Perhaps they’d come here for that purpose, and not to conquer. They hadn’t seemed inclined to fire on Calanthe, or my people, as I’d prepared for in case the enchantment hadn’t worked as I hoped. Most likely Con had used his keen strategic mind, intuiting that the silly young Queen of Flowers would be swayed by his savage handsomeness and fall, fainting and giddy, into his arms—and consequently positioning him to attack Yekpehr. Never mind that he’d decimate Calanthe in the process. What was one more ransacked and dusty kingdom to him?
It burned me no end that he’d been so close to convincing me. Years of certainty and icing my heart to think of only duty, then a few minutes in a garden with a charismatic man and I’d nearly gone against everything my father taught me.
Ambrose bowed, beaming like an honored guest visiting for tea, balancing on the staff as he made a leg with the misshapen one. An odd choice. Mocking me and my throne? The raven half spread its wings, ducking its head in mimicry of the bow.
I’d been planning to restore Ambrose’s magical staff to him, but now I reconsidered. I also considered leaving him in the obeisance. Both would be petty whereas I wished to earn his confidence. Still, I’d wait until I had a sense of whether he planned to attack me before I gave him additional weapons. There. I was thinking strategically again.
“You may rise,” I said, studying them both as they did. Though the wizard’s eyes had been downcast, the raven’s had not. Much as I could see through the eyes of Calanthe’s birds during the dreamthink, Ambrose probably had at least that much ability with his familiar. Likely far more and better controlled. I so hoped he could teach me.
“So, Your Highness,” Ambrose said brightly, ignoring protocol by speaking before I invited him to. “I understand I’m to be added to your Court of Curiosities.”
I raised a brow at the impertinence and he shrugged with good cheer, leaning in and winking. “That’s what we call it, those of us in the circles of the types of folk you collect. It’s meant with affection and all due reverence for Your Highness.”
I seriously doubted that. And I decided not to address the implicit irreverence. No doubt having a wizard for an adviser would come with all sorts of concessions on my part. Plus, none of Con’s people were quite as they appeared, including himself. The jovial mien the wizard displayed didn’t quite hide the canny and ancient being inside. Indeed, the raven had turned its head, hard orange eye on me, as the wizard apparently looked around at the flowers with an absent smile playing on his lips. He never took his attention off me.
“Ah, then, Con spoke to you of the plan. Excellent.” I wouldn’t have to explain it yet again—or face the sort of nastiness I’d endured with Sondra. You’d have thought I was planning to flay her alive rather than offer her a life of ease in the Flower Court.
“Conrí,” he said. “I’m naturally looking forward to seeing some of my friends who’ve accepted your generous offer of luxurious asylum,” he continued, “even as I’m sorry to refuse for my part and Merle’s.”
The raven croaked an agreement, bobbing his head, as if regretfully apologizing. I eyed it, wondering if Merle echoed his master’s thoughts or conveyed his own. He might not be truly a bird at all.
“Not this again,” I replied, having no trouble sounding utterly weary of this group of martyrs. “Con certainly has gathered himself a crew of professional victims. Let Me guess—you’d rather be tortured and executed by His Imperial Majesty, also.”
“Conrí, Your Highness. The rí is an honorific in Oriel,” he clarified. “To truncate it demonstrates either familiarity or disrespect for the crown prince.”
I barely disguised my shock. Conrí, the crown prince of Oriel? And he’d stood there and let me malign his bloodline … I’d throttle the man. I swore I would.
“Is that so?” I said, smooth and barely interested. “Oriel … the golden kingdom in the high hills. Legendary for its prosperity, blissfully happy population—along with the noble but vicious Warriors of the Orb that guarded its borders from attack.”
“Indeed.” Ambrose dropped some of the clownish mask. “One of the first to fall to the upstart tyrant.” He hadn’t bothered to lower his voice.
“Have a care, Syr Ambrose,” I warned him.
“No honorific needed for me.” He stroked his familiar. “Call me Ambrose, and this is Merle.”
“Ambrose,” I replied with studied patience, “Merle, even I cannot protect you from the consequences of treason if your words are connected to your face.”
