The Lion of Senet

by Jennifer Fallon

  “What’s your name?”

  Tia spun around to find Dirk standing at the door to the bedroom. She could hear Ella in the other room reassuring Kirshov, in between fussing over Misha. Close up, he was younger than Tia had first thought. About the same age as she was, in fact. But that just made it worse. The disconcerting thing was that except for those steel-gray eyes, he reminded her sharply of Johan Thorn.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I was just... I was going to say thank you for trying to help Misha. You did the best you could.”

  Patronizing pig. “I didn’t do anything special.”

  “You didn’t panic. Most people would have.”

  “I’m not most people,” she retorted, then gasped as she realized she had spoken the thought aloud.

  Dirk Provin smiled at her. “Apparently not. Did you want a hand making that bed? Ella’s getting impatient.”

  The offer left her speechless for a moment. Then she shook her head, certain that he had an ulterior motive. “I don’t need any help from you, Lord Provin.”

  He looked at her curiously, as if he couldn’t understand the reason for her animosity, then he shrugged and walked back into the other room.

  Chapter 52

  Ivon made Tia some hot tea when she returned to the house that evening, still shaken from her encounter with Prince Misha. They sat around the table in Ivon’s tiny, cat-filled kitchen, while Reithan and the tubby little soldier listened to her tale with growing concern. Reithan didn’t say much, but he shook his head a lot and Ivon tut-tutted frequently, which Tia found intensely annoying.

  “That was foolish in the extreme, Tia,” Ivon said when she finally finished her story. “You should not have brought yourself to the attention of Prince Misha, or the Shadowdancer.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Just let him lie there twitching and foaming at the mouth?”

  “You should have run like hell,” Reithan advised.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” she retorted. “You weren’t there.”

  “There’s one thing about your tale that bothers me, missy,” Ivon said, shooing a cat off the table that was trying to drink out of his teacup.

  “What’s that?”

  “You say Prince Misha is a poppy-dust addict? I’ve never heard anything about it. I mean it’s well known that’s he’s crippled and poorly, but there was never any suggestion that he was an addict.”

  “Poorly? That’s probably the story they spread to cover it up,” she shrugged.

  “But are you sure? You’re awfully young to be such an expert on such matters, missy.”

  “I’m sure,” she replied. “And stop calling me missy.”

  “But it seems so out of character.”

  Tia laughed sourly. “You think a member of the nobility addicted to poppy-dust is out of character?”

  Ivon sipped his tea as his brows drew together in concern. “Oh, I know it’s a problem, both here and in Dhevyn. But that’s just my point. Prince Antonov despises anyone who has anything to do with poppy-dust. The Senetian Guard spends most of its time hunting down criminals who traffic in it. He stripped the Earl of Dochovnat of his lands and his title when he discovered him using it. And the Duke of Galean’s son was executed when he was caught dealing with the Baenland pirates.”

  “It’s one thing to condemn others,” Reithan pointed out. “But it’s a different story when it’s your own flesh and blood. In fact, if it’s true, then the last thing Antonov could admit was that his son is an addict.”

  “It accounts for Ella Geon being in the palace, too,” Tia reminded them. “If there’s anyone on Ranadon who knows how to deal with a poppy-dust addict, it’s her.”

  “She has experience in that sort of thing?” Ivon inquired curiously.

  Reithan and Tia exchanged a knowing glance.

  “Oh yes, you can count on that,” Reithan told him.

  Ivon shook his head with a puzzled frown. “It all seems very odd to me.”

  “Well, I’m just glad I got out of there in one piece. Ella Geon threatened to flay me alive if I said anything to anyone. And I don’t think she was joking.”

  “You said you spoke to Dirk Provin afterward,” Reithan said. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing of substance. I spoke to his servant, too.”

  “Now what did he have to say?”

  Tia pulled a face. “He says Dirk Provin is the smartest, kindest, bravest person in the whole world.”

  “That’s quite a recommendation.”

