by Wendy Palmer
* * * *
But Mizzle did not leave, not the next day or the day after that. Not the day Sifley arrived, effusively pledging to Lithia even before the ceremony.
'If only we could give Dalton's lands to Sifley,’ said Filipe.
'You can if you give Lithia to Crethen,’ said Trick. He had taken to avoiding we.
'And Viga hasn't left.’ Filipe tapped his fingers on the table.
'That's good, isn't it? Lithia said leave or be loyal.'
'Not if he stayed to ferment against her with the other lords.'
'Do you know what Lithia will do tomorrow?’ The coronation was tomorrow. The lords would have to bend the knee and formally swear fealty. And Lithia would have to reward her loyal Lord Crethen and give Dalton's lands to someone.
'I've already advised her Crethen will want her hand in marriage. She won't believe me.'
'Let me guess. “Filipe, he only just lost his wife, he won't want that."’ He mimicked her light accent perfectly.
'More or less,’ Filipe said with a smile and folded arms. ‘Perhaps we should get Mizzle to tell her.'
Trick had to laugh. He was interrupted by a servant, bowing low and handing him a folded message with Lithia's seal.
He read it under Filipe's eyes, stood, and followed the servant. He had received his private invitation to dinner with the Empress, the night before her coronation. Mizzle had had her turn, and no one else.
He suffered himself to be washed and dressed and fussed over by a bevy of servants, and escorted upstairs to Lithia's wing.
Lithia waited, pale in the golden glow of a dozen candles.
Trick had a moment to think misgiven thoughts, and then his chair was pulled back and he sat opposite her, candlelit and beautiful as he should not be noticing.
'Thank you for joining me, Trick,’ she said and his heart jumped again as it had when he had seen all the candles. He thought he was in very serious trouble. She added, in excellent Bourchian, ‘Mizzle has been teaching me. Will you help me practice?'
They talked of nothing alarming over creamy soup and baked fish and vegetables and crystal goblets of Livanian brandy, in formal and simple Bourchian.
Trick finally relaxed, beginning to believe she had called him for no more than an amiable meal and language practice, when she switched back to Livanian. ‘Crethen wants to marry me.'
He paused, not knowing what to answer.
Lithia said, ‘I'm sure Filipe told you. He warned me but I didn't believe him.'
'Crethen got blunt, did he?'
'Yes,’ she said, with the slightest flicker of her green eyes. Lithia had been subjected to an unpleasant afternoon, Trick guessed. ‘Filipe says the only thing to appease him with is Dalton's lands, but I do not want to raise another Viga.'
Fortune, he had sworn he would not let himself get involved with this. But he said, ‘You will have an enemy if he does not get one or the other.'
'If I could balance him with strong support in Dalton's position.'
'It would have to be someone indisputably loyal,’ said Trick. ‘Why are you talking to me about this, and not Filipe?'
Lithia pushed the last of her fish around with her fork. ‘Filipe thinks there's no way out but to give him Dalton's lands.'
Trick shrugged. ‘Your other option is to marry him.'
Lithia dropped her fork and glared at him so he had to duck his head to hide his smile. She said, ‘My other option is to make sure he has to watch his back.'
'Give it to Sifley then.'
'You're not helping me, Trick,’ she said. ‘It's too big a gift. The southern lords will believe I favour the north.'
'You do.'
'And Sifley is too weak to hold Crethen in check.'
That was the crux. ‘It has to be a Livanian.'
'I know,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Or Filipe would have it if he liked it or not. But I have no candidates.'
'A captain of Dalton's?’ he said.
'A possibility,’ she said on a nod and a tracing of fingers on the table.
'Ask Mizzle,’ he tried then, to turn the conversation.
'She's not Livanian,’ said Lithia.
He turned cold as he realised Lithia had contemplated that option. ‘I meant ask her advice.'
Mizzle had divided her time between Jarrett and Lithia. Jarrett had apparently informed her well on how to live among humans, and she was applying his techniques to the Empress. Trick suspected they were longer travelling south.
