The Serrano Succession (63 page)

"It varies . . . I haven't seen my homeworld for three or four standard years, but some people go home every year. And we don't usually have small children out in space; our ships are too small to allow sufficient romping space." She grinned. "I sometimes wonder about the junior apprentices in that regard. They can get a bit boisterous." She cocked her head at Esmay. "Now it's your turn. Tell me about yourself."

"I was a Regular Space Service officer—left my homeworld for the prep school, then the Academy, and then went into Fleet. I've only been home twice since then."

"Are you going home now that you've left Fleet?"

"I . . . don't know." She did not want to talk about this with everyone on the ship. "Right now I'm headed for Castle Rock."

"Ah, so are we. By a roundabout route, but we'll get there." Betharnya glanced away, and her expression changed. "Ah—if you'll excuse me, sera, I should get back—"

Esmay followed her gaze and saw a handsome blonde woman and an even more handsome man at the mess hall entrance. It was amazing how many good-looking people were in this crew . . . she hadn't expected them all to look like actors.

Lady Cecelia de Marktos woke early and headed for the stables, even though it wasn't hunting season. The best cure for an unquiet mind—at least, her unquiet mind—was a few hours spent with animals that could not lie. She felt better with every stride away from the house where Miranda had—perhaps by accident—killed Pedar Orregiemos.

Neil, who had been running the horse operation for at least thirty years, grinned when he saw her coming through the arched gateway.

"I heard you were here, Lady Cecelia," Neil said. "How's her ladyship?"

"It was a tragedy," Cecelia said. His face didn't twitch. She hadn't expected it to.

"She'll be leaving soon?" he asked. "Going back to deal with the inheritance?"

"No, I don't think so," Cecelia said. "Harlis . . . has other problems." She wasn't sure how much to say or not say. Sirialis had its own customs, its own networks.

"That's good, then. You just tell her I said we did fix that bit she was working on."

"Bit?"

"Yes . . . she was down here a few nights ago, working on a broken bit, back in the old forge."

A chill ran down Cecelia's back. She could not imagine Miranda trying to mend a bit herself.

"I've never seen the old forge," she said casually. "Where is it?"

"Back along there," he pointed. Was that tension in his throat? "It's just a workroom now. I reckon she came down just to get some peace, like, with that fellow in the house."

Peace, thought Cecelia, was exactly what Miranda had been after.

The old forge, when she looked into it, had the tidy look of any well-maintained metal shop. Neat rows of tools, a couple of small brazing cones, a shelf of labelled bottles. She leaned forward to look at them . . . chemical labels. Most were unfamiliar. She looked along the workbench . . . someone was working on a pair of spurs, set up in a vise, and there was a can with tongueless buckles of various sizes and beside it a can of straight tongue blanks. Heavier round stock, shaped into hoofpicks, and a tub of bone and antler roughs for handles. A bowl of scrap bits of this and that . . . Cecelia stirred it with her finger, not at all sure what she'd expected to find. A rough edge caught at her finger; she looked at it . . . a small curved scrap of pierced metal that looked somehow older than the rest.

Cecelia wondered what it had been. It didn't look like any metal from horse tack. Something tickled her memory, but withdrew. It was like a fragment of shell from a very large egg, with little holes . . . a colander, for straining a mash? She put it in her pocket and wandered back to the main square, where two of the hunters were being exercised on the longe line. Neil watched, eyes narrowed at the chestnut. Cecelia watched too, and saw the same slightly uneven stretch of the off fore. He signalled the groom, and when the horse stopped, he bent over that front leg. Cecelia watched the bay, as always soothed by the sight of a good horse moving well.

"There you are!" Miranda, in spotless breeches and a pale blue shirt, came through the archway. In the cool morning, she had color in her cheeks again and looked very much the poised, elegant lady of the manor. "I should have known you'd come down here before breakfast."

"Habit," Cecelia said. "But of course it's not the season, and no one expected me to ride this early . . ."

"Ah," Miranda said. "So . . . are you just pottering around petting horses, or would you like something to eat?"

"I was . . . Neil said you'd been in the old forge a few days ago . . ."

"Oh yes?" Miranda's eyes were on the chestnut.

"I'd never seen it before," Cecelia said. She saw the sudden tension in Miranda's neck. "It's a nice little workshop."

"Yes, it is," Miranda said. "We use it for mending tack now."

"That's what Neil said. I've never done that myself . . . well, except for leather. He said you'd been working on a bit, and they finished it. All I saw was this—" She held it out.

"My . . . I wonder what that is." Miranda's voice was breathless. "Quite old, it looks like."

"Not like tack," Cecelia said. "Some kind of strainer, maybe." She put it back in her pocket. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"Shaky," Miranda said. "I can't—it's too much, too fast. I can't believe it all really happened."

Breakfast, with obligatory small talk, was excruciating. Cecelia picked at her eggs and ham; Miranda nibbled a bowl of mixed grain flakes. At last the maid took the dishes away.

"I must meet with that militia officer again," Miranda said. "I have no idea what to do, and with Kevil out of commission—"

"Miranda . . . you have to come to grips with it."

"How?" The blue eyes clouded with tears. "How am I supposed to come to grips with Bunny dying, and Harlis trying to cheat us, and Pedar . . ."

Tell the truth, Cecelia thought but did not say. She was reserving that for later. She followed Miranda down the long corridor, its walls hung with pictures, past the case from which the antique weapons had been taken—she stopped abruptly. The case was partly empty now, of course—the weapons and masks Miranda and Pedar had used had been taken away. But seeing the faint discoloration outlining where they had been, Cecelia visualized it as if it were still there.

