Warrior (10 page)

You may inform Princess Marla that I want no part of her plans for me or my future.”

“You can tell her yourself,” Xanda replied, stepping back as he raised his arm and pointed to the path heading back to the house, indicating she could go first. “After you.”

It wasn’t chivalry, Luciena knew, that prompted his elegant bow. Xanda Taranger wasn’t trying to be a gentleman. He was simply making sure she couldn’t run away.

Marla Wolfblade rose to her feet as the door to her private sitting room opened. The whole house was stuffy this afternoon; the humidity almost unbearable. Greenharbour was always like this just before the rains settled in. The princess was counting the hours until she could leave the city and head north to Krakandar, where at least it cooled down at night and one wasn’t constantly bathed in perspiration.

As her visitor approached, Marla smiled warmly. She didn’t need to rise. Marla was a princess and the young woman being shown into her presence was a commoner, but she wanted to make a good impression. Marla wanted the girl to like her.

The princess stepped forward as the young woman reached the low table surrounded by brightly coloured silk cushions, looking her up and down with the same considering look the girl gave her. Neither of them spoke.

Dressed in a modest but well-cut gown of pale blue silk, Luciena Mariner was pretty rather than beautiful—the prettiness of youth and vitality, rather than the result of good breeding or a particularly fine bone structure. She was a little exotic-looking, Marla thought, with dark eyes and dusky skin that betrayed her Fardohnyan heritage. The girl’s mother had been a
court’esa
of Fardohnyan ancestry, and reputedly a very beautiful one. Marla had only rumour and gossip to rely on for that opinion. Although the woman had lived barely three blocks away in the house provided by Luciena’s late father, it was inconceivable that a slave who’d borne one of Marla’s husbands a bastard would ever be allowed in the presence of the princess.

“Your highness,” Luciena said eventually, with a graceful curtsey. Although common, she’d had the best education Marla could arrange, and that included the social niceties as well as the more traditional subjects.

“Luciena.”

“Is ‘your highness’ the correct form of address?” the girl enquired. “Or would you prefer that I call you ‘mother’?”

Marla smiled. The girl was either very brave or very foolish to declare herself with such hostility within a moment of meeting the person who could make or break her. “Did you
want
to call me mother?”

“I am at your highness’s mercy,” she replied in a tone that was anything but subservient.

“Yes, Luciena,” Marla agreed. “You are.”

Marla let that sink in for a moment as she reached across to the side table and rang the small silver bell resting there. The chimes had barely faded before the doors opened and a legion of slaves hurried into the room with refreshments stacked on several delicately wrought silver carts. They laid out the sliced fruits, the jellied meats and the chilled wine on the table in the centre of the room and then retreated silently, closing the door behind them.

“Please,” Marla invited with a sweep of her arm. “Won’t you join me?”

Luciena took her place on the cushions opposite Marla, studying the princess warily.

“Help yourself,” Marla suggested.

“Thank you, your highness, but I think I’d rather know what I must do to repay the debt I now seem to owe you.”

Marla reached forward and picked up a slice of melon. It was sweet and beaded with condensation, kept cool in the deep cellars of the palace with snow brought in from the Sunrise Mountains during winter.

“Think no more of the debt. I have no need or wish to be repaid. I simply thought it was about time you and I got to know each other.”

“You never felt the need while my father was alive,” the young woman pointed out stiffly. “He’s been dead for six years and you have taken another husband. I can’t see that I matter to you at all.”

“On the contrary, Luciena. You matter to me a great deal.”

“You have an odd way of demonstrating your regard, your highness.”

The girl’s self-righteous manner was rather irritating. “You must understand, Luciena, it was protocol that dictated we could not meet before now. There was enough of a scandal when I married your father. The High Prince’s sister married to a commoner? There were dowager ladies fainting all over Greenharbour at the very thought of it. Acknowledging his baseborn child would have been going too far, even for a court as supposedly open-minded as this one.”

“Then why
did
you marry my father? You never loved him.”

“Your father owned nearly a quarter of the entire Hythrun shipping fleet, Luciena. Common-born or not, he was one of the richest men in Hythria.”

“So you admit that you married him for his money?”

“I tried marrying for love once. It was an unmitigated disaster.”

“But . . .,” Luciena stammered, obviously taken aback. “I . . . I don’t understand.”

“You are your father’s heir, Luciena.”

“I’m baseborn,” she reminded Marla. “I can’t inherit anything because you broke your promise to legitimise me.”

“I broke nothing,” Marla corrected, taking another slice of melon. “I’m simply working to my timetable, not yours. And, if I so choose, I can still arrange for you to inherit your father’s fortune. On three conditions.”

“What three conditions?”

“The first is that I adopt you, obviously,” she explained. “As your father’s only legal wife, I can adopt his child and legitimise her, even though he’s been dead these past six years, making you his heir.”

Luciena smiled, but it wasn’t pleasant. “I see.
Now
you decide to keep your promise to adopt me, and because I’m only seventeen you’ll get to manage my affairs for the next thirteen years as my guardian, strip me of my fortune in the process, all to prop up your brother as High Prince, no doubt.

The rumours about your ruthlessness really don’t do you justice, your highness.”

Marla was rather taken aback. “There are
rumours
about my ruthlessness?”

“As you are no doubt aware, your highness, I’ve had an excellent education. Please don’t insult me by treating me like a fool.”

“Then don’t insult me by not hearing me out,” Marla countered. She was staggered.
There are
rumours about my ruthlessness?

Luciena had the good sense to realise she’d overstepped the mark. “I’m sorry, your highness.”

“As I was
saying
, the first thing we must do is formally adopt you. The second is to arrange a marriage for you.”

