At least the amount of brandy, though generous, had not grown, and she kept a careful eye on the servants' preparations, just in case the Champion's much-vaunted ability to detect poison proved false. The day had left her tired, and she'd already covered the mageglows, leaving only the warm light of the braziers. But getting to sleep before Strake was always difficult, so she sat cross-legged on her bed, combing her hair.
A key turned in a lock. Mid-stroke, Soren blinked at a robed and hooded figure, crossing through the Regent's former throne room. In moments it was in the Hall of the Crown, heading toward a door opposite the royal apartments. Palace-sight made it easy for Soren to peer up at the face beneath the hood and discover Jansette Denmore, smiling and excited as she produced another key and unlocked rooms which were once and soon would again be the Chancellor's apartments.
Soren's initial thought was that this was to be an attempt on the Treasury, but Jansette worked her way around that guarded corridor and made a circuitous route to a doubly-locked door. One of the entrances to the royal apartments, rarely used, and unguarded because its lock was enchanted to respond only to the correct key.
Which Jansette held, it seemed. Suddenly the scene between Halcean and the former favourite was explained. Jansette had been busily finding a way to get to the King of Darest.
It quickly became apparent that another thing Jansette had collected was details of the security routines. She whisked along a route which neatly avoided encountering guards or servants and finally paused in one of the bedrooms once used by the royal heirs. Here she produced and kindled a tiny mageglow and set it and a ring of keys before a mirror taller than herself.
Faintly astonished, Soren watched Jansette shed the heavy cloak with a single, fluid shrug to stand in the chilly night air wearing a diaphanous wisp of nothing. She was, as Soren had noted on too many occasions, truly exquisite. Her skin glowed, fine curls tumbled past slender shoulders, the line of her neck and back was pure perfection. She smiled at herself in the mirror, then rearranged curls over her small, high breasts so they partially concealed what the transparent cloth did not.
Torn between outrage and intense appreciation, Soren sat unmoving as Jansette donned the cloak and again shrugged it dramatically to the floor. This time she adjusted the drape of gauze around her hips, then ran her hand upward from knee to inner thigh, apparently out of sheer gratification. She trailed fingers across the soft curve of stomach, stroked her throat. Voluptuous delight. And then, again the cloak, the shrug, another tiny adjustment.
Despite herself, Soren responded to the sight. But the performance wasn't for her benefit. Jansette had gone to the royal apartments, not the Champion's rooms, and all too soon she left the cloak on and turned to the door.
Not that it would open. It would be a peculiar kind of torture to watch Jansette turn this arsenal of delight on Strake, and all too easy to stop it. No door in the palace would open against Soren's will. Jansette could sit there until the servants cleaned her out.
Or perhaps, supremely confident in her charms, Jansette would make a fuss, call out for rescue. Strake would inevitably investigate and learn that Soren had intercepted such a peerless delight. Whether he had any inclination to accept Jansette's offer would be nothing beside his reaction to such a manoeuvre. He'd made it abundantly clear how much he despised manipulation.
Soren threw her comb across the room. Impossible man! He'd hated her from the start, for no reason at all, and there were times he'd had her on the verge of apologising for being forced to bear his child. He was keeping secrets from her! Why shouldn't she stop Jansette? Why should she have to second-guess every decision she made for fear of upsetting him? It was her duty to protect him, and that meant keeping a potential assassin out of his bedroom.
Albeit the only weapons Jansette could be carrying beneath that scrap of gauze were far from fatal, and the cloak had not fallen as if weighted. The main reason Soren wanted to stop her had little to do with Strake's physical safety.
With a groan, Soren relaxed her unseen grip on the door, just as Jansette reached it and slipped out into the corridor.
"Maybe I can go back to Carn Keep," Soren muttered to herself. "Get away from all the horse-killers, and leave Lord Ill-humour to be seduced by anyone who pleases." It wasn't as if her presence was making any difference to the conduct of the Court or to Strake's safety.
