Lescari Revolution 03: Banners In The Wind (12 page)

'You've no hope of retaking Wyril, not without ten times this muster,' snorted Gren. 'Not without Lescari who can show some true steel instead of these lead-weighted dullards.'

'Stop telling me things I know full well,' Tathrin snapped bitterly.

Failla gestured ahead, where the road forked to either side of a tavern. 'Go down that lane.'

'The Sundial.' Gren contemplated the tavern, forgetting his disgust with the Triolle militia. 'That looks promising.'

'No.' Sorgrad overrode him.

'Maybe later.' Tathrin kept his tired horse walking on, brooding behind Failla.

Gren continued speculating about the attractions of Ashgil's inns. Which might offer a song or some game of chance?

How many men had he killed today? Failla wondered. It never seemed to bother him. Indeed, he relished the rush and flurry of battle. Its hazards were no more or less than the risks of a game of runes. A wound was a trifling inconvenience.

Because, as he'd told Failla more than once, always with a cheery grin, he wouldn't be killed by a blade. A Mountain soothsayer had foretold he'd been born to be hanged.

That was only one reason why she kept him at arm's length, for all he could be such excellent company; cheerful, amiable and always ready to answer an insult with a jest. Indeed, goading someone bigger than he was only entertained Gren further.

She looked sideways through her eyelashes at Sorgrad. Who might suspect those fires outside the walls were a wizard's work? Could anyone possibly suspect that Sorgrad was the wizard in question?

Few people would believe any Mountain Man could have such an affinity with the elements that wizardly magic drew on. None of the tales of great mages had ever featured an uplander, or even one of the Forest Folk. Failla would never have imagined it, not till she'd encountered Sorgrad and learned of his arcane abilities.

She folded her hands across Tathrin's gloved grip on the reins. Would the Archmage, Planir the Black, know what Sorgrad had done? Tathrin had told her something of his terrifying encounter with the magewoman who had been pursuing that treacherous wizard hired by Litasse of Triolle. The dread in her beloved's voice had deterred her from asking further questions.

Now she wished she had. What had Tathrin said? Evidently this magewoman, Jilseth, had grudgingly forgiven Sorgrad's stealthy use of magic on those few occasions she knew of. He had led her to that traitorous mage and that seemed to balance those scales. But now the vile man was dead. There was no excuse for Sorgrad to break the Archmage's age-old edict against wizardry in Lescar's wars.

Failla knew Aremil dreaded the wizard-council of Hadrumal interfering in Lescari affairs. If the mages asserted their interests here, all because Sorgrad had burned down a few hovels, how could they keep the Caladhrian parliament of barons at bay? Or the Magistracy of Relshaz? Or most daunting of all, His Imperial Majesty, Tadriol the Provident of Tormalin?

Chapter Eight

Branca

The Three Fountains Inn,

Solland, in the Tormalin Empire,

19th of For-Winter

The fountain in the courtyard below the window was ringed by creamy paving. It was smaller than the other two since it symbolised the Lesser Moon rather than the Greater or, mightiest of all, the Sun.

Symbol of mysteries, yet to be discovered and never to be uncovered. Branca wondered what she and Charoleia would find here in Toremal. How successfully would they hide everything they must conceal?

Blind white marble, Arrimelin, goddess of sleep and dreams, gazed into the blue-tiled basin, empty now to save the spouting spiral seashells from damage by winter's frosts. It seemed she was particularly revered in Solland. That was apt given her associations with rivers and shorelines, in this port city where the River Asilor reached the Gulf of Lescar.

Branca looked up at the mottled clouds, grey as oyster shells. Should she turn to Aldabreshin cosmology? The Archipelagans said the Lesser Moon was a heavenly Opal, offering omens of harmony and truth among the patterns wrought with the other jewels and stars of the night sky. But the Lesser Moon had waned almost to darkness, now outshone by the full circle of her greater sister.

