I raised my hand and slapped him across his stubbly cheek before I even realized what I was doing. Then I fell back, a familiar heat burning under my eyelids.
“Safire!” he exclaimed.
“You ass. You’re such an ass . . .” All my fear and anger and tension spilled forth in a messy rain of tears, and I grabbed him around the waist and sobbed into his shirt, careful not to jar him. “Oh Merius . . .”
“Shh,” he whispered, his breath warm in my hair. “It’s over with, sweetheart. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”
I drew away enough to get a good look at his wrist. His sleeve had ripped at the cuff, and a large portion of his forearm was visible. The actual break was not at his wrist, but at the narrowest part of his forearm, just above his wrist. There was a wide gash there, still bleeding around the edges--no blade had made that gash. It was too rough-edged for a blade. Toscar’s boot heel had made that gash. My insides churned with renewed rage.
“Your poor hand.” I loved his strong, lean hands, his long fingers, the reddish cast of the dark hairs that grew sparsely across the prominent peaks of his wrist bones and knuckles. What if he could never use his right hand again? I reached out to touch the wound, with the vague thought that I should try to heal it. Then I hesitated. The court physician should set it first before I tried to mend the bone.
“You can touch it,” he said.
“But it must hurt.”
He shook his head. “No, not anymore.”
“What?”
“It hurt like hell when it first happened--I couldn’t think straight. It was all I could do to block Toscar‘s blade. Then suddenly the pain was gone, vanished like when you take away one of my headaches . . .” his voice trailed off as we stared at each other. His eyes were dark, his pupils large and focused entirely on me, an intent, naked scrutiny that laid me bare down to my bones. “You--you took the pain away without even touching me.”
I dared a glance up and found him still gazing at me. I quickly looked away, my face flushing. “I don’t know. I just know I felt the pain you were feeling, and when I took the pain away from my arm, I must have somehow taken it away from yours,” I babbled, so uncomfortable I mumbled half my words. “The mind bond . . .”
“Shh, shh,” he leaned down and breathed in my ear. *We’ll talk later, when we’re alone.
“Merius,” Mordric said, a single word of command.
“Yes, Father?” We drew apart, Merius’s left arm slipping down to my waist as I took my place at his side.
“Let’s see your arm.” Mordric grasped Merius’s forearm and held it up, the queen behind him. Mordric’s face was its usual cipher. Then he suddenly nodded, as if satisfied. “The physician should be able to set that.”
“The pain must be excruciating,” Jazmene said.
“It’s gone a bit numb now, actually,” Merius said. Mordric shot him a sharp glance that somehow came to rest on me. He shook his head, just a quick, perfunctory movement that only I seemed to notice.
*He’s already composing the lecture in his mind. I thought.
Merius looked at me. *He better not lecture us.
“You must have a great deal of stamina to take such an injury so lightly,” the queen remarked. She touched Merius’s sleeve in a show of concern, when just minutes ago she had been entertained by the spectacle of his injury. I swallowed once, the gall of my hatred for this woman coming to rest uneasily somewhere between my lungs and my stomach. “We should have this set as soon as possible. Let me call the guards.”
“I’ll go with no guards of yours, Your Majesty.” The edge in Merius’s voice was unmistakable.
“Pay him no heed, Your Majesty,” Mordric said swiftly. “The heat of battle is still upon him, and he has a hasty tongue.”
“That he does.” The queen gave a brittle laugh. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled at the sound, and I glanced away from her, around the chamber. To my surprise, Toscar lingered near the entrance to the anteroom, bent over the body of the guard he’d killed. I would have thought the physician would be with Toscar by now, tending to his wounds . . . I stiffened as Toscar silently drew the guard’s sword from its sheath and straightened. He looked at our group, but he didn’t notice me staring at him. His steady gaze appeared to be trained on Mordric‘s back. Mordric apparently was saying something to the queen--he looked in her direction and his mouth moved--but I couldn’t hear him over the hornets’ buzz in my brain.