  “I’m not sure I believe it, though. I think the poor child is too grateful for the roof over his head to risk telling me what he really thought. After what Dirk Provin ordered done to make Johan talk, you can understand why his servant is afraid of saying anything uncomplimentary about him.”

  “You really don’t like Provin, do you?” Reithan remarked.

  “He’s a patronizing snob, as well as a sadist and a traitor to his own people.”

  “You’re not interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt?”

  “Give me one reason why I should!”

  Reithan didn’t answer her. He stood up and walked to his vest, which was hanging on a nail on the back of the kitchen door, and pulled a letter from his pocket, which he tossed on the table.

  “What’s this?”

  “A letter.”

  “I can see that. Who’s it from?”

  “Lexie. It arrived today via one of our contacts in the Brotherhood.”

  Tia opened the letter curiously, turning her chair slightly to catch the evening sun streaming in through the dirty kitchen window. The letter was deliberately vague, to protect them if it fell into the wrong hands, but for those who knew her, it was easy enough to understand.

  My son, the letter began, I trust you are enjoying your journey. We are all well at home.

  I have unexpectedly heard from a distant cousin we have not heard from in many years. She is concerned for her youngest son. He is currently staying with a prominent family in the same city as you. You can imagine my surprise when we received a letter from her via your cousin in Kalarada, but it appears genuine. She fears that her son may be in danger and begs our help. In light of this, I believe it may be worth making contact with him. He might be in a position to aid you in your own endeavors. I will leave the decision up to you.

  Your sister sends her love. Please tell your traveling companion that her father has been doing well.

  All my love,

  Mother.

  Tia read the letter twice, then looked at Reithan. “Does this say what I think it says?”

  “It makes no sense to me,” Ivon complained.

  Reithan took the letter from her and studied it for a moment. “If I’m reading it correctly, Morna Provin sent a letter to Mil via Alexin, asking for help, because she thinks Dirk is in some sort of danger.”

  “If it’s true, she’s got some damn nerve,” Tia said. “Fancy thinking she could just run off and live like a good Senetian lackey on Elcast for all these years, then demand our help the minute something happens to one of her precious babies.”

  “You can be sure Wallin Provin knows nothing about any letter,” Ivon remarked. “Such a thing would be considered treason.”

  “That’s never bothered Morna Provin in the past,” Tia pointed out.

  “Do you think you could arrange to talk with him?” Reithan asked Tia.

  “Who? Dirk Provin? Not a chance! For one thing, I don’t believe he’d help us. For another, if I did say anything to him, he’d probably have me arrested. And besides, I was only filling in for Emalia. She’ll be back at work tomorrow and I won’t even get a chance to get near him.”

  “Emalia won’t be back for a while.”

  “What did you do, Reithan?” she demanded suspiciously.

  “I introduced her to a friend of mine. He’s second mate on a ship that was leaving for Damita on this morning’s tide. Emalia was quite enchanted by him. I imagine she’
s somewhere southeast of Avacas at the moment, merrily sailing the Tresna Sea.”

  Tia glared at him. “I asked you to keep her occupied, Reithan, not arrange to have her kidnapped.”

  Reithan smiled. “You have way too much faith in my stamina, girl.”

  “You wanted her out of the way and she is,” Ivon pointed out. “One day changing beds in the royal suites wasn’t going to help much.”

  Tia shook her head. “I’m still not going to walk up to Dirk Provin and ask for his help.”

  “No, that would be foolish in the extreme. But we do need to find a way to sound him out. I’m rather curious to know whose side he’s really on.”

  “Reithan, he arranged to have twelve innocent men murdered! I think it’s pretty damn obvious whose side he’s on!”

  “You may be right. But I’d still like to know for certain. If he has any sense of loyalty to his own people, he could be just the break we’re looking for. He has access to the whole palace, and more important, to Johan.”

  “He’s the best friend of Prince Kirshov and the Lion of Senet’s pet,” she reminded him. “I promise you, Dirk Provin is nothing but trouble.”