“Can’t you?” It sounded like a challenge. “I don’t think the Abiding Ring would’ve accepted you if that were true. May I?” He extended an oddly long-fingered hand toward me, a glimpse of something beneath illusion.
Interested to test that, I laid my hand in his, the orchid fluttering its petals almost coyly, like one of my ladies simpering at a handsome courtier. Have some dignity, I thought at it, and it stilled, obeying for once. Merle opened his beak in a smile, while the wizard had his human gaze on the blossom. His hand felt normal. Excellent illusion then. He was more powerful than I’d guessed.
If I could learn that trick, I might be able to wear fewer clothes. An enticing thought, though minor in the grand scheme of the problems I faced.
“As extraordinary as I’d hoped,” Ambrose said, releasing my hand and leaning on the staff, regarding me like one of my naturalists dissecting a newly discovered beetle. “You’re not what I expected, however.”
“No?” I raised a brow, going for supercilious cool.
Ambrose shook his head ruefully. “It’s not your fault, your mother being taken from you so young and your father passing as he did … And losing your wizards, too. Well, the past can’t be helped, but I did hope for more.”
I squelched the need to ask what he could possibly know about my mother. Another attempt at manipulation, no doubt. He couldn’t know anything of importance, I reassured myself. “I am grieved to disappoint you,” I replied in a tone that froze even the most incautious of courtiers.
But Ambrose waved a hand as if in forgiveness. “I’ve learned to live with worse disappointments. Once you marry Conrí, that will put us on the right path. I’ll be able to begin your instruction.” He beamed at me, somehow making it the expression of a generous and ancient teacher despite his boyish face.
It required all my years of training in courtly impassivity not to gape at him.
“Even if I weren’t engaged to His Imperial—”
“Which you’re not,” Ambrose cut me off. Then added a slight smile. “Don’t try to trick the trickster, Euthalia. I know exactly how much of your apparent betrothal is smoke and mirrors.”
“Will you assist Me then?” I asked, seizing control of the conversation. Perhaps if I’d had access to a wizard years ago, when I first ascended to the throne, too young and in the wake of my father’s untimely death, I could’ve avoided this trap before it bound me so tightly. “Is there a way out?”
“Of course!” He smiled and straightened. I doubted he truly needed to lean on the staff at all. “Though you already have it. I’ve already convinced Conrí that marrying you is the best course. See, there’s a prophecy that—”
I held up my hand, stopping him. “In the age of Anure, prophecies are meaningless.”
Ambrose gave me a withering look. “You know as well as I do that magic is not gone from the world, no matter what the false emperor claims.”
“It doesn’t matter what magic remains. Even at its height, magic wasn’t enough to stop Anure in the first place. If we learned nothing else, we learned that.”
“Oh, child.” The wizard’s scorn turned to pity. “You’re sorely misinformed. Magic was far from its height when Anure took advantage of the sloth and greed of the court wizards across the many kingdoms.”
I stared at him, the fragments of so many lessons and advice from my father swirling in my head, reassembling into a different picture. “Even so,” I replied slowly, “that may change My view of the past, but the
present remains the same. Do you claim the magic of Calanthe is enough to change the entire world?”
“No.” He shook his head sadly, Merle mimicking the gesture. Or agreeing. “No, you’re correct there. But there’s a chance, see, if you marry Conrí, that—”
“I’m not marrying him. I can’t.”
“But he’s the rightful king of Oriel.”
“Oriel is gone,” I pointed out. I am King of Nothing. “I don’t care if he’s the crown prince of Oriel, I—”
“He was. Until his father died. That makes him king now.”
“No, Ambrose.” My voice lashed out, and the orchid ring flexed its petals with the power of it. “He is My prisoner and will face the wrath of the emperor for crimes against the empire. That is a fate of his own making. I can save you; perhaps I can save the Lady Sondra.” We might have to drug her to insensibility until her liege and lover was well away, but we could do it. I owed Con that much, had promised him.
“But can you save yourself?” Ambrose asked softly, Merle cocking his head cannily.
“No. I gave up on that a long time ago when I agreed to honor My father’s promises. All I can do is save Calanthe. To do that, I need you to help Me find the next wearer of the orchid ring.”
