Troubled Waters (31 page)

Mirti waved a hand. “Yes, that’s been welcome, but more than that. There’s a sense that things are falling in place. Lining up as they should. That’s a feeling that’s been missing ever since Christara died.”

Elidon nibbled at a piece of fruit completely lost in a heavy coating of chocolate. “And yet not entirely in balance yet,” she said, “while the Ardelays are still in exile.”

Though she was able to keep her face absolutely guileless, Zoe felt her body string with tension. This conversation, she sensed, was the reason she had been invited here today. “Exile?” she repeated. “I thought my uncle and some of my cousins still lived in the city.”

“They are here, but they are out of favor,” Mirti said bluntly. “They need someone to bring them back into fashion.”

“Have you tried one of these? They’re marvelous,” Elidon said, offering a plate of the candy-coated fruit to each of her guests.

Mirti helped herself to two sizable pieces. “I bought some down at the Plaza the other day,” she said. “Never tasted anything so good.”

Zoe kept her hands in her lap. “Am I to understand,” she said slowly, “that it is up to
me
to restore the Ardelays to their place?”

Elidon made an equivocal motion with her hands. “It is not something you could do all on your own,” she said. “But you could start the process. You could invite your uncle and his sons to your rooms for a meal. Everyone would see that they were welcome at the palace again.”

“Welcomed by the
Lalindars
,” Mirti emphasized. “Since Christara was the one who ostracized them, Christara’s heir is the one who should make reparation.”

“The one who should show them affection,” Elidon added.

“I scarcely know them,” Zoe said. “I haven’t seen any of my father’s relatives for ten years.”

“Immaterial,” Mirti said.

“You may not be aware of how closely everyone is watching you,” Elidon said. “What you do will be imitated.”

“Unless what I do is disastrous,” Zoe said flatly.

Mirti actually grinned. “We’re not setting a trap for you,” she said cheerfully, “though I don’t blame you for wondering. We are giving you very good advice. It is time the rift with the Ardelays was mended, and you can do much to mend it.” She slipped one of the chocolate fruits in her mouth, and then spoke around it. “Unless you can’t stand your uncle and his sons, that is. They’re talkers and charmers, like all
sweela
men, and I know a few people who can’t abide them. But I rather like the lot of them.”

Elidon gave her a quick smile. “But then, your taste in people is notoriously unreliable.”

Mirti snorted again. “Bad, you mean. Not so. I have plenty of upstanding citizens among my ranks of friends.”

Elidon laughed softly. Zoe had the sense they were sharing a private joke, perhaps an intimate one, certainly one she would not be allowed to share. “I will get in touch with my uncle, then,” she said.

Elidon nodded, satisfied. “Good.” She touched her fingers briefly to the back of Zoe’s wrist, a mark of high approval. “You learn quickly, I think. And I like that you are so agreeable and accommodating.”

But Mirti was appraising her with those disconcertingly direct gray eyes. “I don’t think so,” said the Serlast prime. “Or, at least, only when it suits her.”

Zoe smiled and ducked her head in an approximation of a bow. “How could it not suit me to be agreeable to the first wife?”

Now Mirti was laughing out loud. “Exactly so.”

Elidon passed another tray of treats, flat, crunchy breads sprinkled with colorful salts. “Try these,” she said. “You’ll love them.”

NINETEEN

E
arly the following morning, Zoe met Darien Serlast in the
kierten
of the palace, which was bustling with activity even at that hour. She had sent Calvin to him with an urgent message the instant she returned from Elidon’s suite, and this was the meeting place he suggested. Almost immediately, they slipped outside to stroll along one edge of the river, so placid here it masqueraded as a lake. The weather was so cold that a rime of ice had formed all along the shallow shore, but there was enough of a current to keep most of the water fluid. Zoe had wrapped herself in her heaviest overrobe and pulled on a delicate pair of painted leather gloves. She was chilly, but the brisk air was refreshing, and she found it deeply soothing to be this close to flowing water. If Darien minded the temperature, he didn’t mention it.

“I wasn’t sure of the best way to get in touch with you,” she said. “Should I have written a note? Stopped you in the hallway?”

