Trouble with Kings (26 page)

Jaim’s smile disappeared. “That ambush on you and Jason was paid for by Garian—I’d finished tracing the hiring route when Jason himself showed up, cool as you please, and asked me if I wanted my rooms redecorated.” He waved a hand overhead. “So here I am. That’s what you were going to ask, wasn’t it?”

“Well, no. I didn’t think it was any of my business. But if it isn’t inappropriate to say so, I’m glad you two appear to have resolved your differences.”

“Communication”—he raised his glass to me—“is an amazing thing. Another one is growing up. When one removes oneself from a circumstance, events and their consequences—and their motivations—can suddenly make a lot of sense.”

“I hope that isn’t directed at me, as yet another hint about my wealth and my selfishness at resenting being repeatedly yanked from my worthless, boring, inconsequential life in order to further others’ goals whether I like them or not—my opinion being the most negligible aspect of the business.”

“Phew.” He sat back. “But I guess I had that coming, didn’t I? No, that was about me and my assumptions about my brother some years ago. You’ll be relieved to know that I have no designs on your wealth. Jason’s promise holds for me as well. From here on you are, to me, the equivalent of the most poverty-stricken princess on the continent.”

I laughed again, though I did not feel any real mirth. “And I, in turn, beg your pardon. I don’t know why I said that. I feel—I feel unsettled. Perhaps it is my longing to be home, helping Maxl. It has to be horrible for him. And I miss Papa.”

“Well, I don’t blame you for an honest snarl. I’m a snarler myself, you may have noticed. Feels good.” He smacked his chest. “Lets the heat out! And then there’s this. Between the two of us, Jason and I’ve nearly gotten you killed three times over, which ought to be enough for anyone’s lifetime—even for us evil, rotten, scoundrelish Szinzars.”

I sipped at my wine, enjoying the gentle glow. “Evil and rotten. That’s Garian. And a lot worse than scoundrel.”

“My brother appears to be convinced that you regard the two of them as interchangeable.”

“Well, he thinks I’m a fool, so I expect we’re quits.”

“Have you had another of your mysterious seeings? I’ve never heard him say any of that.”

“Not a seeing. He said it, in plain words. Up in Drath, after an ambush he’d thought was yours. Not that I’d asked for his opinion of me.”

“Is it possible that that conversation took place when Jason was not capable of using the clearest judgment?”

I thought back to that terrible day and shivered. “I don’t know,” I muttered, grimacing into my wineglass. “Not that it matters a jot what he thinks of me, since I will soon be going home, and none of us will ever see the other again.” I raised my glass and drank off the wine, a reckless impulse that left my eyes burning.

“Here, let’s hurry the eats along, shall we?” He strolled to the door, and spoke a few words to the footman I’d seen standing outside. “You aren’t recovered enough yet to slap the wine back at so masterly a rate. Unless you want to emulate my esteemed mother.”

“No.” I set the wineglass down. “Neither yours nor mine.”

Jaim grinned, going to the window and looking out. “Rain’s abating. Hope the roads haven’t washed away, taking the couriers with them.”

I said nothing. The wine made my mind fuzzy and my lips numb. It had been stupid to drink it off like that.

“Jason’s problem, as I see it,” Jaim said, coming back around the table, “is that he doesn’t lie. Never has. Doesn’t mean he’s always been right, but he knows that. He either says what he thinks, or says nothing. The problem with people like that is they are easy prey for clever courtiers expert in twisting the truth—like Eleandra-Natalia ru Fidalia. Who, I add, I would very much like to meet again. Despite the fact that, though I’m no longer a bored teenager, I know she wouldn’t give me a second glance. I don’t have anything she wants. And also for the likes of Garian Herlester, who is also adept at courtly jabber and turning it into outright lies.”

“Garian does lie, easily and with great enjoyment.” I frowned at Jaim. “So what you are delicately implying is that when we first met in Garian’s fortress at Surtan-Abrig, Jason thought I was what Garian described me as—a worthless fool who had managed to inherit tremendous wealth that she knew not how to use?”

He turned his palm up. “That’s about the sum of it. After all, Garian had spent time at your court, so he presumably knew you. He certainly brought you back, which argued at least some friendship.”

I sighed. A lot was now clearer. “Why are you telling me these things?”