I tried to move, tried to speak, to warn them, but my voice caught in my throat, all my muscles as slack as when I first woke from the drugged sleep of the Ursula’s Bane. I would have slid to the floor in a heap had Merius not had his arm around my shoulders. I could feel him glance down at me. *Safire? he asked, his thought almost lost in the shrill whir of my brain.
*Toscar . . .
Merius released me so fast that I stumbled but didn’t fall, my sluggish muscles responding just enough for me to keep my footing. His hand on his sword hilt, the blade whipping through the air as he drew it, the firm thumps of his boots on the marble tiles as he dodged around the startled queen and lunged toward Toscar . . . these impressions cut me to the quick, and I opened my mouth in wordless cry, high and wild, the cry of a bird of prey diving down with talons extended. I strode forward, my eyes on Toscar. The pathway inside was wide now, and fire raced up it and into my cupped palms. I hurled the fiery ball at Toscar, at the sword he held in his hand.
The metal started to glow, an orange tinge at the edges of the blade. Toscar’s aura, already an intense band of indigo light around him, contracted with a dark shimmer. He stopped, the lines of his face knitting together as he glanced down at his weapon. Merius brought his sword around then, the blade catching Toscar across the neck. Toscar’s gaze left Mordric and slid to Merius, his expression still puzzled as if he couldn’t figure out what had just happened. Blood bubbled through the thin red line on his throat as he tried to draw breath, that same horrid gurgle as the slain guard had made earlier. The blood dripped down and dotted his collar as he fell to his knees, then collapsed prone on the floor. His aura shrank to an indigo line so thin that I could no longer sense it.
Queen Jazmene stepped forward, then back, then forward again, staring at the growing pool of crimson under Toscar’s head. “You’ve killed him,” she said, her voice faint.
“I told you I would when I issued the challenge, Your Majesty,” Merius said, sheathing his sword. "He meant to kill you, Father.” Merius‘s gaze was unblinking as he regarded Mordric.
Mordric bent to touch Toscar’s blade. He jerked his hand back and looked at me and then at Merius, his face pinched.
“I should have my guards arrest you, Merius, for drawing your sword so near my royal person.”
Merius laughed wildly. “Go ahead, Your Majesty. I don’t think much of your guards--they should have intercepted me long before now.”
Jazmene glanced around, her brow furrowing. “Where are they?” She looked oddly lost. There wasn’t a guard to be seen in the chamber, aside from the guard Toscar had killed.
“Perhaps they left when their captain slit their comrade’s throat,” Merius suggested. “That was a dastardly thing to do--to a man under his own command, no less.”
“It was in the heat of battle, and the guard had a sword,” Jazmene said.
“A sword he had no intention of drawing on his captain--he was only obeying your orders, Your Majesty.”
“And what of the guard you deprived of his ear?”
“At least he wasn’t a man under my command. At least I didn’t kill him,” Merius continued, relentless. “I only wounded him so he wouldn’t interfere--I assumed he was there to distract me so Toscar could practice backstabbing.”
“I’ve had enough of your wit, Merius. Radik should have cut out your tongue.” Jazmene knelt beside Toscar’s body, her face pale but composed. “Why didn’t you listen to me?” she asked the dead man, her voice soft. “I told you to cut his hamstring, first opportunity. Wh
y do you always have to play with them, love?” The cracked facets of her diamond aura swayed around her, casting jagged shards of light on the floor. She reached for Toscar’s hand and clasped it a moment before she removed a silver ring from the third finger.
“What’s that, Your Majesty?” I heard myself ask.
She looked at me, the usual glitter in her eyes dulled. “His seal ring designating him captain of the queen’s guard. He won’t need it anymore.”
A great echoing tramp of many boots made us all start then. We glanced toward the main entrance, Jazmene rising to her feet, her posture so dignified she resembled a graceful lily growing straight toward the sun. Guards poured through the entrance, at least two dozen of them. They approached our small group in two neat lines, marching in perfect unison. Merius grabbed my arm and pulled me close to him.