But Lithia shook her head. ‘Her advice is heavy-handed.'
Mizzle would wield the Imperial army as a weapon and remove any threat to herself. Crethen and Viga both would go, and any other that raised dissent. He could not entirely disagree with her.
But Lithia was not and would not be Mikcul.
'Rissun,’ he said finally. ‘Cultivate Rissun. No one knows where he stands.'
'Yes,’ she said, tapping her fingers on the table. ‘Yes.’ And then, ‘I could marry him.'
They had come full circle. Crethen, she meant, not Rissun. She had but a moment ago refused, and now considered it. Perhaps she asked him to tell her no. Crethen's first wife flashed into his mind, but he could not warn her. He could not worry her about a guess without having proof. ‘If you were sure you could keep him quiet and under control,’ he said instead. ‘You have to marry someone.'
'I want to marry someone I love,’ she said, but sadly, as if she already knew the impossibility of it.
And she smiled at him, so that he twitched and said, ‘He has to be of noble birth.'
'Does King Fillip have a son?’ Lithia asked, with a sudden flicker of a smile. One of the servants, clearing the plates away, dropped the dish she was holding.
Lithia went towards giggles and Trick took the cue to turn to lighter subjects as the servants served dessert, more of the delicate Livanian pastries and cream and sweet white wine. ‘You know this palace was built by Dwarves.'
He, half-Bourchian, did not believe the palace could be in any way old enough for that, but Lithia's eyes lit up. ‘Really?’ she said.
Trick went with it. ‘They say the Dwarves built in a lever in the throne room so in times of trouble you could lower the palace into the ground.'
He beggared belief and Lithia thought about it. ‘How could that be?'
'A great big cavern under the palace,’ said Trick, as straight-faced as he could manage with too much brandy and wine. ‘That's why the grounds are so extensive, so you don't take the city with you.'
Lithia laughed again, scraping along the edges of the space Linnet had once occupied in him.
His mood turned, as simply as that. ‘You never heard that, growing up in the palace?'
Lithia sobered too, in the face of his sudden tone. ‘I was sent away very young.'
'Do you remember your parents?’ He did not, those minor cousins of the Emperor.
Lithia looked away. ‘No.'
'Very young,’ he repeated. He did not try to hide his scepticism. ‘How did Filipe find you?'
'When Mikcul came to power three years ago, my guardians put me into the Company's care.’ Lithia spoke slowly, watching him. Did she know his touchiness on this point? ‘They wanted a haven that could not be corrupted by Mikcul and therefore it could be nothing but Bourchian.'
He swallowed the last of dessert and tossed off half a glass of wine with one gulp. ‘I have to go.'
* * * *
He suspected they were longer travelling south. He only realised what that meant that night, lying sleepless and worried for Lithia and what would happen tomorrow despite himself.
Mizzle no longer needed him. He could go home, wherever he thought that was.
His heart hurt, for joy or sorrow he did not know. But tomorrow, while all were busy at the coronation and feast, he would slip out. That decision made, he fell towards sleep.
Linnet frowned at him. ‘You're too thin. You're not eating enough.'
He reached for her, to touch her face and
her fire-red hair. She changed, twisting away from him.
His outreaching hand held a knife, shaking. He caught at the rope around her neck, to cut her down. Her hair obscured her face. He heard a tortured sound and realised he made it from behind clenched teeth.
She sat on his bed, pushing her hair from her face. He felt her hand brush against his cheek.
The knife sawed through the rope, making her swing and her neck flop hideously. He could not stop whimpering.
On the bed again. She smiled at him, and her face turned black and swollen, her throat gaping. They had cut her throat on the altar before they hanged her.
Trick woke up, on a cry he could not swallow. He sat huddled in bed, head on his knees and arms over his head. He feared to look up in case she still sat there on the end of his bed with her face grotesque and accusing.
His heartbeat began settle down and he shivered as sweat cooled on his back and arms. He dared to grope for the candle in the barely-there light of the dying embers of the fireplace.
