Trouble with Kings (16 page)

“No threat?” I repeated. “But—I don’t understand. Then what am I doing here?”

“Spaquel was going to send you and my sister to Garian. I got there first.”

“But—” I shook my head, bewildered. “Why did you—oh.” I frowned at the wine glass, then looked up. “If you sent Jewel back with Spaquel, who was hotfooting to his house after you—”

“Then he either had to tell the truth to your brother, or make the best of it and pretend to be a rescuing hero, since it was you Garian wanted. Not my poverty-stricken sister. If Ignaz Spaquel tries anything more, he chances to lose everything he holds in Lygiera. Your father might be living in a dream, but I’m beginning to suspect your brother won’t put up with treason.”

“So Jewel was safe, and Spaquel thwarted. And you made me come here why?”

“First, to see who intercepted my ransom letter, and what would happen.”

I glared at him. “What would have happened to me had Garian managed to make us marry that day up in Drath?”

“You were expecting to be strangled in the dark of night?” he asked, mocking.

“Jewel was certain that was your plan—if not sooner, certainly later.”

“You ought to know by now that Jewel’s imagination supplies more interesting convictions than the truth ever could.”

“And so?”

He gazed out the window. “My original intention was to bring you back here and establish you in the rooms you have now until you conveniently followed your mother’s path into a nearby river, as Garian insisted would happen before long—”

“Ugh! Never!”

“Yes, I realize now that the assumption was erroneous, but it’s irrelevant because I have an idea that Garian actually had some treachery in line for both of us. I don’t think either of us were meant to survive crossing his border. What I still do not know yet is if Garian was intending to come to the rescue of my empty throne, or my brother was.” Again he raised his left hand, and turned around with a kind of rueful smile. “We can discourse on that later. It appears we are about to be enlightened in some respects, and misled in most.”

He moved to a sideboard and poured out three small glasses of wine; I noticed he used his right very little.

Without any warning the door slammed open, smashing into the opposite wall, and in ran—

“Jewel!”

“Flian! I
hoped
you would not still be here.” She whirled around, facing her brother. “You horrid, rotten, blast-mad villain! How
dare
you!”

“The Elandersi court started holding Flian’s disappearance against you?” Jason asked as if he hadn’t heard all those insults.

Jewel gasped. “How did you—”

“I had people there waiting, in case that happened. Their orders were to pull you out as soon as gossip started blaming you.”

Jewel rubbed her eyes. “I don’t understand. I’d rather stay there and face down the gossip, which is completely ridiculous—”

“You can spend the evening in ceaseless lamentations,” Jason cut in. “Berry has your old rooms aired and ready. Here.” He pressed a glass of wine into her hands.

To my surprise, Jewel took it and drank it down. “Ugh, my butt aches,” she moaned. “I
loathe
riding like that, day and night!” She beckoned to me. “Come, Flian. I have so
much
to tell you.” Her expressive brows lowered into a scowl line. “When
he
isn’t looming around like a thunderbolt about to strike.”

Jason waved at the door with his good hand. “She’ll be along presently.”

The door slammed, leaving us only with the mingled scent of Jewel’s favorite perfume and the distinctive odor of horse.

Jason held out one of the wineglasses to me and sat down in the chair opposite to mine. “You’re still looking like the trapped rabbit,” he said dryly.

I took a fortifying gulp, figuring if they could drink it, the days of sleepweed must have abated, at least for now.

Jason drank his own, then set down the goblet. “How much does Maxl trust Garian?”

I tried to figure out how my answering the question might harm my brother, and Jason said, “This information will not aid me. I have come to believe that Garian will betray anyone at any time. He has wealth, so his reasons appear to be obscure. Does your brother know that?”

“He does now.” I thought back to my arrival at Carnison what seemed a lifetime ago. “I told him everything that happened in Drath, but he said to keep it to ourselves until he knew more. He’s hampered by not wanting to disturb Papa with added stresses.”

“Jaim visited you there once, did he not?”

“Visited?” I laughed. “He tried to abduct me.”

“He needs money too. Did he, during your brief acquaintance, ever mention Garian?”

