“Back east, or here in Vérella?”
“Here. Paksenarrion has seen them; she thinks something is missing, something she once found, but then forsook.”
“Do not play with us, Duke Verrakai,” Mahieran said, turning sharply to face her. “Do you so distrust the prince and his closest companions—?”
“I distrust the air itself,” Dorrin said. “I believe this matter will and should be made public, but what I think of these things will be nothing to the experience.”
“Then let us go to your house here in the city,” said Duke Mahieran. “Or just me and High Marshal Seklis, if you will.”
It was late now, long summer twilight shading at last to dusk, but Dorrin nodded. “As you wish, my lords. The prince should come, as the matter does touch on royalty.”
“Royalty!” Mahieran’s eyes widened. “Then we will come, at once, and with us what force we might need. Can I trust you to tell us truly?”
“Truly, I do not know. The house itself still holds traps and dangers, as I’ve told the Marshal who visited today and your guard-captain. But what I brought should be safe enough to open.”
Dorrin set out three wrapped bundles on the table. “I found these in my uncle’s study, in a vault in the wall, behind a … painting that had been there when I was a child. I must warn you—blood magery was used on at least one of these things. And they have their own magic.”
She unwrapped the goblet; when she touched it, she felt the now-familiar tingle. “This looked like a small urn when I first saw it; it was full of blood that then vanished in a mist.”
“Holy Gird’s protection be on us,” High Marshal Seklis muttered.
“The inscription on the rim of the cup changed from a script I could not read to one I could,” Dorrin said. She handed it to the prince, who took it gingerly and peered at the script.
“I can’t read this,” he said.
Dorrin quoted it for him. “Do you feel anything as you hold it?”
“Other than astonishment, no,” he said, handing it back. “Do you?”
“Yes,” Dorrin said. She unwrapped the box.
High Marshal Seklis peered at the designs. “That pattern—it reminds me of a drawing the Marshal-General sent, of something found in Kolobia.”
“Paksenarrion said the same,” Dorrin said. She ran her finger along the pattern on the box, and once more it unfolded to reveal the treasure within. “Paks and I think this is royal regalia from somewhere, but where, neither of us knows. Paks thinks the necklace found in a robbers’ den near Brewersbridge was in the same set—see this empty space?”
The prince looked eager and interested; Duke Mahieran reached toward the box, perhaps to touch the lining, and the box snapped closed so fast it bumped his finger.
“What was that! Did you think I was going to steal it?”
Dorrin shook her head. “It never did that before—though this is only the second time I’ve had it open. The other time, Paks was there. I don’t know, my lord—”
“You claim it did that by itself?”
“As it opened. Try tracing the pattern on the top, with your heart-hand finger, and then touching that blue stone in the center.” Dorrin stood back, giving him room.
Scowling, he traced the pattern as she directed; the box opened very slowly, but when he tried to touch the lining it snapped shut once more. “It doesn’t like me,” he said.
“Have you taken anything out of it?” High Marshal Seklis asked.
“No. I’ve touched the inside, though, and it never closed on me like that.” Once more Dorrin opened the box and stroked the blue velvet lining. The box did not move, until she touched the two ends, when it folded again.
“And the third thing?” Seklis asked.
“Ah. That’s two mysteries in one,” Dorrin said. She unfolded the cloth and spread it flat. “Paksenarrion says this design resembles one found on a cloth in Luap’s Stronghold, laid on a stone bench in a room otherwise empty.” She paused. They were all staring. “And then there’s the crown.”
As she spoke, the crown rose in the air and moved toward her. You are mine; I am yours. The voice in her head was so clear she thought the others must have heard it.
“How are you doing that?” All three were gripping their Girdish medallions as if for protection.
“I’m not,” Dorrin said. “It is. It is very old, and obviously magical—” Put me on. “—and you should also know that it speaks to me.”
“Speaks to you?”
