Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  ‘In this weather?’ The Lord Commander narrowed winter gray eyes. ‘Hasn’t been wind fit to drive off the drizzle.’

  ‘No storm,’ gasped the courier.

  Sulfin Evend did not delay to hear more, but elbowed his way through the jeweled press of courtiers gathered to eavesdrop and gawk. He pulled the stumbling courier along, then propelled him ahead in a no-nonsense rush to the prince’s private dressing room.

  The courier received a blinding impression of lavish gilt trim, velvet footstools with lion-claw legs, and damascened cushions shot like fire with reflected candlelight. Then he and his forceful escort broke through the fawning coterie around the prince.

  ‘Exalted, we’ve got trouble!’ Without regard for propriety, ignoring the spluttering mayor he displaced, Sulfin Evend fended away the valet who bore the sapphire tabard in a single-minded sally to reach the Prince of the Light.

  ‘Is there news? Let my officer through!’ Lysaer s’Ilessid should have appeared ordinary, half-clad as he was, the laces of his finery untied and trailing. Yet his fierce inquiry as he straightened to meet the disheveled messenger and the taut urgency of his Lord Commander snapped his disgruntled sycophants to stillness. In breech hose and a shirt edged with gold, he seemed a figment stamped out of light. The diamonds flared like caught ice in his sleeves as his trim shoulders braced for bad news. ‘What’s amiss?’

  Sulfin Evend pushed the reeling stranger forward. ‘Give word to his Grace.’

  ‘Four ships out of Riverton, Lord Exalted.’ The muddy man faltered, embarrassed.

  ‘Go on,’ Lysaer urged, his patience a branding example of courage, while the tap of sullen rainfall slid uninterrupted through a silence of stopped motion and held breaths.

  The courier coughed his reluctance. ‘Sunk, your Grace. Burst, dismasted, foundered, lost. The new hulls ran aground on the Hanshire coastline. None could be salvaged. The sea has battered them to wreckage on the reefs.’

  ‘How many drowned?’ Lysaer demanded.

  ‘Can’t say, your Grace.’ A shift foot to foot, and the courier qualified. ‘I was gone at a gallop before the rescue boats launched.’

  A glance like blued steel passed between the Divine Prince and his coiled and volatile Lord Commander at Arms. Then, with a calm that annealed for its steadiness, Lysaer voiced the brute logic no one else dared to address. ‘There’s been no weather to run a ship on the cliff rocks, I know that.’

  Relieved by the tact which spared him from breaking the first, harsh impact of disaster, the messenger loosened. ‘Sabotage. The harbormaster at Hanshire believes the shipyard’s master played your Grace false with the designs on his boards down at Riverton.’

  ‘No man in my kingdom stands accused without proof, even a common-born craftsman.’ Unmoved from his image of tight-leashed serenity, Lysaer gave rapid orders to his war commander. ‘Look into this. Quietly. The high council must convene on my state galley the moment the wedding festivities are over. Have the vessel provisioned. See five of my warships ready to sail south on the midnight change of the tide.’

  Sulfin Evend bowed, a falcon unleashed for the hunt, but for Lysaer’s touch holding him back. ‘Hear the rest.’ The royal head lifted. Blue eyes surveyed the avid circle of courtiers. Unflinching, direct, that measuring majesty drove the most hardened sophisticate backward. Jammed in a welter of velvets against the tables spread with warm wine and comfits, the pedigree elite of Avenor received the prince’s unequivocal warning.

  ‘Let no one disclose what has passed in this chamber. For the good of this kingdom, my wedding goes on. I’ll have no taint of black news, no one’s busy secretary, and no messenger in guild pay sent abroad to spread talk and premature rumors. My justice will not fail to address all wrongdoing, but action shall await upon my bride’s pleasure. Woe betide the man who dares break his silence beforetime.’

  The barest hint of leashed temper flicked through Lysaer’s bearing as he released Sulfin Evend in dismissal. ‘Be sure the courier’s needs are met, and on your oath to serve the Light, let nothing upset the celebration arranged to honor Tysan’s new princess. Once the marriage has been consummated, I’ll attend my sovereign duties at the wharf.’

  Sulfin Evend’s eyebrows furrowed in drastic surprise. ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Tonight. By midnight, latest. Be ready.’ Lysaer snapped his fingers, startling the valet who hovered at a loss with the royal tabard draped on his forearm.

