The Lord-Protector's Daughter

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “I heard you made certain she had the rifle.”

  “I thought it was for the best, Mistress Mykella.” Areyst smiled pleasantly.

  Beneath the smile, Mykella felt his concerns, but she could not sense exactly what they were, except that, despite his words, he was clearly relieved to see her and Salyna. Especially her, and that unsettled her just a bit.

  Once they reentered the courtyard, Areyst inclined his head, then mustered their escort into a formation outside the stable.

  Although Mykella was not slow in grooming and rubbing down the gray, she did not rush. Nor did Salyna, yet, when they left the stable to cross the courtyard to the palace, the Southern Guards who had accompanied them—and the undercommander—still remained mounted and ready.

  Areyst inclined his head to them, but did not speak.

  38

  On Tridi morning at breakfast, Feranyt looked up from his tea at Mykella. “Have you been prowling around the lower levels of the palace again?”

  “Sir?” Mykella didn’t have to counterfeit confusion. She could go anywhere she wished in the palace unseen. “No, Father. I haven’t been prowling anywhere. I have more than enough to do teaching Maxymt about the accounts. Why?”

  “There have been reports, strange things, doors opening with no one around, silvers lying on the stones, door locks clicking when no one was there….” He kept looking at her.

  Mykella was surprised—and more than a little worried. Not that there were reports, but that such reports had been brought to her father weeks after the events had occurred. Was that just another indication of how out of touch he really was?

  Feranyt chuckled. “I can see you’re as surprised as I am. Good. I wouldn’t want you to make a habit of nocturnal prowling.”

  Not like Jeraxylt, she thought, without voicing the thought.

  After breakfast, she made her way to the Finance chambers, thinking about both her father’s questions and Undercommander Areyst. She’d been concerned about the undercommander ever since they had danced that single waltz at the ball because he had come across as direct and honest. After what had happened to Kiedryn and what she had sensed from both Nephryt and Demyl, the thought that something might happen to Areyst was disturbing. Yet how could she even warn Areyst without putting him in danger? And what could she say—that he was the only honest senior officer left in the Southern Guards and that he was in danger because he was? Who could possibly believe that? Equally problematical was that there was little way for her to see him anytime soon in a setting where she could convey her concerns. To create any public opportunity would be noted, and jeopardize him, while any use of the sight-shield to reach him might well create questions better left unraised. Then, too, there was the problem that, she realized, she found him attractive…and, if anyone discovered that, she’d be on her way to Dereka even sooner than would otherwise be the case—or she’d be confined under observation. That would leave her with few choices, and none of them enviable.

  Once in the Finance chambers she gave Maxymt a polite but perfunctory, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Mistress Mykella.”

  Mykella went to her table, where she began with the highway and river ledgers, reviewing the entry clerks’ work. Then she compared those entries and summations to Maxymt’s entries in the master ledger. She had to admit that Maxymt had learned quickly and that he was probably sharper with figures than Kiedryn had been—and that worried her as well.

  She forced herself to concentrate on the columns of figures in the ledgers before her. Slowly, slowly, the figures began to absorb her, and she was beginning to see yet another pattern….

  “Mykella!” Salyna burst through the door to the Finance study.

  Mykella looked up from the ledger, biting off the words of annoyance she had almost voiced when she sensed the grief and fear radiating from her sister. “What’s the trouble?”

  “Jeraxylt…” Salyna opened her mouth, then closed it. Her body shook with silent sobs.

  Mykella bolted to her feet. “What about Jeraxylt?”

  “He…there was an accident…they were practicing with blunted sabers…and his broke. So did the other guard’s, but…”

  Mykella glanced to Maxymt, then back to Salyna. Somehow, Maxymt was surprised…yet not surprised.

  “I’ll be back when I can,” Mykella said, moving toward Salyna.

