Rider of the Crown

by Melissa McShane

  She drained her glass and looked around the garden. There was Maxwell Burgess; she should greet him. “Please excuse me, I will speak with the department chief,” she said, and rose from the table.

  Burgess greeted her politely, but without enthusiasm. “I hope you are enjoying the evening,” Imogen said with equal politeness.

  “Of course,” Burgess said with a shrug. “And you, madam ambassador?” His eyes roved the garden, never resting on her.

  “I am well. Ghentali is a generous host. I do not know it is Eskandel tradition to give gifts for a birthday.”

  “Yes,” Burgess said.

  His continued indifference surprised her. Usually he was a good conversationalist. “He has given me this,” she said, and lifted the pendant to show him. He glanced down, then took it in his hand to examine it.

  “That is a valuable gift indeed,” he said, sounding surprised.

  Imogen shook her head. “No, it is…I do not know the word. It is a hard stone you can see through. They make regular shapes like sticks with six sides.”

  “Crystal. You may be right.” He dropped the stone and looked beyond her. “Excuse me, madam ambassador, I must speak to Mister Godalming. Have a pleasant evening.”

  Imogen watched him go, surprised at his abruptness. Of course. He was a friend of Diana’s; Imogen had seen him speaking with her at the Spring Ball. Well, if her tiermatha hated Diana on her behalf, it made sense that Diana’s friends would share her resentment of Imogen. She was just surprised the Foreign Relations chief wouldn’t remain impartial. She was growing to hate that word.

  She continued to visit with friends and acquaintances, occasionally crossing paths with Weatherby, who was doing the same. A Deviser approached her for a meeting to discuss trade options; a young woman wanted to know about the possibility of working together on a breeding project for Kirkellan horses. The Kirkellan were becoming part of the wider world. Victory might want to bear children someday, and suppose they were sired by a Tremontanan horse? She might not be insulted by the idea.

  Weatherby escorted Imogen to the door of the embassy without attempting to kiss her or do anything more than bow over her hand. She rather liked his company and hoped he wasn’t developing a romantic attachment to her, because she wanted to see him again. She dropped her pendant into her dresser drawer and rang for Jeanette. She wanted to see him again because he was safe, she wasn’t attracted to him, he wasn’t likely to take a place in her heart. Damn. She wasn’t going to be impartial, was she?

  When Jeanette had gone, Imogen lay in her bed, staring blank-eyed at the ceiling high above. There was only one man she wanted to be with wholeheartedly, and that wasn’t going to change just because she dutifully pretended not to see him when they were in a room together. Being apart had only made things worse. She sat up, punched her pillow with some ferocity, and lay down on her side. She could write to Mother, ask to be relieved of her position…no, she’d made a promise, and now that promise was making her burn with thwarted desire. She rolled onto her back again. She wanted him in her bed, lying naked beside her, running his hands over her body…she took her pillow and held it over her face, trying vainly to block the vision.

  “I don’t know how you can stand to do that,” Elspeth said, lounging on one of the sofas in the east wing drawing room with her feet on the armrest.

  “It is soothing,” Imogen said, selecting another needle bearing a different colored thread.

  “It’s boring.”

  “You do not have to be bored. You can read a book. Or draw me sewing. Or knit.”

  “I hate all those things. Isn’t it time for dinner yet?

  “I do not know. I do not have one of those Devices that shows what the time is.”

  Elspeth took her watch out of her pocket. “Twenty minutes. I’m hungry now.” She sat up. “Can I look at your pendant again?”

  Imogen set her needle aside and removed the pendant from her neck. Elspeth took it and held it up to the light. “It’s awfully pretty for crystal. Are you sure it’s not a diamond?”

  “I do not think Ghentali would give me a diamond as big as that no matter how much he likes his birthday and me.” Imogen stitched the hindquarters of a tiny horse, knotted her thread and bit it off.

  “That’s disgusting. You have scissors.”

  “And I have teeth as well and they do not need hands to work.” With another color she sketched in the horse’s mane.

