Trouble with Kings (23 page)

After dinner, as the evening shadows began to meld and shroud us in darkness, we heard horse hooves.

Eleandra’s head came up, her eyes wide, reflecting the light of the campfire that she had insisted be made each night and tended until dawn. I had my lute out again, had begun a ballad. I faltered, and laid it aside. Siana looked around, puzzled.

Eleandra swatted the tent flap open and walked out, her skirts flaring. The four of us followed as the sounds resolved into a great many horsemen.

He had come.

Anger burned through me—the anger of moral self-righteousness. Yet underneath that I was aware of a strong sense of disappointment. I had kept my promise, but I was not going to let Jason Szinzar spend lives without delivering my opinion of so evil an act.

The foremost rider leaped down, his long dark cloak swinging, and he threw back his hood.

The firelight made a golden-hued blaze of his long red hair.

It’s not Jason
, I thought blankly, buoyant with relief. Yes, and joy.
It’s not Jason.

“Garian,” Eleandra cried. “You remembered!”

Chapter Twenty

“An invitation issued by you, Eleandra? How would it be possible to forget, when you are in my thoughts night and day?” He made an elegant bow and kissed her fingertips.

Her delighted laugh was the first real expression I had ever heard from her.

Behind her his guard dismounted. There had to be fifteen or twenty of them, all armed for war, and behind them servants.

Garian’s gaze swept over the rest of us as he bowed. Jewel and I had gone as stiff as a pair of stalks. Garian’s expression altered. “Is that Flian Elandersi?” He laughed. “And Jewel Szinzar. I don’t believe it!”

“They came to invite me to Lathandra.” Eleandra smiled, her tone teasing.

Jewel gaped with the same mind-numbing astonishment that I was feeling.

“It would, I admit, be strange to see Jason again after so many years,” Eleandra went on, in that same tone: a little laughing, a little challenging.

“Seems a habit with you, meeting your suitors in secret,” Garian retorted.

Eleandra glanced at us. This conversation was not following the oblique pattern that her court friends willingly followed. Siana and Eneflar were also staring in blank amazement. “Courtship is best done without an audience.” Her chin lifted as she threw her beautiful hair back.

“But its completion requires one. Ironic, is it not?” Garian bowed once more, graceful and mocking. He saluted her hand with a lingering kiss. “It seems I shall eventually have to do myself the honor of calling on your sister again, but for now, we can while the time away here in this pastoral setting. What is it, watching the leaves grow? Fall?”

Eleandra laughed, and turned away. “If you’ve no liking for nature, then entertain us with wit.”

“Now that is a challenge, is it not, Flian?” There it was, that nasty derisive tone I loathed so much.

Garian did not wait on my answer. He looked past me dismissively and instead asked questions of the sisters—who they were, how they liked their sojourn among the trees, and suchlike. They answered with court nothings, Eneflar’s edged with sarcasm that made Garian laugh.

And so we stood about until the wind kicked up, blowing smoke into our faces. Eleandra gave the order for the campfire to be put out. It had been a beacon indeed, but not for Jason Szinzar.

Siana said, “I think I’ll retire.”

Eleandra responded with a polite wish for pleasant dreams. And so the party ended perforce. The sisters and Jewel and I returned to our respective tents. And though by then Garian’s staff had set him up a tent in the space Eleandra had designated, he and Eleandra withdrew into hers, and occasional murmurs punctuated by laughter drifted through the cold night air until, at last, they diminished into silence.

I woke up feeling a whipsaw of emotions: relief that Jason had not come, wonder at how Jason was going to take the news, and apprehension at what Garian Herlester intended.

Rain pattered on the tent, promising another dreary day. Dreary and anxious. Lita brought us breakfast. She looked as tense as I felt.

As soon as she was gone Jewel muttered, “I won’t stay with that nasty creature around. As soon as the weather clears, I think we should tell Markham to saddle our horses and we will leave. Now that Garian is here with her, our part is done. Markham ought to let us go on to Lygiera, whether he escorts us or not.”

“I suppose we ought to tell Eleandra we’re going. I don’t want to make any diplomatic trouble for Maxl.”

