The City in the Lake (15 page)

The Queen alone was already seated, at her place to the immediate left of the head of the King’s table. Her face was as still and stiff as if she had been made of wax. Her gaze, when she met the Bastard’s eyes, was unreadable. Her ladies fluttered around her nervously.

The Bastard’s mother was not yet present. No doubt, the Bastard thought, she intended to make an entrance; he thought she would enjoy creating a spectacle. He walked quietly to claim his place, at the right hand of the King’s place. Galef walked behind him and took up a place behind his chair.

To the Queen, the Bastard said, speaking in a low voice, “Ellis, if you must throw something tonight, throw it at me. Do not throw anything at my mother.”

The Queen gave him a level look out of her striking violet eyes. “Your mother.”

“She is a mage, or something very like. She is very dangerous.”

“She has claimed you, I hear.”

“Is that what you hear?” The Bastard paused, then said harshly, “If you have hated me, Ellis, I think you will be satisfied by whatever claim my mother makes of me tonight.”

“Yes,” said the Queen, calmly deliberate. “That, too, I heard.”

Lelienne came into the hall at that moment. All white she was, save for her black eyes: white hair dressed with pearls, stiff white gown embroidered with ivory, skin pale as the most delicately blushed rose. She seemed in the soft light to be younger than the Bastard himself.

The Queen had stiffened when Lelienne entered. She stared down the length of the hall at the white lady, her back very straight, her hands folded flat on the table before her, her face closed and still. Her violet eyes glinted in her face, almost as pale at that moment as that of the other woman.

Lelienne strolled up the long, long hallway as though passing through a private garden. And yet, though she quite clearly meant to make a show, there was a touch of humor in her smile when she at last reached the head of the King’s table and met, for a moment, the Bastard’s eyes: it was as though she played an elaborate charade and invited the Bastard to share her amusement with it.

The hall had quieted the moment Lelienne had stepped into it. The quiet had deepened with every step she took from the tall entryway to the King’s table. By the time she reached the King’s chair and turned to stand behind it, the silence was absolute. Turning to the Bastard, she said, in her light, charming voice, “My son, introduce me.”

The Bastard closed his hands carefully on the back of his chair. He said expressionlessly, looking out at the assembled court and speaking to be heard at the farthest reaches of the hall, “This is Lelienne, my mother, once loved by my father the King. In his absence, she rules this Palace and this City and this Kingdom.”

Smiling, Lelienne seated herself in the King’s chair. With a rustle of stiff cloth and of whispers, the court moved as one to sit, but a small movement of his mother’s hand stopped the Bastard when he would have followed this example. “My son,” she said, smiling. “You need not sit. Kneel here, beside me.”

The Bastard lowered his eyes to hide rage and shame. He asked in a low voice, “If I refuse, whom will you punish?”

Long white eyebrows lifted as his mother turned to gaze at him with apparent surprise. “Perhaps I will let you choose.”

He moved, stiffly, to do as she commanded, kneeling on the hard stone at her right hand. Whispers exploded down the length of the hall, with a sound like birds taking flight off the waters of the Lake. The Bastard did not look up. Color had flooded into his face.

“You will eat the bread I give you from my plate,” said his mother gently. “You will not refuse. When I wish wine, you may rise to pour it. When I speak to you, you will answer, and you will speak truthfully. Who is powerful in this court?”

“I was.”

“Who else?”

The Bastard named half a dozen men, men who had been friends and advisors of his father, and three or four men and one woman who were competent and knew how to direct affairs within the City so that everyday matters ran smoothly.

“Will they fight me?”

“Not,” said the Bastard precisely, “when they see that you have brought me to your heel like a dog.” He could feel the covert stares of all the court from where he knelt, and knew this was true.

His mother smiled. She knew it, too. She said pleasantly, “You have not named Ellis, the Queen.”

Glancing up, the Bastard saw the Queen turn her head and give Lelienne a hard, narrow stare from her violet eyes. He said swiftly, “She had my father’s ear. Without him, she has nothing.”

“She has power. Men’s eyes will go to her, out of habit if nothing else. She could be a nuisance to me, if not a danger. As she might have been a nuisance to you—if not a danger. You shut her up in her own rooms. What shall I do with her?”

