Grand Conspiracy (31 page)

‘I'm not afraid,' she insisted. Her courage took away the last of his breath, and still, her blithe tenderness misread him. ‘I heard that four of the Riverton ships were lost. Your chancellor said you'll leave to hunt down the shipwright who betrayed you, and I'll be left as your last wife was, with your household here at Avenor. Unless you promise to take me along, I prefer to remember this night with clear wits.'

Lysaer let her go. Once more on his feet, he refilled his brandy glass, then drained it. His body felt lined in white flame as he turned and regarded his bride on the bed. His eyes were dark sapphire, the pupils distended. ‘Drink the wine. You would be better off.'

Her heart-shaped chin tilted, and her hair, combed free, spilled down her shoulders and breasts. For answer, she grasped the goblet by the stem and emptied it onto the carpet. ‘Shame on you,' she said. ‘I need no drugged posset.'

‘Your choice.' Lysaer set down his glass, reluctant. If he swallowed neat brandy until the pain was burned out of him, he risked becoming incapable. ‘The tide goes at midnight. There won't be time to plead my forgiveness, and the wine was the only lame courtesy I could offer.' He jerked off his sash, stripped the gold-blazoned tabard over his head, then kicked off his boots and discarded them on the heaped silk. The points on his trunk hose seemed defeatingly intricate. Since the brandy had robbed his fingers of finesse, he settled for tearing off pearl-studded eyelets and letting them scatter to the floor.

Ellaine managed not to flinch as he whipped back the sheet. The bite of his hands on her shoulders shook her nerve. He could feel her confused uncertainty as he refused the soft lips upturned for his kiss. Her mahogany hair spilled warm over his chilled hands, and her skin, like fine pearl, smelled of rosewater. He felt nothing. Only the calculated drive of necessity, the hardened heat in his loins lit at last by the mindless anesthesia of the brandy. He parted her legs. Then, without apology, he let go of sanity and allowed the animal instinct of his body do its raw work for the kingdom.

Ellaine jerked. She cried out but once, cut to painful betrayal, then strove through her tears to silence a misery no trained deportment could master.

Sickened by grief and self-hatred, Lysaer bore down. As Tysan's Prince Exalted, he must admit no vulnerability; therefore, he heard nothing, saw nothing beyond his ringed fingers, knotted
into sweet waves of dark hair as he muffled his wife's tormented gasps in his shirt.

Then release; the act was completed. He arose. While his conquest wept in limp shudders against the pillows, and the small spot of blood marked the sheets with incontrovertible proof of consummation, he flung open the door and shouted. His valet came, bearing clothes and a sea cloak; then the elderly handmaid, her face clamped to anger as she awaited his royal bidding.

‘Attend to my princess.' He could wish that the brandy did not slur the command in his voice.

The handmaid stepped to the bed. Lysaer endured, regal in reserve, while she asked her young charge gentle questions. Her competent hands touched and soothed with a tenderness the new bride might never know from her husband. When the girl's ravaged nakedness had been covered over in the impersonal embrace of cool linen, the old matron regarded the prince.

Through a silence as pained as the twist of a knife blade, he spoke. ‘She need only give this kingdom an heir to live in comfort for the rest of her life.'

Foolish, stubborn, unmindful of consequences, the handmaid launched from the bedside. ‘For shame!' She raised her stout arm and dealt Lysaer an openhanded slap across the face.

While the valet gasped in shock, Prince Lysaer stood motionless. The candle spun glints of gold through his hair. His eyes stayed direct, stark with an unflinching guilt that became a torture to witness. While the welted print of the maidservant's fingers flushed the bloodless plane of his cheekbone, he asked, ‘I was so rough?'

‘No.' Her woman's glare savaged him, and still found no flaw in the merciless gift of his honesty. ‘But who will answer for what Ellaine is to become? The hurts to her female body are nothing beside the wound you have dealt to her spirit.'

Impatient, unspeaking, Lysaer stepped away.

The handmaid moved also. She blocked his path to the doorway, her disapproval immovable stone. ‘Your princess has a face,' she accused. ‘Look at her! She has a name. Would it unman you to use it?'

