Tapestry Lion (The Landers Saga Book 2)

by Nilsen, Karen

  *That still doesn’t explain why you had to lie. Someone here taught you about the fire selkie, some ally you don’t want the queen to know about. I guessed.

  *You know, Quicksilver, you always have the look of a man aiming at a bulls-eye. You can’t live every moment so intensely, lest you burn out young.

  *So you did learn about the fire selkie from a secret ally. I concluded.

  She chuckled, a husky, grating sound. *I do like men who can’t be distracted--they make the best lovers.

  *Don’t start that nasty talk tonight, or I really will break the mirror. Safire snapped.

  *My nasty talk saved Quicksilver’s life. Undene retorted. *It never occurred to Jazmene--or you--how much power you derive from his strong life force until I brought it to everyone‘s attention last night.

  *Why didn’t you tell Jazmene what would happen to the mind bond when Safire and I I paused *when we made love?

  Undene met my gaze in the mirror, and I grimaced at lurid brightness of her eyes. *I did tell her, Quicksilver.

  *Not until after the fact. It seems an odd omission for a loyal servant such as yourself to make.

  *Don’t call me a servant.

  I inclined my head. *Forgive me, my lady. So why didn’t you tell her before?

  Undene smiled slightly, as if indulging a willful child. *So many questions . . . very well then. By not telling Jazmene until after the fact, I gave you two the chance to consummate the mind bond before she could stop you. She wanted that bond broken so she could have full control of Safire without your interference. Now that’s impossible. She cackled.

  *So you’re not a servant and you’re not particularly loyal, I take it?

  *I wouldn’t say that. I’m loyal. I’m finding out secrets about you right now for Jazmene. Secrets like where you were hiding the last several months.

  Safire stiffened, then pictured the chamber where Falken had first hidden her, every cobweb and battered piece of furniture in exquisite detail. Quickly, I focused on that chamber too before my thoughts strayed to more dangerous memories.

  *You have more control over your mind than your loose tongue would indicate, little one. Clever--that chamber could be anywhere. Surely, though, you didn’t spend the whole time there?

  Safire concentrated on a cobweb high in the corner of Falken’s chamber. A glistening black spider waited in the middle of it. A small bluebottle flew into the web, its struggles to free itself causing the whole web to tremble. The spider suddenly dropped down to the fly and bit it. The fly, immobilized, was helpless as the spider spun silk. When the spider started to wrap up the bluebottle, it lifted its head to reveal a perfect miniature of Undene’s face, her white eyes glowing where the spider’s eyes should have been.

  “You wayward little witch,” Undene exclaimed in delight.

  “Merius inspired me.” Safire met my gaze. “Like one of your clever caricatures of courtiers as animals in your council notes. Remember the one you did of Peregrine as a snake?”

  “What is it, Undene?” Jazmene asked, and I started, suddenly remembering there were others in the chamber with us.

  “Safire’s showing me rude pictures of myself. It’s quite amusing.”

  “What?”

  “I wish you could join us, Your Majesty, but Safire‘s talent doesn‘t reflect in the mirror, not like mine.”

  “Undene, remember what we discussed.” Jazmene’s voice was sharp.

  “Of course, Your Majesty. We’re almost finished here,” Undene said, turning back to the mirror. *Impatient fool--little does she know. she thought.

  *What doesn’t Jazmene know? My hand tightened around Safire’s fingers.

  Undene smiled. *A lot. And I’d tell you all, Quicksilver, had we but time. She winked then, and I thought it was the most perverse gesture I’d ever seen. *But alas, we only have time for me to tell you that you caused quite a ruckus. Jazmene and Radik had a nasty, nasty quarrel over you two this afternoon, the nastiest quarrel I’ve ever heard them have.

  *What?

  She hooted. *Radik was a naughty boy, coming up here with all those guards to get a peep of Safire in her shift. He didn’t have Jazmene’s permission, you see.

  *Why did he do it then?

  *To provoke you, of course. He can’t wait for your duel, Quicksilver.

  *What about the queen? How does she feel about the duel?

