Most of the others were already seated by the time they came downstairs for supper. Long tables had been set up, Skalan style, in the main hall, and Beka waved them over to seats at the end of Klia’s table.
“I wondered where she’d gotten off to all day,” Seregil muttered, seeing Nyal at her side.
“Behave yourself,” Alec warned.
“You can thank your captain for the fine desserts and cheese we’re having tonight,” Nyal announced as they sat down.
“Me?” Beka laughed. “He got word yesterday of a trader’s caravan coming in from Datsia. We met it outside the city and haggled the best pickings out of them before anyone else was the wiser. You’ve never tasted such honey, Alec!”
“I thought you looked like you’d found something sweet,” Seregil remarked blandly.
Alec used Thero’s fortuitous arrival to mask the kick he dealt him under the table.
Klia stood and raised her wine cup, as if they were all comrades in a plain soldier’s mess. “We’ve no priests among us, so I’ll do the honors. By Sakor’s Flame and Illior’s Light. May they smile on our endeavors here.” Turning, she sprinkled a few drops on the floor as a libation, then took a long drink. The others did the same.
“What’s the word at the Iia’sidra, Commander?” Zir called from the next table. “Should we keep our packs tight, or settle in?”
Klia grimaced. “Given our reception so far, Corporal, I’d say you might as well get comfortable. Time seems to mean a great deal less to the ’faie than to us.” She paused, saluting Seregil and Alec with her cup. “Present company excepted, of course.”
Seregil returned the salute with an ironic chuckle. “If I ever had any Aurënfaie patience, I’ve long since lost it.”
The windows and doors had been thrown open to let in the soft breeze; evening birdsong provided the meal’s music as the shadows crept slowly across the floor. The only discordant notes were Torsin’s occasional fits of coughing.
“He’s getting worse,” Thero murmured, watching the envoy dab at his lips with a stained napkin. “He won’t admit it, of course—claims it’s the climate here.”
“Could it be that fever you had?” Beka asked.
Thero looked blank for an instant, then shook his head. “No, not that. I can see a darkness hovering about his chest.”
“Will he survive the negotiations?” asked Alec, gazing over at the old man with concern.
“By the Light, the last thing we need is him dying in the midst of all this,” muttered Seregil.
“Why wouldn’t he let his niece come in his place?” Beka whispered. “Lady Melessandra knows as much of the ’faie as he does.”
“This is the crowning achievement of a long and distinguished career,” Seregil replied. “I suppose he couldn’t bear not to see it through to its conclusion.”
As the meal ended Klia wandered down to their end of the table. “We’ve been given the luxury of doing nothing tonight, my friends. Kheeta í Branín says the colos offers a pleasant view of the sunset. Anyone care to join us?”
“We’ll make an Aurënfaie of you yet, my lady,” Seregil said, rising to accompany her.
“Good. You and Alec can be our minstrels for the evening.”
“If you will excuse me, my lady, I must retire early,” Torsin said, still seated.
Klia laid a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Of course. Rest well, my friend.”
Servants carried wine, cakes, and cushions up to the colos. Seregil made a quick detour to their room for his harp. By the time he joined the others, they’d settled in to enjoy the cool of the evening. The lingering green glow of sunset was fading quickly on the western horizon. To the east, a ruddy full moon was already rising over the city.
He and Alec were laughingly given the place of honor across from Klia. Beka and Nyal sprawled on the floor near the door, their backs to the wall.
A sudden lump rose in Seregil’s throat as he struck the first notes of “Softly Across the Water”; from where he sat he could see the colos on Adzriel’s house, where he’d played for his family on so many evenings like this. Before he could halt or falter, Alec took up the melody, catching his eye with a small, questioning lift of an eyebrow. Fighting off the unexpected rush of sadness, Seregil focused all his attention on the intricate fingering of the song and came in with harmony on the refrain with the others, letting their voices cover any lingering unsteadiness in his own.