Dorrin took the crown in her hands; light flashed from the jewels. She set it gently back in the center of the cloth and covered it. “Yes. I do not know when it came into our family, but I know it has lived surrounded by blood magery for a very long time and perhaps it—whatever it is—is confused at being at last free.”
“In the archives,” Duke Mahieran said, “the oldest records we have speak of the rituals attending the coronation of the old kings, the kings before we came over the mountains. What just happened—” He nodded at the three objects. “What just happened,” he repeated, “would fit those old rituals, or the stories told about them.”
“I brought these things to give you,” Dorrin said, turning to the prince. “You are the rightful heir of this kingdom; you will be our king; you should have them.”
“Not if they’re going to nip his fingers off,” Duke Mahieran said.
Seklis came closer. “Let me see that cloth again … if you can keep the crown from leaping to someone’s head.”
“Her head,” Duke Mahieran said. “That seems to be its chosen head. And the stones, you notice, are sapphire and diamond … Verrakai colors. Not ours.”
Dorrin unfolded the cloth again, and lifted the crown in her hands. It sang along her arms, commanding, pleading, for her to put it on. She did not, but waited while Seklis peered at the cloth.
“Sunlord,” Seklis said at last. “I think that’s the Sunlord’s symbol. Very old, that would make it. And it’s all embroidery, the entire surface. The cloth under it is white.”
“What does it mean?” Mahieran asked.
“Many questions to which we have no answers,” Seklis said. “But the only one that concerns me now is your purpose, Duke Verrakai, in bringing this here, now. That crown wants your head, unless I’m mistaken.”
“It has said so, but I am not royal-born, and the prince is. I thought here, perhaps, it would speak to him.”
“No,” Seklis said. “I think not. The old Tsaian crown was said to be of rubies, broken up during the sack of the palace in Gird’s day. This is not Tsaia’s crown.” He turned to Mahieran. “Would you know what realm in the south once had a ruling family with these colors?”
“No,” Duke Mahieran said, rubbing his nose. “And I advise against risking the prince’s life by trying that crown on him, if it does not choose.”
“You brought it as a gift?” Seklis asked.
“Yes,” Dorrin said. “As well, if I were found to be hiding a crown in a closet, you might think I meant to use it at some time, perhaps to claim the throne the prince is about to take in full power … especially since you already know the Verrakai retained some magery, and that I, too, have it.” She looked from face to face. “Indeed, from what was said earlier, it seems you have heard rumors of a crown, have you not?”
“Indeed we have,” the prince said. “I—the Council—discounted what Verrakaien said at their trial, and those trials were held in secret, but later rumors began in the city that the Verrakaien not only believed they were descended from kings, but had the proof of it, and a crown hidden that their magery could wake to great power.” He tipped his head toward the table. “Like that one.”
“We could not trace the rumor to its source,” Duke Mahieran said. “The market wardens heard it first, and assumed it came from some southern caravaner. Then a Girdsman told her Marshal, and the Marshal brought it to another, whose grange was just then buzzing with it. Marshals told High Marshals; in days it was all over the city
. The Verrakaien would return, return with proof at last that they should rule Tsaia and have power to enforce their will.”
“A Verrakai started that rumor,” Dorrin said. “Have you found any that had changed bodies, as I wrote you?”
“Does the person whose body is taken know it?” the prince asked. “On the night of the attack, Haron Verrakai appeared like Duke Marrakai—fooled many of us—for a time, but Duke Marrakai does not remember being taken.”
Dorrin shook her head. “No, that is a different thing, a glamour cast to confuse the eyes.”
“Can you do it?” the prince asked.
“I’ve never tried,” Dorrin said. “I do not know how.” She felt around inside her magery, but nothing happened that she could feel. Yet those facing her fell back a step. “What?”
“You—you look like Kieri Phelan,” the prince said. “As like as his twin.”
“I don’t know what I did and I don’t know how to undo it,” Dorrin said. When she looked at her hand, it looked like hers, but with a faint outline of another overlaid on it. She concentrated and suddenly that outline disappeared. “Am I … back?”
