The City in the Lake (23 page)

C
HAPTER
15

he City seemed unsurprised to have lost its King: perhaps it had felt his death, echoing from the other Kingdom. Or perhaps the understanding that the King had died had spread outward from the Queen. Because Ellis knew. She welcomed her son, returned at last to her side, with love and relief. But she did not ask after his father. She moved quietly through the days following the storm, never shouting or throwing plates, as though the driving rain of that night had permanently quenched her temper. And she greeted the return of the King’s elder son with such careful restraint that he understood, to his surprise, that she was ashamed.

“You know, I do not blame you for anything,” he told her when, a few days after their return, he made a moment of privacy with the Queen.

Ellis bent her head. They were in her rooms, as they had been once before not so long ago. She had thrown a water pitcher at him on that occasion. This time she did not seem inclined to throw anything. She looked elegant, weary, and, for the first time Neill could remember, as though she might one day be old. “You protected me,” she said. “You protected us all. We—I—gave you little enough cause. Thank you.”

Neill listened to what she did not say. He said gently, “I would have saved him if I could. I tried. You were wrong, you know. I never hated him. I took any small excuse he ever gave me to love him.”

“He gave you so little. I never minded. I encouraged him in that. I wanted everything for my son. I never cared that there was so little left for you. You should blame me.”

“He gave me enough,” Neill said steadily.

“I am glad,” said the Queen, obviously with some difficulty, “that you were there for him, Neill. For both of them. Cassiel told me. . . . I will be grateful forever that you were there.”

“If I hadn’t been,” Neill said drily, “the whole problem would never have arisen.”

“One cannot hold against the child the terrible acts of the parent.” The Queen studied his face. “Or the stupidities. Or the unkindnesses.”

“I hold nothing against you, Ellis. Far less against Cassiel.” He met her eyes, and added gently, “Everyone loves Cassiel. He is easy to love. Why should I be excepted?”

“It will make me glad,” said the Queen softly, “to know you will stand beside my son when he takes the throne. To know he will be able to depend on your courage and your loyalty.”

“You may be sure of it.” He looked at her thoughtfully: her wide, guileless violet eyes, her calm face. Those eyes met his for a moment, and then dropped. A faint flush rose under her fair skin. He said, without heat, “Will you believe me if I tell you I do not want it? That I will indeed be content to stand quietly beside the throne?”

Her violet eyes lifted again. “I will believe anything you tell me,” said the Queen. “I have learned that, at least.”

“I am glad to hear it. I do generally tell you the truth.” He rose to his feet and took her hand in his, raised it to his lips as he offered a slight bow. “I’m grateful for your regard. Truly,” he added as her eyes searched his face for any trace of mockery.

The Queen rose gracefully and accompanied him to the outer door of her apartment: a signal courtesy. “I shall see you tonight, then.”

“Yes,” he said, “tonight,” and took his leave.

“You’ve been to see my mother,” Cassiel said to him later; it was not quite a question. Waving away hovering attendants, he took his brother by the arm and turned toward the balcony of his room. The air was cold and clear. The view from that balcony, though excellent, did not match the one from the highest Palace tower. Neill did not miss it. He had no special desire to set foot on that high gallery ever again.

“She was more than civil,” he said. “She was trying very hard to be kind.”

Cassiel studied him. “She doesn’t trust you. Even now?”

“She does, in fact, I think. Her doubts of me now are merely habit, and she is, I believe, trying not to listen to them.”

The Prince turned and leaned his arms on the balcony railing. “In time she will learn to trust you with her heart. I wish she would begin to throw things again.”

Neill smiled. “Then we would both know she was recovered.”

An attendant appeared tentatively at the door of the balcony and said, “Your Highness . . .”

“Later,” commanded the Prince. He said to Neill as the man vanished again, “They pretend to believe we will not be ready for the coronation tonight, but of course we will be.” His tone was light, but grief moved suddenly in his eyes.

“He would be proud of you,” Neill said gently.

“I don’t know why. I did very little.”

Neill tilted his head. “You were kind as well as brave. I remember a certain offer, made at the end, that was very like a King. You will be a fine King. Of course he would be proud.”

Cassiel, faintly embarrassed, made a noncommittal sound. He turned suddenly, as though gathering courage from the cold air. He said, eyes searching his brother’s face, “Neill, do you mind?”

After the briefest pause, Neill said lightly, “So you doubt me as well. You need not.”

Despite the lightness, his brother heard the hurt in that pause. He said swiftly, taking Neill’s arm again in a grip so hard it almost bruised, “No. Not your heart, nor your patience, nor your resolve, nor your courage, nor your ability to stand next to me for the next fifty years, if you must, and never show the slightest trace of regret. Even if regret is what you feel. You say I will be a fine King. But I know you could be a great King, and you are the elder. . . .”

“But you are the only son of the Queen,” said Neill softly. “And the heart of the Kingdom. My heritage is not . . . not so comfortable. I could be clever and ruthless and powerful, and those are all good qualities in a King. But you will shine like the sun in the sky and bring joy to all the Kingdom. Besides,” he said, and smiled suddenly, “I do not want it. If I learned anything in my brief week of rule, it was that. I want you to have it, and I wish you all possible joy of it.”

Cassiel gave him a searching look. “Do you mean that?”

“Certainly,” Neill said, and took care that this time there was no trace of hesitation.