“Why not the same?”

“Why not,” suggested his mother, “something creative?”

The Queen, her mouth thin, her hands shaking with anger, had leaned back in her chair and now stared at Lelienne, eyes sparking with outrage. The Bastard caught her eyes with his and held her silent through a flashing effort of will that amazed them both. When he looked back at his mother’s black eyes, she was clearly amused, and he knew she had missed nothing. He answered, “Because the court would resent it, and that would be a nuisance to you, if not a danger. Put her back in her rooms and leave her there, and you will arouse no such resentment.”

“Not regarding what I may do to you?”

“I have enemies, and few friends. The City loves the Queen. When my father shouts, only Ellis dares shout back at him. And behind her temper she is kind. She has spoken for many men before the King. When you humble me, many men will be satisfied that you should. Do the same to the Queen, and they will feel differently.”

Lelienne smiled, her black eyes contained and secretive. “So,” she said, “my son has a feel for the rule of men.” She turned to Ellis. “Does the Queen have a temper she has not shown me?”

Ellis, amazingly, looked away, though an angry flush rose in her face.

“So. When you go to your rooms later, you will stay there, and be quiet. Perhaps I will forget you are there, if you are wise,” Lelienne said, and looked out thoughtfully along the hall, where all the court was watching with covert fascinated attention. “And you, my son. What shall I do with you?”

“You have taught me not to fight you.”

“You have begun to learn that, perhaps. And, evidently, you have no temper of your own. Who taught you that?”

“I learned it of life.”

“You learned it of power constrained, and as restraint is the beginning of wisdom, you have begun to be wise. Do you yield to me?”

“Yes,” said the Bastard tightly.

His mother smiled. “No. You resist me with every breath you take, and every lowered glance you show me. You are experienced at waiting, my son. But capable, I take it, of action. Where is your father? I had anticipated our reunion.”

The Bastard thought she was mocking him. He flushed. But Lelienne repeated her question, adding, “I took the son, and hid him in the light behind the mirror, but I had not expected you to remove Drustan from his high place for me. In that, you did surprise me. In that, perhaps you are indeed my son. However, I shall need him. I know he is not dead. Where is the King?”

“I have no idea,” the Bastard said blankly. He still expected elaborate deception, though he could not imagine the purpose of it. He was off balance from this unexpected line of questioning, and thought she had done this to him intentionally. He was waiting for that hidden purpose to emerge. While he waited, he said cautiously, “I thought you took him, as you took Cassiel.”

His mother glanced at him. Her ageless eyes pressed down on the Bastard with a weight like the iron darkness at the heart of the world. His breath jerked under the pressure, and he set a hand against the floor for support. “Where is Drustan?” his mother asked again, dangerously quiet, and he understood at last that she was in earnest. “I will not ask again.”

The Bastard bowed his head. He said carefully, “I hid him in the eternal City. I hid him in the Lake. He wanders there, blind to what you do here.”

Lelienne leaned back in the King’s chair. She was smiling. Though she had her eyes on him still, the pressure had gone from her gaze. “The reflected City. That is where you put him? And you not even a mage?”

“He wished to pass into the eternal City,” the Bastard explained, still with the most exquisite care. “And he is, after all, the King. That City was only a breath away, for him. It took no spell to carry him there, but only the smallest nudge. Now he is lost in the Lake because he cannot find, even there, what he seeks.”

The Queen sat back in her chair, a hand lifting to touch her mouth, but his mother was pleased. “My clever son. Cassiel I have secured where I can reclaim him at will, but I shall need Drustan as well. You shall bring him to me.”

The Bastard set his teeth against any sound of protest.

“And Trevennen, too, shall help me, since your friend Marcos has become indisposed,” added his mother. “Where is Marcos? I see he is not here.”

The Bastard was still for a moment. Then he said, “I have sent him away from the Palace. He fears you. He will not return, I think.”

“He will return, if I summon him. Or, I have no doubt, if you summon him. Later, perhaps. He could be useful to me. Indeed, I am certain he will be. However—Trevennen! Declare yourself.”

