Naamah's Blessing (21 page)

To be sure, the lad found it profoundly unnerving.

Lowering my voice, I willed him, and him alone, to hear me. “Tristan de Barthelme, make no mistake! The path you tread is one of heresy,” I intoned in his ear. “Let the girl go, and trouble her no more.”

He released her as quickly as though her touch scalded him, backing away so fast I had to spin out of his way and nearly lost my grip on the twilight. “I’m sorry!” he said to her, his eyes as wide as saucers. “Just… go!”

The maid fled without hesitation, still clutching her feather duster. I had to hurry to slip out the door behind her.

When I told Bao what I’d done, he laughed until he wept. “Ah gods, Moirin! Why didn’t you tell him to leave Desirée alone while you were at it?”

“I didn’t think of it,” I admitted. “Mayhap I should go back?”

“No, best not to.” He wiped his eyes. “Too many folk know about your gift. The lad’s likely to figure it if you push your luck too far.”

“Well, at least we know he’s a lout,” I said.

Bao shrugged. “He’s a boy trying to steal a kiss from a pretty maid. I was no different at his age.”

“No.” I shook my head. “It’s not
that
. That, I understand. It’s that he didn’t care that she was unwilling, that he’d thought through the reasons she wouldn’t dare speak of it.” I shuddered. “And he was quick to threaten her. I don’t like him, Bao. And I don’t want his majesty thinking he’s a fit suitor for Desirée, now or ever.”

He sobered. “No, you’re right. You should speak to him again.”

I did; or at least I tried to.

King Daniel willingly granted me an audience, but he held up one hand when I sat opposite him in his study, forestalling my tale. The lines of sorrow etched on his face were deeper than ever.

“You were right, Moirin,” he said heavily. “Duc Rogier approached me yesterday with a proposal that we arrange a betrothal.”

I swallowed the words I’d meant to speak. “I’m so sorry, my lord.”

“I’d thought better of him,” he mused. “Truly, I did. Why? Was it not enough that I appointed him to administer the affairs of the realm?”

As ever, his grief made my heart ache. “Ambition is a dangerous thing,” I murmured. “One can harbor it unknowing, only to find it sparked into life when the opportunity presents itself.” I thought about the offer that the fallen spirit Marbas had made me, and about how I’d been tempted by Kamadeva’s diamond. “No one is immune to it, my lord. I know that I myself am not.”

He sighed. “Would that I had been born a simple shepherd!”

I met his gaze. “We do not choose our destinies, my lord. I am sorry, but it is true. What will you do?”

His shoulders rose and fell. “I have denied his proposal. Now I suppose I must appoint someone else to serve in his stead.”

“
Your
stead,” I reminded him.

It was a piece of insolence, and a part of me hoped that his majesty would rally against it, chastising me. Instead, he bowed his head, dark locks of hair spilling over his brow, his eyes in shadow.

“My stead,” he agreed softly. “At least until Thierry returns. I plan to abdicate the throne to him, you know.”

I nodded. “I suspected you might.”

But in less than a week’s time, everything changed.

TWENTY-THREE

A
s though the fates were conspiring to grant the King’s wishes, the very day after my meeting with his majesty word came that the Dauphin’s flagship had reached the harbor at Pellasus and was making its way up the Aviline River toward the City of Elua.

The City rejoiced; and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Spared from the necessity of having to appoint a new Royal Minister, I daresay the King was relieved, too. Couriers tracked the ship’s progress along the river. His majesty arranged for a royal reception to greet his returning son, and on a bright spring afternoon, we gathered at the wharf.

Flying the silver swan of House Courcel beneath the lily-and-stars pennant of Terre d’Ange, the ship made dock.

I was there with Bao and Desirée, alongside his majesty and his Royal Minister, presenting a seemingly united front to the realm. Whatever discord seethed beneath the surface was hidden. My father was there, and Tristan de Barthelme beside his own father, the sun glinting on his golden curls. He was on his best behavior.

Desirée squirmed with impatience as we waited for the gangplank to be lowered, eager to meet the older brother of whom she had heard so much and knew so little. I held her hand, praying that Thierry’s return would suffice to make up for the loss of Tristan’s attention likely to come. I would urge Prince Thierry to be kind to her, I thought. He had a good heart, and he would listen to me. I hoped so,
anyway. During the time that I had served as Jehanne’s companion, we had come to form an odd bond of kinship, Thierry and I.

At last, the gangplank was lowered, and a lone figure descended it. The crew remained on the ship, watching in unusual silence for sailors come to port after a long journey. A soft hiss ran through the gathered crowd.

“Moirin?” Bao inquired. “That’s not the prince, is it?”

My throat felt tight. “No.”

It was someone I knew, though—Denis de Toluard. He had been one of Raphael’s closest friends, and a member of the Circle of Shalomon.

It appeared he was fighting tears.

For once in Terre d’Ange, truth had outstripped rumor. There on the wharf, Denis de Toluard made his way to King Daniel’s presence and fell to his knees. He gazed upward, his eyes filled with tears and his mouth working.

“Your majesty,” he said in a husky voice. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I wanted you to be the first to hear it.”

“Tell me.”
The words dropped like two stones from the King’s lips. Desirée had gone still, and her hand felt slippery in mine, although I daresay it was mine that sweated.

Denis bowed his head. “The Dauphin is gone.”

Although he spoke softly, the words carried in the stillness; and where they did not carry, they were passed from mouth to ear. A great outcry of shared grief arose, a spontaneous ululating. The only thing that kept me from joining it was the pressure of the young princess’ hand in mine.

“Moirin?” she whispered.

“I’m sorry, dear heart,” I whispered in reply, my own heart breaking. “Ah, gods! I wish it had been otherwise.”