  Mykella did not say anything more until they were outside in the corridor. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Salyna, still shuddering, nodded. Then, she straightened. “They sent a messenger to Father. Eranya told me.”

  “Where’s Father?”

  “In his study, Eranya said. He wanted to be alone.”

  He can be alone, but not until I’ve talked to him. Mykella increased her stride until she was almost running.

  “You can’t…” protested Salyna from behind her.

  Mykella hurried to the front of the building, barely looking at the two guards stationed beside the double doors before she stepped into the outer study, leaving the door open for Salyna, if her younger sister chose to follow.

  Chalmyr stood by the inner study door. “He said—”

  “I know.” Mykella summoned her Talent, projecting all the authority she could muster. “I will see him. Now.”

  Chalmyr looked at her, then stepped aside.

  Mykella did open the door gently, closing it softly as well.

  Feranyt sat behind the wide desk, looking almost blankly into space, his face ashen, although Mykella did not sense any of the unseen grayness she had discerned around his frame from time to time.

  “Father…what happened?”

  Feranyt shook his head. “He’s dead…”

  “Do you know how it happened?”

  “It doesn’t matter…”

  She could sense that she’d get no real answers from him, not at the moment. “Thank you. I’ll be back later.” She turned and started to head out of her father’s study.

  “Mykella…don’t…”

  She ignored his words and kept moving, through the door and past Chalmyr and Salyna, both of whom just looked as she swept past them, hurrying out into the corridor and then down the steps and out into the courtyard.

  Once out in the chill, she glanced around, but there were no mounted guards anywhere in sight. So she hurried across to the stable, where she saddled the gray as deftly and quickly as she could. She thought she heard horses, but when she led the gelding out of the stable, the section of the courtyard she could see held neither Southern Guards nor mounts. So she jump-mounted and rode toward the avenue gates.

  One of the two guards stepped out of the sentry box. “Mistress…wait…you need an escort…”

  “If I have to wait for an escort, you’ll be hung by morning.” Her voice blazed with fury…and the power of her Talent. Her words filled the courtyard, so much that the gate vibrated and rattled.

  The other guard scrambled out and began to open the gate, murmuring to the first, “There’s a squad beyond the stables…the ones who brought…let her go…tell them…”

  As soon as the gate was wide enough, Mykella urged the gelding through.

  She didn’t urge her mount into a full gallop; it was more like an easy canter for the vingt eastward to the square stone building with the enormous center courtyard. She swept past the duty guards and into the courtyard, reining up before the bronze posts with the hitching rings for the senior officers.

  The ranker stationed there gaped as Mykella vaulted down and handed him the gelding’s reins. “Tie him up. I need to see the Arms-Commander.” With that she rushed through the outer doors and then to the left, and down the corridor to the headquarters section. There she pushed her way through the double doors to the Arms-Commander’s outer study.

  The single ranker bolted to attention. “Mistress Mykella…”

  “Where’s the Arms-Commander?”

  “He’s not here, Mistress.”

  “Commander Dem
yl?”

  “Ah…”

  “Where?” snapped Mykella.

  The ranker’s eyes flicked to the left, toward a golden oak door.

  “Thank you.” Mykella went through the door.

  By the time she’d closed the door, Commander Demyl had risen.

  “Mistress Mykella—”

  “What happened?” Her voice was like ice.

  “I’m so sorry for you,” Demyl’s voice oozed sympathy, but beneath it was cold calculation. “It was an accident, Mistress Mykella. We really don’t know how it occurred.”

  Despite his soothing tone and sympathetic demeanor, Mykella knew the commander was lying. “You must know something, and I’d like to hear it.”

  “Your brother and a junior guard were sparring. The blades were unedged practice weapons. Somehow the other guard’s blade shattered, and a fragment went through your brother’s eye and into his brain. There was nothing anyone could have done.”

  “I’d like to hear about it from the other guard.”

