The Falcon Throne (The Tarnished Crown Series) (37 page)

He covered his own with the flat of his hand. Lowered his brows. “No.”

“So, Blane,” said Roric, ignoring his pique, and sitting again. “Paint me a picture of Cassinia as it stood when you left. And then tell me honestly how it seems to you
we
stand there–and don’t think to spare my feelings.”

Hastily swallowing, Blane set his goblet aside. The rich wine had stained his neatly barbered flaxen beard dark red about the chin. “Then I won’t. Alas, Your Grace, when it comes to Cassinia I fear we’re kneeling, not standing. That curs’t principality’s naught more than a cauldron of simmering strife. It bubbles up, spills over, and blights everything it touches. Like poison.”

Which was precisely what Aistan and Vidar had told the council earlier that week. The same sobering report from two different, reliable sources. And now here was a third.

Unhappily thoughtful, Roric picked at a loose thread in his fine grey wool sleeve. “And?” he said at last. “I’d know the worst.”

“The worst, Your Grace?” Blane shook his head. “I doubt we’ve seen the worst, though what I’ve seen is bad enough.” He snatched up his goblet again and drank like a man in need of courage. “Though we’re still barred from Ardenn, with the restoration of our trading rights in Cassinia’s other duchies I did for a time think we were looking at better days. But I fear I hoped too soon.”

From the careful corner of his eye, Humbert saw Roric’s face tighten at the mention of Berardine’s duchy.
Berardine
. Curse the meddling bitch. In offering her daughter to Roric she’d given Cassinia’s regents a blade that had been pressed to Clemen’s throat ever since. The duchy’s slow decay had started the moment she set foot in Eaglerock.

And still the boy felt pity for her. As though she weren’t the scribe of her own miserable fate.

“Ardenn’s duchess,” Roric said, abruptly. “How does she fare? Do you know?”

“Berardine?” Blane blinked. “Why, she’s still prisoned in her own duchy, Your Grace, but no worse than that. At least I heard no ill rumour to suggest otherwise.”

“And her daughter? Catrain?”

“Ah.” Blane swallowed more wine. “She’s dead, Your Grace.”

“
Dead?
”

“That’s the general opinion. For certain she’s not been seen alive in Ardenn–or anywhere else–for some years.” The trader grimaced. “Which only worsens our predicament. Without a son to inherit Baldwin’s duchy, when Berardine dies the other dukes will fight over it like dogs with a bone.”

Roric cleared his throat. “But the duchess has other daughters.”

“All married off, Your Grace. And even if they weren’t, after the disastrous widow there’ll be no more women permitted sole rule in Cassinia.”

“No,” said Roric, his gaze dangerously unfocused. “I dare say you’re right.”

Shifting in his chair, needing to ease his aching bones, Humbert knocked his booted foot against Roric’s ankle. A timely hint. Let the boy be distracted by Berardine and her dead daughter and they’d not escape the merchant’s company before sunrise.

“What news else, Blane?” he said briskly. “No need to dwell on Ardenn. His Grace knows already where Clemen can and cannot trade.”

“But he doesn’t, my lord,” Blane said, banging his emptied goblet on the side table. “And nor does any man who thinks to do business in Cassinia these days. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! For in Cassinia these days up is down and down is up and the rules change from moment to moment, on a whim!”

Roric turned. “Patience, Humbert. We need to hear him out.”

And that was true, though he wished it wasn’t. He didn’t care for Master Blane. Rich men who opened their coin chests to dukes oft had a nasty habit of thinking they’d made a purchase, not a loan. Resting his chin on his chest he gestured at the merchant.

“Very well, Blane. We’re listening.”

Blane smoothed his wine-stained beard, the costly rings on his fingers catching the firelight. “Your Grace, allow me to illustrate my point. This last venture, we travelled particularly to Duchy Hardane–being given reliably before we sailed that the noblemen there favour tawny silk above all. Now as everyone knows, the best silk-dyers you’ll find anywhere live in Clemen. So at great expense I shipped in highest-quality silk from the Quartered Isles and had it dyed here. But when we arrived in Hardane, we were told tawny silk is forbidden in the duchy, by order of the Regents’ Council!”

Despite himself, Humbert was intrigued. “For what reason?”

“Because, my lord—” Blane hissed a breath between clenched teeth. “—the duke of Hardane’s nephew insulted one of the regents while wearing a tawny silk doublet.”

From the look on Roric’s face, it seemed he didn’t know whether to laugh or howl. “I’d not heard that, Blane.”

