by E. J. Beaton
They had all seen her hair when she walked into the room, of course. Her difference had not been named, then. Now that it had been spoken aloud, people on every side looked at her without restraint, and she had the sudden feeling that it would have been better to stay silent.
“When you say that you were found . . . surely it is rare for noble children to be lost?”
“Councillor Prior is not from a noble family, Your Excellency,” Luca said, putting down his goblet. “She is an orphan. Perhaps you are not aware that at my table, it is considered ill manners to inquire into the breeding of my guests.”
“I assure you, I meant no—”
Luca’s body, as he rose, reminded Lysande of a tightly coiled spring.
“But since I like to be a generous host, I shall do you the favor of finishing. Councillor Prior is an orphan, as I say, and I am a bastard son: my father was Prince Marcio Sovrano, and my mother was a Lyrian attendant who scrubbed his floors. I took her name because she was worth more than the fool who parted her from her child.” He smiled coldly. “So now that you have the blood of every member of the Council noted, you can give your king a full report. Would you like a goblet of water, Your Excellency?”
Merez had opened her mouth to speak, but she paused. “Yes,” she managed, “I will take a goblet.”
Luca’s gaze cracked like a whip across the ambassador’s face. The conversation turned to safer subjects, with the help of Derset and Hussir, Cassia’s advisor: the heavy snows north of Valderos, the last Sapphire Ball in Lyria, where two hundred dancers had twirled, and a tournament at which Sarelin had fought, unhorsing ten nobles. Lysande’s eyes sought out Luca every so often, but he did not look her way, sipping his wine and talking to the guests.
Gabrella Merez spoke rarely after the first exchange. Lysande saw her stare at Luca from time to time. She did not like the look Merez exchanged with one of her dignitaries; it was sharper than Sarelin’s battle sword, and far dirtier. A silence eventually descended on the table. One of the Bastillonian noblemen, goblet in hand, broke it.
“King Ferago was gratified to receive your Astratto Formulas, Your Highness. He delights in receiving documents signed by the author—he displays them prominently in the royal library.”
Luca nodded briefly. Lysande had the sensation of having missed a stair while going down a flight, and flailing for a moment. How had she not known that Luca was the creator of the same formulas she had wrangled with late at night in the camp? Those thorny strings of numbers . . .
“Yes,” Merez put in, “though some might consider scribbling away at equations an odd occupation for a prince.”
Luca waved a hand at the wall on his right. Lysande glanced at him, and even as she righted her reeling mind, she appreciated the dangerous politeness of his expression and the tightly enunciated words that followed. “There are eight tapestries in this room, Your Excellency. What is eight multiplied by four?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Precisely. And that is an equation that no one here can fail to appreciate. Thirty-two bows are very effective in a small space.”
Luca clapped his hands twice. The tapestries on the walls fell to the floor. It took only one pull to bring each one tumbling down, Lysande saw, thanks to the guards standing behind them, holding silver bows. The Rhimese soldiers packed into the hollowed-out cavities in the walls nocked their arrows, four behind each tapestry, all pointing their weapons at the table.
“Sun and stars,” she breathed.
She saw Dante shake his head, his mouth half-open. Several of the silver-haired Bastillonians rose and exclaimed in their own tongue. Lysande signaled to her own guards to wait—Chidney had already taken two paces forward. Her own body seemed to be moving automatically, running on some unknown fuel. Be a leader, she implored herself. Think of something. Now.
Two of the Valderrans rushed to Dante’s side, shielding him. Litany stared at Lysande, silently entreating her for direction.
“The women and men aiming at you right now are Rhimese archers, trained from childhood,” Luca said. “They can hit a target so small that it can fit on the end of my thumb. You might take down one or two of them if you had a crossbow, but unarmed . . . well, even your pure-bred heart would be pierced in seconds if you did anything to displease me.”
