Grand Conspiracy

by Janny Wurts

  Outside, unconcerned with the snarls of conspiracy, the rain-dreary twilight melted into a gusty, black night. Stars spiked between shredded clouds. On the knoll above the harbor, Avenor’s high towers bloomed with a twinkling garland of lights. Largesse was thrown to the beggars in the square, new-minted shadowbanes interspersed with commemorative coins struck with the princess’s profile. When the coffer was emptied, the crowds loitered in the streets and the wineshops. Rich and poor jostled elbows, hoping to glimpse the royal couple, while an uneasy current of movement heaved through them, as men raced to arms from the taverns and barracks, and the ship’s chandler loaded his supply drays by torchlight. His long-haired, plucky daughters drove them in thundering haste down the back streets to the docks, where the swearing stevedores packed casks and salt meat onto the galleys appointed to depart.

  Lord Commander Sulfin Evend presided over the messengers, coming and going. Still clad in dress finery, his unadorned field sword slung on a belt set with cabochon turquoise, he chewed a lamb pie someone had brought him and raised eyes like gray sleet from the latest list of lading. His tactical survey encompassed a high tower window with rose garlands spilled like clotted shadow over the edge of the sill. A light burned there, the solitary star of a candle.

  The time was two hours before the tide’s turn at midnight. ‘Be ready,’ the Lord Commander barked to the state galley’s captain, stalled by the rambade to chastise a green sailhand who fumbled to batten the forward hatch. ‘Our prince will be timely. If not, you can claim the sunwheel badge off my tunic.’

  ‘For a dozen coin stake, I’ll accept.’ The captain’s flinty laughter entangled with the boom of a rolling wine tun. ‘Which makes for a heartless quick bedding of the bride, if you win. Or dare you place gold that the princess isn’t a virgin?’

  Sulfin Evend flashed a sardonic grin. ‘If she’s not, then you’ll see a mayor elect’s head roll to a royal for treason. His Grace can’t afford another taint on his wife.’

  Shouts swelled from the celebrants who swayed, roistering drunk on the seawall. By the harbor gate, small knots of stragglers had knit into groups of fist-waving craftsmen. Here and there, the plumed hat of a merchant appeared among them like a stray mushroom.

  ‘His exalted self had better not tarry,’ the galley captain mused, his critical eye trained on the argument about to flare between his purser and the spitfire minx in charge of the wagon on the dock. ‘The lid’s coming off the bad news from the south. Angry trade guilds won’t wait for our prince to prove out his prowess in the sheets.’ Sea routes were open, but the old deadlock held; no goods could pass southward by galley with Havish’s ports closed to slavery. Since thaws, the landbound trade through the Camris passes vied to press full advantage. Caravan masters had hiked up their haulage rates to the despair of the incensed merchants. ‘Those ruined ships have left a rank mess. Believe it. We’ve got the entire high council belowdecks, buzzing like a pack o’ hazed wasps.’

  ‘The wait won’t be long,’ Sulfin Evend assured. Upon his next glance, the window in the tower had gone dark.

  Lysaer s’Ilessid leaned back against the wall, his ringed hand still clenched on the cord he had jerked to shut the heavy curtain. The candle by his elbow spat driblets of wax. Shouts from the street reached him muffled through velvet, meaningless as the noise of sea breakers. He shut his eyes, opened them, watched the jeweled rings on his fingers flicker like actinic static. He could not stop their trembling, though he gripped the silk drawstring until his knuckles gleamed white to the bone.

  Across the narrow landing, the door to the bedchamber cracked open. The Erdani lady’s maid appointed to the princess swept into a tactful curtsy. ‘She’s ready, your Grace, and virgin in truth. Be gentle. Behind the excitement, she’s frightened.’

  ‘You may go.’ For a miracle, his self-command stayed intact, his voice a cool ribbon of steadiness.

  The maid bobbed another curtsy and departed to a proprietary rustle of skirts. Lysaer stood alone in front of a door he would rather have died than step through.

  ‘Merciful Ath,’ he whispered before he recalled his forfeited right to beg help from that quarter. The beams overhead and the creamy brick lintels with their lion-bossed rods and tapestried hangings closed him in like a prison. He jammed down a memory: of long hair spilled like tawny satin between his fists; the breath he sucked in smelled of roses and beeswax as he pushed away from the wall. Two steps, three. He marveled the body could follow instructions when the mind cried out for escape. His duty to Tysan set in traitorous conflict against the cry of his heart, he raised the latch whose touch was ice under his filmed, sweaty hand.

