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Authors: Katya Reimann

Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (9 page)

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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Sieur Jumery, something flickering and unsettling moving in him, returned his attention abruptly to the foreman. “Tell me the rest.”
When the man finished, Sieur Jumery eased forward, put his hand on Martin’s bridle, then moved close to his stirrup. “You,” he said. “You who are traveling with this sorcerer-woman. Do I know you? Should I know you?”
Martin shifted his foot, turning his toe so it did not point at the man’s face. “I think I know you, old man,” he said softly. Then, louder, “My name is Martin Stalker, good Sieur. I may once have been known to you as Martin Montgarret, heir to Seafrieg County.”
Gaultry stiffened. Martin only identified himself by the name and title he had forsworn in circumstances where he felt dangerously threatened; further, his personal connections to the titled classes meant he seldom bothered himself with punctilious regard for the titles of lords and ministers. What had he recollected of the man’s history to make him respond in this way?
“Of course,” the justice said. “The Duchess of Melaudiere’s grandson. It has been a decade—more—since I heard the name. You fought at Pontoeil with my sons—that terrible summer the Lanai raided east and burnt half the old town. Fergaunt’s son has taken his spurs, you know. Just this past spring. He’s already left for the border.”
“I remember Fergaunt,” Martin said. “He was a bold man.”
“Then there was that ugly business with your wife and your father’s title … .” Sieur Jumery’s gaze drifted from Martin to Gaultry, and he did not complete the thought. “Who is this woman?”
“This is Lady Gaultry Bias.” Martin did not look at Gaultry as he made the introduction. Something in his tone made Gaultry guess that he was willing her to keep her mouth shut. “If you have recent news from Princeport, you will recognize the name.”
The old man nodded, his eyes unpleasant and intense. A measured pause went by, as he digested Martin’s information. Then he left Martin’s stirrup and came to Gaultry’s. He held up a frail, blue-veined hand, as if to assist her down from the saddle.
“Thank you, Sieur, but I will not trouble you.” Something intangibly threatening in him made her slide out of her saddle without touching him. She made a little bob, curtsying, to cover her refusal of his touch.
The watery blue eyes studied her. The justice was a tall man, for all the height he had lost to age, and he looked a little down at her. Under his scrutiny, the skin tingled at her scalp. Then Sieur Jumery smiled, revealing age-yellowed teeth. “You did great service to our country this past Prince’s night. I must say, I never thought to meet the woman who brought our blessed Prince to his full power. I am too old now to have thought of traveling to see her, and I never dreamed she would come to me.”
“We’re on the Prince’s business now,” Martin interjected, coming to stand by Gaultry. “We want to see justice done for what happened at the bridge, but Benet has called us to return to Princeport and we are not at liberty to linger.” Strictly speaking, this was true: The Prince had ordered all members of the Common Brood to make haste to Princeport—six weeks before, at a time when they had been no more than two miles beyond the capital’s boundary stones. Martin, of course, omitted mention of their extensive divergence from strict regard for Benet’s edict. “We must be judged here for what we have or have not done, and then we will be on our way.”
“On your way?” Sieur Jumery said. His gaze shifted past Gaultry to the cart. “Only if what you would have me believe is true. Beyond that—I was told that you have wounded. And I see for myself you’ve brought me some bodies. That does not argue for any swift leave-taking.”
“I doubt anyone will claim those men,” Martin replied. “They are foreigners—Bissanties. Whoever set them to ambush us won’t want their name known.”
“Fergaunt’s son has been sent to the Valle de Brai.” Sieur Jumery abruptly changed the subject as he reached to touch a foot that protruded stiffly over the cart’s back rail. “He writes me that it is cold land, and hard. Have you been there, Martin Stalker?”
“I have, Sieur.”
“You must tell me something of the ground there.” The old justice stood up on his toes and looked into the cart. “This one alive here—is she your woman? Can you talk?” he asked the Sharif, sitting grimly wedged between two bodies, her proud face full of pain and tauter than ever.
“She does not have our language.”
“But she is yours?”
Martin nodded. “She is a war-leader from the far south. We hope to reward her service by returning her to Ardain.”
