Banner of the Damned (30 page)

“May I see your album?” Lasva asked Farava as she took her place on a satin couch next to her.

Farava blushed and handed it over. The Duchess of Sentis cast Lasva a grateful look for this attention to her niece, but Lasva did not see it as she bent over the silk-bound album.

Lasva leafed through the heavy, crackling pages of finest rice paper, looking at the sketches of Farava, ranging widely in skill (and in the case of the written ones in wit), halting at one marked with a golden ribbon. There was a fast but well-executed sketch not only of tall, thin Farava, her merry brown eyes caught by a masterly hand, but in the background, Lasva discovered a sketch of herself, standing pensively framed in a window. No, a mirror, and she wore a lace mask. But her gown was unmistakable.

“That was at the Twelfth Night Masque. Isn’t that a wonderful drawing?” Farava whispered, leaning forward. And, in an under-voice, “He said I am as beautiful as a princess, which is why he sketched you and me together like that.”

Sketches of masks and mirrors conveyed their own hidden meaning.
The drawing was not signed, except by a quick semblance of a coronet: the younger Landis prince.

Marry me
, he’d said to Lasva, bending over her chair and laughing as if I was not seated within arm’s length. But then scribes are supposed to be invisible.
We are so alike,
he’d whispered.

Perhaps they were, in mirrored rooms and decorated with court masks, but not in the realm of the spirit, or he would have seen that her acknowledging the truth of his remark did not admit of it being a compliment.

“If I have to marry, it will not be to a mask,” she had said to me as soon as he moved away. That was the first observation she’d offered in days.

Lasva paused, bending a little closer to Farava’s album as she stared down at an arrestingly beautiful likeness of Farava, each eyelash, the glimmer of light on her ear-gems, all lovingly and faithfully rendered. “Oh. How brilliant.”

“I love it the best,” Farava whispered.

Lasva’s brows rose in surprise at the initials below: R.A. for Rontande Altan. She had not known that moody, wayward Rontande had found someone to train him to far better skills than the days of his cat sketches. What surprised her more was that his ignoring of Farava was not cruel intent but protection against idle gossip.

“You know he’s painting a great mural for his cousins at Altan Castle?” Farava asked.

“My dear, recall that the princess has spent her life surrounded by work from the best artists in the world,” the Duchess of Sentis put in, drawing attention to royalty seated with her niece, as Rontande bowed ironically in the background.

“Such as that of Mazin Phee,” came Ananda’s voice, brittle as glass.

Lissais sat down beside Farava, her light gray eyes wide with interest. “I heard before I left that the queen hired Phee to paint the royal princess on her first Name Day!”

“By then he ought to be finished with his present… challenge,” Ananda said, deep quirks on either side of her pouting mouth.

Lasva had turned her head, and I knew she wished she was elsewhere.

Rontande flipped his fan up before one eye for just a heartbeat, and Farava was too young to resist displaying her curiosity. “What? What is it that makes you smile?”

Ananda’s fan dipped into Art is Eternal but mocked the pose with a questioning flick. “My cousin Suzha had the news two days ago from Tatia Tittermouse. It seems that the Icicle Duchess hired Phee to paint
the newly wedded pair—in the fashions of Lasva Sky-Child and King Mathias the Builder.” Her fan arced at a plangent angle, a mockery of Becoming Modesty.

“Oh!” Lissais and Farava said together, stunned into silence.

Lissais whispered behind her fan, “She’s not
that
beautiful.”

A baroness whispered back, “But some think
he
is.” Her fan twirled slowly in Ananda’s direction. “I don’t see how. Those Lassiters are as raw-boned as the horses they prize so much.”

Ananda stilled then caught a slack-lidded, warning glance from her mother, the Duchess of Gaszin.

“I understand we’re to have music,” Lady Nollafen spoke up from her chair near the duchess, her fan fluttering in the Heedless Youth mode. “Where can the musicians be?”

The Duchess of Sentis rose, smoothing the silken layers of her robes. “I believe I will seek the music of the river. A walk would be refreshing.”

Though her tone was kind, the rebuke was felt by the Duchess of Gaszin, who sent her daughter Ananda a long glance.