Lysaer froze in place, the queer, fragile majesty of him through that drawn-out moment enough to brand sight for eternity. ‘Her Grace does have a name,' he agreed, the indelible depths of his suffering ripped at long last to the surface. ‘To speak of her would destroy us both, since the one fit to claim that hold on my heart
has died, defamed by the hand of the enemy. You want truth for the woman who has married to continue the s'Ilessid royal line? I will have sacrificed everything I ever loved well ahead of the day the Master of Shadow is brought down.'

He brushed past. The valet scrambled after, threw a cloak overtop of his liege's unlaced shirt. ‘Your Grace, you'll need clothing.'

Yet the solicitude paid to royal dignity was meaningless. Once over the threshold, Lysaer slammed the bedchamber door. The explosive force of his own temper mocked him. Sealed to a course of desolate justice, he knew that no anger, no violence, no punishment of grief could ever serve to heal the void rent through his spirit.

‘Sea boots, and breeches and a white-and-gold tunic,' he said in iron restraint to his valet.

Behind him, Talith's memory burned unspoken on the air while the beautiful, broken creature his royal duty claimed for Tysan swallowed back the drugged wine and slept at last in the loveless sheets of their marriage bed.

By the hour before midnight, news of the wrecked ships was just breaking. If the elite of Avenor still drank to the health of bridegroom and princess, the guild ministers were absent. No one had noticed the moment, but the notable courtiers and all of the city's high officers had left to nose out the scope of disaster.

Beyond the lit hall with its carousing, oblivious sycophants, the last clouds had fled. Stars burned cold pinpricks through the black arc of a sky the wind had finally swept clean. Pennons flapped on the battlements above the western gatehouse, while the city's tiered towers glowed with the light of a thousand celebrating households.

The prince their wine toasted passed in haste through dim streets with three guards, inconspicuous in a mantle of dark wool. Crowds were now gathering in ominous knots by the breakwater. He passed through, unobserved. A word to a sergeant, and the hurried tramp of a late-mustered company parted its ranks to admit him. Lysaer s'Ilessid might have reached his state galley unremarked, except for the ruthless, wary vigilance of Sulfin Evend.

‘He's here, and before the change in the tide.' The Lord Commander extended his hand, lips curved in a sardonic smile. ‘I win.'

‘Damn you,' murmured the royal galley's captain, forced to relinquish ten silvers from the opened strings of his purse.

The Alliance Lord Commander played the coins between his fingers, their chime a melodious cascade through his prince's low word of greeting.

He responded, succinct, ‘Your Grace, be on guard. Sharp eyes have noticed Alestron's duke sent no family emissary to honor your wedding. Bold rumors are flying. Hotheads who hate clansmen have already linked Mearn s'Brydion's name with the defection of Riverton's master shipwright.' A piercing, short pause; then Sulfin Evend added, ‘Is that what you wanted? If not, we'll need some pat answers to muzzle the trade guilds. Their craftsmen already clamor for a lynching.'

Whatever his opinion on s'Brydion loyalty, Lysaer preferred reticence. ‘Has my council assembled?'

Sulfin Evend raised his eyebrows, surprised. ‘You can't hear the bickering? Koshlin and the Mayor of Erdane are howling in chorus to rip down Alestron with a siege.'

‘If the duke's brother's guilty, we'll face that cold certainty.' Gold embroidery snagged sullen glints as the prince glanced behind, uneasy as his guards with the awareness that informants already raced to spread the alarm through the alleys mazing the shoreline. ‘Old distrust of clanblood won't be settled by a hanging, even if the s'Brydion duke would acknowledge Tysan's right to pass sentence for treason.'

Lysaer swung back, impatient. The deck lantern's candle flared in the wind and splashed light underneath his drawn hood.

Sulfin Evend shut his lips. He dared not acknowledge the livid weal a woman's hand had left marked across the face of Tysan's bridegroom. Fixed in that splintering, too worldly royal gaze, he averted his eyes and regarded the black swirl of high water, the lines of slack current just starting to suck at the pilings.

‘We're provisioned?' Lysaer asked, as though nothing were amiss.

‘Your best company of field officers has already settled in.' Sulfin Evend accepted the lifeline of tact, brisk as he listed details. ‘Crewmen are lashing the last of the water casks. The steersman couldn't be sobered. His replacement is due any minute.' Then the calculated afterthought, ‘You should hear I took liberties.'

