Sworn To Conflict: Courtlight #3 (26 page)

“Stay back,” she stammered, ready to scream.

She watched in complete surprise as the Lord Chamberlain picked up a rather large rock.

What is he going to do with that
? wondered Ciardis.

Her answer came in the next second as he walloped Lady Arabella on the back of the head with mighty
thud
. She collapsed on the ground with a profuse amount of blood pouring from her wound.

Mouth agape, Ciardis looked from the comatose and likely dead Truthsayer to the man, who casually tossed the rock to the side.

“I suppose you have questions,” said the Lord Chamberlain in a measured tone.

“That would be an understatement,” Ciardis said, looking at him warily.

“And they will all be answered,” he said as he stepped forward and quickly grabbed her wrist with a speed and strength she hadn’t known he possessed.

But Ciardis wasn’t without her own tricks, and she punched him straight in the nose. He stumbled back, cursing, with red blood pouring down his shirtfront. In the meantime Ciardis was desperately trying to reconcile what she knew about the man before her and what she had felt in his touch. There was magic there. Strong magic. She narrowed her eyes and took in the cold gentleman. Even as she stared straight at him she couldn’t get a glimpse of his magic. It was carefully concealed, and even now it avoided her mage sight as it hid in the corners of her vision, tucked away like sparkly mothballs trying to hide under the bed.

“Who are you?” she asked.

He snapped a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his nose while eyeing her balefully.

“I am who I always have been,” he intoned. “Lord Chamberlain to His Imperial Majesty Emperor Bastien Athanos Algardis and friend to Lady Companion Lillian Weathervane.”

“You mean
former
friend,” Ciardis said, “seeing as she’s dead.”

“On the contrary, Lady Ciardis Weathervane,” the Lord Chamberlain replied, “your mother is very much alive, and I can prove it to you.”

“Nice try,” Ciardis said with a sharp smile, “but I don’t need anything proven to me. Particularly not from a snake like you.”

He frowned in confusion and then his face cleared up as he gazed down at Lady Arabella’s body with understanding. “Oh, you mean
her
. I incapacitated her at your mother’s request. She was getting too close to the truth.”

Ciardis decided to humor him. “And, pray tell, what is the truth?”

“That your mother is alive,” the man repeated as if she had a few too many rocks rolling around loose in her head.

“If she’s alive,” said Ciardis stubbornly, “where has she been all this time? How could she abandon her position at court, let alone my brother and me?”

He studied her with careful eyes. “I think that perhaps it’s best she explain that to you. You might realize that you haven’t been as alone as you thought.”

Ciardis laughed bitterly. “I grew up begging for scraps. Passed from family and family until I was old enough to make my own way with side jobs. Even then I lived meal to meal in a hovel until I managed to finally find board at the small inn in a room with holes bigger than my head and patrons that liked to slap my ass as I walked by. There was no one looking out after me. Not there and not here.”

“And what about in Sandrin?”

“What about the capitol city? I managed to attach myself to an incompetent sponsor and wound up on the wrong side of nearly everyone at court.”

“Perhaps your sponsorship wasn’t as bad as you think. You can’t know what went on behind closed doors, what the Lady Serena did for you in private meetings.”

“Oh, and
you
do?” said Ciardis spitefully.

He opened his mouth to object. She got there first. “I am done talking about my sponsor, who has disappeared on me once again, I might add, thank you very much. Is there anything else?”

He said simply, “Yes, there is. You’ve wanted to know since you were child what your mother was like. Why she abandoned you. If she has thought about you this whole time. Every orphan does. I did. The difference is that you can do something about it. Now’s your chance.”

Ciardis felt warring emotions tearing through her like a kick in the gut. She didn’t want to imagine meeting a mother.
Her
mother. What if he was lying? What if her mother was dead like the whole court assumed? Worse—what if she didn’t want her? She had stayed away for so long, she had to have done so on purpose.

