Champion of the Rose - Kobo Ebook

by Andrea K Höst

  "I've spent more time with that horse than with you."

  Her voice was rusty-dry, and he grimaced, then said: "You've been riding out on your own each morning?"

  She just nodded. That was not what she wanted to talk about. "Was it the same?"

  "Unequivocally?" He sighed, then sat down opposite her, leaning forward with his eyes on his clasped hands. "It looked very much the same to me. But I've read the histories, and there's enough detail in them for someone to reproduce the creature's manner of killing. Slashes like claws, continuing after death, the body uneaten." His fingers whitened, betraying what his face and voice did not.

  "The Rose gave me no warning," Soren said, quite steadily. She'd reached the stage of numbness.

  "It may not have known." Those long, dark eyes flicked up for an instant. "The way it's constructed, there would be little within the palace hidden from the Rose, but most of its divinatory abilities outside are linked to the presence of Rathens, or the Champion." His mouth twisted. "Of course, if warning you of the attack on the horse would have resulted in you running straight outside to be cut up yourself, it may well have deliberately kept quiet. But I lean toward the former. It's certainly not omniscient, may not even be able to reason complexly."

  It just acted like it. Far too contradictory. "If Vixen was killed by the same thing that hunted you in the forest, how could it be inside the palace grounds? Why would it trail you all the way from Teraman?"

  He shrugged. "That's what we aim to find out. Is Aristide awake?"

  "Oh, yes." Aristide had returned to his morning passion for staring at the ceiling. He at least did not smile as he lay thinking over the morning's news. "What do you plan to tell him?"

  This distracted Strake enough that he stopped trying to strangle his hands. "Most of it. He's far more a mage than I'll ever be, and I want to see if he can track this thing, or at least discover why the Rose was able to. Which means, yes, he'll know more about the Rose than is comfortable. Including that it attempted to prevent you from coming to my aid. But not everything."

  Strake was very deliberately staring out the window. Soren didn't say anything at all and after a pause he continued. "The saecstra was a brilliant move. He was right – I would never have trusted him else." He shrugged again. "Yes, I expect he will think it very convenient if this Deeping monster kills me. But he chose the wording of his oath, and it leaves him little room to manoeuvre."

  He stopped, his fingers again laced and white, his unease having little to do with Aristide. Carefully, he loosed his grip and settled his hands on his knees, breathing deeply. "I think he likes the prospect of reviving Darest too much to risk losing Rathens altogether," he said, with determined focus. "If I do die, you may be certain he will protect our child."

  "I have no intention of letting you die," Soren told him. And meant it. She had no idea how, but she refused absolutely to ever face finding a pool of blood belonging to Strake. Never.

  Chapter Sixteen

  No light but Selune's shall ever shine in her temples.

  It was a difficult edict. During the day, the temples kept their windows shuttered and curtained, and the entry hall screened by successively heavier layers of velvet drapery. Candles, even ordinary mageglows could not be used, and many of the smaller temples simply could not manage it, were constantly seeking funds for specially enchanted orbs which stored the light of the moon. Otherwise, the temple remained dark until the sun set, permanently a place of uncertain shadow.

  Most of the larger temples followed the structure of a long hall with walls of black and a pool-studded floor of white before a ceiling-scraping arlune. Soren had already seen the temple through palace-sight, had been fully aware that glows had been placed beneath the water consecrated to the goddess, that the arlune had been similarly enchanted so that the entire sweep of white shone like the shaft of moonlight it represented. When she struggled out of the mercifully dust-free curtains, the room still made her gasp. It danced.

  Halcean remained outside, ready to fend off intrusion, and palace-sight showed Soren two acolytes lurking behind curtains to her left. She ignored them, her attention flicking to Aristide and Strake as they passed out of the east doors to the stables. She listened to her Rathen's breathing, then shut him away as fully as she was able. She had come to make an offering.

  It was invariably cold in a Moon temple, thanks to all the water. In this case it flowed the length of the walls along specially constructed channels to form a semi-circular moat. A narrow bridge projected out into the centre of this moat, terminating just short of the arlune in a densely padded prayer cushion.