Merez reached into her robe, drew out a vial, and sloshed the black liquid inside as she held it up. Little prisms in the fluid shone from several feet away. Lysande smelled burned cinnamon rising through the air and felt the precise terror of recognition.
“My reply,” Merez said with a sneer, “might seem small, but what it lacks in quantity, it makes up for in efficacy.”
Matching the combination of the shade, the prisms, and the smell to a paragraph in Montefizzi’s manual, Lysande felt her stomach turn to water, and wondered how anyone could hold Bastillonian python venom with such equanimity.
Two Rhimese archers stepped toward Merez. Lysande’s shoulders tightened.
If the contents of that vial were anything like she’d read . . . who could forget that the worst assassination of the Steelsong Era had taken place in Belága with a bottle of python venom? The description of the hapless Eliran envoy, daubed with poison by an eastern agent, screaming in pain for so long that the Bastillonian queen shot him out of mercy, had kept Lysande awake the night after she read it.
Several of the Bastillonian dignitaries pulled out their own vials, including one very close to her left elbow. Lysande tried not to look. She saw Dante shift his position, moving between Jale and the nearest Bastillonian, his forehead riven with lines of concern. Both Chidney and Litany slipped over to Lysande, shooting swift glances at each other as they took their positions side by side.
“Now that we’re equally armed, perhaps you will tell me the meaning of this,” Merez said. Luca rose slowly. He regarded the ambassador, a dark fire burning behind his eyes. He did not acknowledge the Bastillonian who was brandishing a vial next to his cheek, and Lysande had to admire his sheer gall, even as she felt her hands clench.
“You know perfectly well why you are here,” Luca said. “But for the sake of clarity, let me remind you. Three riders attacked our Council yesterday on the Scarlet Road. Their bulging purse bore the Bastillonian crest. Did you hope to eliminate the leaders of the five cities in one swoop, or would killing half of us have been good enough? You must understand, I am devoted to detail.” Luca gave a flick of one finger, like a trainer signaling to wolfhounds, and the archers tightened their bowstrings. “Confess—admit your king’s plan. Tell me why he tried to assassinate our Council. Or all thirty-two of these arrows will come down upon you, and believe me, they hunger for places to rest.”
As she listened, Lysande tried to concentrate on the image of the purse in her memory.
“There was no such attack,” Merez said, looking from one Councillor to another.
“Some of my people died,” Dante put in. “Are you telling me I imagined the arrows in their necks?”
“Perhaps there was an attack—I could not say—but if there was, it was not ordered by us.” Merez bristled. “You, on the other hand, have been scheming against the greatest monarch in the Three Lands, like your ancestors have for centuries, holding back steel and tempero, keeping us in need. Do you think we missed your foray at sea, too? We see your base tricks.” She sloshed the venom again. Three of the Rhimese guards who had been moving tentatively toward her arm took steps backward. Lysande’s mind spun and spun, turning over the object in her pocket.
“You claim we attacked you?” Jale said, not bothering to stifle his laugh.
“Poorly, too. That ship you sank failed to harm us. And as for the incident two days ago, in court . . . we did away with your assassin before she could throw her filthy darts.”
None of it made sense. There had to be a pattern somewhere, though . . . if she could just piece it together and fi
nd the reason . . . she wanted to wrangle with this problem, and she was sure, somehow, that she could do it.
“Every word out of your mouth is a lie,” Cassia said. “The warriors of Pyrrha make flutes out of liars’ bones. Do you want to become our new instruments?”
“I could say the same to you, Irriqi. Where is this purse you speak of?”
Luca looked across at Freste, who was standing by the door. The noblewoman shook her head. “You were told to bring it,” Luca hissed.
“Your Highness, I looked everywhere.”
Lysande rose to her feet and cleared her throat. She had the feeling that this was her only chance, before the situation turned ugly, but she had not expected such a heavy silence to fall.
“I have the purse,” she said, pulling it from her pocket.
