The Shattered Mask s-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  When they reached Lindrian's bedchamber, she saw that the birds he'd kept there were missing also. The patriarch of the House of Karn himself looked shockingly ill. His wrinkled face was white as wax save for bruise-like discolorations under his clouded, sunken eyes. Even worse, a faint, rotten smell hung in the air, as if his flesh was already decaying from the inside.

  At least he was awake and alert. Propped against a mound of pillows, he gave Shamur a sardonic smile and said, "You came. I wasn't certain you'd bother."

  Shamur felt a twinge of guilt, for in truth, she hadn't often called at Argent Hall in recent years, even after Lin-drian had fallen ill. It was strange, really. Nearly three decades before, she'd loved her kin enough to forfeit any chance of happiness on their behalf, yet once she'd made the sacrifice, she'd gradually lost any enthusiasm for their society.

  "Of course I came," she said. "What happened to your birds?"

  "I had to have them removed so I could rest," Lindrian said. He coughed convulsively, spattering the front of his nightshirt with tiny drops of blood. "They were making a terrible commotion. They saw Death's hand reaching out for me, I imagine."

  "Death needn't take you yet," Shamur said. "Not if we send for a priest versed in the healing arts."

  "I'm terrified you're right," Lindrian said, "and that's why we're not going to do it. I don't want to live in pain any longer. I want to rest." He gave Fendolac a bitter smile. "Besides, my son is impatient to be Lord Karn, aren't you, boy?"

  Fendolac's bloodshot eyes widened in shock. "Father, I swear to you-"

  "Get out," Lindrian said. "I want to talk to your sister in private."

  "Father, I love you!" the youth persisted.

  "What's the matter?" said the dying man. "Are you afraid I'll disinherit you and give everything to her? I will if you don't make yourself scarce. Now, scat!"

  Fendolac threw up his hands and withdrew, closing the door behind him.

  "That was unjust," Shamur said, seating herself on a low-backed green velvet chair. "That young man has his faults, but he does care for you. Now he may live out his days wondering if his father ever truly cared for him."

  "Well, pray forgive me for wounding his tender sensibilities," Lindrian said, "but dying in pain makes a person irritable. I'll dry his tears later. " He waved a tremulous, liver-spotted hand, dismissing the matter. "Right now, I need to talk to my aunt."

  Shamur was surprised. Indeed, though he was a man at the end of his life and she, still strong and hale, she was his aunt and not his eldest daughter as the rest of the world believed. Neither of them had explicitly acknowledged that fact for a number of years, not even when they were certain no one else could overhear.

  "About what, nephew?" she asked.

  "I fear I've done you a great wrong."

  Shamur shook her head. "Has my situation weighed on your conscience for all these years? Please, you mustn't fret any longer. The switch was your father's idea, and in any case, it was my choice to replace your poor daughter as Thamalon's betrothed. I wish it hadn't been necessary, but I couldn't permit the impoverishment of my family when a wedding and twenty chests of Uskevren gold could avert it."

  "I'm not talking about the substitution," Lindrian said, "although I suspect your marriage made you far more unhappy than you've ever confided. It's, well, it's that I've kept a secret from you. For the past twenty-four years, I've known the identity of the foe who worked behind the scenes to destroy our family's every venture, then finally murdered my little girl."

  "Are you serious?" she asked. She'd never stopped praying that someday she'd discover who had relentlessly attacked her family, slain her beloved grand-niece, and so forced her into her current dreary existence, but after so many years, she'd essentially abandoned hope of ever seeing the murderer punished. "Who was it?"

  "Thamalon."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Thamalon Uskevren, the very husband to whom, may Sune Firehair forgive me, we sold you."

  Shamur frowned. "Lindrian, your illness is filling your head with fancies. You think you know this, but you don't."

  "Yes, I do."

  She sighed. "All right, if you say so."

  "Don't patronize me! It's my body failing, not my mind."

  "But what you're saying doesn't make sense," she said. "Why would he drive our House to the brink of ruin, then rescue us? Why seek my grand-niece's hand, try to kill her, then ultimately go ahead and marry her, as he imagined he was doing?"

