It was a small bird, barely larger than a dove, but she could feel the power in its talons as it settled onto her fingers. With her ungloved hand, she reached up and stroked the cruel curve of its beak. “Tell me,” she whispered, in a language long dead.
The message, such as it was, consisted of a series of brief visions, which flashed into Daryna’s mind like sudden memories. A middle-aged woman with dark hair and jewels and a crafty-looking smirk. A tower. A chain breaking. The ancient crown of Myrcia.
Legend had it that the great hillichmagnars of ages past who created the world could send coherent sentences, even whole letters, by animals or birds. There was even a story that Leofe the Blessed, most powerful of their kind since the Fall of Koarthak, had been able to send a full, corporeal vision of herself, walking and talking and interacting with people.
But most hillichmagnars today couldn’t do that sort of thing. Indeed, most of them never even tried, since in their training, they had learned a kind of symbolic code. They didn’t have to make the bird learn a long, complicated message. Birds were—to be kind—not the brightest of Earstien’s creatures. They could only learn a handful of images. So hillichmagnars had adapted to the limitations of their avian couriers, and had invented a way to send messages that even a bird couldn’t forget.
Daryna touched the bird again and reviewed the message. A woman with dark hair. A tower. A broken chain. An ancient crown.
At first, she was confused, but then she realized who the woman must be. And then the meaning of the tower and the broken chain were obvious.
“Oh, blast it all,” she muttered. Caedmon was on Merewyn’s side too. The most powerful hillichmagnar at the Myrcian court wanted Daryna’s help in getting the disgraced queen released. “Oh, Caedmon,” she thought, “why do you have to make this so difficult for me?”
“Is everything well?”
Daryna turned suddenly, making the bird flutter and squawk on her hand.
“I’m sorry,” said Grigory. “Is something wrong? You ran away so suddenly.”
Daryna whispered the release spell to the falcon, and it launched itself away in a sudden flare of white and gray feathers.
“It’s nothing,” she said. “A little conversation between old friends. Caedmon wants me to bring him an embroidered horse blanket. Nothing to worry about.”
Chapter 9
MEREWYN REARRANGED the flowers yet again. Today she had mums, and Earstien knew there wasn’t a lot to maneuver on a mum, but she did her best. Next, she strode across the room and shifted the position of the decanter on the table the width of her thumb, scooting the two glasses to match the new orientation. She searched the room for anything else that could be improved when her eye alighted on her desk and the drawings piled atop it. Brandon had shown real interest in them, so why not show them off? Bustling over, she propped open her easel and slid what she thought her best charcoal of Hengist Tower onto it just before the knock came.
When the door opened, however, it was not Brandon who entered, but his sister, Lady Hildred. She had on a severe dress of starched gray linen and a long white apron, like she had been doing some cleaning somewhere.
“Well, this is quite a surprise,” said Merewyn. “You haven’t been here since you introduced Haley to me. She’s working out well, you’ll be glad to know.”
“How gratifying.” Hildred looked down her nose at Merewyn’s books and charcoal drawings. “Charming.”
Hildred had aged surprisingly well. Bitterness was, apparently, a marvelous preservative. Even so, she wore a deep scowl on her long, pale face, and she held a very familiar scrap of parchment in her hand.
“Is that one of my letters?” Merewyn asked, barely able to keep her tone civil.
“Did you really write to my brother and ask him to arrange a meeting for you with Queen Nina?”
Merewyn crossed her arms and settled into the window seat. “Since you have the note in your hand, you obviously know the answer already.”
Hildred’s long chin quivered. “I am slaving away, night and day, to plan the queen’s visit. I will not have....” She paused, took a slow breath, and started over. “Would you please try not to disrupt all my plans?”
Earstien. Hildred was worried about being upstaged by a woman locked in a tower. What a fool.
“I have absolutely no interest in disrupting your dances and garden parties,” said Merewyn. “I simply wish to speak to the queen on matters of mutual interest.”