“Yes! Said not to trust him.” I sighed. “That’s why I went to Drath in the first place, to spite him. But how was I to know?” My mind raced on ahead. “Don’t tell me Garian and Jaim concocted that nasty little plan between them?”

“No. But Garian led me to believe that they had. Supposedly it was a bargain. Jaim would send you to Drath, and in return, Jaim got sanction to cross Drath while carrying on his lawless depredations in either my kingdom or yours. Garian represented himself as go-between, you see.”

“So when Jaim came smashing in and carried me off, and you no doubt sent people like Brissot and so forth to find him, it looked like the two of you were betraying one another? Whatever for?”

“To keep us at one another’s throats, and maybe get one of us to kill the other, so that Garian could find Jewel, force her to marry him, come over here and use his new status to take my army and march over the border into Dantherei.”

“What? Why there? Does Garian want to be a king?”

“Either a king or a lover to the rescue.”

I drank my wine off as quickly as Jewel had, and leaned forward. “Wait. Wait. None of what you are telling me makes any sense. Rescue who?”

“The queen’s sister, Princess Eleandra-Natalia—”

“Her again,” I said, sighing. “From what Maxl has been boring on about since his stay there, she already has as many suitors as I have gowns.”

“You have never seen her,” Jason observed.

That was all he said, but I had not spent a couple days in his company without gaining a modicum of insight into the changes of his voice, his expression. “Oh no,” I exclaimed. “Not you too?”

For the first time ever, I saw him laugh. “We have been secretly affianced for nine years, she and I.”

My mouth was open. I shut it.

“Unfortunately there have been political intrigues that have become increasingly complex. Garian appears to have joined the complications.”

“So…what is your part in those complications?”

“I promised her nine years ago that one day I would march in and remove her sister from the throne. At that time she would marry me and we could join the kingdoms. The benefits to Ralanor Veleth would be incalculable, for I’ve several generations of increasingly bad management to overcome.”

I got to my feet and prowled the perimeter of the room. The mind-numbing power of surprise gave way gradually as I considered everything I had heard—bringing me to another surprising conclusion.

“You told me all this for a reason,” I said. “What is it? Not another threat, I hope.”

“A request. I promise, whatever the outcome, you will get safely home afterward, and I will never again interfere with your life.”

I made another sightless turn about the room. The sunshine, the view out the windows, everything was blind to me but my thoughts and my memories. “You tried once to force Jewel to marry Garian. Is that true?”

“I did. Before I really knew him. He promised the money I needed, and at the time I believed him. Just like I believed the ambush was made by Jaim’s renegades, as most were dressed in old green battle tunics. But Markham did not recognize a one. Circumstances being what they were, we only realized that later.”

It all fell into place then, like the pieces of a stained glass window, only the whole was not nearly so pleasant to look at. “Garian was plotting not just against us, but against you, too?”

“Yes. As for Jewel, marriage for treaty or wealth is traditional in our family,” Jason went on. “Our mother came here as part of a bargain between my father and his most powerful enemy among the regional lords. Not that the treaty held.”

“Jewel told me much the same thing. To resume the original discussion, you want me to go to Dantherei, am I right?” I asked. “As your envoy? And you expect me to, what, do your courting for you?”

He smiled. “That was done nearly a decade ago. I can’t cross the border now, not without international repercussions, and I don’t want to turn my back on Garian. I would like you to go see her. If she intends to keep her part of the bargain, send her back here, and then you can go home again whenever you like—bypassing Drath entirely.”

I frowned. “You really expect me to speak for you?”

“Say whatever you like, from your own perspective. But that’s the message from me.”

“And meanwhile?”

“Meanwhile I am going to find my brother. If my understanding of his real motivations is correct, I will offer him a new plan. Together we’re going to seek our needed finances from Garian Herlester.”

“The threat at last!” I laughed. “A real threat, yet how comforting to hear someone else threatened for a change, especially someone I loathe. Well, I shall consider this request of yours—and your promise makes it seriously tempting. I take it Jewel would be accompanying me?”

“I think she will like Dantherei’s court.”