  While Sulfin Evend shouldered toward the doorway, and the servant shrank hesitant on the sidelines, Lysaer softened into a debonair smile. ‘Do you think me a bridegroom without tenderness?’ White upon gold against the gloom of the casement, his ebullience burned like a torch. ‘There’s no frightened virgin who can’t be made pliant. Carithwyr wine and a posset should ease any girl’s skittish nerves.’ He dipped his fair head, still talking. ‘Gace Steward will instruct the lady’s handmaids. Now, please, can we go through the motions of dressing? I’ve no wish to marry in shirtsleeves and hose, and if you strangle that tabard in a death grip any longer, I’m going to wear fingerprints in the velvet.’

  In the peach-and-gold decor of the palace guest suite, the wax candles burned with extravagance. Velvet curtains with white silk fringes masked the drizzling rain, and the chatter of highborn Erdani women fell mellow and warm as the weather denied by Tysan’s changeably fickle west coastline.

  ‘Your chin, miss,’ murmured the lady’s maid. The polite request came with a firm, guiding hand, then a pinch of hair nipped and turned under a pin to crimp a ringlet into her coiffure. Ellaine shut her eyes as the damp, hot towel pressed the confined strand against the flushed skin of her temple.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘My mind feels as scattered as the mist.’

  ‘Ath’s glory, who wouldn’t be distracted for a bridegroom who fills his hose like the stuff of legends themselves!’ The heavyset aunt who had spoken shot out a cheerful, dough fist. She caught the loose toddler who charged past, squealing, in a tangle of untied ribbons and a rosy absence of underthings. ‘Love us, we’re going to be late, every one, if this gentleman keeps kicking off his breeches.’

  The mother of the youngster arrived and scooped him up, breathless in her exasperation. ‘Easier to keep clothes on an eel, I’m afraid.’ Her apologetic smile dissolved into laughter. ‘Come on, wild thing! Let your pipsqueak equipment grow a few years before you show off to the ladies.’

  Ellaine closed her eyes, while other hands patted and primped, and tucked ruches and arranged pins and jewelry. She could scarcely share her sister’s breathless excitement over the bows and fine laces, or the delicate embroidery of gold worked into satin ribbons. As a comfortable cloud of patchouli arrived and settled in a whisk of silk at her right hand, her mouth turned up at the corners. ‘I’m too pale, I know.’

  Her mother patted her chill hand. ‘Never mind, Ellaine. Your eyes will be dazzling. We’ll just brighten your skin with a dusting of rouge powder.’ The beautiful, ringed hands which had managed each detail of her father’s state palace in Erdane snapped once, and a maidservant jumped in response. ‘Mind, not too much, girl! She’ll flush with the dancing. We don’t want her looking like a hussy, nor leaving streaks on her husband’s fine cuffs as he touches!’

  Ellaine chewed her lip; caught herself; stopped. A fortnight in residence had shown her how tightly the wheels of efficiency meshed in Avenor’s state household. Gace Steward ran everything like a high-strung dictator, until even the pot scullions feared to spread gossip. ‘Ath, where will I be needed?’ she blurted aloud.

  Her mother caught her shoulders in a careful, quick squeeze. ‘Women’s wisdom, my dear. You’ll make your own way. This bastion of male authority will have chinks, and you’ll find them, just as I did when I wed your father.’

  Ellaine opened velvety, tea-colored eyes. Her answering smile trembled at the edges, but courage shone through, steadfast and determined. ‘Are you sure you taught me everything you know?’

  Her mo
ther arose from her perch on the chair arm. ‘You will bear the royal children. That will make you an influential power in this land, don’t you ever for one moment forget. Your worth will come to be measured as Crown Princess. Nor will you fall short. You hold the threads of your prince’s dynasty, and in that arena, your place beside him is equal. One day, your blood will shape Avenor’s policy. Your son will sit the throne that commands Tysan’s four principalities, and his deportment as a king will come to be the purposeful achievement of your life.’

  The lady’s maid slipped the pins, and deployed the little ringlets that softened the line of a face which required little artifice to adorn the clear bloom of youth. Another hand arranged the jeweled pendant at her throat, and the room very suddenly seemed half-empty of life; the squealing of children and the companionable chatter of women relatives rolled into a sudden, poised hush.

