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Authors: Katya Reimann

Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (32 page)

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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“You’re smiling,” Vaux-Torres said, welcoming Gaultry back. “Let’s see your ring.” Of course, she had watched Gaultry receive it from across the room, just as Gaultry herself had watched Palamar. “How inexpensive,” she said, taking Gaultry’s hand and turning it so the little sapphire caught the light. “The value clearly cannot be in its price. Now what might that mean?” Gaultry found her smile had widened reflexively at the imp of mischief in the Duchess’s expression. “Gabrielle wouldn’t have slighted you after all you’d done for her. So obviously it is an important gift, whatever its appearance. It’s initialed.” She shot Gaultry a mocking glance. Clearly, Vaux-Torres had looked for more than her own name on the rolls when the solicitor had shown her the written confirmation of her gift. “Gabrielle’s courting ring, at a guess. At the time, Hugh couldn’t risk giving her anything better, or her father would have discovered his suit. The oak must have signified the pledge of his strength to protect her.” The Duchess released Gaultry’s hand. “Quite a piece of history, if I’m right.”
Gaultry looked again at the stone. Sea-blue, almost the color of the old Duchess’s eyes, surrounded by silver oak. “You could be right,” she admitted, inwardly glowing. “The rolls did not record any story.”
“You have to read past that,” Vaux-Torres said. “Gabrielle would have been careful of what she chose to commit to text. Words written in a will can so easily become outdated. Printing out the name of her grandson and offering him over to you would certainly have been an indiscretion.”
Gaultry choked on a mouthful of peach. The Duchess smiled sweetly. “But that is how you read it, no? I see you smiling.”
“Martin Stalker is a married man,” Gaultry said, her heart pounding with stupid joy as she swallowed down the peach. If that truly had been what the Duchess had intended! “This ring has nothing to do with him,” was all she said aloud.
“Of course,” the Duchess agreed demurely. “I understand. And after all you had done for her, you are even a little angry with Gabrielle that she was not more generous. Perhaps you’d like to trade me for my egg?”
Gaultry covered her gift with a protective hand, and Vaux-Torres laughed. “I thought not. Though trust me, with her own artistry put into it, my gift has the greater intrinsic worth.”
The Sharif went up and returned with a gold mourning ring—heavy, hammered gold, with the broad, crosslike sword of the Melaudieres raised across its face. Similar-looking rings were given out up the table, as well as several uniquely crafted sculptures like Vaux-Torres’s egg, and scrolls to two of the Princess’s ministers, the contents of which left one man puffed with outrage. When Dervla went up, she received something small and golden—but if it was a ring, she did not choose to wear it after she returned to her seat.
Finally everyone but the Princess had been served their turn. The solicitor stepped aside and handed off the will to one of his assistants. A low cart covered with tapestry cloth was wheeled forward. The shape of the cloth’s folds told Gaultry that this last gift must be the cradle she had seen in Melaudiere’s death chamber.
Lily rose to her feet. A hush fell, followed by an indrawn breath. Though the Princess wore a traditional black mourning coat, beneath this top coat she was dressed in blue and white, long skirts that fell away from her waist like foam-chased water, threaded in places with silver to catch the light.
“I wish to see my gift,” she said loudly. “My Benet would have done Gabrielle Lourdes the honor of seeing it given here, and not in private.”
The solicitor’s wig wagged worriedly. “Your Highness—”
“Great Twelve above, I will see it now. I understand it is Melaudiere’s gift to the future. Let us all see what she thought the future might hold.”
An awkward silence hung throughout the room. Clearly some protocol had been determined, and the Princess had chosen to flout it. By Gaultry’s side, Vaux-Torres shifted, her eyes gleaming in anticipation.
“Your wish commands,” the solicitor said. At his signal, two footmen drew the tapestry cloth back.
The cradle was more beautiful than Gaultry remembered, and also more sinister. In the brilliant reflected light of the Duchess’s chambers, she had not noticed that the serpentine fishes that formed the cradle’s rails had a fiercesome aspect. Here, in the shadows of the alcove, they appeared almost menacing, silver-traced guardians coiled atop the cresting foam.