The solid metal helm. The pierced metal mask. Pierced just like the fragment in her pocket—her hand clenched on it.

"What?" Miranda said, from two strides down the hall. "What is it?"

She had known, and not known—she had not wanted to know. She had wanted to believe it impossible, so she would have nothing to do, no responsibility.

"Miranda, I am sure that this—" she held out the metal fragment, "is from that mask. That you did something to that mask. If I had the skill, and investigated the chemicals in the old forge—"

Miranda said nothing.

"You can't expect me to let it go—"

"No." Miranda's voice was hoarse, as if she'd been crying. "I can expect you to be right in the middle of everything, with your teeth locked on the most inconvenient of truths."

It was still a shock. "You mean, you did—"

Miranda's hand smacked the table. "Of course I did. Damn and blast, Cecelia, the man had my husband killed, and his idiotic schemes as foreign minister endangered all of us—my children included. And he was putting pressure on me to marry him. He was a despicable, slimy, skirt-climbing bastard—"

"And now you're a murderer," Cecelia said.

"A killer," Miranda said. "Murder is a legal definition."

"I don't care what you call it," Cecelia said. "We both know it's not something you can live with—not in our society."

"Oh, fine. Pedar can have my husband killed, and get a ministry, but I—"

"Come off it." Cecelia linked her big hands together and didn't bother to hide the contempt in her voice. "You had the goods on Harlis; you could have waited and gotten Pedar legally—"

"I didn't think so," Miranda said. "I thought he'd get away with it."

"You can't just brazen it out. You can't. It affects your children, your grandchildren, their position in the Familias . . . there's Brun, back on Castle Rock—if you could only see her, Miranda. It's like—" She bit her tongue on
like Bunny come back
. "She's grown up, really grown up. She's got a real talent—"

"Well, of course she does," Miranda said, looking away. "She's my daughter—and Bunny's. If she'd only grown sense a little earlier, married—"

"She doesn't need to marry," Cecelia said. "She's doing very well on her own. But she does not need a murderess mother hanging around her neck, an easy target for her enemies."

"Buttons will—"

"Buttons," Cecelia said, "has his own life to live. And he's got many of your and Bunny's admirable qualities, but he doesn't have Brun's flair. And no, he can't keep people from using your act as a weapon against Brun." Miranda's stubborn expression annoyed her so much that she burst out, "By God, Miranda, I know where she got that reckless, stubborn determination to go her own way regardless, and it wasn't Bunny."

"I never—"

"You certainly did, and this wasn't the first time." Incidents she'd thought lost to memory decades before came spurting out, under the pressure of her anger. "Before you turned cool and calculating, you were hothead enough—like that birthday party where you pushed Lorrie into the fountain, and the time at school—Berenice told me about it—when you—"

"Oh, stop it." Miranda, flushed with anger, looked more alive than she had since Bunny's death. "I was like any child, hasty and unthinking. Yes. But I got over it."

"Until you stuck a sword in Pedar's eye. I wouldn't call
that
getting over it." Cecelia took a deep breath. "Listen—if you stay here, it's true they're not likely to come get you, but what about the other people here on Sirialis? What about your children? You wanted this for them, remember?"

"What, then? If you know so much, you tell me what to do."

"Exile. Leave the Familias. Go to—oh, I don't know, maybe the Guerni Republic. Get treatment for whatever it is that made you think you could kill him with impunity. Stay a long time . . ."

"And be arrested on the way—be reasonable, Cecelia."

She was going to do it again, and regret it, but she was beginning to recognize the feel of a duty she dared not shirk. "I'll take you."

"You! You hate me . . . you insist I'm a murderess. And besides, you don't have room in that little thing you fly now—"

"I don't hate you," Cecelia said. "And I'm not afraid of you—you're not going to kill me, not if you agree to go. As for the ship, I found I didn't like being completely solo all the time. It's still small, but it's adequate for two people."

"So—what are you going to tell our militia captain?"

"I will answer accurately any questions he asks me. What he makes of the answers is his business."

The interview covered much the same ground as the day before. When had she arrived, what had she seen, what had Miranda said and done. Cecelia recognized, in the militia captain, a man who did not want to think about what might have happened, if a good enough explanation appeared. Yet he would not let himself skimp the questions. Cecelia answered honestly, as far as his questions went.

"And did you know the deceased?"

"Slightly." Cecelia allowed herself a curled lip. "My horse beat his in the Wherrin Trials, right after Bunny—Lord Thornbuckle—was killed."

"Was he there?"

"Pedar? Oh, yes. He thought he could win—"

"Did he ride?"

"No, he had a rider. Pedar was never . . . particularly interested in risking himself."

"Yet Lady Thornbuckle said he asked specifically to use the old fencing gear—" The militia captain glanced at her suddenly, as if to catch her out.

Cecelia shrugged. "I don't know what he was like with fencing. I don't fence; I ride." The interviewer smiled and nodded; everyone knew this about her.

"Ser Orregiemos had been a competition fencer, milady; according to Lady Thornbuckle, he had won many championships in his younger days. She wasn't sure when his last competition was, but with his multiple rejuvenations he could have been competitive quite recently—as you yourself are." He paused. "Lady Thornbuckle said, when she came, that she was here for privacy; we were all quite surprised when Ser Orregiemos arrived."

"Well, so was I when I heard he was here. Such an appalling little tick."

"You don't—didn't—like him." It was not a question.

"No. None of us—the horse people, I mean—felt he was entirely honest."

"Ah. But you know of no reason why . . . I mean . . . there was no bad feeling between him and Lady Thornbuckle?"