The ancient races of Forest and Mountain had their different foretelling rites. As Branca recalled, the Lesser Moon was a sharp-edged rune. Its closed circle could be a task completed, or one cut short before it was done. It indicated aloofness that could be serenity or madness. It might reflect chastity or virginity; a hopeful state for some, the bitterness of disappointment for others.

There were times when scholarship was no help whatsoever. Knowing so many creeds, she couldn't value one above any other. She could blame neither all-powerful deities nor uncaring cosmic fate, or beg either to pardon what she had done.

Voices sounded in the corridor. Thankful for the interruption, she hastened to the door.

'Thank you.' Charoleia took a silver mark from the mesh reticule hanging from her wrist.

'Thank you, my lady.' The lackey deftly palmed the coin.

Branca noted the pinched pallor around Charoleia's glossed lips and snapped her fingers. 'White brandy, if you please.'

'As you wish.' The obliging man hurried away.

'You're getting used to ordering the domestics.' Charoleia was wanly amused.

'How are you feeling?' Branca escorted her to the cushioned daybed.

Charoleia sat down with a heartfelt sigh. 'Just help me off with this cursed wig.'

'There's no news at the shrine?' Branca began removing enamelled pins securing the elaborate hairpiece

'Just the same fevered gossip as yesterday and the day before that.' Charoleia winced.

Branca carefully lifted the wig away. 'At least you're getting the benefit of salt bathing.'

This prestigious inn was notable for its proximity to the town's shrine to Ostrin. Many of Tormalin's leading princes and their ladies sought a cure under the auspices of the god of healing and hospitality. Though Branca found the nobility curiously reticent about what exactly they sought this renowned cure for.

Then there were the dowagers and decaying princes who preferred the clement winters on the coast, along with all their servants. Aristocratic esquires and demoiselles made dutiful visits to their elders retired from the complexities of managing Tormalin's great houses, their vast estates and tenants and sworn retainers.

Charoleia flinched as the hairpiece's netting foundation stuck to her burned scalp. 'That white gauze scarf, if you please.'

'Air will help the healing.' Branca recalled their invaluable apothecary's advice, before they had left Carluse Castle despite all his admonishments.

She handed over the scarf regardless, guiltily relieved to see the evidence of Charoleia's torments covered. Tied to a chair, starved, tortured with thirst, and beaten, then that vile mage had scorched away her hair, one lock at a time, while Litasse of Triolle's henchman looked on.

'Master Welgren isn't here.' A spark of mischief lit the older woman's amethyst eyes.

Branca was still astonished by her resilience. As soon as she'd come to her senses, Charoleia had ordered Branca to crop her remaining tresses, so wigs would sit more evenly. She even joked it saved the trials of stripping away the dye of her last disguise.

She fanned her scabbed scalp with a hand. 'Our noble callers will expect me to make some effort.'

'Noble callers?' Branca was torn between misgiving and curiosity.

Charoleia smiled pertly. 'Pass me that crackle-glazed jar and some muslin.'

'At once, mistress.' Branca bobbed a curtsey like the dutiful lady's maid she had never been, nor wanted to be, despite her mother's tales of the rich pickings from such work.

Not that Branca had particularly wanted to be a maid of all work in Vanam's university halls, but if that was the price of admittance to their libraries and learning, she wasn't too proud to pay it. Pride was something few Lescari living in Vanam's lower town could afford.

She watched as Charoleia dampened the muslin with perfumed lotion and stripped away her mask of rosy good health. Her face was left pale, her eyelids dark with weariness. Sickly stains still marred her cheekbones and jaw. Branca's own bruises had been much quicker to fade.

Regardless, Charoleia was still beautiful. With her fine features and dazzling smile, an alluring figure and innate elegance, she had turned admiring heads all her life. This naked evidence of violence against such beauty was all the more appalling.

So she had some plan best served by showing these noble visitors the full extent of her injuries

Charoleia closed her eyes for the barest instant before smiling brightly up at Branca. 'Help me into a dressing gown and tell me what you've learned on your morning walk.'

Branca deftly unlaced Charoleia's gown. 'There are liveried swordsmen on every corner,' she commented. Noble houses' well-drilled retainers; chosen men ready to take up arms at their liege lord's command.

