House of Shadows (43 page)

“
And to your own heart?
”

Leilis glanced from one dragon to the other, trying to understand the undercurrents that lay beneath their words. She felt that she was missing half the exchange, but if the dragon was baiting the king, he did not rise to the bait. He said merely, “Perhaps.”

“
And to mine?
”

But at this, surprisingly, the king shook his head. “No. Yours, I recognize, O Ekorraodde.”

The dragon tilted its head, regarding the king from one great
black eye. “
What would you have of me, grandson of Taliente Neredde ken Seriantes, King of Lirionne, in exchange for your heart? Ask.
”

The king bowed his head. “My heart was always yours. But as you ask me, O Ekorraodde—I, too, would be pleased to see the transient cities of men prosper.”

“
Then see to it that they do
,” said the dragon, and sank its long head down to rest on one taloned hand, regarding the king almost from his own level.

After that there was at last a discreet, relieved withdrawal. Several of the King’s Own guards carried Taudde, carefully, but with an air of bearing a prisoner and not merely a wounded man. Leilis watched them with covert anxiety. She had attached herself as by right to Karah’s company, and thus by implication to the protection of Prince Tepres. It might have been this that prevented any guardsman from laying a hand on her. Or they might merely have thought her held safely enough without going to the trouble, as was clearly true.

Karah walked hand in hand with her sister, both girls quiet and strained. But Karah’s other hand was laid on Prince Tepres’s arm, and there was no mistaking the possessiveness with which the prince regarded the young keiso. But the prince also cast one and another distracted glance back toward the dragon’s cavern. His father had not left the cavern with the rest but had remained to speak further with the Dragon of Lonne. Leilis wondered what they would say to one another, the king and the dragon, but was not sorry to have been dismissed with the others. The big smoke-and-silver cat had stayed behind with the king, but the little gray cat with the white foot walked before their little company and Karah’s kitten perched on her shoulder, guides and guards and whatever else they might be. They were a comforting presence in the dark places of the mountain.

The caverns scrolled out before them and around them, graceful curtains and spires of white stone barely revealed by the simple
lanterns of men. For a while their path lay beside a swift rivulet of opaque water. The sound of it running across the stone made Leilis realize that she was desperately thirsty. She saw some of the King’s Own guardsmen also glance wistfully at the water, but no one was rash enough to drink from
this
stream.

At last they crossed a narrow arching bridge of stone, barely a handspan across at its narrowest width—Prince Tepres looked worriedly at little Karah, but there was no room on the bridge for him to give her his hand. But the girl simply walked across with matter-of-fact grace and no sign of fear. Soon after the bridge, they found themselves at the base of a long, steep stair of rough-carved steps. Water glistened on the stone walls and dripped from thin needles overhead, but even so, Leilis fancied she could already feel a draft of warm, ordinary air coming down these stairs to welcome them back to the places of men.

The stair let onto a wide landing with a small door of iron-bound oak, now standing open. More King’s Own guardsmen stood on the landing. They greeted their companions with first relief and then anxiety when they found the prince but not his father in the company. The senior officer murmured to them, increasing both their evident relief and their unease. “Derente, you and yours will stay here to wait for the king,” the officer said then, brisk and assured. “Keredd, take your man—” he nodded toward the unconscious sorcerer two of the guardsmen carried between them “—to the upper east prison, and send for Mage Sehennes to see he stays there. Be swift. We do not know how soon he may wake.” He glanced at Leilis and the girls while his men murmured acknowledgment, and then looked finally, warily, at his prince.

“They may stay with me,” Prince Tepres said firmly. “They are my guests, Neriodd. I will not have them frightened or offended.”

The officer bowed his head in acquiescence. But he also said, “Eminence. Your guests, if you will have it so, but still your father’s to dispose of as he sees fit. I will send Jeres Geliadde to you, and I will ask you to keep your guests secure. You might escort them to… the lower east suite, perhaps. If you will, eminence.”

