Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (11 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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“Prophecy!” The Duke snorted again. “The Bissanties may be plotting to break Tielmark by twisting our prophecies, but it’s not stopping them from trying to break us with the Lanai as well.”
“Prophecy and the gods rule Tielmark.” That was Sieur Jumery.
The duke paused. When he spoke again, his tone was more measured, his rising temper damped. “I’m a pious man,” he said. “I believe that Elianté and Emiera watch my actions. The Goddess-Twins stand at my border as well as in Princeport’s halls, and I am beholden to Benet and all of Prince Clarin’s line who have maintained the link that holds them there. But a strong Prince must have the confidence to ride out to protect his outlands, not just his center. Instead, Benet has called all the Brood-blood to Princeport, and now they’re strutting his halls, arguing about the meaning of power. All well and good, if you don’t have a country to run and a border war!”
“My grandmère is of the Brood,” Martin said dryly. “As am I.”
“You’re a fighting man,” the Duke said impatiently. “And your grandma Melaudiere I can respect. But some of those court spiders … They want the power of ruling Benet, and the rest is excuses to justify their encroachments.”
“Perhaps the Brood thinks Benet needs help rebuilding his power,” Martin said. “There has been talk that it is time to raise Tielmark from a mere Principality to a Kingship. Indeed, that is the very heart of the Brood-prophecy that has ruled myself and my kin since Princess Corinne’s days.”
“Benet has to make his own power!” the Duke shouted. “Gabbling old women can’t stop Lanai tribesmen from burning my villages.”
If he had more to say, he did not get the chance to say it. The door opened, so unexpectedly that Gaultry, who by now was tightly pressed against it, almost fell inside. Recovering awkwardly, she found herself staring into Jumery Ingoleur’s watery blue eyes. He stood unpleasantly close to her, his breath a little heavy, his hand a skinny claw on the door’s handle. The stillness in his eyes unnerved her. He had known she would be there when he pulled the door open. “Good evening, demoiselle,” he greeted her. “Why don’t you join us?”
“I fell asleep,” she blurted, trying to explain herself. “Then I thought I heard something—”
“That would have been me and my horsemen,” Victor of Haute-Tielmark cut in. He was sitting in one of a pair of delicately carved chairs, a goblet of wine in his hand, his great legs sprawled out before him like fallen tree trunks. Though he was every inch the confident bear of a man that Gaultry remembered, he was also, even to her frequently fashion-blind eye, oddly dressed, somewhere between silk court equipage and leather riding gear, his gold hair and thick beard half elaborately pressed into chevalier’s locks, half disheveled by the rigors of a hard ride. The metal edge of the military baldric he wore strapped across his chest had torn the silk threads of the finely embroidered stag head on the front of his tunic. He heaved himself to his feet and made a half-bow. “Uncouth of me to have woken you. Brought you down in bare feet, I see.” He grinned at her, not unpleasantly, revealing his crooked canines.
“Good evening, Your Grace,” Gaultry acknowledged the Duke with an awkward curtsy. She curled her naked toes into the rushes, embarrassed. “I could not find my boots.”
Martin, standing at the back of the room, came forward and reached for her hand. Behind his impassive expression, she sensed he was ill at ease.
“The Duke heard rumors in Soiscroix that piqued his interest,” he said mordantly. His voice betrayed little of the nervous tension she could feel running in his body. “The number of men who died at Sizor’s Bridge has grown tenfold. Rumor has a mile of road buckling as well as the bridge. Haute-Tielmark rode out here to discover for himself what part of the talk was truth.”
“How many men did he bring?” Gaultry asked. Wishing she had the Sharif’s ability to communicate without speech, she let Martin tuck her hand under his arm and draw her into the room. Whatever her argument had been with him this afternoon, just at this moment, his presence at her side was deeply comforting.
“He said six.”
“Six and two boys to rub the horses down. They’re in the stables now,” the Duke offered, “admiring the Stalkingman’s corpses. It’s late, and my men are not known for their restraint. My apologies if their clatter woke you.”