“And the boy?” The watery gaze took in Tullier. “Yours too? These people are not fit to travel.”
Their escort’s foreman, troubled by the justice’s air of placid curiosity, could no longer hold his peace. “Sieur Ingoleur, you can see for yourself that these people have conspired with foreigners and demons. They used that power to destroy Sizor’s Bridge. Look! See their demon-familiar, straight up from Achavell!”
The tamarin, as if on cue, raised its head from the Sharif’s lap. It regarded the old man with its luminous, smoke-colored eyes. With its slitted crimson-red pupils and fierce pointed snout, the little creature did indeed look somewhat demonic. Sieur Jumery gave it a curious look but did not overtly startle.
“This woman cast a spell at the bridge,” the foreman insisted. “She tore it to tinder with the very vine that had been set by the Great Twins’ magic to mend it. How anyone will get to market now—”
“Do you know who this woman is?” Sieur Jumery pointed at Gaultry. The foreman shook his head. “She is the Prince’s Glamour-witch, Gaultry Blas. If you don’t know the name, you’ll have heard at least how she and her twin sister called the gods to earth to bless our Prince’s wedding?”
The foreman goggled. “But Sieur, the bridge—”
“Enough,” Sieur Jumery said. “Look here. Have none of you the wits to see?” He turned back to the cart. “These corpses bear clear witness that you have misunderstood what you saw. These men are wearing Bissanty soldiers’ boots.” Gripping the cart’s rail for balance, the justice pushed up the puttee worn by the nearest corpse. Embossed in the leather, near the top of the boot, was a square with a cross drawn in from its corners, the sign of Imperial Bissanty. “What honest Bissanty men would lie waiting for travelers at Sizor’s?”
“I do not know,” the foreman said, rattled. A bluff farmer, he obviously had heard only in its vaguest outlines an account of recent doings at court, but he recognized the imperial mark. “We did not look at their boots when we laid them in the cart.” His manner shifting, he cast Gaultry a glance trending toward a friendly reverence. “Truly, this is the Prince’s Glamour-witch? The strong one, who remade the God-pledge? We have been very wrong, good Sieur. Were these men Imperial spies? And to think, they would have harmed our Prince’s guardian.” The man seemed genuinely upset.
Sieur Jumery repossessed his orb of office from his servant. “We will lay these men in the stable,” he pronounced, holding up the shiny sphere.
“Their bodies will be searched for further signs as to who might have plotted this attack. I will question this man Martin Stalker and Lady Blas, looking thoroughly into this matter before I dismiss it, but I suspect it will be swiftly proved that they acted in their own defense.”
He raised the orb over his head, steadying it in both hands. His tone took on an incantatory cadence, the tremor of age momentarily ceasing. “So say I, Sieur Jumery Ingoleur, Prince’s Justice, speaking by my right as the voice of Benet, Prince of Tielmark; vesting this last day of Rios Sword-god’s moon with my authority and Benet’s. For verily, the young hay lies cut in rows upon the meadows, and Midsummer Days are on us, come next morning’s dawn.” Lowering the orb, he met the foreman’s eyes. “As Rios and all the Great Twelve are in me, do you accept my ruling?”
The foreman drew a long breath. “Sieur, as the Great Twins rule me and Tielmark together, it is not mine to oppose you.” The other men of their escort, once so keen to administer justice on their own account, nervously nodded in agreement.
Gaultry, although relieved, could not herself quell a pang of apprehension at the invocation Sieur Jumery had chosen.
Rios Sword-god, First Harvester, the Shining Blade of Justice, was not a deity to call upon lightly. He was a cold god, and seldom moved by mercy or forgiveness. If the old justice made a practice of calling Rios to witness his judgments, it was little wonder that the locals hesitated to air their complaints before him.
“Now, is there anything more you would have of me?” Sieur Jumery waggled a finger. “Speak now, the gods are watching. Tomorrow is Midsummer Market. Have you no business there?”
“Sieur—that’s my cart those men are laid in.” The farmer at the foreman’s side would have said more, but the old man quelled him with a sharp gesture.
