Champion of the Rose - Kobo Ebook (11 page)

Soren nudged at a tendril thought, a fragment of will
furnished with dark, serrated leaves and copper-green thorns. And the bells stopped.

"Thank you," Strake said, tone edging back into
impatience. Soren opened her eyes to
discover herself still a woman standing in a garden. With a palace twining through her mind.

She wasn't certain how long she'd been staring at things she
couldn't really see, but it seemed to have been enough time for Fleeting Hall
to collect the beginnings of a confused crowd. Some like Aristide still in sleeping clothes, and most staring up at the
ceiling. Others were watching Lord
Aristide, with the usual interest anything he did inspired, but they didn't
seem to understand that the pair of people he faced were the heart of the
morning's excitement. That the bells
were for the King, for a new chapter in Darest's history. Bells for the end of the Regency.

They couldn't see her, Soren realised. Just her legs beneath Vixen's belly. A very strange thing, for a horse to be in
the Garden of the Rose, but not nearly so curious as the sudden clamour of
bells.

Then Aristide Couerveur went to one knee.

Thirty years at the heart of Court intrigue. It had certainly provided Lord Aristide with
a performer's feel for the moment. Soren
could not do more than guess at his feelings, but he did not spare any inch of
depth as he inclined his head to the new King of Darest. He still looked like he was enjoying himself.

"Your Majesty," he said, star sapphire eyes
meeting blue-black ink. "How may I
serve?"

"You can get up, for a start," Strake replied
waspishly, but it was too late. Disbelief ran through the Court: the Diamond Couerveur – kneeling! Then comprehension slowly dawned, and those
nearest began dropping to their knees. A
different kind of excitement spread across Fleeting Hall, a mix of fear and joy. Strake merely looked impatient. "If you would be so kind," he
added.

Lord Aristide immediately rose to his feet. And smiled, that peculiarly sweet smile he
was reputed to have given
Vereck
Basquet
before he beggared him. "Would Your
Majesty like to be conducted to the...former Regent?" he asked.

"In due course." Strake looked out over the twenty or thirty people kneeling before him
to startled newcomers just entering Fleeting Hall. "One of you fetch the Chancellor,"
he said. "And the Seneschal. Presuming the palace still has one."

Soren only recognised a handful of the people who were
gazing at Strake so avidly. Guards and
servants mostly, for few people had apartments close to the Hall. She saw Aspen, and the Chancellor's pretty
young husband, who looked particularly wide-eyed as he surged to his feet,
bobbed like a cork, then hurried away toward the still-open door to the
Chancellor's apartments. No-one needed
to fetch the Seneschal, who had already appeared at the west entrance and
stopped to stare.

"King Aluster," Soren said, as much to the crowd
as to Strake. "This is Lord
Aristide Couerveur, the Regent's son. Lord Aristide, this is Aluster Veristace Rathen, son of Chenath Rathen,
who was sister to Queen Tiarmed."

"King," Lord Aristide added, and folded into
another exquisitely judged bow. Again,
there was no hint of hesitation or doubt in the observance. "Perhaps Your Majesty would care for
breakfast?"

"Shortly."

Gratified to discover that curt and touchy was Strake's
method of dealing with everyone, Soren gestured to a porter. "Take Vixen to the stables," she
said, catching hold of the mare's bridle as she sidled toward the pool at the
back of the Garden. "See that she's
well looked after."

"At once, Champion!" With a startling puff of self-importance, the
man jumped to take the reins. Soren
stroked Vixen's neck one more time, trying not to feel that she was sending
away her only support. She wished she
could concentrate.

It did not seem possible to shut off the ebb and flow of
information through her mind, though it did tend to recede to the background
when she focused on what was happening immediately around her. But even as she turned back to Strake, she
was discovering that she knew that there were exactly eighty-three people in Fleeting
Hall, that dozens more were running toward it and seven away, that the
Chancellor and his husband were a few moments short of their apartment's door,
and one of the cooks had just upset a pot of water over the kitchen's main
hotstone
, sending up a cloud of steam. That the whole palace was a pageant silently
playing out in her head.

