Sasharia En Garde (21 page)

o0o

The next morning she toured the kitchens, asked questions
about the baking and cooking, tasted and complimented everything. She saw that
there was little chance of egress there, as the kitchens lay directly adjacent
to the expanded guard barracks.

At noon she toured the housekeeping area and introduced
herself to Mistress Eban’s replacement. The woman was so stiff, so wary, that
Atanial knew immediately she’d received stringent orders about communicating
with the king’s “guest.” So she kept her questions confined to cloth, weaving,
sewing and the current styles in Sartor. By the time Atanial had inspected the
lyre-backed chairs with the cushions embroidered with queensblossom, the woman
had unbent enough to flick a look her way.

Atanial gave her a smile, but left knowing she’d met defeat
there.

o0o

Canary invited her to dinner.

Again they were alone.

By then she was ready to begin the first tier of questions.

“Where is Dannath Randart?” she asked.

Canardan grinned. “You want to see him again?”

He gave her such a comically skeptical look that she replied
tartly, “I was hoping he’d dropped dead. Preferably with a bolt in the back.”

“So you heard about that, eh?”

“Who hasn’t?” She spread her hands and then grabbed up a
fresh corn bun, noting as she did the faint color along Canardan’s
still-handsome cheekbones. “I find it utterly reprehensible, and frankly hope
that he’s on the other side of the kingdom.”

“He’s going out to sea,” Canardan said. “Far enough to keep
you from one another’s sphere.”

“My second question is, what have you done with Mistress
Eban and the others?”

“Nothing, as yet. That depends upon a number of things.
Including you.”

“If you dare try to hold their lives hostage in order to
force me into something, I will shout it from the rooftops.” Her fists thumped
on either side of her plate.

He patted the air between them. “No, no. I know better than
that. I should be more clear. I believe more lives will be saved if I keep all of
you safely here until the kingdom settles.”

She sighed. “Even if you do find Sasha, and if by some
miracle she agreed to your proposal, how could a marriage possibly settle the
kingdom?”

“It would go a long way toward reestablishing good will.” He
saluted her with his wine goblet. “Join the names, all that.”

“But if you do get her, and threaten my life—”

He looked skyward. “What did I just tell you? I might add
that my wayward son, who seldom notices a wall until he smashes into it, would
probably object as loudly as your daughter. He thinks he’s quite a catch. When
he isn’t following bards around, he’s off flirting with every pretty face he
meets. And apparently they all seem to like him. No princesses, though,” Canary
added regretfully.

Atanial couldn’t help but laugh. “It sounds like he’d much
prefer a minstrel.”

“If she’s pretty and she paints, he would probably marry her
out of hand.” Canardan gestured with his butter knife.

“When do I get to meet him?” Atanial put her elbows on the
table and her chin in her hands. Math’s voice came back from all those years
ago,
Jehan’s a fine boy. And smarter than
his father thinks, despite all the daydreaming
.

To which Glathan had said in his gruff growl,
Maybe because of it. He learned early to
keep his mouth shut. But we don’t know if what he’s thinking is to our benefit
or not.

Which is why I’m going
to write him, since no one else seems to be doing it,
Math had said, and
despite Glathan’s shake of the head he’d been true to his word.

Atanial had never found out if the boy all the way across
the continent had written back. Math had never mentioned him again, and Atanial
wondered now if that was because of Glathan’s disapproval, or if the
correspondence had ended with the one letter.

The pause had grown into a silence, Canardan frowning into
the middle distance. But he was watchful for all that. All she did was look up,
and the flick of her eyelashes seemed to release him from his reverie.

“I’ll see what I can arrange, but right now he has duties at
the academy.” Canardan drank, then set his goblet down, his thumb aligning it
with an absent stroke just beyond the point of his knife. “Do you remember the
midsummer games?”

“The cadets and their demonstrations. Relay races through
the hills. And the yacht races in the harbor.”

“Well, we’ve had to cancel the yacht races, but the relays
and the rest will go on as usual.”

