Banner of the Damned (53 page)

“I am going to travel fast. That means no languor of a morning,” he said.

It was that same tone again:
an act of war
.

“I shall be ready before the glass changes,” was her response, and she whisked herself back into her bedchamber, surprising her yawning maids in the act of stowing her cleaned jewels and rolling her ribbons.

She issued orders in a determinedly low, pleasant voice that sent them scurrying, and then, when they were safely out of the room, she moved to her ribbon drawer, and pulled out the waiting white ribbons. She was about to pitch them in the fire, then hesitated. No. That would only cause comment.

Just how much subsequent slander had been aimed
her
way, that she didn’t know about? Before this she had never considered the possibility that a Definian could be mocked. But that was before the queen had given Alarcansa a moth kiss before nearly all the court, at an Alarcansa masquerade.

No, that was a
royal
moth kiss. Carola carefully replaced the ribbons that she would never touch again and walked to the wardrobe to dress for riding.

In spite of the rude, even vulgar incivility of this mode of travel, her
melende
required that she match Kaidas pace for pace; she would show
concern for others, including animals; she would never bring up the forbidden name unless he introduced it first. She would demonstrate through her actions that anything that fool Lasthavais Lirendi could do (or Kaidas believed she could do—because Carola knew that the princess had never so much as sat bestride a horse) a Definian could do with more style and grace.

And so, because they traveled largely in silence, she had time to think.

Carola had to appreciate the queen’s mastery. In spite of all her flourishing words about loyalty and romance, heroism and defense.
My part of her ire was earned
… Carola had known about the queen’s antipathy for the Baron Lassiter. It had never occurred to her that the queen had accepted Carola’s suit not just as an effective break of the prospective ducal alliance, but as a personal strike at the Lassiters, father and son.

And now the queen was going to strike again.

Carola regretted those damned floating lamps.

When she rose on the third morning of their journey, and the early light outlined the familiar ridge that marked the distance to her home, her mood was more uneasy than relieved. Too much had changed. From a lifetime of habit she yearned to share her thoughts with Tatia, and yet there was that
my cousin says
. Those particular words had
never
been on Carola’s orders. She had always been quite clear that if Tatia shared her views, she was free to speak of them, but to tell her to say something? What could Tatia have been thinking? Carola was tired of conversations in her mind, both with her silent duke and with Tatia.

This was her firm conviction: she could duel with the queen, style for style. Since it was going to cost, she might as well create an entertainment that would be talked of as the epitome of fashion, if not by an antagonistic queen, then by her entourage. Even in beggary a Definian would display more style—more
melende
—than a Lirendi.

They rode into her courtyard just after the sun had cleared the mountaintops. She dismounted and said, “Shall we breakfast at the Hour of the Deer and form our plans?”

Kaidas bowed and strode off. She had matched him pace for pace, as she had promised. He did not acknowledge it, but neither did she see any of that withering sarcasm.

Taking in a small breath of relief, she walked inside her palace. It was quiet. She encountered one of the maid-servants carrying a silver chocolate
service. The girl looked so startled the dishes rattled as she curtseyed. “Oh, your grace,” she said. “We did not know you were to come!”

“Who is that for?” Carola asked, annoyed that her personal dishes—the ducal dishes—were being used.
Surely
the servants did not dare—

“Lady Tatia,” the girl said quickly.

“Return it to the kitchen to be kept warm. We will breakfast at the Hour of the Deer,” Carola said, smothering the impulse to add
as always
.

She trod at a deliberate pace up the stairs to Tatia’s rooms, which were empty, the bed stripped, the finer furnishings shrouded. Carola looked around, puzzled. Where was Tatia—visiting a vineyard? No, that maid had been taking chocolate to her.

Carola started out, and it was then that she noticed things out of place: a mirror gone from the wall there, where Carola customarily took one last look at her dress and coif before descending the stairs to public view. The side mirror gone from outside her own suite, where she liked seeing herself as she entered and left her private rooms. The parrots’ cage was missing from the small anteroom.

She spied a footman carrying a dusting cloth to the formal rooms and asked, “Where are the silvertails?”

The man bowed, not hiding his surprise. “We were told it was your orders to put them in the cellar until your return.”

“It was not my orders. Lack of sunlight makes them ill. Restore their cage at once.”

Carola whirled and marched to the ducal suite, flung open the doors, and there was the private parlor with the furniture every which way and no sign of any of the lovely things she had ordered for Kaidas. Carola surprised two servants in the wardrobe, amid shimmering piles of Tatia’s favorite pinks and mauves and lavenders.

Fury ignited in Carola as she strode into her own bedchamber—her own room, where she and Kaidas slept—and there was Tatia in the great bed, like a skinny worm in the heart of a—

“What are you doing in here?” Carola demanded.

Tatia sat up, flushed, then put her hands on her hips. “I did not know you were coming home, cousin,” she retorted, flinging her hair out of her eyes. She seemed to see Carola’s anger, for she mooed in her usual caressing tones, “If you had sent a messenger, everything would have been just as you like it.”

“Why was it not left the way I like it?”

Tatia said, “But surely… as I serve as your voice, and after all, I
am
your heir….”

The quiet clink of something set down reminded Carola of the servants in the wardrobe behind. She smiled, preserving her
melende
as she said in her sweetest voice, “Yes, quite true. You are my heir. I have ordered breakfast for the Hour of the Deer. The queen is honoring Alarcansa by beginning her progress here, and there is much to be done.”

Carola walked out, hearing the satisfying sounds of hasty dismantling behind her. She did not have to lower herself to giving orders for all to be restored. She walked back down the stairs, and out through the vestibule and then the side garden to the court, where she discovered her duke surrounded by the garden and stable staff.

At her appearance they all bowed. “Please finish,” she said, and waited.

