by Sarah Remy
By the time everyone calmed Avani had hold again of her wits.
“My lord,” she said, going to one knee in front of his chair. “You have my apologies, both for the bird’s ugly manners and because you have had to wait on word for so long. Lord Malachi meant to come speak to you himself, but was delayed by the king’s greater need.”
Mal, she thought as she lightly gripped Belmas’s palsied fingers, why are you neglecting your duties? Hadn’t she seen her friend off to speak to the baron days earlier? How was it he hadn’t made it there after all?
If Mal heard her dismay, he essayed no response.
“I understand,” Belmas said. “Which is why I sent my valet to you. Now that Doyle has returned I expect there is less demand for your own talents.” He smiled a small smile. “I may be trapped here above the hustle and bustle, but I know well how you saved Wilhaiim from the Worm. Islander you may be, but I’m assured the king believes you’re as useful a magus as Doyle. Mayhap more so lately.”
Pulling his fingers from Avani’s clasp, he sat back. “Now rise,” he ordered. “And tell me how I stand with my dead wife.”
“There was no babe,” Avani replied. “It was an ailment of the womb, a mass grown rampant in her abdomen.” Kneeling still, she looked up into Belmas’s face and saw his relief.
He waved a trembling hand. “Do not judge me. I’ve spent the better part of the year believing my wife concealed a lover. A lifetime of trying—and failing—to throw an heir and why should that change in my dotage? I knew it wasn’t my seed in her belly.”
Belmas cleared his throat. In response the valet brushed past Avani, lifting a goblet to the baron’s mouth. He swallowed greedily, then wiped traces of red wine from his mouth with his fingers.
“Thank you. I can mourn Greta as she deserves, now, without bitterness.”
“My lord.” Avani rose. “I’m glad to give you some relief, but I’m afraid there is more.”
“Oh, aye?” While Belmas’s beard and hair had long ago gone silver, his brows were still dark, startling above imperious blue eyes. “What more?”
Goddess take you, Mal. I’ll wring your neck for this.
“My lord,” she began, “you’ve heard she was found on a street near the Fair.”
“She’d gone shopping,” Belmas agreed. “She had a fondness for pickled herring. There’s a man there who makes it up special, just for Greta. I had supposed she was on her way home when she collapsed.”
Avani hesitated. Belmas’s brows beetled further.
“Spit it out,” he snapped. The valet set a hand on the back of his chair. “I’m not so frail I can’t hear the truth of it. There’s not worse than cuckolding.”
“She was murdered, my lord. Stabbed through the heart from behind.”
The valet went white. Belmas took in a sharp breath then let it out again between his teeth.
“Murdered, you say? Impossible. What, robbed? For her pocket money? The scarf around her head? Greta’s not so foolish as to wear her gewgaws shopping. She’d have nothing on her worth murder.”
“No, my lord.” Avani kept pity from her face. She didn’t think her sympathy would be appreciated. Belmas was not a man who minced words. “Is there any other reason someone might have wanted your wife dead? Had she trouble with anyone in court, for instance?”
The tower chamber had grown very quiet. Belmas’s servants drifted close in shock. The baron, to Avani’s surprise, didn’t shoo them away. Instead, he crooked a finger.
“Lily, Caroline, had your mistress any enemies at court?”
“Nay, m’lord!” The two young maids, both dressed in white, looked properly horrified. “Never, m’lord!”
“Outside of court, mayhap?” Belmas pressed, watching Avani. “In the kitchens, or the market? The temple? The stables?”
“Of course not, my lord,” the valet replied. “Lady Belmas is—was—well liked in every corner of the kingdom.”
“Every corner is a bit strong,” Belmas said. “Greta had a sharp tongue and a quick temper. She didn’t tolerate fools, but she owned her mistakes and knew how to ask pardon of those she might have wounded with a sharp word. She never held a grudge and no one could stay angry at her for long.” He folded shaking fingers in his lap. “She had no enemies.”