At any other time, the look on Luca’s face would have warned her to keep silent. It reminded her of an adder about to descend on an unguarded nest. But as the light from the candelabra fell on the stitching, a wave of realization washed through Lysande. The clouding of her mind, the frustration of the last day: it all disappeared.
“I believe we have all been tricked, Your Highnesses,” she said.
“If you’re concocting some scheme, Councillor—” Luca said.
“Observe the sheen of this stitching—the iridescent gleam.” She was struggling to keep her voice cool, like a noble’s; the words tumbled out, chasing her thoughts. “You cannot see it in shadow, but in full light, it shines silver.”
Luca stared at it for a moment. “Diamond thread.”
“Exactly.” She lifted the purse high so that the whole room could see. “Named as such because it is as rare as diamonds, and as strong, once sewn. You only find it in the west and the Periclean States. A blend of fibers used in Royamese ornamental tailoring, almost impossible to obtain in Elira or Bastillón for over a century, thanks to the restrictions on western trade.” Her hand was trembling. “What are the chances of Bastillonian assassins carrying purses stitched with a foreign thread?”
“What are you suggesting, Councillor Prior?” Merez said.
“The attack—it was set up carefully, the riders paid handsomely. But there were three of them, pitted against a large, armed party.” She looked at Luca, then across to Dante, Jale, and Cassia. All of them had seen the cadres tumbling from that purse. She hoped, desperately, that they would not see her interjection as the raving of an upstart; that they would absorb her words. “Someone needed them to attack five city-rulers in a situation against great odds, where they would surely be killed. That purse was meant to be found.”
She saw Dante and Jale share a look, and Cassia raised a hand to her chin, stroking it. She could feel her own pulse drumming in her chest.
“The stitching,” Merez said, lowering her vial slightly. “On the assassin’s cloak, back home. The crest of Elira. The reports mentioned that it was unusually bright in the torchlight. But I didn’t think . . .”
“The Royamese have stayed out of our affairs for centuries,” Luca said. “Why would their Sovereign want to make us cut each other up?”
Lysande forced herself to listen to her breathing. In. Out. She could do this, surely, if she could face a group of elementals in the middle of the night.
“It’s not Royam I’d look to,” she said, enunciating her words. “If the Royamese wanted to take our land, they would have done so in the war, when our forces were spread thin. They didn’t risk upsetting the trade lines and suffering a huge dip in their own supplies. No, someone else wants to start a war.” She drew a breath. “And that someone wants Elira to believe that Bastillón is trying to attack us. If Mea Tacitus can sow enmity between the Three Lands, she can persuade Bastillón to let her travel to our border. We all know she is coming for our throne.” She lowered the purse. “This sprinkling of lies across land and sea, it is part of her strategy. Ask yourself—when Bastillón cuts all ties with Elira, who profits? Do we? Do the Royamese, if the scales of trade slide left and right, up and down, unpredictably weighted? Or is it the White Queen who profits from our discord?”
There was a pause as they all looked at each other, and Merez’s expression wavered between realization and indignation. Lysande guessed that she was struggling to keep the veneer up as she exchanged glances with her advisors. Her own veneer was barely in place. It did not help that she locked eyes with Luca and caught the interest flashing in his eyes, flaring for the merest of moments, before he veiled it.
“This farce of a dinner is an insult,” Merez said, corking the python venom. “His Majesty will demand an apology for your insolence, Fontaine.”
Luca fingered the rim of his goblet lazily. “Let him.”
“Do you scoff at the king of the east, signore?” Merez drew herself up, bristling, and rose from her chair. “By Fortituda, bastard, you go too far—I will await your apology at the ambassadorial manor, for these insults and for your foul thefts at sea. And if I do not have it within a week, I will see that His Majesty knows about this little charade. Come!”
This last was addressed to the Bastillonian dignitaries, who rose and followed her out. The golden-haired servants trailed behind them in silence, and Lysande felt a surge of hot rage at this separation, this delineation between people of different appearances, so well-ordered that it spoke of long practice. Luca waved to his archers, and the women and men around the walls lowered their bows.