“Nor I, Your Grace,” Blane said glumly. “Or I wouldn’t have carted twenty bales of tawny silk all the way to Hardane.”

“
Twenty
bales?” Humbert snorted. “A foolish risk.”

“No, my lord,” Blane said, not quite hiding his resentment. “The duke of Hardane’s nephew is passionate fond of tawny silk. And whatever he esteems becomes wildly popular with the nobility. If he’d not ruined himself with the regents I’d have turned a pretty profit. As it was…”

“You had to bring it back again?” said Roric, all sympathy.

Blane heaved a morose sigh. “No, Your Grace. I was able to sell the stuff eventually. To a passing Hentish merchant. At a steep loss.”

“What?” Humbert stared. How was it this man headed the Merchants’ Guild? “You couldn’t get a better price for it elsewhere in Cassinia?”

“I tried, my lord,” Blane said stiffly. “But the duke of Lambard’s
third cousin is wed to that same insulted regent’s wife’s brother, so the duke refused me an audience. Next, I approached Duchy Voldare, but the duchess of Voldare is feuding with the duchess of Rebbai, whose second son is betrothed to the youngest daughter of another regent’s—”

“Clap tongue, for pity’s sake!” Humbert snapped. “D’you think His Grace has time for this nonsense?”

Blane pinched his lips. “My lord, you asked.” Pointedly shifting his gaze to Roric, he adjusted the guild medallion resting on his breast. “Your Grace, the unhappy truth is that Cassinia writhes like a viper’s nest with dispute. Its dukes see a slight in a smile, a deadly insult in a sneeze. And while it shouldn’t be our business, they make it so. You’d need a soothsayer to tell you which duke was trading insults with which, and whether our travelling papers will be honoured–or torn to shreds for the offence of trading with a neighbour who one day is seen as friendly and the next declared a bitter foe! I tell you plainly, these quarrelsome dukes are as constant as a–as a–
frog
. And when they aren’t fighting each other they’re fighting the prince’s regents! Which gives our merchants no respite, for the end result is the same. Much knavery on Cassinia’s roads. And that means fistfuls of coin in hired protection for the avoiding of it, to our great detriment.”

Roric picked up his goblet, but didn’t drink. “You say all our merchants faces these dilemmas?”

“Every one, Your Grace,” said Blane. “But alas, there’s more. Even when the dukes stop their feuding long enough to catch breath, from one day to the next Clemen’s merchants can’t be sure how much we’ll be taxed from duchy to duchy, or if we can use the donkeys we hire at port-fall or must hire more afresh every time we enter a different duke’s lands, or whether what might be lawfully–and profitably–sold yesterday can still be sold today. Or tomorrow!”

“But what of the regents? Don’t they see the rule of law enforced? What you’re describing sounds monstrous unfair.”

“Ha! Your Grace, the regents know better than to stir the dukes against them. Indeed, I think they think it useful to keep the dukes busy with their squabblings. So they wink and nod at floutish behaviours, interfering only when they must. And then, to keep the dukes sweet after, they let pass certain imposts their duchies owe the crown and instead wring them from us!”

Humbert exchanged a troubled glance with Roric. This was worse even than Aistan had reported.

“I’ll be blunt, Your Grace,” Blane added. “Matters can’t continue in this fashion.”

“No,” Roric murmured, and sipped his wine. “I see that.”

“And there’s something else.”

“What?” Humbert prompted, as the merchant worried at the emerald dangling from one heavy lobed ear. “Don’t hold back now, Blane.”

“It’s Prince Gäel,” Blane said heavily. “Rumour has it he’s quite mad.”

“Mad?” Roric set down his goblet. “How can a child be mad?”

Blane shrugged. “Some say he foams at the mouth. Others say he holds tongue for weeks at a time and walks about his grand palace quite naked, but for one shoe. This whisper claims he sees a mirror and runs screaming, that whisper swears he thinks himself a dog. Every tale is different, but at the heart they’re all the same.”

“That Cassinia’s prince is mad.” Roric pushed to his feet and crossed to the closet’s hearth, where cheerful flames still leapt. Head lowered, he rested his forearm on the carved oak mantel. “Poor boy. To lose father and mother, and then his wits.”

Humbert scowled at the scant swallow of wine left in his goblet. A pity he’d not let Roric refill it. He could use a good dose of strong grape. This news was ill indeed, and came as a surprise. Not even Aistan had managed to nose it… and the implications for Clemen were dire.

“It’s also whispered the regents will do anything to conceal their prince’s madness,” Blane added. “They’ve spies in every mouse hole, and every butt of ale. But though they’ve killed some who’ve spoken, and locked others away, the truth slithers free.”

