Champion of the Rose - Kobo Ebook (12 page)

Vaulted beams of burnt honey curved molten over a generous
two stories. The same wood formed a
single sinuous line of banister, up the curving flights of stair, and all the
length of the galleries to merge with the wall behind the throne, holding the
Hall in an embrace minutely etched with roses. The room's five doors, a darker shade of honey, were also festooned with
intricate carvings. Petals and leaves,
thorns and vine.

The floor was glory. Sunset marble, awash with the most delicate of reds, gold, pinks and
yellows. It drew in every ounce of light
and gave it back as depth, revealing more and more of its kaleidoscope
mysteries until it became a thousand layers of colour in an ever-receding
horizon.

Soren found it entirely mesmerising, not least because her
strange, new-found sight made it feel like she was staring at the inside of her
own skull. But if she hesitated too
long, someone else would find the nerve, or gall, to question her about
Strake. And though those who had
approached her so far had reluctantly accepted her statement that the King
would address the Court later that day, there was sure to eventually be one who
would not. Besides, Soren had answers of
her own to discover.

-
oOo
-

During her journey to Teraman, the Champion's apartments had
been transformed from over-stocked library to muted luxury. She even had an actual view into the Three Fountain
Garden, now that the wall she'd thought contained only shelves had proven to
possess a wide windowsill. A few dozen
books remained, and she found her King sitting in a chair reading a
particularly old and decrepit specimen. A selection of others were piled on the floor beside his feet.

Strake read with the same expression he wore when watching
sunsets. Engrossed, introspective, those
long, blue-black eyes still markedly cynical, but the hostile irritability
absent. He held himself with a loose-limbed
poise, and was attractive in a way which was signally his own. Amazing the mix of sick dismay and pain the
sight of him could conjure.

But despite the Rose's efforts, despite her own heart-felt
wish not to, she still felt a curl of desire when she looked at him. Even without being King, he'd soon have half
the Court after him. She did not think
that she would enjoy watching the inevitable attempts, any more than she was going
to find any pleasure in talking to him now. Because he was her Rathen, just as the sword was her sword. She kept recognising him in some fundamental
way that she thoroughly distrusted. Not
dealing with him didn't seem to be an option, no matter how much he went out of
his way to make her not want to. No
matter how thoroughly she'd failed him.

Memory of that violation was a gaping chasm between them,
which no words could possibly mend. If
she could undo the last day, if she could have lived up to the role forced upon
her– She wished she understood why she
was Champion, when she was patently a less than adequate protector, and nothing
like a courtier, able to smooth over such a savage rift. But with little choice but to stumble on.

"Does that, by any chance, detail the supposed
abilities of the Rathen Champions?"

He looked up, and for a moment barely seemed to recognise
Soren in her embroidered black surcoat. But the now familiar anger was quick to follow, a shutter slamming
furiously in her face.

Then he sighed and looked resigned. Sitting back, he snapped the book shut and
gestured at the chair which faced his. "It's a journal of the last of the true Champions," he said,
as she sat down. "Most of them kept
some kind of record. This one covers the
arrangements made after Torluce's death, but it's circumspect, to say the least. An occupational hazard. I doubt you'll find anything conveniently
written down."

Last of the true Champions? She couldn't deny it.

"What did the Champion of your time do?" Soren
asked, making herself be glad to be dealing with a person rather than an
ill-natured storm. Being alone with him
was desperately uncomfortable, but this had to be faced. "What was publicly known?"

Strake shook his head, but then said: "The Champion
concerned himself mainly with directing the Captain of the Guard. When my aunt travelled, he would create the
ward I showed you, and it's well known that the Rose detects poison. No-one was obliging enough to directly
assault my aunt while I was around." He paused, as if entertained by the idea. "Still, he also enforced her rule of
peace within the family, which was a challenge given our tendency to offend
each other.
Lockren
would always know when matters had reached the point of daggers-drawn, and find
his way to us before we'd managed a fatality. It was impossible to lock him out."