Kaidas said, “That’s enough for a beginning, don’t you think?”

Everyone bowed again and hastened away.

Carola walked with him to the foot of the lily pond, which still had few plants and fish. She was too weary and too heart-sore to feel the fierce enjoyment she’d gotten from seeing the rose garden ripped out and this canal dug. She forced her attention to Kaidas, to be surprised by a smile. A
grin
. “I have an idea,” he said. “I am quite certain that Hatahra is using this progress to beggar this province. Do you agree?”

“I have come to the conclusion that you are right,” Carola said, wondering at his startling change in mood.

He said, “The queen duels with wit, so let’s choose the same weapon. We’ll start a new fashion by bringing back an old. We will have everything redone, but from the period of artistic austerity. She’s expecting to be showered with gifts, and so shall she be—but music. Poetry. Plays. She won’t be able to walk ten steps without having verses quoted at her. When she ventures into the garden, every bush will hide a flute player, and every tree a harpist. Meals will be in high art mode—”

“From the period of austerity, when plates were largely empty, save lightly dressed garden produce, all arranged to appeal to the eye.” Carola was surprised by her own laughter. It banished enough of her anger to enable her to broach her own new idea: “I have a notion of my own. I believe we should consider an heir.”

R

We transferred from barge to a wide-bottomed ship. The journey to Remalna only took a day through quiet waters, but even so, Ivandred spent all of it at the rail, along with several others. It was astounding to me to witness those black-coated Marlovens exhibiting human weakness, as more than one of them leaned foreheads against horses’ necks, hands gripped in manes in their struggle against seasickness.

The ship wallowed into a small natural harbor. At the end of the pier we were met by the king and his soon-to-be queen, along with a host of servants liveried in pale violet and white. The king, princes, princesses, and lords sped up a paved road in fast carriages. The rest of us waited for the horses to be coaxed down the ramp to the pier—a job Birdy helped with, exchanging brief and easy remarks with the Marloven servants. After that we had to fetch all the baggage.

Athanarel was a long crenellated castle made over into a palace by the addition of marble inside, sunstone outside, and widened windows. It
was fashioned in squares around carefully pruned formal gardens, readied for winter.

The Remalnan version of Sartoran sounded strange to us but comprehensible. As soon as we were shown to our quarters, I left Marnda and Pelis not quite arguing over the low platform all the way around the chamber. They spoke in the enforced polite tone of ill-hidden irritation as they attempted to determine whether people sat on the cushions on the platform, or was it storage, and they sat in the middle of the room, like normal people? Marnda had plenty of servants at hand, and I had the queen’s orders to think about, so I slipped away in search of a bath.

A hot bath! Clean skin! Dry clothing! Oh, the sweetness of rediscovering things I had always taken for granted.

After my bath, I approached a passing attendant and was directed to the central portion of the palace, upstairs.

The archive was a large, airy room with windows on one wall overlooking an enormous open garden, unlike our discreetly walled Colendi gardens. The shelves were knee to eye height, very comfortable for walking along, containing the expected mixture of scrolls and books. Most of the section on Sartoran history was not only familiar, the books and scrolls were from the Sartoran Twelve Towers, which gave me hopes of finding something about magic.

My search along the shelves brought me three quarters of the way around the room to an archway covered by a tapestry instead of a door—as were most entrances in that palace. The tapestry was pulled halfway up and pinned by a hook, so that I could look in. And I found myself face to face with Greveas, my fellow scribe student from Sartor.

“Emras,” she exclaimed.

“Greveas?”

“I’m here to replace a scribe who strained her arm,” she said, answering a question that I had not asked. She indicated the desks. “We were hired by the new king to translate the—”

Her greeting, the quick gestures, and the sense that she was offering an excuse, rather than information, formed into a new idea. I said, “You expected me.”

She flushed to her hairline, the two different shades of red startling. “I am a messenger.” She took a step closer to me, moving from polite to private space.

“Messenger to whom?”

“To you. I work as a scribe, yes, but my true vocation is field mediator for the Mage Council.”

“The… the
Sartoran
Mage Council?” Then a new surprise bloomed, and I said, “My brother Olnar. He knew your name. Is that why he wouldn’t visit the guild? Because you were there?”

“It’s not what you think.” She grinned. “We studied together in Bereth Ferian, in the far north, and it’s hard to pretend you don’t know someone when you’ve shared the same table for three years. Listen, Emras. This is my first assignment on my own, and it’s very important. See, I was to talk you into being a messenger, too, since we’ve already met. They said I could explain as much or as little as I thought best, and I’d so rather tell you everything.”

“Please.”

“We
must
find out if the Marlovens are dealing with Norsunder. There have been disturbing… no, I won’t tell you that. You might go looking for what might not be there. You know how human nature is.”

I touched my fingertips in assent.

“All we ask is this. I am to offer you a ring. If you find sign of Norsunder, you use the ring in a simple spell. It will let us know. You need do nothing else.”

“A ring,” I repeated.

“Not to be worn on your hand,” she said quickly. “I know that you Colendi see symbols in everything you wear, and someone might ask why if they saw a ring on your hand. But if you were to wear it on your toe, well, the only person who might see it is a lover, and I understand that you Colendi have different customs for intimate things.”

So many questions crowded my mind I couldn’t lay tongue to one.

A sweet sound caught my ear, silvery, bright. At first I could not determine what made it, then I recognized it as a silverflute, a musical instrument I’d only heard in Sartor. It was not popular at court in Colend, as blowing a wind instrument distorts the face. Another flute with a deeper range joined it, and a third much higher, then more as three separate melodies wound in a roundelay.

“Practicing for tonight’s banquet,” Greveas said, gesturing.

“It’s so beautiful!”

“Emras, listen to me, not to the octet.”