Alarm came from the outer room, a servant's raised voice. He had only been vaguely aware one slept out in the nook by the door. His bedroom door burst open and he saw only a shadowy figure and the glint of swords.
His heart raced again and he rolled sideways, reaching for his own sword by the bed. He came up with it unsheathed and ready, crouched on the bed. The invader remained in the doorway and he recognised Mizzle.
The servant—his servant—bobbed behind her. ‘It's fine,’ he said, and dropped his sword so he wouldn't be such an obvious liar. ‘You can go.'
The servant went away. Mizzle vanished her swords and stepped forward as he lit the candle.
She sat where Linnet had sat. ‘I thought you were in need of assistance.'
He had been crying out in his sleep. He had drying tears on his face. She heard distant cries from wherever she was, and came running. ‘I'm fine,’ he said.
Even Mizzle could see the lie in that. She stayed sitting, looking at him with silver eyes that caught the light the way her swords had.
She said, ‘We will move on after the coronation.'
That turned all his assumptions around, and sent his plans into disarray. ‘I thought you'd stay.'
Mizzle pushed her hair away from her face, Linnet's gesture and her own. He could not repress a shiver. Had Linnet always brushed her hair aside like that, or had she done it in the dream because Mizzle haunted his dreams too? He did not remember and it made him want to weep again.
She looked at him as if she did not understand his comment. ‘I cannot,’ she said at last. ‘My clan is coming for me.'
He had repressed the cave and the tunnel and what had happened there. He felt his hand reach for the scar on his side and resisted the urge, fighting it back to the blanket.
He could not, in that moment, see any relation between Mizzle sitting so calmly on his bed and the inhuman creatures that had swarmed at them in the cave. The fall of her hair, the tilt of her head, were too alluring for him to see her in her family's arms.
Trick shook his head. She sent her siren call out without even being aware of it and made him forget the danger that went every step at her side. ‘So Jarrett insisting you don't need to go to the LightElves is falseness.'
For a moment he thought he had gone too far, finally and for the last time. Then she too shook her head. ‘He suggests a judicious application of the DarkStone.'
The memory of the DarkElves in the cave horrified him and he still could not nod approval of that. Lithia had called Mizzle's advice heavy-handed. Apparently she had never spoken to Jarrett.
Mizzle said, ‘I do not find that appropriate. They are my family.'
'Why don't you just give the stone back to them?’ he said. ‘Will they stop chasing you?'
'I cannot give it back,’ she said. ‘I need it.'
'You don't need it,’ said Trick, as flat as he dared in the dim light and still shivering. ‘And if you take it to the LightElves they will do what you will not.'
Attack the DarkElves to their destruction, he meant, and she understood him, with bowed head.
'I need it,’ she said again, into the silence.
'You did so well without it,’ he said, not entirely truth but he could only think she was not doing any better now.
'Do not seek to judge my behaviour.’ Mizzle's words carried a surge of ice.
'I judge you?’ Trick said. He spoke not in challenge but in surprise, that she would ever think him in a position to judge anyone else. Chill set into his bones and he could not stop shaking.
She stood, abrupt and already turning her back to him.
'Running back to Jarrett?’ He realised, suddenly, that he did not like Jarrett, where once he had loved Fingers. She had twisted even that, planting worms of jealousy into his mind and spoiling his most cherished memories.
He got a glance back over her shoulder and that was all.
He shivered, with shoulders bunched and muscles fighting him, huddling under the blankets until the dream left him and Mizzle's visit left him as well. Voices in the outer room woke him before he got past dozing, and then came a knock at the bedroom door.
'I'm sorry to disturb you, lord,’ the servant said, nameless and nervous and as always insisting to call him lord. ‘You have a visitor.'
'Send him in,’ he said, reaching for his sword dropped on the floor by the bed. This new person approached more politely than Mizzle. That did not mean he was less dangerous.
But it was Mouse. He held out his slate as he walked over. I saw Crethen's man, it read. I know where he is.