  “And if he is, I’ll happily stand by and watch while you slit his throat,” Reithan assured her. “But not until we know for certain.”

  “He’s very clever,” Ivon suddenly said.

  “He certainly knows when he’s on a good thing,” Tia agreed.

  “No, I mean really clever. I heard Prince Kirshov talking about it to Sergey at training a few days ago.”

  “Who’s Sergey?” Tia asked.

  “The captain of the guard.”

  “What did he say?” Reithan asked.

  “I didn’t hear all of it, but I think he was complaining about having to study with the Provin boy. I mean, it’s common knowledge that Kirshov hates spending time with his tutors. It’s also common knowledge that Prince Antonov only lets him train with the guard if his tutors remain satisfied with his academic progress. Kirshov was telling Sergey that it was bad enough studying with Princess Alenor, but since Dirk arrived, it’s been a thousand times worse. He called him the next Neris Veran.”

  Tia stilled warily before she glanced at Reithan.

  “Surely he was exaggerating,” Reithan suggested in a carefully neutral voice.

  “Maybe,” Ivon shrugged. “But I’ve heard other people talk about him, too. And if you believe palace gossip, the High Priestess has been badgering Prince Antonov about sending him to the Hall of Shadows, although why she would want Morna Provin’s son, of all people, anywhere near her sacred Hall is beyond me.”

  Later that evening, when Ivon was snoring contentedly next to the fire with his favorite tomcat on his lap, Tia and Reithan slipped out into the yard. The sun was high overhead and the world was saturated in its scarlet light. Reithan closed the door gently and turned to face Tia, making no attempt to hide the concern he had so carefully concealed from Ivon.

  “It’s not true, is it?” Tia demanded in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “About Dirk Provin? Goddess, I hope not!”

  “My father is a freak of nature, Reithan. He says that himself. It isn’t possible that Dirk Provin could have the same ability!”

  “We’re in trouble if he does,” Reithan warned. “The only thing that stops Belagren from becoming omnipotent is the fact that she can’t access the knowledge that Neris left behind.”

  “But if Dirk Provin is clever enough... if he could find a way through the Labyrinth . . .” She let the sentence hang, afraid to voice her fears.

  Reithan nodded grimly. “Then Belagren would learn when the next Age of Shadows is due.”

  “And if she learns that, she’ll share it with Antonov...”

  “I know,” Reithan said heavily. “If that happens, Dhevyn truly will lose all chance of ever being free.”

  Tia nodded in agreement, as she thought over the problem. She’d seen no sign of Dirk’s allegedly superior intelligence when she’d met him. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there. But if it was true, the danger he posed was extreme.

  Her father had spent months devising ways to hide and forget what he’d discovered. The Labyrinth constructed by Neris Veran in the ruins at Omaxin had confounded the High Priestess and her minions since before Tia was born. In fact, she owed her existence to it. It was the Shadowdancers’ attempts to coerce Neris into revealing the secrets of the Labyrinth that had prompted Ella Geon to seduce her father and produce a child that they believed they could use to control him. Johan had ruined their plans when he had rescued Neris and then later stolen her as a baby from the Hall of Shadows, but they had never stopped searching for a way to get through it, and every year that passed made the problem more critical.

  Belagren’s dilemma now, Tia knew, was that she didn’t know when one of the suns would disappear again. The only person alive who knew that was Neris Veran, a mad, drug-addicted, broken man, who blamed himself for the rise of the Shadowdancers and all the suffering and death that came with them.

  Neris would tell nobody what he knew, not even Johan. He had constructed the maze believing that it would be a lifetime or more before someone else came along who could find a way through it.

  Tia and Reithan both understood why Neris had done what he had. They also believed that if they could announce when the Age of Shadows was due to return, they could expose Belagren and her cult for the charlatans they were, break Antonov Latanya’s power and finally free Dhevyn from Senet.

  And now Dirk Provin—that arrogant, sadistic little bastard from Elcast—was going to ruin everything.