“Don’t you like to know the why of matters that concern you, or have concerned you? I know I do. Which is why I listened when Jason showed up alone, arm bandaged, one rainy day, not very far from our hideout. Not far at all. And I’d thought myself so clever.” Jaim rolled his eyes.

“Yes.” I nodded, inwardly sorting through my reactions. “You’re right. I do.”

“Well, then. He said it turned him damn queasy when you hopped out with some cheerful assertions about trust, during the time your head and your memory had lost their acquaintance. In fact, about the moment Garian was offering the wedding toast and my merry band was preparing to swing down and smash in the windows of Garian’s hall, Jason had been concocting a post-wedding plot for decoying Garian’s nosers by sending his entire entourage east to Lathandra, escorting an empty coach with as much fuss and bother as possible, while you and he and Markham Glenereth rode secretly west to Carnison and your brother. The idea being to annul the vows on the grounds of your lapsed memory. And then plan from there.”

I rested my arm on the table to ease the ache in my shoulder. “So, what Garian intended was, either Jason contrived my death—in which case he’d be in trouble with Papa and Maxl—or he’d discover he was stuck with a wife with no intention of flouncing into a river and, what, Garian meantime could gallop to Dantherei and tell Eleandra that Jason had betrayed her and married someone else?”

Jaim grinned. “You figured it out faster than we did.”

“With help from hindsight,” I retorted, grinning back. Questions boiled around me, a thunderstorm of emotion-charged questions. “But that day Spaquel set Jewel and I up, when Jason grabbed us?” I drew a deep breath. “Spaquel is Garian’s creature. So Jason sprung a trap of Garian’s? He did drop a hint to that effect, which I didn’t really pay attention to, at the time.”

“That’s about it. Garian wanted you as a bargaining piece—and as an excuse to create his war with Lygiera. Spaquel put together a plot to get you to Drath. Jason got ahead of him, but only just. He didn’t know that Garian had gambled on that. As a test of Jason’s real intentions, shall we say. Those hired knives of his were watching every single road from the west. We are fortunate he only sent them out in parties of twelve.”

“Jason sent a threat—a bluff, he called it later, but still—to my brother.”

Jaim twiddled his fingers. “Through a courier he suspected leaked news to Garian. Sure enough, Garian found out right away. And when Maxl saw through the carefully worded letter, Jason realized it was time to choose his allies and tell your brother everything.”

I bit my lip. “But he didn’t see fit to tell me any of these things.”

It was Jaim’s turn to study his wineglass. “Yes. Well. True. But you could ask him now.” He waved a hand in the general direction of Jason’s tower lair.

I thought angrily,
If he wants to talk to me, why isn’t he here?

Out loud I went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “But that does not explain why Jason said, not long after the fire, that I would live to regret not using that knife on him.”

While I had spoken, my words coming quicker and quicker, Jaim walked around the table, looking out the window, at the cabinet in the corner, down at the wine glasses, then at last at me.

Was he waiting for something more? I shut my mouth so hard my teeth clicked.

He said, finally, “I don’t know. We talked little about that. I can only point out what I did before. He wasn’t in any shape to make much sense. Perhaps you would do better to discuss that directly with him.” Again the hand toward the tower.

I remembered Berry’s voice from the day before.
The king requested me to name the time you would like to depart—

I might have misunderstood—that what I assumed was dismissal of me and my disastrous mistakes was actually the opposite, an oblique invitation to continue the conversation, or not. As I chose.

If it was indeed true, what did I choose?

The door opened then, and servants came in bearing trays. The moment of decision was gone.

Jaim sat down. We served ourselves. His next question was about Dantherei, and my impressions thereof. The subject of Jason was never again introduced by either of us.

Chapter Twenty-Three

At dawn the next day, I wandered out onto the rain-washed balcony. A clean, cold wind swept out of the west, bringing the scent of wet loam. I faced into the wind and lifted my gaze beyond the castle walls to the distant mountains, stretching in a dark line on the horizon.

A flicker of movement resolved into a galloping rider splashing through great puddles. He vanished through the military gate. A courier? It was none of my concern.

I returned to the harp. Laboriously—trying not to jar my left arm—I tested and tuned the strings. Finally every one rang sweet and true, but by then my left arm ached.

Berry appeared, her expression anxious. Alarm kindled in me.

