Shrouded: Heartstone Book One (17 page)

Dolfan smiled and bowed again. He backed toward the sheds, watched until they’d both boarded and the hatch slammed down into place. He waited until the currents shifted and the ship shot out over the incline before sagging against the wall.

What had he expected? He could refuse to play Shayd and Mofitan’s game until the Shroud faded and blew away. It wouldn’t change the fact that he was a traitor. In his heart, he’d already committed that sin repeatedly.

“
I
t’s so fragile
.” Vashia stroked the instrument. The thin wood felt like foam in her hands, the lute barely constituting more than a long neck that flared slightly around the sound hole. Her finger found the strings and she plucked an experimental note. “I don’t know if I can.”

“It’s simple.” Tondil lounged on the couch nearest her chair and played a twin lute. His fingers plucked and strummed alternately, but she still couldn’t work out how he could muster so many notes from three strings. The instruments she’d learned on had at least eight a piece. “You’ll get the hang of it.”

She sighed and listened to him instead. The music trilled under his adept fingers. Peryl hummed along, leaning against Tondil’s couch and tapping a matching rhythm against the floor tiles with his fingers. His milky ring shimmered in the room’s light and the glow of the Shroud blushing beyond the windows.

“You all wear the same ring,” Vashia said.

Tondil nodded and kept playing.

“They’re Council rings,” Peryl explained. “Every prince wears one.”

“The stone?” The cabochons looked like agate, pearly white with faint banding, but she couldn’t be certain from a distance, and she’d never wanted to get close enough to examine Haftan’s. “Is it agate?”

“Feldspar.” Peryl shook his head. “Like the Heart.”

“The Heart?”

As Tondil’s playing faded, the room’s mood grew somber. He took over for Peryl, and his voice lent a touch of magic to the story. “The stones are mined straight from the Heart vein,” he said. “The tears are supposed to carry some of the stone’s powers.”

“Powers?” Did they all believe in the Heart nonsense, or, like Haftan, did they play along only for appearances?

“The matrix that our Heart grows from protrudes in other places,” Tondil continued, “though the other crystals are smaller. The palace was built around the main point, of course.”

“Of course.” Vashia watched the Shroud swirl and frowned. “They do the other ceremonies there? At the other points?”

“She misses her friends,” Peryl guessed. “Tondil, play something happier.”

“It’s fine.” She couldn’t help but chuckle. No foul mood could stand long against the two of them together. “Can you show me how to play the notes?”

She watched his hands and struggled to force her fingers into their proper places. Tarren and Murrel had been on her mind, yes, but the shadow on her thoughts fell closer to home. Vashia couldn’t shake Dolfan’s reaction on the hover pad. She couldn’t shake the black eye, the limp. He’d had a hell of a fight with someone.

“No,” Tondil corrected from across the room. “Like this.” He flexed his fingers and Vashia cringed.

“Tondil, you’re bleeding!”

He held up fingers dented with bloody trenches and smiled. “I’ve lost my calluses. Been playing the flute too long.”

“Well, stop, then. For heaven’s sake. I don’t need to play that badly.”

He shook his head and strummed a warbling chord. “Nope. I’ll never get them back that way. The flute has wooed me away long enough.”

“You could always stick to one instrument,” Peryl offered. They cackled together at some private joke.

“Well, I won’t be responsible for your poor fingers.” Vashia shook her head. “I can figure this out on my own.”

“No point now,” Peryl said. “He’ll be for the lute until the next thing sways him in a different direction.”

“True,” Tondil nodded. “Peryl knows me far too well.”

Vashia laughed with them, but she couldn’t help the shiver of suspicion. Maybe all the Shrouded lived by their whims. They might be a fickle lot, swayed by the moment and the whisper of their big crystal. She didn’t want to believe it, but the room they sat in pulsed with static, and all seven Shrouded Princes set her “Heart bond” flaring. Maybe they were meant to be interchangeable?

She followed Tondil’s lead and shifted her hand across the neck of the flimsy instrument. Her fingers pressed hard enough against the metal wires to draw her own blood. But what hurt most of all was remembering that when Lucha suggested Dolfan join them at the hover pads, he’d been horrified. If one thing in all the background noise had come across clearly, it was that Dolfan wanted as far away from her as possible.

Vashia sighed and closed her eyes. She strummed the lute and heard only the discordant brattle of her own failure.

D
ielel crossed the platform
, spun one tight circle and then paced back in the opposite direction. He’d repeated the same maneuver three times since Dolfan first spotted him. The fourth time he stopped half way across the pad and ran both hands through his short hair.
Fair, for a Shrouded.
Funny, he’d never really noticed before.

Not that Dielel begged noticing. Still, amidst all the black, a lighter shade of ashy brown should stand out, Dolfan mused. He spent the majority of his time a half-step behind Haftan, so Haftan had no problem claiming all the attention.

