By Divine Right (6 page)

Kera laughed, and I noted it held the same richness of tone as Lady Gael’s. Their features were akin, but while Gael’s blue eyes were topped by dark hair, Kera’s green eyes were surmounted by burnished auburn.

Gael smiled at me and I noted the curve of her lips in spite of my efforts not to. “He’s quick, this one,” she said. “But I do not refer to your appearance, but to your birth. Very well, sister, I accept. The usual wager?”

Kera nodded. “Agreed.”

Gael’s hand lifted, commanding me to remain. I noted it held the same feminine strength as her face. “Be still.” Her gaze fastened to my boots and she walked a slow circle around me. “He’s new to the court.”

“Come now, sister,” Kera said. “I knew that much by the way he clutched the wine flagon. His knuckles are stark against the back of his hand.”

I didn’t know what game they played, but I couldn’t afford the distraction or the possibility of unwanted attention. Servants were supposed to be invisible. “Your ladies, if you will excuse me, I should be about my duties.”

“No,” Gael said, her voice soft as she continued to step around me. “We do not excuse you.”

“Not until we’ve satisfied our wager,” Kera added.

“Wager?” I asked.

She nodded. “Gael must be able to divine something from your appearance that I cannot.” Her lips curved into a bow. “We rarely get to play anymore. All the nobles are too familiar, and the servants offer too little challenge.”

Gael stepped around me, a horse at auction being checked for defects before the bargaining started. A moment later she stepped back, her gaze now up to the level of my head. I found reasons not to meet her stare.

“Interesting,” she noted. “He doesn’t want to play.”

Kera chuckled. “Few of them do, sister. They’ve been trained to be deferential, after all.”

Gael shook her head. “His deference rests upon him like an ill-fitting cloak. I think his reasons are different.” She completed her circle until she stood next to her sister once more. “Look up, please—first at me and then at my sister,” Gael ordered.

I held her gaze as long as I dared, breaking it before looking at her sister.

Kera drew a breath. “Very well, sister, what do you see?”

Gael pulled air into her lungs, and I admired the stained glass for the second time that evening. “Common, but the dagger in his boot says something. The servant’s outfit indicates that he’s very new to the hall, perhaps added only this evening. The fact that it fits him poorly might be evidence that he’s a last-minute addition.”

Kera nodded with impatience. “Yes, all of that is obvious.”

Gael’s head tilted in thought. “There are fresh cuts and bruises on his hands. He’s been brawling, but he doesn’t carry himself in the manner of a soldier, not quite. Yet his right hand has the calluses you’d expect from one.”

Gael’s sister looked skyward. “You’re stalling.”

Gael smiled. “How do I know what you’ve noted or missed unless I go through it all?”

Kera’s laugh sounded clean and joyful. “When was the last time I missed anything so obvious?” Her eyes narrowed as she brought her gaze to mine. “If you desire my coin, sister, you’ll have to unravel the mystery above the shoulders.”

Gael’s answering smile held equal parts challenge and determination within it. “The face is more weathered than most—he’s outdoors quite a bit.”

“He’s young,” Kera said in a prodding tone.

Gael nodded. “The mouth is unlined, but the creases between his brows are deep enough to be a permanent fixture. He’s either a man of thoughts . . .”

“ . . . or a man gripped by some concern,” Kera finished.

I shouldn’t have met her gaze, but their inspection grated, and the willingness to adopt the servant’s pose deserted me.

“There’s steel in this one,” Gael said. “He hasn’t been a servant long.” Her gaze bored into mine. “Secrets.”

Kera’s breath ghosted from her in a small laugh. “Every man has secrets. It’s one of the few things that make taming them worthwhile.”

Gael’s face went slack as her stare continued. Sudden realization of my danger exploded in my mind. Nearly all nobles were gifted in some way. I had no idea how Lady Gael’s giftedness and innate talent might have intersected. What could they divine by mere inspection? I didn’t know and, more importantly, I couldn’t afford to find out.