Sieur Jumery’s meeting room was lined with time-scarred oak paneling. Its large hearth had been swept and scrubbed clean for the summer. The mantelpiece decoration showed the motif of a sword with scales balanced to either side. A well-used room, if a little spare and empty. A
folding traveling desk stood upended beside a sagging sofa. Two delicately carved wooden chairs—one of the pair creaked plaintively as the Duke retook his seat—had been arranged next to a small table. The men had been drinking wine before her arrival, from silver-chased goblet cups and a matching decanter. Though everything in the room was expensively made and had once been very fine, now it was threadbare and a little shabby. The mood within the room seemed even less friendly than Gaultry had been able to intuit from the passage. A trio of massive dogs lay on the hearthstones of the empty fireplace, quiescent but alert. One raised its head as she entered, studying her with suspicious eyes. Sieur Jumery, leaving Gaultry’s side, crossed to the hearth and touched the animal with his foot. The dog laid its head back on its paws and pretended it had not moved. Even from across the room Gaultry could sense its fear-based loyalty.
Without waiting for permission she sat on the sofa, touching Martin’s arm so he would sit at her side. “I suppose you’ve had a look in the stable yourself?”
“After what I heard in Soiscroix, I had no choice but to see for myself.” The Duke stroked his beard with a red-skinned, hamlike hand. “According to the word in town, a fire-haired witch rose up and broke the bridge into tinder, then turned and set her spells on the unfortunate man who had tried to stop her. It sounded most spectacular. And the witch’s henchman—something in his style made me think of a man I’d seen in battle myself.”
“Those men’s deaths are not on our heads,” Gaultry said. She thought back to the awful moment when her fear for Tullier had changed into dreadful recognition of what the man was about to do. “Someone sent those men to ambush us.”
“I was told that one man turned his blade and slit his own belly,” the Duke said. “Something must have made him do that.”
“Believe what you like,” Gaultry said. The secret of Tullier’s imperial blood was not for casual sharing—and certainly, not with a man of dubious loyalties like Haute-Tielmark.
“Sieur Ingoleur.” She turned to their host. “I have not yet had a chance to thank you for all the help you’ve given us.”
“Dear lady,” the old man replied courteously. “It is no more than my duty thus to serve you. Allow me to pour you some wine. Your friends—they are safely resting? I trust they are comfortable?”
“As much as can be expected.”
“Let me pour for you.” His old hands trembled on the decanter as he set a fresh goblet before her. He watched as she took her first sip. The wine tasted a little past its prime, a metallic savor dominating. She tried not to look at the old man, standing near enough that she could smell the musty odor of his robes. “Red wine for a red lady,” he murmured, topping up her goblet before she could demur. “Tamsanne drank this very wine when she came to this house.”
“I’m empty here.” Haute-Tielmark banged his goblet down, startling the old man so he drew a little back. “Lady Blas can drink after she’s finished answering my questions. I want to know who she thinks set up the attack.”
Gaultry took a long sip of the metallic wine, annoyed at the interruption. Her mind was in a whirl. Tamsanne had been in this very house? “The rumors you heard in Soiscroix were exaggerated, but it was a serious and well-laid trap. I think whoever set those Bissanty soldiers on us planned for me to use my own magic, thus triggering the spell that was laid upon the bridge-binding vine. Now, if you want to talk about powerful magic, there was a serious spell.”
Victor of Haute-Tielmark held his cup up to Sieur Jumery to be refilled. Raising it to his lips, he threw it at one gulp into his throat, and held up the cup again. When Gaultry had first met the Duke, he had been downing mugs of raw ale in the noisy public room of an inn on the Bissanty border. There he had been among his own men, in his own land. The power and confidence that had radiated from him had filled the room—at the time it was rather intimidating to Gaultry, for whom he had been searching, with orders to take her prisoner.
“Bissanty men, a Bissanty plan,” he said, swirling the fresh wine in the cup. “There’s an easy line to follow.”
Gaultry shook her head. “I must differ. The magic that shattered the bridge came from Elianté. It wasn’t Bissanty—or mine either,” she added, remembering belatedly that she had offered no explicit denial of the charge of bridge-breaking.