  The bedchamber beyond held the stuffy perfume of the citrus oil used to polish the massive carved bed, and the cloying, heavy sweetness of roses which trailed from the urns by the casement. Damask curtains closed out the night. One candle burned on the pearl-inlaid table. Alongside lay a basket of oranges, and a tray bearing two cut-glass goblets, a wine carafe, and a stoppered decanter of brandy. Lysaer blinked, stabbed by the recollection of another chamber laid out with chilled wine and fruit, and a floor tiled in a turquoise motif of sea creatures.

  Then a runnel of sweat threaded his lashes and dragged him back to the present.

  This floor was eggshell marble, its polished shine broken by a patterned carpet from Morvain. He could not look at the girl on the bed, nestled in a drift of white sheets. She would be naked, scented, adorned in the gold bracelets and necklet he had given that morning as a bride-gift. She watched him with huge sloe eyes, and a trusting innocence that left him battered and speechless.

  He managed to pour her wine without snapping the fragile, stem goblet. With the brandy he was less successful. The spill ran down his fingers and flecked amber stains on the gold-stitched silk of the coverlet. Ellaine’s silent censure seemed to sear his skin through his tabard as he drank, seated on the mattress with his back turned, and his eyes on the pleats of the curtains.

  ‘Lord Exalted,’ she whispered. Glass clinked. She set her wine on the table untouched.

  He reached sideways, closed his hand over her slender wrist before she could withdraw from the gesture. ‘Will you not drink?’

  Her trembling increased at the snap in his tone. Hand still locked to her wrist, he knocked back the brandy. The fire of the alcohol blazed down his throat, seared a path through the hollow in his chest, and settled a spark like damnation in his belly. He sat, the girl’s delicate limb in his grasp, and waited to welcome the numbness.

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ she insisted. Her courage took away the last of his breath, and still, her blithe tenderness misread him. ‘I heard that four of the Riverton ships were lost. Your chancellor said you’ll leave to hunt down the shipwright who betrayed you, and I’ll be left as your last wife was, with your household here at Avenor. Unless you promise to take me along, I prefer to remember this night with clear wits.’

  Lysaer let her go. Once more on his feet, he refilled his brandy glass, then drained it. His body felt lined in white flame as he turned and regarded his bride on the bed. His eyes were dark sapphire, the pupils distended. ‘Drink the wine. You would be better off.’

  Her heart-shaped chin tilted, and her hair, combed free, spilled down her shoulders and breasts. For answer, she grasped the goblet by the stem and emptied it onto the carpet. ‘Shame on you,’ she said. ‘I need no drugged posset.’

  ‘Your choice.’ Lysaer set down his glass, reluctant. If he swallowed neat brandy until the pain was burned out of him, he risked becoming incapable. ‘The tide goes at midnight. There won’t be time to plead my forgiveness, and the wine was the only lame courtesy I could offer.’ He jerked off his sash, stripped the gold-blazoned tabard over his head, then kicked off his boots and discarded them on the heaped silk. The points on his trunk hose seemed defeatingly intricate. Since the brandy had robbed his fingers of finesse, he settled for tearing off pearl-studded eyelets and letting them scatter to the floor.

  Ellaine
managed not to flinch as he whipped back the sheet. The bite of his hands on her shoulders shook her nerve. He could feel her confused uncertainty as he refused the soft lips upturned for his kiss. Her mahogany hair spilled warm over his chilled hands, and her skin, like fine pearl, smelled of rosewater. He felt nothing. Only the calculated drive of necessity, the hardened heat in his loins lit at last by the mindless anesthesia of the brandy. He parted her legs. Then, without apology, he let go of sanity and allowed the animal instinct of his body do its raw work for the kingdom.

  Ellaine jerked. She cried out but once, cut to painful betrayal, then strove through her tears to silence a misery no trained deportment could master.

  Sickened by grief and self-hatred, Lysaer bore down. As Tysan’s Prince Exalted, he must admit no vulnerability; therefore, he heard nothing, saw nothing beyond his ringed fingers, knotted into sweet waves of dark hair as he muffled his wife’s tormented gasps in his shirt.