It still amused Alec to find himself consorting with royalty. Not so long ago he’d thought it a treat to sit next to a smoking hearth in some filthy tavern, back in the days when the ’faie were still creatures of legend rather than his own kin.
Seregil cheered up as the evening wore on, and the two of them acquitted themselves admirably as minstrels. When their throats went dry, Thero took over with a pretty collection of illusions he’d picked up in his travels with Magyana.
“The wine’s run low,” Kheeta announced at last.
“I’ll lend a hand,” Alec offered, wishing his bladder felt as light as his head. He and Kheeta gathered the empty jugs and made their way downstairs toward the servant’s stair at the end of the second-floor corridor. This took them past Torsin’s chamber, and Alec saw that the door was slightly ajar. The room beyond was dark. Poor old fellow, he thought, gently pulling the latch shut. He must have been sicker than he let on to retire this early.
“She’s a great lady, your princess,” Kheeta observed warmly as they headed down to the kitchen. He’d had his share of the wine and was slurring his words a little. “It’s sad …”
“What’s sad?”
“That the ’faie blood has run so thin in her,” the Bôkthersan replied with a sigh. “You don’t understand yet how fortunate you are, being ya’shel. Just you wait a few hundred years.”
The cooks had propped the kitchen door open to catch the breeze from the yard. Passing it, Alec caught sight of a cloaked figure hurrying out the postern gate. Something in the sloped set of the man’s shoulders made him pause; a familiar, muffled cough made him thrust the still empty wine jugs into his companion’s arms and follow.
“Where are you going?” Kheeta called after him.
“I need some air.” Alec sprinted across the yard before the other man could question him.
The guards by the watch fire took no more notice of him than they had of Torsin. Why worry about one of their own going out when it was folk creeping in they were set to guard against? Outside the gate Alec paused, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. A cough nearby guided him to the left.
He’d acted on pure instinct until now, but suddenly he felt rather foolish ghosting along after Klia’s most trusted adviser as if he were a Plenimaran spy. What was he going to tell her when he got back, or say to Torsin if the old man caught him tailing along behind him? As if in answer, a large owl—the first he’d seen since they’d left Akhendi—glided past, flying in the same direction Torsin had gone.
I can claim I had an omen, he thought.
Ill or not, Torsin moved as if he had a purpose more serious than taking the night air. The taverns were busier than ever, and music seemed to come from all directions. Aurënfaie were out in pairs and groups, enjoying the night. He stopped now and then to exchange a greeting with some person he knew but didn’t linger to chat.
Leaving Bôkthersa tupa, he led Alec down a succession of streets that took them past boundary markers of Akhendi and Haman. When he slowed at last, Alec’s heart sank. This street was marked with the moon symbol of Khatme. Thankfully, there were fewer folk abroad here, but Alec was careful to keep to the shadows of doorways and alleys. He wasn’t nightrunning, he told himself, hoping he never had to justify that to anyone else. He was just keeping an eye on an ailing old man.
Torsin stopped at an imposing house Alec guessed rightly to be the house of Lhaär ä Iriel. A brief slice of candle glow from inside illuminated the old man’s face as he entered, and Alec was close enough to read what looked like resignation
on Torsin’s haggard features.
There were no obvious ways into the house, even for Alec. The well-guarded villas of Rhíminee possessed a comforting symmetry of design by comparison. There might be walls to climb, dogs to avoid or charm his way past, but you could almost always find some aperture to wiggle through if you knew your business. Here there were only barred doors and windows out of reach.
He was further stymied by the fact that this building, whatever it was, abutted several others, all of which presented equally blank faces. He was about to give up when he caught the sound of several voices somewhere overhead.
Looking up, he made out the dark jut of a balcony. The voices were too soft for him to catch the gist of the conversation, but the erratic punctuation of Torsin’s coughing left no doubt in Alec’s mind that he’d found his man again.
There were at least two others with him, a man and a woman—Lhaär ä Iriel herself, perhaps.