  Her mother’s wise eyes misted over. ‘Blessed be, girl, you’re lovely. You’ll do very well. Come now, the carriages are waiting.’

  In twenty brisk minutes, impeccably on time, the Prince of the Light emerged from the privacy of his chamber. He had called for no emergency council. Beyond his first orders to Sulfin Evend, he had done nothing more than let his servants attend to his dress. His stature ensured that their fuss was not wasted. The cloth of gold sash and sapphire tabard finished that precise, frosty poise that could intimidate at twenty paces. By the lighthearted charm annealed through his expression, no doubt clouded his committed intention to grant his new bride her day of carefree celebration.

  The talk of the courtiers drifted around him, brittle as beads of blown glass. If none of the pedigree elite could ignore the royal seal of silence, word of the smashed ships would break loose from other sources. The trade guilds had private couriers. The noon post run from Hanshire would reach Avenor by evening, to questions and unrest if the gate watch detained them. Ill news could not bide in close company for long. The ministers’ wives in their layered gowns and amethysts, their velvets with silver-tipped ribbons, would hear from the lips of their lackeys.

  Like the flocking of sparrows before breaking storm, the guests poured in for the bridegroom’s reception, smiling and oblivious. The palace halls jammed with their packed heat and noise; their grooms and their footmen thronged the vestibules. While the bride’s procession wound through the city in gilt carriages with outriders tossing flowers, the highborn and the powerful gathered to toast the health of Tysan’s prince. In crowded splendor, cloaks and jeweled mantles crushed together in steaming warmth and perfume, and a sibilance of flowery language, they wished him vigor and bliss through his upcoming nuptials.

  The secrecy imposed on the master shipwright’s defection wove through the opening festivities, a thread of cranked tension as conversations faltered around Avenor’s high councilmen, then lurched through a cascade of inane subjects on bursts of determined energy. Stifled intimations of disaster rode through empty compliments and innuendo like the pall of a ghost ship, passing. Strain tugged at the weave of the music and gaiety like the subliminal false note: here the jarring trill of laughter from a lady unaware of the pending call to muster; there the odd gap in mannered pleasantries which a member of the prince’s inner cabal jumped to fill.

  Prince Lysaer himself was the picture of candor, his stunning good looks and royal bearing a sight to break hearts and wring sighs of envy from every female bosom in the room. Too soon, for them, the reception ended. His Grace owned that charmed manner of listening to each word, his blue eyes trained in riveted attention. And yet, the tongues of the gossips all noticed: his mind was a statesman’s. He drew the morning formalities to a close precisely on the hour appointed.

  ‘And not out of ardor for his pale, nervous bride, you ask me,’ hissed a dowager matron from under the fringed lace of her hat. ‘Something else is afoot, I could bet all my pearls.’ A porcelain, ringed finger stabbed home the point. ‘The high chancellor’s out of words, a first-rate astonishment, and the seneschal goes claptrapped as a rabbit anytime somebody mentions reclaiming the trade down the coast.’

  As the horses for the prince’s cavalcade arrived in the outer archway, each led by a liveried groom, not a minister or high councilor failed to draw a deep sigh of relief.

  For his Erdani bride, Lysaer s’Ilessid had arranged a state ceremony, founded in the tradition of town law. The appointments he made had been lavish enough to overawe even the massive envoy from Etarra. His great hall had been bedecked with spring lilies. Garlands of primroses trailed in strung ropes from the hammer beams, tied up with ribbons of cream silk. By Westlands custom, the bride and her family were given first seating. They and their invited guests sweltered in their rain-dampened finery, while the youngest children ate dried fruits and fidgeted, and the bridegroom’s procession wound through Avenor’s main avenue, cheered on by merchant admirers and the heaving press of commoners clad in their holiday best.

  Decorum reigned, despite dreary weather. The state dignitaries paraded in their wilted panoply, red noses and broad hats clustered like posies under the fringe of swagged awnings. Their ladies tapped through the puddles in pattens, their rich mantles strung with pearls that fogged in the unrelenting drizzle off the sea.

  Once, a crofter from Korias broke through the mounted cordon. Through the press and the cheers, he demanded to know why an adept from Ath’s Brotherhood had not been invited to officiate.

