Grand Conspiracy (75 page)

The sanctified quiet of the mayor's grand palace itself housed the eye of the tempest, as the hard-bitten captain of Jaelot's guard burst into the tiled foyer. He had not slept. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his mood clipped short as the gray rime of yesterday's stubble.

‘Conniving damned witches are here in strange force,' he concurred with the mayor's mousy valet. He stamped caked ice off his boots, impervious to indignant censure from the house staff until after he delivered his report to the mayor. ‘Queer, that so many should be here all at once, given the onset of winter.' He peeled off his wool cloak, then shed his steel helm; the fleece-lined rim had printed a red, transverse groove across his weathered forehead. ‘You ask me, we're fools to keep a liaison with their kind at all. Man wasn't born that could figure their ways, and their bitch tangle of political interests.'

‘They'll want something for certain,' the aged footman agreed, arrived to hang the captain's cloak. His disdainful grasp filled with rust-smelling wool, he jerked his sallow chin toward the shut door to the parlor. ‘Mind you don't speak your opinion too boldly. His lordship's inside, sharing counsel over breakfast with the order's ranking enchantress. No telling how long you'll be made to wait. I'll send a boy with a chair, unless you want to stay standing.'

‘A hot mug and something to eat would be better.' The guard captain flicked the servant a coin to speed his request to the kitchen. Then he settled with his elbow hooked around the landing newel post and chewed his lower lip in calculation.

Behind the closed doorway, not thoughtful at all, the Mayor of Jaelot sat with his wife and one guest at the lacquer-and-pearl table imported at great cost from Vhalzein. He had just demolished his third plate of sausage, with a basket of warmed honey cakes to sop up the grease. Conversation that had run the gamut of innuendo grew animate in the friction of impasse. Crumbs cascaded down the velvet-frogged front of his dressing robe as he gestured, pink-tipped fingers still sticky with jam. ‘Well, our part certainly hasn't progressed without snags. You can thank the Light for one favor at least. We've found an executioner who's unafraid to practice his trade on a Sorcerer.'

The mayor repeated his peremptory beckon, and the servant just
arrived with basin and towel bent to the task of dabbing his fleshy hands with their encrustation of carbuncle rings.

‘I didn't know you'd had problems.' Her eyes the wide gold of a languid tigress, the enchantress sat in her high-backed chair, stirring sugarless tea with an elegance that suggested she had used silver spoons all her life.

‘Oh yes.' The mayor heaved a replete sigh, chin nested in the crimped flesh of his neck. ‘Our own headsman refused. The work falls by default to the garrison commander, but even he had second thoughts since last night. Swore he'd be cursed, should he take a Sorcerer's blood on his hands.'

‘Spare me,' Lirenda murmured.

‘I don't need to.' The mayor belched into the back of the plump wrist just freed from the servant's ministrations. ‘We posted a notice offering triple pay. The brute who took the job can surely wield a sword and a torch well as any.'

Lirenda said, impartial as ice, ‘Well, if he's an amateur and bungles a clean stroke, no one's likely to protest.' She set her cup in its crested porcelain saucer, the tilt of her chin dismissing the servant who moved in, deferent, with his basin. ‘Be sure I'm told when you're planning the execution. When the Sorcerer's moved, my enchantresses must take sure and proper steps to seal your town in protection.'

‘But the disposition was made yesterday evening.' A wren before the Koriani peer's inbred elegance, the mayor's wife dabbled at dissatisfied lips with a fold of her brocade napkin. Pearls winked through the lace at her sleeves and fur collar as she settled flighty hands in her lap. ‘The spectacle will open our winter's night festival.' Having decided the event was a social occasion, she chirped through her list of preparations. ‘The men-at-arms on parade guard will wear their dress surcoats. We've timed the event for just before dusk. The bonfire will be left to blaze until dawn. All Jaelot shall celebrate as the Master of Shadow receives his due punishment for the cavalier wreckage of our city.'

That moment, a peal of raw thunder rattled the glass in the casement.

The mayor's wife screamed. The servant dropped his basin with a crash. Water spewed everywhere. Porcelain cups jounced and juddered in their saucers and slopped tea on the linen tablecloth, while from the foyer outside, the shout of the watch captain brought the house guard running to barricade the palace. Then the service door burst open. Four red-cheeked linen girls fled
through from the laundry, trailing steam and rose-scented suds, and shrieking like geese in blind panic.

