by Melanie Rawn
“He’s probably become quite civilized these last two winters. Let him rub some polish onto you, Ruval.” She stopped outside a shop where a fine Cunaxan rug was displayed. A rathiv—“carpet of flowers”—done in brilliant colors, it was perfect for her purposes. “I want that. Come back later and acquire it for me.”
“With money or persuasion, Mireva?”
As she glanced up to return his grin, by the soft light she suddenly seemed half her nearly sixty-seven winters. The fine lines raying out from her fierce gray-green eyes vanished, as did the slight fleshiness along her jaw as her lifted head tightened the skin.
“None of that,” she chided, though she shared his glee at the possibilities open to them in placid Swalekeep, where diarmadh’im were unknown and faradh’im barely tolerated by proud Chiana of the long and grudge-filled memory.
They continued down the street to the appointed meeting place just outside the low brick wall surrounding the castle gardens. They lingered for some time, pretending to admire the late roses.
“I can’t help wondering how much he’s changed,” Ruval said as they waited for his half-brother.
“Do you really think he has? He’ll be just the same as ever: stubborn, jealous, and ambitious.”
“But he’s bound to have picked up a few ideas of his own. Like Segev.”
They both paused to recall the youngest of Ianthe’s brood, dead these seven summers by a faradhi hand. Segev’s failure to steal the Star Scroll had been a setback; his scheming to take its power for himself had been a shock; his death had been a blessing. But the manner of his death—stabbed by Lady Hollis—earned Mireva’s vow to avenge him. Killing her—and her husband and children—would be almost as satisfying as killing Pol and Rohan.
And Sioned, who had captured Rohan before Ianthe had even met him, thus fouling one path back to power for Mireva’s people. Sioned had protected Rohan from Roelstra’s treachery during their single combat by constructing a dome of glistening starfire at an impossible distance—stars forbidden to Sunrunners by Lady Merisel of abhorrent memory—after she had ordered Feruche razed and Ianthe slaughtered in her bed.
But only one of Ianthe’s sons had died with his mother: the boy who was Rohan’s get. Ruval, Marron, and Segev had escaped on Sioned’s own Radzyn-bred horses and been brought to Mireva. Ruval wanted the High Princess dead in payment for his mother; Marron, always more direct, simply wanted her dead. Mireva’s reasons were more complex. She had, after all, touched the woman’s powerful mind.
Addressing Ruval’s last remark, she said, “Segev was a fool as only a sixteen-year-old boy can be a fool. Marron is older, and one hopes he’s wise enough to know that you two can’t fight it out until there’s something to fight over. Until we have the Desert and Princemarch, he’ll go where he’s reined.”
“I’ll be riding him with a pronged bit and spurs just the same.”
Mireva paced a little way down the low wall, pausing to inhale the heavy spice of a flowering bush. Ruval followed, and together they gazed up at the castle. An eccentric structure, befitting its long history and the varying tastes of its owners, it exuded towers, extra wings, and additional floors with no regard for any architectural grace. Vines climbed thick and close up gray stone, softening some of the more awkward angles, but taken as a whole it was a rather ugly place. Dragon’s Rest, on the other hand, was reported to be an exquisite blend of beauty, strength, and power. How nice of Pol, Mireva thought with a sudden almost girlish smile, to make a palace fit for the Sorcerer High Prince who stood at her side.
She must be sure to thank Pol before she killed him.
“At last,” Ruval muttered. Mireva turned and saw a familiar young man dressed in the light green of service to Meadowlord’s rulers. Similar in feature and build to his eldest brother, Marron’s coloring was ruddier; even in the muted gray light his hair was a dark red mane. His eyes were brown, like Ianthe’s. Ruval was the taller by two fingers’ width, but Marron was the heavier and more physically imposing. They were unmistakable as brothers, especially when they smiled—sly, mocking, and shrewd.
Marron nodded pleasantly as he approached, as he had done to the one or two others he passed along the wall. When he was abreast of them, he whispered, “The Crown and Castle.” And walked on.