“Why no yachting? I thought the academy is where you got
your navy captains as well as your guard captains?”

“Yes, and we’ll hold ’em anon. But the merchant codes were
pinched by a pirate a few days ago, and we have reason to believe he might try
to slip into either of the two main harbors. Those same codes are being used by
countless legitimate merchants, so we don’t know if he’s coming or already
there in some kind of disguise. We already know he has a way of stealing in,
doing untold damage, and slipping out unheeded.” Atanial saw the telltale signs
of anger in the tightened skin at the corners of his eyes.

Her brow furrowed. “Is this the pirate who holds my
daughter?”

He spread his hands. “How can we know? He doesn’t exactly
communicate with us.”

“Back to your son.” She set her goblet down. “I’d like very
much to meet him.”

As a distant bell rang, Canardan got to his feet. “Speaking
of whom. I thought we might see if one of his charities is worth what I pay
out. Are you finished?”

Atanial rose, shook out her skirts, and took his offered
arm. Canardan led her through the informal dining room, made of pale peach
marble, through the formal dining room that she remembered from the old days.
Then it was silver marble to match the Zhavalieshin silver-and-crimson
firebird. They walked along the balcony above the main entryway to the palace.
From there he took her through the private door to the royal box above the private
theater, which was tucked behind the palace’s enormous ballroom.

Canardan appreciated her surprise and delight when she saw
the lit stage, empty and waiting. The rest of the low circular tiers of chairs
were empty. Only their box had a single candle. Two liveried servants stood by,
one with wine, another with extra cushions, as Canardan guided Atanial to one
end of the beautiful rosewood couch with its fine velvet cushions. He sat next
to her and nodded at the servants.

They poured honey-colored wine in the goblets on the little
tables at either end of the couch, and set out porcelain plates of tiny
lemon-and-custard pastries, layered delicately so that one could take a bite
without experiencing any gooshes of custard or splatters of crumbs. Next to the
plates, crystal vases of just-budding white roses breathed a delicate scent.

All very thoughtfully arranged, she thought. For?

Another campaign.

Down on the stage, a master illusionist stepped out in the
black gown of his calling, and sat upon a stool at one side. Prince Jehan’s
“charity” was a company of first-rate players. The custom for the master
illusionists to come forward onto the stage instead of remaining behind had
been introduced twenty years before, so people could watch the magician at work
making the scenes. The old days of one or perhaps two rudimentary illusions
cast and left up for the duration of the play were gone. The subtle
metamorphosis of scene sets behind the players had become art, as it had been
centuries before.

In the intervening twenty years, the gestures had taken on
stylized grace, reminding Atanial of a person on Earth performing poetry in
sign language. Hidden musicians played on flutes and horns, evoking a garden of
birds. The stage glittered with a rainbow splash of color as a setting
coalesced into being.

The setting was a garden terrace, with tiers of flowers at
various levels. Atanial recalled something about Sartoran gardens, how they
might take a century or more to properly mature. Colendi gardens could take
even longer.

The players strolled out, wearing layers of silk fashioned
in complicated folds, the colors subtle gradations of shades from rose to gold.
They gathered around a young man in layers of celestial blue.

Atanial tightened all over, bracing for some obvious message
aimed at her through the performance, but before very long even she, relatively
ignorant of this world’s history, recognized the legendary story of the
brilliant Prince Tivonais of Sartor. If he lived, it was a couple thousand
years ago.

This was a musical comedy, about the one woman who did not
surrender to his incredible charms. Any message was confined to the varieties
of human passion and love. Atanial sat back and relaxed, chuckling at the
ancient jokes about human actions and reactions that hadn’t changed much in
millennia, whichever world you happen to be on. She sipped the wine, which
tasted like liquid gold.

Gradually her focus on the stage widened to include Canardan
so close beside her. One of his hands tapped out a counter-rhythm to a dance,
while players whirled and stepped and leaped on stage. She heard his breathing
as he leaned back, eyes shut, during a beautifully sung lament.