Avani believed him. The baron and his white-clad servants exuded candor. And yet, Belmas had for many months believed his wife unfaithful. But the palsy ensured the baron couldn’t have done the deed himself, and while it was not impossible one of the baron’s loyal staff had taken up the blade in his stead, there was still George Farrow dead outside the city walls to think of.
“The knife used to pierce her heart,” she began, “carried your device. The knife was in her body. Your mark was clear on the dagger’s hilt.”
The corners of Belmas’s mouth turned downward. “Ivy,” he prompted. The valet stepped from around the baron’s chair. Taking a knife from her belt, she offered it up hilt-first for examination.
“Aye,” Avani said. The weapon was identical to the one she’d seen in Mal’s cold-room, from the narrow blade to the device etched in the pommel. “Just like that.”
“Each member of my household carries the like,” Belmas agreed. Disdain sparked in his blue eyes. “But if you mean to accuse us of murder—”
Avani lifted a hand in protest. “I only wondered if one similar might have gone missing, lost, or perhaps stolen?”
“You’re sniffing up the wrong tree,” Belmas growled, “if you think someone filched a knife from one of my people and used it to murder my wife. Use your head, lass. Or stick to your weaving and leave atrocities to others.” He hunched beneath his blankets, turning his face away. His disappointment stung Avani. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? The killer snatched Greta’s own knife from her belt and used it in his villainy. It’s how I’d do it, if I didn’t want to leave my own weapon behind.”
Chapter 9
“Belmas isn’t wrong,” Mal said, amused, “when he says it was obvious.”
“Not to me,” Avani retorted. Embarrassment made her furious, and she didn’t care if Mal saw it. “Had I need to kill a man I’d use my own sword.”
“In battle or self-defense, certainly.” Mal smirked. The flatlander graveyard was dark but for the occasional late fire beetle and the mage-light over Avani’s head. When she’d found the vocent he’d been sitting alone in the moonless night, all but motionless beneath black skies as if waiting for the stars to come out.
It didn’t escape her notice that it was Siobahn’s stone slab upon which he sat. Knowing that he still sought some comfort there only stoked Avani’s temper. For all that she believed herself a temperate person, she could not forgive the dead woman the grief she’d caused.
“But this is murder, not a battlefield killing or a duel gone all the way to mortal wound,” continued Mal. “Murder is a tricky thing.” His eyes flashed green disdain under lowered lids. “You’ve not met it in this form before, not this deliberate, cold-blooded monster, but if you continue on as you have at the king’s right hand you’ll eventually learn better than to ask stupid question of testy barons when you could ask them instead of his more loquacious housemaids and get the same answer with less offense taken.” He tapped the long fingers of one hand soundlessly against Siobahn’s gravestone. “Harder to let go the office than you expected, is it? Packed away the Hennish leather but still eager to answer Renault’s call? Not so eager to run back to Stonehill as you once were? That’s the difficulty with prestige—it’s near as addicting as magic.”
“I went to the throne room looking for you.” Avani had never been afraid of Mal. She wouldn’t let him change that now. They were of a height—the magus cross-legged on his dead wife’s stone and Avani on her toes in the summer grass—and when the magus leaned forward Avani held her ground. “You left me behind on Farrow’s land without so much as a by-your-leave.”
“Something came up. I’d finished what needed doing on Farrow’s homestead.�
� He smelled of apples and ire and faintly of sweat. “I wasn’t aware I needed your permission to go about my own business, Avani.”
“Ai, not mine, but certainly the king’s. He had to hear of the sidhe from a courtier and of Farrow’s death from me.”
Mal shifted away. Resting back on the palms of his hands, he turned his head to watch a fire beetle fly mad circles above the forest of old gravestones.
“You should have kept Renault from my chambers,” he said, flatly accusing, “until I was recovered, or at the very least you might have been kind and barred the door until I was back in my right mind. You and I are meant to look out for each other, or so I thought. But instead you let him in and he heard too much, saw too much. Now he won’t meet my eye or clasp my hand as brothers do. I’ve lost the king’s regard. I’ve known it since I first woke to sense and glimpsed his unease when he thought I didn’t see. I hoped that would change, that I would soon regain his trust. He’s loved me a long time, and I him.” Mal glanced sideways at Avani. “He’s a good king, and loyal man, but he’s always preferred to leave the hardest tasks to others. Now I’m the difficult task and you’re his easiest solution.”