Mireva was irritated, but understood his need for caution. Had there been more people about, they could have met with complete unconcern right outside Chiana’s windows. But the sultry heat kept most of Swalekeep indoors. Thus they had to meet there, too.
The inn was situated at the end of a street that itself ended at the lofty outer wall. This was one of those places where the granite had been stolen away for more prosaic uses; the gap was big enough to ride through without ducking. Not that Ruval would have cared to try it—those upper stones looked a little tentative, deprived of their underpinnings.
One side of the Crown and Castle abutted on an ironmonger’s. The other was Swalekeep’s main wall itself. Over the hearth fire hung a cauldron from which patrons dipped their own stew. A smaller pot held mulled wine, also on a self-serve basis. Ruval showed a gold coin to a girl who sat near the hearth and ordered chilled wine. She left off petting the fat orange cat in her lap long enough to point to a nearby table—and to take the coin from his fingers.
Mireva joined him in a corner and they made slow drinking of the wine, trying to ignore the incessant hammering of the smith next door. How anyone could find the energy to work in this weather—let alone over a furnace—was utterly beyond him. Eventually, full but not particularly refreshed, Ruval got up, stretched, and made his way out the back door as if to relieve himself. Marron was waiting for him, fuming.
“You knew where I’d be! Why did you make me wait?”
“Because I was thirsty. Because it amused me.” He assessed his brother with a scathing glance. “You’ve fed well, these last few winters.”
“And you still look like a half-starved wolf who doesn’t know how to hunt for himself,” Marron shot back.
“Why should I, when I have a little brother to do my hunting for me?” Ruval grinned and walked toward the watering trough, seating himself casually on its edge. “Well? What news of our darling Aunt Chiana?”
“Keep your voice down!” Marron hissed.
“Are your senses grown as soft as your belly? There’s no one in hearing distance but those cats.” He gestured to the gray striped cat and kittens nearby. “And I doubt they’re interested.”
Marron sighed and shook his head. “I hate being closed in like this. You don’t know what it’s been like. The Veresch forests are walls you can walk through.”
Ruval felt unwilling sympathy. He hadn’t considered until arriving in Swalekeep how difficult it must be to adapt to life inside stone. “Come sit down, brother.”
Marron perched on the far rim of the trough. “You know my position in Swalekeep. It’s taken me two years to get into the chamberlain’s confidence, even using bits of power here and there. Chiana’s a bitch up one side and down the other—our grandfather’s daughter, no doubt about that! She wants all done to perfection, then finds fault and makes you do it again.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
Dark eyes widened. “You can’t!”
“No?” Ruval laughed. “Go on.”
Marron looked as if he might argue, then subsided with a glower. “Mireva was right about Chiana’s ambition. She wants Rinhoel to have Princemarch as well as Meadowlord, even though all the sisters renounced it for themselves and their heirs—”
“All the sisters except Mother. Dead—at Sioned’s order.” A fragrance, a silken rustle, a throaty laugh, a sharp scowl when he played too rough—the meager memories darted through his mind, always escaping too quickly.
“I saw Sioned at last year’s Rialla. Toured Dragon’s Rest, too, but we’ll talk of that another time. She’s fifty next year, and looks thirty-five. Rohan’s the same.” Marron hesitated. “He’s not even a Sunrunner, Ruval
—yet I could almost see the aleva around him. Sioned’s is almost painful to look at. And as for Pol—!”
Ruval frowned. The aleva was literally a “circle of fire” that the truly sensitive, especially among diarmadh’im, could glimpse around the highly powerful. That Sioned possessed such an aura was taken for granted; that Pol’s would also be visible was expected, too. But Rohan, whose Sunrunner blood was so thin—
Still, it was the Dragon’s Son and not the Dragon Prince who concerned him now. “Tell me about Pol.”
“I didn’t catch more than a few glimpses of him. I had to spell Chiana to get her to take me at all. And she’s not easy to work on, believe me. They’re building Dragon’s Rest out of stone and steel—she’s made just the same, only of ambition and hate.”
“My, how poetic.”
