Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses) (60 page)

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Authors: Sharon Shinn

BOOK: Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)
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She waited till he was out of sight, then she issued quick orders. “Donnal. Take bird shape and await us on the roof. If there’s any problem here, go directly to the Danalustrous ship in the harbor and get word to Kirra’s father. Cammon. I want you to wait in the hall right outside the parlor. If any trouble threatens, interrupt us immediately. Justin, Tayse. You come in the room with us.”
“Will he allow that?” Tayse asked.
Senneth smiled grimly. “Oh yes. His own men are there. He will expect to see us defended as well.”
“What do you want me to do?” Kirra asked.
“Just stand there and look noble. Unfortunately, I think this is my interview. He’s come to hear what I have to offer.”
She caught Kirra’s sharp look and Tayse’s puzzled one. She smiled. “Well, let’s see what Halchon Gisseltess has to say.”
 
 
TWO soldiers were guarding the parlor, both wearing the crest of Gisseltess: a falcon clutching a red flower in its talons. Four more soldiers with the same insignia stood just inside the room. Senneth and her companions stepped through the door, Senneth trying to make her own carriage as regal as Kirra’s—which, perhaps, meant she was really imitating the supercilious Casserah Danalustrous. It was comforting to feel Tayse so close behind her, even though she did not turn to look at him. She could see the soldiers inside the room cast calculating looks his way and knew that his appearance, as always, was formidable. Just now, she needed a formidable presence at her back.
Halchon Gisseltess stood gazing out the window, his back to them, and did not turn around immediately. Senneth took the opportunity to study him. He was dressed in riding gear: leather pants tucked into black boots, a short wool coat on his back. His hair was slightly ruffled from wind, but still thick and heavy as it fell to his collar. Streaks of silver lightened its blackness, but he had not grayed as much as his sister had. Then again, he was ten years younger than Coralinda. Just over forty. A powerfully built, powerfully stubborn, and powerfully dangerous man.
“Halchon,” Senneth said, when she was tired of the tense silence in the room. “I’m so glad you could find the time to see me.”
Now he turned, but she was braced for the hard slap of his personality as all his attention came quickly to bear on her. His eyes were midnight black, his square face not nearly so handsome but just as fierce as she remembered it. This was what her raelynx might look like if it took human shape and aged for a couple of decades.
“Senneth,” he said, and his voice was beautiful and hard, like an exotic wood or an edged blade. “It has been too long.”
Not long enough,
she thought. “You’ve been busy, these past years,” she said. “I hear tales of Gisseltess prowess and Gisseltess products across the whole of Gillengaria.”
“I oversee a very rich property,” he said. “And I have considered it my duty to make it flourish. I think even Brassenthwaite and Danalustrous would acknowledge that Gisseltess is among the greatest of the Houses.”
“As it always has been,” Senneth said. “Yet these days there are—rumors—that perhaps Gisseltess is overreaching itself. Striving for roles and honors that, strictly speaking, the House does not deserve.”
He smiled, a charming, feral smile such as a raelynx might produce. “That’s the Senneth I remember,” he said, and his tone was admiring. “Straight to the point, and no pleasantries beforehand. I knew you could not be in this room five minutes without going on the attack.”
“I have not attacked you,” she said, keeping her voice very calm. “But I
am
here to ask you questions. We have been on the road several weeks, my friends and I. And we were not traveling long before we came across Gisseltess soldiers interfering in matters that seemed more rightly to belong to Helven and Fortunalt troops. It led me to wonder how far your influence extends these days—and how far you want it to spread.”
“I want to rule the country—surely that cannot come as a surprise to you?” he replied instantly. “I have always been ambitious. I have always wanted to acquire more land, more money—more influence, as you say. If the conditions were right, I would happily take over the management of all the southern Houses—and the middle Houses, and the northern Houses, and Ghosenhall itself. Is that what you wanted to hear me say?”
