Then he looked up to meet the king’s considering frown and suddenly wondered if perhaps he should have let his father go on thinking little of Oressa.
But no. Letting that go on had never served either his sister or their father well, however Oressa felt about it. Besides, Gulien and his sister were both in such dire standing with their father now, Gulien no longer cared whether the king realized how much he, Gulien, resented his treatment of Oressa. He met his father’s eyes for a long beat before lowering his gaze.
After a moment the king said, “This way,” and directed Gulien out again into the narrow hallway, not back the way they’d come, but toward the smaller sitting room.
This, despite its name, was a generous space. It held two groups of comfortable chairs beneath hanging porcelain lamps, a sideboard for chilled wine or other refreshments, wide murals on three walls, and a single large window that looked out onto a sheer drop to the gardens below. It also held, new just this hour, Gulien surmised, two of the short, heavy chains used to confine violent prisoners in the dungeon below the palace. The chains had been placed about ten feet from each other, about four feet from the floor, each flanked by a chair on one side and a low table on the other.
The king crossed the room to the chair by the farther chain and beckoned to his son.
Gulien didn’t move. In that moment he couldn’t have moved to save his life. “Sire—” Then his breath failed. He tried again. “Father—”
“My son,” the king said, his tone flat, and beckoned a second time.
Gulien did not precisely disbelieve that his father would do this, but . . . he couldn’t believe it. He felt sick. He felt as though he had been struck and was only now beginning to understand the severity of the blow.
He didn’t know what his father saw in his face, but Osir made a slight movement, instantly checked, and said, “Gulien—” Then he cut that off and stood in silence for a long moment, his steady, dispassionate gaze on his son’s face. Gulien was unable to read anything in his father’s expression, but at last Osir said, not gently, but more mildly than Gulien would have expected, “I grant you pardon, my son. I have no intention of looking elsewhere for my heir.”
Gulien took a breath as though it were the first he’d managed in an hour. “Then why . . . ?”
“Practical necessity.” Osir beckoned a third time, this time with a curt impatience that required obedience.
Crossing the room seemed to take longer than any reasonable measure of time. Time enough for fury to kindle and burn high and wither to ash, for defiance to struggle to be born and die again, for shame to crush Gulien’s heart. Gulien did not resist when his father took hold of his arm. He only said quietly, “Father. Please. This isn’t necessary.”
“You are mistaken,” the king told him shortly, locking the chain. “I am unfortunately required to leave Caras. I trust my absence will be brief, but I would prefer to find Caras still mine when I return. Though I have pardoned you once, I do not wish to be compelled to do so a second time.”
Unable to meet his father’s eyes, Gulien dropped his gaze.
“Fortunately, Prince Bherijda will accompany me, which should remove the greatest chance of peril for both you and the city. However, I am not inclined to risk your wandering freely about the palace while I am gone. Particularly not as that foreigner’s men will remain in occupation.”
“In occupation?” Gulien asked sharply, bringing his gaze up again. “What bargain have you made with Bherijda?”
“A practical one. A temporary one. The game I am playing with Prince Bherijda has high stakes and a difficult board. I do not wish you to complicate the play, my son. While you are here in this apartment, my people can protect you and you cannot interfere with my intentions. I will therefore ensure that you remain here. Sit down, Gulien, and compose yourself.”
Gulien sank into the only chair he could now reach. The chain was long enough to let him rest his arm on the arm of the chair. He could stand up, if he wished. He could reach the table. That was the extent of his free movement now.
“Be patient. Shortly you will have company in your detention,” said the king, and in an unexpected gesture that Gulien did not know how to read, touched him lightly on the shoulder before leaving the room.
CHAPTER 21
Prince Gajdosik’s demeanor was calm as they waited for Oressa’s father to return, but Oressa could see the tension in his shoulders and back. That always gave away his uncertainty or fear, and when had Oressa learned to see through his mask of impassivity? She wished suddenly and intensely that for once Gajdosik should not be the one set at a disadvantage and forced into the role of a supplicant. But there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t even talk to him, not with Kedmes leaning in the doorway, glowering watchfully.
