by Anne Leonard
“What?”
“If you don’t settle down people are going to think you’re angry with me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He reached down and laced his fingers with hers. “I hope I’m not spoiling it for you.”
“What are you worried about?” she asked.
“I don’t even know,” he said.
She touched his forearm. “You’re about to explode, you need to move about or do something. I can take care of myself.”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “I hate to leave you alone. Something bad is going to happen. I can feel it coming.”
Nothing stirred in her. No dust or darkness or black wings. Then certainty struck. She shook her head. “It already did,” she said. She felt cold despite the heat of the room and resisted the impulse to fold her arms across her chest. “This afternoon. While your father was speaking.”
“I wish I’d listened to you then.”
“There was nothing to be done.” She tried to think of someone else he trusted who could calm him. She stood up. “Can I meet your sister?”
“I should have done that already,” he said. “I’m a boor.”
“Mattan said cad.”
“He did, did he?” Abruptly he pulled her to him and kissed her. It was no light touch of lips, it was as full a kiss as any he had ever given her. She resisted a bit—it was far too public a place for such a kiss—then gave in. Cina would skin her alive. Her body roused.
When he broke it off she found that her hand was on his chest. Hastily she brought it down. “How much longer must we stay?” she whispered.
“We can’t leave together,” he said. “I just ruined your reputation enough. You should probably slap me.”
“If I were going to do that I would have had to do it when you started,” she said. She was glad he seemed to be recovering a sense of humor. “You can’t come to my room, and I’m certainly not going to go wait alone in yours. What are we going to do?”
“Not tonight, Tam,” he said. “Not when everyone is watching us. If you go alone to your maidenly bed, then they know you matter. I’m not known for restraint, showing it with you will raise your standing.”
“To what?”
“To what it should be for the woman I love.”
Her mouth dried up. What was he suggesting? Certain she was about to say the wrong thing, she said, “That won’t work for long.”
“It doesn’t have to.” The next dance had started, and he caught her hands, swept her into the circle.
“What are you doing?” she asked, though she was enjoying it.
“This is the fastest way to the top of the room. I intend to perform my social duty.”
“And then stand there drinking with the other men? Why aren’t they dancing?”
“You’re welcome to try to convince them. They might dance with you. You’re lively enough. It’s damn boring having to listen to women prattle about nothing.”
“I’m aware of that,” she said. “But what do you expect them to talk about if they can’t go to university or take part in commerce or politics? It’s damn boring sitting around sewing.”
She was not sure what to expect for a response. “You,” he said, and broke all rules of the dance to kiss her, “are not someone I ever want to argue against in public, because you will slice me into tiny pieces before I even know it. However did you get this way?”
“I’m not inbred nobility,” she said.
He burst into laughter and lost the rhythm of the dance. She stumbled, and he drew her out of the circle into the watchers. She was about to ask him how he had got that way himself when she saw something that stopped her voice entirely. Words seemed stuck in her throat. She pushed them out. “Corin, look. Your sister.”
He looked. The humor died in him instantly. He said, almost snapped, “Sit down.” Then he hurried away, barely restraining himself from a run. Tam walked backward, still watching him, knowing it was something bad. She turned her head briefly enough to find an empty chair and sat down without paying any attention to what she did. She felt as though she were about to watch someone step off a cliff and could not make herself heard or seen in trying to stop it. The ache that had begun in her when he told her about Tai deepened painfully.
The uniformed man talking to Mari had to be someone of importance. The princess stood with her head down and her hands made into fists, obviously trying not to cry. Corin reached her, touched her. She fell into his arms. He spoke briefly to the man, then moved toward a small door in the back, one arm still around his sister. He did not look back toward Tam at all.
Other people were watching now. The dance had come almost to a stop. The important-looking man came and spoke to the musicians, who started playing something lively, though at first it seemed wooden and a bit off-key. Tam sat still, unsure what to do, unsure what had happened.
Someone sat down beside her. She looked, feeling angry, and saw Jenet. It touched her.
“Can I help?” Jenet asked quietly, sincerely.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong.” She sounded frantic to herself, and she took several deep breaths. “It can’t be anything too terrible since they want the ball to continue. Who’s the man?”
“Gerod. The guard commander.”
“My God,” she whispered. What had happened? It couldn’t be that anything had happened to Aram, he would have come to Corin first. If it had been a matter of Mari’s children, someone else would have come. But there had to be some danger involved. Danger that had hurt Mari. Danger that made Corin forget all about his worry for Tam.
“No wonder you kept quiet,” Jenet said. “I don’t think anyone guessed. He does like you, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” Tam said absently. Her stomach was clutching. She forced herself to look at Jenet and saw the ruby ring on the woman’s hand. She said all the appropriate phrases, hardly hearing them, and Jenet replied with the same automatic correctness.
The commander was looking at her. “I think I need to go,” she said, standing. Her feet took her toward him. When he saw her coming he moved to meet her.
