Trouble with Kings (22 page)

I stared after, wondering if I should tell her that we intended to keep going west and then south to my home after we saw her argan trees, then decided not to. She had not asked our plans—and didn’t need to know them.

So I retired for the night.

On the fourth day we descended into a gorgeous river valley—which meant we had ridden far more west than south. In the distance directly southward, sure enough, rose the northernmost of the great peaks that formed the border with Ralanor Veleth on the east and Lygiera on the west. The peaks that belonged to Drath.

There, to everyone’s surprise, the princess bade her people raise the tent-pavilions.

Those had been brought against our being trapped on our ride by a sudden squall, but everyone had assumed we would be staying in some dwelling, even if only a posting inn.

As Siana stared about in unhidden astonishment, Eleandra said, “Is this not a profoundly beautiful place?”

“It is.” Siana sounded more polite than convinced as she cast a puzzled, slightly weary look around.

Despite the court ladies’ attitudes, the place really was beautiful. The campsite lay on raised ground above a fork in the river. All around us grew smooth, white-boled trees whose leaves were a brilliant variety of colors—crimson, amber, gold, pumpkin. And here and there the silver-leafed argan trees, rare in Lygiera’s coastal air. Before their leaves fell, they seemed to take on a metallic glow that made them look like enchanted things, especially in the pearlescent light of dawn and in the slanting golden glow of sunset.

It was apparent that Eleandra had everything mapped out in her mind, for she did not trust her servants to the placement of the tents. She paced over the long emerald grasses, pointing here and there. It was not until the tents were actually set up that we saw a space near her own.

Eleandra expected someone.

Jason.

Some went inside the tents to change out of riding clothes. I wandered out on a palisade overlooking a waterfall just above the river fork. The two sisters had forgotten that tent walls block sight, but not sound.

“Who is coming?” That was Siana.

Eneflar drawled, “Whoever it is must be male, which would explain why she sent Galaki off in a huff. I don’t know why you and I are here, unless those little princesses bore her as much as they do me. She’s only happy when surrounded by men.”

“She’s not the only one.” For once Siana sounded heartfelt.

“I wish she would tell me what she wants from me,” Eneflar went on. “Then I could say yes or no, and go home.”

“Where are you, Siana?” Eleandra called from across the camp, and the sisters fell silent.

As Siana emerged, I drifted around the back of their tent and made my way beyond wild berry shrubs so no one would see me and possibly be embarrassed. Though I suspected the only one who’d feel embarrassed would be I.

The horses and servants were all housed in plainer tents beyond the trees, well out of our view, along the riverbank. I could see the horses, some drinking, others grazing the sweet grass. Once I glimpsed Markham moving purposefully about, and I felt the urge to ask him how Jason would know to meet us here at this isolated riverside.

I squashed the impulse. Just because I didn’t know about them didn’t mean secret plans had not been made. So? I couldn’t stop either of those two, Jason or Eleandra. My part was done. I had delivered the message, and I waited only to go home.

I turned away and wandered back to the tent that Jewel and I were to share. When I reached it, I found Jewel lying stretched out on one of the bedrolls. Lita was not there.

Jewel turned her head and studied me. “I wish I understood you.”

No smile accompanied that statement, only a wide, appraising blue gaze that again called her brothers to mind.

I dropped down near her, murmuring, “I thought you did.”

“I don’t think anyone does,” she retorted, her voice much softer. A hint of a smile warmed her eyes. “I will always be grateful to you for pretending nothing happened the other day—except whom were you going to tell? Maxl?”

So I’d been wrong, then. She did remember. I looked away, feeling a strong surge of sympathy. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because we don’t talk about affairs of the heart. Not since his return from Dantherei, and he raved for weeks about Eleandra, and how he must have her. He didn’t talk
to
me so much as talk
at
me. Then, when the years went on and she sent all these diplomatic messages but never actually came to visit, or invited him to visit her, he stopped talking about her at all. At least to me. What went on between Maxl and Papa, I don’t know.”

“So you two are as secretive as we Szinzars, for all your affect of sibling devotion.”

“I do love my brother,” I said in a low whisper. “I do. But he is private. And I guess I am as well, though there has been nothing in my life so far that required any exertion to keep private. Most people think me as boring as my interests.”

