The Fall of Neskaya (41 page)

Before Coryn could reply, a knock sounded from the back of the room and a small door swung open, evidently a private entrance. A woman slipped through and hurried toward them. Coryn, turning, caught a swirl of russet skirts softly gathered beneath a tapered bodice, and a cloud of ebony hair and flashing green eyes.

“Oh! Forgive the intrusion, Uncle. I didn’t realize—” the woman began.

Coryn scrambled to his feet, almost tripping over the legs of his chair.
“Tani?”

She turned an astonished gaze to him, her mouth forming a rosebud of surprise that sent his heart racing. Good health had burnished her skin to peach-cream, set off perfectly by the scooped neckline of her gown. Her movements sparkled with vitality. As if to greet her, a sudden breeze had filled the room from the opened windows, cool and fresh with the scents of spring growth.

“Coryn! However did you find me?” She smiled, sweet and radiant, and came toward him, hands outstretched. Her fingers slipped between his, warm and strong for all their slenderness.

“Tani—” he stammered, “I had no idea you were here—”

She laughed, tilting her head back ever so slightly but creating the effect of joyous abandon.

“So this is
your
Coryn,” Lady Caitlin said, as if that explained everything, just before all three of them, plus the paxman who had escorted him there, began talking at once.

King Rafael summoned wine, but Coryn dared not drink. His head was spinning enough, thoughts tumbling together. He had known Tani’s desperation, her fearful flight, but he’d had no idea of her station in life. Seeing her here now, she seemed a jewel set in a royal diadem.

Sitting with Tani and King Rafael in this elegant, sunlit room, he felt even farther from her than he had in the months before. Until that moment, he had not realized how he cherished the memory of their brief hours together, the silken touch of her skin against his, the smell of her hair, the brilliance of her eyes, the moment when she turned to him in utter trust. As
laranzu
and under-Keeper of Neskaya, he reminded himself, he was no man’s inferior. Now he saw the unbreachable gulf between their worlds.

Before Tani had properly begun her story, the paxman bent to murmur in Rafael’s ear. “Gerolamo reminds me of my own schedule,” Rafael said. “You young people can carry on very nicely without me. Gero, arrange a banquet tonight in this young man’s honor, as thanks for his services to my niece.”

“Your Majesty, please, it’s hardly necessary—” Coryn began.

“Nonsense!” Rafael called over his shoulder as he left the room.

Tani smiled fondly as the door closed after him. “You’ve given him an occasion to celebrate, which puts him doubly in your debt.” She rose without any of the skirt-fluffing Coryn associated with ladies and fine gowns. “There’s no need for us to stay indoors on such a fine morning. Let’s walk in the gardens. Caitlin, would you be so kind as to ask the nurse to bring Julian to us there?”

Without waiting for an answer, Tani walked briskly from the room, striding almost as fast as a man even in her long skirts.

“I am like my uncle in this,” she said as she led the way through a series of corridors and down a narrow stone stairwell. She turned to flash a smile at him. “We’re both happier in the fresh air, doing things. You must forgive his brusqueness. It’s
cortes
season.” Her tone implied that King Rafael would be sitting long, tedious hours in judgment on the cases brought before him. An occasion for celebration would indeed be a gift.

The garden was small and immaculately kept, the gravel of the walkways gleaming like marble pebbles. New green sprouted from the carefully pruned cherry trees, rose trellises, and sculptured borders. A pair of birds nesting in the ancient oak at the center chirped a warning at their approach but did not fly away. Around a corner, Coryn caught a glimpse of topiary in the form of a dragon.

Tani talked of inconsequentials, how unexpected his appearance was and the fine weather of the morning, until a nurse approached, leading a sturdy toddler with dark hair and glowing cheeks. Shrieking with delight, the boy ran to Tani and she caught him in her arms.

“Your son,” Coryn said.

“Yes, I—” She broke off and set the boy on his feet, then lowered herself beside him on the bench. He promptly crawled into her lap.

“I was pregnant with Julian when I escaped. Without you—” Now she lifted her eyes to meet his and when she continued, her voice brimmed with emotion he could not put a name to. “Without you, neither of us would have survived the journey. I owe you my son’s life as well as my own.”

He sat immobile from the Tower-trained habit of avoiding direct physical contact. “You called the King uncle. Who exactly
are
you?”

“My name is Taniquel Elinor Hastur-Acosta,” she answered. “King Rafael is my mother’s brother. I was orphaned at an early age and fostered here in Thendara and then at Acosta.”

As she spun out the story of her childhood and marriage, it seemed to Coryn that the spirited girl grew into a determined, resourceful young woman before his eyes. He could well believe she had braved such a terrible journey alone.

When she spoke of the assault on Castle Acosta, the toddler in her arms grew restless, as if sensing her anguish. One of the servants brought out a ball and a hoop and stick.

“Come on!” Laughing, she tossed the ball in the air for her son to run after. Coryn felt a pang, remembering such games with Kristlin, but Taniquel’s joy infected him and he soon joined in with a will.

After the child grew tired and was taken away by his nurse, it was time for the midday meal. Taniquel excused herself, saying she had other duties.

That evening, as Rafael had proposed, a feast was held in the great hall, with music and singing. If it was quickly organized, it was no less joyous. Rich food and wine filled each table. After the meal, the entertainment began. Acrobats leaped and tumbled, and climbed on each other in feats of balance. A small troupe of professional dancers executed an elaborate and extremely athletic version of a mountain dance. A minstrel had composed a ballad about Taniquel’s journey to freedom, although Coryn thought he’d taken great liberties with the landscape as well as his own part. He had not, as the song suggested, appeared to the fugitive Queen as an angel surrounded by blue light. Nor had Taniquel borne any marks of physical torture; her outward injuries had been from exposure, not assault. Coryn glanced at Taniquel. Her eyes glittered and a fevered color rose to her cheeks. Invisible wounds often ran far deeper than those which could be bandaged.