  Tia didn’t doubt for a minute that Dirk would throw his lot in with Antonov and Belagren. And if he was as smart as Ivon claimed, then he might be able to find a way through the Labyrinth, discover the knowledge that Neris had gone to such pains to conceal and hand the High Priestess unlimited power.

  “He has to die,” she hissed.

  “But he might be on our side,” Reithan pointed out.

  “Why should he be?”

  “And who’s going to kill him? You?”

  “Gladly,” she promised savagely. “And what’s more, I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.”

  Chapter 53

  Following Antonov’s announcement over the dinner table that it was Dirk who ordered the murder of a dozen innocent men to persuade Johan Thorn to talk, everyone looked at him differently. As the palace swung into the preparations for Kirshov’s coming birthday celebrations, he found people giving him a wide berth. They refused to look him in the eye. Conversations would suddenly halt when he entered a room. The tutors who were responsible for his lessons with Alenor and Kirsh each day treated him with such deference it was embarrassing.

  Kirsh just shrugged when he heard about the executions, certain that his father had a good reason for whatever he did. Alenor barely even blinked at the news. She’d lived in Avacas long enough not to question what went on in Antonov’s court. They believed him when he protested that he’d had nothing to do with the slaughter. But when he mentioned the rumors and the sly looks to Alenor and Kirshov, they told him he was imagining things.

  But he wasn’t imagining it, he knew, and nothing drove home his isolation more than the reaction of the serving girl in Misha’s chambers after he’d had that seizure. Antonov had managed to make him out to be the essence of pure evil. Dirk didn’t know who the girl was, but she had looked at him as if he was a fiend. She had been openly hostile when he’d tried to thank her, too. And if that was the reaction of some nameless serving wench, what must Johan Thorn think of him?

  He’d done his best to avoid contact with Johan in the weeks since his arrival in Avacas, although Antonov had urged Dirk to visit him on a number of occasions. Despite his status as a prisoner, with the Queen of Dhevyn due any day, Antonov was taking some pains to appear as if he was treating Johan Thorn as a prisoner of rank, rather than the common heretic he believed him to be. Dirk had resisted until now. He so desperatel
y didn’t want to get involved, but at the back of his mind was a small voice that reminded him that, like it or not, he was involved, and that even if he hadn’t been Johan Thorn’s bastard, he would have railed against Antonov’s treatment of him.

  He finally decided to visit Johan the day after Misha’s seizure. The serving girl’s hostility had convinced him that he should do something, even if it was just to assure Johan that he’d had nothing to do with those men’s executions.

  Johan’s room was on the third floor beneath the royal suites in the west wing, which had been cordoned off from the rest of the palace. Dirk descended the stairs behind a guard sent to escort him to Johan’s room when he had asked to see him.

  The room faced the western side of the city, and the setting sun flooded it with light. The ceiling was high and decorated with a candelabrum that could be lowered by a chain, which made Dirk wonder if this part of the palace had been built during the Age of Shadows. Nobody built rooms that required artificial lighting anymore.

  The exiled king was leaning on the windowsill, staring at the magnificent view of the city stretched out before him. The second sun sat low on the western mountains. The first sun was just beginning to appear over the opposite hills, bathing the eastern horizon in a ruddy light. An earlier rainstorm made everything glisten with moisture, and scattered clouds moved across the sky, throwing a patchwork quilt of shadows over the city.

  Johan did not turn as he heard Dirk approach. “I wondered if you’d have the gall to face me again.”

  Dirk walked through the room that was stripped of anything Johan might use as a weapon. The shelves were empty, the cupboards bare. He walked across a surprisingly rich carpet to the window. “Sir?”

  “Nice view, don’t you think?”

  “It’s magnificent.”

  “This used to be my room, you know. I used to stay here as an honored guest once. But we were young then, and it was considered politic to ensure that the future ruling princes of Dhevyn and Senet were at least nodding acquaintances.”

  “Perhaps that’s why . . .”