Distress blunted the edges of Avani’s temper. “You frightened him,” she allowed slowly. “And I’m sorry for it, but you were frightening. I imagine you can’t recall. You were in a bad way. It was a . . . dangerous time.” She winced when he scowled and continued more gently. “I couldn’t have kept him from your side had I ten Kingsmen at my disposal. Renault will come around, but not if you insist in neglecting your duties. You throw his doubts too much back in his face, I think. Give him time.”
For a long moment Mal said nothing. In Avani’s head the feel of him was the threat of lightning, keen and too sharp. Avani ground her teeth against the growing tempest. Suddenly Mal chuckled.
“Sit,” he said, a challenge and a request. In the shine of her silver sphere his grin was self-mocking. “Unless I’ve frightened you, too.”
“Ai, of course not.”
So she sat, scooting up onto the edge of Siobahn’s stone. The slab was pleasantly cool through her salwar. Siobahn’s ghost was not there. Mal had seen his wife well and truly gone, had banished her from the realm of the living. He clasped Avani’s hand. Because she wanted to prove to them both that she trusted him yet, she let him. As soon as their fingers twined the pain in her skull lessened. She went light-headed with relief. It was like poison drawn from a festering wound; she hadn’t realized the entire weight of it until the burden was gone.
“You should have told me,” Mal chided. “How long?”
“Since you stepped off the ship,” Avani confessed past a lump in her throat. “The deep sea sundered our link and for months I couldn’t feel you, and then you were back and you were overflowing too much. You couldn’t hold your boundaries, not even with the ivory back on your wrists, and I couldn’t guess what else to do but catch what I could before you did damage to anyone else.” She almost asked him about Liam, then, but the pressure of his grip warned her tread cautiously. “For a time it worked.”
“Until it didn’t, because even the deepest well can’t contain an endless font.” He squeezed her fingers. His hands were warm, roughly calloused. “I’m sorry. I can’t promise it won’t continue to happen for a while yet. Things changed, in Roue. I’m still learning my way.” In the mage-light his expression was wistful. “But I can help you with it, next time. Take back what you’ve collected, so to speak. Relieve you of me.”
It was a boon to be alone again in her head. Once she’d craved the flame of him under her skin, rejoiced in the promise of their twined power, and known that he’d felt the same. Their connection had been a comfort—nay, more than a comfort, it had been perilous and sweet in turns, heady as newly forged infatuation.
Now she knew he’d been wise to try to prevent that entanglement. Now, when it was too late. Whatever it was that bound them was well and truly rooted, for good or for evil.
“Let me show you what I was about,” Mal said across their clasped hands, as his warm regard flowed, intoxicating as strong wine across their link. “While you were bending my king’s ear and worrying Baron Belmas.”
He released her hand. While she watched, awestruck, he drew a cloud of glittering fire beetles from the trees bordering the graveyard. Like tiny, pulsing stars the insects swarmed overhead, so surpassing Avani’s mage-light that she snuffed her magic to better see their beauty. She counted one hundred, and then another fifty, and then she lost track of their number.
“I’ve never seen so many at once.”
“They’re coming to the end of their cycle,” replied Mal sadly. “They’ve tonight left, mayhap tomorrow. A candle fly’s life is fleeting.”
Then he murmured a half-voiced cant, wielding the swarm like a scribe might his ink, one elegant finger a stylus, the night air a dusky canvas. He sketched rows and curves and parallel lines in the air, wielding the tiny pulsing bodies. At his command the beetles held frozen exactly as he placed them, motionless but for their flash and fade and spark again, and the desperate beating of their wings.
So taken was Avani by their allure that she almost failed to recognize Mal’s artistry. Until the starlit lines coalesced into a familiar pattern that brought to mind weary days spent under the city, walking old tunnels, sealing off sidhe doors to keep Wilhaiim safe.