  Elspeth slipped the pendant back over Imogen’s head and freed her hair from the chain. “I do like the horse,” she admitted. “Needlework is pretty so long as I don’t have to do it.” She turned her head at the sound of footsteps. “Jeffrey! And Mister Burgess.” Her enthusiasm faded at the second man’s entry. They were followed by four guards in blue and silver uniforms. “Jeffrey, can we have dinner early? I’m starving.”

  “Not now, Elspeth.” His face was grim, his lips set in a straight white line.

  “Madam ambassador,” Burgess said, “would you stand, please?”

  Imogen stuck her needle in her fabric and laid the hoop down. Burgess looked impassive. Jeffrey looked angry. Her heart thudded against her ribs. “What is this about?”

  “Madam ambassador, you are accused of espionage against Tremontane for having given confidential military information to the Proxy of Veribold.”

  She felt faint. “I do not understand,” she said.

  Burgess removed a telecode tape from inside his coat. “Madam ambassador, did you receive communications detailing Tremontanan troop movements from the Kirkellan camp?”

  “I did,” she said, “but I did not—”

  “Following your first meeting with Bixhenta, you used the palace telecoder to send this message to the Kirkellan camp. You met with him a second time after receiving an answer.”

  “How do you have that? I burned it.”

  “The palace telecoders keep a duplicate of all messages sent and received,” Jeffrey said, his voice low and angry. “The message you carefully concealed from the operator wasn’t hard for our translators to decipher.”

  Burgess said, “The message is a request for information about troop movements in the occupied territory. The reply clearly states the Tremontanan border with Veribold is undefended and there is no one in the area who could raise an alarm when Veribold invades.”

  She stared at Jeffrey, frightened of the furious look in his eye. That he could look at her that way…. “Bixhenta told me to investigate the truth and not to just believe his words,” she protested. “I did not tell him what I learned. He want me to, but I do not.”

  “Investigate the truth of what?” Jeffrey asked. “That Tremontane lies open and ready for invasion? I fail to see what need you had of that information.”

  “Bixhenta refuses to speak to us,” said Burgess. “I take that for confirmation. If he were innocent, he wouldn’t need to hide in his embassy; he would want us to know the truth.”

  Imogen looked from Jeffrey to Burgess. “It is a mistake,” she insisted. “I did not tell him.”

  “And there’s this,” Burgess said, taking the pendant in his hand and yanking on it to break the chain. It cut into her neck and she cried out in pain. “We asked Ghentali about his ‘gift’. He confirmed it is a ten-carat diamond and he gave it to you ‘out of friendship.’” His sarcastic emphases made her heart beat more painfully. “I wonder what secrets you sold to him to deserve what I can only call a princely gift.”

  She shook her head, hoping her dizziness would pass. “It is his birthday,” she said. “He say he gives gifts to all.”

  “I didn’t receive a gift. Neither did your escort, Mister Weatherby, who confirmed Ghentali’s account. It seems very few of the Eskandelic ambassador’s guests received a gift from him, and none were given anything nearly so valuable as this.” He tucked the telecode tape and the diamond into his coat. “Madam ambassador, I am placing you under arrest.”

  “No!” Elspeth exclaimed, grabbing Burgess’s arm. “Imogen
would never do anything like that. You’re wrong!”

  “Don’t interfere, Elspeth,” Jeffrey said in a flat, hard voice. “This has nothing to do with you.”

  “But—”

  “I said enough!” he shouted, turning his glare on her, making her flinch and drop Burgess’s arm.

  “Jeffrey—” Imogen pleaded. He had to believe her.

  “I don’t want to hear anything from you,” he said, still in that voice that made him a stranger. “You may have helped Veribold invade my country, which makes you my enemy.”

  “But I did not do this—”

  “Shut up. I’m done talking to you.” He turned to Burgess. “Have her taken to the prison. I’ll interrogate her later. We might be able to contain the damage if we find out exactly what she told Bixhenta.”

  “Madam ambassador, I would prefer not to bind you. Will you agree to go quietly?” Burgess said.