“My lady,” Gerod said, tightly formal, “His Highness would like you to come with me.”
“Of course,” she said. It was rote. There were a hundred eyes watching, more. She refused to give them anything that would shame either her or Corin. She found Cina. Her face was white. She must have realized that Tam was right about Efan. Tam thought a reassurance at her, then turned to Gerod.
She was as stately as could be while she walked out beside the commander, but as soon as the door was shut she slumped a bit. The commander tactfully ignored it.
He took her not to Corin’s rooms, but to what seemed to be a sort of family sitting room somewhat of a distance away and down a different hall. Inside, she drew back, uncomfortable, noticing only that there were quite a lot of people present and knowing she was not one of them. Then Corin was with her, and he put his arms around her as though she had been in some great danger.
“Thank you, Gerod,” he said. “Tam, let’s step into the hall where it’s quieter.” He gripped her hand.
But he did not say anything for a while. She thought he was in pain, but if so he was very good at hiding it and she could not be sure. The grip on her hand had loosened, but nothing else about him had. His face was hard, carved. The corridor was well lit, but even so it seemed eerie to her, very white and shiny with marble, gas lamps flickering like marshlight.
“Do you remember what I told you about my sister’s husband Ves?” he asked abruptly.
A little thud of knowledge dropping into her. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?” And it had Mari weeping, it had to be bad.
“Yes, not just to him.” A pause that stretched into waiting. “I’m just going to say this, love, there’s no way to make it anything but cruel. While we w
ere in the ballroom, a dragon landed. I felt it, I should have gone up then. The rider dropped two bodies on the roof and left before the sentries could do anything. And they were . . .”
“One of them was Mari’s husband.”
He did not bother to affirm it. “The other was my sister Tai’s husband. Both of them, Tam, both of them. They were not easy deaths.”
God. It was too terrible for her to even feel pain about it. It was entirely unreal. She imagined it, the roof where she had kissed Corin in the darkness, the soft air, the dragon bearing down with its bloody load.
He said, “Hadon didn’t need to hurt Tai this way too.”
“It’s—Corin, it’s evil,” she whispered, staring up at him, squeezing his fingers between hers. She had seen malice a few times before, but this, this was beyond malice.
“It is. I am going to kill him for it.” His hand itself seemed to get cold as he spoke. It was not a threat, it was a vow. There was no room left in him for anything of mercy or forgiveness, not to Hadon, not to himself.
“Oh, my love,” she said, aching for him, knowing he was going to drive himself until it was finished. He was so stiff and straight that she knew she could not ease him.
He swallowed, said roughly, “You see what this means for you, don’t you?”
It was unexpected, and took a second for her to understand. “I can’t possibly be in that kind of danger. I’m not worth that much.”
“This—this thing he did, Tam, it’s not any kind of war. It’s meant to hurt. After tonight all Hadon’s spies at court will know I love you. That’s all he needs. Ves and Ader weren’t killed because of who they were, they were killed because of who my sisters are.” His voice was flat, cold, inarguable. “He wants to hurt me especially.”
She touched the necklace. If the man who had given it to Mari had married her, he would be dead now. “What will we do?” she asked, feeling him slipping irretrievably away from her.
“Don’t talk to anyone tomorrow except Cina any more than you have to for courtesy. Anyone. And you need guards.”
Guards. She hated the entire idea. “Am I trapped inside? Don’t make fear for me into a prison, don’t, it will kill me, ruin me.”
“No. If they’re any good, which they will be, you will hardly notice.”
That was a relief, if a small one.
He said, “You should go somewhere they can’t find you.”
“I won’t be sent away, Corin, I won’t.”
“I knew you would say that,” he said, softening a bit. He put his fingertips lightly on her cheek. “Not yet, Tam, we will trust to the palace guard for now. But you’re going to have to hide eventually. Probably soon. I no longer think Hadon would not kill a woman. You won’t be the only one gone to ground. There’s already a bird sent to the garrison in Dele to get your brother out. I was an utter fool.” Gently, he touched her forehead with one finger, brought it down to the side of one eye. “You’re so very beautiful,” he said.
It almost broke her. Staring at the marble on the other side of the hallway, she said dully, “What now, I mean tonight?”
“My father wants words with you.”
“Now?”
“Yes. Come on.”
She did not want to. She had no choice. She nodded and followed him back in, hand in hand.
Very quickly—she was not quite sure how it happened—she was alone in a small side chamber with the king. It was dimly lit by a single glowlamp, with no windows, and furnished only with two uncushioned wooden chairs. Aram did not sit. The walls were plain unplastered stone. It intimidated her a bit. She wished Corin could be with her.
There was nothing forceful in his voice, though, when he asked, “How much has Corin told you?”
“He says it is everything, my lord.”
“Did he tell you about Tai?” His daughter. One could not have guessed from his tone.
“A little while ago,” she answered. “Very briefly.”
“And the dragons?”