Marron looked as though he wanted to take a swing at him. “If you want to try getting through all that, go right ahead.”
“Pol,” Ruval said.
“No Sunrunner’s rings, but he’s been well-trained, wager on it. Tall, blond, good-looking—the women were all after him. He’s got an eye for the prettier ones.”
“Hmm.” Ruval smiled. “That’s interesting news for a little project of Mireva’s. But never mind that now.” He glanced at the inn’s back door, where a boy had just thrown scraps to the cats. “You must have more to tell, and Mireva wants to talk at length. And in private.”
“There’s a musical evening tonight—Chiana likes to present herself as cultured and sophisticated,” he added sourly. “Another thing about Pol, he’s got an absolute passion for music. I’ll meet you in the garden near the Pearlfisher Inn after dusk.”
“I’ll find it. But why not here? The wine’s good.”
“The wine is terrible. You’ve a lot to learn about the finer things available to a prince,” Marron jeered. Before Ruval could put him in his place with a sharp answer, he strode off.
Mireva hissed with annoyance when Ruval entered their small chamber at the Green Feather. She intended the precious rathiv to be part of her performance for Chiana, and he had lumped it together as if it was a horse blanket.
“Wait,” he grinned, correctly interpreting her angry look. Unfolding the rug, he revealed a torso-sized gleam of silver and glass that took her breath away. “I thought you might like this.”
“By the Nameless One—!” she breathed, taking the mirror from him. Kneeling with it set before her on the wooden planks, she ran reverent fingers over decorative wires that swirled and twisted in a pattern as old as her people. “What is this doing out of the Veresch?”
“The shopkeeper didn’t know what he had, of course. I actually paid money for it—though not for the rathiv—the price was that low.” Ruval crouched beside her. “Do you have any idea what to do with it?”
“See this?” She pointed to an intricate knot woven in silver wire at the top of the frame. “Recognize it?”
“I’m not blind,” he replied impatiently. “Can you get it to work?”
“Yes. Oh, yes!” She laughed and threw her arms around him. “My clever High Prince!” His hands ran eagerly over her back and hips, but she pushed him away. “Later. Leave me alone with it for now. Come back when it’s time to meet Marron. I need to set the spell within it.”
“And you won’t let me watch.” His handsome face with its cruel, curling mouth went dark. “After all these years, you still don’t trust me.”
“If you knew what I do about this mirror, you wouldn’t trust your own mother.”
“Considering who my mother was, you’re quite naturally right.” Rising, he cast one last hungry glance at the mirror and left her.
Mireva rocked back and forth, hugging her breasts. The mirror rested in mute impotence on the floor, its strange dusky gold surface like a stormy sky at sunset. The silver frame was old and tarnished, the wires broken in some places and missing in others. But she knew it for what it was—and gave thanks that Ruval had seen and identified the crowning knotwork.
Her old, gnarled fingers caressed the flat face as a maiden might her lover’s cheek. The small hand mirror she’d planned to give Chiana had been a risk. This was a certainty.
It took her some time to find the right words—she initially misjudged the age of the mirror, and had to restructure her accent and phrasing to awaken it. But when it finally brightened in the gloom of her chamber, it was with a sure and steady glow.
Marron opened all his windows to the evening rain. The heat had finally broken with a sweep of icy air that from its feel had come all the way from Firon’s early snows. The trees outside bent in the wind and he nodded in satisfaction. It was plenty cold enough to justify the heavy hooded cloak he wore to disguise his distinctive hair.
Descending the stairs, he heard the faint echoes of strings and drums from the hall where Chiana was perpetuating her “great lady” image. Several times a season she invited influential merchants and their wives to spend the evening in her presence. She did not go so far as to give them dinner; she broke bread with no one under the rank of athr’im. But a summons to the castle was a social distinction no one refused, no matter how deeply Chiana was loathed.
