Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (42 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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“High Priestess Dervla came to visit my mother tonight. Very late. The servants came to wake her, and the commotion woke me in its turn—when there’s a breeze, I can hear Mama’s bell from my bed. My private
stair lets into my mother’s study. I heard voices, and I started down to find out who had come. Once I heard what they were saying, I could not reveal myself. I should have returned to bed, but what I heard—I couldn’t make myself stop listening.
“My mother has close ties to Bissanty.” Elisabeth glanced down, embarrassed, a touch of her girlishness returning. “You know, perhaps, about my sister Anna?”
Gaultry shook her head. “Should I?”
Elisabeth flushed. “They started out talking about Anna. Beaumorreau and I are the lucky ones. We were born with mother’s face. Anna was not so fortunate. I’ll show you—” From beneath her robe she slipped a tiny locket, appended to the gold chain, and snapped it open, revealing four tiny miniatures. Gaultry tipped it toward the light. There was little to see—how could portraits so tiny reveal details? One feature, however, was instantly evident. The artist had either been fastidious in accuracy, or most unkind. Anna Climens’s face was set apart from those of her siblings by the unusual grey cast of her skin.
“Her father was a Bissanty man?” That grey was a pallor Gaultry had seen only in the highest born Bissanty nobles, men like Coltro Lepulio: well-connected, dangerous, and full of ambition.
“Mother was Tielmark’s Envoy to Bissanty that year.” Elisabeth said bitterly. “She could hardly have been less discreet.”
“What does this have to do with tonight’s business?” Disturbed, Gaultry let the locket swing free. The ties between the two countries were dangerous enough without such foolishness. She could not believe that Argat Climens would have got herself with child by a high-born Bissanty man for love. Elisabeth, perhaps sensing the unsympathetic trend of Gaultry’s mind, hastily tucked the locket out of sight.
“The High Priestess had discovered the name of the man who fathered my sister. Also she had secured some of my mother’s correspondence. Things she had written to men in Bissanty. Not just Anna’s father. Others too. My mother’s Bissanty friends are well placed—does she know any other kind? However it was, Dervla had their letters. There was nothing political about Tielmark in them, but they had furnished her with the names of the men my mother had known in Bissanty.
“My mother began to argue. At first, she didn’t seem to care that Dervla had her letters. She said a woman’s private affairs did not rise to treason, that she was willing to declare that openly before all the Prince’s court. She said some ugly things,” dark lashes fluttered on Elisabeth’s
cheeks, momentarily shuttering her expression, “but I suppose it was brave of her that she was willing to admit her indiscretions in a public forum. From what she said, Dervla had threatened her with this matter before, and my mother was holding firm that she had done nothing for which she could be condemned. ‘Take me to trial tomorrow,’ my mother challenged her. ‘My reputation can weather it.’
“Dervla stopped arguing and laughed. She said that she couldn’t be held accountable if my mother chose to throw prudence to the wind. ‘Do you think I would be here tonight if my evidence didn’t rise against more than your reputation? I’ve been talking to Envoy Lepulio,’ she said. ‘Do you imagine that he’ll continue to shield you? Talk to him again, and you will find his song has shifted. In exchange for what I can give him, he’s arranged that your past lovers will bear witness against you. You’ll be crucified in court. Not just you, but your children too. The house of Vaux-Torres will lose everything. And perhaps Benet will even reward me by allowing me to appoint a successor for your lands.’
“Mama refused to believe her. She insisted that the Envoy would never collude in fabricating evidence against her, whatever he’d told Dervla. The High Priestess got angry, but still my mother wouldn’t believe her. Finally the High Priestess lost patience, and she told my mother exactly what coin she’d offered to buy Lepulio’s cooperation.
“Dervla has a weapon. An ancient blade, forged in the furnace of the past. It holds power enough to kill a god’s own child—leaving the one who wields it untainted by that god’s curse.” Elisabeth stopped and glanced at Gaultry, who had startled and shifted.
A god’s own child.
That was what Tullier was, now that Bissanty’s Tielmaran crown had been acceded to him.
