Traitor's Sun (65 page)

“What is it, Kate?”

“Herm told me, before he ran off like a thief in the night, that we were going to have to take Terése to this Arilinn for some sort of test.” She bit her lip. “I don’t want anything like that to happen when I am not around—I will not have my daughter frightened!”

“I can promise you, Katherine, that nothing will happen to Terése, and that she will not be tested in your absence.” Marguerida thought for a moment. “She is a little young, and has not shown any sign of threshold sickness yet, so there is no need for it.”

“I am going to hold you to that, Marguerida.” Kate could hardly contain her sudden anxiety for her child. But she knew Marguerida to be a woman of her word, and she felt herself begin to calm.

“Now that everything is all settled, let’s order up a proper breakfast. I’ll help you dress for the rite, Kate. Doing your hair will probably improve my mood a bit. I wonder if anyone would mind if I wore a heavy veil, or perhaps a sack over my head?”

Marguerida sputtered over a gulp of tea. When she had regained her breath, she said, “Do Kate’s hair?” She looked from one woman to the other, as if something had occurred between them which had escaped her notice, and she could not quite discern what it was. “I have never seen you so . . . helpful, cousin. It becomes you.”

“I’d tell you I was reformed, but you wouldn’t believe me, would you?”

“After what I witnessed yesterday, Giz, I would believe almost anything.”

“Marguerida, what
did
happen in the Council meeting?” Kate asked.

“Aside from the damper matrices being shattered to pieces, and Regis Hastur manifesting out of the beyond and scolding everyone?” Marguerida sighed. “And Javanne disowning Mik, and Francisco Ridenow suggesting that Regis’ death was suspicious? Other than that, it was a useful meeting. Don’t look at me as if I have lost my mind—just give me a glass of wine. Tea is all very well, but not what I need just now. My bones ache with weariness.”

“Regis . . . appeared?” Gisela looked startled.

“Didn’t Rafael tell you?”

“No, because I haven’t seen him since yesterday!”

“Oh, yes, I had forgotten. Mikhail sent him to Rafe Scott, and the two of them are trying to discover if the Sons of Darkover are a real threat to the Comyn.”

“The who?” The name clearly meant nothing to Gisela, and she studied Marguerida keenly, her green eyes flashing in the light from the fire. “Kate, give her some wine right this minute! Now, Marguerida, begin at the beginning and tell us everything. Just pretend it is one of those tales you are always writing.”

Kate poured another goblet of wine and handed it to Marguerida. Then she sat down, curved her hands around her still warm tea, and listened to the story. She felt suspended in time, as if she had nothing more important to do than sit and hear the tale. And when Marguerida stopped speaking perhaps twenty minutes later, she was not sure she believed half of what she had just heard.

The three women sat companionably in silence for several minutes, and then Gisela stirred in her chair. “Well, now at least I understand what put Father in such a rage. And why Lady Javanne looked so haggard when I passed her in the corridor.”

Kate was struck by the oddness of the situation, to be sitting in her bedclothes with two women she had not known a week before, drinking tea and speaking of plots and ghosts, as if they were the most ordinary things instead of impossible ones. Or were they? She thought that Marguerida and Gisela were intelligent women and certainly not crazy ones. Maybe these events were not remarkable on Darkover. Some of the tales she had heard about the ghost groves on Renney would probably strike them as very odd indeed. Katherine decided she would accept the story, for the present.

“Kate, I am going to go tell the maid to pack some things for your children.” Gisela paused and smiled at Katherine. “Don’t worry,
breda.
Just go and find Hermes and mend your fences with him, and leave the rest to me.”

Katherine nodded in agreement. She knew she could stay in Comyn Castle, or go with the children herself, but neither of those choices would keep her from worrying about her husband. She had not really understood, until now, how absolutely vital he was to her, and if he were killed in what seemed to her to be an insane venture against the Federation, she would rather perish with him than live another forty or fifty years without him. She did not want to think about this possibility, but she had to. And, if the worst occurred, she was certain that Gisela would see that her children were cared for.

M
arguerida was chafing at the slow pace of the funeral train. It demanded all of her will and the discipline of a lifetime to swallow her impatience. They had been on the road since daybreak, and all she wanted was to reach the village where Domenic was staying and to see her beloved son safe. But there was no way to hurry the entourage. Twenty-five wagons and as many carriages were behind her, with about three hundred riders beside them. She was only grateful that she was mounted on Dyania, with the pleasant sensation of horsey muscles against her thighs, instead of enclosed in one of the vehicles as were
Dom
Gabriel and a few others. That would have been too much for her.

They had left Thendara at dawn, and ridden out of the city on the Old North Road, past fields covered with drifting autumn mist. It had been eerily quiet, and the soft folds of earth that were almost visible through the concealing veils of moisture had been empty of anything except flocks of sheep and cattle. This had gotten on everyone’s already excited nerves, and when the sun rose and began to burn away the mist, she had sensed a little relaxation around her.

Now she rode beside Mikhail, surrounded by twenty Guardsmen, and Marguerida tried to force herself to think of something besides her son. Could it actually be only eight days since Regis had died? She turned in the saddle and looked back, to the coffin draped with the silver-and-blue Hastur colors, resting on an enclosed flat-bedded carriage, drawn along by six creamy horses.