Ananda gazed over her fan—trailing ribbons of the pale gold called Summer Thunder.

Lasva smiled at Farava. “Let’s see who else admires you,” she said into the silence, turning over the next leaf of the album with enough deliberation to shift attention, although she longed to be back on the river, watching the moon trail liquid light over the dark waters, far from Ananda’s scalding whisper,
Alarcansa… Alarcansa… Alarcansa
.

Lasva forced herself to listen as Farava told every detail of the parties she’d attended with her elusive, complicated cousin, now betrothed to the equally romantic Lord Adamas, second son of the problematic Dei family.

“… and I hear they will combine their names. Dei-Sentis. It sounds… historic,” Ananda said.

“Well, you know that the Deis have married into royal families,” Farava was saying. “In fact, someone in Sartor said that they have more royal blood than any other family.”

“King-makers but never kings
,” Rontande drawled. “But the Deis seem to be the more romantic for all that.”

Lasva turned the subject yet again, and Darva sat back, staring at Ananda’s fan and its ribbons swaying to and fro, as she contemplated the lingering poison of Carola Definian. She did not understand: why pursue and then bind a man who shows no interest? Was it
because
he showed no interest?

It sounded too simple, as it sounded too simple to attribute Carola’s obsessive and barely hidden hatred of the princess to mere jealousy. Carola had more power than the princess did and her own wealth, yet all spring Darva was convinced that Carola had whispered evil of the princess through that tittering, tittupping cousin of hers: imputations, questions, hints that together besmirched Lasva’s reputation, painting a distorted image of her as a heartless flirt. Carola had taken up the pale gold as tribute to her own coloring, determined to make
summer thunder
her personal sigil; Ananda was just as determined to keep
summer thunder
as the fashion of Lasva’s Roses.

Lasva did not see the sketches though her head was bent and her hand leafed the pages. After a proper time she returned Farava’s album and glanced wearily past the row of soberly dressed people carrying their musical instruments. She
must
hope Kaidas was happy. She did not want him hollowed out by the memory of passion the way her body, mind, and spirit seemed hollowed out.

How she missed his touch, the sound of his voice, the sweet fire of
rafalle!
Her gaze drifted to a stir inside the doorway, and her weariness gave way to mild interest. People parted, their attention on the musicians, and a few on the newcomers, in particular a pale-haired young man dressed all in black.

Lasva gazed as he sauntered to the doorway with a heart-catching swinging stride, and lightning struck.

But it was not lightning, for there was no thunder, or rain, or burn. The shock was entirely inside her skull, leaving her staring witlessly at a pair of eyes that were not black, but pale blue, the exact shade of Skya Lake’s deep-winter ice.

I

Ivandred stopped dead, staring.

The first impression was of blue and silver complementing warm shades of brown skin in a perfect oval face framed by curling dark hair threaded with glints of gold. Extravagant winged brows arched over brilliant eyes the dense blue of a summer sky over the plains. Dark lashes lifted, and their gazes met.

Sound and sense vanished, leaving only the drum of his heart against his ribs.

“Come along,” Macael urged. “We’re direct in the doorway.”

Ivandred was nearly dizzy, so sudden was the shift from deafness to being acutely aware of people to either side of him, waiting for him to cease blocking the doorway.

He shifted as the musicians bustled about, four bearing wind instruments of various sizes, one with a twelve-stringed tiranthe, and another brandishing a percussive tambour with bells around it, which he rang to gain attention.

The musicians took up a station opposite the fireplace, and struck up a lively melody. More people entered, drawn by the music, until the room became quite crowded.

Ivandred elbowed Macael and jerked his head toward the door.

Outside the air was much cooler, the sound only some night birds, and the rush of the river downslope from the back of the inn. He could breathe again.

“Don’t you want to stay and talk to her?” Macael asked. In the reflected light from the long row of windows Macael looked interested, even amused, but not the least stricken by desire.

“Hear her talk first,” Ivandred said. His skin hurt, and his heartbeat thundered in his ears. “Later.”

