by E. J. Beaton
After a moment, Lysande realized that all eyes had fixed on her. “I have no objection to combining my guards with yours. But I stipulate that Captain Hartleigh retains control of my guards.” There. Imperative. She could do it when she tried.
“Let’s deal with the ram scum first. Pay Bastillón back threefold,” Dante said.
“Come now, Dalgëreth, where’s your sense of hospitality? I have invited the Bastillonian ambassador to dine, and I intend to serve her well,” Luca said.
“I don’t mean to be abrupt, but—”
“—a Valderran childhood naturally curtails eloquence. Say no more, Dalgëreth. I’m sure that you’ll join me this evening at six o’clock in the Room of Accord.”
Dante looked across at Jale, but the prince made no motion. Dante sighed.
“Excellent.” Luca smiled as he walked from the room. The stone had disappeared from his hand. The guards at the door marched out after him. Lysande noted the cheer of the whole procession, which sat in contrast to the cold fury she had glimpsed on Luca’s face in the pass.
“Well,” Jale said, “He seems in a good mood, for once.”
Yes, Lysande thought, watching the last of the guards turn the corner at the end of the corridor. That was the worrying part.
* * *
• • •
The Councillors were kept so busy throughout the afternoon that Lysande found herself bustled from one entertainment to another without even a chance to see her suite. A quartet of Rhimese musicians serenaded them with the “Serpent’s Triumph” in the gardens; the guards put on a show of archery, shooting to split arrows in targets (which were no longer comprised of “a selection of conspirators,” Freste remarked, a little wistfully), and they were taken to a luncheon of cold delicacies served with fig wine, at which Luca did not make an appearance. Lysande felt another twinge of guilt as Litany tasted each of the dishes. There was a conversation she still needed to have, about rare poisons and how Litany had come to understand them; about sharp daggers and how Litany had come to wield one; and about an increase in Litany’s wage, with everything it symbolized. It was easy to tell yourself that you were postponing a confrontation, far easier than admitting that you were afraid of it.
As she ate, she was beset by thoughts of the Shadows, but she gave up trying to strategize when the crushing pains in her head and throat returned.
It was not as if she had just taken scale. Did she not have a right to expect that the dosage would stop affecting her over time—or was she to bear this load of pain always, like a wincing pack mule? Surely, you could become truly liberated from the consequences of a very modest, a very occasional indulgence?
If you persisted through the discomfort, it stood to reason that the power of the sensation would gradually diminish. So she had been telling herself as she continued to dose her body and mind. The justification had begun to take on a familiar ring, like a written fact.
Searching for fresh air, she left the hall and set off for the maze garden at the back of the grounds. A circle of brambles shielded the maze from passersby. Within it a latticework of hedges spread out, green walls twisting in all directions, curving into nooks; some of the enclaves offered seats shaped like figure eights, while others held high-backed chairs or stone benches. This was somewhere she could imagine herself coming alone, with a quill and paper. The prince of Rhime probably felt similarly, and she tried not to dwell on an image of Luca walking here on a summer night, his doublet unlaced, his skin soft as tracing paper, streaked with silver light.
Wonderful, she told herself. We’re almost at war, and I’m thinking about Luca Fontaine unclothed. A spurt of pain at her temple stopped the thought, threatening to crush her mind.
She took one of the torches from beside the gate and wandered in. Somewhere a bird was singing, its melody deeper than the thrushes she had heard in Axium Forest. Although she passed several lighted spots, she continued into the heart of the maze until she could see nothing but the hedge around her.
Sarelin had traveled to Rhime and had grumbled to her about being surrounded by scheming easterners for three days. Had Sarelin come to this garden, too? Sturdy boots might have compacted the ground where she walked. Why was it that the memory of Sarelin’s gait and her open smile hurt more than that of her body on the bier? A number of quotations came flying from the shelves of her mind—Cicera on the “exquisite pain” of loss, the scholar Mavotto on tricks of memory, the physician Maqbani on the observed effects of grief on the body. None of them seemed to help.
She walked on, trying to dispel the head pains, which refused to dull, and she had nearly reached the center of the maze-garden when a voice penetrated the wall on her left.
“You must know that you are beyond compare in the Three Lands.”
Squinting through a gap in the hedge, she spied Dante in the nook on the other side, pacing and holding a sword which sparkled under the light of his torch. “The sun may shine brilliantly above us all, but in my heart you shine brighter. And so I ask you to do me the honor of accepting my hand and making Valderos richer for your warmth and light. No . . .” Dante ran a finger over the sword’s edge, “greater for your warmth and light . . . more powerful for your warmth and light . . .”
He seemed to be addressing the air, and he was frowning as he rehearsed his speech. The urge to laugh overcame Lysande. She suppressed it with effort. The softness to his words pleased her as much as it surprised her; she had never imagined Dante capable of proposing anything except a duel. There was something about hearing courtly speech emanating from such a solemn man that seemed inherently wonderful, reminding her of the day she had seen Sarelin hold a small butterfly in her hand.