A stir behind me gave me all the excuse I needed to interrupt their game. Striding into the hall as if he owned it, came a man of more than average height with the strong features and bearing sculptors liked to use when they crafted statues of those who walked a little closer to Aer than most men. It took me a moment to realize he walked a pace to the left and one more ahead of another man, alike in features, but half-a-hand shorter and without such rigid arrogance. Several other men and women, bearing the same stamp upon their countenance came with them.

Kera pursed her lips. “Now there is a man well-featured enough to make the angels weep.”

“Orlan is striking and beautiful,” Gael agreed softly.

My gaze snapped to the two men surrounded now by a cadre of nobles as if a standing version of a king’s court had been called, sycophants drinking in his every word, as if they had been given by divine inspiration. Inside my heart quailed. The Orlan family boasted
no small number of kin. How could I possibly determine which of them plotted against my king?

At the risk of prolonging their game, I bowed to Ladies Gael and Kera. “I see several men within the circle, my lady, which do you mean?”

Gael and Kera both laughed as if I’d asked after the color of the sky, but behind their laughter I saw them add my question to the tally of evidence they weighed upon their scales.

Their gazes went through me as though I’d become as glass, but a moment later Gael answered. “Duke Orlan, of course, good servant.” She nodded toward the group over her wine goblet. “He stands half a hand taller than any of his kin, and he carries himself like a king.”

The instincts I’d honed for years reading people in the poor quarter came into focus, noting the way the duke moved, each motion a deliberate calculation to convey power at rest, an unshakeable confidence that accepted the presence of others but in no way required it.

“Such a striking man would hardly make for a good husband,” I muttered as I noted the artful gestures, but inside I plotted how to approach the group.

I shouldn’t have spoken aloud. “Do you play the game?” Gael asked.

I turned, found Gael and her sister staring at me. “A change in the wager, sister,” Kera said. “The servant’s first observation of the duke will be at least as good as yours was.”

“Done.” Gael smiled. She turned to me. “Tell us what you see.”

I shook my head. “It is not for a servant to weigh his betters on the scales, my lady.”

“Oh no, master servant,” she said with a hint of steel in her smile. “It is for servants to do as bid.” She stepped closer and her voice lowered as those striking blue eyes darkened from a sky at dusk to slate. “Tell us everything you see or my sister and I will expose you. You are no servant, and spies in the king’s court are frowned upon.”

She might have been bluffing, but I couldn’t chance it. “Very well.” I turned. The duke’s group had drifted closer to us to stand no more than a dozen paces away. “The duke stands to one side, with most of his back to the king allowing him to command nearly as large an audience without appearing disrespectful. Watch as he speaks, each motion of his hands designed to embellish his words. Even the
cuffs of his sleeves, a fraction of an inch longer than normal, serve to accentuate his words. He stands at ease, a man who appears to care nothing for the opinion of lesser nobles who surround him. Yet observe how his eyes move quickly to each respondent, his expression carefully neutral, sifting their words for some insult.

“Such men in their prime are much concerned with surrounding themselves by those as beautiful, but they are jealous of their primacy. When their beauty fades they become embittered.”

There was more, but I stopped. The duke’s sword worried me. The scabbard holding it held all the useless decoration one might expect from a noble fixed upon appearances, but the plain hilt showed a deadly serious side to the duke.

Kera laughed, spilling her wine. “Do you yield, sister?”

I knelt to wipe the floor clean and rose to refill her goblet. I emptied my flagon into the rose-colored glass, keeping my gaze averted from them both. I rose as Lady Gael deposited more silver into her sister’s hand on a casual wager than I would earn in half a year.

“You misjudge in your presumption, servant,” Lady Gael said, turning to me. Steel crept into her voice and eyes, and fool that I was I could only think of how it enhanced her features, as if a veil had been removed. “I would never look upon the duke as a potential suitor.” Her gaze sharpened until it could have parted silk. “My family is liege to his. He has nothing to gain through such a marriage.”

I took an involuntary step backward. If Lady Gael or her sister repeated my assessment of the duke to him, I would be fortunate to escape with a striping.