The prince’s mouth tightened. But he inclined his head, accepting this… command, Leilis thought, was an accurate term, for all the deference with which the officer had delivered it. Karah gazed trustfully at Prince Tepres, but her sister—more sensibly, to Leilis’s mind—looked exhausted, frightened, and quite wretched.

Leilis allowed herself one quick glance after Taudde as the guardsmen carried him away, and then lowered her eyes and went obediently with the girls, as she was directed.

The lower east suite proved to be a large, airy apartment halfway up the face of the Laodd, with three wide windows and a generous balcony. It was a beautiful morning. Sunlight poured down through the chilly air, shining on the frost that lay across the rooftops of the city. Not a thousand feet away, the Nijiadde River Falls poured down the cliffs, its thunder muted by distance. Shattered fragments of rainbows glimmered in the mist around the lake far below, where the waterfall crashed into spume.

There was a basin with brass taps for hot water; there were scented soaps and warm towels and pins for their hair. Clean robes were brought, keiso blue for Karah and Leilis, the white of magecraft apprenticeship for Nemienne. Nemienne looked almost as uncomfortable with her robes as Leilis felt with hers. Neither of them protested.

Prince Tepres, in black and saffron and with his hair tied back with a fresh black-and-gold ribbon, had sent for breakfast: perfumed tea and warm rolls with butter and honey, rice porridge with chicken and shrimp, poached eggs floating in broth. Jeres Geliadde arrived with the breakfast, his face set in hard lines, ashamed to have so nearly lost his prince to unsuspected enemies.

“Not so grim,” the prince told him firmly. “Nothing of this was your fault.”

“I never liked him,” muttered Jeres, not comforted in the least. “But I don’t like anyone. I should have seen the black treachery in his eyes. But I had no plain suspicion, not of him nor of Miennes, until suddenly I received warnings from every direction. And trusted none of them. I should have—”

“I can’t think why you should have seen so much more clearly than the rest of us,” Prince Tepres said, still more firmly. He gripped the man’s arm and gave him a little shake. “Don’t take on guilt that isn’t rightfully yours. Do you hear, Jeres? Well, then. Have you had breakfast? Stop glowering and eat something.” He glanced around at Leilis and the girls, with a special smile for Karah. “We are all still half frozen with the memory of cold—at least, I am. Have some tea.”

The fragrant tea was welcome, but Leilis had no appetite for the food. Nor did Nemienne, who only stirred her porridge without tasting it and nervously tore a roll into shreds. Jeres Geliadde ate an egg to please his prince, but he didn’t look like he enjoyed it. Prince Tepres buttered rolls for Karah and drizzled them with honey, and the girl blushed and tried, not very successfully, to keep from smiling. Leilis tried to appreciate the resilience young love gave to the pair, sorely tested as they had been, but she found it hard. Well enough for them, yes, but what of Taudde? He had been harder used than even those two, and she doubted anyone had brought him hot tea and buttered rolls.

The senior officer—Neriodd, wasn’t it?—came in, then, frowning. Karah glanced up in mute alarm, and then at the prince in equally mute appeal. He gave her a reassuring nod and Neriodd a cool look, which the officer did not seem to regard.

“Your father asks for you to attend him, eminence,” the officer said, and then, in the tone of a man reprieved, “Ah, tea!” He hooked a chair out from the table with his foot and sank into it with a sigh of relief and without waiting for leave. “Your father has not stopped for tea,” he added to the prince. “You might see what you can do along those lines.”

“Neriodd—” began the prince, but then shook his head and stood up. Karah began to rise as well, but he patted her hand and she sank into her chair again. Nemienne crept closer to her sister, and Karah put an arm around the girl and smiled down at her in calm reassurance.

“I shall see that your guests receive everything they desire,” the
officer assured Prince Tepres, and bowed with an ironic air that suggested the prince probably should be on his way. Leilis thought the prince might be angry at the informality, much less the implied dismissal, but he didn’t seem to be. She could see there were undercurrents to this relationship not visible to any outsider. The prince murmured to Karah and went out. The officer stayed behind, and Leilis, who might otherwise have liked to speak plainly with the girls, veiled her eyes behind the steam from a fresh cup of tea and said nothing.

