Elegy (The Magpie Ballads Book 1)

by Vale Aida

  Josit had found her leverage. Iyone was still looking for hers.

  It was later than she had thought. The sun had set, leaving the streets shrouded in that penumbral stillness peculiar to twilight. She had left Elysa and her other maids at home, and managed to give her father’s guards the slip at the portcullis. These days she was never quite sure who was reporting to whom.

  She passed under the Marigold Bridge on her way home, taking a side alley that curved between two rows of boarded-up shopfronts. Overhead, several freedmen were packing up their shovels and manure bags for the night. The street was deserted; no one liked to be out after dark with an assassin prowling the city. Already people were muttering that in the days of good Lord Kedris, no innocent soul had ever been afraid to walk abroad at night, and that perhaps they should all have gone on campaign with the Silvertongue—a slippery little bastard with a heart like the bottom of a moat, to be sure, but a real circus-master. At least one would die entertained.

  A stone rattled along the road to Iyone’s left. She had thought herself alone. She turned, seeking the source of the sound.

  There was no one in sight. Then a foot scraped on the cobbles behind her, far closer than she would have thought possible for someone to approach unseen, and a pair of hands closed around her throat.

  She screamed. Immediately this struck her as an egregious failure of planning, because she was now out of breath, and the hands prevented her from drawing any more. She clawed at her attacker’s wrists, trying to prise them off. The bones were small and slim, though their strength was vicelike. An irrelevant detail; surely there were petite assassins just as there were giant hulking ones; gods, what was the matter with her? She could not focus, could not reason a way out. Her lungs burned. Black spots danced before her eyes. It was beginning to occur to her that she—Iyone Safin, who prided herself on living life as a purely intellectual pursuit—did not want to die, entertained or otherwise. It seemed a bad time for a philosophical epiphany.

  Blindly, she kicked out behind her like a donkey. The heel of her boot made glancing contact with her attacker’s shins. To her surprise, the hands loosened their grip. She sucked in a dizzying lungful of cold, sweet air. “Murder!” she shouted. “Murder! Help!”

  From far off came an answering shout. The hands were still around her neck. She flung them away and whirled around; and there she stood, her Thorn.

  A drab grey hood covered the straight golden hair, and a cloth had been wound around the face from the eyes down, but Iyone would have known her attacker anywhere. She stood clutching her throat, half stunned, unable to think. Not far off, a great many people—armed, by the sounds of it—were pounding up the street towards them.

  “Scream,” Shandei advised.

  Reason returned. With a sudden, immeasurable delight, Iyone understood. She drew a great sobbing breath and yelled, “Over here! Hurry!”

  The Thorn shoved her, not ungently, so that she cut herself off in mid-shout and stumbled to the cobbles. Before she had quite recovered her breath, the cloaked figure was gone.

  Still dazed, she did not notice the livery of the approaching guards until they had spread out to search the street, and their leader was kneeling beside her, calling her name urgently. “Lady Iyone? You ain’t hurt?”

  It was Cahal, clad in cream and bronze. Efren guards. The irony did not evade her, nor did the unlikelihood of a coincidence. She laughed shrilly, and Cahal’s bushy brows knitted together in concern. “Milady? Did he give you that?”

  She looked down. On the ground by her hand was a single red rose, a little crushed, thorns bristling all along its stem. The whole thing had been perfect, down to the smallest detail. Nothing had been forgotten.

  “Yes,” she said. “How romantic. Why were you following me?”

  A shifty look crossed the broad, tanned face. “Lord Efren’s orders,” said Cahal. “He was worried for your safety. Milady, did you see the man’s face?”

  “Of course,” said Iyone. “A jowly fellow with a big black moustache and lips like caterpillars. And a unibrow.” She dropped her head into her skirts and, with effort, turned another laugh into a sob. “No, by gods, don’t listen to me. I’m hysterical.”

  If Cahal was sceptical, he was too polite to show it. He offered his arm and helped her to her feet, while his men clattered around with their shields and spears. “I hope,” said Cahal after a moment, “your ladyship is not offended that we followed you?”