“Oh, really?” Hildred put a hand on her hip. “What matters would these be, exactly?”
Merewyn picked up a little red-bound monograph from the windowsill. “Just a few things I’ve been reading about lately.”
“I wasn’t aware that the Loshadnarodskis were a literary people.”
Flipping through the slim volume, Merewyn quickly found “Fig. 7a: Yearly Production at the Sobol and Bogdanov Clan Mines,” with its ominous columns of steadily declining numbers. She considered showing it to Hildred, but Hildred probably wouldn’t understand the chart. Or if somehow she did, she would probably steal Merewyn’s plan for herself.
Not that Merewyn had much of a plan yet. First, she needed to know for sure whether she would get to see Nina. Then she could figure out how to help with the mines. She had a vague idea of getting Haley to ask her father, the botany professor, to find someone at the university who knew about the most advanced methods of mining. Then she would invite that person over for tea with Nina. The Loshadnarodski queen would be properly grateful, and she would want to do something to help Merewyn in return. Of course, the first step was to arrange a meeting with Nina. Everything depended on that.
Hildred pressed her, however. “Kindly give me your word that you will give up this notion.”
“Do you actually trust me to keep my word? How very flattering.”
Anger flashed in Hildred’s eyes, and Merewyn guessed the conversation was about to become much less genteel. But at that moment, Brandon arrived for tea.
He looked almost as shocked to see his sister as Merewyn had been. “Hildred? What are you doing here?”
A tinge of pink appeared on Hildred’s pallid cheeks. “I was just.... That is to say, I was....”
“She was checking to see I had everything I needed,” said Merewyn smoothly. “And she was going to deliver a note to you on my behalf. And since you are conveniently here, she can discharge that duty with no extra trouble. I know how busy she must be.”
With a defeated look, Hildred handed the letter to Brandon and quickly excused herself, saying that she needed to check the wine cellars to see if a certain shipment of Annenstruker Rodvin had arrived yet.
“She wasn’t bothering you, was she?” Brandon asked, frowning at the doorway even after it had shut and Hildred’s steps had died away on the stairs.
“Not at all. I am so starved for entertainment here that I take it where I can. Two minutes with your sister, and my pulse is racing like I have been running up and down stairs for an hour. It’s a marvelous tonic for old age.”
Brandon laughed. “She means well, even if sometimes she acts as if she doesn’t.” He looked at the letter in his hand. “Now what’s in this message that she took off my desk? I promise in the future I will read all your notes immediately, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” He paused to read, and then looked up, eyebrows raised. “You want a meeting with Queen Nina?”
She sighed dramatically, taking advantage of her low neckline. She knew she was still a handsome woman, and Brandon was still a man. “That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
“Not in my estimation, no. I know for a fact that the queen wishes to see you, as well. She has mentioned it twice in her messages to the king.”
“Really? She has?” Merewyn rushed over and took Brandon’s hand. “Oh, you can’t imagine what a relief it is to know that. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“I did not want to raise your hopes prematurely. You know that the king will still have the final say as
to whether Nina will see you. I have written to urge him to make a decision, but so far he has not.”
“How utterly typical.” Merewyn let go of his hand and walked back toward the window. “If you write again, please tell him, please tell...,” she almost said “That Man,” but stopped herself. “Please tell Ethelred that I only want to help make this visit a success. Let him know that I want to do my part.”
“I will tell him,” said Brandon. “And for my part, I will do everything in my power to make sure you can see Queen Nina. I will be sending Mr. Kemp upriver to meet the Loshadnarodski party and escort them into the city. I will tell him to pass along your best wishes to the queen.”
Merewyn was so overcome that she almost couldn’t reply, so she busied herself in pouring wine and serving out cakes for both of them, and soon they were talking and laughing as usual and discussing all the preparations for the Loshadnarodski visit. All too soon, though, Brandon had to leave to go meet with Mr. Kemp again.