  Then release; the act was completed. He arose. While his conquest wept in limp shudders against the pillows, and the small spot of blood marked the sheets with incontrovertible proof of consummation, he flung open the door and shouted. His valet came, bearing clothes and a sea cloak; then the elderly handmaid, her face clamped to anger as she awaited his royal bidding.

  ‘Attend to my princess.’ He could wish that the brandy did not slur the command in his voice.

  The handmaid stepped to the bed. Lysaer endured, regal in reserve, while she asked her young charge gentle questions. Her competent hands touched and soothed with a tenderness the new bride might never know from her husband. When the girl’s ravaged nakedness had been covered over in the impersonal embrace of cool linen, the old matron regarded the prince.

  Through a silence as pained as the twist of a knife blade, he spoke. ‘She need only give this kingdom an heir to live in comfort for the rest of her life.’

  Foolish, stubborn, unmindful of consequences, the handmaid launched from the bedside. ‘For shame!’ She raised her stout arm and dealt Lysaer an openhanded slap across the face.

  While the valet gasped in shock, Prince Lysaer stood motionless. The candle spun glints of gold through his hair. His eyes stayed direct, stark with an unflinching guilt that became a torture to witness. While the welted print of the maidservant’s fingers flushed the bloodless plane of his cheekbone, he asked, ‘I was so rough?’

  ‘No.’ Her woman’s glare savaged him, and still found no flaw in the merciless gift of his honesty. ‘But who will answer for what Ellaine is to become? The hurts to her female body are nothing beside the wound you have dealt to her spirit.’

  Impatient, unspeaking, Lysaer stepped away.

  The handmaid moved also. She blocked his path to the doorway, her disapproval immovable stone. ‘Your princess has a face,’ she accused. ‘Look at her! She has a name. Would it unman you to use it?’

  Lysaer froze in place, the queer, fragile majesty of him through that drawn-out moment enough to brand sight for eternity. ‘Her Grace does have a name,’ he agreed, the indelible depths of his suffering ripped at long last to the surface. ‘To speak of her would destroy us both, since the one fit to claim that hold on my heart has died, defamed by the hand of the enemy. You want truth for the woman who has married to continue the s’Ilessid royal line? I will have sacrificed everything I ever loved well ahead of the day the Master of Shadow is brought down.’

  He brushed past. The valet scrambled after, threw a cloak overtop of his liege’s unlaced shirt. ‘Your Grace, you’ll need clothing.’

  Yet the solicitude paid to royal dignity was meaningless. Once over the threshold, Lysaer slammed the bedchamber door. The explosive force of his own temper mocked him. Sealed to a course of desolate justice, he knew that no anger, no violence, no punishment of grief could ever serve to heal the void rent through his spirit.

  ‘Sea boots, and breeches and a white-and-gold tunic,’ he said in iron restraint to his valet.

  Behind him, Talith’s memory burned unspoken on the air while the beautiful, broken creature his royal duty claimed for Tysan swallowed back the drugged wine and slept at last in the loveless sheets of their marriage bed.

  By the hour before midnight, news of the wrecked ships was just breaking. If the elite of Avenor still drank to the health of bridegroom and princess, the guild ministers were absent. No one had noticed the moment, but the notable courtiers and all of the city’s high officers had left to nose out the scope of disaster.

  Beyond the lit hall with its carousing, oblivious sycophants, the last clouds had fled. Stars burned cold pinpricks through the black arc of a sky the wind had finally swept clean. Pennons flapped on the battlements above the western gatehouse, while the city’s tiered towers glowed with the light of a thousand celebrating households.

  The prince their wine toasted passed in haste through dim streets with three guards, inconspicuous in a mantle of dark wool. Crowds were now gathering in ominous knots by the breakwater. He passed through, unobserved. A word to a sergeant, and the hurried tramp of a late-mustered company parted its ranks to admit him. Lysaer s’Ilessid might have reached his state galley unremarked, except for the ruthless, wary vigilance of Sulfin Evend.

  ‘He’s here, and before the change in the tide.’ The Lord Commander extended his hand, lips curved in a sardonic smile. ‘I win.’

  ‘Damn you,’ murmured the royal galley’s captain, forced to relinquish ten silvers from the opened strings of his purse.

