Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (35 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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“This morning we had a man from one of our country justices. His livery was so decrepit that Mother had him newly outfitted at her own expense.” Elisabeth smiled again. “Now that’s her own weakness. She cannot bear for anyone to look anything other than immaculate. She claims it improves performance all around—though I’m quite sure that’s not true of me.” She patted the tamarin’s nose, and it playfully snapped at her fingers, eager for more plum. Juice had run on to the material of her sleeve, but Elisabeth seemed not to notice. “But perhaps she’s right—the man was certainly grateful for his new outfitting. He seemed quite taken with it all—the clothes, the glitter of court, the liveliness. It’s more than he is used to, back at Sieur Jumery’s.”
Gaultry stiffened. The tamarin caught it immediately, focusing in with bright, inquisitive eyes. Elisabeth, intent on her story, did not. “You would think the old man’s estate is falling down, the way his servant talked. But I think it must just be the contrast with the splendors of Princeport. What do you think? Do you find Princeport impressive? I did, when I first came up at summer’s start. Now, of course, I’ve had to become a little more acclimated.”
“It’s a matter of comparison,” Gaultry said evenly, trying to conceal her perturbation. The arrival of Sieur Jumery’s man, so soon after her own, could be no coincidence. “And also, I suppose, of whether or not one is accustomed to making comparisons. When I first came to Princeport I had never been to a village that served as a market center, let alone to a large town or city. Now I’ve seen Bissanty’s capital as well as Tielmark’s. The sheer busyness of so many people in one place still overwhelms me, but at least when I’m in a crowd now I have something to compare it against.” She was babbling, but she needed to say something to cover her confused dread. If Sieur Jumery had sent a man to report to Vaux-Torres, what information had he brought with him? Harmless details of the attack at Sizor’s Bridge? An angry account of their own fight at the burial ground? The bitter charge the old man had made against her grandmother?
Your grandfather was a dead man.
“This man you’re describing—did he have anything interesting to report? Or was it all talk of the fields and the early harvest?”
Elisabeth shook her head. “I don’t get to hear any of that. My mother doesn’t mind me standing as the Vaux-Torres figurehead, but Beaumorreau
is the one with whom she shares the real business. If my brother wasn’t leading the army in Haute-Tielmark this summer, he’d be standing in my shoes at this very moment.” She cuddled the tamarin, then set it down to explore the bole of a nearby tree. “Sometimes I wish she trusted me more, but that is the burden of being the youngest. I suppose a part of me must be grateful for the Lanai wars and for my mother’s problems for giving me this season at court—though I hope that is not true!”
“You seem to be managing well enough,” Gaultry said encouragingly. She liked the girl’s self-deprecatory humor. “Now, if you will pardon me, I have some business with my grandmother.”
“Oh—I—you are busy, and I have kept you.” The girl’s cheeks flushed with quick embarrassment. “Please excuse me—”
“Elisabeth,” Gaultry stopped her. “Don’t chide yourself. It’s pleasant for me too, to find a friendly face among these busy courtiers.” Damning Dervla’s petty games, which had left the girl so isolated, she gave the tamarin a last pat, and found her way around the musicians and through the trees to the orchard-cot.
The little cottage was built low to the ground, with thick walls and an over-heavy wadding of thatch on its roof. She hesitated at the front door, which had been wedged fully open with a time-smoothed triangle of wood. The doorway breathed coolness from the building’s interior. Looking within from the brightness of the sun, everything was dark. Gaultry smiled to herself. Tamsanne had occupied the one building in all the palace grounds that had the smell, the feel, the ancient earthiness, of her own cottage in Arleon Forest. The scent of herb-fragrant air that emanated from the cottage sent her spiraling back to her childhood, to all familiar things. To the person she thought of as her true self: a woman who could touch lightly her magic powers, but fully engage them only under duress; a woman who was bashful and reserved, save for the moment she played point on a hunt; certainly a woman too shy to trouble her elders with questions they did not wish to answer.
All qualities she could ill afford today.
“Tamsanne?” she called. “Are you busy?”
“Gaultry,” Tamsanne answered. “Please come in. I was wondering when you’d find the time to come and see me.”