Lily pushed back from the table and passed around to the alcove. She knelt, her skirts spreading. Her child-small hands caressed the smooth
wood of the cradle’s interior, then touched the serpentine heads and gave it a tentative push. It rocked smoothly. The silver inlay flickered in the light. For an odd moment, the silver threads in the Princess’s skirts and the glitter of the silver trace merged, and Gaultry felt she was seeing Lily as the Prince himself must first have seen her—merged with the sea in her dark sea-folk’s coat, her legs lost in the foam below, the delicate triangle of her face intense.
“This is beautiful,” Lily said, emerging from her reverie. “It will rock Tielmark’s heir many a long day.” She stared out at the crowd, defiant. “Melaudiere has done us a great honor here, and I will honor her sacrifices in my turn. The tide of life ebbs and flows. A life has ended, but another begins.
“You have come today to mourn the death of my most faithful Duchess. You leave today with the new pledge of the life that grows within my body. Pray to all the Great Twelve to fulfill their promise, and you will see a child in this crib before Elianté shoots her green arrows in the spring.”
The uproar that greeted her announcement was fervid, but not entirely joyous. The upper ranks of the table were noticeably restrained. As those standing in the room’s corners clapped and cheered—one woman falling to her knees at the Princess’s feet and reaching up to kiss her hand—the ducal representatives could be seen casting nervous glances Dervla’s way.
In the midst of impending disorder, Tamsanne rose to her feet from her place near the table’s center. “Silence!” she called, her dry, cackling voice breaking across the room’s noise. “Silence, all of you! Where have your manners gone?”
It was not Tamsanne’s place to call for quiet, but somehow everyone obeyed her. She was like a black angry crow in their midst, and somehow everyone feared her. “Fill the cups,” she told the footmen, her black eyes snapping fiercely. She turned to Dervla. “Make the toast. Say the prayers and make the toast. Your Princess has made her announcement. Don’t pretend that you have forgotten your duty.”
Dervla, glaring daggers, did not respond. The footmen moved nervously in the room, sloshing every cup full. Tamsanne, waiting for them to finish, did not move. But finally, when they were done, she spoke again. “Dervla of Princeport. Make the prayer. Your Princess has called.”
This time, Gaultry felt it. A reverberation of power shook the table. Tamsanne was readying herself to speak words of power—ancient words,
with the strength of unmaking. Power that Tamsanne had reached back through the ancient trees to find, the first rootings of magic that the gods had lain under the earth—
Dervla could feel it too. Dervla and Mervion and Palamar. Gaultry could see the fear, the awareness, on all the faces she could see where magic lived. For a moment it seemed Dervla would resist Tamsanne’s challenge—
Then the High Priestess reached for her cup, and raised it. “New Life in the Prince of Tielmark’s line,” she said. “Let us all praise it.”
The toast was drunk, the prayer said. Tamsanne lapsed back in her seat and lowered her head. Dervla whispered something to a footman. He passed word to his fellows, and they quickly moved the guests into a queue, lining them past the alcove to kneel and kiss the Princess’s hand. The wake had been transformed into the public celebration of the Princess’s conception.
After another moment, it seemed Tamsanne had never spoken, never risen to interrupt.
“It may be that we will not talk again soon.” Argat Climens rose from her chair and gave Gaultry a little courtesy, responding to some invisible signal that had half the titled guests risen from their seats. “But how pleasing that we had a chance to open this discussion. Your grandmother is quite remarkable. What do you think? Yourself and your sister aside, was there some power vested in the original brood that can never be recaptured?” She glanced up to the top of the table. “Dervla certainly doesn’t want to think that.”
With a whisper of silk, she was gone.
She never waited for any of my answers,
Gaultry told the Sharif bitterly.
She never even gave me a chance to show I could match her wit.
The Sharif, fingering her new ring, cast a soothing look Gaultry’s way.
That one doesn’t need your answers,
she said.
She’s looking to make you ask questions. All you need to do is decide if they are questions that would be useful to you, or no.
I don’t need to involve myself in Vaux-Torres’s power moves to establish her innocence,
Gaultry answered.
If she colluded with the Bissanties, that’s her problem, not mine.