“Very well. Unload the dead in my stable. Then you can take your cart away with you.” Sieur Jumery addressed his serving man, “Girian, go quickly and bring Hesbain and Gisella to the guest quarters. No, better still, tell Hesbain to come directly here to tend to the wounded.
“Your people will need a night at least to recover.” The justice turned to Martin. “You’ll serve our Prince best by allowing them their rest.”
Martin swung down from his horse. “Good Sieur, we are in your hands.”
“Martin,” Gaultry whispered, as they jostled together between their
horses’ bodies, tying up stirrups and securing reins. “What’s going on? Why is everyone so timorous as they defer to him?”
“Rios aside?”
She nodded.
“The Ingoleurs used to be a very influential family,” Martin whispered back. “Until Corinne was made Princess, fifty years past. I haven’t heard the name for years—but I should have known it immediately. The family is older than the hills. Rumor would have it that their land ties were once tremendously strong. That makes for strange loyalties—beyond Benet, deep to Tielmark’s very earth. So keep your distance. We’re going to be trapped here for the night at best, longer if your Tullier won’t wake up.” As the servants took charge of their horses, he took her arm. “Try to help the Sharif, and take some rest. I’ll keep with the good justice and find out what can be learned from the bodies.” He bowed to the old man as he drew Gaultry onto the manor’s front step. “My lady Blas is tired, Sieur. As you heard, she took a tumble in the water when the bridge went down. But she will see our wounded settled before she takes her own rest.”
“That is as I would expect,” the old man said. Once more Gaultry had a sense of something intangible, unsettled, rising from him. “I hear tale that you are Tamsanne of Arleon Forest’s blood,” he added softly, coming near her.
“She is my grandmother,” Gaultry replied, before she remembered Martin’s advice to keep her mouth shut.
“So it is true,” the old man breathed. “When you were up on the horse I thought I saw the likeness. At first I thought my old eyes must have deceived me—” He shook himself, and then, rather awfully, he smiled. “Forgive me. I am an old man. My memories have become confused. It pleasures me, in Rios’s name, to offer you my hospitality.”
Once again, that curious invocation of the Sword-god—appropriate to the day and season, but a little perilous to call down, outside ritual. Gaultry guessed that the old man took his role as justice almost too seriously—that was enough to make any man fear him. Fairness and justice were not always the same.
But—he had known Tamsanne. That was interesting. Her grandmother had not been a public figure for fifty years. Gaultry had met no one outside of those very close to the center of the Prince’s power who had any memory of her, and she herself knew little about Tamsanne’s life as a young woman. “You knew Tamsanne?”
“I was there when she and the others of the Brood helped Princess Corinne fulfill the Tielmaran God-pledge.” The old man made a self-deprecatory gesture. “Myself, along with the rest of Tielmark’s court. I was not at the heart of the action on that blessed day, but at least I was there to serve witness.”
The arrival of Sieur Jumery’s healer, accompanied by a handful of other servants and a stretcher, interrupted the chance for further questions. The rail at the back of the cart was unhooked, and Tullier’s body gently slid out. Gaultry, exhaustion tugging at her, leaned against Martin and watched as they settled the boy on the stretcher. The Sharif managed to stagger out under her own strength, on the verge of collapse. The tamarin, losing the lap, leapt lightly down and into Gaultry’s arms. She stroked its soft fur, grateful for the comfort of its warm body. Tullier’s half-grown puppy, still in the cart, whimpered at the jump and had to be dragged down.
“Take them inside,” Sieur Jumery said. “Call Didion if you need some muscle to help with the woman’s shoulder.”
“Go on.” Martin fairly pushed her toward the door in the stretcher’s wake. “Go with them.”
The front door let into a tall but modest-sized entry clad with old-hewn stone. A massive, richly carved staircase of dark-colored wood curled up to the second floor. As with the manor’s exterior, everything was grand but worn. Sieur Jumery’s servants maneuvered the stretcher up the somewhat narrow and constricted steps and along a hallway to a plain white-washed chamber. There they laid Tullier on the bed, comatose but steadily breathing, and shut his pup in to watch him.
BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
4.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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