“All right,” said Cassiel softly, and drew him forward into an abrupt, fierce embrace. “I love you,” he said, with simple sincerity. “
I
trust you. Always. Never doubt it, brother.”

Neill swallowed a sudden, surprising lump in his throat and returned his brother’s embrace, not trying to speak.

Cassiel pushed him back again, smiling, eyes sparkling with sudden mischief. “And since I love you, I have sent your servants suitable clothing for you to wear tonight.”

“Oh . . .,” said Neill, recovering all his accustomed selfpossession as he made a rapid leap of imagination. “No, Cassiel—”

“Your tastes are far too plain. You know that.”

“Cassiel—”

His younger brother only laughed. “You should see what I sent to Timou. Well, you will, of course, tonight.”

Neill smiled reluctantly. “Not white, I hope?”

“Thunder and ice, no,” Cassiel said cheerfully. “She needs to look like herself, not like your mother.” He said this with a lightness that suggested he had already forgotten that night of terror and despair at the heights of the Palace, though Neill knew he had not. But his tone made it clear he meant to dismiss any importance Lelienne had ever had for either of them. “But all that white hair! And that skin! Those eyes! I asked Jesse’s advice—Jesse has an eye for women’s fashions that might surprise you.”

Neill studied him with a sudden faint concern. “Cassiel, you’re not—You don’t see Timou’s face in the falling rain, surely?”

“What?” his brother said, surprised, and then laughed. “Neill, she’s your sister, and you’re my brother. It would hardly be right. No. But I can appreciate beauty when I see it. She will be exquisite.” He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

Neill said warningly, “If mine is too exquisite, I won’t wear it.”

“You will. To please me.” Cassiel turned back toward the door, making a slight face. “And I will wear all the regalia my attendants insist upon, so you’ve no cause to complain.”

Neill did complain, at length, when he saw the clothing his brother had sent to his rooms. But he did it with a lightness to his tone that set the servants to smiling behind their hands.

His brother had sent him a shirt like midnight, with the puffed sleeves slashed up to the elbow to show the silvery blue lining. The leggings were black, traced with intricate silver-blue embroidery that ran in a narrow line down from his right hip to swirl around his calf. The embroidery continued down his right boot, picked out in silk and sapphire. The other boot was plain. The boots had, Neill judged, undoubtedly been a special order. Someone had probably stayed up for several nights in a row to finish them in time.

Cassiel had sent ribbons for his hair: midnight-blue and silvery blue and, the one concession to mourning, a single ribbon of lavender. There was a silver hair clasp, set with tiny sapphires.

“The ladies of the court will fall at your feet,” said an elderly servant, braiding the ribbons into Neill’s hair.

“Wonderful,” Neill said drily.

“If you do not look at them, my lord, you will break their hearts.” The servant, who was the man who had watched Neill take a coal out of the fire at his mother’s command, came around in front of him and opened a little rosewood box to show him a ring. It was made of strands of braided silver, set with sapphires and pearls. It had belonged to the King, who had worn it on special occasions. “Prince Cassiel sent it,” the servant said gently. “It will break
his
heart if you do not wear it.”

After a moment Neill extended his hand.

The servant slid the ring onto his thumb—the King had worn it on the third finger of his right hand, but Neill’s hands were not so heavy. Then the servant bowed his head and touched his lips to the hand he held. Startled, Neill did not move.

“All the court should kiss your hands,” said the servant softly. “Some of them know it. All of
us
know it.”

Too much touched to speak, Neill laid his hand on the man’s shoulder. All the servants bowed, one after another, very carefully and seriously, and retired quietly afterward, to leave Neill standing by himself in the privacy of his room. He found, to his considerable surprise, that for once he did not feel that he stood alone in the heart of the court.

The coronation occurred at dusk, the correct and proper time to recognize all moments of change. And what could be more momentous a change than the recognition of a new King after the death of the old?

Garlands and ribbons dressed the great hall, which had been flung open to all the Kingdom for the evening; in practice this meant that the hall thronged with courtiers, while people from the City and beyond filled the streets outside the Palace.

Tables along the sides of the hall held platters of thin-sliced beef, soft white rolls, tiny pastries filled with thick cream, cakes garnished with nets of caramelized sugar, and pyramids of glistening red berries that seemed to glow with their own contained light. The same fare, Neill knew, was being offered all through the courtyards and gardens surrounding the Palace, and it was a very good thing the evening sky was cloudless.

No one wore overt mourning on this evening: nothing brought worse luck to the coronation of a new King than extravagant mourning for the old. Courtiers wore bright jewel tones. sEven the widowed Queen had put aside her black and lavender; she wore instead a gown in a pure deep blue, embroidered with traceries of creamy thread and white pearls. A strand of pearls and amethysts dressed her hair. She moved through the gathered courtiers with a slightly abstracted air that suggested her attention was elsewhere: thinking of her absent husband, Neill guessed, or of her son, waiting to be crowned in his place. Or most likely both.

Timou, when she entered, wore a confection of silvery colors—blue and green and rose—that poured like water down her slight form. Pearls and softly colored opals swept down the left side of the gown and were stitched onto her left slipper in a stylistic gesture Neill recognized; pearls and more opals dressed her hair, which had been gathered up to show off her slender neck. The gown and the upswept hair made her seem older than she was; the delicate colors and her air of unstudied grace made her seem like herself and less like her mother.