Dragon Prince 01 - Dragon Prince (7 page)

“Your wits are in working order, at any rate,” was all the verbal praise she gave him. “Now that you’ve had a chance to think about it, tell me why you should marry my
faradhi
witch.”

Rohan took several moments to answer, but when he did it was with growing enthusiasm. “Information, for one thing. A network of
faradh’im
all over the princedoms would be very useful.”

“And what makes you think I’d allow you to use them?”

“The same thing that makes me think you’ve got some grander plan for me that doesn’t preclude using anyone or anything you can get your hands on. I know why you pushed your sister into marrying my father, and I know all about your spies—I’m not talking about the
official
Sunrunners, Andrade.” The line of his jaw hardened. “What is it you really want? Why show me that face, knowing I’d find her beautiful? How do you plan to use
us?
”

“If I live long enough—if
you
live long enough—we may all find out. I do only what the Goddess bids me.”

“Dragon shit,” Rohan said in a pleasant tone, his eyes blue ice. “She tells you what you feel like hearing. You’re setting me up in direct opposition to Roelstra. Why?”

“You mean that with all your studies and all your deep thoughts, you haven’t yet seen it?” she taunted, angry and a little frightened by his perceptions.

He took a step toward her, the fire between them, and there was nothing boyish or gentle about him now. “What do you plan for me, Andrade?”

Years and responsibilities, old hates and hopes and even a few dreams settled on her like a cloak of iron. “Rohan—it’s all as you’ve said about Roelstra’s daughters. I was afraid the offer would come before I could speak to you. Your father would never listen to a word I said. He doesn’t entirely trust me.”

“Should I?” he asked, his voice cold.

“If not me, then Sioned.”

“So she has a name. I’d wondered.”

“She’s very dear to me, Rohan. What I want doesn’t matter. She was the one who saw you years ago in the Fire.”

“Did she?”

“Couldn’t you feel anything when you looked at her tonight?”

“What I feel isn’t your concern. Have you sent for her?”

“She’ll be here soon.”

“And you call
me
arrogant! It runs in the blood—like the
faradhi
gifts that Tobin has and I don’t. That’s what you wanted from my parents, wasn’t it? A
faradhi
prince. Sorry to have disappointed you. But now you’re about to try the same thing, aren’t you? Does Sioned know it, I wonder?”

Andrade met his gaze stoically, not reacting to his sarcasm—for she heard how he tasted the girl’s name as if schooling his tongue to its syllables and his ears to its sound. “You need not marry her if she doesn’t please you. When she arrives, you’ll both know one way or the other.”

“Haven’t you planned it all out?” But in the next moment his expression changed and he murmured, “I’m sorry.”

She watched him, this manchild with the deceptively gentle eyes, this princeling who would soon rule over the vastness of the Desert—and perhaps one day, if her misted visions were accurate and the Goddess had not teased her with lies. . . . It would be enough if Rohan and Sioned could be together. They were right for each other; she knew it. “I apologize for my sharpness,” she said. “You’re right—I really ought to keep in mind who you are.”

“No, it was the right way to do it. I can’t sit up here feeling sorry for myself. But it’s awkward, you see. Waiting for Father to die. Being afraid and having to hide it. Being—alone. I can’t really admit things to anyone but you. Do you understand?”

She nodded, thinking that the day he could admit everything to Sioned would be the day he was no longer alone. “Go downstairs and get some sleep. Zehava will live for some days yet. He’s too stubborn to let death have him quickly. Your mother will need you to be strong.”

Rohan smiled sadly. “No one will need me for anything until it comes time to acknowledge me as prince. And then they’ll need even more than I can give. What I have to offer won’t seem like much to them—not compared to my father.”

T
he higher peaks of the Veresch were smothered in white and would remain so well into summer, crowning the heights above Castle Crag. The keep itself was lower down in the hills, perched on the side of a terrifying gorge like a dragon with its claws sunk deep into the cliffs. Land on either side of a canyon carved out by the Faolain River was summer-green, thick with trees and bright with flowers below a sky pierced in the distance by the highest range of snow-capped mountains.