On his way out he encountered the chamberlain in a back corridor. A doddering holdover from Clutha’s time, the old man drank himself stuporous most nights and whined about the good old days to anyone who would listen. Marron found himself caught by a wizened claw, unable to escape without being rude. The role of humble servant did not sit easily on a man descended from High Princes and diarmadh’im, but Marron had little choice. At last he claimed a pressing appointment with a young lady who did not like to be kept waiting, and slipped away while the chamberlain mumbled about ancient loves of his own.
Swalekeep was patchworked by little public parks, islands of trees and bushes and flowering plants connected by meandering streets. Chiana had appropriated the largest of them for one of her oddest self-indulgences: an animal garden. In it roamed several deer and elk, and an eagle with its flight feathers regularly plucked to keep it earthbound. In large cages were a wolf pair that had produced nothing but dead pups in the five years of their captivity, and a female mountain cat, her claws torn out. Chiana had offered a substantial reward for anyone who could bring her a mate for the cat; it was said she would have paid half Meadowlord’s yearly income for a dragon, but no one had taken her up on that, either.
Marron paused outside this sad little place, watching the wolves pace endlessly behind steel mesh. A strong kinship welled up in him for his fellow captive exiles. But he could afford no weakening sentiment right now. He was about to meet Mireva for the first time in two long winters.
Chafing his cold hands beneath the cloak, he hurried to the enclosure opposite the Pearlfisher and entered, snicking the gate shut behind him. The hand on his arm startled him into a curse.
“Your senses have dulled,” she murmured. “But they’re lost in a good cause.”
Ruval’s cause, he wanted to say, but held his tongue. Time enough to deal with his brother and leave Mireva with only one of Ianthe’s sons to work with.
“I’ve missed you,” she said abruptly. “I didn’t think I would.” The words surprised him, but he was still wary. “Where’s Ruval?”
“Standing watch. Come and sit with me.”
It was fully dark now. The rain had eased to a fine mist that veiled her graying hair as she pushed back her hood. He could see every line on her face in the lamplight across the narrow street; she had aged with the tension of waiting. He knew how that felt.
“It is time to prove your brother’s legitimacy,” Mireva began without preamble.
Marron had known this was coming. Bastardy was not a stigma as such—illegitimate offspring shared inheritances with trueborn—but Roelstra had sired such an embarrassing number of bastard daughters that the custom of fathering children outside marriage had gone out of fashion. In practice these days, legitimate heirs had the edge. Rohan’s father had in many ways begun the trend by
being scandalously faithful to his adored wife. It was a foolish practice, for most women bore only three or four children. Those who conceived five times and lived to tell of it were uncommon; no one had ever heard of any who had borne more than six. Prolific bloodlines were sought after, and those who produced twins, like Princess Tobin, were most desirable of all. It was only sensible to get as many heirs as possible—possession of a single son was dangerous, as Prince Chale of Ossetia had learned years ago when his had died.
“Chiana’s son is legitimate, a prince,” Mireva went on. “But she was quite spectacularly born a bastard.” A smile gleamed around her lips for a moment. “Imagine it—being utterly frantic to prove herself a bastard! Ianthe, on the other hand, was the daughter of Roelstra’s wife. If we can provide evidence from Lord Chelan’s own mouth that he and Ianthe were wed—”
“I made inquiries when you asked last winter,” he interrupted. “He lived at a manor on the Syrene border.”
Her eyes lit with silvery sparks. “ ‘Lived’?”
“And died, and burned there this summer. A wasting sickness, it’s said.”
“Damn him! Damn him for dying!”
Before she could get what she wanted and then kill him herself, Marron thought. But he said nothing.
Mireva inhaled deeply, struggling for calm. “It’s my own fault for not taking care of this sooner.”
“If you had, attention would have fallen on him—and he would have been around our necks.”
“That’s true.” She sighed.
“Ruval will just have to do without,” he said, a trifle more acidly than intended. She fixed an icy gaze on him. “I know, I should’ve told you on starlight. But you’ve both been traveling so much—Cunaxa and all over Princemarch—it was impossible to find you.”
“And you’ve never been very good at that sort of thing,” she snapped. “Are you sufficiently good at palace politics to get me in to see Chiana? Tonight?”