“Go on,” Gaultry said. “You have my full attention.”
“Dervla told Mama that if the Emperor wanted to keep his throne for his own heirs, killing the boy with this knife was the surest way to make that happen. She said it had been agreed that she would give the knife into Bissanty hands on their oath-bond that they would use it as she dictated. The silence that answered her told me that my mother believed her. Not only that, but that she believed that whatever hold she might have had upon the Envoy, this offer of Dervla’s outweighed it. Finally she asked Dervla what she must do, and what guarantees Dervla would give her that her family would be protected.
“‘A small thing,’ Dervla said. But that ‘small thing’ was for my
mother to arrange for your assassin-boy to fall into Bissanty hands! Dervla did not want any connection to this action until after the Bissanties had completed their part. Then, once the boy was dead, Benet would be told the whole truth.
“That made my mother angry. She said that if Benet knew the truth, she’d lose everything. ‘The boy is under Benet’s protection,’ she told Dervla. ‘If I were to arrange for him to fall to the Bissanties, Benet would skin me alive for betraying his word, whatever he personally earned by it.’”
“How did Dervla answer?” Gaultry asked. Her mouth tasted ashy, but she tried to keep her question calm. The knife Dervla wanted to give to the Bissanties—it could only be the
Ein Raku
blade, the Kingmaker knife Tamsanne had described to her in the orchard. Dervla, it seemed, wanted to take two birds with one stone. Raise Benet to King, and use the Bissanties to rid Tielmark of Tullier’s presence.
“She called my mother a fool, and said that Benet would reward her for having the courage he lacked—that Benet should never have pledged his protection to the boy in the first place. My mother said one last thing to argue—she told Dervla that she didn’t know Benet so well if she imagined he’d reward skullduggery. Then—then she agreed to do what Dervla wanted.”
Elisabeth unclasped her hands and stood, flaring the hem of her robe nervously around her. “I hope all that’s right. It’s what I remember, even if I don’t have every word correct. After that it seemed like it was just insults: My mother was defeated, and Dervla took her chance to rub that in.” She touched her hands to her face, a tired gesture briefly covering her eyes. “For all her faults, mama is passionate for the Vaux-Torres’s land, and she loves us, the children of her flesh. To protect that, I don’t doubt that she’ll do what Dervla told her.”
Elisabeth paused. “I can’t let that happen. I won’t. After Dervla left, I went back to my bed and tried to decide what I ought to do. Finally it came to me—if you knew what was being planned, there was a chance you could prevent it. I thought maybe that if you heard it first from me, you could stop it in some way that did not touch my mother’s honor.”
Gaultry sat back, studying the girl’s anxious face, her hunted air. Elisabeth had brought no proof for anything she was saying—nothing but the circumstances of her panicked arrival. She struggled to see the gain in anything Elisabeth said being lies. It didn’t surprise her that Dervla wanted Tullier out of the way, that she might even treat with the Bissanties
in order to get him out of Tielmark. But why choose the Duchess of Vaux-Torres for her tool? “Did Dervla say
when
she wanted your mother to turn Tullier over to the Bissanties?”
Elisabeth’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think so. She talked about the God-King’s month and the alignment of the stars. When she talked about the right time to tell Benet what had been done, she said something about the Full Moon—as though she expected Benet to be back in Princeport before the end of the month. I don’t know how that could be possible when he’s just committed himself to battle on the Lanai front.”
Gaultry glanced at the grate. From where she sat, the brittle strands of the fetish crown were just visible beneath the poker and shovel. “Did Dervla mention anything about why she came breaking in on your mother in the wee hours of the morning? What brought that on? Wouldn’t it have been more discreet to wait until some more reasonable hour?”
“I don’t know.” Elisabeth seemed genuinely puzzled. “My mother didn’t question it. Dervla might have told her before I started to listen.”
“Maybe,” Gaultry said. She looked again at the burnt strands of crown. She would willingly now stake odds that Dervla was connected to that attack. When the spell failed, Dervla must have sensed it—and rushed to string another arrow to her bow.
