The Rose Throne (25 page)

She waited a long moment and shook her head again.

Kellin shrugged. “As you say. It will be Edik, then. We must make sure that your father gives him time to show his taweyr, and to grow in other ways. Princess Marlissa may help.”

Yes, that was how it should be, how it must be. The throne had always belonged to Edik. And Marlissa would make a far better queen than Ailsbet ever would.

There was a knock at the door, and a messenger came to inform Kellin that two of Prince Edik’s groomsmen had been discovered by the king’s spies. Both had been brought to the Tower and formally accused of being ekhono, and of stealing Edik’s taweyr. In the next week, they would be executed in public as ekhono, the fate that Ailsbet herself had begun to fear.

“I am sorry your work was all for nothing,” said Ailsbet, though, in truth, she was relieved that Kellin’s plan had proven him flawed. It meant, surely, that he must be wrong about her, too, and about Edik.

“There were four groomsmen,” Kellin reminded her.

So he had saved two. Perhaps she could do something for the other two herself.

Ailsbet left Kellin and went to see her brother. She noticed there were new groomsmen within his chambers, and new guards without, one of whom was missing two front teeth and looked hardly older than her brother.

“Have you heard what will happen to the captured groomsmen?” Ailsbet asked. Could he put himself in the place of his guardsmen and imagine what that would be like? Could he conceive of what it would be like to watch it—to hear it?

Edik closed the door to his chambers and pushed a trunk against it. He looked thin and pale. “They stole from me! My groomsmen took my taweyr!” he cried. “They deserve punishment!”

“Edik, what proof do you have that they took your taweyr?” asked Ailsbet.

“Who else could it be? I have no taweyr, so they must be ekhono.”

“Think, Edik,” said Ailsbet. “Have they shown at any other time that they are ekhono?”

“They are too clever for that,” said Edik. “They came to destroy my taweyr. It is a great ekhono conspiracy.”

He had several swords hanging on his walls now. Ailsbet had not noticed them before. New gifts from their father, the king? Edik touched them lovingly.

“Perhaps there could be another explanation,” said Ailsbet. “One that has nothing to do with your groomsmen.”

“Of course, there is no other explanation,” said Edik.

“But what if you have not truly come into your taweyr yet? What if it was true that others were using their taweyr for you?”

“That is impossible,” said Edik flatly. “Of course it was my taweyr. I felt it. I knew it was mine.”

“Then think about this: you could beg our father for their lives. You could ask him to set them free.”

“For what reason?” asked Edik.

“For the sake of mercy?” said Ailsbet.

“And when has our father done anything for mercy?”

“Then do something else for them.”

“What?” asked Edik. “They are guilty. I cannot save them from their fates now.”

“Were they never your friends? Did they never do anything kind to you, laugh with you or tease you? Did you never meet their families or hear them speak of sweethearts?” asked Ailsbet.

“They are servants. I owe them nothing,” said Edik, turning away from her.

“Edik, beware,” said Ailsbet. She had told Kellin that Edik could be a proper king, that he only needed to grow older. But now she did not know if that was the case. “There is danger waiting for you that you do not wish to see,” she added.

“I see the danger of the ekhono,” said Edik stubbornly.

“That is not what I mean. Our father is a king first, not a father.” She did not spell it out for Edik, but surely he must understand her.

“The ekhono hate me,” said Edik, ignoring Ailsbet’s hints completely. “They want to destroy me. I must destroy them first.”

There was altogether too much destruction in Rurik, as far as Ailsbet was concerned. But it seemed no one listened to her.

I
N THE
T
HRONE
R
OOM
the next day, King Haikor invited Issa to attend the execution of the prince’s groomsmen on the Tower Green. Please no, Issa whispered silently.

“I think Prince Edik would be glad of your place at his side,” said King Haikor. “It will be an opportunity to show your loyalty to your future husband and your abhorrence of all those who act against him.”

Issa knew that when she became queen in Rurik, she would have to attend executions. But she had hoped to leave that for some years yet.

“Or perhaps you are too weak for this. You do look pale and pinched,” said King Haikor.

“I have slept poorly these last weeks,” said Issa, “in this new and unfamiliar place, with so many new things to learn. But I am adjusting quickly.” She was learning how to put on a mask, as Princess Ailsbet had.

“So you will be well enough to come to the execution, then?” said King Haikor.

It was the last thing Issa wanted to do. But when she glanced at Ailsbet, she saw that the other princess was not asking to be excused. Issa could hardly be seen as weaker than Ailsbet.

She still believed Edik’s groomsmen were innocent. But there was nothing she could do to save them.

“I shall come,” said Issa.

“Good. So there is some mettle in Weirland, after all,” said King Haikor.

The following morning, Issa woke long before dawn. Still, she lay in bed until one of her own servants came to help her into her new gown, made from blue silk, the color of Weirland. They did not speak of where Issa was about to go. Nor did anyone speak of breakfast.

