She stopped as low voices reached them. Across the chamber by the couches, a saffron-robed monk knelt at Chintara’s feet.
“…and tell my lord I anxiously await his arrival,” Chintara was instructing the monk, who seemed afraid to look the consort in the eye.
Arkady smothered a smile. Poor man. He’d probably have to do penance for a month after being admitted into the presence of an unshrouded woman, let alone one as enticing as the Imperator’s Consort.
The monk lowered his head, but spoke clearly, as if reciting something learned by rote. “My lord also said to tell you that he, too, anxiously awaits the return of his queen to his side, his companion to his table and his lover to his bed.”
Chintara rolled her eyes. “He’s not the only one anxiously awaiting the latter, I can promise him that.” She glanced across the room and spied Arkady. A momentary frown flickered over her lovely face—almost too quick to register—and then she smiled at her guest. “Ah, Arkady! You’re early! Come! Brother Ostin was just leaving us.”
Nitta lowered her arm and allowed Arkady to enter the hall. She crossed the tiles to where the monk had risen to his feet, although he kept his eyes averted.
“Arkady, Duchess of Lebec and wife of our Glaeban ambassador, this is Brother Ostin,” she said, when Arkady reached them. “He’s a follower of the Way of the Tide.”
“Yes,” Arkady agreed. “I recognise his yellow robes. I did not expect to meet a male in the royal seraglium, Brother Ostin. Are you not bound by the same rules as other men regarding unshrouded females?”
He shook his head, surprising Arkady by answering in Glaeban. “I have been granted a dispensation, my lady.”
“Really? A dispensation? By whom?”
“The head of his order,” Chintara told Arkady before the monk could answer. “You may go, Brother Ostin.”
The monk took the hint and, after bowing quickly to both Chintara and Arkady, hurried from the hall, followed by Nitta. Arkady watched him leave and then turned to Chintara. “Do you often use a third party to communicate with your husband?”
“I beg your pardon?” the consort asked with a blank look.
“I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but overhear Brother Ostin’s rather lyrical declaration about your lord anxiously awaiting…how did he put it? The return of his queen to his side, his companion to his table and his lover to his bed? I wish my husband was as poetic.”
Chintara studied her with an odd look for a moment and then smiled. “I’m blessed,” she agreed, not completely able to hide the irony in her voice. “Truly, I am.”
“I wasn’t aware that you were such a devout follower of the Way of the Tide, either, my lady.”
“Which just shows how little you know me, Arkady. Shall we bathe first before we eat? This wretched heat is driving me mad this morning.”
“As you wish,” Arkady agreed, thinking nobody she’d met in Torlenia seemed less bothered by the heat than Chintara, and unable to avoid the niggling feeling that she’d just witnessed something very important and she couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out what it was.
Chapter 14
The office assigned to the King’s Spymaster was located in the Herino Palace only two doors down from the King’s Private Secretary. Not many people knew this. Most believed his headquarters were located several blocks away behind the forbidding walls of Herino Prison. It was Lord Deryon’s idea, for him to work out of the palace. The King’s Private Secretary didn’t like the inconvenience of having to send a message to the prison every time he wanted the spymaster to do something for the king. He found it easier, and far less public, to simply take a walk down the hall.
Although it was a nuisance sometimes, Declan didn’t really mind. He liked that people didn’t always know where to find him. It helped keep up the mystery, and for Declan Hawkes, the air of mystery he’d somehow acquired since taking up this thankless post at the behest of the powerbrokers who ran the Cabal of the Tarot was one of the few things that was even remotely fun about being spymaster.
When he opened the door to his office at first glance it appeared unoccupied. The room was lit by the overcast morning light coming in from the windows behind the desk and seemed undisturbed from how he’d left it the previous evening. Although only a quarter the size of the Private Secretary’s office down the hall, it was furnished in the same style as the rest of the palace with over-done gilt furniture, priceless artworks hanging on the walls and a beautifully worked Tenacian rug on the floor. He glanced at his chair and smiled. It appeared to be empty but if one knew what to look for, the faint warping of a humanoid form could be seen.