The conference did not last long. The unseen conspirators soon disappeared back into the house. Alec waited a few minutes to see if they’d return, then headed back to the front of the building to wait.
Torsin emerged a few minutes later, but not alone. A man walked with him for several minutes before turning in the opposite direction.
Alec was still trying to decide which one to follow when a familiar shape emerged from the shadows beside him.
“Seregil?”
“You take Torsin; I’ll follow this other fellow. Watch out for Khatme along the way. You won’t be welcome here.” With that, Seregil disappeared as quickly as he’d come.
Torsin led Alec straight back to their own door, the front one this time. After exchanging a few words with the sentries, he went inside.
Looking up at the colos, Alec saw lights still burning there. Not knowing what excuses had been made for his absence or Seregil’s, he went in through the stable yard and up the back stair. Halfway up, he heard Klia’s voice, and Torsin’s.
“I thought you’d turned in already,” Klia said.
“A short walk in the night air helps me sleep,” Torsin replied. No mention of where he’d been.
Alec waited until he heard two doors close, then continued on to his chamber and settled in to wait for Seregil so they could get their stories straight. That seemed a safe enough plan, far more attractive than being the one to tell Klia that her trusted minister has just been consorting with their opposition behind her back.
Seregil’s man was not wearing a sen’gai, but he guessed from the cut of his tunic that he was from one of the eastern clans. He was soon proven right. The man led him to the house of Ulan í Sathil.
Lurking in a nearby doorway, Seregil pondered the possible connections. Intractable Khatme and worldly Virésse; the two clans were divided as much by their ideology as they were by the spur of mountains that lay between their ancestral lands. The only uniting factor he knew of was their opposition to the Skalan treaty.
The greater question was whether Torsin knew of the connection.
He returned to the guest house to find the colos dark, the music stilled. Entering by the back gate, he found Korandor and Nikides on guard duty.
“Has anyone else come or gone this way tonight, Corporal?” he asked.
“Just Lord Torsin, my lord,” Nikides replied. “He left a while back and we haven’t seen him since.”
“I thought he’d turned in for the night.”
“Couldn’t sleep, he said. Now, I say night air’s the worst thing for weak lungs, but there’s no telling these nobles anything—begging your pardon, my lord.”
Seregil gave the man a knowing wink and continued on as if he’d just been out on a constitutional of his own.
He found Alec pacing impatiently in their room, every lamp blazing. Shadows still clung in the corners, resisting his superstitious efforts to banish them.
“Seems they can’t carry on without us.” Seregil grinned, pointing up toward the abandoned colos.
“Klia came down about half an hour ago,” Alec told him, coming to a rest in the center of the room. “What did they say when I didn’t come back?”
“Kheeta had some story about you feeling your wine, but he slipped me the nod. What happened?”
Alec shrugged. “Luck in the shadows, if you can call it that. I just happened to be there when Torsin left. He came straight back here from Khatme tupa after I saw you. Klia met him in the passage as he came up.”
“Did she know where he’d been?”
“I couldn’t tell. What about your man?”
“Care to guess?”
“Virésse?”
“Smart boy. Too bad we don’t know what was said either place.”
“Then you didn’t learn anything, either.” Alec sank into a chair by the hearth. “What do you suppose Torsin was up to?”
“The queen’s business, I hope,” Seregil replied doubtfully, sprawling in the chair opposite.
“Do we tell Klia?”
Seregil closed his eyes and massaged the lids. “That’s the real question, isn’t it? I doubt that spying on our own people was quite what she had in mind when she invited us along.”
“Maybe not, but she did say she was worried that he might be too sympathetic to Virésse. This proves it.”
“It proves nothing, except that he and someone with connections to Ulan í Sathil met at the house of Lhaär ä Iriel.”
“So, what do we do?”
Seregil shrugged. “Bide our time a little longer, and keep our eyes open.”
17
ALEC KEEPS BUSY
Bide our time.
