “Yes. And let’s have Jehan here. That will be the excuse, the
two of them meeting. He’s supposed to be good with women. Maybe he can win her
over for us. Find out where the daughter might be, or at least find out more
about her. Let’s do it. End of the week.”

Zhavic said, “Is that enough time?”

Canardan gave him a wry look. “Whenever I want is enough
time. Go back to the harbor. You know your orders. Tell my son I want him here
as soon as possible. I’ll go get the heralds sending runners out to my other
guests. It’s a good way to shift the gossip away from whatever happened at
those damned games, as well.”

Zhavic, seeing that the king had quite decided, bowed and
left, sourly thinking of all the extra work that would fall on the mages,
warding the castle, the guests to get ready so hastily, and all of it because
the king had rediscovered his twenty-year-old hankering for that troublesome
woman.

Canardan had already forgotten the mage. He watched Atanial
straighten up, arching her back. Was the daughter as smart, as
incomprehensible? She couldn’t be as beautiful, not if she’d inherited Math’s
and Ananda’s wild wooly hair, and the Zhavalieshin eagle beak of a nose.

Atanial wouldn’t talk about the daughter at all. Any
questions he asked, she deflected.

Well, maybe it was time to ask again, but not by himself.
Jehan, worthless in matters military and diplomatic, ought to be able to manage
sweet-talking a woman about her marriageable daughter.

As for him, he might begin their first dance by asking why
she liked churning butter.

He walked on, the morning sunlight in the windows outlining
his form, shadowing it to silhouette, and outlining it again. Everybody down
below in the courtyard had seen him appear in the hall above. They all knew he
was there and had redoubled their efforts.

Atanial finished stretching her back and watched him until
he vanished into the heralds’ wing. If he’d noticed her down here, what did he
think? Oh, he noticed. Just as his servants and guards were aware of his
presence, very little escaped his eye, she’d learned that much. So if he did
ask what she was doing with the kitchen servants, she’d tell him it was fun.

It wasn’t fun, but the talk was. The butter churning, she’d
discovered, was a splendid upper-body workout without being obvious. She didn’t
dare demand a sword-fighting session. Canary seemed to be on the watch for her
to try something stupid like trying to kiss up to the guards; anyone she spoke
to at length was rotated elsewhere.

I wish I had a plan of
action
, she thought as the second pastry cook tested the butter for color,
consistency, and taste.

Guilt tightened her throat, and made her stomach roil.

Everyone seems to
assume I’m happy to be here. I’ve given in, given up. But what else can I do?
Yelling about treachery and treason and betrayal would win me a free ticket to
a cell all to myself.

No, now she was on sure ground, even if only a few inches of
it. Make trouble, and Canary removes the troublemaker. And she wouldn’t get
anywhere near her friends in the detention wing. Friendliness hadn’t
accomplished it, but threats and heroic speeches definitely wouldn’t.

The kitchen workers headed back inside. Instinct so far had
prompted her to make friends with everyone, but then that was an easy plan
because she would have done it anyway.

Instinct, not duty. She winced, a sudden memory throwing her
back to her very first days in this palace, when the old king was alive, and
Math running around doing his jobs.
You
don’t need to wear those tight dresses with all the frills
, she’d said to
one of the young aristocrats at her first ball.
Women are as good as men, and no one will be convinced of it while
we’re serving as male sex objects in clothes like this.

But I want to be what
you call a “sex object” if by that you mean I dress to attract
, was the
reply.
I want the attention of the man of
my choice. And I want him to dress to attract me. What would be the fun of
flirting at a ball if we all dressed in sacks?

Atanial laughed at herself as she made her way upstairs. How
long ago that was! Surely Canary didn’t give her this much freedom because he
thought she’d go right back to lecturing everyone on self-actualizing and
consciousness-raising . . . or did he?

At least if he thinks
I’m a fool he won’t see me as a threat.

Fool. Threat.

She frowned, thinking over the queen’s words.

As she lowered herself into her bath, she thought wistfully,
A threat would have a plan of action. All
I’ve got is a silly reputation.

Her mood was somber when she emerged from the bath. Feeling
she’d betrayed Mathias, Sasha, and everyone else with her total lack of success
at coming up with a working plan, she reached for the first gown in the chest,
then paused when she saw the heavy cream-colored linen paper resting on her
little table by the door.

After pulling her robe back on, she retrieved the note. It
was sealed with a silvery wax imprinted with the royal cup. She slid her finger
carefully under it, her nails still soft from her bath.

She frowned at the script she hadn’t read for years.

His Majesty . . .
invites you to honor him with your presence . . . masquerade
ball . . . week’s end . . . in order to meet his
son and heir, Prince Jehan
.

Canardan had written this invitation by his own hand.

o0o

Zhavic winced away from the brilliant sunlight of a
rain-washed morning. Transfers always gave him a headache. At least there
didn’t seem to be any trouble. He squinted against the dancing points of light
reflecting off the deep blue waters of Ellir Harbor, where the fleet was
pulling their anchors up and lowering sail as the tide began to ebb.

His mage-apprentice on duty, a trustworthy, sober girl, had
informed him as soon as he entered the mage room in the command tower that
Prince Jehan had been seen disembarking from his boat after dawn at the height
of tidal flood.

“Send someone—no, better go yourself. Find him, request him
to meet me, everything polite. King’s orders,” Zhavic said, and the girl was
gone with two quick steps and a swing of rust-colored braids.

Zhavic sent the senior cadet on duty at the door to fetch
him some breakfast. He knew by the time anyone found wherever Jehan was moping
about and he actually made his way up, the mage could eat a good meal and maybe
get rid of the transfer malaise.

While he waited for his food, Zhavic stood at the window and
watched Randart’s fleet begin its slow departure. He had a mage safely
aboard—and at Randart’s request, which was far better than having to try to
arrange a covert role. Zhavic had chosen a quiet, steady, untoward mage, her
area of expertise being woodwork. The commander would not suspect her of other
orders.

Everything was as it should be.

Sunlight reflecting off the glass in a merchant’s window
below in the street lanced at his eyes and he turned away, thinking of
Randart’s brother in the command suite directly overhead, probably dealing with
the results of the disastrous games. The king had been disappointed, but
Zhavic, in the safety of an empty room, could permit himself to smile. What
could be better for keeping those Randarts busy? One off chasing pirates, the
other facing an academy of angry youths who’d been trounced by those mysterious
boys from the hills.

Magister Zhavic’s breakfast arrived moments later, brought
by a breathless weed of a cadet. The boy set the tray down, bowed, and backed
outside the door to his post, and that, too, made Zhavic smile. The cadets as
well as their masters were all afraid of mages. Good. Healthy attitude.

He’d not taken two bites before he heard the familiar
lounging footfalls of the prince. He sauntered in, dressed in his usual brown
velvet, his eyes tired, his face tense. Zhavic, looking for mere sulkiness and
perhaps the nausea of a hangover, thought he saw the signs. Drunk again.
Typical.