That one would never be happy with a single plot running,
the Sharif said, watching Vaux-Torres’s back as she moved to join the line of those stooping to congratulate the Princess.
She spoke nothing to you of her Bissanty affairs, am I right?
Well yes
—
She wants your help on another matter,
the Sharif told her.
She is too proud to ask, but she would steer you in that direction.
I’m not going to help her
, Gaultry replied heatedly.
She must help herself
.
The Sharif smiled. “Gautri,” she said aloud. “You tell me the same thing, the day you took me from the slaver.”
It was time to take their places in the line that led to the Princess.
After two days of rain the sky was cloudless, the air perfect and clear
. A breeze coming in off the water contained the heat. It felt good to be outside, to feel the air in her hair. With the Midsummer festival over, the docks and quays were almost deserted—everyone was busy elsewhere or out on the ships. Gaultry stood with Tullier at the tip of the Prince’s personal dock and watched the Sharif’s ship, a deep-bellied vessel with a high deck and weathered once wine-colored sails, as it drew in its sails and picked up speed. Though a Chlamanscher ship from the distant south, it flew Tielmark’s blue-and-white pennant beneath its own colors, per order of the Prince.
As the ship receded, the Sharif stood tall in the stern, Aneitha, bound by a collar and chain, frisking at her side. The war-leader’s robes fluttered in the breeze, and her gaze rested on them, smiling, until they could no longer distinguish her proud figure from the woodwork of the ship. She had finished her good-byes. There was no last mind-call as the ship rounded the headland and passed out of sight beneath the glistening walls of the palace, heading to the east and the south.
“I will miss her.” Gaultry scuffed her foot against the boards of the dock and turned her back to the sea. Another companion leaving. Princeport’s skyline was bright and shining under the morning sun, the crisp angles of the roofs rising along the spine of the headland toward the palace. A pleasing view, though not enough to quell the sadness that rose in her throat. “But I suppose I’m also relieved. After what happened to Melaney, I’m glad she’s safely away.”
Tullier, still facing the sea, hesitated before answering. His health was much improved. Mervion’s attentions and two days of rest while the Tielmarans performed Melaudiere’s funeral ceremonies had served him well. He could stand without pain and he’d recovered much of his cockiness, although the episode had left him with an inward pensiveness that had been previously lacking.
“Whoever sent those men to the townhouse won’t strike in that way again,” he said. “They wanted to get me before your Prince gave me a place at the palace. The attack wasn’t so personal that it wasn’t constrained by political proprieties. But whoever planned it—he or she is admirably focused.” His voice was infuriatingly admiring. “They don’t care what they destroy en route to achieving their objective. I had that focus once.”
“Stop regretting that it’s gone,” Gaultry said testily. “There are things to admire besides the willingness to kill, you know.”
He turned to face her, grinning.
Realizing that he was teasing her, if blackly, she boxed his shoulder. “Let’s explore the tide-line a ways before we go back up to the palace. Supposedly a path runs somewhere along the bank.” She looked along the shore toward the intriguing tangle of small warehouses, drying fishnets, and cottages. “I’m not in the mood just now to run into Dervla or Ronsars in the halls, and have to play wary to their intrigues.”
He nodded acquiescence. The Prince’s warder had visited Tullier in Gaultry’s quarters to explain the more abstruse aspects of the terms of the boy’s protection. In the three hundred years of Tielmark’s history as a free state, a wealth of precedents had been established to govern every circumstance concerning the sojourn of a Bissanty Prince in residence at the free Tielmaran court, though to Ronsars the fact that Tullier had not yet reached his majority was an opportunity to tease out further intricacies. The boy had not been grateful to the warder for bringing his attention to these stultifying implications of his unasked-for status as Bissanty’s Fifth Prince.
After the last dock they came to the narrow, ill-kempt footbridge that spanned Glassmouth, the broad, lazy river that drained into Princeport’s harbor. The far bank was dotted with fishermen’s cottages. On the near side, a path led inland along the river’s rising sandstone bank, crowded on both sides by artisans’ shops and odd little fences that demarcated their yards. The crooked path looked more interesting than the bridge.