“Sending Calvin was the best choice,” he said. “And it’s always preferable to send a verbal message. Put nothing in writing. You never know how words might be misinterpreted.”

She sighed. “Just living here makes me tired.”

He laughed. “No, no, it should invigorate you with its constant challenges.”

She ostentatiously cast a glance all around them. They were highly visible to anyone who might glance out of a palace window, because there was very little ground cover near the shoreline. On the other hand, there was no convenient hiding spot where spies could lurk to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“Are we safe even here?” she asked, her voice derisive. “Should we cross the bridge to the halfway point and whisper to each other over the murmurs of the water?”

“I think we may speak freely,” he answered, grinning. “I suppose you have come to seek my opinion on some finer point of palace etiquette.”

“Just so. Even though I know you will lie to me when you like,” she said dryly, “you don’t seem to want me to stumble. So I trust you to warn me away from behaviors with catastrophic consequences.”

“I am relieved to think you trust me even that far,” he said.

“I received some advice from Elidon and your aunt Mirti, and I’m not sure it’s sound,” she said. “I’m not accusing them of trying to cause me trouble, but—”

He laughed again. “Oh, but they are both wily women who have complex agendas,” he said. “You are wise to wonder if they have your best interests at heart.”

She said bluntly, “They told me I should bring the Ardelays back in favor.”

Darien’s eyebrows shot up, and then his face assumed a thoughtful expression. “That would be an interesting step for you to take,” he said slowly. “The king has been debating the best way to mend the rift with Nelson Ardelay. He had considered inviting Nelson and his sons to one of the formal dinners, but this is better. It gives you a chance to demonstrate your own strength and prove your commitment to blood—your father’s as well as your grandmother’s. And it means that Nelson will already be somewhat reestablished before Vernon issues an invitation.”

“So I wouldn’t be condemned and banished if I brought my uncle to the palace.”

He glanced at her. “Is that what you were afraid of?”

She grinned. “It’s what I
hoped
for. I find court life wearisome in the extreme. What grave error can I commit that will get me flung off the mountain?”

“I have to believe you’re joking.”

“Only a little.”

He shrugged. “So what stops you from simply walking down the stairs and out the doors?”

“I don’t know—the thought that you might go hunting for me and drag me back?”

“I might go to some effort to make sure you were established in reasonable new accommodations, but I would not force you to return against your will. Though I do think you betray your family if you do not play the role it has fallen on you to play. Like it or not, you are their representative, their advocate with the king. If you abandon the palace, you abandon them.”

“I have had some experience with abandonment,” she said. “It is not as bad as everyone thinks.”

“I would wager your father did not agree.”

“No, probably not.” She kicked at a stone that lay in her path, and it bounced down the shoreline to plop into the water. She was wearing the sturdiest of her new shoes, the ones that could survive hard usage like walking outside. They were also roomy enough to accommodate socks; even so, her toes were starting to turn to ice. “Then I shall have my uncle in for a visit as soon as I can arrange it.”

“Good,” he said. He smiled. “Do you have any more questions? Any other matters on which you would like to consult my wise counsel?”

“I’m too cold to think of any,” she said. “Let’s just go back inside.”

She turned toward the palace, but he stopped her with a hand on her arm. His expression was serious. “If you
did
leave,” he said. “If you did simply walk out the doors and stroll down the mountain, leaving behind no word of where you were going or why, I
would
come looking for you. I would never stop looking for you. I would find you, too.”

She gazed up at him, her own expression neutral. “Just because you found me the last time I ran away from you doesn’t mean you would be so successful a second time.”

“Ah, but I know you much better now. And I know where you are likely to run. I could find you even more quickly.”

“There are always new places,” she said.

“Even for a
coru
woman,” he said, “there are finite places to go.”

She shrugged. “Why? Why not let me go? Why come after me at all, if I choose to leave?”

He was silent a moment. “Because I said I would,” he said. “Word of a
hunti
man.”

Everyone knew what that meant: solid as wood, unyielding as bone. She nodded but made no answer, and they finished the rest of the walk in silence.