Sourly unhappy, Soren watched the little scene play out. Strake glanced up as his door opened and looked purely surprised as Jansette shut the door behind her and stood with her back to it. Then the well-rehearsed shrug, and he stared in earnest as she took one step forward out of the folds of the cloak.
Snapping shut the book held in one hand, he said something. Jansette's reply, delivered with that air of ingenuous gravity, surprised him to laughter. Whatever he said then was accompanied by an extremely sardonic expression, but still he put the book down and stood up, did not sneer or snarl or send her scurrying.
Nor was he precisely encouraging as Jansette crossed the room to stand before him, but surveyed her careful display with critical attention. The Lady Denmore was equal to the challenge, however, moving with unhurried aplomb and composing herself into a very pretty picture, hair falling away from that lovely throat as she gazed up at him, head tilted ever so slightly to one side.
Strake asked a question. Jansette's attitude was demurely inviting as she replied, though it was difficult to understand how it was possible for anyone to be demure in such a flimsy excuse for clothing. By comparison Strake looked overdressed, ready for sleep in loose hose and a grandly patterned bed-robe. The Master of Apparel was slowly succeeding in his attempts to inject a little colour into the royal wardrobe.
Kittenish, Jansette arched her back, then leaned forward until she was almost resting against his chest. The ecstatic enjoyment of her approach was obviously disarming. They spoke again, an exchange which brought a glint of appreciation to Strake's long eyes. He had not stepped away, did not move as a slender white hand touched his wrist, travelled up to trace his arm beneath the robe, then slid further still to twine around the back of his neck.
Soren only just anticipated it, knew a moment before Jansette tried to pull his mouth down how her Rathen would react. It was a fatal, inevitable error. Strake threw his head back like a shying horse, then gripped Jansette by the upper arm and spun her across the room. She bounced off the door, regaining her balance to stare back at her incandescently furious king. Soren had never seen Strake angrier, and wholeheartedly applauded Jansette's quick decision to gather up her cloak and leave the way she had come. In a few moments she was back in that empty bedroom, gathering up her keys, head cocked to one side as she listened for any outcry.
Strake hadn't moved, still gripped by the memory of the Rose's assault. He looked like he was grinding his teeth, quite capable of chasing after Jansette Denmore and beating her to a pulp. And then he did follow her out into the corridor, but turned left instead of right and slammed open the door which connected the royal apartments to the Champion's rooms.
In her shock, Soren actually squeaked, then hastily leaped off her bed and retied her robe so she wasn't gaping out all over the place. On the far side of her apartments, Halcean sat bolt upright in her bed, jerked out of sleep by the bang.
Soren had barely fumbled tight the sash before her bedroom door was wrenched open and Strake was somehow right in front of her, tall as a mountain, eyes black as pitch.
"What do you think you're playing at?" He snarled the words, almost spitting in his fury.
Her mouth wouldn't work, and she must have gaped like a fool, but knew better than to pretend she didn't know what he was talking about. How could she have anticipated this?
"I – it – I wasn't sure whether I should make those decisions for you," she quavered, hating herself for the too-exposed fear. "She wasn't carrying a weapon."
"Don't you know an attempt to climb to the throne when you see it?" he snapped. "The last thing I need is anothe
r manufactured heir. Another trap." Sheer loathing dripped from his voice, and he lifted his hands, quivering, then paced around her as if he had to move or hit out. "The moment I set eyes on you, I knew I should have run as far and fast as possible."
This made Soren blink. But she had known it, remembered that surge of anger as she walked into The Lost Prince. Even before the Rose had assaulted them, he'd felt this way. "Why?" It came out as a gasp.
"Look at you!" He stopped pacing, made a violent gesture toward her face, then caught himself and turned away to stare at their images in her mirror. Two white faces: one frightened, the other furious. "As if I would obediently take the treat offered me. And then when I did not–!" He was vibrating with fury, shaking.
It was immensely difficult not to move away, for she very much wanted to put some distance between them. She was painfully aware of Halcean, now out of her bed and listening hard, obviously just able to hear Strake's voice and not at all sure what was going on.