  The Alliance Lord Commander played the coins between his fingers, their chime a melodious cascade through his prince’s low word of greeting.

  He responded, succinct, ‘Your Grace, be on guard. Sharp eyes have noticed Alestron’s duke sent no family emissary to honor your wedding. Bold rumors are flying. Hotheads who hate clansmen have already linked Mearn s’Brydion’s name with the defection of Riverton’s master shipwright.’ A piercing, short pause; then Sulfin Evend added, ‘Is that what you wanted? If not, we’ll need some pat answers to muzzle the trade guilds. Their craftsmen already clamor for a lynching.’

  Whatever his opinion on s’Brydion loyalty, Lysaer preferred reticence. ‘Has my council assembled?’

  Sulfin Evend raised his eyebrows, surprised. ‘You can’t hear the bickering? Koshlin and the Mayor of Erdane are howling in chorus to rip down Alestron with a siege.’

  ‘If the duke’s brother’s guilty, we’ll face that cold certainty.’ Gold embroidery snagged sullen glints as the prince glanced behind, uneasy as his guards with the awareness that informants already raced to spread the alarm through the alleys mazing the shoreline. ‘Old distrust of clanblood won’t be settled by a hanging, even if the s’Brydion duke would acknowledge Tysan’s right to pass sentence for treason.’

  Lysaer swung back, impatient. The deck lantern’s candle flared in the wind and splashed light underneath his drawn hood.

  Sulfin Evend shut his lips. He dared not acknowledge the livid weal a woman’s hand had left marked across the face of Tysan’s bridegroom. Fixed in that splintering, too worldly royal gaze, he averted his eyes and regarded the black swirl of high water, the lines of slack current just starting to suck at the pilings.

  ‘We’re provisioned?’ Lysaer asked, as though nothing were amiss.

  ‘Your best company of field officers has already settled in.’ Sulfin Evend accepted the lifeline of tact, brisk as he listed details. ‘Crewmen are lashing the last of the water casks. The steersman couldn’t be sobered. His replacement is due any minute.’ Then the calculated afterthought, ‘You should hear I took liberties.’

  A gust off the sea plucked at Lysaer’s cloak. He trapped his errant hood in a death grip, while the dock lines tugged and creaked on the bollards, and someone ashore raged to spill blood for the works of s’Brydion treachery. Like an echo from Sithaer deep inside the galley’s hold, a muzzled hound snarled at its handler.

  ‘Skannt’s trackers are aboard?’ Lysaer smiled, his ebullience fanned by the lift of the brandy. ‘That wasn
’t liberty, but divine inspiration.’ He clapped his Lord Commander’s shoulder, raw with the need for human warmth.

  ‘Then you did want Alestron’s alliance to be suspect?’ Sulfin Evend let the touch pass, passionless as a trained falcon. ‘Mark their clan for death, I’ll tear apart their city and hunt them like rats through the wreckage.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Lysaer said, then snapped himself short. Old grief and the maudlin warmth of fine spirits had nearly upset his sensibilities. In darkness, the flare of the lamps on buckles and mail and sword hilt had blurred into a host of older memories. Chills touched him, and a sorrow that all but stopped his breath. Never again could he share long-range plans as he once had confided in Talith’s brother.

  The pause stretched too long. Sulfin Evend watched, his rapacious instincts already fastened on discrepancy.

  Flicked to self-disgust, Lysaer masked his slip of tongue behind the less damning intimation, ‘Cattrick or Mearn, the placement of the Riverton yard has hazed the wrong enemy to light.’

  ‘Ah, then you meant the lost ships for bait to lure out the Spinner of Darkness? Your guilds would cry murder.’ His devotion set above the frank pull of curiosity, Avenor’s Lord Commander surveyed a fresh wave of weaving torches, sure enough sign that a targetless fury was building unchecked in the streets. ‘Whoever’s responsible, unless you want a war fought on the suspicion of conspiracy, you’ll need Cattrick’s proven guilt, and Mearn’s bleeding corpse as a scapegoat.’

  Lysaer quelled a shiver, faintly sickened by the ruthless analysis his own laid plans had encouraged. He knew himself vulnerable. Marriage and brandy bared too many wounds that lay too near to the heart. Besieged by emotions beyond risk to express, he excused himself, then moved on, the unflinching dignity displayed at each step an act of bald-faced bravado.