"You haven't a broken skull."
"Not yet." He gave her one of his sour looks. "It seems I soon will. Is that enough explanation for now, or shall we wait for an audience?"
Soren stared up at the black rose. "What of the thing chasing you? And how you came to Teraman?"
Strake was looking toward Fleeting Hall. "Later," he said. "You have my word, if you need it."
There were footsteps approaching, steady but not hurried, and very near. Soren, the implications of Strake's impending death unravelling in her mind, looped Vixen's reins over her neck and moved to stand next to him. The black rose dipped to meet her and she paused, because she did not know what to say.
It was at this precise perfect moment that Aristide Couerveur walked into the Garden of the Rose. He was wearing a light, silky dressing gown over loose trousers, but was otherwise as impeccably presented as the last time Soren had seen him. He didn't even seem surprised.
There was no time to freeze or panic. Soren lifted her hand to brush the very tips of the fragile petals and looked straight into the eyes of the man she was about to disinherit. "Aluster Veristace Rathen," she said, then added with exacting simplicity: "King."
Several things happened at once. The rim of silver on Strake's rose flashed bright enough to hurt, the light shifting gold before it vanished. Strake made a small noise, a grunt of pain or effort. And a thousand bells rang.
Metal tongues in metal throats, falling over themselves in eager triumph. High as birdsong, deep as night, cascading everywhere and through everything. A clamour of acclamation so powerful that Soren's chest vibrated in sympathy, and only Aristide Couerveur's interested gaze kept her from covering her ears.
It wasn't easy to think in the midst of joyous cacophony. Soren's thoughts kept being bounced from their course as she tried to divide her attention between Strake's expression and the possibility that Lord Aristide would be rash enough to attack them in the Garden of the Rose. And a strange sense that she'd suddenly acquired a dozen extra eyes.
Since it was impossible to be heard in the riot of noise, and Strake and Lord Aristide were just standing surveying each other, Soren concentrated on herself first. An unlooked-for section of her mind seemed to have suddenly opened up, or been invaded, by...locks. Locks which were home to spiders, locks which were frozen with rust. Locks which were in part tiny killers; cold and patient. Shining locks, recently oiled, warm with use. A dozen hundred locks. And their doors. In every direction, doors. And musty stairs and cobwebbed windows and tiled roofs enduringly whole beneath their burden of leaves and dirt. Gardens, bright and blooming, and one parched, desiccated from neglect. Rooms empty and still, others warm with life. People. Walls and corridors and floors of stone and wood and marble, held together by a coiling all-pervasive force. All around them, everywhere. Infesting, upholding every part of the palace. The Rose.
And bells. She'd never known there were so many in the palace, indeed that there were any outside the Chapel of the Sun. But there were two at each corner of Fleeting Hall, warm and mellow. A cluster of twenty at the very entrance of the palace, turning and rocking above the great golden doors. And one massive cup of metal, just beyond the throne room, exulting the new King in a voice of silver thunder.
Soren nudged at a tendril thought, a fragment of will furnished with dark, serrated leaves and copper-green thorns. And the bells stopped.
"Thank you," Strake said, tone edging back into impatience. Soren opened her eyes to discover herself still a woman standing in a garden. With a palace twining through her mind.
She wasn't certain how long she'd been staring at things she couldn't really see, but it seemed to have been enough time for Fleeting Hall to collect the beginnings of a confused crowd. Some like Aristide still in sleeping clothes, and most staring up at the ceiling. Others were watching Lord Aristide, with the usual interest anything he did inspired, but they didn't seem to understand that the pair of people he faced were the heart of the morning's excitement. That the bells were for the King, for a new chapter in Darest's history. Bells for the end of the Regency.
They couldn't see her, Soren realised. Just her legs beneath Vixen's belly. A very strange thing, for a horse to be in the Garden of the Rose, but not nearly so curious as the sudden clamour of bells.
Then Aristide Couerveur went to one knee.
