by Melanie Rawn
“First I’ve heard of it.” He plucked a flower from a bush and began shredding the petals.
“Confess, Rohan—what you’d really like to do is go through every tent and house and cottage within a hundred measures.”
“If I admit to it, will you?” He smiled at her.
“There’s not really much chance of finding him, is there?”
“Not much.”
They continued along in companionable silence for a time, heading for the bridge that crossed the Faolain. People were returning from the Fair loaded down with packages and satchels, discussing purchases and current rumors. Rohan and Sioned went mostly unnoticed in the crowd, for both were plainly dressed and kept their hands with the telltale rings in their pockets. Some few recognized them, but at a slight shake of the head from either merely bowed slightly and went on their way.
“Plenty of people here this summer,” Rohan observed.
“More than enough to blend in with, wouldn’t you say?”
“Except if you happen to be a young prince with two zealous guardians. Look.” He pointed to where their son walked along the river, Maarken and Ostvel in close attendance.
“It seems none of us can stay put for the afternoon,” Sioned murmured with a wry smile.
“I can’t say I blame us.” He led her out of the crowd and toward Pol. “I wonder where Riyan is,” he asked suddenly. “Clutha’s here, but Riyan hasn’t come by to greet Ostval yet.”
“I expect he’s been too busy. He was in Waes this summer, you know, keeping an eye on Lyell for Clutha. But he wasn’t at the residence when we had dinner there. Chiana said he’d ridden to the Faolain crossing to meet Clutha’s party.” She waved to Pol as he hurried up the slope toward them. “She seemed rather put out, probably because she didn’t get anywhere with Riyan.”
“My love, the boy has taste! But I’d like to talk to him. Perhaps he’s heard something.”
“I’ll ask Clutha to send him by tonight.” She smiled as Pol approached and gave them a courtly bow and a mischievous smile.
“Have you been over at the Fair?” Pol asked. “I actually got to see it for a little while,” he added with a half-teasing, half-resentful glance over his shoulder at Maarken and Ostvel. “I had some business to settle.”
“My present?”
“Could be!” Sioned hinted.
“Whatever it is, I hope it fits,” she replied, rumpling his blond hair. She turned to Maarken then and added, “I assume you took a little time for yourself and spoke to at least a dozen goldsmiths about wedding necklets.”
The young man made a face at her, and Ostvel chided, “Now, Sioned. Don’t fuss the boy. Besides, it was only half a dozen. I counted.”
They were just about to start back to the Desert tents when someone in the crowd nearby shouted a warning. There was a scuffle on the bridge and people scattered from the steps, screaming. A tall, ill-dressed man lurched against the railing. Gouts of blood spurted from his neck.
“Sweet Goddess—someone’s killed him!” a man’s voice cried.
“There they are! Grab them, don’t let them get away!” Rohan and Ostvel were already running for the steps. Pol would have done the same but for Sioned’s firm grip on his shoulder—and it took all her strength to hold him. Maarken stood between them and the bridge, scanning the crowd warily with sword drawn, ready to defend them if necessary.
But it was Rohan who needed a sword—a weapon he had not carried for the length of Pol’s life. A man wearing yellow and brown surged from the knot of frightened people and leaped for him, blade gleaming. Rohan’s boot-knives were in his hands instantly, and he fought with all the swift grace and skill of one born to wield a blade. Ostvel grappled with a second man in Merida colors who jumped him before he had the chance to draw his sword. They rolled down the slope and splashed into the river.
“Father!” Pol cried, struggling against Sioned’s grasp.
The battle was over quickly. Very few were a match for Rohan in a knife-fight; this man was not one of them. He was forced up the steps of the bridge, bleeding from a dozen gashes. At last he turned, wild-eyed, and flung himself over the rails into the swift-flowing river. He surfaced once, arms flailing. Hurtled downriver by the vicious current, caught in an undertow, he screamed and vanished.
Ostvel had meantime managed to prevent his attacker from drowning him and was instead encouraging the man to breathe water by holding his head under in the sandy shallows. Rohan helped Ostvel drag the man out of the river. They shook him, slapped his face, and after a time he choked and vomited.