  The Prince of the Light heard that cry and drew rein. In glittering ranks, his honor guard halted. While his snowflake-dappled palfrey sidled and champed at the bit, he answered through an oddly bitter sorrow. ‘You didn’t know?’ Unerring, his gaze singled out the man who had offered complaint. ‘The adepts have been cozened by the delusion of Darkness itself. If you ask, they will insist that the Master of Shadow is innocent of his crimes against humanity.’

  ‘Innocent?’ A burly cooper shook his fist from a second-story alcove. ‘My own brother’s bones lie buried under a rockslide in Vastmark, alongside his unblooded sword!’

  ‘Just so.’ Gold fillet gleaming, Lysaer tipped his head in salute to the man’s tragic loss. ‘Our land and people will not be exposed to blind trust in a sorcerer who has torn down a mountain to cause a massacre. The adepts of Ath’s Brotherhood are not welcome in my city. For that reason, Erdane’s high chancellor is given the honor to preside over my marriage to Lady Ellaine.’

  The white horse leaped ahead to a touch of gilt spurs, while the rain misted the prince’s collar of white diamonds to dim pearl and streaked tarnish through his unprotected hair. At the looming archway that fronted the great hall, the decorous procession reached its end. The bridegroom dismounted. His jewels spat reflections beneath the ragged flames of the torches. Two pages in white velvet took his palfrey, and liveried servants opened the doors. More light flooded out, scented with incense and primroses. Satin ribbons in Erdane’s colors dripped from the wreaths by the entry. Watched by a spellbound populace, Lysaer s’Ilessid stepped inside, between the high pillars of rosewood, and the sagging, plumed hats of his courtiers.

  Cheers resounded from the street as the Mayor of Erdane handed his daughter to the prince. She was on that day seventeen years of age, with the brown eyes of a trusting deer and hair like burled walnut, twisted high in wire combs. Lips lush as peaches were flushed where her small, nervous teeth had pinched the blood to the surface. Her royal bridegroom touched her cheek. She smiled back, shyly radiant. The retinue of high officers trailed the couple inside, and the heavy oak panels swung closed. The riveted interest of the onlookers waned, leaving wet, cold people restless in the dusk, and the sheen of chill flagstone dulled from silver to lead under the whispering rainfall.

  Inside the dry sanctum, where privilege reigned, the shining perfection of the evening sustained, against odds. The ceremony passed without flaw. The cream of the company retired to the state ballroom. There, the inner circle of Prince Lysaer’s guests dined their way through nine courses. Branched candelabra blazed with beeswax lights,
and the boards were drawn from the feast. The Exalted Prince swept off the dance floor and returned the Mayor’s pigeon-pert wife to the care of her beaming husband. Her blush cheeks glowed through the rice powder the inclement weather had not yet managed to smudge, and her eyelids fluttered from the royal flattery bestowed through the lull in the music.

  ‘Madam, my pleasure,’ Lysaer murmured, his glance on his bride, whirled giddily away in the embrace of a middle-aged cousin.

  Gace, steward of the royal household, slipped in like a weasel and plucked at his Grace’s sleeve. His lashes slitted in sly confidence, he whispered, ‘There’s been widespread comment, my prince. No delegation from the s’Brydion duke has arrived to honor your nuptials.’

  His manners unshakable, Lysaer s’Ilessid bestowed a light kiss on the soft, scented cheek of his mother-in-law. ‘Madam, please excuse me.’ His engaging smile never shifted, but his eyes were blue as fired enamel as he drew Gace Steward aside. ‘Shouldn’t your concern lie closer to home? Whatever has caused Alestron to withdraw, unless you speak to the servants about wine, Avenor’s hospitality will be faulted.’

  ‘Your Grace.’ Gace clicked his heels and bowed, his smug manner stiffened as he realized: the red was indeed running low. No doubt the fact had been pointed out to his prince by the unforgiving, sharp eye of the mayor’s wife; the embarrassment galled him beyond his concern for the state of s’Brydion loyalties.

  Lysaer masked a smile as his steward scuttled off, primed with frustration and no doubt stormy reprimand for the servant in charge of the cellar.

  Since Gace’s failed attempt, more than one courtier with the perspicacity to mention Alestron’s lapse discovered the bridegroom escaped to the dance floor. Lysaer’s elusive opinion on the subject sparked whispered speculation in dim corners. Behind their sealed silence, Avenor’s peer statesmen pondered whether the four foundered ships might in some way be connected.