Thirty years at the heart of Court intrigue. It had certainly provided Lord Aristide with a performer's feel for the moment. Soren could not do more than guess at his feelings, but he did not spare any inch of depth as he inclined his head to the new King of Darest. He still looked like he was enjoying himself.
"Your Majesty," he said, star sapphire eyes meeting blue-black ink. "How may I serve?"
"You can get up, for a start," Strake replied waspishly, but it was too late. Disbelief ran through the Court: the Diamond Couerveur – kneeling! Then comprehension slowly dawned, and those nearest began dropping to their knees. A different kind of excitement spread across Fleeting Hall, a mix of fear and joy. Strake merely looked impatient. "If you would be so kind," he added.
Lord Aristide immediately rose to his feet. And smiled, that peculiarly sweet smile he was reputed to have given Vereck Basquet before he beggared him. "Would Your Majesty like to be conducted to the...former Regent?" he asked.
"In due course." Strake looked out over the twenty or thirty people kneeling before him to startled newcomers just entering Fleeting Hall. "One of you fetch the Chancellor," he said. "And the Seneschal. Presuming the palace still has one."
Soren only recognised a handful of the people who were gazing at Strake so avidly. Guards and servants mostly, for few people had apartments close to the Hall. She saw Aspen, and the Chancellor's pretty young husband, who looked particularly wide-eyed as he surged to his feet, bobbed like a cork, then hurried away toward the still-open door to the Chancellor's apartments. No-one needed to fetch the Seneschal, who had already appeared at the west entrance and stopped to stare.
"King Aluster," Soren said, as much to the crowd as to Strake. "This is Lord Aristide Couerveur, the Regent's son. Lord Aristide, this is Aluster Veristace Rathen, son of Chenath Rathen, who was sister to Queen Tiarmed."
"King," Lord Aristide added, and folded into another exquisitely judged bow. Again, there was no hint of hesitation or doubt in the observance. "Perhaps Your Majesty would care for breakfast?"
"Shortly."
Gratified to discover that curt and touchy was Strake's method of dealing with everyone, Soren gestured to a porter. "Take Vixen to the stables," she said, catching hold of the mare's bridle as she sidled toward the pool at the back of the Garden. "See that she's well looked after."
"At once, Champion!" With a startling puff of self-importance, the man jumped to take the reins. Soren stroked Vixen's neck one more time, trying not to feel that she was sending away her only support. She wished she could concentrate.
It did not seem possible to shut off the ebb and flow of information through her mind, though it did tend to recede to the background when she focused on what was happening immediately around her. But even as she turned back to Strake, she was discovering that she knew that there were exactly eighty-three people in Fleeting Hall, that dozens more were running toward it and seven away, that the Chancellor and his husband were a few moments short of their apartment's door, and one of the cooks had just upset a pot of water over the kitchen's main hotstone, sending up a cloud of steam. That the whole palace was a pageant silently playing out in her head.
With a wrench, Soren brought her attention back to Fleeting Hall as the Chancellor emerged, his husband in tow. Though he was properly dressed, with the thick silver chain of office around his neck, the Chancellor's dark hair was standing in uncombed clumps. He ignored the Seneschal as she wove her way toward them, blinked twice at the sight of Strake, Soren and Lord Aristide, then bowed briskly.
"Chancellor Dominic Gestry," Soren said helpfully. Gestry was an olive-skinned man with a handsome-ugly face, all
his features seeming too large, but somehow coming together into an attractive whole. He'd been the Regent's favourite some years ago, his position his reward when her interest waned. He'd managed to retain it by proving circumspect and just ambitious enough.
"What are Your Majesty's orders?" he asked now, acting like he'd been serving Strake for decades, and not at all dishevelled or short of breath.
Strake was frowning at the inner corners of the Garden of the Rose, where the scourers never dared venture to collect fallen leaves and scrub away dirt and mould. He turned to look the Chancellor up and down, then said: "Inform Darest of my return, and despatch the appropriate messages to our neighbours. I will expect to meet with the Regent after lunch, then address the Court. The afternoon will be divided between an initial briefing from the Court Shaper, Councillor of Mages, Marshall of the Army, and Apexes of the Sun and Moon. Then I will meet with those of the Barons who are currently at Court."