“Yes,” she said faintly. Corin had said his father knew. He had told her what Aram said about the rider at his birth. But admitting to Aram that she knew made a bond between her and the king. They both knew this about Corin, and Aram had to know Corin would not have told such to a woman he did not love. It was like saying she carried his child.
The king said, “The wisest thing for you to do would be to pack your trunk and be out of here at first light tomorrow.”
Greatly daring, she said, “Is that an order, sir?”
“No. At least, not yet. But are you sure you understand the risk you take in staying?”
“Yes.”
He looked at her for a long intent moment. He said, “I believe you do. There are some things I need to tell you, then.”
She nodded. It suddenly seemed unreal. She wanted to spin time backward, an hour, a day, a week. How far back would she have to go to make a change that mattered? If she had gone into town with Cina that day she would not have seen Cade die, and none of what passed would have happened. For want of a nail. It would not have changed what Hadon did tonight, though.
“The first you probably know already. Be careful whom you trust. Man or woman.”
“Yes,” she said, not without sadness.
“Most people here will mean you no harm, but don’t rely on that. You have good instincts. Listen to them.”
She wondered what made him so sure of that but said, “I will.”
“If you need me, come. I will be sure my clerk and guards know to admit you.”
“I don’t—my lord, I don’t deserve that. I’m not . . .” Her voice trailed off. He knew what she was, there was nothing to tell him. “You’re trusting me on very little.”
“Your face doesn’t hide much, my dear,” he replied. “You were tested that night. I saw how you watched him.”
It was an extraordinarily intimate thing to say. She looked down.
He gave her time for several breaths. Then he said, in a soft and relentless voice that pulled her eyes to his, “Tam.”
“Sir.”
“The second thing I would ask that you not tell Corin.”
That was an order. “Of course not,” she said.
“You can’t go with him. None of us can. But he’s going to drive himself hard until he does leave, especially now that this has happened. Try to temper it. And if you think he’s going to break, tell me.”
Her eyes stung and blurred. Embarrassed, she dashed the tears away, but it was a moment before she could look at him again. “What else?” she whispered.
He ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture that was Corin’s. “You have wit and courage, Tam. Use it.” It was about the last thing she expected from him. Men did not say things like that to women, nor kings to commoners. It was the kind of command one gave to an adviser or trusted friend.
But what did she really know about kings anyway? Aram was as he was, whether or not it matched Tam’s expectations. He wasn’t going to let her complain or whine about her inadequacies. Whatever he wanted of her, it was not servility. She heard her answers. Yes, of course, I will. She was more than that.
In the next room a clock chimed midnight. She straightened and looked squarely at him. “What are you going to do about what’s happened?”
“I can’t even begin to know,” he said. His voice was still calm, but this time she could tell it did not match his feelings. That shook her. She realized she had to tell him more. Maybe Corin had, maybe he already knew. But she owed it to him. He had admitted uncertainty to her. He knew about the dragons, he would listen.
Awkwardly, she said, “I’ve had a sense—I’ve felt—there’s a fraying in the world somewhere. I don’t know what it is.”
He stared at her for a long time. “You don’t know yet how much power you have, do you?”
It startled her. “What do you mean?”
“You See things.”
Startlement became fear. “I don’t,” she said, her voice suddenly hoarse. The boats sailing to Dele called her liar.
He put a hand on her shoulder. That was power, to touch so freely. It steadied her, though, as it was intended to. He said, “You told me you saw the dragon in the mirror. No one without power could have seen that. Who knows where it came from. Perhaps it has been in your family’s bloodlines for centuries, perhaps it is a random stroke of fate. It is not unnatural, nor to be feared.”
“Are you saying I am a wizard?” It was bizarre, even mad, though it was impossible to think such a thing of Aram.
“No. Just a Seer. There are more forces in the world than we know yet.”
Wind. Fire. Fluttering moths. Time. She had told Corin more or less the same thing.
He walked over to the glowlamp and touched something on it to make it brighter, then turned back to her. “You need not use it,” he said. “No one will think less of you. But if you don’t use it, it should be because you choose not to, not because you can’t. Don’t hide from yourself.”
He had put a burden on her with one breath and lifted it with the next. “And if I choose to?”
“I don’t know what will happen. And I will make no suggestions.”
“Is this what you want from me against Hadon?”
“Want?” he said softly. “It has nothing to do with what I want or need. It’s not a matter of duty, Tam, it is for yourself alone.”
She was quiet. Murmured voices came through the wood of the door. She knew that Aram was capable of waiting much longer than she was. She should not hold him so, not tonight, not now when war had been declared with blood and agony.
“I need to think,” she said.
“Of course. But whatever you do, be careful,” he said. “There are things more powerful than you. You don’t know what you might disturb.”
It brought all the urgency she had felt that afternoon rushing back. She said, “Corin’s felt it, my lord. Something waiting for him. It’s already roused.”
“He has?”
“Yes. That’s why he didn’t come in that night. It wasn’t just the dragons.” She hoped she was not betraying him, but the king had to know.