'Wearing what badges?' Charoleia demanded.

Branca tried to recall. 'A red flower, a dog-rose I think. A honeysuckle coil. A black goat.'

'Den Breche. Den Dalderin. D'Orsetis.' Charoleia identified the blazons without hesitation.

As Trissa would have already done. Branca swallowed the painful realisation and her still aching grief at Charoleia's faithful maid's death.

Charoleia stepped out of her plum-coloured skirts, donned a yellow dressing gown and sat back on the daybed.

'You look dreadfully sallow in that colour.' Branca couldn't help an appreciative smile.

'Indeed.' Charoleia arranged the lace of her shift to expose the burns on her throat and the swell of her breasts. No one could doubt that more shocking injuries were modestly hidden.

She glanced at Branca, her lavender eyes dark. 'Don't ever doubt my gratitude, for all you did for me and Trissa. I know I owe you my life--'

A knock interrupted her. Relieved, Branca hurried to the door. She might even take a glass of white brandy herself.

But she found no inn servant in the hallway. A plainly dressed man of unremarkable appearance waited with a fresh-faced youth whose slender build belied the promise of his height. Both wore fashionably full-skirted coats over dress swords that looked more ornamental than useful.

'Your . . .' Branca's mind went blank. 'Majesty?'

'For this journey, I'm merely Sieur D'Istanel,' the brown-haired man advised placidly. 'And this is Esquire Yadres Den Dalderin. May we come in?'

'Of course.' Stepping backwards, Branca wondered how many more heavily armed men were escorting the Tormalin Emperor and how far away they might be.

'D'Istanel; a cadet line of your late mother's family, Highness,' observed Charoleia. 'Not the most impenetrable of disguises.'

'It suffices, as long as everyone politely accepts the fiction.' The Emperor, perhaps a handful of years older than Branca, raised his brows. 'What should I call you, madam? Since I refuse to believe in Alaric of Thornlisse, any more than I believe in the Relict Den Sarascol, taking the waters as she recovers from the fire that killed her husband.'

Whoever kept Tadriol informed was very well informed himself, concluded Branca.

'You may call me Charoleia.' She folded her hands demurely in her lap.

'Your home?' Tadriol persisted. 'Your family?'

'My home is wherever I find myself.' Charoleia smiled serenely. 'My family are those tied to me by affection, not by haphazard bonds of blood.'

The Emperor contemplated her for a long moment. 'Sieur Den Dalderin tells me you carry a reply to my letter from this disaffected son of Draximal who's appeared from the shadows now that all Lescar's going up in smoke.'

Branca hid her clenched fists in her skirt. How dare he refer to Aremil with such contempt, even if he was the Tormalin Emperor?

Charoleia sighed. 'Eofin Den Dalderin should know better. Master Aremil is a scholar and while he was indeed Duke Secaris's firstborn, his concerns are with Lescari peace and prosperity, not Draximal's petty anxieties.'

'Petty anxieties?' Tadriol snapped. 'Duke Secaris's acknowledged son and heir is dead! Need I remind you that amiable and virtuous young man made a good many friends on his visits to Toremal? '

'Lord Cassat took up arms against the Soluran,' retorted Charoleia. 'The fortunes of war are notoriously fickle, so don't blame us for his death. Has Draximal been overrun? Has Duke Secaris's castle been sacked? Is His Grace begging for bread by the high road? Hardly,' she answered her own question scornfully. 'No more than Duke Ferdain of Marlier.'

'Duke Moncan is dead, and his son and heir,' Tadriol countered. 'Sharlac Castle is a burned-out shell.'

Charoleia shook her head, unrepentant. 'Had he surrendered, they would be alive today.'

'Duchess Aphanie and her daughters--' Tadriol began wrathfully.

'Branca, please fetch His Imperial Majesty's letter.' As Charoleia brushed the straying edge of the silk swathing her head, her lace cuff fell away to reveal the rope scars on her wrist. 'Forgive me, I am weary. You'll find all your answers in there.'