Sioned allowed Pol to escape her grasp, and Maarken followed him down to the banks. The crowd huddled nearby, murmuring and amazed. No one but Sioned remembered the dying man on the steps.
She went to him, and saw at once that nothing could help him. His throat had been sliced clean through, the whiteness of bone visible through a gaping slash that had ceased to gush blood with the ending of his heartbeat. His sleeve had caught on a nail and he hung limply, his open green eyes seeming to stare right through her.
As she descended the steps a woman pushed through the crowd, dragging a reluctant captive with her. Sioned tensed, for the woman wore no identifying colors or badge of service.
“Commander Pellira, your highness, of the regent’s guard,” the woman said, bowing. “I regret we weren’t fast enough to catch the others.”
“Who’s this?” Sioned asked softly.
“I’m not a murderer!” The captive had stopped trying to get away. “I was only coming back from the Fair when she grabbed me!”
“Tell her grace the truth!” Pandsala’s guard snapped. “He was following the dead man over there. I know, because I was following him.”
“Take him to our pavilion and watch him,” Sioned told her, suddenly very tired. “We’ll question him later.”
She stood beside Pol and Maarken as Ostvel worked on the second assassin. Rohan propped him up as he shuddered and gulped in air, his gratitude at being alive warring with sheer terror.
Rohan stood up, blood streaking his jaw from a knife-graze, and met Sioned’s gaze. She shook her head, and he sighed quietly.
“This one will live,” he told her.
“Merida colors,” Ostvel grated, his voice sounding bruised.
“No,” Pol said. “Father, look at your hands, and Ostvel’s.” He gestured to Rohan’s fingers, stained brown and yellow from the man’s tunic. “He’s not Merida. The colors were dyed into them only recently—and not very well. See how it’s run all over your hands? And why would they so obviously wear their own colors, anyway? That’s not the Merida style.”
“You’ve sharp eyes,” Ostvel acknowledged. “But if not Merida, then who?”
“Why don’t we ask him?” Rohan prodded the man in the leg with the toe of his boot. “Have him brought to our camp and dried off. And I think you’re due for a change of clothes, Ostvel, before you catch your death of a chill. Have the dead man brought along as well,” he added.
“Dead?” Pol glanced over to the bridge.
“Yes. Very.” Sioned felt an irrational desire to hold her son to her heart, protect him from all that was ugly and foul in this world. She contented herself with brushing her fingertips against his shoulder. “Will you help me up the slope, Pol?”
He put his arm around her waist and she was comforted by his closeness, his warmth, the living strength of him next to her. Untested, untried, unblooded—but he had grown nearly as tall as she over the summer, and would soon be a man. One did not try to protect men from life. Especially not princes.
She heard Maarken order that the drowned man’s corpse be recovered if possible from downriver. She heard Ostvel’s cough, the assassin’s whining protests, the murmurs of the slowly dispersing crowd. But she did not hear her husband’s voice, and when she had gained the top of the riverbank she turned to look for him.
He was standing motionless by the bridge as several men heaved the corpse upright and carried
it from the steps. Rohan glanced up and Sioned caught his eyes that mirrored there own weary, helpless anger.
He joined her and Pol, who at last broke the uneasy silence among them. “I’ve never seen you use your knives before, Father.”
Rohan barely looked at him as they started for their tents. “Good at it, aren’t I?” he asked in a bitter tone that Sioned understood and Pol did not. The boy’s cheeks flushed and his lips tightened. Rohan shrugged. “Any idiot can use a knife, Pol. It’s very direct and—heroic. But the results are usually not worth the trouble.”
Maarken had never had much use for liquor as a cure for jangled nerves, and vaguely disapproved of people who turned to a bottle in times of stress. But that evening he learned the value of a winecup’s companionship. He sat alone in the growing darkness and welcomed the spurious strength of the Syrene vintage through his veins. After viewing the murdered man, Maarken felt in need of a restorative.