I did not know what to say—I was not about to thank him for the prospect of my getting home safely as he was the one who’d brought me in the first place—so I left.

Chapter Fourteen

Jewel’s rooms were the ones on the other side of the great tiled bath.

I knocked and Berry let me in. A couple of maids had just finished changing the bed linens and dusting. Berry told me Jewel was in the bath.

“Flian! Is that you?” came Jewel’s voice.

I walked in, to meet a wide blue glare.

“Berry says all the servants are talking—saying that you saved his life. Is that true?”

I shrugged. “Yes.”

“Why would you do such a demented thing? Did you delude yourself into thinking that he’d be grateful?”

“Not for one moment,” I stated. “It never even occurred to me.”

My calm certainty seemed to enrage her further. I studied her stony expression and black hair plastered to her skull. “You look exactly like him right now,” I added.

Her jaw dropped. She ducked under water and came up again with her hair covering her face. “Is this any better?” Then she slung her hair back and laughed. “You must have been out of your mind!”

“Well, I was, but I’d have done it even so. Think, Jewel. You wake up seeing this huge fire and a live person lying in its path. Would you let him or her lie there, no matter who it was?”

She shook her head. “I’d say yes and good riddance, but I can’t really imagine what it was like. What
was
it like?”

“Horrible. I didn’t wake up after we left Spaquel’s—not until that fire. In retrospect I think Markham and Jason were alone except for me, traveling by the fastest route in a racing carriage, and the rest of his people were either scouts or decoys. They gave me a couple of doses of sleepweed, so I slept through it all. We would have reached the border around nightfall, everyone gets a big meal, no harm done. Instead there was this ambush, which took them by surprise. The scouts riding ahead had been killed first, so there was no warning.”

Jewel drew in a breath. “Oh, I hope the ambushers weren’t Jaim’s people.”

“No. Garian’s people, dressed up to look like Jaim’s.”

Jewel let out a sigh of relief.

“Anyway, they fought the attackers off, but Jason got stabbed. It was at night. When they were down to the last couple of ’em, Jason ordered Markham to leave us and fetch reinforcements, in case there were more ambushers to come. Markham took one of the horses. I was all wrapped up in a cloak, lying in the smashed racing carriage. Jason had probably passed out, and woke as the fire began to spread. It was dark by then. He freed the other horse, which was closer to the fire—yes.” I closed my eyes, calling up the vivid images from that terrible night. “I nearly tripped over the traces. I think he was coming back for me, but he collapsed, for by then he’d lost a lot of blood. When I woke, the trees all around us were on fire and branches were falling.” I opened my eyes.

Jewel gazed back at me in astonishment. “So what did you do?”

“Rolled him onto the cloak and dragged him out of danger. And when he first woke, Jason did his best to provoke me into running—either that or taking his knife and finishing the ambushers’ job, and when I did neither, he scorned me for my cowardice.”

“Eugh.” Jewel grimaced. “He must have been in an almighty sulk. That’s the only possible explanation.”

“Maybe. But the truth is, I
am
a coward.”

“A coward would have run and left Jason to burn to death.”

“Then there are degrees of cowardice. I don’t see that as an act of bravery, only one of moral necessity.”

She snorted. “I see it as an act of insanity. And my stone-hearted brother thought you not only cowardly but stupid, or why would he snarl and snap at you afterward so nastily? Because I must say, his reaction sounds surly and uncivilized even for
him
.”

I knew by now that Jewel’s perception of her older brother was limited by vivid childhood memory. Jason was opaque to me as well, but I suspected that he exerted himself to be opaque. It was his armor against his own harsh early life. Whatever his true motivations or desires or feelings, it would be a mistake to assume that because one couldn’t fathom them he had none—or that they were uniformly evil. Especially in the light of his revelation about Princess Eleandra-Natalia.

Remembering that surprising revelation, I laughed inside. Jewel heaved herself from the bath. “Berry? You here? Where are my gowns?” She grinned as she swathed herself in a towel. “I made Jason’s fools bring along my favorite dresses. And
they
had to carry them.”

“They and the horses.” I followed her into the bedroom, where Berry was in the process of laying out clothes.