  The arlune itself was marble, far removed from Carn Keep's carved sandstone painted white. It rippled like the water beneath, curving out of the bracketing walls and flowing upward, narrowing to a pristine shaft which touched the dark ceiling. Kneeling on the prayer cushion, Soren looked up.

  "Moon for birth and death, Sun for all the rest." Soren had not often come to the Moon's temple. When her brother's daughter was born. The deaths of two of her grandparents, a childhood friend, pets. She'd never felt so conflicted.

  Gripping the edge of the prayer cushion so that she could not be tempted to reach out and steady herself with her hands, Soren leaned forward and rested her forehead against the chilly marble. Immediately, a faint headache she had not realised she was carrying lifted, and the swirl of palace-sight retreated to something distant and negligible.

  To the Moon she gave two slow, sinking realisations. One spread black across a stable floor, and the other solidifying out of the chaotic aftermath of the Rose's assault in the Tongue. Painstakingly she reconstructed her bewildered loss and slow-burning fury at sight of that pool of blood. To that she admitted a shrinking desire for safety. Then she tried to piece together the suspicion of pregnancy. A great deal of that was anger and dismay, but despite it all she had to acknowledge an edge of pleasure, that she was to have the child of this man she desired. Child of a King, child of her Rathen. An offering required honesty.

  She felt it flow away from her, combined recollection of death and conception, not erased from her memory but shared with the one who meted out the world's souls, and gathered them home again. The Moon did not reach out to her supplicants – there was no chance of the sudden, burning transcendence brought on by the fleeting regard of fickle Sun. An offering to the Moon brought more a reminder of a presence always there but hardly noticed, as an oft-worn scent becomes edited out of conscious notice. A connection to something immensely distant, remembered in return for memory. Mother's skirts. Comfort.

  It could not bring Vixen back, but it would do.

  -oOo-

  "Let me help."

  "What?" Soren looked up at her aide. Not willing to offer any more of her grief up for the Court's consumption, she'd retreated to her apartments to leaf through the histories, searching out more references to the killer while she watched the palace.

  "Let me help," Halcean repeated. "I'm your aide, good for more than answering doors."

  Halcean's eyes were intent, full of frustrated energy, but Soren hesitated. It didn't matter whether the woman offered out of ambition or sympathy, Soren simply didn't want to talk, didn't want to prod at the mass of fear and frustration tangled around her.

  "What can you do?" she asked equivocally.

  "I can be properly outraged!" Halcean grimaced, and held up a hand to forestall response. "I – ever since I came to Tor Darest, I've been watching how everything works. Learning who wants what, and how badly. And how I could use it to get ahead. I knew just what strings to pull to get myself offered for this position, and it was fun to do it. There's–" She hesitated, then hurried forward in a rush. "You do what you can, to advance your family, and most of the time I enjoy playing Court. But I don't think I've ever seen anything so completely unnecessary as killing your horse. Whoever did that – well, I'd like to see them regret it."

  "So would I." Soren looked down, then rubbed her fingers across a
line of old text, a fair description of a centuries-old death. "Who then?" she asked. "There are others to work out how it was done, to try and prove it. Tell me who, who has reason enough to – to hate the return of the Rathens so much that they'd try and mimic this? Because if we aren't facing the real monster, someone has to be willing to go on killing, to make it look like the King's past has tracked him down. Who has so much at stake to do that?"

  Halcean bit her lip, her certainty faltering. "It does seem excessive," she admitted. "I mean, if they're able to hide their tracks well enough for a single death, why not just make it the King's and be done? Of course, the King's under better security, but they'd have to breach that some time, and this kind of thing will only mean he keeps out of harm's way."

  "It would have to be a mage," Soren said. "Even avoiding the divinations cast for Vixen requires that."

  "Or someone wealthy enough to buy one. There's few enough local mages, but plenty for hire elsewhere."

  "So name your candidates. Whether or not you could believe them contemplating a string of murders, who has the most to lose?"

  "Well–" Sudden caution.