  "Because his plans changed from one day to the next. I'll tell you the tale as I pieced it together once I discerned the atrocity at its center. As you recall, the other merchant-noble Houses had driven the Uskevren out of Selgaunt half a century ago for conspiring with pirates. By trading elsewhere, Thamalon acquired a new fortune, then dared to return to the city. For all his wealth, he wasn't received in the parlors of the Old Chauncel. The other nobles still held his father's crimes against him. To gain acceptance, he needed to marry into an honorable family."

  "So he courted your daughter," Shamur said. "I've always assumed that was the reason, and while it might not inspire a troubadour to rhapsodize on the theme of love eternal, it isn't dishonorable. It certainly doesn't implicate him in any crimes."

  "But you see, if we Karns had been prospering, Father and I would likely have spurned Thamalon like the rest." The old man pressed his hand to his chest as if his heart was paining him. but then, rather strangely, immediately snatched it away. "We certainly wouldn't have allowed him to marry my child, and he knew that. Accordingly, his agents poisoned our flocks and the soil in our cotton fields, collapsed the tunnels in our mines, burned our sawmill, and hired brigands to raid our logging camps. This depleted our coffers and set a pack of creditors snapping at our heels. All so we would have no choice but to welcome an Uskevren into the family if we wished to save our House."

  Shamur shook his head. "Thamalon wouldn't have done that."

  "Have you never known him to be ruthless?"

  She hesitated. "Only to his enemies. Besides, this tale still doesn't hang together. You still haven't explained why, if he wanted your daughter for his wife, he nonetheless tried to kill her."

  "Because he believed"-the dying man coughed long and hard, and when he resumed speaking, his voice was a painful rasp-"a better opportunity had come along. Do you remember Rosenna Foxmantle?"

  "Yes."

  "I imagine everyone does. That teasing smile and lilting laugh! I've never known a more captivating woman, and that year you came home to Selgaunt, every nobleman in the city was infatuated with her, Thamalon included."

  "At the same time he was wooing your daughter?"

  He gave her a cynical grin. "Now I suppose you're going to tell me that you've never known him to take an interest in another woman."

  "No," she said flatly, "I won't tell you that."

  "I'm glad we at least agree on that much. It wasn't just Rosenna's beauty that made the men love her. It was her vivacity. Her flirtatiousness. Her wildness. As it turned out, she was wild enough to dally with a charming pariah. I infer from what followed that she and Thamalon even spoke of marriage. An elopement, no doubt. They must have hoped that once they were wed, her kin would see little choice but to accept the situation."

  "At which point," said Shamur, following the logic of the story despite herself, "Thamalon would acquire the status he craved and the woman he truly coveted as well. Moreover, he wouldn't need to expend any of his hard-won wealth to forestall the ruin of the Karns."

  The old man nodded. "Precisely. Indeed, if he wished, once we were bankrupt he could purchase our holdings at bargain prices and own them outright."

  "I still don't credit a word of this," she said, "but go on."

  "The problem, of course, was that Thamalon and Shamur-my Shamur-were already betrothed. He couldn't just set her aside without risking challenges, a lawsuit, and, for all he knew, assassination. Moreover, such dishonorable behavior might have precluded his ever being accept
ed among the Old Chauncel at large, Foxmantle bride or no."

  "Therefore, the only solution was to murder his fiancee."

  "Which he proceeded to do, unaware, like everyone else outside the family, that another Karn, who looked exactly like my daughter and even bore the same name, had slipped back into Selgaunt and was living in secret in Argent Hall. He couldn't anticipate that an impostor would step forward to take the dead girl's place, proceed with the wedding, and so save our House from destitution.

  "Nor did he have any notion that Rosenna would cast him aside if invited to wed the Overmaster's son, but that was what she did. Afterward, with no other prospects in the offing, Thamalon opted to go back to his original plan and marry a Karn."

  Shamur frowned, considering. She didn't want to believe the story, yet it made a ghastly kind of sense, and in some respects it reflected the character of the Thamalon she knew, a man both calculating and lickerish, his appetites unflagging even now, in the autumn of his life. Still… "You haven't told me how you learned all this."