‘That's enough!' shrieked the Mayor of Jaelot, as their pandemonium destroyed the sanctum of his parlor. Flushed to his wattles, he banged a ham fist onto the table. Silverware, salvers, and honey crock went flying. ‘No more! That damnable sorcerer is going to die now, and to Sithaer with the flourish of a festival!'

He shot from his seat. The heavy, upholstered chair flew back and upset with a splashy thud on sopped carpet. ‘You!' He singled out the cowering footman. ‘Fetch my steward! Tell him I want that executioner ready at once with his tinder and sword.'

An outraged squeal interrupted.

‘No,' he cracked at his rankled wife. ‘Not this time. That's final! I won't risk my city to distress and discord for the niceties of your social pomp and ceremony.' His vitriolic tirade transferred to include the Koriani senior, arranged in her seat as if sealed in place by her veneer of poise. ‘And somuch for relying ona woman's promise and your order's spells of protection!'

Lirenda disdained to acknowledge the insult. She righted her tipped cup, her composure loomed silk in the face of disruptive setback. Inside, she seethed.
Something had disturbed the set wards
on the walls. She knew by the sweeping ache through her bones, as the roil
of snapped sigils cast eddies of disharmony through her tuned link with
her quartz crystal
.

While the mayor stormed out in limping agitation, Lirenda excused herself with sugared almond courtesy. Avoiding smashed glass and the stains of spilled tea, she followed his lead through the doorway.

The fanned breeze of her departure flicked out the candles and caused an elaborate, pinned lock of the wife's coiffure to tumble like a loop of dropped knitting.

That final indignity lit the firestorm of temper she could not indulge as a hostess. ‘Damn the shadow-bending rogue to the torments of Dharkaron's vengeance!' she shrieked at the gawping footman. ‘May he burn for eternity beside Sithaer's scaled demons for the nuisance he foists upon guests and genteel entertainment!'

Cast clear of state policy, free at last to pursue her private mission in the face of an unknown crisis, Lirenda smoothed her immediate, base impulse to bolt from the mayor's state mansion. The elegant expanse of the tiled marble foyer echoed with agitated voices. She cut through the traffic of running servants and strode in a
brisk swish of silk past the armed captain from the garrison, who convened with the partridge-plump mayor and was barraged with shrill instructions.

Throughout, she extended her awareness, each faculty pitched to trained height. Like a prick of hostility, she sensed the sharpened regard of the watch captain swing to follow her back. She did not look around. Her business at hand concerned nothing else but the directive of her Prime Matriarch: first to right the current upset, and then to pin down the elusive person of Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn. The raking concussion that had unbalanced the wards still shocked static through her aura. An upset of such magnitude surely meant her thrown gauntlet had been accepted; the snare she had crafted on the fate of Fionn Areth had hooked its desired bait. Inwardly thrilled by the prospect of bringing her personal demon to heel, Lirenda quickened her pace. The magisterial, driving joy in her bearing caused drudges and footmen to backstep and shrink from her path.

Ahead, the justiciar's blustering arrival set the doorman into cowering apologies. While a blast of gray glare and wintery cold invaded the untended threshold, Lirenda quietly slipped out.

Above the notched roofs of the mansions and domed hall of state, a low cloud cover sheeted the early sunlight. The air bore the glass-sharp taint that presaged a snowfall. The enchantress shrugged off the chill, unwilling to delay for a servant to send for her cloak. She pushed through the flustered press of officials flocking the outer terrace. Frost rimmed the stone. Without her pattens, Lirenda picked her way on slippered feet down the marble stair, past the ornamental pots quilled with the dead stems of summer peonies and seized in a crystallized armor of ice.

Before she reached the gritted rime of the street, a middle-aged seeress from the order rushed to meet her. Hood torn back, her crystal worn under a band of silk at her brow, she offered the brunt of bad news. ‘Every ward we wove through the night is cast down! Your lane-watcher confirms. The quarry we seek did not breach by way of the walls.'

Lirenda's fists clenched in convulsive irritation. ‘You're certain?'