  Imogen assessed her chances. Four men, fully armed…it was almost a compliment. “I will go quietly because I am innocent and I will show you,” she said, but her voice was weak and she felt on the verge of tears. Elspeth burst out crying. “It will be all right,” Imogen lied, “you do not need to cry for me.” The guards led her away, and she wondered if she was allowed to cry for herself. That thought brought her to her senses. She would not cry. She straightened her spine. She was innocent. And she would show these men no fear.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It probably looked, she thought, as if the guards were escorting her somewhere perfectly normal, like the ballroom or a waiting carriage. She was too angry and frightened to pay much attention to the route, but she was aware they were moving steadily downhill. At one point she realized they must be underground, and yet they continued to descend. They passed through an old wooden door and were suddenly in a much newer building with tile floors that echoed with the tread of the guards’ boots. The pale yellow bricks of the walls looked bluish in the glare of the light Devices embedded in the ceiling.

  They turned a corner and entered a small chamber with an iron-bound door that looked as if it had been there longer than the rest of the building. One of the guards knocked on it. They waited. Eventually Imogen heard the creak of a key being turned, and a small woman holding a large ring of keys pushed the door open. The guards led Imogen through the door into another small chamber with another ancient door, which the woman also unlocked and opened. Beyond this door lay a long, poorly-lit corridor lined with age-blackened wooden doors. Each had a small barred window at the top and a metal slide at the bottom.

  The woman went to the fourth door on the left and unlocked it. One of the guards prodded Imogen, who turned on him, snarling, before she remembered she’d agreed not to fight them. “I am innocent,” she growled, then gasped as the guard backhanded her across the face.

  “No talking,” he said, and shoved her more forcefully. Imogen felt as if she could cheerfully kill him, but she turned and walked through the door and heard it close behind her, then heard the rasp of the key in the lock.

  The cell was small but clean and comfortably appointed, illuminated by a round Device fixed in the ceiling that shed a flickering yellow light over the room. There was a cot against one wall with a blanket and a pillow, a sink with a tap, a mirror, a small chest and a chamber pot. The chamber pot was empty and didn’t stink. The blanket, which was a washed-out red, felt scratchy, but there was a clean sheet underneath and the pillow was unstained. The floor was solid granite worn smooth; she wondered how many generations of prisoners the cell had seen.

  She sat on the cot and stared at the floor. Jeffrey had looked at her with such anger that remembering it made her stomach churn. He couldn’t believe Burgess’s accusations. That she could be condemned on such slim evidence as Bixhenta’s refusal to talk and Ghentali’s innocent gift…good heaven, what was the man thinking to give her something so valuable as casually as that? He’d been so cheerful, so happy to see her, and he could have had no idea how his gift would be used against her…or had he? Was he in on this plot to discredit and condemn her too?

  It had to be a plot, but to what…oh, by thundering heaven, would Diana go to such lengths to see her humiliated? To break Jeffrey free of her clutches? She absolutely would. And Burgess was her tool. Imogen covered her face with her hands and gave out a huge, shaking sigh. He would have had access to the telecoders, though how he’d found out about her messages she had no idea. The operator? Someone he’d had watching her? Had someone been watching her everywhere she went? She wanted to be sick, but couldn’t bear the thought of sharing her tiny cell with the stench of her vomit.

  She stood and paced again. Three long paces one way, three long paces the other. Plenty of room. Four paces, even, if she made short steps. It only felt tiny. She sat on the chest and felt the rough wood dig into her rear end. No one knew where she was. No, Elspeth did; would she think to tell the tiermatha? She pictured Dorenna and Revalan leading an attack on the prison, screaming and slashing and dying at the hands of gun-wielding soldiers, and hoped Elspeth would have the good sense not to run crying to the tiermatha for help. She shifted from the chest to the cot, curled up on her side atop the blanket, wrapped her arms around her knees, and stared at the door. Someone would come, eventually. She would figure out what to do then.