C
alvin took the formal message to Nelson Ardelay, inviting the prime and his two sons to a private luncheon in the quarters Zoe Ardelay Lalindar enjoyed at the palace. Zoe instructed Calvin to deliver the message in person so that he would know what Nelson looked like, and he could be waiting in the
kierten
when the Ardelays arrived at the palace two days later. Nelson would not have to humble himself to ask a servant to announce him; he would not have to endure stares and whispers. Calvin would already be there, bowing and leading the way.

Annova and Zoe had gone to some trouble to decorate Zoe’s sitting room to honor her conflicting heritage. On the day of the visit, they placed tall girandoles in the four corners of the room and fitted them with slow-burning tapers. They set a small fountain before the window and filled its bubbling waters with tiny golden fish. For the table, they made a centerpiece of a flat, transparent bowl of water; on its surface floated lit candles shaped like birds and flowers. Water and fire coexisting.
Sweela
and
coru
at peace.

Zoe dressed herself carefully in a sea-blue overrobe and trousers heavily stitched with gold embroidery in a flamelike pattern. She stood motionless beside the table, so still that none of the charms on her bracelet rattled. She was listening intently to the sounds in the palace corridors, trying to convince herself that she could identify her uncle’s heartbeat as he climbed the multicolored staircase. But she was still startled enough—or nervous enough—to catch her breath when Calvin stepped through the door, visitors at his heels.

“Zoe Ardelay Lalindar,” he said importantly. “I present Nelson Ardelay and his sons, Kurtis and Rhan.”

“Uncle,” Zoe said, bowing deeply. “Cousins. I am delighted to see you again.”

“Niece,” Nelson replied. He performed an offhand, hasty bow, then snapped back to an upright position and studied her with great curiosity.

She inspected him in return. He did not look much like Navarr, his younger brother, who had inherited his dark eyes and hair from his
hunti
mother. Nelson Ardelay was all
sweela
, with brushy red hair and a ruddy complexion, though the hair was heavily grayed and the skin was creased with wrinkles. Although she guessed him to be in his mid-sixties, the essential force of his personality didn’t seem to have banked down at all. He kept a neutral expression on his face, but it was clear he was a passionate man, quick to anger, quick to laugh. She had a sudden, swift, visceral memory of boisterous conversations at his house, loud arguments and outbursts of gusty merriment.

“Oh, surely we’re not all just going to stand around and stare at each other for an hour,” one of her cousins said, and her attention was drawn to Rhan. He was the younger of the two, burlier than his father, with a wild mane of curly red hair and a wicked smile. “I remember you, Zoe! But you were a skinny little thing with big eyes and no meat to you. Look at you now!”

He strode across the room to envelop her in a crushing hug. For a moment she was assaulted by sensations—not just the sheer physical impact of body to bone, but the electrifying leap of blood as her own sparked in recognition of his.
Mine. Family. Mine.
The thoughts were inchoate but powerful. She smothered a gasp and hugged him back.

“Well, if that’s how we’re greeting cousins these days,” Kurtis said, and pushed his brother aside. He was taller and slimmer than Rhan, with more orderly hair of the same bright color. When he took Zoe a bit more sedately in his arms, she felt that response in her blood again, that jolting excitement. Again, she returned the embrace with enthusiasm.

“I would apologize for my sons, but you do not seem to mind their mauling,” Nelson said, once Kurtis had released her. “Let me greet you with a bit more restraint, but just as much heartfelt happiness.” And he took both of her hands in his, squeezing them tightly and smiling down at her. There it was, even stronger this time.
Mine. Mine. Blood of my blood . . .

A little dizzy, but teetering on euphoria, Zoe laughed and pulled her hands free. “I didn’t expect quite so much fervor! Everyone else has been so measured and cautious that I have forgotten what it is like to be engulfed by visitors.”

“Measured and cautious are not words that are often used to describe Ardelays,” Rhan said with a grin.

“Though we have spent some years struggling to achieve thoughtfulness and wisdom,” Nelson said with a sigh. “It has not come easily.”