  She had recovered enough composure to smile. “On the contrary,” she said, “I am very offended. But also very grateful. You may tell Lord Efren I said so.”

  * * *

  She allowed Cahal to escort her home, and suffered the overwrought embrace of her father and the baffled concern of her mother. Elysa fluttered around with warm towels and steaming cocoa and other useless paraphernalia; and Willon Efren, who seemed to be under the impression that he had saved her life, called on her with a flood of questions. With vindictive pleasure, she refused to say a word to him until he had apologised, thrice, for casting aspersions on her integrity, and then told him as little as she had given Cahal. He left soon after, manfully promising her father that he would “get to the bottom of this”.

  Despite her protests, her mother swept her upstairs. Elysa, thankfully, had been sent on some other errand. “How lucky,” said Aretel, ushering Iyone into her bedchamber, “that there were guards within earshot.”

  “I don’t believe in luck.”

  “Neither do I.” Aretel shut the door with a decisive clap, not quite a bang. This must have been the second shock of the evening. She would have heard by now that Lucien was going to war, and why. “You know who the Thorn is, don’t you. That’s why you’ve been shielding Shandei. Why haven’t you told Willon?”

  Fired point blank, the questions could not be dodged. Aretel had the sort of motherly omniscience that made it futile, when one had broken a window or eaten all the dessert, to try and feign ignorance. “Why should I?” asked Iyone. “There are three different people responsible for these assaults, and Willon is so far from the truth he might as well not even have started looking. Who is that at the door?”

  “The physician,” said Aretel. “I have sent for her.”

  Iyone fought down a fresh wave of inopportune hilarity. “Mother. I don’t need a doctor. What I need is a vase.”

  She was still holding the battered rose. The servants had tried, exclaiming, to take it from her, but she hadn’t let them. Aretel stared at it, looking pained. “Trust me,” she said. “If you know what you’re doing for that girl, you’ll want to see this doctor.”

  There was something meaningful in the severe gaze that, as usual, made Iyone shut up and acquiesce.

  It was the physician who had tended her childhood ailments, a plump older woman called Poire, with warm earth-brown skin and broad eyes skirted by laughter lines. “Iyone!” she crowed, bustling in with her bowls and phials of noxious unguents. “Fighting off assassins all by yourself, I hear? You’re more trouble than five of your brother. Let me feel your pulse.”

  Her pulse was fine. Iyone made herself smile, and stuck out her wrist. “Look at you,” said Poire. She had always been a talker. “So tall and strong, when you used to be such a scrappy little thing. I attended your mother at your birth, you know. You were terrifying. Dawdled on your way for two full days, and a fortnight premature at that. The High Priestess herself showed up in case Aretel needed her last rites done. Here, wipe your face.”

  Wearily, Iyone took the warm towel and daubed her face with it. It smelled of peppermint. “She’s always told me I was going to be the death of her.”

  Poire laughed. “Now Hiraen, that was a different tale altogether. Popped out in a matter of hours, glowing like the dawn and yowling to bring the house down. It’s rare a first birth is so much easier than the second.”

  For some reason, none of this surprised Iyone. “What about Savonn? Did you attend his birth too?”

  “Oh, no,” s
aid Poire. “His mother Danei was an odd one. Daughter to Jehan Cayn, the Lord of Terinea… It’s always in the great houses that you see this sort of madness.”

  “Madness?”

  Poire looked disapproving. “Poor fierce thing, she was half crazed all through her pregnancy. Sequestered herself in a convent of Mother Alakyne in her fourth month, refused to speak to any doctors, wouldn’t even see her family. I was in Terinea near the expected time, and went to offer my services, but she screamed at me and flung me out.”

  Iyone allowed the towel to fall from her face. Aretel, subtle as ever, had brought in this woman for a reason. “What? But I heard she was frail. Surely someone had to look after her.”

  “She had the women of her household with her,” said Poire, retrieving the towel. “A couple of handmaids, and that slave of hers.” She cupped her hands over her mouth, her eyes going wide. “Oh, that’s terribly impolitic. She’s all high and mighty now.”