  She had no way of knowing how much time had passed. At one point the slide at the bottom of the soot-stained door opened and someone pushed a dented metal tray through the slot. She rushed to the door, but the slide closed before she could do…what, exactly, had she planned to do? Fight her way out through a narrow slit barely three inches high? The tray contained two slices of thick brown bread, a flat bowl of watery soup with tiny chunks of carrots and dull green peas, and an equally flat tin mug of water. She snatched up the bowl, draining it without resorting to the spoon with its oddly flattened bowl. The whole thing looked as if it had been set beneath a giant paving stone and pressed. She used the bread to mop up every drop of the soup, then drank the water, which tasted unpleasantly of loam. Then she sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the slot and waited, buttocks aching from the cold that seeped through her muslin dress. Shortly it slid open again and a man’s deep voice said, “Pass it over.”

  “I am innocent. Let me out. I will prove it,” she demanded.

  “Don’t make me come in there t’ get the tray.”

  “I think you should come in here and we will see which of us leaves.”

  “Just hand the tray over and stop causin’ trouble.”

  “No.” She was being stupid, she knew, but being trapped in this little box of a room had all her nerves on edge.

  “Fine. Keep it.” The slide snapped shut. Imogen stood and kicked the tray so bowl, cup and spoon scattered everywhere with a clatter. She paced the room again. Two strides in each direction. It had been larger before she ate. The wall the door was set in was shorter now, she was certain of it. She curled up in a ball and stared at the door, willing it to open or fall over or burst into flames.

  The light flickered out, then came back on as a faintly glowing circle of gray light in the ceiling that illuminated nothing. Nighttime, unless this was some nasty trick to confuse the prisoners, make them more compliant. Imogen got under the blanket and tried to make herself comfortable. The cot was too short for her; her feet in those useless crepe-soled slippers dangled off the end so the frame cut into her ankles. She drew her knees up and stared at the glowing circle. She couldn’t see the point of it. Maybe it was to give you hope that the light would come back on again someday, so you could see the wonderful glories of your prison cell and be grateful you weren’t in complete darkness.

  She stared at it some more until she could no longer tell how far away it was. Three feet? Three inches? It hovered just above her nose. When she exhaled, she could taste her own breath, as if it were reflected back at her. She blinked up at the blackness she knew was only inches from her face. If she tried to sit up she would dash her head against cold stone
as the ceiling lowered itself upon her, crushing her as flat as the dinnerware. That’s what had happened to her tray. She couldn’t stand. She couldn’t breathe. Imogen screamed and threw up her hands, ready to pound futilely at the stone, and felt nothing but air. She leaped off the bed and swatted at the circle, clawing at it with her fingertips, panting in her desperation to knock it over or turn it off or somehow make it disappear so it would stop staring at her like a lidless eye. Finally, her breath gone, her shoulders aching, she fell back onto the cot and lay on her side with her arm over her face.

  Tears slid down her cheeks. She could still see Jeffrey’s furious face, could hear him telling her to shut up. He was supposed to believe her. He was supposed to at least listen to her, though she didn’t know why she expected that from him. They’d known each other barely two months; he’d known Burgess for years. Of course he’d take his Foreign Affairs chief’s word over that of an illiterate barbarian he had nothing in common with.

  She sank into a restless sleep, waking at every imagined noise—why were there no cries from other prisoners, no demands for release? Was she the only one here? Could she be trapped here forever? She woke fully, her teeth clenched on a scream, and buried her head under the pillow. She felt as if the blackness was closing in on her again; she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to breathe slowly, calmly, and eventually fell asleep again.

  The light woke her, flickering back into life, its meager brightness blinding her dark-acclimated eyes. Imogen lay unblinking, taking in every detail of the room. It was no smaller than it had been the day before, but now she felt suffocated. She ran to the door, screaming, “Let me out! Let me out of here!” She banged on the door, but the noise her fists made was muffled by the thick oak that had absorbed centuries of screaming. No one came. Finally, her throat raw and aching, she gave up. She used the chamber pot, washed her hands and face, and again sat cross-legged on the floor watching the slot. After a while, she heard footsteps coming down the hall, and the metallic sound of the slides scraping open and shut. The footsteps became louder and then stopped outside her door. “You hafta give the tray back if you want more food,” the deep-voiced guard said.