As they walked, Gaultry considered what Tullier had said about the townhouse attack. Part of his assessment felt right. She thought, with grief, of young Melaney’s crumpled body. Yet until the raw green magic had possessed the swordmaster, kidnapping had been Siànne’s stated intention, not murder, and even once the spell had been invoked, she was not sure whether its intention had been merely to kill Tullier’s protectors, or the boy as well.
“Why would a Tielmaran want to kidnap you?” she asked. “The magic that took Siànne—its source was certainly Tielmaran.”
The boy shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. I could see why Bissanty might want to reclaim me that way, but Tielmark? No.”
Gaultry kicked a stone on the path, hard, and watched it skitter down the embankment toward the water. “I’d think it was Dervla behind this,” she said, “if I could just find a way for that to make sense.”
A little way along the path, they came to the first of the glasswork factories which gave Glassmouth River its name and reputation. These were small, family affairs operated out of home-workshops at the top of the river crag, beneath which lay the seam of pure sand from which they crafted their stock. The smell of hot molten glass hung in the air as they approached. Gaultry herself had not yet had a chance to explore this corner of Princeport, and she found herself sharing Tullier’s curiosity as they craned to see into the yards where the master craftsmen worked.
“The Bissanties built one of their first encampments in Tielmark here because of this sand,” Gaultry told him. “Melaudiere told me that there are some ancient pieces in the Prince’s palace, beads and cups and amulets and things, that date back even to the wanderers’ time. And the farmers hereabouts still sometimes dig up odd fragments of glass and clay when they’re plowing their fields.”
“Bissanty can make its own glass now,” Tullier said. “They have quarries almost as good as this in Dramcampagna, and even as near to Bassorah as Polonna Major.”
“Yet another reason your Empire shouldn’t need us.” Gaultry sighed. “Not that it makes Tielmark any richer that you’ve lost your need to trade for raw materials.”
The path broadened onto a muddy square. A handful of makeshift shops crowded the front rooms of the houses at the square’s sides, a few with glass-carvers seated outside, taking advantage of the bright morning sun for finishwork on small pieces. Tullier was curious enough to ask one woman to show him her wares. She called her son to bring out a padded
leather tray of carved pendants and multicolored beads. The work was surprisingly fine.
“That one’s very nice,” Gaultry said, pointing out a fused cameo of a white bird with a topaz-colored back.
“It’s almost like a dove.” Tullier shook his head. “It reminds me of my sister.” He picked up the smooth piece of glass by its edges, avoiding contact with the white of the cameo bird. “I wonder what she’s doing now.” He set it down, with an air of putting Columba too away from him. “Really I’d prefer not to know.” Columba had attempted to betray them, back in Bissanty. Gaultry didn’t blame him for not wanting to think of her. His hand moved over the tray. “This one,” he said. “This one is more to my liking.”
It was a dark green glass pendant. The carving was a dense spiny tree with spreading branches. “An acacia,” the woman said, picking it up and polishing it with a piece of leather. “For eternal remembrance. And affection.”
“Very nice.” Gaultry reached for her purse. “Everyone who went to the Duchess’s wake yesterday received tokens of her regard.” She turned to Tullier. The boy had never known the grand old woman, but her advice had been so pivotal in Gaultry’s life, she wanted suddenly to include him in the ceremonies of her passing. “I’d like you to have something as well. Do you want it?”
He touched it with one finger, and she knew the answer was yes.
The woman sold it to them with a cord. He would not immediately put it on. He held it in his hand as they wended their way through quiet back streets, and finally turned toward the palace. The boy seemed tired. Gaultry hoped the walk had not overtaxed him.
“You’re going to lose it that way,” she warned him, watching him play with the cord.
“I won’t,” he said. “I’ll be careful. It’s just—I haven’t worn anything on my neck for more than a month. And my last necklace was not exactly something I wore by choice.”
Gaultry realized then that the last necklace Tullier had worn had been his Sha Muira poison beads—the antidote pearls he had ingested daily to counteract the Goddess poison that had permeated his flesh.
She wondered if it had been a mistake to give him the pendant. With Tullier, it was so hard to know where one was making a misstep.