Today, Haftan was king, and Dielel, pacing and wringing his hands again, looked damn near lost. Dolfan leaned away from the screen and tapped nervous fingers along the console. The Gauss was fine. He had no reason to feel twitchy. The Shroud curled overhead, soft and yellow, and Dolfan guessed he understood exactly what drove Dielel’s pacing feet.

The whole world was wrong today.

The guardsman on duty slipped into the control room and they exchanged a curt nod of their heads. “Your Highness,” the man dipped into a chair opposite the next panel down. He squinted at the forward windows and frowned as Dielel made another spin and stalked away again. “Is he well?”

Dolfan laughed. The man flushed, dropping his eyes, but not without a subdued chuckle. “He’s been at it awhile, hasn’t he?” The guardsman only nodded in response. He wore the stiff, pressed uniform that made Shrouded Security look unflinching and, in Dolfan’s opinion, horribly uncomfortable. Their short wrist wraps served an aesthetic function on sleeves, but hugged the guardsmen far more tightly than any Dolfan had ever worn.
How do they move in them?

“I suppose I should see what he needs,” Dolfan sighed.

The guard’s face twitched, but the smile was as tight as his dark uniform. He nodded, stiff also, and turned his gaze forward.
It’s all an act.
Dolfan pressed his lips tight and slid through the shed doorway, out under the awning where Haftan’s shadow paced.
They guard against nothing. The rigidity gives them weight, lends them an aura, as if we might need them at any second. Like Syradan’s drama. Like all of it.
The uniforms were stiff, but not armored. They provided no more protection than the men who wore them.
The illusion again. How much of our life is false?

“What?” Dielel’s voice cut into his reverie. “What?”

“Nothing.” He took a step out from under the hangar and joined the other prince on the pad. They’d never been friends, but then, he’d never spoken to the man without Haftan present. “You just—is everything all right?”

“I have a perfect right to be here.” Dielel’s lip curled. His voice whined like a hover bike, higher pitched than he’d expected. “I came for today’s messages.”

“Of course. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

“Haftan gave me communications.”

“I remember. A good match, I suspect.” And one that would allow Dielel to spy for Haftan. “Did I take too long?”

“What?” Dielel followed his gesture toward the consoles through narrowed eyes. He shook his head. “No. I already got them.”

“Oh.”

They frowned at one another. If Dielel had the mail, then why did he still pace the hover pads? Why did he linger here when he could be delivering his daily reports to the new king? Dolfan shifted his weight to the other foot and eyed the stairs. None of it was his business. He shrugged and took a step to the side.

“I don’t know where Haftan is.” Dielel stared at him. His expression wavered between terror and suspicion, as if somehow Dolfan had spirited the king away.

“Nor do I.”

“Oh.”

He bit back the urge to laugh. Dielel
was
lost after all. Had it been so long since Haftan left the man to his own devices that he couldn’t function independently? He started for the stairs again. Their symbiosis had little effect on his troubles. When he reached the foot of the path back up, he found Dielel at his side.

Dolfan paused. Did the man need
someone
to follow? He waited, but Dielel didn’t move an inch until he stepped up onto the bottom stair. Then, the other prince followed suit. He sped up. Dielel stuck to his side, half a pace behind and with a spring it his step that increased with each tier they ascended.
I think not.
He needed to squash this little development before it turned into a habit.

“So,” he began. How to shake the man gently? “Where do you suppose Haftan has gone?”

Dielel shrugged and kept match with his steps.

“Do you suppose something’s wrong?” Like the whole world, like everything they’d ever imagined was true.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Dielel snapped. At last, a bit of something original touched his face. His brow drew down and his eyes spit fire for a second. It was enough. He held back when Dolfan took the next step. “What would be wrong? Haftan is king. He can go wherever he wants.”

“Of course.” He kept walking, and breathed a relieved sigh when Dielel gave him a little lead before following. The other prince kept talking, though, his love of Haftan driving his tongue to defend the man who’d abandoned him.

“He’s the king now.” Did he speak to Dolfan or himself? “The Heart put them together. Who are you to question it?”

“I didn’t really.”

“Who is anyone to?” Dielel either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. He continued to prattle as Dolfan topped the slope and stepped out onto the plaza tiles. “What do I care if he dislikes the woman?”

“What?” He froze mid-step. Behind him, Dielel’s feet stuttered against the stones. He fell silent, but Dolfan had heard enough. He spun back around to catch the chagrin on Dielel’s face. “What did you say?”

“Nothing that matters to you.” The lip curled again. Well, he’d managed to dislodge Dielel, but now he’d spoiled the moment as well. He saw the distance stretch between them and knew Dielel was done talking.

“How could Haftan dislike the queen?” The air around them sharpened. Dolfan’s nerves turned to stone, he felt his own blood circulating, the twitch of his heart beating—once, twice, forever.