They nodded. “I hope that doesn’t happen by mistake,” Dorrin said. “I still don’t know how I did it. And I don’t want to.” She wrapped the crown again, then the other items, and placed them back in the padded sack. They called to her; she bespoke them in her mind, telling them they would be safe.
“You want us to take these things?” Duke Mahieran said.
“I do. I thought perhaps the prince could wear them, that they would recognize someone of true royal blood—I was willing to think our family had stolen them long ago, in Gird’s time—but I see now that might be dangerous to him. Still, if they are in your treasury and you know it, you can be sure they are not in my possession. That I am not plotting to put that crown on my own head—even if it does talk to me.”
The prince nodded, then looked at Duke Mahieran and High Marshal Seklis before turning again to Dorrin. “It is not yet the day of my coronation, and for matters of state I must still consult the Regency Council. But here are two members of that Council. I propose, for your own safety, to take your oath of fealty here and now, before them. You will give it again with the other peers, but your oath now will lend weight to your protestations that you intend no treason. Are you willing?”
“Of course, Lord Prince,” Dorrin said.
“That is well said, my lord prince,” Seklis said. “We three have reason to believe the Duke honest, but others will not.”
And would an oath make her honest? Had not her uncle forsworn himself a dozen times over?
“Are these chairs safe?” the prince asked.
“Yes,” Dorrin said. She pulled one around, sat in it, and stood again.
“I would have taken your word,” the prince said. He sat; Duke Mahieran and High Marshal Seklis moved to either side of him. Dorrin knelt before the prince, and phrase by phrase repeated the oath of fealty.
“Rise,” the prince said when it was done; he stood and once more they clasped hands.
“So how do we convey these things in a way that continues to show your loyalty?” the prince said. “I cannot think that sneaking them into the palace in a sack is the best way to do it.”
“Perhaps not, but soonest is best,” Duke Mahieran said. “Our visit here tonight will not have gone unremarked … and if we come away with a mysterious sack, that story will be all over the city by midmorning tomorrow.” He turned to Dorrin. “Is there anything like a chest or casket here that you could put these in?”
“I haven’t investigated all the rooms,” Dorrin said. “Every one I found had multiple traps … there were chests in the bedrooms my uncle and his brother used.”
“But those, you said, were guarded by blood magery,” Seklis said. “My lords, it is very late, and Duke Verrakai knows of peril in this house. It is my recommendation that she wait until morning—full daylight—to transport those things to the palace, and do it herself, with her own escort. We are not taking them from her; she has offered them. And by then, perhaps, she will have found a suitable container, though the sack would do.”
Duke Mahieran chewed his lip. “Gird knows I don’t want to wake any evil here tonight, if a box that wants to bite my fingers is not already evil.”
“I think it is not, my lord Duke,” Dorrin said. “Opinionated, but not evil.”
“And I agree,” Seklis said. “I sensed no evil in those things. Though I am not a paladin, I am usually alert to evil.”
They left, then, with cordial farewells spoken outside in the street, where a few people still strolled past. “Do not worry,” the prince said, loud enough to be heard by anyone listening, “about the upkeep of the house while you are here. I will tell the Seneschal and he will speak to our banker. We will meet again tomorrow.”
Dorrin bowed. “You honor me, Lord Prince, and tomorrow I will be at your gates before midday.”
They rode off in a clatter of hooves. Dorrin dismissed her escort to the stable, all but Eddes, who came with her into the house and barred the door. With him, she checked the windows on the lower floors, the kitchen entrance, the gate to the stableyard. Then she gathered the rest of her escort together in the main hall. They yawned almost in chorus; her jaw ached with fighting back her own yawns.