Before the Chancellor could even nod, let alone compose some sort of response, Strake turned to the Seneschal, who had reached the edge of the garden and was curtseying deeply, her Keys of Office clattering.
"Seneschal Mara Sedurian," Soren murmured. Thin, prim and highly political, the Seneschal's most public battle was with the Chamberlain, sparring with him constantly about the division of their duties. Her expression suggested rapid thought, but like everyone else she did not seem prepared to simply reject the new King. Aristide Couerveur, after all, had not.
As Strake gave the Seneschal the same quick survey that he'd awarded everyone else, the crowd finally broke its silence, those furthest away beginning to murmur explanations to newcomers. Only a few were still on their knees. In other circumstances, Soren might find their stunned confusion entertaining, but too many were stealing quick glances at the man two steps to her right for her to forget possible consequences. Lord Aristide gave no sign of being perturbed by the fact that Strake had not spared him a further glance. She couldn't imagine what he was feeling.
"I'm told that part of the palace was sealed after Torluce's death," Strake said, brusquely, as the Seneschal opened her mouth to speak. "Get it cleaned. Start with the throne room, then my apartments. The Champion will see to your people's safety. But first find me somewhere to bathe and breakfast."
"I–" The Seneschal struggled briefly, then bowed her head. "Of course, Your Majesty. If Your Majesty would follow me?"
Strake held up a hand to put the Seneschal off and turned to Soren. "I'll see you for lunch," he said. "Will you be able to shepherd the cleaning crews?"
"Yes," Soren said simply, because it was hardly the moment the launch a discussion on her sudden dual existence as person and palace. And she was, besides, quite sure that she could. When she'd had more time to think, perhaps it would be clear why.
Turning away, Strake paused to look Lord Aristide over again. "Perhaps you would like to inform your parent of my arrival," he said.
"Very much indeed, Your Majesty," Lord Aristide said, with a wonderful sincerity. "Thank you."
Strake barely lingered for the answer, was striding across Fleeting Hall, the Seneschal only just managing to keep ahead of him.
"You appear to have crowned a whirlwind, Champion," Lord Aristide said, too soft for any but Soren's ear. Soren, whose attention had flicked away to the Regent, rising grandly from Jansette's bed, glanced jerkily at the man at her elbow and found his smile quite impossible to gauge.
The prospect of Lord Aristide as enemy frightened her, and she looked back at the full, dark flower which represented their new King. His explanation of the colour briefly drowned out the palace.
"It means I'm about to die."
Chapter Ten
There was nothing Soren wanted more than a quiet place to hide, if only for a year or two. Instead she had a crowd of servants, all lye, linseed and unconcealed excitement as they turned out the fabled living quarters of the Rathen rulers. Soren was too shakily weary to even appreciate it, her head full of cotton regret.
"My Lady Champion, you must advise me!"
Avoiding a scourer laden with disintegrating bed-linen, Soren turned to the Master of Apparel. He was one of those small, dapper men who seem to live on a diet of nerves and ill-considered romance. "What is it?" she asked, as her newfound inner eye flicked across a dozen rooms to find Strake in her own apartment, moodily leafing through the books she hadn't had time to study. She'd been carefully not looking at him ever since he'd climbed into his bath.
"It is the King," the Master of Apparel replied, with a nice rising note of alarm. "He will not allow me to dress him!"
Strake was certainly not prowling about her rooms naked. Nor was he still in his trail-worn clothes, though his current outfit was something very similar. "How so?"
"Everything I have shown him, Champion, he has rejected out of hand. He has turned his nose up at any thought of a demi-robe, and even the simplest of stockards prompted him to accuse me of trying to dress him like an Atlaran. His opinion of shirts suitable for wearing without outer robes does not bear repeating."
"But you have dressed him all the same?" Soren asked, her sense of the absurd slowly stirring to life.