At last, Issa walked down the stairs and out through
the inner courtyard, which was beaten-down dirt, with no touch of neweyr left in it, no hint of green growth. She looked at the clean stones, untouched by moss and ivy, and felt a pang of homesickness that she suspected would never really leave her, even if she returned to Weirland.

Then she caught sight of the gangly figure of Prince Edik, waiting for her. He lifted a hand and waved, and she felt relief. She and Edik had something in common, after all. These were his groomsmen, and he must regret their death as she did, even if he thought it was necessary.

Issa could see Kellin and Ailsbet sitting close together, looking at ease if unusually solemn, as if it were merely another day in court. A makeshift throne had been brought out for King Haikor to sit on, not the elaborate one from the Throne Room, but one that was finely carved with stout legs and raised him high above anyone else. The throne sat upon fine Caracassan rugs, which had been spread on the grayish ground. The name
Tower Green
was now more of a reminder that there was no grass near the palace, nor much of any living plant.

The river Weyr could be seen clearly from this vantage point, reaching out to the ocean beyond, and there were already commoners gathered across
the river to see the execution. Their attitude of celebration made Issa ill.

“You look a little better now,” said King Haikor.

Issa nodded and took her place next to Prince Edik.

“Now you will see how we deal with traitors in Rurik,” said Haikor.

Edik shuddered, the first sign Issa had seen that he regretted what had happened to the groomsmen, and for that she felt a sudden warmth for him and put a hand on his arm.

“A man faces death proudly and gladly,” said King Haikor, his gaze on Edik as harsh as on the groomsmen as they were led out of the Tower.

“I think a man is no less a man for grieving at a loss, when it must be faced,” Issa said, for Edik’s sake.

“But what you think makes a man does not matter here, does it?” said Edik quietly. “Nor what I think.”

After that, Issa had nothing else to say to him. The commoners on the other side of the river roared as the two young men struggled against the Tower guards and wept on the short path to the block where the executioner stood, tall and hooded.

The lower part of the Tower had been built generations ago, but King Haikor had added to it early
in his own reign, so that it rose higher than any other part of the palace. It swayed with the wind, a symbol of the taweyr, in a land where only the taweyr mattered.

The two groomsmen looked up and caught sight of Edik. They cried out for mercy.

Issa could feel him tense beside her, and he opened his mouth, but did not speak.

The executioner knelt both of the groomsmen down on the Green. Edik looked away, biting his lower lip until it bled.

But the executioner made quick work with his axe, and soon the two men were dead. Their bodies would be burned later for all to see.

“It is finished,” Issa whispered. Only then did Edik look upon the men he had betrayed, and Issa could not tell for whom the hatred in his eyes was meant.

Issa turned to Ailsbet and saw there were tears on her cheeks. It was the first time Issa had seen the other princess weep. The tears ran down her face and dripped onto her gown, and she did not seem to notice them.

King Haikor stood and waved at the commoners across the river, who cheered for him and for the executioner. Then he thumped Edik on the back. “This is what it means to be a prince,” he said, and
the warning was clear in his tone. “A prince rejoices in seeing traitors receive their due.”

They all walked toward the palace then, but Haikor returned to his Throne Room, and Edik remained outside a moment longer with Issa. He said softly, his head bowed, “I have never had many friends, and now I have none.”

“You have me,” said Issa.

Edik turned away, his shoulders hunched, and walked back to his chambers, alone. And then Issa saw Kellin, who had his eyes on Ailsbet and his hand on her cheek, wiping away her tears. He was not hers, thought Issa. And he never would be, no matter how much she might wish it.

L
ATER IN THE AFTERNOON
following the execution of Edik’s two groomsmen, Ailsbet was astonished when the ambassador from Aristonne dropped a note in her hand. The face of Ambassador Belram was pockmarked from a long-ago illness, but he wore fine clothes with the continental cut. He spoke to King Haikor in a precisely accented tone, but he tended to fade into the background of the court for long stretches of time. He had certainly never spoken to Ailsbet before.

Ailsbet was not able to read the note until that evening, after she had retired to her own chambers.
The paper was thick and fine, of a perfectly uniform ivory color. The smell of the ink was unfamiliar, and its color was almost brown rather than black, so she thought the ink must be very fine. The words themselves were formed in a delicate hand, with ornamentation that made it difficult to read. It was an invitation to meet Belram two hours past midnight at the stone wall behind the kitchens.

She debated whether to go. After all, there was no reason for her to think the ambassador of Aristonne wished her well. The location was a dark, vacant one. If Belram meant to harm her, he could do so without any fear of being overheard, and it would be hours before she was found. Ailsbet had done nothing personally against Aristonne, but she feared that hurting her might be a way for the current prince of Aristonne to wreak vengeance against her father, even if it was twenty years after the battle at which the young King Haikor had defeated that prince’s father.