“You can do that. I won’t talk to any of them. I hate it,” Jewel grumped. “I hate rain and tents and boring companions, and I really,
really
hate Garian Herlester. Well, heyo, let’s wander over and see if the other two want to kill time playing cards until Eleandra emerges and we can get the politesse over with and ride out of here.”

There was no sign of Eleandra or Garian, so Jewel and I followed her suggestion. We sat in the sisters’ tent and played cards in a listless, desultory manner until the sun came out late in the afternoon. Siana and Eneflar elected to take naps, and Jewel did as well. Eleandra’s tent was silent, which could mean she was either occupied or else gone; good manners required us to wait until she wished to appear before us again.

I began to walk around to the other side of the fork where no one could see me, with the idea of practicing a little of what I had learned in Dantherei. I was about to slide my way down to the riverbank, which had a wide, flat space, when I heard voices below me.

Garian’s and Eleandra’s voices. They were walking at the water’s edge.

“…afraid, my dear, you have no choice.” That was Garian.

“What?” she demanded. “What do you mean?”

I was eavesdropping. Etiquette warred with expedience—and expedience won. I stayed right where I was.

“My invitation to return with me to Drath is more in the nature of a request. Send your friends home.”

“But why? I told you I was going to break with Jason—if he doesn’t break with me first.”

“But you have not done it, my dear.”

“Why bother? You know why I gave him that ring. I only wanted someone strong enough to oust Tamara. I’m tired of being second, of begging and pleading for money, of pretending this and that ‘for the sake of the kingdom’. If I am queen, they have to please
me
. Jason said he’d put me there, once, but I don’t believe he has any intention of making the effort now. Or he would have sent me word long before this, and not through a pair of twittering young princesses.”

“Oh, he always keeps his word, the fool. I know that much. None better.” His drawl tightened into anger. “He made sure of that when he and his damned brother visited me a couple weeks ago. He is quite predictable—and you, my dear, are famed for your fickleness.”

She gasped.

“A compliment to the man who wins you and keeps you constant.” The smack of a kiss. “So yes, whatever he plans he will never fulfill, for I am already ahead of him. You say you wish to be queen? Then you must fall in with me. I take you to Drath. Your sister will not interfere, not with Lygiera and Ralanor Veleth on the verge of war.”

“What? When?”

“Now. Soon. While Jason and his bush-slinking brother were busy helping themselves to the contents of my vaults at Surtan-Abrig and Ennath, my friends in Lygiera were busy filling the ears of Maxl Elandersi, in whom are combined the charming attributes of gullibility and earnestness.”

“How can you provoke a war?”

“The same way you wished to. Turn the private passions of the monarch into a matter of state. I will spare you the details of that particular exchange, except for the delightful irony of the putative cause being your guest, all unknowing, here in this rustic retreat.”

“Garian!” she exclaimed—laughing, admiring.

“Lygieran runners are probably halfway to Lathandra with their war declarations right now. You want a kingdom? Once Jason and Maxl have exhausted themselves in battle the winner will have to contend with me. I will give you”—another kiss—“an empire.”

War? My brother?

I had been listening so intently that I forgot the surroundings and myself in them. I knew only that the voices were increasingly clear—so clear that they had closed the distance between us before I became aware.

Foliage rustled, and I stared up into Garian’s face. “Flian.” His eyes narrowed. “Doing some spying on your own? For whom, I wonder?”

My thoughts fluttered about like butterflies in a windstorm.

He stepped up to me. “You will be accompanying us, you and the Szinzar wench. I hope association with you has taught her some manners. You two will be useful, and that reminds me.” He smiled, the gloating, hateful smile that made me burn inside with anger and fear.

He grasped my chin and forced my head up. “A piece of news that ought to interest you, if you’ve discovered a taste for politics. You are one step closer to the throne. The old man keeled over dead when my courier informed him of your abduction by Jason Szinzar and your subsequent disappearance.”

A sun exploded behind my eyes.

Eleandra’s voice came from a distance. “Jason did what to her? Why did I hear nothing of that?”

“You can ask for all the details on our ride. But get your people to pack. We will depart in the morning.”

A cold frost solidified around my heart, quenching the impotent anger. The frost sent icy fingers up to freeze my brain, and like a string-puppet, I moved along when Garian gripped my arm, forcing me to accompany them.