  *She let your challenge stand because she hoped it would summon Safire out of hiding, and she loves to watch men duel, especially with real swords. For someone who calls everyone else barbarians, she‘s quite uncivilized herself at times. But now . . .

  *I take it then she’s not so eager for the duel now, now that Safire and I consummated the mind bond?

  *She wanted to revoke your challenge, for fear of what would happen to Safire if you were killed. Radik finally talked her into letting your challenge stand--he said he would hurt you just enough so that Safire would be forced to show off her healing ability. But I don’t trust him. Watch him, Quicksilver--he means to cripple you forever and call it an accident.

  *How dare he? Safire’s breath came in short gasps, her face red.

  Undene grinned. *Careful, little one--your temper could burst a vein.

  “I’m tired, Your Majesty,” she said as she turned from the mirror, her voice querulous. “It’s turned into a dull show with the lovebirds gaping at each other. Perhaps we should leave them alone.” She grinned with a glimpse of yellowed teeth as she nudged Safire with her elbow.

  *Thank you, Undene. Safire thought. *You’ve given us much to ponder.

  The white eyes flashed in the mirror for an instant as Undene glanced back at it, at our reflections. *If you want to repay me, paint me as the spider and Quicksilver as the fly. She cackled again, and before either Safire or I could think of a suitably caustic response, she turned away, one of the handmaidens grasping her elbow as she trundled toward the door.

  The queen looked after them for a moment, then turned to us. “Is there anything else you require before bed? My servants are at your command.”

  “Please, Your Majesty, take the mirror out. I’ll not be able to sleep with it in here,” Safire said.

  “Of course.” The queen gestured to her remaining handmaid, who curtsied and then followed Undene, picking up the mirror on her way out.

  Jazmene suddenly reached out and touched Safire’s hair. Safire started, then lifted her head. If it had been Toscar touching her, she would have jerked away, but just as I couldn’t bring myself to spit at a queen, Safire apparently couldn’t bring herself to flinch from the royal hand. Instead she stood, frozen, as Jazmene gently combed her fingers through the loose curls.

  “Perhaps I’ll allow you and Merius to go to a ball, after you‘re more settled here. Naturally, you’ll be guarded, but then everyone in this palace is guarded, whether they realize it or not. We only confine you to protect you, you know.”

  “Is that why Lord Toscar and his men came in here to gawk earlier?”

  Jazmene looked at me, her chin tilted up. It occurred to me then that it must take someone with remarkable posture to hold the weight of a crown so proudly after wearing it all day, every day. “Someone misunderstood my orders,” she said, her tone as tilted as her chin. “Believe me, it won’t happen again.”

  “I’m glad, Your Majesty. Some women thrive on such attention, but not Safire.” I paused before I continued, “I do have one request.”

  “What is it, Merius?”

  “This chamber pleases in all respects but one. There’s nowhere to exercise properly.”

  “Yes,” Safire exclaimed. “A thirty minute stroll on the parapet every day--that’s all I would need. And somewhere Merius can run and practice . . . please, Your Majesty.”

  Jazmene’s eyes narrowed to thoughtful slits. “It’s asking a great deal of the guards to accommodate such a request, especially since I don’t dare let you out of this chamber together, at least not yet. One of you at a time could go perhaps. If
you continue to be compliant, I'll consider it. Now good night, my dears.” Jazmene trailed her fingers over Safire’s hair and my sleeve, leaving unpleasant tingles in her wake as she strode for the door. I glanced at Safire beside me as she stared after the queen.

  "I think the nightmare poison was a ploy, Undene’s ploy . . ." Safire whispered as soon as the door clanged shut.

  “Ploy?” I paused. “What do you mean?”

  "Undene told the queen the poison would break the mind bond, but I bet anything she lied. The poison only strengthened the mind bond--it didn’t break it. You remember what it was like--we couldn’t escape each others’ thoughts during the nightmares. Undene’s wanted our mind bond sealed tight from the beginning ."

  A shift happened inside. The silvery light around us suddenly seemed too bright, too warm, and I couldn’t quite catch my breath. Pieces started falling into place. "You’re right, Safire--I don’t know how or why, but you’re right. I can feel it. Undene has her own plot, separate from the queen’s--that was obvious tonight. What I want to know now is who Undene’s secret ally is . . ."