To Alec, it seemed all they’d done since they arrived was wait, held impotent by the strictures of diplomacy and the plodding pace of Aurënfaie debate. The last thing he felt like doing was biding his time now that something interesting had finally happened.
He rose early the next morning and took himself out for a dawn ride around the city walls. The distant hills floated like islands above the thick mist rising from the rivers. The bleat of sheep and goats came from closer by. Reaching the Nha’mahat, he stopped to exchange greetings with a rhui’auros who was setting out fresh offerings for the dragons. At this hour the little creatures fluttered in swarms thick as spring swallows, circling the tower. Others scrabbled over the bowls in the arcade. Several lit on Alec and he froze, not relishing the thought of another painful bite, no matter how auspicious the marks might be.
Riding back through the Haunted City he passed the House of Pillars and was surprised to see Nyal’s horse, a black gelding with three white stockings, grazing there next to a sturdy white palfrey. Alec had an eye for horses and recognized this little mare as the mount Lady Amali had ridden over the mountains from Gedre.
If it hadn’t been for Beka, he might have ridden on. Instead, he tethered Windrunner out of sight and hurried inside.
Voices echoed from several directions, and he set off following those that sounded most promising to the pools at the center of the sprawling place. At last, he found his way to a small, weed-grown court some distance further on, where the comforting rise and fall of a man’s voice sounded a counterpoint to a woman’s soft weeping. Creeping closer, Alec slipped behind a tattered tapestry that still hung near the courtyard’s edge and peered out through a hole.
Amali sat on the edge of an empty fountain, her face in her hands. Nyal stood over her, stroking her hair gently.
“Forgive me,” Amali said through her fingers. “But who else could I turn to? Who else would understand?”
Nyal drew her close, and for an instant Alec scarcely recognized him. The Ra’basi’s handsome face was suffused with an anger Alec had never seen in him before. When he spoke again, his voice was almost too low to hear. Alec could make out only the words “hurt you.”
Amali raised her tear-stained face and clasped his hands beseechingly. “No! No, you must never think such a thing! He’s in such distress at times I hardly know him. Word came that another village near the Khatme border has be
en abandoned. It’s as if Akhendi is dying, too!”
Nyal murmured something and she shook her head again. “He cannot. The people would not hear of it. He won’t abandon them!”
Nyal pulled away and walked off a few steps, clearly agitated. “Then what is it you want of me?”
“I don’t know!” She reached out to him. “Only—I needed to know you are still my friend, someone I can open my heart to. I’m so alone there!”
“It’s where you chose to be,” Nyal retorted bitterly, then relented as she dissolved into tears again.
“I am your friend, your dear friend,” he assured her, gathering her close and rocking her gently. “You can always come to me, talía. Always. Just give me this much: Do you ever regret your decision? Even just a little?”
“You mustn’t ask me that,” she sobbed, clinging to him. “Never, never, never! Rhaish is my life. If only I could make him well.”
Amali could not see the despair that filled Nyal’s eyes at her words, but Alec could. Ashamed of his eavesdropping, he waited until the pair had gone, then set off for home.
• • •
Seregil and the others had left for the Iia’sidra by the time Alec arrived. He checked at their room, in case Seregil had left any lastminute instructions, but found nothing. On his way down to the kitchen for breakfast, however, he found himself pausing outside Torsin’s door, his heart beating just a little too fast. It seemed to be his day for opportunities; the door was ajar again.
The envoy’s strange behavior the previous night was too much to ignore, given Seregil’s concerns about the man’s loyalties. And this—the open door was just too tempting to pass unexplored.
With a last guilty glance around and a quick prayer to Illior, he slipped inside and closed the door.
Torsin’s room was a large one, with an alcove at the far side. A desk stood beneath a window there, dispatch box, writing materials, and a few sealed parchments arranged neatly on its polished top. The room was furnished with the usual accoutrements: gauze-hung bed, a washstand, clothes chests, all made in the simple Aurënfaie style—pale woods and clean, sweeping lines accented with darker inlay.
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