He let me go outside Jewel’s and my tent.

I walked in. I lay down on my bedroll—

How much time passed? I will never know.

My thoughts were far away, imprisoned in a terrible place. They returned briefly when I heard Jewel’s voice.

“Flian? Flian. Are you asleep? Tomorrow we leave. There’s a storm on the way, it seems, and Her Haughtiness does not want to swim aboard a horse down the river.”

A voice spoke. “Garian is abducting her.” Was it my voice?

“That so? Well, I must say it’s a relief to have someone else get a turn for that!” She chuckled.

Time passed, or did it?

“…something wrong?” Jewel sounded anxious. “Oh, Lita, that gown on top. Otherwise it crushes into a million wrinkles…”

I dreamed.
Riding horseback, wearing Markham’s clothes, Jason just ahead
—

The wind whisking, cold and pure and rainy, along mountain trails—

Memories of childhood. Of my first court gown, and Papa’s pride. My first ball, and he danced with me himself. My first concert, Papa clapping the loudest at my choices, my hand-picked musicians, all of it spun through my mind, vivid, brittle, crystalline pictures, fragile as snowflakes, then they melted away. Maxl. Papa—

Papa.

The threat of war was not from Jason. It was Garian, and had been all along. Gloating.
Gloating
about my father dying, and sending Maxl and Jason at one another’s throats, just so he could claim an empire…

Angry voices from the outside the tent. Garian, Jewel.

“Apparently you have not yet attained a semblance of civilized behavior, Jewel. How tiresome you are, you and your fool brothers. How much pleasure I will take in being rid of all of you.”

“You are stupid, and pompous, and rude, and a bore!”

Garian laughing. So confident, so cruel.

Lightning flickered somewhere to the west.

I groped my way to Jewel’s baggage, neatly packed in the corner. Felt around, found the fabric of her chemises. Worked my fingers in—and there was the knife.

I was still in my gown. I took off the overdress with its tiny tinkling beads and lay down in the green linen underdress.

Closed my eyes.

Opened them, and the tent was dark, and Jewel’s breathing was slow and even. Lightning flared, thunder rumbled.

Rain hissed down.

Time to act
.

I slipped out of the tent and ran across the camp to Garian’s. I crouched outside the flap, lifted it with a finger. Waited for lightning, which flared, blue-white and close.

He was there, sleeping alone. I saw how he lay, and a voice from far away said,
You’ll have to act fast, because you’ll only get one chance.

Papa—he killed Papa. He intended to kill Maxl, as well as Jason Szinzar.

Not, though, if I could get him first.

I was going to take action, for once in my life. I eased in, my feet bare and soundless, and crouched beside Garian’s long body. I raised the knife. When the next flash came it would guide my strike.

White and stark, the light ripped through the tent, revealing tousled red hair in his eyes, partially covered bare chest and—too late—a drop of water like a diamond falling from my wet hand.

I stabbed—an iron hand caught my wrist. It twisted with uncompromising strength, making me gasp with pain; this was no practice drill, each mindful of the other’s safety. This was a duel to the death.

I dropped the knife into my other hand. Rose to my knees to throw my weight behind another strike.

Entangled in his blankets, Garian bore down with his hand and then yanked, throwing me off balance. We rolled over and over, winding together in blankets and my skirt as we each fought to stay on top.

We bumped against the other side of the tent. I writhed, desperate to free my knife hand, which was caught in one of the folds of cloth.

Garian’s breath drew in. He swung a hand, knocked me backward. The knife flew free of my fingers, and a moment later he got me pinned down flat, hands on my wrists, and a knee across my own knees. I wrenched every muscle and bone in a desperate effort to get free, but his weight and strength and the enveloping mass of bedding kept me from moving.

“I wait only for the light to identify you, my would-be assassin, before I kill you. No one, ever, threatens me and lives.” And he hit me again.

Then he shoved my wrists together over my head, and I knew he had the knife.

“Your wrists have a womanish feel. Which one are you?” He bent closer; I felt his breath on my face, and his hair brushed over my neck.

Lightning flashed. I saw his face above mine, mouth tight with anger. “
Flian?
” His eyes widened. “My very last guess. Too bad I will never find out what inspired you—”