“Only if it’s true,” she answered.
He laughed. “And do you think it’s true?”
“From what I have seen, it is certainly possible,” she said. “I suppose what I really want to know is why. And why now.”
He was holding a glass of some kind of amber liquid; he took a meditative sip and set it down. “The why and the why now are the same, I suppose,” he said. “We have an aging king on the throne. Beside him sits a mysterious queen, and somewhere in the shadowy recesses of his palace flits a strange young princess whom very few have ever seen. The succession is in danger, Senneth, and I am not the only one to say so. A royal line in turmoil puts a country in chaos. A country in chaos puts a crown up for grabs.” He shrugged. “I am just the man to grab it. So I ready myself for the opportunity.”
“There is no proof yet that the king is ill or his daughter unfit,” Senneth said. “You move too soon.”
“Better too soon than too late.”
“And if the king yet produces an heir capable of ruling? Princess Amalie or a half sibling born to Queen Valri? Don’t you worry about being at the center of a bid for treason?”
“Well, the queen has produced no heir as of yet,” he said, sounding amused, “and, the situation being what it is, she may never have the opportunity.”
“So that is enough for you. That is reason enough to arm for war,” Senneth said. It could hardly be a surprise after the revelations of the past few weeks, but still she found herself unable to credit a philosophy so simple and so brutal. “You doubt the strength of your king, but without proof, and without consultation, you plan to steal the throne from him—and claim it is to ensure the stability of the realm.”
He shrugged. “Oh, I have already admitted I am ambitious. My motives are not entirely altruistic. But I tell you plainly that if this king dies without an acceptable heir, and no plans have been made to install a ruler in his place, we are headed for civil war before his bones are even cold in his grave. I have moved up the timetable by a few years, perhaps, but war has been plotted in the background ever since Amalie was born.”
“Your sister speaks of a holy war and seems to care not at all about kings and princesses and shaky successions,” said Senneth. “Yet she is poised to cause almost as much damage as you are.”
Halchon gave her a wide smile. “My sister’s passion has been convenient,” he admitted. “We pursue the same ends for different reasons. I could not have asked for a better ally. But it is not she who will rally forces and command troops. If there is a war, it will be fought at my direction.”
“ ‘If there is a war,’ ” Senneth repeated. “What would it take to make you draw back from your plotting?”
“Concessions I doubt the king would be willing to make,” Halchon said. “But you could pass along my concerns to him and see what he has to say. If he is eager to avoid bloodshed—if he is indeed tired and worried about the future of his country—he may be willing to make a treaty with me. I am ready to be reasonable.”
“Then tell me your conditions,” Senneth said. “I return to Ghosenhall as soon as I leave Lochau.”
“Name me heir,” Halchon said. “It is as simple as that.”
Senneth felt her eyebrows lift. “And don’t you wonder—just a little—how the marlords of the other Houses would feel about Gisseltess being suddenly raised to such a position of prominence?”
Halchon shrugged. “I am willing to make an alliance. I am willing to take a bride from some northern House and spawn children of mixed blood who will take the throne after me.”
“You already have a wife,” Senneth said.
“Wives are easily disposed of,” he said.
Senneth felt her blood, always so warm, turn frosty in her veins. “You are willing to be quite ruthless to attain your ends,” she said in a neutral voice. “Don’t you worry that by invalidating your current marriage—by whatever means—you will anger your wife’s family and dismantle an existing alliance?”
“I almost married a Nocklyn girl,” he said conversationally. “But that very circumstance held me back. So I married from within the ranks of Gisseltess nobility. I was thinking very far ahead, you see. No one in Gisseltess will turn against me.”
Her skin turned chillier and chillier. She thought she knew what was coming very soon, but she could not keep herself from asking more questions. “Your sons?” she asked against a dry throat. “They won’t be furious if their mother is cast aside?”