Then her father’s man glanced back over his shoulder and moved aside, and her father came back into the room.
Though Oressa had been unable to stop herself from flinching at his return, the king paid no attention to her at all. He looked Prince Gajdosik up and down, his expression impersonal but intent. Gajdosik met the king’s eyes, not precisely with defiance, but with no sign of subservience.
After that first comprehensive examination, the king resumed his seat and said, “Prince Gajdosik, you are my prisoner. I expect you to show me appropriate humility.”
Gajdosik hesitated a bare instant. Then he went to one knee and bowed his head.
“Your brother appears to hold you in some dislike,” the king said to him.
Lifting his gaze again, Gajdosik shrugged. “We have never been friends. I used that very whip on him once, when we were both much younger. He had offended the sister of one of my men. It’s rather a habit of his, unfortunately. I hadn’t realized he’d kept the whip with an eye for . . . future possibilities.”
“A long and silent grudge,” said the king. “I see.” He considered for a moment. Then he went on, without emphasis. “You would have been wiser to kill him, Prince Gajdosik, rather than leaving an enemy at your back. Now he is ascendant and you are, fortunately for you, my prisoner. I expect I shall receive a request or a demand that I return you to his keeping. What shall I say to him?”
“What you will,” Gajdosik answered, his voice level. “I am your prisoner. Whatever you do, I have no recourse.”
“What shall I say?” repeated the king patiently.
After a moment Gajdosik said, “Tell him that you will deliver me as a gift to our brother Prince Maranajdis. That thought will please Bherijda, should you wish to please him.”
King Osir tapped the arm of his chair very gently with the tips of two fingers. “Interesting,” he murmured.
“Or if you require some manner of barter with my brother, then offer me to him in exchange. You may bargain high, if you wish,” Gajdosik added, his tone edged.
“Hmm.”
“Or you might tell him that you will set me free, that I may remove my men from your northern coast and put them to use harassing Prince Maranajdis. That would be convenient for you, and there would be little risk that I will turn back against you now that Bherijda is your ally. I don’t have the men to face you both together.”
“I see,” said the king. “Yes. Enough.” The king considered his prisoner silently for some time. It was not a comforting silence. Boring and fraught at the same time. Oressa’s cheek still stung, but now her back ached as well, and her knees. She shifted her weight gingerly from her toes to her heels and, after a little while, back again. It seemed to her she had been standing here in this room forever, nervous and uncomfortable, unable to leave or sit, afraid to do anything that would draw her father’s attention to her. Her palace-honed sense of time, however, trained by innumerable court functions over the years, told her it had not even been an hour.
Gajdosik waited quietly, his head bowed. Oressa knew it was harder to kneel for a long time than to stand, but though he had to be as exhausted as she, he showed no sign of weariness. She wondered whether her fathe
r was deliberately drawing out this interview, maybe to test Gajdosik’s patience. She wondered just how far that patience would last today, when the Tamaristan prince had already been pressed so hard.
But at last the king said, “Prince Gajdosik, tell me about the Kieba. In some detail, if you please.”
Gajdosik lifted his head. He glanced at Oressa, but away again at once. She realized he was wondering what she might have already told her father. She wanted to say that she hadn’t yet told any part of the story, that Gajdosik could say anything he wanted and she wouldn’t contradict him, but of course she couldn’t. She tried hard to keep her face set in the proper calm court-princess mask.
Gajdosik described, in brief, terse phrases, what had occurred inside the Kieba’s mountain. He told the king about the savagery of the roused Kieba. He left out the vault of plagues and without exactly saying so made it sound as though the Kieba’s servants had simply perceived a threat without Oressa having anything to do with what had happened. He described the Kieba’s prison and, briefly, her appearance outside that prison, and what had come from that. He said nothing about the kephalos. It occurred to Oressa that Gulien had also left out any mention of the kephalos. She began to consider how she might cast her own story so as to do the same, because though she could not see any particular advantage to leaving out that part, it was obviously just as well to reserve as much as you could when you were questioned by an enemy.