  Chapter Thirty-One - Mordric

  Cedric lunged toward me, his practice sword outstretched as he aimed for my knee. I stepped aside and brought the flat of my blade down so hard on his wrist that he cursed, his weapon dropping to the floor with a clang. He tore off his mesh practice mask, his shoulders heaving as he caught his breath, his hair damp and spiked with sweat. “How did you disarm me like that?” he demanded.

  “I told you that your lower blows are too predictable.” I set my sword on the table and removed my own mask, glad to have it off my head for a moment. Black specks darted in my field of vision whenever I wore the mask, and I preferred to leave it off. When I practiced with Merius, I left it off. I knew his triggers, what to do if the heat of battle took over and he got out of line. But Cedric had been an unknown quality before this afternoon. Someone with my reputed skill often had to be brutal with young men during training sessions--many of them were far too eager to prove themselves against a master to listen properly. But not Cedric--he actually seemed to realize he had something to learn. I could see now why he had such a good reputation with a blade--a solid, calm sort with an affable manner, he was a fine balance to my excitable son. No wonder Rankin had put them on guard duty together. I wished for an instant that Merius had absorbed some of Cedric’s stability. Of course, the Cedrics of this world rarely had the passion, the sheer rage, to do whatever was required not only to win, but to grind their enemies’ bones to dust. Whatever else could be said about Merius, he had the killer instinct, loath as he was to acknowledge it, even to himself. It was the one trait that might keep him alive during his duel with Radik. I shook my head and shut my eyes against the suddenly painful sunlight slanting through the windows.

  “Sir?” Cedric asked. “Is everything all right?”

  “The light’s at a poor angle. It’s time to stop for today.”

  “Thank you again--you’ve taught me more in an hour than I learned from Sir Jarrell in a month's worth of sessions.”

  “Indeed.” Somehow that didn’t surprise me--thank God I had trained Merius myself instead of letting Sir Jarrell near him.

  Suddenly the door to the salon opened, and Rankin poked his head around the edge. I noticed he looked all around the room before he entered, as if ascertaining if anyone else besides me and Cedric occupied it. I also noticed that he latched the door tight behind him.

  “I’m returning to my post right now, my lord.” Cedric bobbed his head in quick acknowledgement, heading for the door.

  “Thank you, lad.” Rankin grabbed Cedric’s shoulder before he could open the door. “Listen, you tell everyone Sir Mordric and I are in my study and are not to be disturbed, that we’re working on a secret treaty or any similar nonsense you may want to concoct. Particularly say nothing of import to that spying scribe.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Cedric ducked his head down in an attempt to hide a smile and quickly reached for the door latch. Rankin’s guards, hell his whole household, seemed endlessly bemused and amused by him. Yet, despite this, they followed his orders. I wondered how he managed to maintain such absent-minded, jovial authority. It wouldn’t have worked in the House of Landers, that much was for certain.

  As soon as Cedric closed the door behind him, Rankin turned to me, his face suddenly drawn. “King Rainier has summoned us.”

  “This afternoon?” I glanced out the windows, as if expecting to see some rare heavenly phenomenon like an eclipse, some sign that would explain the king’s abrupt summons. “Whatever for?” I looked back at Rankin. “He’s ignored our messages the last two weeks—why now all of a sudden?”

  “I can only assume it has something to do with Esme’s betrothal. Here, see what you make of it.” Rankin flicked his sleeve and pulled out a scroll, distinctly marked in blue wax with the leaping porpoise royal seal of Sarneth.

  I unrolled it with the crisp snap of expensive parchment, the heavy kind almost impossible to rip, and scanned the few terse lines. “A secret meeting then, without the queen?”

  “You think so?”

  “He wants us to use the back entrance, like we did the first night I was here. Why go to the hassle if the queen will be at this meeting?”

  “Good point.”