There was something a bit puzzling about her emotions, for when Diotima, her stepmother, had died, Marguerida had been able to accept it almost immediately. True, she had been expecting Dio’s death for several years, while Regis’ death had come without warning, but surely after so many days she should be able to come to grips with herself. However, even after the astonishing intrusion of Regis during the Comyn Council meeting, she had not yet managed to absorb the sudden death of the man. She could only hope that once he was interred with his ancestors, she would at last be able to adjust her heart to the loss.

The Council meeting had given her husband fresh confidence, and he no longer seemed as doubtful and hesitant as he had in the days immediately following Regis’ death. She did not understand all that had taken place within him, but she could see that he was ready to lead Darkover at last. Now, if they could just survive the expected attack—if it was not all a tempest in a chamber pot—and if she could keep herself in the background for the rest of her life!

She chewed on the problem, ruthlessly examining herself. She contrasted herself with Lady Linnea, who had never gone beyond the role of consort, and decided she could not imitate her very well. She was simply a different sort of person—too independent—and she was equal to Mikhail in the peculiar powers of her shadow matrix. Well, she could only be herself, and everyone would have to accept it. The thought refreshed her as the wind tugged at the hood of her cloak.

Marguerida wondered what Lew was doing right then. Pacing, probably. That was how he behaved when he was impatient. Would there be an attack on Comyn Castle? She hoped there would not be, yet, she was curious if the plan she had helped to conceive would be effective. She smiled slowly. Working closely with Cisco Ridenow for the first time had been a remarkable experience. He had grasped the nature of the problem immediately, swinging into action as if he had been preparing for such an eventuality for years. And, she thought, perhaps he had. She had not expected him to be so imaginative, nor sure of himself.

With the dampers in the Crystal Chamber destroyed, there had been no way to prevent a certain degree of leakage from the minds at the table, although everyone had been aware of this situation and done their best to shield their surface thoughts. So it had been something of a revelation to learn that Cisco was not nearly so much his father’s creature as she and everyone else had always assumed. There was an undercurrent of mistrust between the two men which had surprised her. Watching the interplay between the two Ridenows, she finally decided that Cisco did not answer to anyone except himself, that he was stern and sober, confident in his own judgment, and wary of his sire as well.

It was Cisco who had suggested smuggling the children away from Comyn Castle in the carriages which had brought the
leroni
from Arilinn for the funeral, while the Tower people remained behind to aid in defending the castle. He had been able to give an exact count of the men available for both the defense of the castle and of the funeral train as well, and she suspected that he had independently considered the possibility of such attacks. Indeed, he had already organized the City Guards for this purpose, calling up the many retired Guardsmen who still lived in Thendara and putting them on alert.

He would bear watching, she decided, if they came out of this crisis in one piece. Still, she could not help mis trusting him just a little, because of his father, and after wrestling with her conscience for a moment, Marguerida decided she was probably wise rather than petty. It was always a good idea to keep a weather eye on cunning men, however loyal they might think themselves.

Getting the children away had been a great relief. Roderick had protested mightily, insisting he was old enough to go to the
rhu fead
. He was furious that Domenic was going to have an adventure from which he was excluded, but she was glad that she did not have him to worry about. And Gareth Elhalyn had been displeased as well. No, that was too puny a term to describe the boy’s behavior. Gareth had been furious and had thrown something very like a tantrum. She almost pitied Gisela, and was still somewhat bemused by her offer to oversee both Katherine Aldaran’s and Marguerida’s children, along with her own. Marguerida did not envy her a carriage journey with eight youngsters, at least two of them in adolescent sulks.

It suddenly occurred to Marguerida that if they failed and perished in this mad adventure, then Gisela might see her youthful ambitions realized. As the aunt of Roderick and Yllana, and the wife of Rafael Lanart-Hastur, she would be one of the logical choices to care for the children, even though she was an Aldaran by birth. It would give her the power she had craved all her life. And, for no reason that Marguerida could bring to mind, she was not perturbed by this possibility. Giz would have to contend with Miralys Elhalyn, who had remained behind because of her pregnancy, as well as Javanne, who loathed Gisela even more than she did Marguerida. She let herself envision the encounter, for the sheer pleasure of it, to distract herself from other, even less wholesome thoughts. She succeeded for a short while, but then her doubts rushed back, and she started worrying again.

If they had been successful, then Lyle Belfontaine had no idea that the carriages were filled with armed men, not women and children as they ordinarily would have been. Six to a coach, and twenty coaches, gave them another hundred and twenty fighters who were not visible to any interested eyes, in addition to the two hundred and fifty Guardsmen and the company of Renuciates who rode at the rear of the procession. Not a great number to face the kind of armament that the Federation could bring to bear, although they did not anticipate there being more than a hundred of the enemy. And, too, the Federation had no idea of either Mikhail’s powers, or her own. It seemed a slender thing on which to hang their future, but there had been no alternative, after hours of discussion that had lasted until every voice in the chamber was hoarse with weariness.

Suddenly Marguerida was struck by the irony of it all. For years people had feared Mikhail’s matrix, so much so that they had almost forgotten the capacity of her shadow matrix. Lady Javanne,
Dom
Francisco and Lady Marilla had refused to believe he would not use his powers to further his own ambitions, and Regis had worried in his own way. Now they had turned about and decided Mikhail was to be their savior. It would have been amusing if it were not so terrible.

A cold wind from the west blew across her cheeks, and she breathed deeply, smelling the crisp air. It brought back memories of another journey up the Old North Road, sixteen years before, when she had gone to Neskaya with Rafaella and her sister Renunciates. Odd that her mind did not go to that other occasion, when she and Mik had dashed off in the middle of the night, to tumble into history.