With a wrench, Soren brought her attention back to Fleeting
Hall as the Chancellor emerged, his husband in tow. Though he was properly dressed, with the
thick silver chain of office around his neck, the Chancellor's dark hair was
standing in uncombed clumps. He ignored
the Seneschal as she wove her way toward them, blinked twice at the sight of
Strake, Soren and Lord Aristide, then bowed briskly.

"Chancellor Dominic Gestry," Soren said
helpfully. Gestry was an olive-skinned
man with a handsome-ugly face, all his features seeming too large, but somehow
coming together into an attractive whole. He'd been the Regent's favourite some years ago, his position his reward
when her interest waned. He'd managed to
retain it by proving circumspect and just ambitious enough.

"What are Your Majesty's orders?" he asked now,
acting like he'd been serving Strake for decades, and not at all dishevelled or
short of breath.

Strake was frowning at the inner corners of the Garden of
the Rose, where the scourers never dared venture to collect fallen leaves and
scrub away dirt and mould. He turned to
look the Chancellor up and down, then said: "Inform Darest of my return,
and despatch the appropriate messages to our neighbours. I will expect to meet with the Regent after
lunch, then address the Court. The
afternoon will be divided between an initial briefing from the Court Shaper,
Councillor of Mages, Marshall of the Army, and Apexes of the Sun and Moon. Then I will meet with those of the Barons who
are currently at Court."

Before the Chancellor could even nod, let alone compose some
sort of response, Strake turned to the Seneschal, who had reached the edge of
the garden and was curtseying deeply, her Keys of Office clattering.

"Seneschal Mara
Sedurian
,"
Soren murmured. Thin, prim and highly
political, the Seneschal's most public battle was with the Chamberlain,
sparring with him constantly about the division of their duties. Her expression suggested rapid thought, but
like everyone else she did not seem prepared to simply reject the new
King. Aristide Couerveur, after all, had
not.

As Strake gave the Seneschal the same quick survey that he'd
awarded everyone else, the crowd finally broke its silence, those furthest away
beginning to murmur explanations to newcomers. Only a few were still on their knees. In other circumstances, Soren might find their stunned confusion
entertaining, but too many were stealing quick glances at the man two steps to
her right for her to forget possible consequences. Lord Aristide gave no sign of being perturbed
by the fact that Strake had not spared him a further glance. She couldn't imagine what he was feeling.

"I'm told that part of the palace was sealed after
Torluce's death," Strake said, brusquely, as the Seneschal opened her
mouth to speak. "Get it
cleaned. Start with the throne room,
then my apartments. The Champion will
see to your people's safety. But first
find me somewhere to bathe and breakfast."

"I–" The
Seneschal struggled briefly, then bowed her head. "Of course, Your Majesty. If Your Majesty would follow me?"

Strake held up a hand to put the Seneschal off and turned to
Soren. "I'll see you for
lunch," he said. "Will you be
able to shepherd the cleaning crews?"

"Yes," Soren said simply, because it was hardly
the moment the launch a discussion on her sudden dual existence as person and
palace. And she was, besides, quite sure
that she could. When she'd had more time
to think, perhaps it would be clear why.

Turning away, Strake paused to look Lord Aristide over
again. "Perhaps you would like to
inform your parent of my arrival," he said.

"Very much indeed, Your Majesty," Lord Aristide
said, with a wonderful sincerity. "Thank you."

Strake barely lingered for the answer, was striding across
Fleeting Hall, the Seneschal only just managing to keep ahead of him.

"You appear to have crowned a whirlwind,
Champion," Lord Aristide said, too soft for any but Soren's ear. Soren, whose attention had flicked away to
the Regent, rising grandly from Jansette's bed, glanced jerkily at the man at
her elbow and found his smile quite impossible to gauge.

The prospect of Lord Aristide as enemy frightened her, and
she looked back at the full, dark flower which represented their new King. His explanation of the colour briefly drowned
out the palace.

"It means I'm about to die."