  I furled the parchment into a tight roll, tapping it on my palm as my mind raced through possibilities. “He wants to catch us off our guard, but why? Why, Artemious?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t either.” I sighed. “All right--we’ll need long cloaks with large hoods, something that will cover any insignias. At least it’s winter, so we won’t look completely daft. And I’m taking my sword.”

  “Do you think they’ll allow you entrance with it?”

  “The king can hardly deny you a guard, can he? It‘s against court protocol. All the ambassadors are allowed an armed guard, even in the palace.”

  Rankin’s face relaxed into a smile. “As long as you have your sword, that‘s all the guard I’ll need.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  We walked to the back trade entrance of the palace in silence. It had snowed the night before, and the crisp whiteness of it gleaming against the red stone of Midmarch hurt my eyes, so much so that the sudden darkness of the subterranean passages under the palace blinded me. I stopped and covered my eyes with my hand as if that would help. Then I cursed.

  “You cannot stop, sir,” the hulk of a guard rumbled behind me. “His Majesty’s orders are to let you find the way on your own with no stops. Otherwise I arrest you as an imposter . . .”

  “So arrest me. My eyes need a moment to adjust, that’s all. Damned snow.”

  “Mordric?” Artemious asked, the first words he had spoken since the embassy, an unusually long silence for someone as talkative as him. “I remember the way, I think.”

  “That’s all right.” I drew a deep breath, then lowered my hand from my eyes. Faint orange blobs slowly resolved themselves into the flames of lanterns set high on the walls to illuminate the gloom. I stepped forward and immediately remembered I had to turn left, then another left, then right . . . Artemious and the guard trailed me as I retraced the steps of my memory. My feet carried us to the bottom of the spiral staircase. I began counting steps, then doors under my breath, glad for the temporary mental distraction--it saved me from wondering about whatever awaited us in King Rainier’s library.

  The tenth door came too quickly, far too quickly. I stood beside Artemious, my sinews in knots under my skin as the guard knocked three times, then stepped aside to allow us passage. Safire’s painting of the queen and Toscar itched through the thin material of my shirt, as if the figures on the tightly rolled canvas danced over my skin. Damned witch talents. I adjusted my doublet so that the long inner pocket where the painting was concealed hung more freely, away from my body. I carried it with me whenever I left the embassy, just in case the opportunity arose to use it as blackmail to
free Merius and Safire. One of Safire’s moving paintings would be a magical plaything to a queen like Jazmene, something to admire and perhaps use in an intrigue. It would be a curiosity to a king like Rainier, something to study and perhaps use in an experiment. However, it would be far more than a plaything or curiosity to the resentful masses seething through Midmarch’s underbelly. To them, it would symbolize the decadence and decay of the royal court, captured on an undeniably enchanted canvas. Some would decry it as demonic, as witchcraft, but most would seize on it as undeniable proof of Jazmene’s duplicity to her king and his country. In the wrong hands (or right hands, depending on one’s perspective,) one magical painting of the queen and her not-so-secret lover could spark the conflagration of rebellion.

  As we entered the library, the weight of all Rainier’s books and scrolls, all that accumulated knowledge, pressed down on us. It seemed to subdue even Artemious’s scholarly curiosity so that he stopped with me, his gaze not on the books but on the small group near the fireplace.

  The first thing I noticed was Jazmene‘s absence. The only people in the chamber were King Rainier, who stood near the hearth, two guards on either side of the fireplace, and an old woman seated in the warmth of the fireplace alcove. Orange light glinted off the thousands of beads on her black dress. A widow then. Who the hell was she?

  The king stepped forward, his hands clasped behind his back. Like the widow’s gown, his black eyes gleamed orange in the light from the fire. “Ah, Landers, you brought your sword,” he said. “I‘m pleased.”

  “Why, will I need it, Your Majesty?” I asked as I straightened from a hasty bow.

  “Perhaps, perhaps.” His reedy voice cracked with some strange excitement as he brought his hands forward and rubbed them together as if to warm his fingers. Rankin and I glanced at each other, both at a loss for words, both out of our depth. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been out of my depth.

  “Please, Lord Rankin, Landers--sit.” Rainier indicated two arm chairs near the fire. “Would you like any refreshment?”