A gust off the sea plucked at Lysaer's cloak. He trapped his errant hood in a death grip, while the dock lines tugged and creaked on the bollards, and someone ashore raged to spill blood
for the works of s'Brydion treachery. Like an echo from Sithaer deep inside the galley's hold, a muzzled hound snarled at its handler.

‘Skannt's trackers are aboard?' Lysaer smiled, his ebullience fanned by the lift of the brandy. ‘That wasn't liberty, but divine inspiration.' He clapped his Lord Commander's shoulder, raw with the need for human warmth.

‘Then you did want Alestron's alliance to be suspect?' Sulfin Evend let the touch pass, passionless as a trained falcon. ‘Mark their clan for death, I'll tear apart their city and hunt them like rats through the wreckage.'

‘Not yet,' Lysaer said, then snapped himself short. Old grief and the maudlin warmth of fine spirits had nearly upset his sensibilities. In darkness, the flare of the lamps on buckles and mail and sword hilt had blurred into a host of older memories. Chills touched him, and a sorrow that all but stopped his breath. Never again could he share long-range plans as he once had confided in Talith's brother.

The pause stretched too long. Sulfin Evend watched, his rapacious instincts already fastened on discrepancy.

Flicked to self-disgust, Lysaer masked his slip of tongue behind the less damning intimation, ‘Cattrick or Mearn, the placement of the Riverton yard has hazed the wrong enemy to light.'

‘Ah, then you meant the lost ships for bait to lure out the Spinner of Darkness? Your guilds would cry murder.' His devotion set above the frank pull of curiosity, Avenor's Lord Commander surveyed a fresh wave of weaving torches, sure enough sign that a targetless fury was building unchecked in the streets. ‘Whoever's responsible, unless you want a war fought on the suspicion of conspiracy, you'll need Cattrick's proven guilt, and Mearn's bleeding corpse as a scapegoat.'

Lysaer quelled a shiver, faintly sickened by the ruthless analysis his own laid plans had encouraged. He knew himself vulnerable. Marriage and brandy bared too many wounds that lay too near to the heart. Besieged by emotions beyond risk to express, he excused himself, then moved on, the unflinching dignity displayed at each step an act of bald-faced bravado.

Tide rocked the galley's keel. Still poised on the rambade to see the dock lines cast off, the sea captain watched the prince mount the gangway. His interest shifted to incredulity as that sovereign figure swayed and caught rope in both hands to keep balance. The wind took advantage, snatched off the
dark hood. Pale hair blazed bright gold under the yardarm lanterns.

A cry of acclaim swept the disgruntled masses on the shoreline. ‘Look! There's the prince!' Disunified voices merged into a chant, fired by the promise of redemption. ‘Defender of the Light! Defender of the Light!'

Lysaer raised an arm. The power of his gift blazed up like a star in acknowledgment. Then his guardsmen closed in. Their deft intervention masked his passage across the deck, and the revealing stumble that sent him through the companionway into the private stern cabin.

‘Young bitch must have claws.' The galley captain chuckled in rich appreciation. ‘Did ye see? Bedamned if our prince isn't flying three sheets to the wind!'

‘So what if he's drunk?' Sulfin Evend spun on his heel, his killer's grace tracked by the petulant chink of his chain mail. ‘The lady you slander is Avenor's crowned princess, and we're going to have riots securing that gangway if you don't get this tub under oars right smart!'

Spring 5654

The clinging, fine rainfall which had dampened the wedding feast at Avenor still misted in the coastal bluffs that thrust seamed, sandstone ramparts down Tysan's west coastline and broke the hard crash of the sea. The crests grew no trees, only rolling acres of salt-burned grass, tossed and combed by the winds. Scrub willow thicketed the rain-carved hollows, rooted in tough sedge and cattails where the hard, stony soil shed water from the heights and channeled runoff in twisting streamlets. These fed the wider catch basins and small marshes, pooled like dropped silk in the valleys. At the change of the season, the deer came to graze on the pale, tender greenery that seeded the mud on the verges. By night, the horned owl raked the ridges hunting rabbit, its broad-winged, wild majesty undisputed until summer, when the plains drifters drove their horse herds southward for grazing.

Yet tonight, the bleak territory overlooking the sea was not empty of human activity.

A band of men crouched in fugitive silence on the seamed side of a bluff overlooking the broken shoreline, with its straggle of irregular islets.