“They will be given high rank in the new court when they are old enough. And the powerful Houses will seek them as husbands for their daughters, as a way to ensure some connection to the court and some hold over me. I do not think they will suffer much.”
“I do not think the other eleven Houses will be satisfied by such a measure,” Senneth said. “I do not think they will so happily give over control of Ghosenhall to you.”
“They will if I choose the right bride,” he said. “They will have no choice, for the alliance will be too strong.”
Colder and colder—ice in her bones. “And what alliance would you pursue?” she made herself ask.
Halchon’s night-black eyes glanced at Kirra and returned to Senneth. “Danalustrous would do,” he said, “but that would be my second choice. Malcolm Danalustrous is a tricky ally in the best of times. I cannot be so certain what course of action he might take, even to avert a war.”
Senneth couldn’t bring herself to look at Kirra, who mercifully stayed mute. “And if not Danalustrous?” she said.
He fixed her with that midnight gaze, impossible to look away from. She had hated a fair number of people in her life, but none of them as much as she hated Halchon Gisseltess. “Brassenthwaite,” he said. “You.”
There was absolute silence in the room.
Halchon continued. “It was the marriage I wanted nearly twenty years ago, and it’s the one I want now. Your brother is a more reasonable man than Malcolm Danalustrous. I think he would grasp the advantages of the match right away, just as your father did. And seeing Brassenthwaite fierce in support of the throne, I think the other Houses would fall quickly in line to accept me. To accept you and me,” he amended.
She could not look at Kirra, at Tayse, but she could feel their astonished attention focused on her as they solved some of the final mysteries of her life. Her throat was so tight she was not sure she could speak, but she was making a supreme effort to appear normal, to appear detached. “It has been a long time,” she said, “since I acted at the direction of my brothers.”
“Much has changed since then,” he said.
She found a little strength and infused it into her voice. “And, if you recall, I was not eager to marry you the last time the alliance was proposed.”
“It’s different this time,” he said.
“How so? I am even more independent now than I was at seventeen.”
“It’s different now because if you don’t marry me, the whole country will be plunged into war,” he said. “I think you have a soft enough heart to want to see such a tragedy averted. Put aside your personal feelings about me, and make a marriage that will save the kingdom.”
“I would rather see you dead,” she said calmly.
For a brief, shocked moment, everyone in the room absorbed her words. Halchon was the first to react—with a short, dry laugh. “I wonder what it is about me,” he said, “that you find so unpalatable. You can’t be afraid of me, because Senneth Brassenthwaite fears nothing on this earth.”
“You terrify me,” she said. “You always have. It is a struggle for me to stand even this close to you.”
He seemed more amused than offended by this reply. “And perhaps that is what draws me to you so irresistibly,” he said softly. “Your so very obvious desire to escape. I find myself wondering—I have always found myself wondering—what it would be like to hold you so tightly that you could not break away. Would you scream? Would you shatter? Would you succumb? If you were my bride, you know, I would be able to discover the answer. I might be able to discover it anyway.”
And he took three quick steps closer and placed his hands around her throat.
For Senneth, the world became a place of stark shadows streaked with patches of light. The pressure on her throat was so great that she could scarcely breathe, but she could not even gather the strength to wrench away from him; she could not clench her hands and summon fire. It was as if his very touch was anathema—as if he was made of moonstone—as if he possessed a magic that was of a composition completely antithetical to her own. She could not struggle, and she could not strike. She could only stare at him, wreathed in night and errant brilliance, and listen to the roaring darkness.
A flash of silver cut across her vision, and a bulky shape loomed suddenly behind Halchon’s body. “Release her,” said a low, taut voice, “or you die.”
A second longer the stranglehold lasted, then the fingers relaxed from around her throat. Senneth stumbled aside, coughing, shaking her head to clear her vision. Soft fingers were laid across her arm, and she felt Kirra’s healing strength pour through her muscles. She stood a moment, bent half over, collecting her thoughts and her energy.

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