Banner of the Damned (54 page)

I flushed, bowing with my hands open in Pardon.

Greveas leaned toward me. “I don’t know if we can speak again like this. It is generally believed that the most dangerous man in Marloven
Hesea is their king. And he is dangerous, everyone says. You had better walk soft and look around every corner twice, as we Sartorans say. But your real danger has to be Sigradir Andaun, the king’s mage. We think he’s the one treating with Norsunder.”

“But that sounds like spying,” I protested. “You are asking me to spy on behalf of the Sartoran Mage Council?”

I could just hear Queen Hatahra’s response to that.

Greveas looked affronted, and I said quickly, “We had a spy in the palace. A Chwahir spy. He killed two of the princess’s staff.”

“You would not be a spy in that sense—an agent of some monarch, intending harm to another. You certainly aren’t going to harm anyone. All you do is live your life.” Greveas brought her hands together in a clasp. “You are not pretending to be anything other than Princess Lasthavais’s scribe, and you will see and hear many things because you know how invisible we scribes are.”

“First Rule.”

“Exactly. And you won’t break the First Rule, because all you will do is listen. And if you find out that Norsunder is invoked, or involved, or gives Sigradir Andaun power or even just spells, you take off the ring, say the spell, and it vanishes. Then you are done.”

Here is one of those crossroads we reach in life.

I had come to the archive seeking information about magic, so that I could understand Tiflis’s book, now lodged in my head and repeated every morning to keep the memorization fresh. I considered confessing to Greveas.

But I heard again her own words,
You are not pretending to be anything
, and I heard the queen’s words about Sartorans and their interference, and all during my student days I’d heard about how jealous mages were of their training and skills. If she told her superiors about the book in my head, would the mages demand that I be removed from my position? What would be the repercussions?

Traveling in isolation had made such questions seem distant. Now the questions were as close as Greveas’s watchful eyes.

And I still had my orders. “I will do it on one condition.”

Greveas gripped her fingers tightly. “Which is?”

“If I am to recognize magic, any kind of magic, I need to hear it done.”

“Is that all?” Her eyes closed and her jaw softened in relief. Then she smiled at me. “Of course. Nothing easier. Here. See the flames?”

She pointed to the fire stick burning on the grate. “I will borrow a bit of the fire to light a candle. We seldom do such a spell. It takes as much
effort to get a paper-twist and light it in the fireplace, then touch the flame to the candle, as it does to expend magic. Summoning fire from far away is exponentially harder, as you may surmise.”

She uttered some of the gibble-gabble. My heart thudded when I recognized the syllables, but she said them fast, and her fingers flickered as if winding yarn and pulling, then she leaned over the candle sitting on a sideboard, opened her hand, and a flame sparked into being on the wick. And burned steadily.

“Magic will sound like that. If it’s a complicated layer of spells, what we call an enchantment, there will be a lot of it. Norsunder’s magic is destructive. You won’t be able to miss it, as there is a terrible feel, as if the world has been scorched. And it will do something terrible… I don’t know how they use it, though most certainly to conduct wars. The Marlovens always seem to be involved in wars.”

I thanked her, accepted the ring, and departed, nearly running into a familiar round face framed by blue-black hair.

“Anhar?” I rocked back on my heels.

She flushed. “The staff has a hair dresser here, who restored my natural color.”

The glossy hair framed her round face, highlighting how light her skin was by nature, for there had been no time in recent months to sit outside in the sun in order to gain color. The black hair emphasized how large were her black eyes, yet it wasn’t just the hair. Her gaze was more direct, her chin up as I took in the truth: Anhar was definitely Chwahir.

Out loud I said, “It is flattering.” Which it was. I am aware of how abominable it will make me, and by extension, the rest of us Colendi sound, but I had never before considered that there could be any beauty to the Chwahir in person or culture. Anhar, in her quiet way, was beautiful.

The carefully planned dinner began as an anxious ordeal for Tharais and as a bore for Macael.

Tharais found Lasthavais Lirendi to be as stunning as reputed. She looked and moved like a portrait, with her smooth gold-threaded dark hair, her wide blue eyes framed by the longest lashes Tharais had ever seen. Her stillness, her slightly breathy voice, her fascinating singsong Colendi accent. Lasva mirrored everything Tharais did, to eating the same food and drinking the same amount of liquid. She praised everything
she’d seen. Her manners were so exquisite they were exhausting, like the first time Tharais saw Macael’s palace, so full of colored marble and carvings and art that she could not determine where the doors were.

Tharais avoided Macael’s ironic gaze after a relentlessly polite conversation about travel, and made the private sign for the musicians earlier than she’d planned. And Macael avoided Tharais’s, so he was watching Lasva when Tharais signaled the first of the carefully chosen Colendi airs her octet had rehearsed in honor of their illustrious guest.

Flute, horn, and there was that lilting melody called “Laughing Fountain,” brought straight from Alsais’s court, everyone said.

Lasva stilled, every muscle taut. Her eyelids flashed up then shuttered, her face blanched with pain, as if she’d been struck. Macael was so surprised he leaned forward. Her face smoothed out a heartbeat later, no sign of any emotion, like a lake closing over a rock that briefly broke its surface.

He was alone in seeing it. Ivandred was reassuring Tharais that the Colendi all seemed fond of music. Tharais divided her attention between her brother and Geral, whose attention was solely on her.