A soft knock at the door interrupted her train of thought. Elisabeth shot Gaultry a frightened look. “My mother—”
“We’re expecting a caller,” Gaultry reassured her. “You needn’t be scared. But why don’t you wait outside with Tullier while I answer it?” Elisabeth cast doubtful looks over her shoulder as Gaultry chivied her out onto the terrace, but did not argue openly, a small favor for which Gaultry was grateful.
Tamsanne’s hand was raised to knock again as Gaultry opened the door. Looking up at her granddaughter, her head cocked inquisitively. She slowly lowered her hand.
“There you are. I almost thought—” Tamsanne’s dark eyes, shadowed in the dim light of the hall, seemed uncharacteristically unsettled. “Well, never mind what I almost thought. Are you going to invite me in?” She was swathed in dark robes, a pouch bulging with leaves at her belt. Unlike Elisabeth, in her white beacon of a garment, Tamsanne was one with the shadows of the night. It must have taken the man Tullier had sent great effort to find her.
“We weren’t sure when you would get here,” Gaultry said. “I guessed you would be out.”
Tamsanne nodded. “Your messenger roused half the garden staff trying to find me.” She stepped inside. “So my visit here will be no secret, whatever prompted you to call me. I trust your need was truly urgent.”
“Grandmother,” Gaultry said, confused by this half-scolding greeting. It was still strange to think of this woman as her direct forebear, rather than as her great aunt. Tamsanne was so tiny, so dark and bird-delicate, where Gaultry and her sister were long-boned, fiery and robust. This woman had raised and nurtured them so tenderly, yet never once had she revealed their direct blood kinship. Her trust in this woman was so strong—and yet so fragile. “We’ve had an unexpected visitor. It’s Elisabeth Climens. I’ll need to get rid of her before we can talk.”
Tamsanne. raised her brows. “You are not alone? There is a woman here in your chambers?” A quiver of something like relief shook her voice.
“Yes, but it wasn’t something I expected.” Gaultry did not understand her grandmother’s tone. “Because of what happened to make us call you, Tullier and I went to the temple to make prayer to the Twins. Elisabeth was here when we got back.” Gaultry hastily sketched Elisabeth’s account of Dervla’s late-night visit to her mother. “The timing was a little odd. Elisabeth must have arrived here almost immediately after we left.”
“So you have not in fact been here in this room in all the time since you sent for me?”
Gaultry could not see why her grandmother kept harkening to this point. Was she annoyed that Gaultry and Tullier had not waited in the room? “I tried to make sure we were back before you arrived,” she said apologetically.
Tamsanne’s reaction was not what Gaultry expected. She smiled, as if at an irresistible private joke. “So, you were not here at all then.” She touched Gaultry’s shoulder gently, almost as if she were welcoming her back after a surprise absence. “Yes, that makes better sense.”
“Better sense than what?”
Tamsanne shook her head, her amusement passing. “Later. First we must consider these new threats. You say Dervla threatened Argat Climens through her children? How disappointing.” Her expression darkened. “Our new High Priestess is truly old Delcora’s child.”
Gaultry hesitated, guessing that Tamsanne must have been remembering the threats Delcora had described in her notes, but the old woman added nothing further about either the High Priestess or her mother. “I need to speak to the girl.” Tamsanne took a step toward the terrace. “Let me speak to the girl before you send her packing.”
“Wait, Grandmother. The matter for which I called you—” Gaultry touched Tamsanne’s shoulder and gestured toward the grate. She did not want her to talk to Elisabeth in ignorance of all that had preceded her arrival. “It lies there. Elisabeth was not my first visitor tonight.”
The black sticks of crown lurked balefully, beneath the collection of fireplace implements Gaultry had set atop them. Tamsanne took a quick look and drew a hissing breath in between her teeth. “At least the iron stilled it. That was a clever thought. Has Elisabeth seen this?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then call her in. We’ll deal with her first.”
Gaultry stuck her head out the terrace door. “Elisabeth,” she called softly. The girl was a pale shape across the terrace, the dark shape that was Tullier close by her side. “My grandmother would speak with you.”

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