It was not that the corpse had been messy, he told himself as he refilled his cup. The knife had sliced through the man’s throat with incredible skill, and death had been swift. Maarken had been younger than Pol when he’d seen far worse in war—whole battle-fields of men and women hacked into pieces barely recognizable as human. He had seen far more unpleasant deaths.
He rose, pacing the private tent he merited as the almost official Lord of Whitecliff, aware that his knees were not what they should be. He drank more wine. Somehow the murder had shaken him even more than the tragedy of Maeta’s death at Castle Crag. All spring and summer he had known about the problems facing his uncle, but the sight of that green-eyed corpse had made the dangers immediate. His private concerns were trifling compared to the threat posed by the pretender.
Maarken knew how precarious Rohan’s position was. The real difficulty was not even this man’s claim. What it came down to was faradhi power. Pol’s personality would go far toward convincing all that he did not have the makings of a tyrant, would not use his Sunrunner gifts in combination with the powers of the High Prince to crush all opposition. But if he was the son of his royal father, he was also the child of his faradhi mother. No matter how winning his ways, many feared the two powers combined in one man.
Maarken sat down again and closed his eyes. A picture of the corpse was burned onto his lids: tall, dark-haired, with green eyes wide open to the last of the sunlight. They could hardly display the dead body as evidence against the claimant; there were plenty of green-eyed men in the world. Who was to say that this one had fathered the pretender?
“Damn,” he muttered, clenching his fist around his winecup. There had to be something they could do, some way of convincing people—
“Why all alone in the night, my lord?”
The feminine voice startled him so violently that wine sloshed out of his cup.
A slim shadow moved toward him in the gloom. “You shouldn’t be solitary and sad, my lord. Share your trouble with me.”
Without thinking he called Fire to the wick of a candle. “Chiana?” he asked incredulously. “What are you doing here?”
“You faradh’im! Always startling a person!” She laughed lightly and came closer. Her fingers rested on the back of his chair beside his shoulder, and somehow the gesture was more intimate than if she had touched him. “I came to ease your loneliness, my lord.”
“Thank you for the thought, my lady,” he said, remembering his manners at last. “I mean no offense, but I would prefer to be alone. I’m no fit company for a lady tonight.”
She laughed again, low in her throat this time. “I’d wager you’re always excellent company for a woman—especially at night.”
Cool, soft fingers brushed his nape. It had been a long time since he had received caresses from a beautiful woman, but this was the wrong woman. He got to his feet, cursing the wine that had made him light-headed. Chiana gazed up at him, candlelight making her face all soft lips and shining, excited eyes framed by artfully tumbled hair.
“Forgive me, my lady, but—”
“You’re too modest,” Chiana said playfully. “But I can tell, my lord.” Her gaze roamed over his face, down his chest and arms. “Yes, I can definitely tell. . . .”
Even with the chair between them he felt as if she had her hands on him. The wine had not so befuddled him that he gave in to her. Neither had it dulled his powers of reasoning. He knew why she was here, and it was not because of his charms. She was terrified of the pretender and groping toward any man who, by marrying her, would provide her with a noble title to replace the one she feared she was about to lose. But one did not tell a lady she was a scheming little bitch. “I thank you for the compliment, Lady Chiana. It’s as unexpected as it is flattering, coming from a lovely woman. But—”
“Maarken! Maarken, they’re here!”
He sent up brief and heartfelt thanks to the Goddess for providing him with a cousin who occasionally forgot his manners. Chiana backed off as Pol came running into the tent. The boy’s jaw dropped halfway to his knees at the sight of her, but he made a quick recovery.
“Lady Andrade is here, and Father says to hurry,” he said after making a slight bow to Chiana. “I’m sorry to interrupt—”
Chiana’s voice was cool and distant. “I should return to my sister’s tent. I have enjoyed our conversation, Lord Maarken. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to continue it another time.” She bent her knees to Pol. “Your Royal Highness.”
“My lady,” he said as she swept past him. Then he whistled soundlessly. “Maarken, I really am sorry—”
Maarken pinched the candle out. “Being alone with a pretty lady is desirable only when you like the lady.”
“If you tell me it’s something I’ll understand when I’m older, I’ll kick you,” Pol replied, grinning. “Come on, Lady Andrade is asking to see you.”