Later, we would learn more details about how the Dauphin’s expedition had found favor with the Nahuatl Emperor by virtue of Raphael de Mereliot’s skills as a physician. It seemed that along with foreign elements such as horses and steel, the Aragonian explorers who
established a base of trade with the Nahuatl unwittingly introduced foreign diseases that ravaged the native folk, rendering them helpless before its onslaught.

The killing pox.

It was Raphael who found a way to ameliorate the effects of the pox, persuading the Nahuatl Emperor to allow him to inoculate him and his extensive family with a lesser strain of the disease.

When it proved effective, the Emperor rewarded him with knowledge, knowledge of another empire on the far side of the sea, rich in gold. But that day on the docks, we learned only that Thierry had set out on a secondary expedition that vanished into the jungles of Terra Nova.

“I was sick myself,” Denis de Toluard murmured, still kneeling. “Dysentery. I was too weak to travel. I agreed to stay behind and wait. I waited and waited, your majesty. Months past the appointed time.” He lifted his face, screwed up with grief. “But he never came. Prince Thierry never came back. None of them did. He made me promise that if anything befell him, I’d tell you myself. So I took charge of the flagship, and set sail.”

The King laid one hand on his head. “It wasn’t your fault. You did the right thing.”

“It wasn’t enough!”

“No.” The King smiled sadly. “It never is, is it?”

I swallowed my grief as best I could.

Ah, gods!
Thierry
, good-natured Prince Thierry, who had forgiven me all my transgressions.

Gone…

It seemed impossible—and yet it was so. Of course, it had
always
been a possibility. In my head, I knew this. Ships foundered, men died. Seafaring and exploring was a dangerous business. But in my heart, I simply hadn’t thought the gods would be cruel enough to deal one more crushing blow to a man who had experienced so much grief in his life.

King Daniel turned away and began walking toward the royal
carriage like a blind man, his face gone utterly blank. Guards and spectators moved out of his way uncertainly.

Trusting Desirée to Bao’s care, I ran after his majesty. “My lord!” I wasn’t sure what to say. “You… you should not be alone.”

He looked at me as though I were a stranger for a moment. “Moirin. Oh. The child.” His blank gaze shifted to Desirée, holding Bao’s hand, tears streaking her face. “See that she’s safely returned to the Palace.”

“You should not be alone right now,” I said stubbornly.

My father came alongside me. “My daughter is right, your majesty.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Daniel de la Courcel said with gentle firmness. “You are dismissed.”

We could not ignore a royal command, could do nothing but watch as he climbed into the carriage and gave the order to depart.

I stole a glance at Duc Rogier. He was standing with one hand on his son Tristan’s shoulder. I thought the look of sorrow on his face was genuine, but behind it, calculating wheels were turning. It struck me that Desirée had just become the heir to the throne of Terre d’Ange in earnest.

Beneath the bright spring sunshine, I shivered.

Obeying the King’s order, Bao and I saw the young Dauphine returned to the nursery, where she wept herself into a state of profound exhaustion. Not even Sister Gemma’s most soothing cradle-songs could comfort her for the loss of her absent brother. I wondered if she sensed the burden that had settled on her shoulders that day. At last, wrung as limp as a dishrag, Desirée fell asleep with her thumb in her mouth. I stroked her damp hair, plastered to her cheeks. Her tear-spiked lashes were like fans.

“You should go,” Sister Gemma said wearily. “She’ll sleep for hours now.”

“I know.”

Our eyes met. “It was a bad day,” the priestess said. “A very bad day.”

I nodded. “One of the worst.”

Bao leaned over the bed, coaxing Desirée’s thumb out of her mouth and crooning to her in the Ch’in dialect of his youth. “Tomorrow will be better,” he said with a confidence none of us felt. “It will, won’t it?”

My eyes stung. “Gods, I hope so!”

It wasn’t.

Worn out by my own grief, I slept hard that night. I woke from a dream of a great bell tolling for all the world’s sorrows to find Bao shaking me, and every bell in the City of Elua tolling loudly.

“What is it?” I asked sleepily.

“I don’t know.” Bao’s expression was alert and grim. “But I think we ought to find out.”

Outside, we found commonfolk roaming the streets of the City, and rumor running wild. We followed the course of the rumors to a promenade along the banks of the Aviline River, close to the Palace, where guardsmen in the livery of House Courcel raced frantically back and forth, torches streaking the night with flame, firelight glinting off the waters of the river. All the while, the bells continued their urgent summons.

“Here, here!”

“No,
here
!”

“There he is!” one shouted, pointing at the river. “There, there!”

I covered my mouth with one hand. “Oh, gods! No!”

Guards plunged into the river.

Bao put his arm over my shoulders, pressed his lips to my hair. “Moirin, don’t look.”

But I did, because I had to. I looked. I watched as members of the Royal Guard swam and gasped in the benighted waters of the Aviline River, sodden in their livery, towing their burden ashore.

King Daniel.

For once, he looked at peace. His pale, grave face was at peace with death, his dark hair strewn about him in wet tendrils.

There was more shouting.

There were physicians—to no avail. They breathed into his mouth, but he did not respond. His body lay still and lifeless. Daniel de la Courcel, the King of Terre d’Ange, was dead.

Later, we would learn that the King had begged his Captain of the Guard for solitude, and a chance to walk alone along the banks of the river. That his guards had trailed him at a respectful distance, leaving him to his grief. In the darkness, they’d lost sight of him from time to time.

No one knew when he’d slipped over the embankment and waded into the river. All they knew was that he’d done it a-purpose, for he hadn’t made a sound and there were stones in his pockets, weighting him down.

I wept.

Bao held me.

Everything had changed.

Everything.

TWENTY-FOUR