Then Gajdosik described, succinctly but more or less truthfully, what questions the Kieba had asked him and what answers he had given, so far as he remembered, though he didn’t mention the Kieba’s chair.
“Then she sent us away, with firm advice to manage our own affairs ourselves,” Gajdosik finished, and waited. He didn’t glance at Oressa again. If she had already told her father everything, if she had been completely honest, well, Gajdosik hadn’t actually lied at all. Though he had certainly left out quite a lot. Oressa kept her expression bland.
“Well?” her father said to her. “Is this account accurate?”
“Oh,” said Oressa, surprised. She hadn’t expected to be asked yet. “Yes, sire, I think so,” she said promptly and confidently, because no one but she and Gajdosik knew what was true in that account or what had been left out, and she was sure neither of them would give anything away.
The king said to Gajdosik, his tone flat, “You alarmed the Kieba by your ill-considered attempt to steal her power. Now she will be on her guard. For that alone I should not only give you back to your brother but also provide him, if he is so inclined, with his choice of whips.”
Gajdosik said nothing.
The king said, his tone even flatter and less expressive, “And you took my daughter with you into the Kieba’s mountain. You offended the Kieba while my daughter was in your company, by all you knew drawing her into your calamity. For that,” he said very softly, “I should wield the whip myself.”
Gajdosik still did not answer, but this time he flinched and lowered his head.
“So Prince Gajdosik held you as his prisoner,” Osir said to Oressa. “Did he offer you insult? Did he offend your honor?”
Gajdosik stiffened but did not otherwise react to this. But Oressa straightened in outrage, aware even at that moment that she was affronted on his behalf as well as her own and that this was not very sensible. But she said sharply, “No! Prince Gajdosik and all his men have been perfectly courteous! Not like your friend Bherijda!”
Her father tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, not quite in an even rhythm. “Indeed,” he murmured. But he seemed, a little to Oressa’s surprise, to accept this as truth. He added, “Well, that is fortunate.”
Fortunate. Of course. Her father certainly wouldn’t his daughter’s value compromised. Oressa clenched her teeth, not only furious but ashamed that Gajdosik should see her father treat her so.
Her father studied Gajdosik. His eyes were narrow, which could sometimes be a sign of temper, but his expression remained unreadable. After a moment he called, “Kedmes!”
The man came forward a step, bowing. “Sire.”
Oressa’s father got to his feet, grimacing a little. Oressa supposed he did not much care for having to move back into this high apartment with all the stairs to climb and hoped, vindictively, that his knees hurt him.
But the king did not pause. He beckoned to Oressa, said, “Come,” curtly to Gajdosik, and led the way deeper into his apartment. Kedmes followed Gajdosik closely.
The king took them to the smaller sitting room. Gulien was already waiting there, seated in one of the chairs. He had bathed and changed his clothing, but he looked, if anything, worse for the opportunity: pale and stiff. He rose as their father came in, with a very small bow, and that was when Oressa noticed the chain. With an effort, she stifled her exclamation of dismay and anger, so that all that emerged was a throttled hiss. Her father glanced at her, his expression unchanged.
Kedmes traded Gajdosik’s bonds for the other chain. The Tamaristan prince did not resist, but merely stood in his place, watching the king with strict patience.
The king paid no attention to him or to Gulien. “Oressa,” he said shortly, and took her into the adjoining room, which was a small bedroom—obviously, by the feminine appointments, meant for a woman, on those occasions when Osir wanted a woman’s discreet companionship. She guessed that there might be a hidden door between this bedroom and the king’s. The thought that there might be a secret door between this room and her father’s made her skin crawl, but she couldn’t immediately spot any likely places for such a door, so maybe there wasn’t one. The room was prettily appointed, its porcelain lamps and fixtures painted with birds and flowers, but it had no window.