  "By chance. Four years after your wedding, I took a turn serving as a Probiter. During that time, the Scepters arrested a ne'er-do-well named Clovis for bludgeoning a fellow scoundrel who had accused him of cheating at dice.

  "There was no doubt of Clevis's guilt, and he had a long history of wrongdoing. Thus, he had little hope of escaping harsh punishment this time around, at least until he happened to spot me walking to court in my judge's robe.

  "Clovis recognized me and bribed a jailer to bring me a message. It said that if I would arrange his release, he'd help me learn who poisoned my daughter."

  Shamur frowned. "We made certain that the world at large never learned of the poisoning."

  Lindrian nodded. "Thus it was clear that the wretch must actually know something. I interviewed him privately, agreed to his bargain, and he told me what he knew. It turned out he had no idea who had wished my daughter dead. He did, however, know who'd sold the whoreson the poison to do the job."

  "Who?" Shamur asked.

  "An apothecary called Audra Sweetdreams, who ran, and for all I know still does run, a shop in Lampblack Alley. She was Clovis's friend, or as near as such a scoundrel had to a friend. One night, giddy with some narcotic powder of her own devising, she'd boasted that a rich nobleman had paid her handsomely to help him poison Lindrian Karn's daughter, although for some reason, perhaps simply the irrationality of an addled mind, she'd refused to divulge the identity of her patron.

  "The following day, I asked some of the Scepters about the woman. They'd never quite managed to catch her committing a crime, but were quite certain she consorted with thieves and other miscreants, providing them with illicit drugs, potions, and probably even poison on occasion."

  "I assume you interrogated her as well," Shamur said.

  "Of course. I had her arrested on a bogus charge then, when we spoke in private, I offered her much the same trade I'd already made with Clovis. If she gave me the name of the aristocrat to whom she'd sold the poison, she'd go free. If she withheld it, it wouldn't matter that she was innocent of the offense of which she was currently accused. I was a lord of the Old Chauncel and a Probiter, she, a commoner of dubious reputation, and I would have no trouble arranging her conviction and a savage punishment to follow.

  "Well, as you already know, she eventually gave up Thamalon. She even told me how he administered the poison. You recall, we always wondered about that."

  "Yes," Shamur said.

  "It was quite ingenious, in a horrible way. She'd concocted a clear, tasteless liquid harmless to males but deadly to females. Thamalon rubbed it on his lips, then applied it to my daughter's mouth with a kiss."

  "That's monstrous," Shamur said. "Did you actually let this medusa go?"

  "Yes. You would have done the same, had you given your word. Besides, she was only a tool. What I cared about was finding the fiend who instigated my daughter's death."

  "Yet when you finally identified him, you did nothing!" she exploded. "Why didn't you tell me at the time?"

  The old man lowered his eyes. "I feared the consequences. Our finances still hadn't fully recovered from the disasters Thamalon had inflicted upon us, and by that time our commercial ventures were thoroughly entwined with his own. If something disrupted that partnership, the House of Karn might yet fall into ruin. I reckoned vengeance wouldn't bring my daughter back, and I had the welfare of my other children to consider. And I was thinking of you."

  "Me?"

  "Yes. By that time, you were the mistress of a great House and the mother of a three year-old son you adored. I didn't want to tear your life apart."

  "Then why in Mask's name are you doing it now?"

  "Because it seems to me now that I was wrong. You have a right to know, and this was my final chance to tell you."

  She struggled to compose herself. "Thank you. You… you have told me, and I'll need to sit alone and ponder what to do about it. For now, may we talk of other matters? What would you like me to do to help Fendolac and his siblings in the days ahead?"

  He answered, but she barely heard him, for her mind was in turmoil. The gods knew, she didn't love Thamalon, far from it. Still, he was her husband of nearly thirty years, the father of her children, and never had she imagined him capable of such malevolence. Yet Lindrian, his illness notwithstanding, seemed entirely lucid, nor could she conceive of any reason for him to lie.

  Somehow she had to discover the truth, and if Thamalon truly had murdered the innocent lass who'd adored him, if he'd engineered the chain of events that had trapped Shamur in a loveless union and a life she loathed, then she already knew he'd have to pay.