  It was difficult to look disinterested. “No one’s listening but me,” said Iyone. “You’re speaking, of course, of Lady Josit?”

  Poire grinned, her elderly face full of youthful mischief. “The very same. They were good friends, you know. Insofar as a free woman can be friends with a slave.” She lowered her voice. “It’s no wonder they didn’t mind sharing Kedris.”

  Iyone managed a giggle. “So,” she said, “when Danei sequestered herself in the convent, Josit went with her? You didn’t happen to see her there, by any chance?”

  Eagerness made her blunt. But Poire was not Aretel, and enjoyed the gossip too much to be suspicious. “No. Only Danei, big as a balloon and twice as fragile, the darling. Truth be told, I was astonished she survived the birth.”

  She mixed a hot posset for Iyone and departed not long after, in a flurry of exhortations to stay warm and drink echinacea tea and not to quarrel with any more assassins. Iyone drank the posset, but did not go to sleep. She found a vase for the rose, filled it with water, and placed it at her bedside. Then she sat down to think.

  Danei had been sequestered from her fourth month to the birth of her child. That was half a year in which Josit was unaccounted for. If they had conceived around the same time, then neither pregnancy would have been visible before they entered the convent. Josit could have given birth there in secret. Only Danei would have known, and she was eight years in her grave.

  But this meant that Josit’s child must have been born the same time as Savonn, or not long before. July 1512. His birthday had just passed unremarked, as had Iyone’s own. As children they had celebrated with joint parties, much to Hiraen’s jealousy. They had been inseparable, after all, and their birthdays were in the same week—

  She sprang to her feet.

  No. That was not possible. Poire had attested to Iyone’s own birth, not in some Terinean convent, but in this very house in Cassarah. And Aretel, for all her subtleties, was not a liar. Josit was not Iyone’s mother. It could not be.

  It was, she had to admit, something of a disappointment.

  16

  Iyone would have liked nothing better than to call on Shandei the next morning. But Aretel, looking dubiously at the rose blooming by her bedside, said it was still a bad idea to be seen together, so she had to satisfy herself with word from Linn that the girl was safe.

  The rumours permeated the city by dawn. Lucien’s brave daughter, she of the lofty stare and the insalubrious humour, had fought the Thorn all by herself and sent him running. She received visits from several old admirers, their interest freshly renewed; and even from Oriane Sydell, who seemed to prefer Aretel’s company to Lord Willon’s these days. But Iyone knew that their esteem was misplaced. If anyone had been courageous last night, it was Shandei—Shandei, who had planned the feint, and risked capture and death at the hands of the Efrens to divert suspicion from Iyone.

  Now it was Iyone’s turn to do something for her. She pondered all day, and then at suppertime paid a visit to Josit Ansa.

  Kedris’s mistress had never lived with him. She had her own manor on the Street of Canaries, as small and graceful as its occupant, surrounded by an apple orchard and an elaborate marble fountain fashioned like a leaping trout. The steward, a freedman with impeccable manners, ushered her into a solar, and soon after Josit herself arrived. “Why,” she said, seating herself on a low rosewood settee. “I thought you would have lost your taste for walking about after nightfall.”

  Iyone was at the harpsichord, playing an elaborate waltz Josit had once taught her. “I brought all my guards today,” she said. “And Elysa. How awkward for her if she is spying for you.”

  Josit gave an obscure smile. Kohl and powder made her look ten years younger than she was, slender and fragile, but Iyone knew she was far from decorative. She had survived years of slavery, had swum the Morivant to escape Sarei and, twenty-three years ago, had borne and hidden a child. “You do know, my dear, that I would never lay a hand on you? Yesterday’s attack had nothing to do with me.”

  “I know perfectly well who it was,” said Iyone. “So do you.”

  Her patience for equivocation was wearing thin. The topic of Shandei was raw and sore, like an open wound she had to cover. In hindsight, it was stupid not to have considered that the girl might make a move of her own, which would put Iyone in her debt. Another unforgivable oversight. No wonder she was losing.

  “Then,” said Josit, “why are you here?”