Gael closed the space between us, her smile one of victory despite the wager she’d lost. “Your perception is nearly keen enough to be gifted and the practice of deferential obedience is not on you,” she whispered, her eyes darting over my shoulder. “By the time a servant is admitted to the throne room, they have practiced their subservience until they wear it like a second skin they can scarcely remove, more’s the pity.” She turned to her sister. “He is at work for the castellan,” she said in tones that barely reached my ears.

Kera eyed me with renewed interest, her smile growing as she returned Gael’s silver. “Well played, sister.”

Their conclusion stood too close to the truth. Without waiting for dismissal I turned, hoping to serve the duke and his kinsmen before Gael and Kera exposed me. I should have looked behind me first. Before I’d taken my first step, I crashed into a tall figure dressed all in red. The flagon tumbled from my hands to crash on the floor, threading dissonance through the strains of music in the hall.

“Watch where you’re going, fool!”

I bent to pick up the flagon, scarcely taking it in my grip before hands hauled me up to face the man I’d bumped. “Your Grace, here is sport,” the man called to the duke. “This servant presumes to judge your character.”

A hole opened in my midsection, and most of my guts disappeared into it. I
was
a fool, allowing myself to speak my mind out loud, and in the throne room of all places.

For a moment, Duke Orlan appeared on the verge of approaching where I stood, but he cut his eyes toward his audience and with a practiced gesture summoned his man and me to approach. I looked into a smile that only emphasized the absence of compassion or empathy in his eyes. His perfect face might have been carved from marble for all the warmth or humanity it possessed.

“Someone has been lax in your training. Consider yourself fortunate that you’ve caught my notice.” He nodded to his man. “Release him.” He clucked his disapproval at the noble I’d backed into. “Wine stains on a perfectly good doublet.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gael and Kera go pale. “Your Grace,” Gael said as she curtsied. “I found myself amused by this servant’s presumption.” To her credit, the laugh she assayed held all the mockery and derision one would expect from a noble. “I’m afraid our conversation startled him into bumping into your man.” She turned to me. “You are dismissed, servant.”

Orlan offered her a condescending smile for her effort. “Still playing your game, ladies? Servants are paid to be invisible.”

“Come, brother,” the man on Orlan’s right said. “The servant can hardly be held to account for their wager.”

Gael nodded, grasping at the opportunity. “Yes. His limited intelligence offered a moment’s diversion from the tedium of court.”

I cowered as any servant would have—fear of the duke’s reprisal made the effort genuine enough—but my gaze flew everywhere at once, searching the duke’s group for anyone who might have stolen Ian’s gift. But they all stood still, a rapt audience for the duke’s spectacle.

I bowed my thanks to the Lady Gael for covering my indiscretion, but inside I railed. Once the chamberlain learned of my blunder he would never allow me back into court. I turned to leave.

“Hold!” The duke’s voice, threaded with cold amusement, stopped me. “
I
have not dismissed you, servant.” Around him, I heard titters of laughter at my predicament. More nobles gathered until we were ringed about, but none of them betrayed by motion or expression any indication that they held an unlawful gift.

The duke cast a sneer toward his brother. “You are too forgiving, brother.” He sighed. “Such a disappointment. Yet I suppose your soft nature is becoming to the second born, a mere marquis.” His smirk encompassed a rapt audience. “Perhaps a gift of helps has come to you unaware?” More laughter greeted this jibe, but the duke’s brother merely dipped his head in acknowledgment, the gesture of a man so familiar with disdain that it no longer carried the power to sting.

The duke turned his smile to me. “Servant, my goblet is empty.” The duke held it out to me with his left hand. Gael flinched, her arm reaching toward me as if she could prevent what would surely come next, but the duke reveled in his element, his eyes wide, intoxicated by the exercise of his power. When I stepped toward him, the empty flagon lifted as if I could honor his request, Orlan flicked his eyes toward the man on my left.

Every boy from the lowest commoner to the most exalted noble knew what would happen next: Orlan’s subordinate would trip me, causing me to fall into the duke, who would then use my perceived assault as cause to beat me.