“And serves to embolden Cassinia’s dukes,” Humbert growled. “If the whispers prove true, they’ll not accept the rule of a mad prince. I’ll wager every one of those cockshites goes to bed at night dreaming of a crown.”

Blane’s earring swung vigorously as he nodded. “Aye, my lord, aye! ’Tis only a matter of time before they do more than dream. And they won’t care when their ambitions tear Cassinia apart… and us with it.”

“
If
the whispers are true,” said Roric, turning back to them. “There’s a chance they’re false, Blane. Spread by one of the dukes to bolster a claim to the crown.”

“That’s possible,” Blane said slowly. “But what’s certain is that
between the growing ructions in Cassinia, and the difficulties we face when we try to trade further afield–pirates, and dangerous, ill-natured waters, and skullduggery from nations who don’t care to share their spoils–
and
a new plague come down from Agribia, touching the Treble Kingdom and Zeidica and even the Danetto Peninsula, or so that Hentish merchant told me, well… Clemen’s in for yet more hardship and heartache. How are we expected to survive?”

The shadows in Roric’s eyes deepened. Seeing his distress, Humbert fought the urge to sink a fist into the merchant’s expensively clad paunch.
Cockshite
. Did Blane think Roric blind to the duchy’s growing burdens? Or was he offering a veiled warning?
You owe me money, boy. Don’t forget it.
As if Roric would, or could, forget the debt when every day he faced the many troubles that had forced him to borrow so much coin, and tormented himself over his imagined failings like an exarchite who beat his own back with a knotted rope.

“You needn’t worry on that score, Blane,” he said, standing. “Everything possible is being done to see Clemen’s set to rights.”

“Of course, my lord,” Blane said. “But I thought it should be said.”

“And I’m–
we’re
–grateful for your insights,” said Roric. “Isn’t that so, Humbert?”

He sniffed. “I’ll be grateful for an assurance that Master Blane won’t repeat what’s been discussed here.”

“My lord.” Blane unfolded from his chair and offered a frosty bow. “You have it.” Turning to Roric he bowed again, more warmly. “Your Grace. If there’s nothing else you need…?”

Roric’s smile was faint, and strained. “Only your promise you’ll not refuse me further counsel.”

“I’d refuse you nothing, Your Grace. You’ve only to ask. Good night.”

“Good night, Master Blane. Beyond the door you’ll find a squire waiting to see you safely out of the castle.”

“Thank you.”A sharp nod. “Good night, Lord Humbert.”

He grunted something suitable. Tried to catch Roric’s eye as the merchant shrugged into his warm outdoors cloak, fastened his crimson-enamelled cloak pin then pulled on his gloves. But Roric was staring into the fire, heedless.

Hand on the chamber’s door-latch, Blane turned. “One last thing, Your Grace. If I might be so bold.”

Humbert gritted his teeth. Spirits curse the garrulous shite. What now?

Encouraged by Roric’s nod, Blane settled on his heels. “If Clemen’s
merchants are to weather these harsh times, Your Grace, we need Ardenn’s coin. So whatever must be done to reclaim our trading rights there, I urge you to do it.”

“Again I’ll advise you to clap tongue, Master Blane,” Humbert snapped. “Clemen’s not subject to arrogant Cassinian demands–and any man thinking the duke’s council would travel the duchy down that road is a fool.”

Blane’s eyes narrowed. “That’s as may be, my lord. But better the council swallows its pride than the rest of us in Clemen swallow gruel, and hear our children wail with hunger, because we can no longer afford to put meat and bread on our tables.”

“He’s right, Humbert, and you know it,” Roric said, once the merchant was gone.

“I know nothing of the sort! Who’s Master Blane, to be ordering Clemen’s council? Or its duke?”

“He’s a good man who fears what lies ahead for our duchy.” Sighing, Roric retrieved a length of wood from beside the hearth and fed it to the lowering flames. “As I do.”

“Roric, if you’re about to start blaming yourself again I swear I’ll—”

“
Don’t
, Humbert.” Bone-white weary, Roric rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. “You say I can’t blame myself, but who else is there to blame? Have I convinced Cassinia’s regents to stop punishing us for Berardine and Catrain? No. Did I prevent even one fresh outbreak of plague in the duchy? Or blistermouth? Or fish rot? No, no, and no. Have I been forced to borrow coin from wealthy men like Master Blane? More than once. And have I sired a son to sit the Falcon Throne after me? No, Humbert. I haven’t. So tell me, my lord. Is this how you’d measure
success
?”