  “To play your harpsichord,” said Iyone. Her hands danced across the keys, guided more by instinct than conscious thought. “To let you know that you have made your move, and it is now my turn. You put Shandei in danger. If you do not desist, I have one or two very damning plays of my own to make.”

  Josit raised her brows, as if Iyone were a toddler throwing a tantrum. “The matter of the children? Really, just because I made one trifling remark?”

  “As I recall,” said Iyone, “I was the one who made the remark. I know that your child was born in July 1512, in the same convent where Danei Cayn gave birth. I know that you want this to remain a secret. And I can reveal it, if and when I choose.”

  She turned back to the harpsichord, ignoring the rapidly changing meteorology of Josit’s face. “I wonder,” she mused, “why you went to so much trouble to hide the child? I could ask Danei’s old handmaids. They may still live in Terinea.”

  An uninterpretable silence. She did not look up. There was a sharp movement at the corner of her eye, and then Josit came up beside her on silent feet and crashed both palms onto the keys. A thunderous cacophony rang out, drowning the waltz. Iyone’s fingers stilled.

  “I,” said Josit, “would like to hear your guesses.”

  Because Iyone was seated, Josit had the advantage of height. “Was it the father?” Iyone asked. “Were you afraid of him?” As soon as she said the words, she knew they tasted wrong. Josit had never been afraid of anyone. “Was it whoever enslaved you in Daliss?”

  Josit’s lip twisted. “The father is dead. His identity will not astonish you. The woman who sold me into slavery, however, is very much alive.”

  Iyone got up, rocking the bench. Everyone knew Josit’s story. King Romett of Sarei, an imprudent man who believed in nothing but self-indulgence, had died leaving at least a dozen putative heirs. Of these, it was Marguerit who had butchered her way to the throne. The Court had been all but decimated in the wake of her succession, entire families wiped out for having picked the wrong side. Josit must have sprung from one of these extinguished houses. There was no Dalissan family called Ansa, but this was no doubt an assumed name.

  “You mean Marguerit,” said Iyone slowly. “But it’s been so long. Why would she care?”

  “Because, my poor, slow novice,” said Josit, “there is no one she fears more than me. I brought all her secrets to Cassarah. I taught Kedris how to defeat her at the Morivant. And worst of all, I was her sister, and very nearly her queen.”

  Iyone’s hand fell onto the keyboard, and created a plash of sound.

 
“Right father, wrong mother,” said Josit. Her composure had returned. “The rest is easy to figure out. The child I bore, the bastard son of a bastard daughter, could have threatened her legitimate heirs. But she no longer needs to worry. And neither do you. The child was stillborn.”

  Iyone was silent. “So, my love,” said Josit, smiling once more, “as you once told me: find another avenue.”

  * * *

  Iyone returned home in a temper, sent away Elysa and all her attendants, and began to throw together clothes and money for a madcap trip to Terinea. Then frustration gave way to cool-headed acrimony, and she unpacked everything again.

  She did not doubt that Josit was Marguerit’s sister. Such facts were easily verifiable. The child, on the other hand… If it was stillborn, why the incredible secrecy? Why, twenty-three years later, was Josit still afraid that someone might find out about it? If Iyone visited the convent, she could ask a few questions for herself. But Josit’s threats had been plain enough. If she went away, there was no telling what might befall Shandei in her absence. She had made a promise to Hiraen. And her father had put his affairs in order, and was ready to take his small army to Medrai any day now.

  These days, Iyone’s mind was a whirlwind of disparate ideas that kept her tossing all night. They coalesced now, like ingredients in a diviner’s cauldron, into a near-coherent plan. Her father would pass through Terinea. She could not ask him for help—he had all the subtlety of an ill-tempered mule, heavens preserve him—but with him would go four hundred soldiers and an assortment of servants, cooks, and camp-followers. One more would not be noticed.

  Her father and mother were bickering in the parlour. The guards were preparing for the march to Medrai, and Elysa was out. No one was paying Iyone any attention. She crept down the hall to the spare room that more or less belonged to Savonn, borrowed a few choice pieces of clothing, and slipped out of the house.