“The Abiding Ring,” he corrected. “That’s the old name for it.”
“Good to know,” I answered, hard on the heels of his correction, feeling the bitterness rise. It would’ve been good of my father to tell me at least that much. The sun had risen high and shone down too hot. What I wouldn’t give to shed these clothes and dive naked into Calanthe’s cool and forgiving sea.
“As I said, your ignorance isn’t entirely your fault.” Ambrose read my irritation and gave me a sympathetic smile that hardened. “Though it will be if you continue to be willfully blind.”
“I should let Leuthar deliver you to Anure,” I hissed, anger and frustration getting the better of me. “I’m trying to help you and you only insult Me.”
“Oh, my dear child.” Ambrose looked sorrowful. “I don’t need your help. I’m offering you mine. If you’re wise, you’ll take it.”
I sat back slightly. The structure of my garments doesn’t allow for much, but I needed a moment. “You’ll help Me find an heir to the throne of Calanthe,” I said, testing him.
He rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine. That will be simple once you marry Conrí. It’s really the least of what we need—”
“No, wizard,” I explained with all the patience left in me. “I need to transfer the orchid ring—”
“The Abiding Ring,” he corrected.
“—to My heir as soon as possible so I can marry His Imperial Majesty. Time is running out.”
“That’s the one true thing you’ve said.” Merle croaked an affirmation, then clacked his beak at me, chiding.
“Listen, Ambrose—” I broke off, listening to a commotion beyond the walls. The door opened to admit Tertulyn. She looked distraught, as much as she ever did. Picking up her skirts so her dainty slippers flashed across the mossy stones of the paved courtyard, she ran to me and sank in a curtsy.
“Forgive me, Your Highness, but the emissary is awake.” She caught her breath and tried to still her panting, then had to gulp in more air. Ambrose examined her with great interest.
I gazed at her, more than a little bemused. “Thank you, Tertulyn, for letting Me know he’s woken, as I asked you to.”
Her pansy-blue eyes flashed up to my face. “I mean he’s up. He received a messenger bird and he’s looking for You.”
A bellow outside the walls. Leuthar, in a rage or excited. I closed my eyes briefly, sending a prayer to Ejarat. Then opened my eyes and pinned Tertulyn with a stare. She flushed, not only from exertion, but from … embarrassment? Surely not shame for an error. Unless something more had occurred.
“Why wasn’t I given more warning?” I asked her quietly. Some of my anger at Ambrose leaked into my voice, because I sounded more menacing than I’d meant to.
She colored a deeper shade. “Your Highness, I—”
“Your Highness!” Leuthar called from beyond the door. “Tell Your guard to admit me. I have joyful news of the utmost importance.”
I glared at Tertulyn, who blanched. How she’d failed me I didn’t know, but we’d deal with it later. At the moment I apparently would have the great pleasure of an unexpected audience with the emperor’s emissary, Sawehl save us. And in my favorite private garden, too. I mentally sighed for it as I could hardly refuse him, not without an excuse, and I could think of absolutely nothing. Con and his people had drained me of anything but despair. “Admit Syr Leuthar, please, Tertulyn.”
She practically fled back across the paving stones. I turned my attention to Ambrose, who appeared to be in silent conversation with Merle. “I don’t suppose you will disguise yourself as someone else?” I asked.
Ambrose gave me a wide-eyed, boyishly innocent look. “Why would I do that? I’ve never met an imperial emissary before. Sounds so exciting. Is he as impressive as his title?”
Tertulyn had reached the gate. “At least give another name,” I pleaded. “Say you’re one of My scholars who doesn’t frequent the Night Court. There’s plenty like that whom Leuthar has never met.”
I’d apparently erred in not asking Tertulyn to remain because she slipped out the doors as Leuthar swept in. Perhaps she assumed my orders to keep the garden audiences private still stood, but normally she’d know that Leuthar’s arrival had changed everything. I would have to find out what was going on with her. Especially as Leuthar had clearly been up and about for some time—long enough to groom himself to extravagant perfection—without her alerting me.
So not like her. And worrisome.