Though Maarken didn’t care much about seeing Lady Andrade, it was difficult to keep his strides from lengthening as he accompanied Pol to the blue pavilion, and even more difficult to keep his expression under control as he entered and his eyes found Hollis. But Pol again forgot his manners.
“He wasn’t with Aunt Tobin and Uncle Chay,” the boy reported. “He was in his own tent with Lady Chiana.”
Maarken turned red. Grateful as he had been to his cousin earlier, now he could cheerfully have strangled the brat. Rohan’s lips twitched with barely suppressed mirth, and Sioned coughed to hide her laughter. Andrade looked him down and up, with a brief stop below his belt. But Hollis reacted not at all. She stood to one side with Andry and a tall, black-haired youth Maarken didn’t know. Her dark blue eyes were circled beneath with bruises of weariness. She looked thinner, and the supple energy that usually shone from her seemed tarnished somehow.
“Well,” Andrade said, breaking the awkward silence. “Your own tent now, eh? Chay must have given you Whitecliff, and about time, too.”
“He has, my Lady.” Maarken bowed to her.
“Isn’t somebody going to ask me to sit down?” she complained. “And I could do with something to drink.”
Maarken and Andry performed squire’s duties as Pol and the black-haired boy brought extra chairs. Hollis sank into hers with a long sigh, and the boy hovered behind her with an almost proprietary air.
“Pleasant trip?” Maarken whispered to his brother as they poured out cups of wine.
Andry grimaced. “Hell on horseback. Remind me not to tell you about it.”
They finished distributing the wine as their parents entered. Andrade waited while they greeted Andry, then directed them to chairs as if this were her pavilion, not Rohan’s. But they were all long accustomed to her ways.
“Sorin has duty tonight with Volog and can’t come,” Chay said as he sat down. “Goddess! Do you know how depressing this is? All my sons can look me straight in the eye! It’s not fair. They started out so short!”
“Perhaps you’re only shrinking due to rampant decrepitude,” Andrade commented. “I hope the rot doesn’t extend to your brains
, any of you. What are you going to do, now that Masul’s real father is dead?”
Rohan leaned back in his chair. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“My eyes and ears may be old, boy, but they still function. What are your plans?”
“I’d rather hear about yours. Your Sunrunner Kleve was keeping an eye on Kiele for you, wasn’t he? What did he find out?”
It wasn’t often that anyone managed to startle the Lady of Goddess Keep. Maarken glanced at Hollis, prepared to share an amused glance at Andrade’s astonishment. But Hollis was staring into her untasted wine, and the black-haired boy was hovering even closer.
“How did you know about Kleve?” Andrade demanded.
As gently as possible, he said, “We received word today—and proof—that he’s dead. They cut the rings from his fingers by taking the fingers themselves, Andrade. He probably died for something he knew. Do you have any idea what it was?”
Andrade’s face was immobile. After a few moments she whispered, “No. I—I knew he was dead. Riyan told me. But he didn’t say how it happened.” Rallying, she took a long swallow of wine. “Kleve is dead, and his information with him. Masul’s real father is dead, and his testimony with him. You haven’t managed this very well, Rohan.”
Pol had been standing between his parents’ chairs, listening wide-eyed. But at this point he stiffened and took a step forward, frowning at the implied insult to his father. Maarken could have told him to save his indignation; Andrade spoke that way to everybody.
She noticed, as she noticed everything. “Meath tells me you can call Fire,” she said abruptly to the boy.
“I can, my Lady.”
“What else can you do without ever having been taught?”
“I don’t know,” Pol replied boldly. “I’ve never tried.”
She gave a bark of laughter. “You’re the son of your father, all right.”
“And of my mother,” Pol added. Maarken hid a slight smile. If Pol was awed by their formidable kinswoman, he was determined not to show it.
“Mmm, yes. And of your mother,” she said. “Tobin, take your husband and sons to your own tent. I have no time for family news right now. Pol, you may go with them. Hollis, Sejast, go tell Urival to hurry up. I’m tired and I want to rest in my own bed sometime before midnight.”