"I don't understand." She forced herself to be soft and composed, to not provoke, to try and defuse.
The expression he turned on her then well recalled his words on their arrival in Tor Darest. That he had never so wanted to punish another human being. He lifted a hand, but this time it was only to summon illusion, sparkling into the air beside them, an eerie intruder to shift a confrontation's balance.
"We were looking for a third, Vahse and I." Strake's voice had lowered to a hiss. "Our tastes were shared and we made an image of our ideal and set out to find her. I never saw anyone even close, until that inn."
It was close. A tall, dark-haired woman with the same oval of face and exactly the same mouth. The build, the carriage, the eyes were all familiar. It reminded Soren horribly of her sister, Rain.
"Composite of my desires," he went on. "As if I would obediently perform at the first opportunity. And you ask me 'why'? The why I can't answer is why I haven't damned the consequences of destroying the Rose and gotten rid of you both."
"Both?" Soren echoed. She was still staring at the woman Strake and Vahse had been looking for. Not her face, but her. Very much her.
"Wonderfully arranged." Strake was pacing again, each step provoking a responding clench of Soren's shoulders, anticipation of a blow. "The Rose operates through the Champion, and the Champion carries my child. If I destroy the Rose, the power backlash releases through you, and thus makes me murderer of my own heir."
"And me." Her voice was breathy now, strangled by disbelief.
"Sometimes that doesn't bother me."
He was only getting angrier, working himself up with this flood of explanation, a litany of frustration and betrayed hope. On top of her fear, Soren added a flush of embarrassment, for Halcean had crossed into the receiving room, and was hesitating in its centre, concern written over her face. Soren doubted the woman could hear exactly what was being said, but the tone, the participants, would be clear.
"I'm sorry," she said, forcing the words past the tight lump of tears. "I wish there was some way I could fix this. That I could erase what happened, or make it less awful. I...I know you have nightmares. I know that it's the Rose you want to hurt. If there was anything I could do, you know I would. Anything at all. But I can't unmake it."
Strake stared at her, black fury riding his eyes. She could feel his need to hurt her beating down, growing stronger, boiling over.
Then he said: "Take off your clothes."
"What?"
"You heard me. Something you can do."
The look in his eyes was ugly, unlike any she'd seen there before. It didn't matter that this had been a thing she wanted, that he could have had her with a gesture, a glance. Lust wasn't what was driving him. This was for revenge, to kill the nightmares and the memory of being forced on her. An outlet for overwhelming anger. She wasn't sure he would let her leave. That would be even worse.
This was the moment Soren discovered how to operate the palace defences.
They coiled down out of the ceiling, vines of milk or moonlight; mist. Thorns longer than any plant's had a right to be, leaves serrated like saws. Glass snakes, flawlessly deadly. They glowed, leaving a vicious little trail of afterimages as they dropped to frame his face. He would only have to turn his head to see them, but he was frozen now, intent on her stricken eyes. Wholly gripped by old, cold, seething anger.
It would be ridiculously easy to tear him away from her, cut him, shred him as completely as Vixen had been. Keep him distant, impotently furious. Or kill him.
"Unless you'd like me to strip you?" he said, oblivious to threat.
She held her hand across the sash of her robe – a mindless defensive gesture as she frantically searched for some way out. If she attacked him, it would completely destroy whatever fragile relationship they might salvage after this. She wasn't even sure she could avoid killing him, if she let the Rose strike. But she couldn't let him rape her.
"It's only going to make everything worse," she said, brokenly.
He recoiled, something in the words striking him more surely than any thorn. A staggered step backward, as the glowing vines lifted like startled snakes, and then he whirled and slammed his fist into the panelled wall beside her bed, producing a sickening crack. Out in the receiving room, Halcean jumped, took two hasty steps forward and stopped again while Soren gasped with the effort of holding back the vines.
Strake slid into a heap beside her bed, Halcean bit her lip, torn, and Soren pushed the Rose away, refusing murder. And, without protest, it went.
