The Shadow Within (11 page)

“You have something to say, Jared?” Abramm asked.

“Only that . . . sir, it goes against the code of honor for a valet to reveal such information. I would never do such a thing.”

“At least not knowingly.”

“Maybe it would be best to send him away, sir,” Haldon suggested, his tone carefully neutral. “To one of the border fortresses. Archer’s Vale, maybe. Or Highmount Holding.”

Jared’s eyes went wide.

Abramm frowned. “Exile him for accidentally learning something I’d prefer he not know?”

“What he knows could ruin you,” Haldon said quietly.

Abramm turned to the boy. “What do you think, Jared? Can you hold your tongue, or would you rather be somewhere distant where it won’t matter what you say?”

“I swear to you on my life, Sire, I will say nothing.”

Something in his tone, in the solemnity of his mien reminded Abramm of Philip Meridon, hopefully already in Sterlen with his parents by now. Philip would say it the same way. And he would mean it. Abramm sensed that Jared meant it, too. He regarded the boy long and hard before releasing a low breath and nodding. “Very well, Jared. I accept your oath and your service.”

“You can start by gathering up these staffid and throwing them into the fire,” Haldon said.

“Yes, sir.”

His first bath completed by default, Abramm slipped on the plain white shirt and black breeches Haldon brought to him, then followed the chamberlain into the dressing chamber to select the clothes he would wear this evening. Once the older man reached the wardrobe, however, he merely stood there, staring at the closed door. The expression of severe neutrality he had worn throughout the interview with Jared had given way to one of increasing dismay. Now he turned from the wardrobe’s dark bulk and lifted a hand.

Abramm gaped as a kelistar bloomed on his large fingers. Completely taken aback, he was a moment finding his tongue. “Thank you for showing me this, Haldon. I am . . . more pleased—and relieved—than you can know.”

But that only increased the pain in the old man’s face. Flicking out the orb, he said, “To my shame, sir, I must confess that I
have
broken the honor of a valet.” He hesitated. “When you attacked me, I thought it proof you were . . . compromised. I am afraid I . . . passed that conclusion on.” He dropped both hands to his sides.

“You thought I was controlled by rhu’ema?”

“It was widely known among us they intended that for you six years ago. It seemed the only explanation. You were so strong and quick. You nearly killed me! That is not something a simple scribe could’ve done.” His eyes flicked back to Abramm’s chest, hidden now by the shirt. “But then you weren’t a scribe, were you?”

“I was for a time. Who did you tell?”

“Only Beeson. Your chef. But he will tell others. Already has, I’m sure.”

“Terstans?”

Haldon nodded. “I’ll tell him I was wrong, of course. But for many, I fear, it will not matter. They’ll just think I’ve fallen to your deceptive abilities.”

It hadn’t occurred to Abramm that the men he’d assumed would be his allies might reckon him possessed, and he thought himself an idiot now for the oversight. Had he not on his last arrival at Springerlan been kidnapped by Terstans who believed he was to be the Mataio’s puppet king? Why would they think differently now when the Mataio itself was openly claiming exactly that?

Haldon looked more miserable than ever, but he kept his chin up and fixed his gaze on something beyond Abramm’s right shoulder. “I am disgraced, sir,” he whispered, white hair shining in a halo around his craggy face. “
I
am the one who ought to go to Highmount Holding.”

“That is true,” said Abramm. And Haldon slowly paled. Abramm let him squirm a moment, then relented. “Nevertheless, I know you for a faithful man, Haldon, and I trust you’ll not make the same mistake again.”

“Never, sir.” Haldon still had not met his gaze.

“Besides, it will hardly be to my advantage to send you away now you’ve learned my secret, only to have to begin anew with someone else. Although frankly I’m beginning to wonder if this subterfuge is really worth it. I hadn’t counted on having to win over my allies as well as my enemies. Maybe I should just come clean of it at the start and see what happens.”

Haldon’s head jerked up in alarm. “Tonight, sir?”

“Why not? I’ve already been openly accused.”

The chamberlain shook his head. “If you declare it, sir, they will never accept you. It is not good to be a Terstan these days. In the last month alone, two high lords were ruined for it, their titles stripped, their holdings seized. The month before another disappeared without a trace. We suspect the Gadrielites took him. He probably died from their attempts to drive the evil out of him.”