From his place only half a dozen seats down the table, the mage stood as Lelienne lifted her voice in that summons. His expression was composed, his gaze level. The Bastard saw that he was not surprised or offended or afraid, and understood suddenly why his mother had hidden Cassiel in a fall of light behind a mirror, and yet the one mage of the Kingdom who had looked behind every mirror and every fall of light had not found him there. Rage rushed into his throat and choked him. He made no sound. He was not certain what might have shown in his face. But no one was looking at him. Trevennen was looking at his mother, and his mother was watching the court. Only Ellis, the Queen, spared a quick glance for the Bastard, her own face showing remarkably little. Her hand had closed hard around the stem of her wineglass, and he was momentarily terrified she might fling the glass the length of the table. But she did not. He had not imagined her capable of such restraint, and learned otherwise in that moment.

“Lelienne. Madam,” Trevennen said. He bowed slightly.

“Whom do you serve?”

The tall mage bowed again, more extravagantly, a hand over his heart. “Madam, I am your servant.”

The court had been listening in frozen anticipation, and for the second time whispers exploded down its length, with a sound like the rising wind. Neither the mage nor the white lady paid any heed to the murmurs. “Approach me,” Lelienne commanded, and the mage left his place to make his way to the head of the table, where he kissed the hand she offered him and then straightened attentively.

“You have been listening to our conversation,” Lelienne said severely.

Trevennen bent his elegant head in an acknowledgment that seemed to the Bastard only faintly guarded, as though he believed he knew the limits of Lelienne’s humor. Even fighting rage, the Bastard wondered whether he really did.

“You have heard what my son has said. Is this truth?”

“I was intrigued to hear it, madam. I believe it could be true. Your son is an interesting and subtle man, and ambitious. And born of the royal house, as of course you intended.”

“And thus able to see into the eternal City.”

“Likely so, madam. Everyone knows he goes to Tiger Bridge at dusk, to look at the City in the Lake when the Lake becomes a mirror of the eternal dream.” The mage gave the Bastard a look both assessing and curious. “Yes, I think that is quite likely. It would explain a great deal. If you did not, ah, remove the King yourself from this ephemeral City . . .”

“No.” Lelienne sipped wine and glanced at the Bastard, who set his teeth, got to his feet, refilled her goblet, and resumed, without comment or expression, his place kneeling at her side.

“I shall need him,” she said, not to the mage, but to the Bastard. “You will bring him back for me.”

Had they been alone together, the Bastard might have risked a refusal. Amid this assembly, he did not dare, and only bowed his head against her dark, dangerously perceptive gaze.

It was extraordinary how quickly the City accustomed itself to the rule of a woman it had not seen in thirty-four years, and who had been at that time thought to be only a woman who had caught the passing fancy of the King. The City, the Bastard reflected, sensed power, as though authority were a fragrance carried on the wind that blew off the Lake and through every street and alley and byway.

Everyone knew the Bastard had been brought to heel by his mother, though she made little show of it after that first banquet before the court. Everyone knew the Queen was pinioned in her tower, and everyone knew from her women that she was most uncharacteristically quiet and meek in her new captivity. Everyone knew that the most powerful mage in the City had kissed Lelienne’s hand and bowed his head under her dark gaze, and that the other mages hid from her in fear. No one dared offer defiance to Lelienne, and no one dared openly slight Trevennen.

The guard had been reordered, so that men stood at the Queen’s door, and the Bastard’s, and throughout the court at the door of this man and that, but not at the doors of the King’s own apartment, which Lelienne had appropriated for her own use. The guardsmen reported the movements of those they guarded to their captain. And their captain reported to Lelienne.

Galef had tried to resign his post. The white lady had turned the hands of one of his lieutenants into the talons of a bird, and his voice into the cry of an eagle. Then she had, more prosaically, taken the newest and youngest recruit the guardsmen had among their ranks and hung the young man by his wrists over a bed of white-hot coals made from burning glass. When Galef had tried in desperation to draw his sword against her, it had shattered into light and mist in his hands.

Lelienne had relented only when the guard captain knelt at her feet and pleaded, in the most abject terms, for forgiveness. She had left the man with the voice of an eagle, although she had restored his hands and Galef’s sword.