Trick had planned to leave tomorrow, resolved never to think of Lithia again or so much as shed a tear if her lords overthrew her. Now he turned the slate over and over in his hands and could not find anything in himself that would respond to this midnight call.
'What do you want me to do?'
Mouse turned that reproachful stubborn look on him. He scrubbed out his slate fiercely with his sleeve. Mizzle can't read. Come tell her.
Trick had to stifle a laugh at this. Mouse played the game as well as any of them. ‘Knock on her door at this time of night? I don't think so.’ Fortune alone knew what he would risk interrupting for the second time that night, and besides, Mouse never really intended for him to fetch Mizzle. He hopped out of bed. ‘Let me get dressed, I'll come with you.'
Mouse had the good sense not to look too pleased with himself. The boy led him down the hallway and up stairs, past Lithia's floor and on upwards. Finally, they went down a corridor and reached a staircase that spiralled its way up the central spire of the palace to the room at the very top.
Mouse grabbed him again and held out the slate. Up the top, with Crethen.
Mouse had not mentioned that before. So Trick would not go barging up those stairs to arrive out of breath and outnumbered by a pair of men he could not kill; nor could he fetch guards, with nothing to accuse them of.
He hustled Mouse into a side room and waited with the door ajar, watching through the crack for Crethen and his assassin to come down.
Time crept on. Trick's breathing was loud, magnified in the silence. He looked around to see Mouse curled up and asleep in an overstuffed armchair. Perhaps the conspirators had left while Mouse persuaded him to come. He was tempted to carry the boy back to bed and let it lie.
But it was too late. He was alerted by footsteps on the stairs. Crethen came into sight, his man holding a lantern behind him.
'Remember, Yury,’ said Crethen. ‘You only act if things do not go my way tomorrow.'
That was the way of it, then.
'And don't fail me again on the other matter.’ Crethen continued on down the hallway to the main staircase.
Yury waited behind. Trick assumed that was so he would not be seen with his master, a sure indication they planned something unlawful.
This was Trick's chance to get Filipe his evidence and thwart whatever Crethen was up to. He could walk up behind Yury and hit him with the hilt of
his sword, tie him up and take him to Filipe.
Yury started off the way Crethen had gone and Trick still didn't move. Why was he trying to play the hero? He wouldn't risk his life for Lithia's sake, no matter how often she smiled at him in the hallways or invited him to dine alone with her.
Until the thing he had once named Linnet stirred in him. He drew his sword, opened the door and slipped after Yury. He would not risk his life for Lithia, but he would risk it for the sake of risking it, and let Fortune throw her dice.
He stumbled in the blackness and Yury turned.
Reacting faster than Trick thought possible, the big man threw the lantern at his head and flung himself after. He seized Trick's wrist and forced the sword away, his other hand twisting about his neck.
Struggling for breath, Trick got his free hand under Yury's fingers wrapped around his throat. He brought a leg up and kneed the bigger man in the stomach. Yury let go with a grunt and Trick grabbed for his sword. Yury kicked him hard and trod on his hand. He yelped, unable to contain himself, and Yury kicked him again.
Trick tried crawling towards his sword. He stopped dead as Yury yanked a hand into his hair, pulled his head back and set a knife to his throat.
His heart beat hard, thudding in his chest, sending a red wash over his eyes. The sharp edge of the knife peeled back the skin of his throat, and he moaned. Yury made a harsh hissing sound Trick realised was laughter.
Finally, he thought. Finally.
Then the knife flew away from his throat and Yury slumped sideways. Mouse, was Trick's first assumption. On its heels came the illogical expectation of looking around to see Mizzle.
Testing his throat, he turned on his knees to find his rescuer. Not Mouse, and not Mizzle, and not anyone he might have guessed.
'One does so hate to get one's hands dirty,’ said Lord Rissun. He dropped the heavy lantern.
Trick stood with his hand still on his throat and stared unabashedly at the other man. Rissun made a twinkling gesture with his hand. ‘Your friend is getting away.'