As the play drew to its end, Tivonais sang his serio-comic
song about loss. The singer revealed just the right touch of mockery in the
relative sorrows of a handsome prince who has everything and everyone he wants.
He asks for a single gift from his beloved, a white rose.

While Atanial tried to remember if the white-rose custom
among new lovers came before the play, or if the play establish the custom, her
body was aware of fingers tracing, ever so lightly, along her shoulder. Her
other
shoulder. A well-shaped arm
touching her back.

It was pleasant—she had to admit it was pleasant—that
despite the years, the dashed hopes and disappointments, the betrayals and
chases, he was still attracted to her. Either that, or he was a master
tactician.

But recognition of your opponent’s skill in battle is not
cause for surrender.

For a moment she considered jumping up and screaming,
You’re trying to seduce me!
Oh, how fun
it would be to see him embarrassed. Except he wouldn’t be, he’d laugh. No, the
embarrassment would be all those players down there, now taking their bow for
their audience of two. They did not deserve to have their beautiful work
reduced to a mere hissing of gossip along the corridors.

She stood. The fingers lifted away. She clapped loudly, then
scooped up the white roses from the crystal vase and tossed them one by one
down onto the stage.

Below, the young man playing Tivonais, perhaps still in
character, made a debonair gesture as he bent, swept up a rose, kissed it and
saluted her with it.

She kissed her fingertips and flung her hands out wide, and
the other players all clapped too.

Tivonais took another bow. Atanial was aware of Canardan
standing beside her, clapping as well, his profile sardonic.

The players bowed a last time, then filed off, the exquisite
acoustics carrying back the sound of their whispering.

Atanial turned away from the empty stage and walked to the
door, perforce Canardan following, his blue eyes narrowed with not-quite humor
as he made a gesture dismissing the waiting servants.

She waited until they were gone and said, “Yes, I felt it.
No, I won’t act on it. Yes, I was a pompous twit when I first came here all
those years ago, but I do not have to justify any actions except—” Even here
there were pitfalls, for she dared not suggest that Math was alive, that she
might know where.

Nothing but landmines around.

The awareness chilled her spirit like nothing had for years.
But she was not a girl in her twenties any more, to indulge in screaming
stomping fits because she’s so very right while everyone around is wrong,
wrong, wrong.

She held her hands out to him, palms toward him. “Age builds
its own internal cities, you have to admit that. Whatever your castle walls are
made of, I don’t know. I don’t know if I can believe you if you try to tell me,
because there lies behind us the matter of the past. Here’s what you can
believe from me. Between the garden of appreciation of your attractions—and
they are there, as they always were—and the road to action is the wall round my
own castle, a wall deep and high, called trust.”

He had the grace to take her hands and the poise to lightly
kiss her fingers. And let her go.

Then he walked away, and the silent servants conducted her
back to her rooms.

War Commander Dannath Randart arrived in Ellir not long
after midnight. Two days of very hard riding, sleep and meals scanted while the
horses were changed at military posts along the way, brought him tired, aching,
and irritable to the west gate, which is where the guard barracks was located.

Randart’s vile temper eased slightly when he saw the walls
patrolled by alert guards, the gatekeepers awake and speedy once his trumpeter
had blown the king’s signal.

He jumped off his sweaty horse and left his troop to rouse
the stable hands as he strode upstairs to the commander’s tower. He arrived at
the same time his younger brother Orthan did, Orthan fastening his tunic with
one hand and carrying his boots with the other.

“Dannath,” Orthan Randart said by way of greeting, blinking
himself awake.

“Any word on Prince Jehan?”

“His personal guard arrived at sunset.” Orthan fell heavily
into his chair behind the desk. The joints in the wood creaked. “But the prince
wasn’t with ’em. Apparently there’s some girl somewhere outside of town he
simply had to visit, and they left him there. But he promised to be along by
morning.”

Randart sighed, and when a hastily dressed cadet runner
arrived, he ordered coffee and whatever food could be made hot the fastest.