A minute after he left, Haley arrived to help clear away the dishes. “The guard downstairs said Lady Hildred was here.” The girl shook her head. “I wish I had known, my lady. I would never have left you to face that trial alone.”
“How kind you are,” laughed Merewyn. “Did I ever tell you that one of my previous ladies had a secret signal we would use whenever Hildred imposed herself on me? When I had had enough, and felt I couldn’t take any more, I would find an excuse to mention Cheruscian fortified wine. That was the signal. Then my lady would suddenly ‘recall’ an appointment I was supposed to be at, and we would make our escape.”
“I’ll have to remember that,” said Haley, grinning.
“That was Tegan Howard. Clever girl—always so amusing, so quick-witted.”
“I don’t believe I know her, my lady.”
Merewyn’s smile faded. “You wouldn’t. She’s been dead now for...oh, fifteen years.” Dead of a broken heart. Dead of drink and bitterness, too.
She hadn’t thought of the woman in years. She didn’t like to think of her. Lady Tegan, grinning in the shadows as she produced the key to some chamber where Merewyn could meet Fransis. Lady Tegan with her husband, the general, inventing the details of an imaginary tea party so that Ethelred would think Merewyn had been with them all day. Lady Tegan at the trial of her husband, after the verdict was read. Her face twisting with rage, hair coming down as she shook her fist at Merewyn.
“You knew! You knew, you bitch!”
“I was in the dark, Tegan, just like you. I’m very sorry about Swithin. I swear I would do anything to help, but—"
“You liar! It was your idea. Swithin only did it for Fransis, and Fransis would never have done it on his own. You pushed him! This is all your fault!”
Merewyn felt a hand on her shoulder. Haley stood there, looking worried.
“My lady, are you well? Should I get you some more valerian and passionflower?”
“Yes.” Merewyn rubbed her temples. “Yes, perhaps you’d better.”
The thick mead potion did its work, but that night, Merewyn woke twice from horrible dreams, in which all her old friends, living and dead, were trying to kill her. The second time she woke up, she went down and sat with a candle, reading books on Loshadnarodski mining as the sun came up. For once, the dry scientific prose failed to put her back to sleep. And she couldn’t concentrate on the words, either. She couldn’t stop thinking that the Loshadnarodskis weren’t coming to Leornian for her benefit.
“Nina isn’t going to help me,” Merewyn thought. “Why should she help me? She’s here to get help with the mines. I’m an unnecessary complication.”
Then, at breakfast, poor Haley unwittingly said the worst thing possible. As she set out the eggs and toast, she chattered about what was going on around the castle, and she mentioned that Brandon’s guard captain had decided to post extra soldiers at the base of the tower while the Loshadnarodskis were in town.
“Why would he bother to do that?” Merewyn asked, stifling a yawn. “I can’t leave unless the spell is lifted.”
“Oh, it’s not to stop you getting out, my lady,” said Haley breezily. “It’s to stop someone from coming up here without permission. Anyone could, you know.”
Merewyn felt lightheaded for a minute, and she could hardly eat a bite. Haley was right—virtually anyone could come up those stairs, if they somehow got past the guards. Hildred had done it, after all. Someone else could, as well. Someone with a knife or poison. Someone who considered Merewyn an unnecessary complication and wanted her out of the way. Someone who wanted revenge.
Haley offered more of the potion, but Merewyn refused, and sent the girl to get a complete list of all the guests who would be at Queen Nina’s welcome feast.
“Oh, are you going to invite some of them to dine with you, as well?” the girl asked innocently.
“Yes. Yes, let’s say that’s what I want the list for,” said Merewyn. Her hands were starting to tremble slightly. “Hurry now. There’s a good girl.”
Brandon naturally obliged her with a copy of the guest list, and she spent the rest of the day and far into the night poring over it and trying to figure out who might be a threat to her.
Long ago, some of these people had been close to her. Here was Vibeka Ostensen, Duchess of Severn. She was the daughter of the King of Annenstruk, and at one time, she had pretended to be Merewyn’s friend. The moment Fransis was arrested, though, she had stopped replying to Merewyn’s letters. Vibeka would attend with her husband and two of her children. The daughter, Muriel, was a grown woman now, “out” in society, but Merewyn had never even met her.
