Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire (12 page)

The inn was situated at the end of a street that itself ended at the lofty outer wall. This was one of those places where the granite had been stolen away for more prosaic uses; the gap was big enough to ride through without ducking. Not that Ruval would have cared to try it—those upper stones looked a little tentative, deprived of their underpinnings.

One side of the Crown and Castle abutted on an ironmonger’s. The other was Swalekeep’s main wall itself. Over the hearth fire hung a cauldron from which patrons dipped their own stew. A smaller pot held mulled wine, also on a self-serve basis. Ruval showed a gold coin to a girl who sat near the hearth and ordered chilled wine. She left off petting the fat orange cat in her lap long enough to point to a nearby table—and to take the coin from his fingers.

Mireva joined him in a corner and they made slow drinking of the wine, trying to ignore the incessant hammering of the smith next door. How anyone could find the energy to work in this weather—let alone over a furnace—was utterly beyond him. Eventually, full but not particularly refreshed, Ruval got up, stretched, and made his way out the back door as if to relieve himself. Marron was waiting for him, fuming.

“You knew where I’d be! Why did you make me wait?”

“Because I was thirsty. Because it amused me.” He assessed his brother with a scathing glance. “You’ve fed well, these last few winters.”

“And you still look like a half-starved wolf who doesn’t know how to hunt for himself,” Marron shot back.

“Why should I, when I have a little brother to do my hunting for me?” Ruval grinned and walked toward the watering trough, seating himself casually on its edge. “Well? What news of our darling Aunt Chiana?”

“Keep your voice down!” Marron hissed.

“Are your senses grown as soft as your belly? There’s no one in hearing distance but those cats.” He gestured to the gray striped cat and kittens nearby. “And I doubt they’re interested.”

Marron sighed and shook his head. “I hate being closed in like this. You don’t know what it’s been like. The Veresch forests are walls you can walk through.”

Ruval felt unwilling sympathy. He hadn’t considered until arriving in Swalekeep how difficult it must be to adapt to life inside stone. “Come sit down, brother.”

Marron perched on the far rim of the trough. “You know my position in Swalekeep. It’s taken me two years to get into the chamberlain’s confidence, even using bits of power here and there. Chiana’s a bitch up one side and down the other—our grandfather’s daughter, no doubt about that! She wants all done to perfection, then finds fault and makes you do it again.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting her.”

Dark eyes widened. “You can’t!”

“No?” Ruval laughed. “Go on.”

Marron looked as if he might argue, then subsided with a glower. “Mireva was right about Chiana’s ambition. She wants Rinhoel to have Princemarch as well as Meadowlord, even though all the sisters renounced it for themselves and their heirs—”

“All the sisters except Mother. Dead—at Sioned’s order.” A fragrance, a silken rustle, a throaty laugh, a sharp scowl when he played too rough—the meager memories darted through his mind, always escaping too quickly.

“I saw Sioned at last year’s
Rialla.
Toured Dragon’s Rest, too, but we’ll talk of that another time. She’s fifty next year, and looks thirty-five. Rohan’s the same.” Marron hesitated. “He’s not even a Sunrunner, Ruval—yet I could almost see the
aleva
around him. Sioned’s is almost painful to look at. And as for Pol—!”

Ruval frowned. The
aleva
was literally a “circle of fire” that the truly sensitive, especially among
diarmadh’im,
could glimpse around the highly powerful. That Sioned possessed such an aura was taken for granted; that Pol’s would also be visible was expected, too. But Rohan, whose Sunrunner blood was so thin—

Still, it was the Dragon’s Son and not the Dragon Prince who concerned him now. “Tell me about Pol.”

“I didn’t catch more than a few glimpses of him. I had to spell Chiana to get her to take me at all. And she’s not easy to work on, believe me. They’re building Dragon’s Rest out of stone and steel—she’s made just the same, only of ambition and hate.”

“My, how poetic.”

Marron looked as though he wanted to take a swing at him. “If you want to try getting through all that, go right ahead.”

“Pol,” Ruval said.

“No Sunrunner’s rings, but he’s been well-trained, wager on it. Tall, blond, good-looking—the women were all after him. He’s got an eye for the prettier ones.”