But the urge was there. The urge to see her. To be enveloped in her warmth. To have her hold her and tell her that everything would be all right, that the war would be won, that the issue of the Sarvinians would be solved, and then she would teach Ciardis everything she knew about being a Weathervane. A true master of her powers.

Ciardis focused outward, pushing down the turmoil and the rapidly fleeing thoughts in her head. “What’s in it for you? Why are you doing this?”

Déjà vu hit her all over again. Less than two days ago she had asked her brother the same thing.

He pursed his lips and said, “Not everything at court is as it seems. Not everyone is content with the way things are run.”

“And you think my meeting my mother would change that?” she asked incredulously.

“Lillian could be persuaded to come to court, to truly reveal herself, if she had her daughter by her side,” he said.

Ciardis found that hilarious. “And why would she do that?”

“The bond of mother and child is strong, Ciardis, particularly when that child is threatened. And believe me, Lady Weathervane, you have many enemies awaiting your arrival back in our fair city.”

“From what I’ve heard,” Ciardis persisted, “my mother was on trial for murder when she fled.”

“Semantics. There was an accusation but no proof. Now that we know what really happened, we can clear her name with the evidence.”

“What evidence?” Ciardis said. “If you have something that could clear her name, even in death, you have to come forward!”

He said, “No, Lady Weathervane, I
have
to do nothing. I wish to come forward, though. But only with the most powerful conclave of Weathervanes in the history of the empire by my side.
Then
, and only then, will I come forward.”

Ciardis knew in that instant that he was convinced her mother was alive. What he spoke of was treason. It almost made her think that the courtiers that orbited around the emperor weren’t as dumb as many were led to believe. The duke of Carne notwithstanding—that idiot couldn’t even manage to handle a proper assassination attempt on a girl who had no guards or protectors.

The Lord Chamberlain saw the blossom of hope in Ciardis Weathervane’s eyes. “Come with me,” he said, “and you can meet her. Stay here and you will always wonder if your mother is truly alive or dead.”

C
iardis was reluctant. She refused politely.

“I promise on the honor of my line, the Steadfasts,” he said with pleading eyes, “you will meet no harm where I’m taking you.”

Ciardis didn’t know why, but at that moment she felt she could trust him. She didn’t want to, but she rarely ignored her gut, and she knew it was telling her that if she didn’t take this opportunity she’d regret it for the rest of her life. The chance to see her mother. She had to go.

“How will we get there?” she asked.

He pulled a family amulet from underneath his robes.

“That, my dear, is simple,” he explained, “She’ll meet us in the Aether Realm; this amulet gives me access.”

He held out his hand.

Feeling nervous, Ciardis took it, and he pulled her with him through the temporal planes. She felt the familiar feeling of magic from the jump between the Earth Realm and the Aether Realm. When her stomach had settled and she could see, she noted that she was standing before a large garden alcove. And the woman she had come to see was standing in front of her.

Ciardis watched as the woman approached in a deep blue cloak with thick mist swirling around her feet. She couldn’t see anything about her face or body. Her face was concealed within the dark hood and the cloak covered her from head to toe. Ciardis’s mouth went dry and her eyes strained in anticipation of that first glimpse. The glimpse of the woman she hadn’t seen in more than sixteen years. The woman who had abandoned her long ago in a small village in a small northern vale without a note or a name. The woman who had caused the town to treat her like filth, AND call her a baseborn bastard of an itinerant girl too busy to care for her.

As those memories swept over her, a silent tear slid down her cheek.

The woman reached a gloved hand forward as if to wipe the tear away, but held herself back. Instead she lifted her hands, which Ciardis could see were shaking even through the emotional cloud of her mind, and pushed back the heavy hood that concealed her face.

Ciardis gasped in shock. She hadn’t expected this.

A woman with blonde hair as striking as the wheat fields of the vale in august and captivating blue eyes stood before her. Lady Companion Serena, her sponsor for the Companions’ Guild, stood before her.

“I knew you despised me, Serena,” Ciardis hissed in shock, “but I had no idea you could be so cruel as to come here and pose as the one person I would give my life to see.”