And Bherijda’s pretty chain had now been added to the room’s ordinary amenities. The chain had been looped around one of the bedposts, which reached to the ceiling and, despite its ornate carving, looked discouragingly sturdy. Unlike the chains from the dungeon, this chain was slender, light, and at least fifteen feet long. Oressa would be able to move freely between the bedroom and the smaller sitting room. She knew her father could just as well have had a third chain brought from the dungeon for her, but she did not find it easy, at the moment, to be very grateful for this consideration.
Her father gazed at her, narrow-eyed. Then he picked up the decorative manacle and held out his hand expectantly.
Oressa gave him her left hand and waited, expressionless, while he closed the pretty, delicate-seeming manacle around her wrist and locked it with its little silver key. She didn’t protest. She longed for him to be done with it if he was going to do it, and then to just go away.
Once the manacle was locked, however, her father tucked the key away and folded his hands behind his back, considering her. His gaze was steady and thoughtful—too thoughtful—the wrong kind of thoughtful, and Oressa realized that she had made a serious mistake. Impassivity had been all wrong. The girlish and none-too-intelligent daughter she’d always pretended to be would have cried and pleaded with him not to chain her up, begged to be allowed to go back to her own rooms, and promised to obey him. Instead, she had stood with her back straight and her eyes blank with secrets, and she had let herself look at him with the silent, concentrated hatred of a captive watching her enemy. And he had noticed it. He could hardly have missed it.
She had done everything wrong. She understood this all at once with a cold shock that was almost physical. She, unlike Gulien, had never knelt down and begged their father’s pardon. It hadn’t occurred to her, but it should have, and now it was too late. She shouldn’t have waited with such painful endurance through those awful interviews in the other room. She should have cried and protested on Gulien’s behalf and her own, passionately and without much coherence. Instead she had let her fear make her silent, and in her silence her father had seen that she hated him and was his enemy, and it was too late now to try to make him see something else. She dropped her gaze, not because she thought it would help, but because she
didn’t dare look him in the face.
Her father said in a level tone, “My daughter, you were foolish to trust Kelian.”
Astonished, Oressa stared at him. She knew she should lower her eyes again. But she was angry as well as afraid, furious for Gulien’s sake, and Gajdosik’s, and even on her own behalf. And it was too late anyway. So she said instead, matching his tone, “I know that. If you trust Bherijda, then you’re a fool as well—but you don’t, of course. You’ve made him fear you. That could be worse.”
Her father’s eyebrows rose slightly. “It is a calculated risk. As is so much else we must do.” He paused, considering her, and then added, “But you know that as well, do you not, my daughter? Gulien was correct. I have held you too lightly, and valued you, I think, too little.”
Oressa didn’t dare answer.
Her father turned and walked away without a word, back through the smaller sitting room and out, gone at last. She heard the door click shut behind him, took a long, shuddering breath, shrugged her shoulders to try to dismiss the tension that tightened all her muscles, and went back into the small sitting room, where at least she could join her brother and Prince Gajdosik in their captivity. If her father’s people would leave them alone, she had some hope she might be able to do something about that even now.
So, not much later, while Gulien fretted over his inability to pace and Gajdosik pretended to be perfectly at his ease, Oressa perched on the windowsill in the smaller sitting room, her back half turned to the view, her legs tucked up under her dusty skirts. She was working delicately to break one of the decorative copper wires off the manacle that encircled her left wrist, bending it back and forth, back and forth. All the wires were so tightly enmeshed that she could bend her chosen wire only a tiny bit each time. More a wiggle than a real bend. The wire might take all afternoon and half the evening to break. If it broke.
“He won’t keep us here long, not like this,” Gulien said. He jerked his wrist against the limits of his chain. “It’s unnecessary, it’s insulting, it’s offensive, and it’s completely improper.”
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