  "Putting the name Couerveur at the top of the list won't startle me, Halcean."

  The aide shrugged sheepishly. "There's no point denying they've lost the most. Though Lord Aristide has recovered a lot of ground. Really, except for not being heir presumptive, he's in a better position now than he was before the King returned. King Aluster has started making changes Lord Aristide has tried to push through for years, and at the same time the mere presence of a Rathen in Darest has increased the number of ships in port. And people are staying on, hoping to ride the tide of new fortune. Lady Arista – well, you don't need that situation spelled out."

  "Aspen told me there's stories she's secretly living in Tor Darest, keeping a close eye on things."

  "Ha." The corner of Halcean's mouth curled up. "I'm sure. But Lady Arista might be the key in another way. Before King Aluster, the Court had been shifting to Lord Aristide's banner, but there were a few too fully invested in Lady Arista to do that. People who hadn't been exactly supportive of Aristide, or who he had little use for. The stand-out candidate for that would be Chancellor Gestry. Lord Aristide's never been overly fond of his mother's discarded favourites, and he's already begun to move against Gestry."

  "He has?"

  "The Chancellor – well, he hasn't precisely been lining his pockets from the coffers, but he's certainly used his position to his advantage. Old gossip's been stirred up this last week: minor sins coming back to haunt him, making their way to the King. I doubt Gestry will be Chancellor for much longer."

  Dominic Gestry was talking to his husband, arms folded protectively across his chest, eyes shuttered and unhappy. More than his political life was falling apart.

  "He's not a mage, is he?"

  "No."

  "Who else?"

  Halcean hesitated again, obviously viewing the next candidate as possibly sensitive. She started to speak, paused, then said: "The Rothwells."

  That was hard to believe, and Soren's expression must have shown it. "Not Lady Francesca," Halcean added hastily. "Her children."

  The Rothwells were breakfasting in the Baron of Mogath's apartments. This was hardly unusual, since Lady Rothwell's lands were in Mogath. Mogath was a stolid, taciturn man who rarely shifted from impassive reserve, but it did not seem his guests were happy ones.

  A frown was carved between Lady Francesca's eyes, and Varian Rothwell was not hiding her frustration. Their attention was focused on the fourth at the table, Lady Rothwell's son Everett. A year his sister's junior, he was a refined male version of his mother's stately presence, and currently in the throes of passionate speech.

  "Why the Rothwells?" Soren asked, fingering the pages of the book again to hide the way her attention was divided. Strake and Aristide had returned to the palace, were heading toward Fleeting Hall. "I thought Lady Francesca had some kind of unstated alliance with Lord Aristide."

  "The Diamond's a chancy bedfellow. And neither he nor the King seems inclined to remain daggers-drawn with The Deeping."

  "So – ah." Soren raised her eyes in comprehension. "Trade."

  "A monopoly is a hard thing to give up, and while Lady Francesca is hampered by a stiff sense of honour, Varian and Everett are not."

  Everett was trying to convince Lady Francesca of something. Varian wavered. The Baron watched. Finally Lady Francesca delivered a short, obviously discouraging speech and left. Brother turned to sister, sister turned on brother. Watching the argument develop, Soren was glad she'd never been drawn to Varian.

  "Is Lady Francesca in danger?" she asked.

  "I don't know," Halcean said, as if that question hadn't occurred to her. "I don't know how far Varian would go. I think–" She paused, a wicked grin lighting her face. "I think Varian would far prefer pursuing more attractive possibilities, like marrying you, than cross her mother. Everett...he wants everything, and he wants it quickly. A man usefully bereft of moral check, as my own mother would say."

  Brother and sister slammed out of the breakfast room, Varian not quite able to fix a mask over her temper as she stalked toward a palace exit. Everett said something evidently vituperative to her back, then walked on. Before he turned the corner, he'd lost all sign of ill humour, was even smiling. Left to himself, the Baron continued his meal. But he did not seem dissatisfied.

  Interesting, but not illuminating. "You had someone else in mind, I think," Soren said, looking back at Halcean. "Before you produced the Rothwells."