For the remainder of the concert, Macael watched Lasva, his boredom gone. There was no return of that expression—what was it? Sorrow?
Grief
. Not what you’d expect from a witless princess. He was aware of the intensity of his interest, and laughed inwardly at himself. Why was human nature so absurd, that this beautiful woman would bore him mercilessly, but the first sign of inner pain made her interesting?

By the end of the evening when he saw in his cousin’s taut focus on Lasva, and in her heightened color, that the long-postponed wedding night was about to be shared, he discovered not only regret but the sting of jealousy. If he stayed, he would get himself into trouble.

And so he informed one of his dallying lords that he had an urgent message from home, and they would depart at first light.

Tharais suggested an early retirement, and no one demurred. She watched anxiously as Van took Lasva’s hand, and the Colendi princess showed all the passion of marble as the pair vanished into the guest suite.

At first, all Lasva could think about was the relief at being clean again, chafed skin soothed with herbal balm, hands and feet properly attended to, the knots of travel smoothed from grateful muscles.

It was so very good to be in civilization again, and Ivandred’s sister so friendly, that Lasva was the more unguarded, which made the pain of that song all the worse. It took all her strength to hide her reaction. Her head was throbbing when at last it was time to retire. She could feel anticipation in Ivandred’s touch and hear it in his breathing. And so when they reach their suite, she whispered, “I will return after I bathe.”

He uttered a surprised laugh. “Did you not bathe before this meal?”

“Will you indulge my Colendi habits?”

He saw only her beauty and her poise, but he was sensitive to pain in others. Puzzled, wary, he stepped away, and she vanished with those gliding steps that made it seem like she floated.

Lasva summoned Anhar to knead the strain out of her neck and shoulders, then soaked in aromatic water. The ache lessened, as it does. Life would go on with all its vagaries and little mysteries. Like, why did Anhar appear with this black hair? It was surprisingly flattering, but it made her look… was it possible that Anhar had Chwahir somewhere in her family? Lasva frowned at the bathwater. Had she ever employed the term “hum” around Anhar? Probably. Everyone used it—meant nothing by it—
I must never say it again
.

Lasva rose from the bath, found Anhar and complimented her on her hair color, then went in to dress. It was good to wear silk next to her skin again.

But when she reached the bedroom and found Ivandred waiting, she made a discovery: that Marlovens did not wear wrappers, at least while traveling. He, too, had bathed, his light hair lying loose, and she knew that he had done so for her. He wore a fresh shirt and trousers, and there was no sign of weapons anywhere.

The sight of him standing there so still, his empty hands turned a little outward as though in appeal, the drape of his shirt sleeves over the contours of arms and shoulders, caused her heart to beat a little quicker.

One hand came up, the palm open. “I told you I am not good with words,” he said, his tone tentative. Like a preamble.

With Kaidas there would have been words, oh so many, enchantingly oblique, quick as a duel only with poetry and wit, scored by laughter and kisses. With a flicker of anger she untied her wrapper and let it drop to the floor. No arts, no allurement, blunt and direct. She held out her hands. “We will do away with words.”

When Lasva reached the age of desire she’d delighted in all the arts of pleasure, at first for pleasure’s sake. Then came the birth of tenderness, followed by the blossoming of love. And then love’s flower had been cut,
leaving a void in body, mind, and soul. But here was the man she had married, who woke her body’s hunger. She was determined, even desperate, to employ all her arts in easing the mind and soul.

He was not at first certain how to begin; his habit was rough and ready but he would not handle this beautiful, fragile creature with that roughness. Sex for him had been confined to the Academy, brief and violent, sometimes mixed with laughter, often with anger. And few words. She trailed her newly painted nails from his brow to his collar bones and then down and down, urging him flat on the bed, and he obeyed. So began a long, slow, striving that was not combat yet engaged all the senses—from the enticing fingernails along the contours of muscle as she undressed him to the soft touch of lips on his eyelids, in the hollow of his throat, and on all the places where the skin is most sensitive—until he was nearly out of his mind with desire. But he did not act because she had not given him leave to act, and the waiting, the anticipation, was far more intense than any intimate act he’d ever known.

The smell of her hair fresh with herbs he could not name, the taste of her, the whispering sigh of silken sheets over his skin, her secretive smile and clever hands that touched him in ways he had never experienced—all these reasons gave him at last, at last, the to mount and ride, to gallop to the rim of the world: “Obliterate me,” she breathed.

It is one thing to imagine giving hints on marriage to a famous princess, Tharais reflected as she prowled around the room just below her freshly swept dining platform, and another thing when that princess appears and looks at you from unreadable eyes, her manners so good and so polite and so… so like a swan, or a lily, or anything that isn’t human.

Tharais had ordered Colendi delicacies. The table was Geral’s finest; carved bluewood, the edges a braiding of ivy leaves, a symbol from her own home, the cushions brocade in the cable pattern in deep violet silk. The dishes were fine porcelain of the type she’d heard they used in Colend, the food thin wheat cakes in rolls no bigger than a child’s little finger, daubed with a fluffy thing made of butter with thrice-boiled molasses whipped into it, making a light, frothy pale gold sweet. Tharais had never heard of such a food, but when she stuck a finger in it, she discovered it was delicious.