“None of us will get much sleep tonight, but we can make it up tomorrow,” she said. She wished for a reliable junior captain or sergeant to share watches with, but what she had was what she had. “Jori, you’re the stableyard guard. That’s post one. There’s the gate, the windows in the stable itself, the stable roof. Here in the city, thieves might come any of those ways. Eddes, post two, front door. If someone sounding official demands entry, tell me, but do not open it. Inder, post three, scullery door, same rules.” If anyone came to the scullery door, it would mean Jori had failed his duty or been killed. She didn’t mention that. “Gani, post four, the cellar door. They should be spelled shut, but we take no chances. Perin, post five, upstairs between the main stairs down and the stairs to the third floor. Now: there’s a great glass in this house; your watch will last as long as the sand runs one way. Post one—that’s you, Eddes, this watch—will check the glass and turn it when it runs out and ring the bell. Every time the bell rings and the glass turns, you will move to the next numbered post, starting with Perin … Perin to post four, the cellar door, and when he comes, Gani, you to post three, and so on. Do not move until your replacement comes, and if he does not come, raise a shout. If there’s an alarm, do not cluster together like frightened chicks to a hen … wait for my orders. Clear?”
They nodded and muttered their agreement, shuffling off to their posts. Dorrin followed, making sure each was in his place, then went to the great glass in the downstairs hall and turned it, ringing the bell to start the watch. She went into the room where the royal treasures were, carrying the old trousers and shirt she slept in, and looked at the sack a moment. “I wish,” she said, “you could tell me your history and why you think you want me …” Then she changed, laid her court clothes on the table and stretched out on the floor, a candlestick and her sword to hand.
The house creaked, as old houses did. She heard no mice or rats—with no food in the house since before the Evener, they would have moved to better quarters. The room was stuffy with its shutters closed, but she’d slept in hotter, stuffier places. The smells were old and dry, whatever they were; she knew that here on the floor she would be smelling odors tracked in from the street, as well as those intrinsic to the house. She dozed off.
When the bell rang, she woke at once, lit the candle with her own magelight, and went to check on the rotation of the watch. Overhead, she heard Perin coming down … and then one by one they moved as she had directed. When they were all in place, she turned the glass again and went back to get what rest she could.
Dawn came early near midsummer; Dorrin woke Efla and Jaim, and sent three of her escort to sleep as soon as they’d had b
reakfast. The other two, she promised, would have their time later. Her own breakfast she scarcely tasted, thinking of all that must be done: find a suitable container for the treasure, cleanse the taint of blood magery, find the many traps … and the day-to-day running of the house, the market trips, the laundry, carting away the horses’ dung, fetching straw and hay …
A knock on the door interrupted her search for a suitable container—she had found three, but all heavily spelled—and she hurried downstairs as Eddes called her.
When she opened the door, two Marshals wearing formal blue tabards and two yeomen with blue sashes were waiting.
“Be welcome,” Dorrin said. “May I have your names?”
“Marshal Veksin,” one said, “and my yeoman-marshal Gilles.” The other, Marshal Tamis, introduced another yeoman-marshal, Berin.
“We should start with the worst contamination,” Tamis said. “Will you take us there, please?”
“Yes,” Dorrin said, “but I am required at the palace this morning and three of my men—who had watch the night through—are sleeping there—” She nodded to the smaller reception room, where the men snored away on the floor and her clothes were still laid out on the table.
“How many servants did you bring with you?” Marshal Tamis asked.
“Just a cook and a boy to help,” Dorrin said. “And five men for an escort and to manage the animals. I am more used to traveling light, military style, and did not think what a house this size might need.”
“I hear the prince visited yestereve,” Marshal Veksin said. He sounded as if he disapproved.
“The prince, Duke Mahieran, and High Marshal Seklis,” Dorrin said. “They did me the honor of coming here after I went to the palace; given the circumstances, I scarcely expected it and was not, alas, prepared to receive them as handsomely as they deserved.”
“They parted friendly, I heard,” Veksin said.
“Indeed so,” Dorrin said. “I had never met the prince, in my years with Duke Phelan’s Company, but the Duke had told me about him. It was both honor and delight to meet him and the others.”
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