This image of constantly warring Rathens went some way
toward explaining how the family had died out, dozens perishing in a few short
decades. Soren tried to picture it:
mages with blue-black eyes filling every corner of the palace, vying and
clashing, kept in order by the Champion. If they'd all had Strake's temperament, it would have been more than a
challenge.

"How did he stop you?" she asked, wonderingly.

"His mere presence was usually enough to damp matters
down. But he was also a painfully expert
swordsman and on occasion we saw the flat of his blade." Strake half-smiled at the memory, then
frowned at her. "You're not wearing
Kittredge's sword."

"My back is bruised," Soren replied, unwilling but
unflinching. It was a question she'd anticipated
and he reacted just as she'd predicted. The shutter slammed down, locking them in mortified silence.

The red lines on Soren's wrists throbbed, refusing to let
her forget her own anger, the helpless fury at being made a puppet by the Rose,
the shame and violation she would have to face. But that assault did not change the political forces shifting to
accommodate a sudden King, did not spare her time to recover and
reconcile. "What about outside the
palace?" she asked, hoping in her blundering way to distract him back on
course.

Strake had turned his head so he was no longer looking
directly at her. She watched the muscles
shift in his face, but could only wait, and curse the Rose. Images of the palace began to infiltrate her
thoughts: the scourers hard at work, Aspen sorting through a pile of old books,
Fleeting Hall unusually busy, children fighting a battle with fallen leaves in
the east garden. Lord Aristide, alone
and unsmiling–

She could push the images away and they would become
background, a flicker at the far corner of her attention, but it did not seem
possible to banish them.

"We had better luck prosecuting our little feuds
outside the palace," he said, sooner than she expected. He was still not looking at her, and the air
of quiet ease was gone altogether, but he was talking. "Even then
Lockren
would too often interfere. He was not a
mage, and occasionally we attempted to disguise our activities, but with
negligible success. We never attempted
to strike at him directly. The reputation
of the Rathen Champion was formidable enough."

"But the stories are so unspecific," Soren said,
looking at him steadily, refusing to give in to squirming discomfort. "I'm constantly told that the Champion
controls the protections of the palace, but the only visible weapon is in the
Garden of the Rose itself – the canes strike at anyone who tries to interfere
with it. While there are endless murky
tales of thieves who have tried to loot the sealed apartments since Torluce's
death, never to be seen again, I can't actually see any evidence of...I don't
know. Traps doors or spikes, aside from
a couple of locks which actually are snares. If there's enchantments set for the Champion to use to eviscerate stray
assassins, I don't seem to be able to touch them."

"You said you could keep the cleaners safe,"
Strake pointed out, at last looking back at her. But the constraint hadn't gone, wasn't ever
likely to.

"I think I can," Soren said, struggling with guilt
and an overwhelming sense of incompetence. "I'm not altogether sure I could attack them, though." She frowned into the distance, but didn't
make the attempt, scared of accidentally killing someone. "Hardly the thing to experiment
with."

"I'll try to oblige you with an attack." Dark eyes flickered, and he took a breath
before going on. "My aunt's
Champion was uncannily omniscient, but since he was so thick with the Captain
of the Guard, we could never be certain if that was thanks to informants or the
Rose. It seems that you telling me what
the Champion can do would be more productive than the other way around."

Soren nodded. "I
can see everyone," she replied, watching Lord Aristide cross Fleeting
Hall, beautifully indifferent to the ever-increasing crowd. "I can see all of the palace, and even
just outside it. Anything within sight
of the walls, I suppose." She tried
looking out over the city and the bay from the palace roof and shook her head. "No distance. I can see about five feet from the wall, not
even to the stables or the New Palace."

"New palace?" Strake repeated, evidently more
surprised at this last than anything which had preceded it.

"Built just after Torluce's death," Soren
explained. "I suppose because so
much of the Old Palace had been sealed off."