"Much against my better judgment. I have been obliged to outfit His Majesty in a manner best suited for stable-work, or some coin-scraped huntsman. It is not suitable, Champion. It is not suitable at all!"
Not fashionable, at any rate. Following Lady Arista's sumptuous tastes and Lord Aristide's shining precision, Strake's penchant for undecorated black was going to look sadly out of place. It was interesting that the Master of Apparel had decided to appeal to Soren. He was the first but not, she suspected, the last.
"He is King," she said now, with as much gravity as she could muster.
"Champion, you must–"
"He is King," Soren repeated. The Master of Apparel opened his mouth, closed it, took another breath to speak, stopped, then reluctantly nodded.
"Thank you, Champion," he said, unhappily, and turned away. Soren watched him go, thinking over the power of that simple statement. If Strake took it into his head to wear a transparent lime-green nightgown who could gainsay him? The Master of Apparel should be grateful for unrelieved black.
"Are you ready to open further rooms, Champion?" the Seneschal asked, having crept over while the Chamberlain was busy displaying his vigilance over a cabinet full of outrageously valuable statuettes.
Soren was starting to realise that one of her major difficulties as Champion would not be playing politics, but staying away from it. The origin of the feud between Seneschal and Chamberlain was murky: something about a woman they'd both wanted. The result was constant struggle. Soren suspected they were as eager to impress the new King with the other's incompetence as their own efficiency. In Strake's absence, they had resorted to proving themselves before Soren.
The loathsome prospect of adjudicating courtier's games was finally too much. Awake since the previous morning, Soren did not really care about the replacement of hundred year-old mattresses, or whether statuettes of emerald and topaz should remain where they were or be conducted at once to the Treasury, let alone which court official should be doing what. The Seneschal had barely given her a chance to bathe and snatch breakfast before chivvying her off to oversee the unlocking of doors. And, because she'd wanted to give the impression that the Champion's much-vaunted powers over the palace protections required her physical presence, Soren had allowed it. But standing about watching people dust was ridiculous.
"So long as you use the keys, Seneschal," she said, decisively, "you will not be troubled by the palace defences. I will be with the King in my receiving room, and will expect lunch at noon. Advise the Chamberlain to leave valuables where they are found."
Without another word, Soren walked away. She'd discovered that there was a door linking the royal apartments to the Champion's rooms, but headed in the opposite direction. She wanted another look at the Hall of the Crown.
Scarcely possible to believe
this triumph of art had been lost to neglect. In permanent gloom beneath layers of grime it had been huge and threatening, with only a hint of splendour in the half-seen sweep of the banisters and the glimpse of carving on the doors. Ignoring the curious glances of stray scourers, Soren stopped just beyond the door to the royal apartments and drank it all in.
Vaulted beams of burnt honey curved molten over a generous two stories. The same wood formed a single sinuous line of banister, up the curving flights of stair, and all the length of the galleries to merge with the wall behind the throne, holding the Hall in an embrace minutely etched with roses. The room's five doors, a darker shade of honey, were also festooned with intricate carvings. Petals and leaves, thorns and vine.
The floor was glory. Sunset marble, awash with the most delicate of reds, gold, pinks and yellows. It drew in every ounce of light and gave it back as depth, revealing more and more of its kaleidoscope mysteries until it became a thousand layers of colour in an ever-receding horizon.
Soren found it entirely mesmerising, not least because her strange, new-found sight made it feel like she was staring at the inside of her own skull. But if she hesitated too long, someone else would find the nerve, or gall, to question her about Strake. And though those who had approached her so far had reluctantly accepted her statement that the King would address the Court later that day, there was sure to eventually be one who would not. Besides, Soren had answers of her own to discover.
-oOo-
During her journey to Teraman, the Champion's apartments had been transformed from over-stocked library to muted luxury. She even had an actual view into the Three Fountain Garden, now that the wall she'd thought contained only shelves had proven to possess a wide windowsill. A few dozen books remained, and she found her King sitting in a chair reading a particularly old and decrepit specimen. A selection of others were piled on the floor beside his feet.
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