“I’m sure you misunderstood.” Dielel pulled his spine straight and snarled outright. “I’ve no time to waste on treasonous rumor mongering.”

Dolfan waited. He didn’t flinch when Dielel stormed past him. He didn’t move. The Shroud glowed above the plaza and Haftan’s closest friend slipped back inside the palace, himself again. In the end, it was Dolfan who was lost. The whole world was wrong, and if the Heart had erred, if even Dielel could find fault in Haftan’s match, then maybe treason was the lesser of two evils.

L
ucha kept
her promise and then some. She kept Vashia busier than she’d ever been, and she taught Vashia more about Shrouded life and politics than any manual could have. The queen originated off-world, but she’d adopted Shrouded ways to her core. She also believed completely in the Heart.

That part rubbed Vashia the wrong way. She could only deduce that Lucha’s past had been unbelievably horrible, that whatever she’d run from had made a kindhearted Shrouded husband seem like complete perfection. The woman never flinched from that conviction, at least not anywhere that Vashia could see.

As to her own Shrouded husband, he might have been a ghost. Haftan said less to her directly each time they crossed paths. He rose early, and was gone from their rooms before she woke each morning. In the evenings, he’d only arrived twice before she’d retired to the bedchamber and the huge bed that whispered
offspring
to her fears every second she spent sleeping on it.

Dolfan, on the other hand, she seemed to see more of with each passing day. After the hover pad, she’d feared he meant to keep as far from her as possible. But she’d passed him in the hallways at least a half dozen times since, and she’d begun to expect him every time her head hummed that a prince was nearby.

Not that they spoke. Not that the intense stares and breath holding were actually pleasant, but she waited for them all, just the same. She waited for the scattered encounters with a sense of expectation that she couldn’t begin to explain. All she knew was that her heart raced every time she felt the static in her head.

This time, however, it wasn’t Dolfan drifting around the corner. She’d left the queen’s rooms and taken a shorter hallway to her own quarters, a route she’d never taken for fear of losing her way in the unfamiliar section of the palace. Lucha had shown her the route twice before, and today, she felt confident enough in her understanding of the layout to at least find something familiar.

The prince in her path was the least familiar of the seven. She couldn’t remember him saying even one word to her. His tall, robed frame spooked her almost as much as the long sideways inspections he cast her way when he thought no one would notice. She hugged one wall and made room for Shayd to pass by. Instead, he stopped and stared at her head on.

The static around them might have crackled out loud. She couldn’t hear it over her pulse pounding. The Seer turned his critical eye to hers and tilted his head to one side as if listening to something.

“Uh,” Vashia stammered. Silence was something she’d never had much experience with. Her father’s halls always rattled with conversation, and she’d grown up with a need to fill any awkward void with speech of some kind. “Hi. I’m—” She thought furiously. Your queen just didn’t roll off naturally, but Vashia sounded stupid. He knew who she was already.

“You,” he hissed, leaning in until she could smell the thick musk of incense. His breathing brushed her cheek, and, for a moment, she feared he’d try to kiss her. He whispered low, though they were the only two visible in either direction. “You are not the Kingmaker.”

She exhaled and blinked, turned to answer, but he already stalked away down the hallway. She wanted to thank him, to scream her agreement, but the Seer vanished around the next branch, and there was no one to witness his letting her off the hook.

By the time she reached her room, their room, her hands shook, and her legs worked like noodles trying to support her.
Not the Kingmaker.
The idea sent little shivers of excitement up her spine. If the Seer could see it, why couldn’t anyone else? Why couldn’t the one person that should?

When she touched the door handle, her hand leapt back. Because the static buzzed like a hive at the contact, she knew they were in there, maybe all of them.
Except Shayd.
She took the time to catch her breath, to smooth her skirts and adjust her wrappings. Lucha had shown her how to wrap them on her own, how to use the bedpost to keep the silk tight for when her “mate was busy with state affairs.”

She’d never wrapped Haftan, nor had he offered to attempt that intimacy, and she definitely preferred it that way. Keeping the wraps tightly bound only cemented that illusion, and Lucha’s guidance assisted her with that effort on a daily basis. It also meant she rarely needed to summon an attendant and she could be left in peace.

She stretched tall and pulled the door open. Whatever conversation might have existed a moment before, the room sat silent when she entered. All of them, of course, would have known she was right outside, would have felt the crackle the same instant she did.
What was the point of that?
She scanned the men lounging in her anteroom quickly before joining them.

Haftan stood so rapidly that she stepped back. He pasted a smile on for show and favored her with a curt bow. He held his arm out, and Vashia stared at him. She shivered at the static and dropped her eyes to his offered hand. She was supposed to play her part now. Lucha had modeled for her exactly how to act.