The guards stopped mere yards from us, their faces grim in their marked stolidity. “Your Majesty Queen Jazmene of Sarneth, former Royal Highness Princess Jazmene of Numer, you are under arrest,” the darker and taller of the two at the head of the lines announced, apparently the designated speaker for such occasions, as he possessed a booming, bass voice and crisp accent.
Jazmene’s face grew a shade paler and the faint lines around her eyes and lips deepened as if she aged several years in an instant. “Under whose authority?”
“His Majesty King Rainier of Sarneth.”
“And what is His Majesty’s charge?” The hint of a sneer lurked at the edges of Jazmene’s voice.
“Treason, Your Majesty.”
“Treason?”
“You sound so surprised, my capricious canary,” an odd voice echoed, a voice so nasal that it twanged painfully against my eardrums in its loudness. “Didn’t you realize when you married a king that being unfaithful to your husband meant being unfaithful to the whole country? It’s one thing to bear a cuckoo’s child to a cobbler or a baker, but to a king? Didn’t anyone tell you the consequences of an illegitimate prince, the rebellions, the wars, the nation-quaking wrath of a cuckolded king? Why, empires have been lost for lesser trifles. Tsk, tsk, you still aren‘t reading the right books.” A short, broad-shouldered man sauntered through the main archway then, guards flanking him and a huge diamond and sapphire crown perched on his disproportionately large head. All the guards bowed with Merius and Mordric as I made another clumsy curtsy.
“King Rainier?” I hissed at Merius, who nodded without so much as a glance sideways. The scene before us riveted him as it now riveted me, for King Rainier was the king in my painting. This ugly man, with his slippery black eyes and busy eel-like fingers, this man who I had never seen before--this man was the subject of a painting I’d started before I had the slightest inkling what he looked like.
“Your accusations would frighten me if they weren’t so pathetic,” Jazmene jeered. “I haven’t borne you any cuckoo’s child.”
“No, you haven‘t--only because I’ve had you so well-watched, my perfidious pearl.”
The queen laughed, a raucous, husky sound. “If you’d ever been a real man, a real husband to me, you would never have needed to resort to spying. You would have known yourself where I was every night.”
“Whatever else I am, man or rat, husband or snake, matters little now to the fact that I’m sovereign here. My will is law, and my will is that you suffer, Jazmene,” he said, his tone so tranquil that a shudder ran down my spine. His aura expanded, a complicated web of seething black and burgundy and blue lines that I imagined captured every secret that came his way.
“You’ll regret this,” Jazmene said. “Sovereign you may be, but many of the nobles support me--you’ll see.”
Rainier touched Toscar’s shoulder lightly with his toe, moving it just enough that faint ripples appeared on the surface of the blood pooled around the dead man‘s head. I turned away, bile rising in my throat.
“We’ve just seen what happens to nobles who have your favor. I doubt many will want to follow Lord Toscar’s example,” the king said.
“You disgust me, little spider,” the queen spat, her hands raised as if she meant to lunge forward and rake her nails down that wide, uncompromising brow, scratch those flat, dark eyes.
“Indeed--we’ll see if you’re still so disgusted after a few days alone in the dark with some real spiders. Take her to the cell I arranged.”
“Rainier!” she screamed as the guards grabbed her, not a cry for mercy but a howl of rage. “Rainier, you’ll regret this!”
The shrillness pierced my brain, and I covered my ears as they dragged her from the chamber. Merius’s arm tightened around my shoulders. I leaned against his solid warmth, his aura draped over me like a blanket. Slowly, I lowered my hands as her screams faded, the buzz of a heavy silence taking over as the king examined us and Mordric. The strands of his aura seethed all around us, a vast curiosity that explored everything with a passion to understand the whys and workings of all things. A disembodied curiosity, a detached if intense logic, with a slight chill clinging to its strands, a chill I sensed even through the protection of Merius‘s aura.
“I understand you and Toscar had quite a match, young Landers,” the king said finally.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Merius squeezed my shoulder. *Say as little as possible around him.
*I’ve gathered that--you should see your father’s aura right now. A slate cloud so dark it shimmered black whirled around Mordric, an acrid smoke that made my eyes water. His seemingly impassive expression as he watched the king gave no hint of the inner turmoil apparent to a witch. *This is the most shaken I’ve seen him.