I kept my eyes on the duke, biting my lip. What I intended to do frightened me enough to send palsied tremors through my hands. Dear Aer, I hoped to live through it.

Orlan’s man didn’t use half measures. His boot shot out, catching me in the shin hard enough to send me sprawling had I not expected it. I turned the leg to catch the kick on the meat of my calf.

Even so the blow felt as if it might have cracked the bone. I screamed to keep every eye fastened on my humiliation and launched the empty flagon toward the duke and his brother.

The flagon flew toward the duke and his brother, and I twisted midfall to watch it. The impact jarred my vision, but I saw the handle of the flagon nestle in the duke’s hand almost by magic. He stood, regarding me with contempt, holding the empty pitcher as if I’d handed it to him.

In the background I heard the music grind to a halt with a cacophonous fall of notes accompanied by the clatter of daggers hitting the floor from the juggler’s direction.

I jerked my head away and closed my eyes, hiding my revelation. The duke’s family, like most nobles, boasted the gift of craft. Their fortune had been built on the exercise of it and the ruthlessness that comes with a hunger for dominion. But that gift had never enabled any of its holders to do what I had just witnessed. Only a physical gift of beauty could do that, whether Ian’s or another’s.

“Would you mind refilling my cup?” the duke’s brother asked, proffering his goblet.

The duke’s face heated at the titters that swept the crowd, and he dropped the flagon to the floor, the clatter loud against the stones. His men pulled me up by my hair as the chamberlain rushed up, his face mottled with anger and shame. “Your Grace”—he bowed—“please forgive this lapse. I will ensure that this man is never in your presence again.”

The duke laughed, and I breathed a sigh of relief even while I braced myself for what would come next. I locked what I’d seen away behind my eyes and kept my gaze upon the floor even as I reeled at its revelation.

“On the contrary,” Duke Orlan said. “I insist that this servant be present in the throne room whenever I am.” He sighed in mock regret. “In a different time I could have had him killed for his ineptitude.” Orlan glanced toward the throne where Laidir looked on. “A pity those days are long behind us. In the absence of example, training will have to suffice.”

His voice dipped into a lower register. “You seemed to have dropped your flagon, servant. You may pick it up now.”

“Your Grace,” Gael said, “please allow me to administer his chastisement.”

Orlan smiled at her attempt to intervene. “You are much too tender-hearted, my lady. Sometimes a firm hand is what is required.” He turned to the man I’d bumped. “Skerrit, I leave his correction in your hands.”

The duke’s man grinned, holding an almost childlike joy at the opportunity to exercise his cruelty. He pulled a riding crop from within his tunic, slapping it across his palm. “Retrieve your wares, servant.”

I bent to pick up the flagon at Orlan’s feet. The crack of impact reached my ears just before fire exploded across my back. For a moment of brief insanity I tried to clench my teeth around the pain, but the second and third stroke came so quickly that screams tore themselves from my throat. Spots swam in my vision and a warm flow of blood began to soak my tunic.

I wondered absurdly if I should let myself pass out to put my back out of reach.

“Halt!” A voice from the dais demanded. I tried to turn to see the speaker, but tremors of pain deprived my muscles of the ability to obey. Obeisant mutters surrounded us as I fought to control my shaking and gasps. I gave up and rolled on the floor, striving to see my intercessor, but too many bodies blocked my vision.

The duke’s man dropped the crop to the floor as an official in blue livery, the castellan, approached. A goblet dangled loosely within his left hand, his nose a copy of the duke’s. “No more than three stripes, cousin,” he said, his gaze cutting to the throne, “by order of the king.”

Skerrit laughed. “He’ll remember those few, I warrant.”

The chamberlain knelt by me and a hand that could have doubled as a vise hauled me to my feet and rushed me from the duke’s presence. “You’re lucky I don’t have you flogged myself.”

“I don’t feel very lucky.” Blood had already started to glue the fabric of the servant’s tunic to my back. Whenever I worked up the courage to get undressed, I’d relive the beating.

But I’d found the man responsible for Ian’s death. Beneath my bloody strokes, I exulted even as astonishment threaded its way through my realization.