  “Alas, that’s not possible, either. He was so distraught at wounding the Lord-Protector’s heir that he slit his wrists with his dagger, then fell on his saber. The duty ranker discovered him, but he was too far gone and died in the exercise yard.”

  “And no one saw any of this?” asked Mykella.

  Demyl shook his head. “The Arms-Commander needed some of the hay moved in the stables, and asked Captain Vealdyn to detail the First Company rankers who were practicing in the yard. He couldn’t very well ask the heir to the Lord-Protector or the guard with whom he was sparring. At that time, no one else was there.”

  How terribly convenient. It was all totally untrue, and yet Mykella could sense that there was no way that she could disprove the Commander’s story. Jeraxylt would have died from a steel splinter from a shattered blade, and the practice blade would match, and the only known witness had died from his wounds, although Mykella doubted that any had been self-inflicted.

  “No one?” she temporized, hoping to draw him out.

  “No one was near enough to see anything, and if the other guard called out, no one heard him. Terribly tragic…just terrible…I’m so sorry for you and your family, Mistress.”

  Mykella forced herself to say, “Thank you.” But she dared not look directly up at the Commander, knowing her glance would tell him that she knew everything. He might guess…but that was something else.

  “I…need to get…back to the palace.” She turned and hurried out of the study, leaving him standing there. Even so, as she departed, she could sense his concern and worry—and it certainly wasn’t about her brother or Mykella herself.

  The ranker still held the reins, but four Southern Guards had pulled up behind her mount. She didn’t know whether they had been summoned from the headquarters barracks or whether they had followed her from the palace. She also didn’t care.

  She mounted and began the ride back to the palace.

  None of the Southern Guards said a word on her return.

  When she finally reached the palace, after a far slower ride on the way back, she turned the gelding over to the ostler’s assistant, something she normally wouldn’t have done, and made her way back to her father’s official study.

  There were four guards out in the corridor, and both Chalmyr and Joramyl were in the antechamber.

  “He’s not seeing anyone, Mykella,” said Joramyl.

  “He’ll see me.”

  “He said no one. Not you, not your sisters, not Eranya, not even me.”

  Mykella could sense the absolute truth of Joramyl’s words. While she could have used her Talent to slip through the stones of the palace itself, she knew her father well enough to understand that, at that moment, he would hear nothing of what she might say. Her eyes burned with unshed tears, tears of grief, but also of frustration.

  After a moment, she turned away, and walked slowly back toward her chamber.

  At that instant, she didn’t want to see anyone, especially Salyna, who might see all too much about what Mykella knew and felt.

  39

  Mykella did not feel ready to deal with her sisters for a time, and almost two glasses passed before she made her way to the parlor. Rachylana and Salyna sat opposite each other, Salyna on the settee, Rachylana on the edge of an armchair. Both looked up and toward Mykella, but Mykella said nothing, just closed the parlor door and walked toward her usual chair.

  “Where did you go?” Salyna sniffed after she spoke.

  Mykella stopped. She knew her younger sister was still upset, but Salyna’s eyes bore only a trace of redness at the corners.

  “I talked to Father and then rode over to the Southern Guard headquarters. I wanted to know what really happened,” Mykella replied. “Arms-Commander Nephryt wasn’t there, but I talked to Commander Demyl.”

  “What did he say?” asked a red-eyed Rachylana.

  “Not much more than you heard. He gave some details. He said the guard whose blade shattered and killed Jeraxylt slit his own wrists and fell on his saber. They couldn’t save him.”

  “It was easier on him that way,” Rachylana said. “How could he have been so careless and stupid? How?”

  “Stupid things happen because people are stupid.” Salyna looked to Mykella, then asked, “Didn’t anyone else see it?”

  “All the others in the practice area had been conscripted to unload hay for the mounts. No one heard anything until it was too late.”

  “Did you talk to Father?” asked Salyna.

  “I did before I left. I tried to when I got back. Uncle Joramyl wouldn’t let me. He said Father didn’t want to see anyone. I could tell that was what Father told him.”