*He looks pretty calm to me, considering he had to break up a duel and almost got stabbed in the back himself. Father has ice water in his veins, Safire.
*I wish you could see what I see--you wouldn’t say that. Jazmene and Toscar together didn’t upset him half this much.
“Merius,” Mordric said sharply then, jarring us both. “His Majesty said you’re welcome to stay at the palace as long as you would like.”
“Sorry, Your Majesty--the arm went numb, and now it’s starting to hurt again. I’m afraid the pain distracted me.”
“Indeed.” A faint smile that crinkled at the edges played over the king’s mouth as he regarded us. *He’s smirking was my indignant thought. *Why is he smirking at us like that? He looks like a smug cat with a mouse between his paws.
*Because he’s a world-renowned ass. All these people are asses. God, I’ll be happy to get back to Cormalen. Aloud, Merius said, so smoothly I could kiss him, “Thank you for the generous offer, Your Majesty, but I really should return to the embassy. I’ll be fortunate if Lord Rankin takes me back as a guard, considering how long I’ve been derelict from my duties.”
“Ah, your sense of duty is admirable, no doubt due in part to your father’s excellent training. You’re both to be commended,” Rainier said tonelessly, his words rushing over each other. The lines of his aura stopped writhing for a moment--apparently being pleasant strained him. “Please know that you’re always welcome here--you’ve rendered me a great service.”
*What does that mean? He’s the king--couldn’t he have had someone assassinate Toscar long before now?
Merius‘s fingers tightened. *Perhaps, but there would have been suspicions. This way, Rainier looks like the innocent victim, the cuckolded husband of a rapacious and bloodthirsty queen and her lover.
“I take it this is your wife? I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” Rainier said then, that flat black gaze traveling over me with an opaque scrutiny that raised my hackles. The spidery lines of his aura surrounded me, and I felt like a particularly fascinating specimen pinned to a dissection board.
“This is my wife Safire, formally of the House of Long Marsh,” Merius said.
I gave a quick curtsy. “’Tis a great honor, Your Majesty.”
“I understand you have some talent with a brush, Lady Landers, and that Korigann has been instructing you. If you wish to continue your instruction
, feel free. The service your husband rendered for me today deserves whatever recompense I can offer.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty. I would like to continue my lessons with Korigann, if he‘s amenable and has the time. He‘s a great artist and a fine man.”
“He’ll be more than amenable--he speaks highly of your dedication and talent.” The lines in the king’s aura twisted together into thick ropes when he spoke the word talent.
I cocked my head, watching the ropes the same way I would watch a tangle of writhing snakes, with fearful fascination. *I don’t think he means just my talent with a brush.
“Ah, here’s the physician at last,” Rainier said. Lichester had appeared in the anteroom entrance, and I shrank against Merius as I remembered the sting of the Ursula’s Bane on my tongue, the sour salty softness of Lichester’s plump fingers in my mouth. “Lichester, young Landers needs his cuts tended and his arm set.”
“Come with me then, sir,” Lichester said to Merius.
“Where?” Merius demanded.
The king chuckled, a dry whispery whistle like the wind through many reeds at once. “Not far, young Landers. The antechamber should be adequate. You can keep your wife and father nearby at all times if it pleases you.”
“It does, Your Majesty.” Merius gave a curt bow before he spun on his heel and followed Lichester to the antechamber, a couple guards loping after him like bloodhounds. I started after him, then felt pressure on my arm. Mordric had my forearm in a death grip, his narrow gaze trained on Merius and the physician.
“I know you want to help, Safire, but you better stay here with me. Setting broken limbs can be difficult, and Merius needs you at your best to tend him afterwards.”
I swallowed, realizing he tried to guard me from myself, my urge to take away Merius’s pain and heal him. Best the king and his men not see me do something witchy--it seemed that the king already knew too much as it was. “How did you know about the fight, sir?”
Tapestry Lion (The Landers Saga Book 2) Page 63