Lady Palila had absolutely no interest in any beauty but her own. She stood on the steps above the thick lawns of the trellis garden, frowning in annoyance because the groundskeepers had shorn her favorite rosebush, the one that produced blossoms exactly the pink of her cheeks. Instantly she reminded herself that wrinkles resulted from unpleasant emotions, and smoothed her face. Her power for the present lay in her looks, and these she had in abundance, starting with but not limited to the wealth of auburn hair that was held back by a thin gold chain studded with brown agates that matched her eyes. Skin the color of pale honey; a bone structure that sculptors dreamed of and had paid homage to in silver, bronze, marble, and even gold; delicate arched brows and a finely carved, passionate mouth—Palila was the most beautiful woman of her generation, and it was only fitting that the High Prince had chosen her as his mistress. She had been careful not to allow her four pregnancies to mar the perfection of her body, and intended that this fifth child—
A boy, a boy at last,
she chanted silently—would leave no mark on her, either. The cut of her dark violet gown concealed her thickening waist for the time being. As ardently as Roelstra desired a son, pregnancy repelled him. But Palila knew she would have to go on getting pregnant until she presented him with a male heir. And then she would be mistress no longer, but wife. Princess.
High
Princess.

There were princesses scattered all over the gardens this afternoon. Four of them, plus thirteen other daughters dignified by the title of “Lady”—seventeen girls, she thought in disgust. By six different women, all that Roelstra had managed were girls and yet more girls. His only legal wife, Lallante, had birthed three boys who had all died within a few days. After his wife’s death, the High Prince’s search for a single male offspring had taken him through five mistresses—all nobly born and all dead now, with the exception of Palila. She had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that she was indeed the exception. Castle Crag positively seethed with women, and the oversufficiency frayed her nerves. She loathed her own sex on principle, seeing all women as rivals for Roelstra’s attention. She was fond enough of her own daughters, but not even they escaped this basic suspicion. Palila rested one hand on her belly and vowed that
this
time there would be a son.

She descended the short steps, irritated anew that Roelstra was busy elsewhere in the keep, for the gardens were a charming context for her beauty—and for the little play she had perfected over the last few years. The place was a great bowl sunk into the rock, filled with flowering vines and daughters in bright summer silks. Palila visited each little group, pausing to smile and chat, keeping up her role of solicitous foster-mother to them all. Her position as their father’s sole mistress for the last four years had gained her their respect, if not their liking. She cared little whether they liked her or not, so long as everyone behaved as if terribly attached to everyone else—no matter how much they all hated each other.

The four princesses were seated beneath a trellis, playing cards. Tall, dark, well-built girls; of the four, Ianthe alone had inherited their father’s shrewd brain. Naydra was placid and biddable, Lenala was simply stupid, and Pandsala had a sidelong way of glancing at people which Palila thought might be a sign of slyness or intelligence or both. But Ianthe, at twenty-two the youngest of the four, was sharp and never bothered to hide it.

Lady Vamana’s four girls were plain and boring. Their mother’s looks had been lost somewhere; Vamana had lost them, as well, to a disease that might have been cured had Palila not switched medicine bottles. She hadn’t meant for Vamana to die—but she hadn’t wept at her pyre, either. Lady Karayan’s daughters stood by the rose wall solemnly tossing a ball back and forth. Palila dismissed little Kiele and Lamia with a shrug, much as she had dismissed their mother from Roelstra’s service with a drop of poison in her breakfast wine.

Lady Surya’s girls, Moria and Cipris, were near in age to Palila’s elder daughters and competed with them for Roelstra’s attention, just as Palila had with their mother until a slip on wet tiles by the bathing pool had cracked open Surya’s blonde head. Palila hadn’t even had to push her very hard.

Yet having rid herself of three rivals, she had soon been presented with a fourth. Roelstra’s infatuation with charming, empty-headed Lady Aladra had lasted for two miserable years. She had been genuinely liked by all the daughters; Palila’s stomach curdled whenever the pretty idiot opened her mouth. Her death in childbed, giving birth to another daughter, had sunk the castle into honest mourning. Palila, though innocent in this case, had made a substantial donation of wine to Goddess Keep—supposedly in Aladra’s memory, but really in thanks for her deliverance.