“To whom?” the girl bristled. “Some scabby old man to whom you owe a favour? One of the High Prince’s sick, twisted friends, perhaps?”

Luciena’s meekness had lasted barely more than a few seconds. Marla was privately glad. She would have hated it if the girl were all simpering timidity and no spine.

“I’m sure we can find somebody acceptable.”

“And why does it matter who I marry?”

“It doesn’t,” Marla told her. “Not
who
you marry, at any rate. Just that you
are
married. You see, here’s the thing, Luciena. We are women in a world ruled by men. In some respects, we have less freedom than a slave. When we marry, we become the possession of our husband. What is his is his, and what is ours becomes his when we marry him. Now, because it was men who made the rules, and there’s no point in taking a sixteen-year-old bride if you have to wait until she’s thirty to inherit her father’s fortune, they left themselves a loophole. A woman might inconveniently die in childbirth long before she reaches her majority, and then what happens to all that money and property you married her for?”

The girl was quick. It took her hardly any time at all to understand what Marla was driving at.

“Do you mean that as soon as I am married, I can inherit my father’s estate?”

“If I’ve adopted you, yes.”

“Who has it now?”

“I do, of course.”

“But if
you
inherited my father’s estate, doesn’t that mean it now belongs to your current husband?”

“But I didn’t inherit it. I’m simply holding it in trust. It doesn’t belong to me, therefore my husband can’t touch it. And you needn’t fear for your fortune, Luciena. I’ve kept a very close eye on it.

When your father died, he owned a quarter of Hythria’s trading fleet. Now you own about a third of it.”

Luciena stared at Marla, her expression thoughtful.

“You said three conditions,” she reminded the princess after a moment.

“The third is that you swear allegiance to the House of Wolfblade.”

The girl seemed puzzled. “You want me to swear allegiance to the High Prince?”

“I want you to swear that you’ll do everything in your power, bring the entire weight of your fortune to bear if need be, to secure the throne for the High Prince’s heir.”

“You want me to swear allegiance to your son, then?”

“No,” Marla said carefully. “Asking you to swear allegiance to anyone other than the incumbent High Prince would be treason. I merely insist that you swear an oath to his House. That’s not the same thing.”

“Suppose the next High Prince turns out to be as useless as the one we have now? Or worse?”

“You can decide that for yourself when you meet him.”

Luciena was looking completely baffled now.

“If I’m to adopt you, Luciena, you’re going to have to meet the rest of the family.”

“You’d have me in your
house
? Me? A baseborn commoner?”

“My husband and I are leaving for Krakandar Province the day after tomorrow. If you’re willing to consider my offer, you may come with us to meet your new brothers and sisters, including the High Prince’s heir. You’ll find Damin inflicted with a degree of obnoxious self-confidence common to most twelve-year-old boys, but we trust he’ll grow out of it soon.”

“And if I don’t agree to your offer?” she asked warily.

“Then I shall find some likely lad and claim
him
as Jarvan Mariner’s long-lost son, adopt him and arrange to manage his estate until he comes of age. It will be a little harder to prove but I do have considerable resources at my disposal. And your father was a sea captain for a long time, you know.

With a
court’esa
or two in every port, he’s bound to have fathered more than one bastard.”

Luciena thought that over for a while before asking, “Who do you want me to marry?”

“We can decide that when you agree to my offer.”

“Why?” Luciena asked suspiciously.

“I beg your pardon?”

“What’s in this for you, Princess Marla? Is it because you want control of my fortune?”

“I already have that.”

“Then I don’t understand why you’re doing this for me.”

Marla smiled, thinking she would be just as suspicious of the offer she had just made this child.

“I’m
not
doing this for you,” she admitted. “You’re right about that much. I’m doing it for my family. It’s no secret the Wolfblade House has been self-destructing for generations. I intend to see it restored through my son. But thanks to his predecessors, Damin is going to have to fight to win his throne and work even harder to keep it. To do that, he’ll need the backing of more than a few sentimental Royalists determined to cling to the Wolfblade line for old time’s sake. You’ll have control over a third of the trading ships operating out of Hythria. And you
will
have control of them, Luciena. I didn’t waste all that education on you just to have you hand the responsibility over to someone else.”

“You’re serious!”

“As you get to know me better, Luciena, you will learn this is not my joking face.”

“How much time do I have to think this over?”

“Do you have a better offer to consider?”

“That depends on whether or not I’m willing to sell my soul to the Wolfblades, I suppose,” the girl replied defiantly.

“You have a gift for the dramatic, I see, Luciena.”

“Actually, your highness, I thought I was merely stating an obvious fact.”

“Then allow me to state another obvious fact, my dear. You have a choice before you between a life of privilege and wealth or one of poverty and obscurity. If you are as intelligent as my informants have led me to believe, you will choose the former.”

“Do you think I’m so fond of material wealth that I would place myself in your power for the promise of a roof over my head? Do you think I’ll stand by and let you marry me off to one of your sycophants just to aid you in propping up the High Prince’s throne? And why should I believe your offer is genuine at all? I’ve made it plain how I feel about you. What reason have you to trust me? Or is it that you don’t
need
to trust me? Maybe all you need to do is adopt me, marry me off to someone you
do
trust, and have the Assassins’ Guild take care of the rest.”

“You’re not actually worth the price of an assassin. If I was that anxious to dispose of you, I’d do it myself.” Marla smiled at the girl’s shocked expression. “
That
was my joking face, Luciena.”

Warily, the girl nodded. “Yes, your highness.”

Marla smiled even wider, hoping to put the girl at ease. “We’ll have three weeks in a carriage on the way to Krakandar to test each other’s mettle, Luciena. I’m sure it will be an enlightening time for both of us. Now, do you accept my offer or not?”