“Hmm.” Ruval smiled. “That’s interesting news for a little project of Mireva’s. But never mind that now.” He glanced at the inn’s back door, where a boy had just thrown scraps to the cats. “You must have more to tell, and Mireva wants to talk at length. And in private.”

“There’s a musical evening tonight—Chiana likes to present herself as cultured and sophisticated,” he added sourly. “Another thing about Pol, he’s got an absolute passion for music. I’ll meet you in the garden near the Pearlfisher Inn after dusk.”

“I’ll find it. But why not here? The wine’s good.”

“The wine is terrible. You’ve a lot to learn about the finer things available to a prince,” Marron jeered. Before Ruval could put him in his place with a sharp answer, he strode off.

 

 

Mireva hissed with annoyance when Ruval entered their small chamber at the Green Feather. She intended the precious
rathiv
to be part of her performance for Chiana, and he had lumped it together as if it was a horse blanket.

“Wait,” he grinned, correctly interpreting her angry look. Unfolding the rug, he revealed a torso-sized gleam of silver and glass that took her breath away. “I thought you might like this.”

“By the Nameless One—!” she breathed, taking the mirror from him. Kneeling with it set before her on the wooden planks, she ran reverent fingers over decorative wires that swirled and twisted in a pattern as old as her people. “What is
this
doing out of the Veresch?”

“The shopkeeper didn’t know what he had, of course. I actually paid money for it—though not for the
rathiv
—the price was that low.” Ruval crouched beside her. “Do you have any idea what to do with it?”

“See this?” She pointed to an intricate knot woven in silver wire at the top of the frame. “Recognize it?”

“I’m not blind,” he replied impatiently. “Can you get it to work?”

“Yes. Oh,
yes!
” She laughed and threw her arms around him. “My clever High Prince!” His hands ran eagerly over her back and hips, but she pushed him away. “Later. Leave me alone with it for now. Come back when it’s time to meet Marron. I need to set the spell within it.”

“And you won’t let me watch.” His handsome face with its cruel, curling mouth went dark. “After all these years, you still don’t trust me.”

“If you knew what I do about this mirror, you wouldn’t trust your own mother.”

“Considering who my mother was, you’re quite naturally right.” Rising, he cast one last hungry glance at the mirror and left her.

Mireva rocked back and forth, hugging her breasts. The mirror rested in mute impotence on the floor, its strange dusky gold surface like a stormy sky at sunset. The silver frame was old and tarnished, the wires broken in some places and missing in others. But she knew it for what it was—and gave thanks that Ruval had seen and identified the crowning knotwork.

Her old, gnarled fingers caressed the flat face as a maiden might her lover’s cheek. The small hand mirror she’d planned to give Chiana had been a risk. This was a certainty.

It took her some time to find the right words—she initially misjudged the age of the mirror, and had to restructure her accent and phrasing to awaken it. But when it finally brightened in the gloom of her chamber, it was with a sure and steady glow.

 

 

Marron opened all his windows to the evening rain. The heat had finally broken with a sweep of icy air that from its feel had come all the way from Firon’s early snows. The trees outside bent in the wind and he nodded in satisfaction. It was plenty cold enough to justify the heavy hooded cloak he wore to disguise his distinctive hair.

Descending the stairs, he heard the faint echoes of strings and drums from the hall where Chiana was perpetuating her “great lady” image. Several times a season she invited influential merchants and their wives to spend the evening in her presence. She did not go so far as to give them dinner; she broke bread with no one under the rank of
athr’im.
But a summons to the castle was a social distinction no one refused, no matter how deeply Chiana was loathed.

On his way out he encountered the chamberlain in a back corridor. A doddering holdover from Clutha’s time, the old man drank himself stuporous most nights and whined about the good old days to anyone who would listen. Marron found himself caught by a wizened claw, unable to escape without being rude. The role of humble servant did not sit easily on a man descended from High Princes and
diarmadh’im,
but Marron had little choice. At last he claimed a pressing appointment with a young lady who did not like to be kept waiting, and slipped away while the chamberlain mumbled about ancient loves of his own.