Toward the end, the song turned invective rather than narrative, building to a call to arms against the tyrants who had usurped the place of Acosta’s rightful King.

King Rafael was busy with the
cortes
for the next tenday and Coryn found himself much in the role of a courtier of the household, welcome but his business considered of no particular urgency. It was not until a number of days later that he heard the rest of Taniquel’s story as they walked together, once more in the garden. Her voice never wavered as she told of aircars bombing the gates and the use of mind-compelling
laran.
An undercurrent ran through her words and he sensed there was much she did not say aloud. Perhaps she could not. She sat there on the bench, with the sun lighting rainbows in the ebony cloud of her hair, her head held so proudly, her hands momentarily still. Her eyes clouded as if she were looking within, at what she could see only in memory, and he thought he had never seen such quiet grace, such courage.

“We have a common enemy,” he said during one of those silences which arose, when feeling took the place of words. “Damian Deslucido, he whom you call Oathbreaker.”

“How did you come to cross his path?”

“Rather ask how he brought sorrow to me and mine,” Coryn said ruefully. “Before he rode on Acosta, he conquered several small mountain kingdoms, Verdanta among them. That was my home.”

“Yes, I have heard of it,” she said, brows drawing together and mouth tightening. “Verdanta, one of the Storn realms, and Hawksflight. He was maneuvering his position to strike at Acosta.”

“His son Belisar was to have married my youngest sister in a peaceful alliance,” Coryn said. “But she died, as did my father, and Deslucido took what he wanted by force. Another of my sisters and my second oldest brother disappeared and I do not know where they are.”

“Perhaps they perished with the rest.”

Coryn shook his head. “I would know, just as I know Eddard and Tessa still live. They are hidden from me, which is probably for the best, for if I cannot find them, neither can Damian’s
laranzu
brother. But whether they have found their way to freedom or outlawry or languish in some dungeon, that I do not know.”

Taniquel reached out and touched the back of his hand with her fingertips. “We are all of us in the hands of the gods.” Then she added, with a bitter laugh, “You know, for one so handsome and full of himself, not to mention heir to a great kingdom, Belisar seems to have unusually bad luck in finding a bride. I almost feel sorry for him. Now his father has fomented a border squabble with my uncle, although I do not for a moment believe it is me he wants.”

“The more fool he,” Coryn murmured.

“No,” she continued, getting to her feet as if she had not heard, “his ambitions have grown so grandiose as to encompass half the Hundred Kingdoms and more. We will have great need of your skills in the times to come, you and your comrades at Neskaya.”

Coryn did not want to set himself against Taniquel, but he could not let her continue in the assumption he was there to offer help. “That is what I have come to Thendara to speak with your uncle about,” he said slowly, “to ask him not to involve us in any argument with another Tower.”

Taniquel continued pacing, gesturing, not looking at him. “In warfare, against such an enemy, one cannot afford the loss of such a valued weapon.”

“But to set Tower against Tower—”

“Or soldier against soldier, what difference is there?” She whirled to face him. “Each of us is duty bound in one way or another. No one is exempt. It feels so odd saying these things to you, for usually it is men explaining the ways of war to women.”

“You do not understand. Each of us has kin or close friends at the other Towers. In the relays, we speak to each other, mind to mind, far closer than any words.” He saw from the shift in her expression that his words had struck some chord within her. “I was trained at Tramontana. I would not make war on the people I love.”

“I am sorry,” she said in a low voice. “but it cannot be helped.”

“Surely there must be another way. Negotiations. Treaties—”

“We tried that in the
Comyn
Council and he set them against us.” Now she sounded angry, her hands jabbing the air, eyes flashing. “Do you know what they are calling our stand against his aggression? The Hastur Rebellion, as if
we
were the ones who had started all the trouble. I do not much care how history regards our cause, but I would not see our own people—or our allies—turned against us through misunderstanding.”

“Then why bring the Towers into it at all? Why not fight your own accursed wars?” he asked, hearing emotions strident in his voice. He reined them in, for they did not belong here in this garden, spoken to the lovely young Queen before him, but to the Hastur lord, the only one who had the power to act. “I, too, am sorry. I spoke out of turn. You are not the one responsible for these decisions.”

She flushed, a wave of anger and something more. “Let us not quarrel,” she said, her voice shaking. “Coryn, I never thought to see you again. This short time the two of us have together is a gift. I would not let our common enemy come between us.”

She put her hand out and grasped his in a gesture of impulsive warmth. Her touch burned along the nerves of his arm. Through the physical contact, he caught the edge of her mind, half thought, half emotional memory. An instant of utter revulsion, the dizzying moment when her world and everything she believed in turned inside-out, the cold-iron taste of desperation driving her through the storm, a vision of her uncle’s face, gray with horror. And in the heart of it, like a spider lying in wait for its prey, Deslucido.

Deslucido, for all his greed and ambition, was only an ordinary man.

Rumail
. . . But Rumail was outcast from the Towers. Rumail could do no more harm.

And yet
. . . Blue flames leaped hungrily behind Coryn’s eyes, part memory, part mirror to the fear he sensed in Taniquel.

In his mind he saw her, turning toward him, eyes filled with light, hair a corona of spun black glass framing her face. She lifted her arms toward him even as the flames rose higher, an incandescent barrier.

Through water you have come to me,
he thought.
Through fire I must come to you.