  Chapter 4

  Shamur waited with masked impatience for Glynnis, her personal maid, to help her out of her mourning clothes and into her silk nightgown, and even to see her tucked away in the warmth of her canopy bed. At last the officious, chattering lass, who had apparently decided Lady Uskevren needed special coddling in the wake of her "father's" death, extinguished the enchanted sconce by touching the raised oval plate at its base, bade her mistress a final good-night, and retired from the suite, softly closing the door behind her.

  Shamur gave Glynnis another few seconds to descend farther down the stairs, making absolutely sure she wouldn't hear her mistress stirring. Then she silently threw back the covers, rose, and pulled on the embroidered white cotton dress, hooded maroon wool cloak, and flimsy, frivolous shoes she'd surreptitiously pilfered from the room of Larajin, the clumsiest of the servants and, Shamur suspected, one of Thamalon's lemans as well. Like the other maids, Larajin generally wore livery, so this outfit was presumably a special one reserved for outings and festivals. Still, it was plainly the inexpensive clothing of a commoner, and ought to disguise a noblewoman, mysteriously prowling the benighted streets afoot and unescorted, very well. With luck, Shamur would have it back in the bottom of Larajin's trunk before the girl ever noticed it was missing.

  She had two other items to take on her errand: a truncheon of seasoned ash she'd borrowed from the salle and a blue leather pouch of the platinum coins called suns. She tucked both in the fringed, striped sash Larajin used for a belt, placing them in the small of her back where the cloak was sure to hide them.

  Lindrian had died an hour after sharing his secret. The old man's obsequies had taken up the next three days, until his kin finally interred him in the Karn ancestral vault. Ever since then, Shamur had been trying to slip away, but in the daylight hours, with servants swarming everywhere, pestering her with their sympathy and their need for instruction, with friends and relatives popping up every few seconds to offer condolences, it had proven impossible. Not since the first years of her marriage had she felt so stifled and confined.

  At last it was night, and she fancied she could escape Stormweather Towers just as the adolescent Shamur had been accustomed to sneak out of Argent Hall. On how many nights had she yearned to attempt this very thing, only holding back because the stakes were too high.
She would joyfully have risked her own well-being, but not that of her kin, nor, in later years, of her children.

  She opened the casement, and a cold winter breeze stung her face. Plump snowflakes drifted down from the clouds. A coach passed on the street five stories below, the bells affixed to the horses' harness chimed in time with their trotting.

  Leaning out the window, Shamur peered about. The conical tower housing her apartments rose from the back of the Uskevren mansion. On this side the house had no enclosing, protective wall like the one around the courtyard in the front. Rather, the westernmost face of Stormweather Towers was itself a fortification. Though entablatures, grotesquely carved rainspouts, stained-glass oculi, and other ornamentation abounded higher up, for the bottom two stories, the wall was forbiddingly smooth, with only a sparse scatter of lancet windows too narrow to offer any hope of entry. At the top of the mansion, crenellated battlements wound their way among the profusion of gables and turrets jutting from the roof.

  At the moment, no sentry was in view, and Shamur supposed she'd better get moving before one appeared. Despite the hindrance of her cloak and skirt, she agilely climbed out the window, then pushed the casement shut, making sure it didn't latch. That accomplished, she started down the wall.

  Larajin's shoes were too loose, and their soles were too slick for safety. If not for the cold, Shamur would have kicked them off and descended barefoot, although so far, with cornices, traceries, finials, and other decorations providing hand- and footholds, she was managing easily enough.

  She thought of how awkward it would be to encounter Thazienne now, sneaking out of the mansion in this same fashion, and just for a moment, despite her bleak mood, she smiled.

  In two minutes she reached the point where all the carved stone gingerbread abruptly gave way to an expanse of sheer, vertical granite. Larajin's ridiculous slippers were still flopping and sliding around on her feet, and to make things even more interesting, her hands were going numb. Shamur supposed that, having failed to find the maid's gloves, she should have worn a pair of her own. But she didn't own any that weren't sewn with pearls, made of the finest, softest calfskin, or manifestly costly in some other way, and she hadn't realized the cold would seep into her fingers so quickly.