“It’s true,” she conceded. “Some do. The ones with no discernment.” She sighed, her eyes closing. “I love Maxl. I think I love Maxl. I am in lust with Maxl. Who isn’t? He’s handsome, smart and charming.”

“Smart I believe, charming I don’t know about—but handsome?” I smothered a laugh. “We’re plain people, we Elandersis.”

“Well, maybe attractive is the better term. It’s his manner, the way he smiles with his eyes before his mouth does, the slight tip of his head when he’s trying not to laugh. The way he’ll rub at that cornsilk hair and mess it up when he’s thinking.” She paused, her expressive brow constricting. “Oh, I know some of his friends are better looking, like Yendrian. In fact I’ve met plenty of men who are handsomer, smarter, and a lot more charming. But Maxl is also in a position of power. Is it actually from that my supposed love stems? I can’t say. I’ve never been in love before. I hope it’s not the motivating inspiration, but I think he believes it is. I resisted it and resisted it, but now I wonder about myself.”

“You are too hard on yourself.”

“No one is hard on himself, or herself. Except maybe you two Elandersis. The problem is that you and your brother are good persons. Maxl has learned to live with power, but he very plainly regards it as his duty. Left to himself, he would sit in his lair among those old dusty books and that shabby furniture and read about history. And you have even less ambition than he does. We Szinzars aren’t good. We all like power, and we’re adept at finding ways to get it.”

I shook my head. “Wasn’t it you who said it’s impossible to be all evil? I don’t think it’s possible to be all good either. We’re a mix.”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m lying here trying to figure out. I feel very sure that Eleandra’s motivation for her supposed love for Jason is his position of power. That’s why she’s here, isn’t she? I mean, even I know that the Drath mountains are south of us now, and I remember what he said about going to Drath. The thing is, he didn’t actually
say
he was going to come over and conquer Dantherei, did he?”

“No.”

“He could be lying, but then he doesn’t lie, my big brother. That’s the problem! If he makes a threat, he goes right ahead and carries it out!” She grinned.

“He didn’t tell us any plans, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have plans.”

“Yes. Curious, how Eleandra picked this spot, when I would have staked my life she wouldn’t cross a room to look at a tree, much less cross a kingdom. You think they set it up, all those years ago? Sounds kind of romantic, doesn’t it?
If I send the ring, I will meet you at the river’s bend. With my army
.” Jewel looked sardonic. “Have to admit the only part that sounds like Jason is the last bit. But would he really do something so disastrously foolish?”

“He did say that the resources of Dantherei would be of endless benefit to Ralanor Veleth, or something much like it.”

“So why not trade? Surely a war is not cheaper.”

“Not in lives, certainly.”

She shrugged impatiently. “Lives probably matter nothing to him. All right. So their betrothal is a mixture of lust and power politics. What I want to know is, can there be real love in kings? Or does love have no place in those who command kingdoms?”

We were back to Maxl—though she did not say his name. “Tamara loves. Though they are not married.” I had to admit the last.

“No, treaty marriages are expected of kings and queens. Are love marriages even possible? Would that be the test of a good king and a good person, marrying someone despite her lack of power?”

I shook my head. “My father is a good person and he married for love—he didn’t need wealth, or treaties. What he brought back was trouble in the social sense as well as in the personal.”

“Perhaps it means you’re a bad person only if you know it’ll be bad for the kingdom and you do it anyway,” Jewel said, waving a hand.

“But what if one is so besotted one cannot see the signs? Oh, my Papa is so unworldly I don’t think he would have seen the signs if they’d been painted on his nose.”

“Did anyone warn him?” Jewel asked, leaning on her elbows.

“My grandmother did, from all accounts. If anyone else did, no one has said.”

Jewel laughed. “Apparently your father was worldly enough to not listen to his mother! Well, that much is like Jason, who doesn’t listen, he does what he wants.”

“Yes.” I thought of Jason wearing that ring over his heart for nine years. I remembered it hanging blood-smeared against his flesh that terrible day on the mountain. And I remembered him slipping it from his shirt and dropping it to the table. “Yes, he does.”