Her Rathen was panting, as if he had run all the way back to Teraman. Palace-sight showed her a face filled with revulsion, self-loathing.
"Thank you," she said, softly. For not making me kill you.
He closed his eyes, looking drained. "It wasn't for your benefit," he told her, in a tone of bitter honesty. "Of all the things I never believed myself capable."
She sat warily on the far end of the bed, and focused on the defeated sag of his shoulders, willing Halcean to stay where she was. "Do you hate me so much?"
"Not you, the Rose. You were right in saying that. But still, your face–" He rubbed a hand across his eyes, as if he was trying to erase memory. His knuckles were bleeding. "Sun, there are times I can't bear to look at your face."
Composite of his desires. Welded with nightmare. She refused to apologise for her appearance.
"Would I really die, if you destroyed the Rose?"
He sat up at that, though he didn't quite seem able to look at her. "I can't see a way to avoid it. The Rose as good as dwells inside the Champion. It's taken root in you, uses the mind it does not quite possess to perform its functions. It's little wonder this instinct feels like a person to you. And that connection means if I simply pulled down the runes, all the power of the enchantment would release through you."
"There's no way?"
"I could attempt to channel the power – or have Aristide do it – but it would still have to run through you, all the power of the Rose. Shielding you from that – it would be like trying to sew with lightning."
As he looked up at her, his expression changed a little, and he stood, made a gesture of open remorse. "I can't apologise for this," he said. "It would be so wholly inadequate. Don't–" He shook his head. "I have never been able to guarantee my temper. If I – bar your door, call for the guards. Don't ever let me do this to you again."
She watched him leave, thankfully not even noticing Halcean transfixed in the middle of the receiving room. Reaching his bedroom he poured out a tumbler of brandy and swallowed it in one choking gulp.
"Are you all right?"
Halcean, a shadow in the doorway. Soren tried to think of something, anything, she could say to explain the dreadful scene away, but could only lift her hands. "I've been worse."
"Really?" Halcean's voice was equal parts doubt and sympathy. She looked as usual full of questions, but instead crossed quickly to the bed and matter-of-factly put an arm about Soren's shoulders, leaning her like a c
hild into her side. "I won't ask. Just let it out."
Strake, face set, poured another tumbler of brandy and swallowed it. Soren, chokingly reluctant, tried not to weep. The saecstra shifted beneath Aristide's skin. Jansette, practically forgotten, slipped safely out of the royal apartments. The guards patrolled, the rats raided grain sacks, the sleepless yawned or shat or fucked. In the Garden of the Rose, a tiny bud grew minutely larger.
And that was the worst of it, far out-shadowing the King drinking himself into a stupor, the dreadful scene, the whole stupid mess of it all. The reason she was Champion. Not because she could save him from the Deeping monster, or for any words of advice she might think to give. Not even for being even-tempered or intelligent. Just because she was a leggy brunette with a nice mouth and the right sized breasts. Champion Brood Mare.
Chapter Nineteen
A poison morning: flat, bleak, spoilt. Soren wallowed in it. She hated Strake for hating her, for being more temper than king. She loathed herself for not yelling back at him, for giving a damn about him. Halcean she resented for suggesting being Champion was a possibility not a life sentence, and for overhearing enough to see that wasn't completely true. The rest of the world she despised impartially.
Lack of sleep was no excuse. As ever she'd woken completely refreshed, but had only watched with sour malice as Fisk discovered his king in a reeking stupor. The secretary would be damned whatever he did. Strake woken on time and half-drunk, or late with a hangover, was not either way going to be a grateful master. Fisk had eventually tip-toed away and, from the looks of it, cancelled the morning appointments. If only Soren had taken the time to bully her aide into equal restraint.
"Drink it. It'll make you feel better."
Soren gazed at the steaming mug and felt queasy. "Halcean," she began, "I appreciate what you're trying to do–"
"No you don't." Halcean grinned, completely undaunted. "You'd appreciate me going away and leaving you alone. But, really, it will make a difference."
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