After the prince, a man came to take Karah to the king. Nemienne looked white and nervous, and shredded another roll. Leilis touched her shoulder in sympathy for their mutual situation and wondered what in the tangle of magecraft and terror and treachery had made the girl so wretched. There seemed so much to choose from. She did not dare speak to Nemienne about anything important, not with the officer keeping his ironic eye on them. But she made the other girl eat a roll rather than crumble it. “You can’t be fainting from hunger,” she pointed out, and Nemienne shuddered and obediently ate the roll.

After Karah, Nemienne was summoned. Leilis followed her own advice and made herself eat a plain roll and a little rice porridge, hoping to settle her nerves and stomach before her own turn came. It seemed a long time coming, but at the same time, Leilis would have been glad to wait longer still. Days, if possible. She had no idea what she was going to say to the king when she was finally brought before him. So much seemed difficult, now.

Her summons came at last, as the sun stood for its little time at noon and began its slow westward slide toward the sea. A long day, following an unspeakable night, and a long time yet to finish it… Neriodd himself escorted Leilis down a long stair and along a complicated path through interior hallways. Leilis had expected some sort of starkly formal reception chamber, or perhaps a grim prisonlike room. Instead, she found Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes waiting for her in a small, warm corner room much like one of the parlors of Cloisonné House. There were
comfortable-looking chairs and small tables scattered in two groupings, one by each window, and rugs of blue and gold, and a writing desk with a dozen books on a shelf above it. A fire burned in a tidy fireplace, with a single chair drawn up before it. The king occupied this chair. His big cat sat on the hearth, its fluffy tail curled neatly around its feet, glints of underlying silver showing beneath its black fur when it turned its head. It blinked its odd-colored eyes slowly at Leilis and then looked away, disinterested.

Whoever had prevailed upon the king, he had a pot of tea on a table by his elbow, and a steaming cup in his hand. The heavy iron ring on his finger gleamed dully as he set the cup down on the table. He did not look exactly rested, but the strong bones of his face no longer stood out with quite the stark exhaustion Leilis remembered from those last moments in the dragon’s cavern. The pale eyes he turned her way were calm and cold, the line of his mouth ungiving.

Leilis, for all her years in the flower world, could not guess what he might be thinking. Nor had she imagined that she would ever stand before the King of Lirionne—but keiso manners came to her rescue. Though she was no keiso, still she glided forward and sank down with deliberate grace to kneel before the king, her right leg tucked in and her left foot arched so that her robes would drape elegantly. She bowed her head, hiding behind her still face.

“You may stand.” The king’s voice was not as cold as his expression had led Leilis to expect, yet its very impassivity was somehow more alarming than open suspicion or even anger would have been. “Look at me, woman. Your name is Leilis? You are of Cloisonné House, yet not a keiso?”

Leilis admitted all this.

The king touched a summoning cord, and Neriodd reentered the room. This time, to Leilis’s surprise, the King’s Own guardsman escorted Narienneh—and, far less welcome, Lily. And behind them both, Jeres Geliadde. The prince’s bodyguard was expressionless. Narienneh’s manner was surprisingly similar, but behind her regal keiso mask, the Mother of Cloisonné House looked
weary, almost as worn as the king himself. Lily, in contrast to them both, glittered with beauty and malice.

“This deisa of your House has described to me your treacherous dealings with the Kalchesene sorcerer Lord Chontas Taudde ser Omientes,” the king told Leilis. “I understand that you were suborned by this man and aided him in his designs against me and against Lirionne.”

For a long moment, Leilis said nothing. A wild flurry of denials clearly would not serve, but what would? At last she said merely, “The deisa is mistaken. The only such designs of which I was ever aware were owned by Mage Ankennes. And I think by your cousin, eminence—Lord Rikadde Miennes ken Nerenne—but I do not know his role with certainty.”

“One might wish,” murmured the king, “to know anything whatever with certainty.” For a moment, before he recovered his cold neutrality, his harsh face showed stark weariness. He asked, “You maintain you did not know Lord Chontas Taudde ser Omientes and were in no way in his employ?”