We passed a quiet evening—four women waited on by a small army of servitors. I could see the campfires belonging to the servants glimmering downhill, though we heard no sounds. If they had their own amusements as the day passed, those were conducted quietly.

As for us, the three musicians played, Eleandra listened for a time, proposed a game of cards and then brooded, staring into the fire.

We departed to our tents fairly early.

Jewel lay in her bedroll without speaking. The silence was deep beyond the rush and chuckle of the river, and the sporadic sounds of birds. From the sisters’ tent came the occasional rustle and low murmur of voices. From Eleandra’s there was no sound.

I prepared for sleep, leaving the tent opening ajar so I could look out at the argan trees, stippled with silver light from the moon, and listen to the river. Our campfire was kept burning high.

Jewel wriggled to the tent opening, her bedroll around her, and lay with her elbows on the ground, chin in hands as she gazed at the fire, her features golden in the reflected light, the sheen of tears gleaming in her eyes.

She whispered, “What are we going to do? Sit here and risk launching a war?”

I scooted close next to her, my knees drawn up under my chin and my arms around them, the way I had sat as a child in my window seat, watching thunderstorms or first snow. “I have been thinking of the very same thing,” I whispered back. “We could try, the two of us, to make it to Carnison and lay the problem before my brother.” Only what could poor Maxl do, striving with Papa’s old court as well as the machinations of those our age, and at the same time trying to shelter Papa from stress? “Should we break out, right now, and run for home?” I asked doubtfully.

“But we can’t. We’ve got Markham along. You graveled us there, Flian. He’d be after us like a bolt from a crossbow, and no one outruns or outfights Markham. Even Jason can’t beat him with a sword, Jaim told me. And there isn’t anyone else that can whup Jason. I thought that was only a lot of male swagger, but Jaim said to believe it; in fact, that’s why he ran away, really, because Jason kept making him stay in the practice courts for days and days, and kept sending all the biggest ones against him and they always thrashed him. Well, nearly always, there, at the end.”

Jason must have done that as well, I thought, and contemplated the single-minded focus that would force someone to spend days and days “getting thrashed by the big ones” just to learn mastery. Supposing such a person liked art, when would he have had the time for it?

“Of course Jason had to,” Jewel said cheerfully. “Just like he grew the mustache. Jaim said it was to make him look older. I mean, he was younger than I am, when he took over! And you have to be strong to hold a runaway carriage like Ralanor Veleth. Well, look at the years after my father died. While my mother drank up Drath’s vinery, civil war all over the place. Markham was a part of it, that much I know, though no details. And Markham, they say, was
always
terrifyingly good.”

I remembered Markham’s calm words about Garian’s ambush, and how the thieves had made the mistake of thinking two against twelve a good balance.

“No, you’re right,” I returned. “We’d never be able to outrun Markham. Who is he, anyway, besides part of your civil wars? He’s so, I don’t know, different. Doesn’t have the manner of a servant, though you can tell he’s loyal.”

Jewel waved a dismissive hand. “Some big mystery. Jaim wasn’t sure of the details, or if he knew them, he didn’t tell me. Who cares? I never want to see Markham or Jason again!”

“I suspect we’d better sleep before we have everyone listening outside our tent.”

“Then I’ll tell ’em exactly what I think of ’em,” Jewel said, and crawled back inside the tent.

Two more days and nights passed. The first was pleasant enough. We whiled the time with walks. Eneflar had her maid bring paper and chalks, and she sketched the river fork, her skill unexpectedly fine. I asked Lita to bring out my lute, and I practiced, which made the time pass pleasantly for me, if not quickly.

At night the others asked me to play. They listened for two or three songs then talked as they had when the servants played, but I did not stop. I was only giving myself pleasure, but I was used to that, and I gave no one else any pain.

The second day was more difficult, partly because of a light rain that persisted through the day, but mostly because Eleandra’s temper was uncertain. Jewel and I spent most of the day in our tent, playing cards—and it is a measure of the sisters’ boredom that they asked to join us. Though I knew what they thought of us, I gave no clue, and Jewel’s social manner was always easy enough. The sisters also made an effort to be pleasing, using their court manners, and so we managed to pass the afternoon until dinner was served in Eleandra’s tent.