A
n aggressively toned message from Princess Lily awaited them on their return to the palace. She wanted an immediate audience, and had sent a footman to wait at the palace gate, with orders to bring them directly on their return from giving the Sharif their farewells.
“I never get a chance to properly tidy myself for these meetings,” Gaultry muttered, as they paused by a small mirror in the anteroom of the Princess’s chambers, and the footman gave them a brief opportunity to brush the street dust off their clothes. “I’m so tired of walking in, and finding everyone else perfectly groomed.”
“You look fine,” Tullier snorted. “No one expects you to look the part of a titled lady. That’s not why you hold people’s respect.”
“When I’m Tamsanne’s age, I’ll believe that.” She shot him a sour look. “Don’t forget. Unless the Princess asks you something directly, let me do the talking. She’s suspicious of anything that comes from Bissanty—with good reason, given her experience. It’s better if you and she don’t have words.”
“Are you saying you’re a more proficient diplomat than I?”
“Neither of us were born to be diplomats,” Gaultry said. “But Lily doesn’t like you. So try to keep quiet, and do your best to look like a good boy.”
The footman led them down a tiled corridor and out to the Princess’s private garden, a high terrace that overlooked the eastern flank of the palace, away from the city. Beyond the palace orchards lay the shining expanse of the sea. Despite the broad vista and feel of exposure given by the panoramic view, the curve of the battlements sheltered the garden’s terraces. Under the noonday sun, its promenades felt overbright and overheated.
Lily’s omnipresent Duchess of Ranault sat collapsed nearby under a shade tree, two maidservants fanning her as she languished with the obvious discomforts of her heavily advanced pregnancy. Beyond her, several other ladies played cards at a covered table on the terraced battlements, close by the cooling spray of a little fountain. The Princess herself sat alone on a cushioned chair, an embroidery hoop in her lap, on an elevated deck with stone balustrades.
At a little distance, standing watch over the tamarin as it investigated an aromatic bed of flowers, was Elisabeth Climens, Argat’s daughter. The girl wore her usual sumptuous attire, paired today with a brocaded mourning cloak that looked uncomfortable in the terrace’s heat. She had the closed expression of a well-mannered child who yearned to be down on
her knees at play with the clever creature, rather than just obediently standing back to watch it.
Princess Lily saw where Gaultry was looking as she and Tullier approached. “Elisabeth seems to like my new pet,” she said, after she greeted them and had been formally reintroduced to Tullier. “I’ve appointed her its warder. I thought she needed something to keep her occupied.”
“Very good, your Highness,” Gaultry said. “I’m sure she is grateful.”
“It might not seem like much.” The Princess shifted her embroidery hoop and fussily adjusted the tension of a thread with her needle. “But when one’s heart is sore, an animal or even a basket of laundry can offer a blessed, if brief, distraction.” Gaultry guessed Lily was thinking of her own experience, of the bleak, lonely days when her future husband had languished under his chancellor’s thrall, and the young laundrymaid had believed herself abandoned. “I would not see Elisabeth stand idle until her mother’s case is heard.”
“Her mother’s case. Will it be tried soon?”
“In two weeks. During the assizes at Andion’s Ides. Dervla says she needs the days to gather her last evidences.” Lily shrugged. “More likely, she wants the sacramental aspect of the day to give weight to her own testimony. The evidence, as I understand it, is quite extensive, but more circumstantial than otherwise.”
Gaultry nodded. On the Ides of the month, when the moon was waned, the High Priestess’s power would be at its peak. It would be a good day for Dervla to question witnesses—no one would want to lie to the High Priestess on the day she was nearest to the gods.
Lily shifted restlessly. For all her pose as the great Lady of Tielmark calmly receiving underlings, Gaultry could see that she was uncomfortably aware of her inexperience.
It had been just two months since Lily had served as laundress to some of her card-playing ladies. Now she ruled them—not just as the Prince’s consort, but in his absence as their ruler. Small surprise that Lily had chosen to raise herself on the little deck rather than take her ease amongst them. Gaultry shifted uneasily. Lily’s lack of confidence made dealing with her a matter of considerable delicacy and tact. Benet’s young wife could not always distinguish between those who did not jump to follow her orders out of disrespect and those who questioned her for justifiable reasons.
BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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