There had been no new mistresses since. Palila reigned supreme. Even though she was no novelty to him, her hold on Roelstra was still strong and the baby on the way had increased it. Yet fond as he was of the daughters she had given him—his “little flowers,” he called them—and showing no signs of becoming bored with Palila, she knew that neither sentimentality about his children nor sensuality in her bed would be proof against a woman who could give him a son. Thus she intended to provide the long-awaited male heir herself, become his legitimate wife, and preside over the marriages of his seventeen daughters.

Their marketability was the one good thing about them. For the foreseeable future they could be parceled out like gold coins to reward useful men. Roelstra would be pleased to have tedious negotiations taken care of by Palila, and even more pleased when her arrangements increased his power. She would make herself essential to him politically and gain a tidy profit for herself into the bargain through bribes exacted from princes and lords wishing to marry the High Prince’s otherwise useless daughters.

She went to her own girls and hugged them, laughing aloud in anticipation of the time when she would find for them the richest and most important men in all the princedoms. But they were very young and she need not worry about their futures yet. Currently she was shopping for men to marry the legitimate daughters, and her primary prey was Prince Rohan. He was rumored to be studious, so Naydra’s quietness might attract him; he was also said to be rather blank of eye on occasion, so perhaps Lenala’s stupidity would suit him. Palila promised herself that neither clever Ianthe nor sly Pandsala would have him, for the idea of either married to such power was intolerable.

“Just look at her,” Pandsala whispered to Ianthe. “That bitch!” Ianthe smiled sweetly. “Lenala, you cannot play the horse atop the rider, dear. Naydra, explain the rules to her again, won’t you? Sala and I are going for a stroll.”

The younger pair left the elder and wandered across the lawns. Vines spread splashes of color across rough-hewn stone walls that rose to twice the princesses’ height and sealed in the trellis garden, just as the rest of Castle Crag and, therefore, their world was sealed. But they could feel the sheer drop of the cliffs beyond the wall, and the free, swift rush of the Faolain far below, just as without looking at it they could sense the silent, spired bulk of the castle behind them. Generations of their forebears had made it the most imposing keep in all the princedoms. The maze of rooms and corridors, antechambers and staircases was punctuated with turrets and towers jutting out wherever builders had found breathing space—with the result that there
was
no breathing space anywhere in the piles of gray and black stone. It was said that long ago the dragons had favored the cliffs here as a summer home during non-mating years, and had flown across the sky in so many hundreds that they blocked out the sun. It was from this place that Ianthe and Pandsala wanted desperately to flee, as the dragons had done long ago.

Pandsala plucked a rose from the wall and put it in her hair. “When are we going to do something about Palila?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.” Ianthe’s dark eyes sparkled gleefully. “Have you ever noticed how many women there are at Castle Crag, and how many of them are pregnant at any given time?”

“It must be in the air,” Pandsala replied, making a face. “Women breed, and they breed daughters.”

“Not all of them.”

Pandsala frowned, then stared. Ianthe laughed.

“If Palila has a son—which isn’t likely, but all things are possible—I have my eye on several girls right now who are just as far along as she is.”

“Why not do to her what she did to poor Surya?”

“I’ve considered it,” Ianthe admitted. “But her personal servants are absolutely loyal—Goddess alone knows why! She sleeps either with Father or with guards outside her door and two women on the floor of her chamber. She doesn’t go out riding, she doesn’t leave the grounds, she doesn’t bathe with the rest of us and she
never
eats anything her own servants haven’t prepared. If you can find opportunity in those things, be my guest!”

“I always did think her ‘delicate stomach’ was a flimsy excuse.”

“She doesn’t trust us any more than we trust her. Oh, she makes sweet eyes at us and pretends we’re all the closest of friends. I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling—certainly not Father!”

“He doesn’t give a damn about any of us, except when we can amuse him. Ianthe, I’m so tired of amusing him! Tell me what you have planned.”