We departed the throne room by the servants’ entrance on the side, between two of the buttresses adorned with a pair of statues of long-dead kings on either side. In the servants’ hall just off the kitchens, the chamberlain spun me around, throwing me into a chair. My wounds hit the oak ladder backing and I gasped, my vision narrowing to a point.

“You will present yourself to me at dawn tomorrow morning.” His tone matched his face, thunderous and on the edge of explosion. “By the time court reconvenes at nightfall you will be a model servant. If you thought the duke’s correction harsh, you’ve no idea what I can mete out.”

He tugged at his own tunic and vest, embroidered in silver, a far richer version of what the servants wore. “Now, get out of here. And let those stripes remind you of the price of your stupidity.”

I left by the opposite door from the one we’d entered. I had no desire to bring myself within reach of Duke Orlan or his men. I’d watched the flight of the flagon. Did he suspect I knew?

A deep breath broke that train of thought as fire lanced across my back. It would probably take several feet of thread to sew the flesh together, and the nearest healer I knew lived close to Braben’s tavern. The thought of making the trek down the height of Laidir’s tor brought a groan to my lips, but it couldn’t be helped.

After I got myself stitched together, I would have to figure out how to go about exposing the duke and be back at court so Orlan could continue my training. That I wouldn’t show for the chamberlain was a foregone conclusion. I tried not to think about the consequences of my disobedience.

I stumbled into the hallway off the servant’s room and startled when two armed men stepped in place on either side of me. Both of them topped me by a hand, one with hair the color of fire and the other with a mane so blond it was almost white. They didn’t say anything until I came to the turn leading to the steps that descended to the lower levels of the tor.

“The other way,” the red-haired guard said.

A dagger against a pair of very big swords didn’t seem like a gamble I could win. “Where are we going?”

The guards didn’t bother to answer. Instead they led me along a twisting series of turns that seemed designed to make me lose my sense of direction. I’d heard tales of the maze of Laidir’s tor my whole life, but only now did I appreciate them.

We came to a pair of heavy double doors flanked by two more guards as big as the pair that escorted me. Without a word, the one on the right poked his head inside, then waved the three of us in.

I blinked against sudden brightness, then gaped. Laidir stood on a shallow dais ten paces away, looking somber and expectant. Without thought, I dropped to my knees, gasping as one of Orlan’s stripes opened. Fresh warmth seeped down my back.

“Rise,” Laidir said, the voice the same as the one that had stopped my beating.

I stood, keeping my gaze to the rich red carpet on the floor.

“I find it easier to judge the truth of a man’s words if I can see his face,” Laidir said. “Look at me.”

I lifted my head, and for the first time in my life I gazed upon the divine right of kings in the flesh. I’d heard men talk of presence before, and I’d felt it in some measure among the mighty in the last war, but Laidir possessed something at once more grand and more indefinable. He granted me a moment to gaze around his private chambers, and I marveled at the collection of tools and instruments that filled the tables. The organization appealed to the eyes as if a complex piece of music had been set to sight instead of sound. Books lined the shelves behind the tables, more than I’d ever seen a single individual possess. I squinted at the nearest, and the titles added to my surprise—most of them were collections of tales.

“Are you surprised?”

I had no training to guide me in my answer. The king laughed at my mute stare. “There is as much instruction in tales as there is in history or theology.” He smiled. “And I enjoy it.” A measure of joy dropped from him. “Now, why would one of my reeves pretend to be a servant?”

I couldn’t have kept the surprise from my face if I tried. “Your Majesty knows who I am?”

His expression hardened, though it didn’t seem to be directed at me. “How long would I live if I allowed strangers to come into my presence, Willet Dura?” He leaned forward. “What was so important that you had to throw a flagon at one of my most powerful nobles?”

“The duke’s man tripped me,” I said.

Laidir shook his head, and the beginnings of anger flashed behind his eyes though it had yet to show on his face. “You expected the blow. I saw you turn to take it off the bone. Do not dissemble with me, reeve. Some would construe your actions as an attack on the duke.”