“Took my suggestion about becoming spymaster seriously, did you, Slinky?”
The slight warping around his chair began to change, the colour of his leather chair taking on a silver tone. Within a few moments, Tiji’s silver-scaled skin had returned to its normal hue and she appeared, sitting comfortably in his chair with her feet on his desk, wearing not a stitch of clothing.
“How come you always know where I am?”
“Because I’m smarter than you,” he told her. “Making yourself at home, I see.”
“You’ve got a very nice chair.”
“I’ll make sure the king knows you approve.”
“You get interesting mail, too.”
Declan closed the door and crossed the rug to the desk. He picked up the letter sitting on his desk that Tiji had obviously opened in his absence and frowned. The broken seal was that of Lebec.
“It’s from your girlfriend,” Tiji offered helpfully.
“First, the Duchess of Lebec is not my girlfriend. Second, get out of my chair. And third, put some clothes on. You can’t wander around the palace dressed in nothing but your shiny silver scales.”
Tiji grinned and did as he ordered, stepping aside to allow him to take a seat behind the desk. She picked her shift up off the floor—where she’d no doubt dropped it when she heard him coming down the hall—and slipped it over her head. Then she pushed aside a pile of requisitions waiting to be signed, so she could sit cross-legged on the edge of his desk.
“Do you want to know what it says?” she asked.
“I can read, you know.”
“Yes, but sometimes it’s better to have someone tell you bad news, rather than read it for yourself.”
Declan looked up at her, frowning. He’d been expecting to hear from Arkady for weeks, but couldn’t imagine what news this letter might contain that required a third party to break it to him. “Exactly what bad news are you talking about?”
“Well, nothing really,” she said. “I just meant that sometimes it’s better to have someone tell you bad news, rather than read it, that’s all.”
He glared at her, in no mood for Tiji’s jokes. “Haven’t you got something you should be doing?”
“Not a thing,” the chameleon assured him, shaking her head. “I am here awaiting your orders, O great and terrible spymaster. Bid me to do something spy-ish!”
“How about you get off my desk?”
“I actually had something a bit more heroic in mind.”
“Life is full of disappointment, Slinky.”
She sighed and uncurled her long silver legs, hopped off his desk and walked around it, taking a seat in the straight-backed wooden chair on the other side. Declan began to read Arkady’s letter. Tiji fidgeted for a moment, sitting like a normal human for all of thirty seconds before she crossed her legs underneath herself again.
“Your girlfriend says it’s hot in Torlenia.”
“Arkady is not my girlfriend,” he repeated, without looking up from the letter.
“Aren’t you two childhood sweethearts, or something?”
“No.”
“But you both grew up in Lebec, together, didn’t you?”
“That’s common knowledge.”
“So how come she married the richest duke in Glaeba and you wound up doing the king’s dirty work for a pittance?”
Decl
an glanced up from the letter in annoyance. “Do you mind? I’m busy.”
“Not as busy as you’re going to be,” the little Crasii predicted.
Declan glared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Get to the bit where your lady friend talks about the Imperator’s Consort,” Tiji advised.
Declan flicked the page over. The first few paragraphs had been filled with benign, unimportant matters. There had been no real point in teaching Arkady how to send a coded letter in the short time they’d had before she sailed for Torlenia with her husband, but he had advised her to couch any information she wished to pass on in the most banal terms she could manage. To alert him that the information was relevant to their search for the remaining unaccounted-for Tide Lords, she had promised to start the paragraph with: Please tell Uncle Lukys…
Sure enough, on the second page was a paragraph that began with their pre-arranged phrase.