  “He’s like that when he gets upset.” Salyna shook her head. “Remember what he was like after Mother—”

  “I don’t want to,” snapped Rachylana. “You two are being so rational. So logical. Jeraxylt’s dead! Dead! Doesn’t that mean anything at all?”

  For a moment, neither Mykella nor Salyna spoke.

  Finally, Mykella replied, “We’re all different. It doesn’t mean we care less. I had to do something. That’s why I rode to the Southern Guard headquarters. I left my escort behind.”

  “It didn’t do much good,” Rachylana replied morosely.

  “Sometimes, nothing does,” Salyna said.

  Mykella sank into the chair where she usually read, not that she had anything to read or that she even felt like it.

  “Why did it have to happen to Jeraxylt?” asked Rachylana. “A broken practice blade…why not someone else?”

  Because they weren’t Jeraxylt. Mykella absently wondered how many blades Demyl or Nephryt had broken before they had gotten one to shatter in the right way. Would there be any pieces hidden somewhere? She shook her head.

  In late afternoon, Mykella returned to her chamber, then stepped over to the stone wall, letting her fingers touch the bare gray granite. She reached out for the darkness, then let herself merge with the stone. Instead of sinking to the depths of the palace, she willed herself to move sideways through the granite, following the heavy walls until she came to the Lord-Protector’s chambers. She followed several walls that did not lead where she wanted—it was different trying to find her way through feel from inside the stone—until she reached her father’s private study, but no one was there.

  She finally located him in his sitting room. When she slipped out of the granite wall, Feranyt didn’t even look up from where he sat in his chair, his eyes on the low coals in the hearth. She took several quiet steps sideways until she could slide the door bolt into the unlocked position before she moved forward. She was almost to his chair, when he started.

  “Eranya! Leave me alone. I told you…” Feranyt looked up, surprised. “How did you get in here, Mykella?”

  “The door was unlocked, Father. I wanted to talk to you, but Uncle Joramyl wouldn’t let me see you earlier.”

  “That’s because I told him I wanted to be alone.” He sighed. “What d
o you want?”

  Mykella took the armchair adjoining his, but she sat on the edge, turned so that she could look at him in the dim light. “After I left you, I went to see Commander Demyl…” She went on to tell him exactly what the Commander had said, as closely as she could recall. Then she girded herself up and concluded, “The death of the other guard seems very strange to me.”

  “It doesn’t to me. He knew he was as good as dead, accident or no accident.”

  “He didn’t try to run. He didn’t try to escape. He just slit his wrists and fell on his saber. Young men don’t do that.” Especially not young guards. They all think they can outrun and outfight anyone.

  “Mykella…it was an accident. I sent Joramyl to look into it immediately. He talked to everyone.”

  “Except the guard sparring with Jeraxylt.”

  “What could you expect? I told you. I would have ordered him killed anyway.” Feranyt looked at her with sunken and bloodshot eyes, then shook his head.

  Mykella could again sense the faint grayness pervading his frame. Why can’t he see?

  “It wasn’t an accident,” she said firmly.

  “You can’t think that,” countered her father. “Joramyl has investigated thoroughly. He talked to everyone. While you were gone, Arms-Commander Nephryt came here to tender his resignation.”

  “You accepted it, I hope.” Mykella did the best she could to keep the frustration and fury out of her voice, but she could still hear a trace of it.

  “What good would that do? I’ve lost a son and an heir, and I should lose a trusted Arms-Commander as well? I can’t blame a senior officer for a bad practice blade, carelessness by a junior guard, and ill chance.”

  All that she could say, Mykella realized, was, “I’m so sorry.”

  Then she just sat there, silently, with her father, for almost a glass.

  In the end, she let herself out of the sitting room and walked slowly back to her chamber. How could she do anything at all when her father refused to see what was happening around him?

  40