Gaultry stepped into the cot’s darkness, taking a moment to adjust her eyes. The little building had a scrubbed floor of wide, pale-colored boards. The hearth had a wooden mantel and a tiny cooking range, with a sleeping niche beside it instead of in the loft. Save for these details,
Tamsanne had everything set up exactly as it would have been in her own home, from the herbs hung to dry in the rafters, to the untidily piled boxes and bags, and down to Bellows, her ancient black dog, asleep on a blanket in front of the hearth. No doubt some part of the things she was looking at belonged to the orchard-cot’s temporarily ousted crofter. Notwithstanding this, it felt comfortably familiar.
But that feeling was brought short by the subtly perfumed presence of Dame Julie, who sat with Tamsanne at the rough lime-wood table, pushing finely polished wooden pieces across a checkered gameboard. The two old women were a contrast of styles: Tamsanne wrinkled and birdlike, wearing her fusty black mourning clothes, Dame Julie slender and tidy in muted grey robes, the white tresses of her softly curled hair beautifully dressed.
“You have met,” Tamsanne said briefly, taking a turn at the game and removing one of Dame Julie’s pieces.
“Benet introduced us,” Julie said. She made a quick countermove.
“Should I come back later?” Gaultry asked. “I have some questions that need answering.”
Tamsanne rubbed the thickened knuckles of her hands, focusing on the gameboard instead of directly answering. “It’s been years since I’ve played,” she complained. “An advantage I see you’ve learned to fully exploit.”
Gaultry approached the table. Whatever the game, it looked more complicated than checkers. There were carved horsemen on both sides, a king-piece, and a pair of sorcerers. Not knowing the rules, she could not tell at first glance if one side or another was dominating.
“You’re up on me two games already,” Julie said dryly. “It would not appear that the intervening years have hurt your play.” She looked up at Gaultry. “It’s been fifty years since Tamsanne and I sat at this gameboard together, and still she makes me feel an untutored girl, giving her all the advantage.” Under these apparently innocent words, Dame Julie’s tone was mocking. It showed in the ill-concealed amusement of her eyes.
“My grandmother has always had the confidence of her power,” Gaultry said. It galled her that her hesitancy seemed to be as obvious to the two old women as it was to herself. “Age has little to do with her advantage.” As she spoke, Gaultry realized the truth behind the defiance of her words. “I may not possess such confidence myself, but my sister already has it.”
At the board, Tamsanne nodded. “Mervion does not need to use her strength to know that she has power.”
“See?” said Julie, only half amused. “She doesn’t waste breath boasting that she can beat me. She needs only imply it, and my play is thrown.”
Gaultry looked down at the board, reconstructing the course of the game—Tamsanne, she could now see, had Julie in retreat. Watching her grandmother capture another horseman, Gaultry’s mind darted to the moment when Mervion had reclaimed her Glamour-soul: her perfect composure as she had bent over Tullier, seemingly aloof to the possibility that she might need outside aid; her ease as she’d invoked the power to perform the spell; her steadiness as she’d performed it. In these things, her sister’s performance echoed Tamsanne’s. In others—such as her sister’s tortured disclaimer of her will to perform—it did not.
She stared at her grandmother’s bent head. An unpleasant idea came to her, that perhaps Tamsanne’s façade of strength, like Mervion’s, might conceal hidden doubts.
These were not matters to air in front of Dame Julie.
“I came here to speak with Tamsanne, but I have a question for you both. Why exactly was it that the Brood didn’t make Tielmark a Kingdom at the last cycle’s close?” A stillness grew in the old women as she spoke, a forbidding stillness, discouraging further questions. Gaultry, determined, ignored it and stumbled onward. “I have a right to know. The Brood-pledge ties me too. Given the prophecy’s wording, you must have known what Lousielle intended you to do, beyond rescuing Corinne. You must have understood the threat that lay in wait for your heirs, as well as the promise of release if you raised the Princess to the red throne of Kingship. Between all the members of the Brood, you must have had the power and knowledge to do it. Dame Julie said you took a vote—but why really didn’t you try?”
“What makes you think we didn’t?” Julie asked. “Do you think we were so simple as to not have seen the trap that lay ahead?”