Leuthar pranced across the courtyard like one of my peacocks, the trailing turquoise plume of his hat bobbing as if he hoped to signal mates out at sea. He stopped before me, sweeping an ostentatious bow and completely ignoring Ambrose, who leaned on his staff, observing the emissary’s approach with bright eyes and an amused smile, as if highly entertained indeed.
Then Ambrose looked at me, wrinkled his nose, and shook his head, as if in disappointment. Absurdly—especially considering how much the wizard had aggravated me—I had to struggle not to laugh. I knew better, too. Syr Leuthar might be ridiculous, but he acted for the emperor and held the power of life and death—and worse than death—over us all. Apparently the wizard didn’t take even that seriously. No surprise there.
“Your Highness,” Leuthar crooned, giving me a charming smile. “My sincerest apologies for my tardiness in congratulating You on Your fantastic political coup. Capturing the Slave King so handily! I only heard after You’d retired last night.” He coughed delicately into a silk hankie, waving away the unmentionable time he’d spent in a drugged haze, only waking well into the night. “Once I had the glad tidings that the rebellious dogs had been taken captive, I sent a bird to His Imperial Majesty immediately to solicit instructions. I’m sure Your Highness had already done so, but it never hurts to confirm. And good thing I did!” He blinked at me in triumph. “For the message I received just a bit ago”—he pulled an ornately folded envelope of Anure’s gray marbled stationery from his pocket—“implies Your bird may have gone astray. Of course, Your little birds are so small and fragile.”
The emperor, and his emissaries, used large messenger birds to convey their verbose messages. They never quite seemed to understand the staying power of the smaller songbirds that migrated distances vaster than the empire twice annually. Nor did they understand that our abbreviated messages conveyed much in code. Obviously, I had no intention of disabusing them of this misapprehension.
“Oh dear.” I made a sorrowful face. “I hope My poor little creature wasn’t hurt or killed.”
Naturally, I hadn’t yet sent a message to Anure. No, because I’d been wasting time and energy trying to save those who didn’t wish to be saved.
“The small things are so vulnerable,” Leuthar agreed. Merle made a
series of croaks that sounded like a laugh. Leuthar jumped as if poked, and eyed the magnificent raven askance, then seemed to notice Ambrose for the first time. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said. “Nor have I ever been in this prettyish garden.” He looked about and frowned at the high walls.
“I’m Ambrose,” the wizard replied, and waggled his eyebrows. “One of the rebel dog captives.”
I had to lower my lashes to keep my eyes from rolling back in my head. Determined to destroy themselves.
“Captives? You mean…” Leuthar glanced at me, fully astonished. “I—oh my!”
“I was interrogating him,” I explained and glared at Ambrose, who—along with Merle—attempted a hangdog posture, making an absolute mockery of it. Leuthar was blissfully oblivious, but the sarcasm wasn’t lost on me.
“But why in His Imperial Majesty’s name isn’t such a dangerous prisoner chained?” Leuthar exclaimed. “Your Highness mustn’t be so cavalier with Her welfare.”
“Ambrose is physically unwell,” I explained, giving the wizard a warning look through my lashes. “And he’s a scholar, not a fighter.”
“Ah.” Leuthar looked unconvinced, and Ambrose obligingly leaned more heavily on his staff, giving up his playfulness and displaying every impression of frailty. Merle let one wing dangle as if broken and badly mended, putting the whole act over the top. Leuthar, however—oblivious to nuance—nodded knowingly. “And has Your Highness extracted anything useful?”
“Unfortunately, no.” I shot Ambrose an icy glare. “He is most obstinate. I suspect he is mentally addled.”
Merle tipped his head to the side, opening his beak and letting his tongue dangle out, forcing me to look away lest I begin laughing in truth.
“Never mind, Your Highness.” Leuthar waved the hankie, the scent of yilkas wafting from it. “His Imperial Majesty employs the very best torturers. He will soon know all there is useful from him, before he’s executed. Tell me,” he said, dropping his voice and leaning in to encourage confidences, “is the Slave King as fierce and brutish as they say, or is the talk all exaggeration?”
The Orchid Throne Page 21