“This is hardly your business,” Martin broke in. “We’ve answered to Sieur Ingoleur for our actions. You can ride up in the middle of the night and pound on his door demanding to see Bissanty corpses, but you have no right to question us.”
The Duke laughed. “I’m not questioning you. I rode here to discover who was fool enough to have the nerve to try to stop you. They’re more hot for your return at court than either of you seem to imagine.”
“What do you mean?” Gaultry asked.
“Court games rot the mind for real business.” The Duke’s manner grew abruptly serious. “I’ve no appetite myself to play the fool. If immortal Elianté and Emiera became incarnate to bless Benet and his marriage, I’m a man to honor their wishes.
“My grandfather bore witness to the Great Twins’ descent to earth, and my father with him. I’ve been fool enough already, thank you, letting politics stand between me and that blessing at this turn of the cycle.” The Duke turned his face to stare into the fire, hiding his expression. When he spoke again, something in him had hardened. “I could have looked into the faces of my gods,” he said. “Instead I listened to the wiles of an unrighteous man, and I missed my chance.
“This summer will be a turning point for Tielmark—the troubles on my own borders tell me that. But the court players want only to interpret the omens in a way that will enhance their own power. They won’t accept that Benet must be a power unto himself.”
He was standing now, staring down at Gaultry, solemnly watching the candlelight play on her face. “Too many of them at court hate you,” he growled. “They hate you because you were the one to stand on the Prince’s altar and talk to the gods, and then when you descended from that altar, you didn’t pretend that the Great Twins had annointed you as his sole trusted advisor. You would have been better served at court if you’d lied and told Benet that the gods spoke only through you, and now you alone knew what it was they wanted. They would have understood that.”
Gaultry shook her head helplessly. “The Goddess-Twins were there that day for one thing only: to witness the marriage of the Prince. It was chance, almost, that I was the one to stand before them to announce the Prince’s bride.”
Sieur Jumery made a soft sound, deep in his throat.
“I want you to understand me clearly.” The Duke rose to his feet, and laid his hand over the stag’s head on his breast. “My greatest grand-sire was the first lord to vow himself to Clarin, when Tielmark was first struggling to free itself from Bissanty. In this day, I have given my vows to Benet. I have lived outside of court long enough that I can recognize you for what you are: a weapon in my Prince’s hand. The man who tries to break you tries also to break my Prince.”
Incredulity swept giddily through her body, stronger than the wine. The most powerful of the Prince’s dukes, Victor of Haute-Tielmark, had
come riding through the night, soiling his silks and spoiling his freshly coifed hair, because—
“You’re here to protect me?” she said faintly, setting down her cup. “I’m not Benet’s only weapon. Martin is too. So are all the Brood-blood.”
The Duke snorted. “They haven’t proved it by me. Why should the Brood be trusted? Their fate may be bound to the Prince’s, but that does not make them love him—or each other. Dervla would have had you tried in absentia for treason if the Prince had permitted it.”
Gaultry’s mind, already flustered, now staggered. She had known that the High Priestess disliked her. But an accusation of treason? “Great Twins! What’s the base for such a charge?” Her eyes flickered to Sieur Jumery. Was this why he had treated her with such wary reserve?
“You protected the assassin who sought the Prince’s death.”
“Tullier was never supposed to kill the Prince,” Gaultry said hotly. “The Emperor planned for Tullier himself to die—”
Martin elbowed her in the side. The Duke shot him an ominous look, but Martin only shook his head, not at all intimidated. “The truth is more complex than Dervla will allow, and all will be explained in its due time and place. Gaultry protected the boy. We are confident Benet will thank her for that. But that is for Benet to decide, not Dervla.”
The duke smiled, his crooked canines fierce above his golden beard. “Indeed. And after six weeks of Dervla’s working at him, I’m sure Benet is in a happy frame of mind to receive your lady’s explanations in good faith.”
“By your own words, we must trust Benet will make the right decision,” Martin replied. “If you truly believe in Benet, you must believe also that Dervla will not prevail.”

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