“Please tell Uncle Lukys,” Declan read aloud, “that I have met the Imperator’s Consort. Although clearly not from Torlenia (I’m not sure where she’s from), Lady Chintara is a delightful and well-educated woman with an interest in the Tarot that rivals Lady Ponting’s knowledge.” Declan sat a little straighter in his chair, a sick feeling settling in the centre of his stomach. “Her knowledge of the Tide Lords seems encyclopedic. I believe she and Tilly should correspond. I am sure there are things about the Tarot that Lady Chintara knows which Tilly would be most interested in…” Declan’s voice trailed off and he looked at Tiji in despair. “Tides…this can’t be happening…not now…”
“Why not?” Tiji asked. She’d already read the letter, so she’d had time to get over the initial shock of Arkady’s news. “Chinta is the Torlenian way of pronouncing Kinta. She probably added the ‘ra’ on the end because in Torlenia, a chinta is a small smelly rodent.”
“I don’t mean the name,” Declan said, although Tiji was probably right about that. “If this is right, what’s Kinta doing married to the Imperator of Torlenia?”
“Same as all the rest of them, probably—waiting for the Tide to turn so she can take over the world.” Tiji shrugged, as if she couldn’t understand his question. “Tides, Declan, why are you so surprised? We’ve got an immortal married to the Crown Prince of Glaeba. As we speak there’s a Tide Lord roaming our own palace halls pretending to be her best friend, and the Empress of the Five Realms is ready to move on the throne of Caelum as soon as her son marries Princess Nyah. Why are you so astounded by the idea the Charioteer isn’t above doing the same thing in Torlenia? It’s no more than the rest of her wretched brethren are doing elsewhere.”
Declan frowned, not convinced it was that simple. “It’s not Kinta’s style.”
“Maybe she’s setting things up for Brynden, then? He’s up for ruling the world any chance he gets. Tides, if you look at how Torlenia is these days, you could argue he’s never really let it go.”
Declan shook his head. “By all accounts Kinta and Brynden are enemies now. In fact, it was more than likely their break-up that caused the last Cataclysm.”
“I thought the Immortal Prince caused the last Cataclysm?”
“Well, he did, indirectly. According to the Lore, that’s who Kinta left Brynden for.”
“Maybe her love affair with Cayal didn’t last,” Tiji suggested. “Maybe this is her way of patching things up with Brynden. I mean…delivering a whole country? That’s a fairly impressive way of saying you’re sorry.”
For a moment, Declan was swamped with a rare sensation of being overwhelmed. And it was only going to get worse. The Tide was on the turn and the immortals were on the move. Every day was likely to bring word of another one popping up somewhere they least expected it.
What disturbed Declan most was their consistency. With the exception of Maralyce, who never moved from her mine in the Shevron Mountains, and the Immortal Prince, who was last heard of buried under half a mountain inside it, every Tide Lord who’d reappeared so far had done so awfully close to a seat of power, poised to strike the moment their magical powers returned. And there was no telling where the rest of them would pop up. Or when.
“What are you going to do?” Tiji asked. “Tell the Guardian of the Lore your girlfriend wants to invite a Tide Lord to join her secret organisation dedicated to destroying them?”
“Tides! Will you stop that!” he snapped. “There is nothing going on between me and Arkady! Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”
“Did you want my help?”
“No!”
“Touchy, touchy!” she scolded. “Don’t take your frustration out on me.”
“Just go, Tiji,” he ordered.
“I suppose I could sneak into Kylia’s apartments and find out if Cecil’s still alive, if you like.”
“By all means,” he agreed, focusing on the letter to avoid looking at her. “Go find out if Cecil is still alive.”
Tiji rose to her feet with the fluid grace that betrayed her reptilian ancestry. “Is there anything useful I can do?”
He shook his head, recognising the apology in her tone, if not in her actual words. “Not at the moment. I’m going to have to get word to Tilly about this, but first, I need to take a walk down the hall and break the news to Lord Deryon that we’ve found the Empress and the Charioteer and then figure out how I’m going to be in two places at once.”
“Why two places at once?”
“I was planning to go to Caelum and check on the Empress and her gang.” He leaned back in his chair, still holding Arkady’s letter with a frown. “Now I’m starting to think I should be in Torlenia.”
Tiji eyed him speculatively. “Why?”
“Because Kinta has reappeared,” he reminded her.