She turned away in anger. Seeing the Lord Chamberlain, she rushed toward him, determined to get him to send her back. Before she could, Lady Serena grabbed on to the mantle of her cloak and forced her to whirl around. But Ciardis didn’t turn back unarmed. She pulled a knife from her wrist sheath fast enough that she had it at Serena’s throat and her sponsor pushed back against the garden wall before the woman could say one word.

“Do you think this is a
game
? That my life is nothing but a pawn for your enjoyment, Serena?” Ciardis said while pressing the sharp blade to her sponsor’s throat. A thin red line of blood crested on the blade’s brilliant edge. Ciardis heard steps behind her and she quickly said, “I’d stop where you are, Lord Chamberlain of the Steadfasts, because I can cut her throat faster than you can get here. You have my word on that.”

“Ciardis,” Lady Serena whispered.

“Not. One. Word,” said Ciardis, her voice low and cold.

“I’ve had about as much as I can stand of you, Lady Serena. If it just had been the taunts and the implied slights about my background we would be just fine. I’ve dealt with that my entire life. But you deliberately misled me and put me in harm’s way by perpetuating my innocence at court.”

“I was trying to
protect you
,” whispered Serena desperately.

“Please listen to her,” the Lord Chamberlain begged from behind them.

“Shut up!” snapped Ciardis.

“And
you
,” she said roughly as tears clogged her throat, “you did nothing but almost destroy me time and again. I—”

Ciardis would have continued, but the blood running down her blade had reached her hand. She didn’t stop in disgust or horror; she stopped in total disbelief.

The blood had pooled on her skin, and for a brief moment it shone with the radiance of sparkling rubies and then it absorbed into her skin as if had never been there. If had just been the blood Ciardis would have dismissed it as a trick, one of Serena’s illusions meant to confuse her. But it was more. It was a whisper of power that came forth, the whisper of another gift so like her brother, Caemon’s, own gift that it was uncanny.

Stumbling back, Ciardis released her, shaking her head furiously all the while.

“This cannot be happening,” she said.

“Don’t panic, Ciardis,” said Serena.

Ciardis snapped an angry look at the woman who was threatening to turn her world upside down as she fought to right it. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

Serena sighed and approached her with a confident smile. “You know I’m telling you the truth.”

is a Weathervane with the same powers that my brother and I possess. You weave illusions.”

one in the Lord Chamberlain’s hands from under her top.

“This,” she said, wiggling it on the end of the chain, “is an amulet that holds Residual Magic. Just like many of the magical objects you’ve seen before, it can accomplish a specific task. In this case I had it made to cast illusions when I was younger. I would go about court disguised as different people in order to sneak around and spy with my friends. It wasn’t until I was accused of murder and high treason that it saved my life.”

Ciardis gave her disdainful sneer. “And I supposed that’s why you have blonde hair, blue eyes, and the complexion of someone much paler than me?”

She thought Serena couldn’t get out of that.

“Because
my
mother had black hair and cinnamon-colored skin. You have neither.”

“You’d be surprised how far an illusion spell and a lot of makeup will go,” Serena said.

Ciardis snorted. “Even at court? I don’t think so. There are mages living on top of mages there. They would know that you were concealing your features with magic.”

“It was my
job
to cast illusions. It wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary to project around myself and weave artful illusions to enhance my beauty. No one saw anything more than a beautiful woman making herself more beautiful with artful touches because they didn’t
want
to see,” Serena said calmly.

“What about the day you worked with Vana Cloudbreaker to unveil my destiny alongside Terris and before the
cardiara
?”

Serena shrugged. “Illusion at its best. Why do you think I was unable to break the code of the
Rabaie’s
cloud? Because I
couldn’t
. I needed Vana’s abilities to do so. Truthfully.”

“She’s right,” said a voice from behind the three of them.

Lady Vana stepped forward from the dense foliage clad in black leather with two swords in hand, a fierce smile on her face.