“For once rumor was, if anything, stingy,” Macael offered. How strange these things were! Here he was, a practiced flirt, but he had not managed to garner more than a distracted glance from the princess, whose face and form transcended rumor. But his appreciation was aesthetic.

Ivandred, who had obviously shared that thunderbolt of instant attraction—so very, very rarely did it go equally both ways—did not answer.

Lasva said, “Emras, will you find out who they are?”

Alone of the Colendi, who had been busy finding seats for the music, I’d seen the
zalend
in his face. And when I turned to Lasva, I found it mirrored in hers. Not
rafalle
, this was something different. Purely physical, for they had not exchanged a word.

I hoped that the two young men had scribes with them, for that would make my task easier. As it turned out, I did not need that middle step, for the same moment I left the salon, Macael re-entered the inn.

He cast his gaze over the knots of people in the hall, and when he saw me, his eyebrows lifted. “Ah,” he said. “Scribe, right?” He spoke Sartoran with an accent.

“I am.” I recognized the signs of superior rank, and wondered how to politely demand his name. “Scribe Emras, in service to Princess Lasthavais of Colend.”

He smacked his hands together and rubbed them, grinning. “Am I the best, or am I not?”

“The best what?” I said, hiding laughter and surprise.

“At finding the right person at the right time. So.” He looked down at
me, his lazy lids narrowing as if he, too, was hiding laughter. “You wouldn’t happen to have been sent to find out who we are? Who
he
is.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the double doors, opened to let in the cool summer air. “I saw that look of hers. Didn’t even know that my handsome self was in the room. Or alive. Whew! We call that ‘the clap of thunder’ at home.”

There was no protocol for this moment, so I fell back on decorum. “Her highness gave me a task.”

Macael chuckled. “Scribal discretion! I recognize it from home. Come on outside. It’s cooler. He’s gone. You talk to me, I’ll talk to you. How’s that?”

He took my arm, the way he’d take that of a friend. I pulled away, saying, “I was sent on a simple task.”

Macael flashed a knowing grin. “I’m not going to pry anything out of you that you don’t want to give. I know how tight-lipped you scribes are, though I also know you and the heralds have got everyone’s secrets scribbled down somewhere. Never mind, I won’t figure in any histories. Too fatiguing. But people are starting to take an interest in you and me standing here like this.”

It was true. A few speculative glances were cast our way from servants passing to and fro and even from courtiers. There was Rontande, lips pursed, strolling arm in arm with another courtier. So I walked outside with a prince, uneasy and curious all at once.

He gestured toward the grassy knoll nearby, where earlier the Countess Darva and others had observed the arrivals.

“I am Macael Elsarion, second son to the Queen of Enaeran,” he said. “And in a complicated web of intermarriages that would bore anyone but the heralds, a cousin to Ivandred Montredaun-An, heir to the throne of Marloven Hesea.” He tipped his head toward the door.

“Marloven Hesea,” I repeated. He did not say “Hes-ay-ah” in our manner, but “HESS-yah.”

“Yes, and what you’re not saying is, ‘Those barbarians?’ Or maybe, ‘Oh no, I’d better run before those nasty Compact-ignoring Marlovens shoot me.’” He grinned, his teeth showing briefly in the light pouring from the row of open windows. “Am I right?”

“I know very little about that side of the continent,” I said diplomatically and bowed. “Thank you for the information, your highness.”

Macael was rubbing his shoulder, evolving an idea. “And what you’ve heard is probably pretty bad. Look. You’ve heard of Elgar the Fox, right?”

I stopped, surprised by this unrelated question. “Of course I have.”

“Bet you didn’t know he was not only real, he was a Marloven.”

“He wasn’t real,” I said with conviction. “No more real than Peddler Antivad, he of the folk tales. We studied Elgar the Fox as a lesson in how kingdoms borrow myths to bolster their own history. You will find that he’s claimed by every kingdom from Khanerenth to Bermund and Bren.”

“He was,” Macael stated, “a distant relation of mine. No, I can see you don’t believe that. Then how about this. You’ve heard of a book written by another of my ancestors,
Take Heed, My Heirs
, right?”