Abramm frowned. “I had heard of this new order of heretic hunters back in Qarkeshan—breaking into people’s homes and hauling them off—but I believed the tales exaggerated. Assault? Kidnapping? Outright robbery? The authorities allow such things?”

“Civil authorities have no jurisdiction in Mataian matters, sir. And heresy is a Mataian matter.”

“But everyone who is not a Mataian is a heretic, so—”

“Only Terstans are considered such right now. And because it’s only Terstans, those who might otherwise object look the other way.” He hesitated, then added quietly, “King Raynen’s last days frightened a lot of people. Even those of us who wear the shield. The Mataio has used that fear to its advantage.”

The chamberlain started to open the wardrobe doors, then motioned for Jared to draw the drapes on the tall windows ranged along the western wall. As the scent of dust tickled Abramm’s nostrils and the room flickered into dimness, he said, “Tell me about Ray, Haldon. All I’ve heard is that he went completely mad of the sarotis and threw himself off Graymeer’s Point.”

Haldon grimaced. “It was seeing Captain Meridon executed that started it, I think. Many say Meridon was set up, that the accusations against him were but a deceit to remove him from the king’s circle. Especially after the— well, whatever it was that happened with you.”

“When I fled the Mataio, you mean.”

“Aye.”

Abramm said no more, though Haldon clearly hoped he would. When he held silence, the chamberlain sighed and returned to his own story.

“After that night your brother was never the same. He met assassins in his bedchamber, saw evil spirits behind the draperies, heard voices whispering from the balcony. He turned out all his personal servants, convinced we were spies. He even suspected the birds.” Haldon snorted softly. “The drapes and doors and windows had to be closed at all times. He took to slinking around the palace, using the secret passages to spy on those he suspected of spying on him. His hair and beard grew long, his teeth green. He never changed his clothes, never bathed, and often we heard him screaming or cackling afar in those passages he haunted.”

He fell silent, lost in recollection while Abramm entertained memories of his own. Raynen had seen their father murdered, knew of Gillard’s aspirations for the throne and of Saeral’s evil plans involving Abramm himself. He was, in fact, the man responsible for opening Abramm’s own eyes to the matter— and who, then, let Gillard sell Abramm into slavery and Trap along with him, betraying them both to save himself.

Guilt could cripple a man—so could fear. In combination they were toxic. Worse, they smothered the Light and so allowed the sarotis to grow.

“He was bent and crippled at the end,” Haldon continued. “The curd filled his eyes and dribbled down his face, drying on clothing that had grown ragged and filthy. His decisions became completely illogical and inappropriate. The Table had to remove him. They locked him up in the Chancellor’s Tower—for his own safety—but the next day he escaped and slipped off to Graymeer’s.”

They fell into silence again. After a moment Abramm said, “And no one wants a repeat.”

“No, sir. If you reveal your shield tonight, aside from Eidon working a miracle on your behalf, I’ve no doubt the lords will remove you permanently from the succession and immediately transform Gillard’s regent status to full sovereignty.”

Abramm regarded him soberly, chilled by the realization that what he said was probably true. “Then I shall not reveal it.” He gestured at the wardrobe. “Shall we get on with this?”

“Of course, sir.” Haldon pulled open the door, revealing a row of garments sewn of velvet, satin, fine wool, and brocade. There were doublets and cloaks and shirts and trousers, all bedecked with ruffles and lace and ribbons and jewels.

Abramm stared at them in a blank-minded surprise that swiftly turned to revulsion and then an inexplicable rising fury. Haldon riffled through them and pulled out a wine-colored doublet spangled with rubies and fluttering ribbons. “How about this one, sir? I think—”

“No.”

Haldon put the garment back, pulled out another, this one deep blue and equally laden with frippery. “Then, how about—”

“I’ll not wear any of these.”

Haldon frowned at him. “Highness, I assure you, all were selected with an eye to current fashion.”

Abramm had no doubt of that, but to him they were straight out of a Game Master’s playbook, far too close to what he’d worn as the White Pretender. “I don’t care if they are,” he said firmly. “I’m not wearing them.”

Haldon drew back, brows flying up in surprise.