The sword drew her gaze. Lettering stood out on its blade, words in the Old Valderran alphabet carved into the steel and painted a gleaming silver. The engraving was too small for Lysande to make out, however. Above the blade, small jewels of many colors covered the guard and grip, a giant diamond taking pride of place in the pommel; this, combined with the sword’s strange size, being between a longsword and smallsword in length, led her to guess that it might be more of a decorative item than a weapon.
One of Dante’s fingers tapped a large engraving near the tip of the sword, an image which looked like an ice-bear. The animal’s distinctive horns leaped out against the steel, small and curved.
“For you see,” Dante began, “I have searched the depths of my sentiments, combed through the silt-bed of my life, and I find no love like the one I hold for you—a devotion of such fury, I do not know myself—you burn . . . no, that is not what I mean to say . . . you make me burn . . .”
She did not think that Dante would take kindly to being observed, and after a pause to muse on the proposal, she hurried on, striding through the maze until she reached one of the little nooks. She managed to cast Dante’s quest for a metaphor from her thoughts.
Hard proof. She sank down onto a bench. Proof was what Three had advised her to find—but without looking at the coin-purse, how could she tell whether the riders had really been in the pay of Bastillón? If she could only get hold of the purse, she could analyze it. Her word would be nothing without evidence. That would mean asking Luca to help her, and she did not feel pleased about that.
The way he had looked at her as he bowed in the Arena . . . there had been a dark beauty in the way he moved, the sun tinting his black hair. She pictured him shifting and coiling. He wore his beauty with perfect scorn. That smooth skin cloaked an edge which she felt sure was capable of inflicting damage before an enemy even knew they had been struck.
Perhaps there was another way. She sat there, considering tricks to slip past the Rhimese guards, stemming a tide of anxieties until the air grew cold. When she returned to the castle, she found Carletta Freste by the doors with arms folded. The onyx patterns glittered in the glow of the torches. As Freste opened the door to her suite, the light glanc
ed off a snake’s-head key.
“Prince Fontaine has honored you with his finest chambers, Councillor,” the noblewoman said, nudging the door open with her foot. “The monarchs of Elira have always stayed in the Painter’s Suite. Queen Brettelin Brey declared it a divine harmony of colors, though she chose to eschew our banquet.”
The enormous room that greeted her boasted four dark oak cabinets. Silk curtains billowed and swelled, the blood-red material dancing in and out of the torchlight. A fountain flowed by the bay windows, the water trickling slowly over three small bowls. One of Luca’s inventions, she guessed, as no pipes adjoined the fountain on either side.
“Thank you,” she said to Freste, who was still hovering in the doorway as if she expected Lysande to bow. “You may convey my thanks to Prince Fontaine, too.”
She stood by the black stone fountain for a moment, dipping her fingers. Three’s warning still nagged at her. Yet she could not help but appreciate the colors and materials of her lodgings as she inspected the writing desk and the cabinets, running her fingers over the rubies inlaid in the wood.
On a small table she found a vial of pale, orange liquid, resting on a note:
This is a Rhimese concoction. For special maladies.
It even works on Axiumites.
Take one sip when you feel a headache coming on.
L.F.
She frowned. For all that he could act out of cold anger, Luca seemed far too astute when it came to her own needs. Of course, she could always ask Litany to taste the medicine later . . .
She thought of Luca leaning over to whisper in her ear, his voice soft against the roar of the Arena.
Why give the best rooms to me? As she stepped into the bathroom, notes of Rhimese flowers overwhelmed her—it was as if someone had picked a bloom from every field south of Castelaggio and compounded them. More extraordinary than the perfumed air, however, was a set of three luminous frescoes on the bathroom wall.
A ray of sun pierced the window and threw the colors of the paintings into relief: pastel pinks and blues mingled against a background of midnight black, and each frame showed a youthful figure, a man on either side and a woman in the middle, all staring ahead.
Did Fontaine want to show this off to me?
All three wore gotas, the long robes from before the Conquest which tied over one shoulder. Lysande bent down to read the plaque beneath the frames.
“The Maturation, by Vitelongelo.”
She observed that the man on the left wore a golden triangle on his forehead, while the woman’s triangle sat at her throat, and the last man’s decorated the middle of his chest. She could see no indication as to why. Three’s triangle pendant leaped out in her memory; could it be that these portraits had some link to the ancient symbology of magic? Or was she looking at an artistic use of geometry?
At least it was clear why the suite had earned its fame. Rhimese artists were rarely a match for the southern virtuosos, Sarelin had said, but Lysande thought that Vitelongelo could stand beside the best of the Lyrians for style. She stared at the painting on the right, absorbing the silkiness of the man’s skin, the soft throat that reminded her all too clearly of—
“Is there anything I can do?”
Litany was standing in the doorway, clutching a pile of towels.
They stared at each other for some time, before Lysande said, “You do much more than I expected.” Litany flushed. “But I will take a bath, if it’s no trouble,” Lysande added.
She wrote a letter to Three while the water was being poured, and Cursora had only just flapped away from the window when Litany returned. Her attendant padded over the floor, taking Lysande’s arm and leading her to the bathroom with a grip that was becoming familiar. The silence between them felt new.
“Where did you learn to identify nightroot, venom of the blue adder, and lover’s poison?” Lysande said at last.