She smiled and curtseyed, but kept her eyes low, afraid looking directly at him, at his phony smile, might give her away. Their hands met, and she felt a shock of electricity. The buzzing filled the room. His ring sparkled with it, the clear, egg-shaped stone reminding her of the Heart and of disappointment. Her quick appraisal had found Dolfan absent from the group, and as Haftan pulled her close and tucked her into the crook of his elbow, she was thankful he wasn’t present.

“My lady returns from Lucha’s clutches,” Haftan said. The room laughed with him. “Has the queen worn you out yet, my love?”

Vashia stiffened and looked up at him. His jaw twitched and clenched behind his thin smile, and his eyes looked like dark, hard pools to her. She shook her head. “I find the queen’s company very refreshing.”

He held the spark of anger back, but she saw the flare. She felt his arm tighten at her waist. “Good. I’m glad for it.” He released her and stepped a pace away, still smiling, still acting. “We’re holding Council here today. Pelinol is having the throne room prepared for our coronation.”

“Should I return to the queen, then?”

“If you’d like.” His look pressed her to go, but Tondil interrupted them.

“Stay.” He leaned back against the couch and winked at her. “Council could use a little feminine influence.”

“I’m sure our business would bore her to death,” Haftan stepped to her side again. He needn’t have bothered. She could take a hint.

“I’ll go, but I’ll expect some music later, Tondil.”

He grinned at her and nodded. “Of course.”

Peryl sat on the floor beside the couch. Beside them, Mofitan leaned against the wall, arms crossed and face as intense as ever. Vashia nodded to both of them and then turned to the man seated against the far wall, the one called Dielel who followed her husband around like a lost dog and rarely looked anyone directly in the eye. Now she found him staring at Haftan, his expression glaringly terrified.

Maybe they’re lovers.
She couldn’t help the giggle. Dielel’s eyes darted to her and away again. Somehow, she couldn’t imagine Haftan loving anything.

“I need to fetch my wrap.” She crossed to the far arch, keeping Dielel in sight and trying to sort him out in her mind. Of them all, she had the least understanding of him. Even dark Shayd could be identified simply for his enigmatic nature, his mystery and silence fit perfectly with his role as she understood it. But Dielel appeared to have no purpose of his own, no personality at all save for the need to follow Haftan and support him. It gave her the willies.

She left them long enough to retrieve her thicker wrap, the one Lucha had suggested on their last visit to the market, and her breather in case they ended up shopping again. Shopping, it seemed, was what the queen did best. Vashia had already tired of it, but it provided time with Lucha to siphon off as much information as she could. They’d be leaving after the coronation, and then Vashia would be alone with the Council of Princes. Alone with Haftan.

She imagined she’d better sort them all out before then. She’d lived long enough in her father’s house to understand that politics did not happen in Council meetings or public ceremonies. Politics happened behind backs and through peepholes. Like it or not, she’d be embedded in the Shrouded government, and Vashia fully intended to know what she was doing.

And it is better than a brothel.
But only by a fraction. She laughed again, chuckled her way back into the anteroom and earned a frown from Haftan for it.
A fraction better.

Shayd had joined them. He stood just inside the doors and continued his examination of her as if he’d never let off. A surge of rebellion took hold of her, and she winked at him. His eyes barely widened.

“This came for you.” Haftan moved to her elbow again. He held out a data pad.

She took it and flicked the message on—a letter addressed to her. Vashia squinted at the electronic type. “Thank you.” She tucked the device close to her chest and headed for the door. This one, she wanted to read in private, and at the moment her rooms were anything but.

She resisted the urge to make a face at Shayd as she passed him. Instead, she hustled to the door. It opened before she reached it, and she nearly plowed into Dolfan. They both froze in place.

“You’re late,” Haftan snapped from near the table.

“I’m sorry,” Dolfan said, but his eyes fixed on Vashia’s. She felt the words like threads between them.

“We can start now.” Haftan sounded far off. Vashia watched the corner of Dolfan’s mouth twitch. She saw his jaw shift to one side and back.

He nodded to her, a small gesture, barely visible. They stepped to the side at the same time. The same side. Then the other. She shook her head and sighed.

He smiled. The first real smile she’d on his face seen since the moon base. “You stay put,” he said. “I’ll go around.”

He passed her, just far enough away that their shoulders didn’t quite brush, just close enough that she could feel every step. She stifled a second sigh, and darted through the door instead. It banged shut behind her. She turned to the left and retraced her steps into the halls, not caring which one she took.

She could find some nook, some quiet seat to hide in. There would be an unoccupied corner where no static buzzed while council was in session. Vashia let her legs carry her at a jog this time. She pressed the data pad close and ran from all seven Shrouded Princes. She’d find a place alone and private and then, when she felt safe, she’d read the letter from Murrel. The last person she’d expected ever to hear from again.