Abramm ignored him. “Either find me something more conservative, or bring the tailor in to alter one of these. It doesn’t matter which, but I’m not going anywhere dressed like a lace-maker’s rack. And I’m
surely
not wearing those ridiculous-looking breeches.”

Haldon swallowed his surprise “I’ll see to it at once, sir.”

“You can also start preparing that second bath.” Abramm could still smell the kraggin on himself and was beginning to fear he might be living with this odor for days. “And what of the barber? Is he here yet?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll send him in.”

CHAPTER

8

The Council Hall, where the Table of Lords met, presided over the Mall of Civil Government on the shelf of land halfway between the top of the great escarpment that formed the city’s eastern boundary and the river at its heart. Feeling confident and upbeat after a day of successful lobbying, Simon rode down in his friend Ethan Laramor’s coach, and not even Laramor’s unrelenting pessimism could dim his good spirits.

Finding the Hall’s front court already clogged with arriving coaches, they drove around to the side and entered through a corridor leading directly onto the Upper Table’s crowded central floor. Tobacco smoke hung thickly above the velvet- and satin-clad dignitaries, who, bewigged and otherwise, clustered in knots of animated conversation, their voices echoing in a riot of sound beneath the chamber’s magnificent hammer-beamed ceiling. Beyond and below them the Lower Table with its ranked rows of long bench seats was also filling rapidly, as were the curved tiers of the audience galleries overlooking it.

It had been an eventful day, with the biggest event yet to come, and Simon could hear the excitement in the men’s voices, see it in their faces. His own efforts fueled by a raft of conflicting rumors, the question of Abramm’s fitness to rule was now foremost on everyone’s mind.

A broad-chested, beefy-faced lord in burgundy velvet, sleeves slashed with black silk, hailed them as they emerged onto the Floor, drawing them into his circle of conversation. Laine Harrady was a longtime friend and ally, an old war brother and one of Gillard’s staunchest supporters. Age had thickened already thick features, enlarging ears and nose as it had robbed him of teeth and hair—Simon had not seen him without his brown, black-ribboned queue wig in at least a decade.

Now Harrady clapped Simon’s shoulder and smiled broadly, his mouth full of large ivory false teeth. “What a day this has been, eh, old friend?” he boomed. “Who would have thought we’d ever be here considering little
Abramm’s
claim to the throne? The queen’s pious pacifist? The little boy who wouldn’t stand up to a mouse if it challenged him? Now he seeks to rule us all.” He waggled heavy brows. “‘Ne’er a fancy queerer than the fortune life delivers,’ eh?”

“Indeed,” said Simon, eyeing the other lords in attendance and automatically taking the roll.

Harrady leaned closer. “Is it true about his having specifically requested your boy Channon as personal bodyguard? And Channon going along with it?”

Simon scowled, feeling a renewed twinge of the astonishment and dismay he’d felt when he’d first learned of that arrangement. “Apparently so, though I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet.”

Channon had spent most of the afternoon on guard in the Ivory Apartments, while Abramm allegedly napped, and retired immediately afterward to his own quarters to bathe, since he’d been on the water with the prince and smelled almost as bad himself.

“I heard he was sick all afternoon,” said one of the other men. “Abramm, I mean.”

“I heard that, too,” said a third, “and also that he flew into a fury when one of the valets took his cloak and drove out all the servants, then demolished the suite in his rage.”

“I heard he attacked Haldon himself,” said Harrady with a grin. “Slammed him up against the bedpost, clear off his feet—if you can believe that.”

“If you can believe that, you’ll believe anything,” Simon said dryly. It was an occupational hazard of palace living—courtiers’ tongues swelled the most insignificant of events into monstrous scandal. He almost felt sorry for the lad. But the silly boy
could
have spent the afternoon cultivating the nobility and proving the rumormongers wrong instead of sleeping in his rooms.

“Yes, but
I
actually spoke to an armsman who saw him arrive,” said the first man, “and
he
said the prince was pale and sweating. Looking as if he might collapse. He may not even come tonight.”

“Don’t we wish!” said Simon. Abramm always had been sickly, so it wasn’t impossible, and if he didn’t show, after all the talk today, the regency extension would pass without question.

“He’ll be here,” Laramor growled. “His Mataian friends will make sure of it.”