“In Axium Palace.”
That opened up more questions than it answered. “I remember the first time you dressed me, you ran one of your nails under my sleeve. It was a test. I didn’t realize it at the time. But I think you also learned to use balm of red death in Axium Palace—did you not?” She had pieced that together on the ride. It had taken some time to work out. The method of identifying poison residue through the application of a reactive toxin was not a subject she usually considered, while guiding her horse past fields and copses.
“The balm enables—”
“I know quite well what it does,” Lysande said. “If I’d been found guilty, you’d have already carried out the sentence.”
They faced each other. Litany, she thought, knew when to speak.
“If you were blameless,” Litany said, “there would be nothing for the balm to respond to. With no catalyst, no transformation: so the physicians say.”
“I believe that maxim refers to healing.”
“Councillor Prior, if I have given offense in the process of tending to the realm—”
“So tell me, then. What makes you feel you have the right to tend to anything, without my permission?” Lysande heard her words clatter and felt the reverberation of their edges throughout the room. The girl avoided her gaze for a moment.
“There’s a shaded garden,” Litany said. “At the back of the pear orchard in the palace grounds. When I was a child, I used to play there with another stable-hand’s daughter, using sticks to fight. My mother wasn’t aware that Queen Sarelin went walking in the pear orchard. I think the queen must have been watching me for some time before she approached, because she called me the silent girl. She said I never grunted or made a noise when I struck.”
Lysande could picture the back of the pear orchard, and the wooden poles that the servants used to fence. Often, at dusk, she had heard the clack of blows there.
“My mother had kept secrets for Queen Sarelin. I saw her tending to the horses just before the Bastillonian ambassador was thrown from her mount—an inconvenient accident, the easterners said. The ambassador was detained in Axium while she healed, long enough for Queen Sarelin to thrash out a new trade deal on silver with her. And another time, quite by chance, you know, my mother had been feeding the horses just before the Rhimese envoy was due to leave. It was said that the Rhimese mare took ill on the journey—simply would not budge. The envoy had to walk quite some way to find a farm with a horse to sell. All her doves had escaped from her luggage, too: an unfastened cage. The news of Queen Sarelin’s new tax reached Rhime the morning after it reached the other cities. My mother had had a feeling it would.”
“Your mother must have been a very prescient woman.”
“Prediction comes naturally to some people.” Litany glanced down, but as she looked up again, her surreptitious grin did not escape Lysande. “But it was her close-lipped nature Queen Sarelin cared for.”
Of course: the skills of the populace were worth recognizing, when they proved useful for Sarelin’s purposes. Lysande wondered what deprivations a stable-hand would have endured if she were not recruited by the royal household. Then there was the matter of elevation to private service, of a personal retainer in mettles . . . and an allowance of fine leather boots and warm coats. “You said that Sarelin approached you in the garden.”
Litany drew a breath. “The queen asked me if I’d like to keep secrets too. Once I could taste and identify poisons, she had me practice other things. Fetching objects. Throwing daggers. Fighting, not only with a sword but with my hands. The kind of things they don’t teach silverbloods.”
“Your grip . . .” Lysande recalled the grasp of that slender hand, unyielding, in the moment when they had both reached for the bottle. “Never mind. I suppose Sarelin was very confident in your mother’s loyalty.”
“I used to think it was about loyalty.” Litany’s voice had dropped. “Then I saw how other poor children did not prosper like myself. My mother t
aught me that’s what it means to be an Axiumite: everything in its place. Even the humblest of us have a duty, a purpose.”
“But?” Lysande said.
Litany frowned. “I beg your pardon, Signore—Lysande?”
“I can hear a but circling in the air.”
The frown dispersed, and Litany met her gaze at last. “Queen Sarelin gave me a duty, right enough. But for all that we talk of duty and higher purpose, I think that it is in doing that we find meaning. Unlike others, I had the chance to find out what I could do. For me, that isn’t sewing clothes or shoeing horses.” She folded her arms. “I know how to steal and never be caught. I can follow someone without the person ever knowing I am there. Striking down an attacker in the darkness: that is purpose, to me. There’s something tangible in using your hands for taking things, and for stopping . . .”
Neither of them finished the sentence.
“Going through my chests, before the ride . . . you weren’t just trying to sneak in jewelry, were you?” Lysande said.
“I needed to see if you were Queen Sarelin’s murderer.”
Lysande could not blame the girl. After all, had she not asked herself the same question—who profits by the queen’s death?
“I might still be a traitor,” she said, watching Litany’s reaction.
“When you invited me into the box, at the tournament . . . there was no food to taste. You included me, and not so I could serve you.” Litany held her head high. “One who kills to rule does not wish to draw others closer to them, least of all a commoner, from whom they can gain nothing. Besides, I saw you crying. After you visited Queen Sarelin’s tomb.”
The soft voice and the timid air. That’s part of it. Isn’t it? You are the veiled blade; the defender that nobody suspects. Lysande motioned to Litany to begin unlacing her doublet. She watched her clothes fall onto the tiles. “So many secrets, swirling around. I am beginning to learn why Sarelin used to curse so often.”