“I don’t know,” Gaultry said doggedly. “That’s what I need you to tell me.”
“Lousielle made the Brood from seven women who had never had children,” Tamsanne interjected. Her voice was dry as paper. “And only one who was married—Gabrielle Lourdes, then newly wed. Did any of us then possess deep wisdom concerning time and fate?”
“So you did try,” Gaultry said. “What happened?”
Julie leaned back from the board and put her hands against the table’s edge. In contrast to Tamsanne’s, her fingers were long, thin, nails carefully kept. “Kingmaking means sacrifices,” she said. “How else can one man earn the right to stand in power over others? Would Tielmark’s farmers be any happier, any the richer, for having a King rather than a Prince on the throne?”
“We went through this the other night,” said Gaultry impatiently. “I already know you agree that Tielmark’s farmers would be better off ruled by a King than slaved to the Emperor of Bissanty. Do you have a plan to topple the Emperor’s throne? To end Bissanty’s constant plots to repossess our land? I’d be glad to hear it. That would save us the trouble of changing the fundamental nature of Tielmark’s rule.”
“What sacrifices would you agree to make to reach that end?” Julie countered. “Your own history of personal sacrifice is not so steady there. What were you willing to sacrifice to confirm Benet as Prince, just this last Prince’s Night?”
Gaultry swallowed. On that terrible night, Mervion’s life had been put in her hands, set in balance against the Prince’s. Even with Tielmark’s fate in the balance, she had wavered. Only Elianté and Emiera’s grace had preserved her from that terrible choice. By looking directly into the Goddess-Twins’ faces, Gaultry had found the faith to deliver Mervion into their hands.
Putting her sister’s life in the hands of her own gods was not quite the same as offering her as a sacrifice for Tielmark’s freedom.
“What could I personally sacrifice?” Gaultry asked. “I can offer no more than my own life.” Her own death. She shuddered. As if such an offering would come easily! Images of possible futures flashed through her mind. “I could only hope that the moment of choice would come on me quickly.”
“What if you needed to sacrifice more than your own life?” Julie pressed forward. “What if the gods demanded Mervion? Or Melaudiere’s soldier grandson? Would you sacrifice them, could you sacrifice them, if you knew they were not willing?”
“The gods would despise such an offering,” Gaultry said. She was sweating, the cool dark of the cottage suddenly choked, claustrophobic. “Tielmark would have a King, but the nature of the sacrifice would poison the temper of his rule. The sacrifice would not be worth the price paid in return.”
Julie nodded, lapsing back in her seat. “Your grandmother made exactly the same argument, fifty years past.”
Tamsanne picked up her king-piece and closely examined its miniature carved features. “Some among us were willing to sacrifice our scruples to make Corinne Queen. Others were more squeamish. And Corinne simply was not ready to choose for herself. At that time, for her, the immensity of fulfilling the God-pledge seemed a great enough gift.”
Gaultry could not read her grandmother’s expression. Despite the oblique phrasing of her response, Gaultry knew that Tamsanne would not have been one of the number who had foregone their scruples. “Tell me what happened,” she said. “I need to know.”
“As I told you before, we took a vote,” Dame Julie said. “It was me, Tamsanne, and Melaudiere against Richielle, Delcora, and Marie Laconte.”
“And Melaney Sevenage took your side,” Gaultry guessed.
“It took some convincing.” Julie glanced at Tamsanne. “It was not your grandmother’s arguments that brought her to our side.”
“But you won,” Gaultry insisted.
“Maybe.” Dame Julie took the king-piece from Tamsanne and set it back in its square on the board. “Except for the problem that failing to overcome our scruples meant that our lives and those of our families would be evermore bonded to the lives of our princes.”
“Did it really have to be that way?” Gaultry asked. “You could have chosen against having children. You must have guessed the fate to which you had doomed us.”
“That would have been one solution,” Dame Julie agreed, her voice like ice. “Unfortunately for some of us, choice did not operate in the decision to become a mother. Aha!” She moved a sorcerer from the back of a line of horsemen and placed it next to Tamsanne’s king. “I win at last!” She glanced at the older witch. “You weren’t concentrating.”

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