Panting, her short-cropped gray hair wisped floss in the wind, the initiate skidded to a stop by the lower step. ‘Thrice over. We checked. Nor did the bastard gain entry to Jaelot through a gate or rear postern. Save us all! Cadgia, Third Senior, insists the disturbance that plagues us was unleashed from
inside
the city.'

‘Don't look so surprised. The prince we would trap is Torbrand's true lineage and thinks with the mind of a fiend.' Lirenda considered, her shelved coral lips thrilled to a faint smile as Arithon's challenge rose to meet her. ‘Our fish has swallowed the lure, don't you see? We have only to close and take him on the hour he steps in to spare Fionn Areth.'

That moment, a hand sheathed in chain mail snatched the Koriani senior by the shoulder.

Lirenda spun around, eyes narrowed. ‘Your pardon, sir?'

The watch captain jerked back his offending grasp as if his gloved flesh had been scalded. His bristled chin jutted in uncowed determination, he just managed to hold his own ground. ‘What lure? What quarry? You've played Jaelot's moves for your order's own ends, and I demand to be told the truth.'

‘There's been duplicity,' Lirenda admitted. Calculation buried in preening distaste, she twitched her crumpled silk straight and flicked the wrinkling twist from her red-banded sleeve. ‘One of our own first suspected the ruse.' Her obstructive suggestion came silken smooth. ‘Like initiate Elaira, I urge you to watch your prisoner most closely, and ask if he's not a decoy.'

‘
What?
' The watch captain clapped a chapped fist to his sword hilt. ‘You'll clarify, now, witch. By the orders I bear, I'm to see that wretch up from the dungeon. He's to be bound over for immediate execution, and you dare raise the question that
he's not the Master
of Shadow
?'

Lirenda looked arch. ‘I claim nothing with certainty. My task, by Morriel's direct order, is to hold Jaelot under Koriani protection. The man you would kill wears the face of a Sorcerer, with no other sure proof to condemn him. None have seen him work spellcraft. I would be negligent if I didn't weigh that issue from every possible angle. If your town was singled out for another attack, how better to throw up a smoke screen? Distract you with a victim held harmless in chains, and the actual Spinner of Darkness might keep complete freedom to cause harm as he will.'

The guard captain shot back an oath, shocked to stark disbelief.

Flat amber in color, Lirenda's eyes on him held a knife-point spark of impatience. ‘Detain me at your peril. Our guard spells have collapsed. If Arithon s'Ffalenn is at large within Jaelot, my sisters alone can engage the necessary action to save you.'

‘You can't ask a stay on the prisoner's death sentence,' the guard captain said through locked teeth. ‘The mayor's hard-set, and the city will riot.'

‘Why should I trifle with changing your orders?' Lirenda's quick laugh of dismissal came barbed. ‘You'll want your additional men mustered anyway, to see that command carried through.' She slipped a hand under her cloak, gripped her quartz crystal, andcast in mental image the first rune of power against the recalcitrant officer's forehead. ‘You need do nothing more than redouble armed vigilance, since it's possible our sister initiate was right.' Hazed now with a glamour of spell-brightened sincerity, she touched the man's bracer and drew him ahead, into the ice-crusted street. ‘Don't press your luck. If the boy is in fact not the Shadow Master, but a foil, the true fox might slip out the rear postern.'

‘True fox?' The watch captain's iron conviction wavered. ‘Then you honestly think we've caught the Sorcerer's double in our dungeon?'

‘The pair could indeed be collaborators.' In diabolical timing, the freshened breeze purled over the cornice of the roof, bringing the sheared taint of ozone.

Another lace-worked mesh of false lightning cracked the sky. Lirenda raised her free hand to secure her pinned hair, while the slamming, thunderous report shook slates and rattled the iron spires on the rooftrees. A street child who had been begging flitted past, someone's purse in his filthy fist. No one gave chase. The merchants who fared on their errands in the street poured in panic for the shelter of doorways and arches fronting the verge of Broadwalk Way.

Buffeted by wind, determined to turn the spread of wild fear to advantage, Lirenda tightened urgent fingers and tugged the watch captain's reluctant step into the thoroughfare. ‘Would you waste your time doubting? Blameless lives in your city could well be at stake.'