"Where?" he asked, looking unexpectedly worried.

Soren gestured generally east. "Past the stables. It's more an extension than anything else,
for it's mainly residences and connected to the Old Palace by
Dathan's
Walk. It
has its own kitchens and laundries." She looked in subdued astonishment at the tight, closed expression of
pain on his face. "What was there
before?"

"Gardens. A
small wood, for riding." It was
apparent that Strake could scarcely believe they were gone. "Is there anything else I should
know?" he asked, with an angry, disgusted bite to the words. "Have they turned the Temple of the Moon
into an out-house, perhaps? Planted
turnips over the floral clock?"

"Floral clock?" Soren repeated carefully, and his
eyes flashed angry-bright before he slumped, and waved a hand in negation.

"I see I shall need to tour the premises sooner rather
than later. And the city. What condition are the royal apartments
in?"

"Dusty," Soren replied, watching him lock obvious
hurt away until he merely looked a little more cynical than usual. "Mould and spider-webs and dirt. I couldn't see signs of mice, though it was
obvious moths in plenty had made it their home. Anything of cloth, and much of the furnishings are in a bad way, but the
structure itself just needs cleaning."

"It takes something to damage. So, you can see everything within the
walls? What's the Regent occupying
herself with?"

"Talking with the Lord Marshall," Soren
replied. "She's set her servants to
cleaning out the room which has served as an alternate throne room." She narrowed her eyes, watching the
packing. "It rather looks like
she's planning to move to a different part of the palace altogether."

"Saves encouraging her to go. Can you see the Treasury? Or the 'old Treasury' as I've no doubt it's
known? Is there anything left in
it?"

After surveying the shut-away rooms, which constituted
practically a third of the palace, Soren decided the one just south of the Hall
of the Crown was the old Treasury. It
certainly had a formidable door. "Chests," she said, after a moment. "I don't know what's in them. Tables with things on them, weapons in racks
on the walls, some rusting, some not. Why would they leave all these things there?"

"The throne isn't the only thing which is
Rathen-specific," Strake replied, the edge back. "What else can you do?"

"Open and close locks, doors, windows," Soren
said, moving the hall door by way of demonstration. Muscles supplied by the Rose. She could easily have sprung every lock in
the palace while lying in the bath. "I think I could turn on those lights in the Hall of the Crown, and
the plumbing in the rooms which have it. I stopped the bells. I don't seem
to be able to shift anything which isn't meant to be moved."

"What are the Regent and the Lord Marshall talking
about?"

Soren shook her head. "I can't hear what people say at all. It's not even like I'm really seeing the
inhabitants of the palace. Painted dolls,
performing behind a wall of glass. A
puppet show." Full of embarrassing
detail. She had managed not to watch Strake
bathe, refused to even think about the privies, and had enough hard detail on
who was sleeping with whom to keep Aspen busy for a year.

And, like any drama with several hundred players, there was
far too much going on at once. If her
mind was on Aspen, busy admiring himself in a mirror, she did not see what
Aristide did until her attention flicked to him and found him talking to one of
the Barons –
Peveric
. A hasty alliance? Aristide was
looking as amused as ever, and
Peveric
solidly
commanding. He made some gesture with
his hand, and turned away. If they had
sealed some bargain, Soren could not decipher it.

"No sound at all," she repeated, then added
cautiously: "But I can hear you breathing."

As she'd expected, the shutter slammed up. "Breathing?"

"It's how I knew where you were in the forest,"
she said, keeping her voice as matter-of-fact as possible. "Wherever you are, I seem to be able to
hear you breathe, know where you are. I
still can't hear what you say, though," she reassured him. "Sometimes I can hear the breath of
other people–" She paused, and
tried to locate Jansette
Denmore
by her breathing,
but that did not work. "When you
were watching my window, I could hear the other people watching me, and I could
hear the thing hunting you–"

"You could?" He sat up straight, as if this was the last thing he was expecting. "Are you certain?"