Swalekeep was patchworked by little public parks, islands of trees and bushes and flowering plants connected by meandering streets. Chiana had appropriated the largest of them for one of her oddest self-indulgences: an animal garden. In it roamed several deer and elk, and an eagle with its flight feathers regularly plucked to keep it earthbound. In large cages were a wolf pair that had produced nothing but dead pups in the five years of their captivity, and a female mountain cat, her claws torn out. Chiana had offered a substantial reward for anyone who could bring her a mate for the cat; it was said she would have paid half Meadowlord’s yearly income for a dragon, but no one had taken her up on that, either.

Marron paused outside this sad little place, watching the wolves pace endlessly behind steel mesh. A strong kinship welled up in him for his fellow captive exiles. But he could afford no weakening sentiment right now. He was about to meet Mireva for the first time in two long winters.

Chafing his cold hands beneath the cloak, he hurried to the enclosure opposite the Pearlfisher and entered, snicking the gate shut behind him. The hand on his arm startled him into a curse.

“Your senses
have
dulled,” she murmured. “But they’re lost in a good cause.”

Ruval’s cause, he wanted to say, but held his tongue. Time enough to deal with his brother and leave Mireva with only one of Ianthe’s sons to work with.

“I’ve missed you,” she said abruptly. “I didn’t think I would.” The words surprised him, but he was still wary. “Where’s Ruval?”

“Standing watch. Come and sit with me.”

It was fully dark now. The rain had eased to a fine mist that veiled her graying hair as she pushed back her hood. He could see every line on her face in the lamplight across the narrow street; she had aged with the tension of waiting. He knew how that felt.

“It is time to prove your brother’s legitimacy,” Mireva began without preamble.

Marron had known this was coming. Bastardy was not a stigma as such—illegitimate offspring shared inheritances with trueborn—but Roelstra had sired such an embarrassing number of bastard daughters that the custom of fathering children outside marriage had gone out of fashion. In practice these days, legitimate heirs had the edge. Rohan’s father had in many ways begun the trend by being scandalously faithful to his adored wife. It was a foolish practice, for most women bore only three or four children. Those who conceived five times and lived to tell of it were uncommon; no one had ever heard of any who had borne more than six. Prolific bloodlines were sought after, and those who produced twins, like Princess Tobin, were most desirable of all. It was only sensible to get as many heirs as possible—possession of a single son was dangerous, as Prince Chale of Ossetia had learned years ago when his had died.

“Chiana’s son is legitimate, a prince,” Mireva went on. “But she was quite spectacularly born a bastard.” A smile gleamed around her lips for a moment. “Imagine it—being utterly frantic to
prove
herself a bastard! Ianthe, on the other hand, was the daughter of Roelstra’s wife. If we can provide evidence from Lord Chelan’s own mouth that he and Ianthe were wed—”

“I made inquiries when you asked last winter,” he interrupted. “He lived at a manor on the Syrene border.”

Her eyes lit with silvery sparks. “ ‘Lived’?”

“And died, and burned there this summer. A wasting sickness, it’s said.”

“Damn him! Damn him for dying!”

Before she could get what she wanted and then kill him herself, Marron thought. But he said nothing.

Mireva inhaled deeply, struggling for calm. “It’s my own fault for not taking care of this sooner.”

“If you had, attention would have fallen on him—and he would have been around our necks.”

“That’s true.” She sighed.

“Ruval will just have to do without,” he said, a trifle more acidly than intended. She fixed an icy gaze on him. “I know, I should’ve told you on starlight. But you’ve both been traveling so much—Cunaxa and all over Princemarch—it was impossible to find you.”

“And you’ve never been very good at that sort of thing,” she snapped. “Are you sufficiently good at palace politics to get me in to see Chiana? Tonight?”

“Tonight—” He swallowed hard. “What do you plan to do to her?”

“What do you think?” she countered.

“You don’t understand about Chiana. She’s—
hard.
” He explained how he’d been able to nudge her in directions she already favored—such as removing Halian’s sister Gennadi as regent of Waes and reinstating Lord Geir. Though the young man hated Halian’s father for the execution of his parents, he was alive to the advantages of working with Chiana. This had become one more thread of power in his aunt’s grasping little hands. “But she has to think things are all her own idea. Even a hint that you’re trying to influence her, and—”