“The king requests an interview, Princess,” she said. “If it’s not too early—”

“Of course.”

Terrible images chased through my mind like frightened birds. Maxl hurt—killed. Carnison under attack—

I forced myself to stop speculating and walked out onto the balcony, as if I could separate myself from imagined horrors and leave them behind.

I stood with my right hand gripping my aching left arm as I stared out at the mountains again. A long, low caravan of ragged gray clouds moved steadily across the jagged horizon, faint stars glimmering above.

A knock on the door.

“Out here,” I called, my heart thumping as if I had run a very long way.

Jason came out and I looked anxiously into his face.

“The news is not from Lygiera,” he said.

I groped behind me and sank into a chair. “Ah.” I exhaled with relief. And then made a face. “Then it has to be Garian.”

“He is holed up in his fortress at Surtan-Abrig. He sent a message. He wants to change Jewel for you.”

I remembered the look on Garian’s face before he brought that knife down, and shivered. Jason said nothing as he watched me. Wishing that I’d kept my reaction to myself, I mustered up my bravado. “Amazing. No ransom, for once?”

Jason’s gaze flicked down to my bandaged shoulder and away to the west toward Drath.

“So what are you going to do? Make me go to Drath?”

“I leave that to you. I promised to send you to Lygiera, and I will honor that, if it takes half an army to see you safely to the Lygieran border.” He turned back to me, waiting for a response.

This time it was me who looked away. “Do you have some sort of plan for freeing Jewel?” I asked the balcony rail.

“Nothing that I can promise is free of risk. Jaim is on his way there now, to evaluate the situation himself.”

I frowned up at Jason. “Wait a moment. If Garian knows I’m here, he must know I told you what happened in his tent. What exactly did he say about Jewel? He must have—”

“Promised that if you do not appear he will kill her.”

I shut my eyes. “Then I have no choice.” I hugged my elbows against myself, but opened my eyes again. Being unable to see was not going to make the situation any easier. “It’s my fault she’s there. It’s my responsibility to help get her out.”

Jason made a sharp gesture outward with the flat of his hand. “I do not see that responsibility lies with you at all.”

I said, trying for a semblance of humor, “Well, you could say it’s your fault for sending us to find Eleandra, but you thought it would be a safe, easy trip. Yet you knew Garian too had a passion for that princess. Did you really not think he might go there?”

Jason looked away at the thin line of departing clouds. Then back. “I thought, should the worst happen and Garian did appear in Dantherei, that first it would be in the capital city, with you and Jewel surrounded by my guards as well as Queen Tamara’s, and second you and Jewel would be so busy maligning me, Garian would see you two as useless as tools against me.”

“Oh, no.” I understood at last what had occurred outside my narrow perception of events. “So by overhearing his plans—and by trying to kill him—I really did make everything worse. For everyone. But especially for poor Jewel.”

“You are in more danger than she,” Jason said.

“But I have to go. There is no choice! I can’t go home and leave her there to be killed, especially when I see myself at fault. It was I who chose violence over diplomacy—” He shook his head. “No, don’t waste the time arguing with me about who is or is not at fault. Make your plans. I’ll abide by them.” I spoke as forcefully as I could, though my insides had cramped with fear.

“In that case, the easiest plan would require your presence. We would trick Garian into releasing Jewel. You could then continue on to Lygiera from there.”

“Trick. You mean double-cross him? Not that I am criticizing. It’s what he deserves, I believe with no shadow of doubt.”

“Yes. Jaim and I discussed the possibility. He will set things up. Get as much rest as you can, for we will travel fast. Also remember Garian is brandishing Jewel as a lure to get you, but through you he wants to get at me.”

He left.

At the time, I did not delve for more than superficial meaning. I was too preoccupied with worries about Jewel—what I ought to have done differently—Papa—Maxl, far away in Carnison, no doubt wondering what was happening, but unable to act because he was tied down by all his new responsibilities.

After breakfast the next morning, Berry brought me a very fine travel gown, deceptively simple in design, elegant in fit. More important for my present purposes, it was quite comfortable, a soft, sturdy cotton-wool of gray and maroon that harked back to the old style of overdresses that hung in panels to show the undergown beneath. This was one piece, the elegant skirt divided for riding, high-necked, which hid my bandages—and it fit me, which meant some unknown hands had been working on it so it would be ready.