There were many others she didn’t know, though she often recognized the family name or title. There was a whole new generation of young noblemen and women who had still been in the nursery when she was first locked in this tower.
Would any of these people be glad to see her? Or did they, like Tegan Howard, blame her for everything that had happened? Were they hoping to get revenge now?
And what about the foreign visitors? Some of them were very famous, like the great hillichmagnars Servius Faustinus and Daryna Olekovna. Other names were new to her, like Lord Harish Govinda. But then Haley returned with word that Lord Harish worked for the Sahasran Vizierate of Magy. He was not a hillichmagnar himself, but some kind of itinerant scholar.
But perhaps there was more to him than that. Why bother sending ambassadors who could use magy? Surely someone like the legendary Faustinus had better things to do with his time. Unless they were here to do something that could only be done with magy. Something like breaking through Caedmon Aldred’s spell on the tower—the one that kept Merewyn confined.
Could that really be true? Could one or more of them be coming to rescue her? No, that was too much to hope for. More likely, they were coming to kill her.
She was a complication. She was an embarrassment and a stumbling block in Myrcia’s affairs with all the world. Queen Nina supposedly wanted to help Merewyn, but at what cost to her country? Loshadnarod needed their silver mines. If it came down to a choice between Merewyn and the mines, which would Nina really choose? What would her advisors do if she chose wrongly?
And the Sahasrans—they were longtime friends and allies of the Loshadnarodskis, and one of the major customers for the silver mines. One of the guests on the list, in fact, was Lord Anik Kaur, a onetime Sahasran diplomat who had married Nina’s younger sister and become her foreign minister. He and his former colleagues would not be happy if a deal to rescue the mines fell apart over Nina’s stubborn insistence on getting Merewyn out of prison.
Both the Sahasrans and the Loshadnarodskis might find life easier if Merewyn disappeared.
As for the Immani Empire, it was one of Myrcia’s closest allies. Servius Faustinus had helped Myrcia win its independence, in fact. But the Immani had also coveted the Loshadnarodski silver mines for generations, and the Loshadnarodskis, in their turn, frequently raided over the border, looting Immani villages and farms. The Imm
ani had no desire to see Loshadnarod and Myrcia grow closer. Which, of course, they obviously would if Maxen—the heir to the throne—saw Nina as the one who had rescued his mother. If it looked as if Nina might succeed in getting Merewyn released, then Faustinus probably had orders to prevent it, most likely by killing Merewyn with a spell. Something quick and subtle, which left no trace behind. One moment Merewyn would be walking around her tower room, pacing and circling, and the next, she would be dead on the floor.
Merewyn clutched at her throat, her breath coming in quick gasps. There was light in the window now—how long had she been looking at these guest lists? She grabbed a blanket and pulled it over her head, curling into a ball on the window seat.
“My lady?” It was Haley’s voice. “My lady, are you well?”
“Yes.” Merewyn peeked out from under the blanket. “Why do you ask?”
“You appear to have been awake all night. Here.” Haley came over and gently removed the blanket. “Let me help you upstairs, and I’ll get you a potion so you can sleep.”
“No, no. I have to keep going over this guest list. Someone wants me dead; I’m sure of it. I have to find out who it is.”
Haley turned her head and scanned the pages, now creased and stained with droplets of wine and candlewax. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, my lady.”
“Really?”
“Of course not. I doubt they would put the assassin’s name on the guest list.”
“That’s not very reassuring, Haley.”
“Sorry, ma’am. Just trying to be practical. Let’s get you up to bed now, shall we?”
Foolishness. It was all foolishness. It didn’t matter who came to Leornian, or if they spoke on her behalf or against her—she would die in this tower, one way or another, because there was no one who wouldn’t benefit from her death.
The Queen's Tower Page 8