Lysande’s knees trembled, and she realized that she had been holding the tension in her body. She gripped the table, breathing in.
“Wonderful,” Luca said, wheeling on her. “You really smoothed things out.”
“Councillor Prior was trying to save us from a war,” Cassia said. “Cool your ears.”
If Luca had resembled a snake, she could now see the points of his fangs.
“Negotiation only works from a position of strength. You must have an advantage before you begin, or you need not bother at all.” He stepped toward her. Those long fingers almost brushed hers. “Thanks to Councillor Prior’s help, we have just ceded the only advantage we had.”
Luca turned and walked from the room, and the archers followed him. Freste whispered something to Malsante and they stared at Lysande, then hurried after their prince.
“Don’t mind Fontaine, my friend.” Cassia reached over to pat her on the back. “You just saved two realms from starting something that would end with a levy of blood.”
Lysande’s smile did not convince Derset or Litany, she was sure, but it seemed to suffice for Cassia, Dante, and Jale. They did not know Axiumite manners well enough to tell when she was shaken. She bowed and walked out.
Her hand was trembling again. Luca Fontaine was arrogant—she certainly had no reason to care for his opinion, when he lacked all courtesy. It was not at all rational.
She shut the door when she reached her suite, took a torch, and walked to the fireplace, trying to keep her fingers steady. She was used to holding them over fire, thanks to Sarelin’s makeshift meals on hunts in the forest, and she lit a blaze. The sight of the flames crackling away soothed her nerves, though not enough that she resisted thinking of Luca’s taut neck and his half-smile.
There was no question of holding back the urge this time. The jar called to her. Two spoonfuls of flakes fell easily into the vial, her sugar and water mixing in and dissolving, sending up a smell that was part pipe-smoke, part worn book covers, part spiced wine. Lysande ignored the reverberation of Charice’s warning in her head. It was hard to say how long she sat there, watching the flames and drinking, enduring the hammer-on-anvil blows of her heartbeat and feeling the glow of the scale. The golden calm spread through the room, melting away some of her frustration, while her insides felt the wrath of the dose, crackling like the fire, and she felt her own weakness in yielding to numbness. She did not care. All her problems rolled away.
At last, a knock came at her do
or and Litany called out her name.
“You did well,” she said, letting her attendant through.
“I was awaiting your command, all that time, in the room.” Litany almost hid her disappointment.
“And I gave none. So you did well.”
The girl bowed, though she still looked a little crestfallen. “I will have those terms ready for you by dawn,” Lysande added. Another knock sounded, and Lysande heard the distinctive cough of an Axiumite trying to be discreet.
“Your advisor, Councillor.” Lysande recognized Chidney’s deep voice.
She dismissed Litany, and as the girl slipped out, she saw her brush against Chidney’s arm in the doorway. The captain stared at Litany as if she were a finely decorated cake. Lysande had never seen Chidney betray her emotions so openly before, not even when the captain had received a silver brooch from Sarelin during the last jubilee.
It seemed to take a moment for Chidney to remember where she was. When Lysande cleared her throat loudly, the captain bowed and exited at last, with only a tiny glance at Litany.
Derset entered with an apology.
“You did the right thing, you know,” he said, when the door had closed. The fire crackled, throwing a few sparks into the air.
Neither of them needed to speak. She rose, and they warmed their hands on the rail of the fireplace together. A long time passed before Lysande looked at him.
“Nobody likes to feel the sting of a rebuke, but it will not help to blame yourself, when Prince Fontaine seized a chance to humiliate Bastillón,” Derset said. “That, and I suspect he does not often experience the feeling of being outsmarted.”
“Perhaps he was right to slice me open in front of everyone.”
“You have been a Councillor for all of a month. Yet I see in you a rare skill, a rare wisdom, and that which is rarer still—a hunger. For something bigger than yourself.”