Chapter Ten

There was nothing Soren wanted more than a quiet place to
hide, if only for a year or two. Instead
she had a crowd of servants, all lye, linseed and unconcealed excitement as
they turned out the fabled living quarters of the Rathen rulers. Soren was too shakily weary to even
appreciate it, her head full of cotton regret.

"My Lady Champion, you must advise me!"

Avoiding a
scourer
laden with
disintegrating bed-linen, Soren turned to the Master of Apparel. He was one of those small, dapper men who
seem to live on a diet of nerves and ill-considered romance. "What is it?" she asked, as her
newfound inner eye flicked across a dozen rooms to find Strake in her own
apartment, moodily leafing through the books she hadn't had time to study. She'd been carefully not looking at him ever
since he'd climbed into his bath.

"It is the King," the Master of Apparel replied,
with a nice rising note of alarm. "He will not allow me to dress him!"

Strake was certainly not prowling about her rooms
naked. Nor was he still in his
trail-worn clothes, though his current outfit was something very similar. "How so?"

"Everything I have shown him, Champion, he has rejected
out of hand. He has turned his nose up
at any thought of a demi-robe, and even the simplest of stockards prompted him
to accuse me of trying to dress him like an Atlaran. His opinion of shirts suitable for wearing
without outer robes does not bear repeating."

"But you have dressed him all the same?" Soren
asked, her sense of the absurd slowly stirring to life.

"Much against my better judgment. I have been obliged to outfit His Majesty in
a manner best suited for stable-work, or some coin-scraped huntsman. It is not suitable, Champion. It is not suitable at all!"

Not fashionable, at any rate. Following Lady Arista's sumptuous tastes and
Lord Aristide's shining precision, Strake's penchant for undecorated black was
going to look sadly out of place. It was
interesting that the Master of Apparel had decided to appeal to Soren. He was the first but not, she suspected, the
last.

"He is King," she said now, with as much gravity
as she could muster.

"Champion, you must–"

"He is King," Soren repeated. The Master of Apparel opened his mouth,
closed it, took another breath to speak, stopped, then reluctantly nodded.

"Thank you, Champion," he said, unhappily, and
turned away. Soren watched him go,
thinking over the power of that simple statement. If Strake took it into his head to wear a
transparent lime-green nightgown who could gainsay him? The Master of Apparel should be grateful for
unrelieved black.

"Are you ready to open further rooms, Champion?"
the Seneschal asked, having crept over while the Chamberlain was busy
displaying his vigilance over a cabinet full of outrageously valuable
statuettes.

Soren was starting to realise that one of her major
difficulties as Champion would not be playing politics, but staying away from
it. The origin of the feud between
Seneschal and Chamberlain was murky: something about a woman they'd both
wanted. The result was constant
struggle. Soren suspected they were as eager
to impress the new King with the other's incompetence as their own efficiency. In Strake's absence, they had resorted to
proving themselves before Soren.

The loathsome prospect of adjudicating courtier's games was
finally too much. Awake since the
previous morning, Soren did not really care about the replacement of hundred year-old
mattresses, or whether statuettes of emerald and topaz should remain where they
were or be conducted at once to the Treasury, let alone which court official
should be doing what. The Seneschal had
barely given her a chance to bathe and snatch breakfast before chivvying her
off to oversee the unlocking of doors. And, because she'd wanted to give the impression that the Champion's
much-vaunted powers over the palace protections required her physical presence,
Soren had allowed it. But standing about
watching people dust was ridiculous.

"So long as you use the keys, Seneschal," she
said, decisively, "you will not be troubled by the palace defences. I will be with the King in my receiving room,
and will expect lunch at noon. Advise
the Chamberlain to leave valuables where they are found."

Without another word, Soren walked away. She'd discovered that there was a door
linking the royal apartments to the Champion's rooms, but headed in the
opposite direction. She wanted another
look at the Hall of the Crown.

Scarcely possible to believe this triumph of art had been
lost to neglect. In permanent gloom
beneath layers of grime it had been huge and threatening, with only a hint of
splendour in the half-seen sweep of the banisters and the glimpse of carving on
the doors. Ignoring the curious glances
of stray scourers, Soren stopped just beyond the door to the royal apartments
and drank it all in.