  "I–" Halcean stopped, shook her head. "No. You said we were talking motive, and I don't know of one."

  "Still–"

  Fisk, despatched from Aristide's rooms, knocked at Soren's door, and Halcean rose with an air of relief to answer it.

  It was time, according to the King, for breakfast.

  -oOo-

  Aristide's taste leaned to the spare and elegant, and Fors Cabtly's departure had been swiftly followed by the transformation of the cluttered apartments of the Councillor of Mages. The rooms were large through lack of furnishings, and the rugs quite distractingly beautiful beneath bare walls of warm-toned oak. The breakfast rooms afforded a different view on the same garden Soren's receiving room overlooked, a discomforting symbol of Aristide's new position in the King's court. The Champion's apartments were bracketed by King's and Councillor's. A cosy little arrangement.

  "It can't be scried," Strake told her, immediately Soren seated herself at the table. "Divinations were useless, and the tracker can't sort out distinctive prints."

  "What were the tracks of the original creature like?"

  "I don't know." Strake grimaced. "What little we found suggested something humanoid. It was intelligent enough to keep away from soft earth."

  "Yet you succeeded in following it," Aristide said.

  Strake paused to look distractedly at the array of dishes, his selections prompting Soren to put a warm roll on her plate and butter it.

  "We tried using dogs," Strake continued, gaze on her now. "Again with little success. At times they seemed to sense something, but their tracking always led nowhere, so we sent them back. We tracked it by the corpses." He watched Soren's hand waver, and shook his head. "Small animals, torn apart. Birds. At times the trees themselves were scored, as if it could not help but claw at whatever it encountered. We'd find something like that, and then Theremel – our tracker – would laboriously search out every bruised leaf and blade of grass and broken twig."

  "Fast enough to take birds, but not outdrawing pursuit? Striking out wildly, but controlled enough to kill a man while his companions slept?" Aristide's eyes were narrow, glittering. "Did you track it, or did it lead you?"

  "That's something I'd like answered." It did not seem to be the first time the question had occurred to Strake. "The Tzel Aviar said it did not conform to any Deeping creature she had previously encountered. The elusiveness outstripped a nixie, the clawing suggests a t
roll. The arcane protection was of a level usually expected of one of the dragon-kind. We discussed the possibility of one of the lesser elves using some sort of artefact, or even one of the Fair run mad. The creature seemed to kill solely for the sake of killing. Selecting its targets with all the logic-illogic of a Deeping monster travelling for days just to slaughter a horse."

  "There have been no reports of sudden deaths between here and the Tongue," Aristide commented. "Certainly no trail of corpses. But if this was done by an opportunistic local, they have superlative protections – a high order of magery. Unlikely that there would be a multitude of untraceable killers. Yet you say this is not entirely the case?"

  While Strake matter-of-factly outlined the Rose's ability to observe inside and outside the palace, Soren made intent work of pulling the roll into small pieces. Aristide listened to long-guarded Rathen secrets with an air of polite attention, but when told that Soren could see everything which occurred in the palace he was not quite able to restrain the curling corners of his mouth. She wondered if he'd stop lingering in his bath.

  Strake concluded with a description of the encounter in the Tongue. "Whether it was the same creature is naturally the issue. There's as much evidence for as against. If it was, then despite our failures it's possible to track the thing."

  "The Rose offered no warning this morning?"

  "No." Soren didn't lift her eyes from her plate to answer.

  "The Rose is a type of setherin construct." Strake was frowning at her bowed head. "Operating through the bloodline and the Champion. It has some unconnected divinations, no real prophetics, and may simply not have been capable of detecting this creature when it was at any distance from the Champion or myself." He paused, turned over his unused fork, then added: "After making clear our pursuer to Soren, the Rose attempted to prevent her from warning me."

  Aristide, arrested in the act of drinking, blinked over the rim of his mug. For once in his life surprised, but quickly recovering composure. He frowned at Strake for a long breath, looked at Soren as if he expected to discover an explanation in her face, then said: "If I might be indelicate, was this before or after your child was conceived?"