“Andrew’s barrow map,” she said. “Russel and I committed what of it we could to memory. The tunnels under the city are blocked.” She squinted, pointing. “You’ve added to it, here and here. There are the passages running west and north; Whitcomb is there, and Stonehill there. But these—” on the perimeter of the tangle that was the old sidhe warren beneath Renault’s city crooked fingers reached east “—are new.”
“New to Andrew’s map and to the deep earth,” Mal agreed. “I’ve supplemented the model as I come upon fresh tunneling. Look there.” He tilted his chin skyward and a single byway began a hectic dazzle. “This passage stalls beneath Farrow’s fields, not directly below the homestead, but close enough as to make no difference.”
“You tracked the sidhe.” Avani was impressed. “The king’s soldiers and a hunting dog spent half a day walking those fields and still couldn’t regain its trail, not past Farrow’s cottage.”
“Not the barrowman.” Mal shook his head. The diminutive gold hoops he’d taken to wearing Rouen-fashion in his ears danced prettily. “The sidhe was too careful for even my methods. Farrow’s wife, on the other hand, left a beaten track a child could follow.” His brows rose in silent provocation.
“My lord!” Avani sat straight. “At least tell me: did you find the poor woman alive?”
Mal hopped off Siobahn’s slab. He dusted his hands on his thighs. His conjured map was fading, fire beetles flickering out one by one. “Farrow’s cottage, tomorrow,” he said, awarding Avani a wicked grin. “Just after sunrise, before the heat of the day becomes unbearable. Bring that corporal friend of yours; if she’s got Andrew’s map in her head, she may be useful.”
“Mal!” Avani rolled onto her knees. “For my sake, go and speak to Renault!”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Avani.” He strode away through the dark, sure-footed even without a light. “Don’t be late.”
He vanished into the night, leaving her alone with only the snared fire beetles for company. Released, the insects fell into the grass with a noise like a sudden burst of rain. They were dead before they hit the ground, starlight snuffed.
“I’m not known for an overabundance of caution,” Russel complained as she scanned the front of Farrow’s shuttered cottage. “But this smacks of perfidy.”
Avani had slept peacefully the night before as she hadn’t since Mal had been stolen overseas. The relief of it made her cheerful.
“I think it’s the way of magi, this making of teaching into a game.” She sat on Farrow’s stoop, intent on the view across the wheat. “It was like this, before, when he wanted to show me how to do a thing. I
suspect he finds book learning boring.”
Russel scoffed. “Has he forgiven you, then? For stealing away the king’s favor? Because despite his courtly airs, he seems a jealous sort. Could be he plans to turn you into a trout and leave you behind in yonder pond and none the wiser.”
“Don’t talk nonsense,” Avani growled. She couldn’t help but grin. “Why would he ask you along, then, if he meant to do me injury?”
“I’m told I’d make an admirable bullfrog,” the soldier replied, deadpan. Then, more quietly she asked, “You did leave word with His Majesty?”
“Aye,” Avani said, ignoring Russel’s pointed nod. “I did.”
When Mal arrived, he came up over the knoll from the direction of the cellar, step jaunty. In spite of the early hour the magus looked refreshed and as content as Avani had ever seen him. As he drew closer she saw he’d cut his hair ruthlessly into order, sheared the long waves into a cap of close-cropped curls.
“Good morning,” he said without breaking stride. “This way, into the field, if you please. Sheathe your sword, corporal. We won’t be needing it just yet.”
Avani jumped to her feet. She hurried to catch him up, then walked companionably at his shoulder. She held her tongue as they plunged off grass and into the wheat, knowing better than to demand explanation right from the start. Instead she took careful notice of their surroundings: the crop past ripening, the sheaves beginning to shrivel, the seeds to drop. The soil was springy beneath the soles of her boots, the field meticulously tended. She saw the miniature cairns here and there beneath amber stems where stones had been worked free of the dirt during planting and set aside.
“What’s that you’ve got?” Russel asked of Mal.
“Tanner’s awl,” the magus replied. “Farrow had quite a collection in his kit, as one might expect. This one is of particular interest.”