“You don’t actually know that, Declan.”
“No, I don’t,” he agreed. “It’s nothing but a baseless fear I have that the Imperator of Torlenia’s consort, who apparently has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Tide Lords, just happens to share the name of the woman who was, until the last Cataclysm, the eternal partner of the Lord of Reckoning. Tides, what could I be thinking?”
She eyed him suspiciously. “Is it really that? Or because you think Arkady Desean might be in danger?”
Declan shrugged, wishing Tiji wasn’t so obsessed by his relationship with his childhood friend. “Arkady can handle herself. She’s already faced down at least four Tide Lords.”
“Yeah…funny about that,” Tiji mused, turning for the door.
He didn’t like what Tiji’s tone seemed to imply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tiji stopped with her hand on the door, where it began to turn an interesting coppery shade as it rested on the knob. “It’s just that your girlfriend had Jaxyn, the Lord of Temperance, living under her roof for a year or more, Declan. Then she welcomed Diala, the High Priestess, into her home with open arms, and then…oh, that’s right, she ran off into the mountains with the Immortal Prince, and if you think all they did up there was talk about nature, you truly are an idiot. And while they were up in the mountains, they just happened to drop in on Maralyce, the Seeker, didn’t they? And now, all of a sudden, she stumbles over Kinta, the Charioteer? You’re the spymaster, Declan. You tell me. Are we starting to see a pattern emerge here?”
He smiled at the ridiculousness of what she was suggesting. “You think Arkady is in league with the immortals?”
“If she isn’t, then she attracts them like a magnet attracts iron filings,” Tiji warned, her expression grim. “Maybe if you want to trap the Tide Lords, Declan, you don’t need a great master plan. You just need Arkady Desean as bait.”
Chapter 15
Despite Declan Hawkes’s dire warnings of what might happen when he entered the service of the Crown Princess Kylia, nothing terrible happened to Warlock when he joined the palace staff. Jaxyn didn’t order him to murder another Crasii, or carve a baby into bite-size pieces, or any of the other dire fates Tiji and the spymaster had warned him about. The crown
princess had smiled and clapped her hands delightedly when Lord Deryon announced that Lady Ponting had sent her and her husband, Prince Mathu, a wedding present in the shape of this exceptionally well-trained canine Crasii slave. She sent him along with a note saying she hoped he would serve them well, and how she was sure he would be an excellent addition to their staff.
For the most part, Diala paid little attention to her new slave. She was too busy playing the ingenue princess for her new in-laws, the King and Queen of Glaeba, to be bothered tormenting a mere canine. Of course, none of the humans surrounding her—with the exception of the spymaster and the King’s Private Secretary—knew the seventeen-year-old Princess Kylia was in fact a ten-thousand-year-old immortal, known to the Cabal as the High Priestess and to her fellow immortals as Diala, the Minion Maker. King Enteny and Queen Inala had no reason to suspect their son’s wife was anything but what she appeared—young, in love, and excited to be living in the royal palace with her new husband.
It astounded Warlock that nobody saw through her.
To the Crasii—whose race was created by the immortals, consequently they could smell one across a room—every word she uttered seemed false, every smile cynical, every action contrived. When she clung to Prince Mathu’s arm, laughing at his jokes, staring up at him with wide, adoring eyes, Warlock didn’t see a young woman in love. He saw an evil, manipulative bitch, using an essentially decent young man for her own amusement.
The presence of the Tide Lord Jaxyn was even harder to stomach. Posing as the Duke of Lebec’s envoy to the royal court, he’d made a point of becoming Prince Mathu’s newest best friend, which kept him close to Diala, as well as the young and credulous prince. When Jaxyn wasn’t playing cards with the other courtiers or malletball on the lawns with the court ladies, he was sneaking Mathu out of the palace to visit a bear baiting, or a cockfight, and probably the odd brothel or two into the bargain. The king didn’t know anything about Mathu’s extracurricular activities, of course, and wasn’t likely to, unless Mathu got into trouble.
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