Other than a brief, gloating laugh inside (I was too tired to utter it) when Lendan backed away in impotent rage, I went entirely numb. To have come so far, just to be caught by that? The irony—the stupidity—of it chased every other thought out of my skull and I stood like a seed husk, empty inside.
“Come.” It was a command.
I could scarcely get my legs to move forward. My mind wasn’t much better. Plans and counter-plans chased themselves through my brain like fireflies in a storm, to be abandoned and forgotten.
We walked through the gate and I caught a glimpse of pleasingly designed canals, curving bridges and white stone buildings amid flowering trees and shrubs, then my captors took me through an unobtrusive door in the wall. We marched down stone steps into a narrow underground chamber, followed along this for some distance, all in silence, that black gloved hand resting on my shoulder to guide me. We passed long corridors and doorways, to all appearance undistinguishable from one another.
The guards turned abruptly at one of these corridors. We climbed up a long stairway, coming out finally in another narrow hallway. This one looked exactly like the previous ones, but somehow I knew I was above ground again. The oppressive weight of the surrounding stone had eased slightly.
More halls, then at last a big, iron-studded door. We stopped and one of the guards struck the door once with her fist.
The door opened. Passing over the threshold, I felt a faint but distinct tickle of magic. My hair involuntarily lifted and one of the guards’ eyelids flickered.
Now we were back in civilization: a wide white-marble hall with a blue-painted ceiling with gold stars overhead, and the floor covered with a mesmerizing mosaic pattern in various shades of blue and gold.
A tall woman dressed in blue and gold came silently from an adjacent hallway and beckoned to the guards. We followed her through two richly decorated anterooms, then she opened a door.
Another woman, stout, with steel-grey strands in her dark hair, sat at a desk beside a huge window that overlooked the white-bleached cliffs high above the sea, and the flow of a river into a vast, curving waterfall. Above it, there must have been a hundred types of birds dancing and diving above that glistening veil of falling waters.
I wrenched my gaze away, and turned to the woman, who waited in silence.
She, like the guards, wore severely cut black clothing. Her face was unremarkable, jowly-square around a short nose, her dark eyes steady and narrowed in a considering gaze as she studied me from dusty hair to filthy feet. Something in the shape of her brow, the curve of her wide-set eyes, seemed familiar, though I had never met her before.
“What is this about Prince Geric Lendan, Princess Kressanthe, and some diamonds, little Hrethan?” The woman spoke Elras, in a low, musical voice that again seemed vaguely familiar. Then she made a casual gesture and the guards silently withdrew.
A thick fog of exhaustion had settled in my skull, obscuring thought and memory. My gaze was drawn inexorably back to that window, and the braided swoop of birds . . .
“The diamonds?” she spoke again. “Do you still have them?”
Lhind? Faryana said.
“Oh, yes.” The fog retreated a little. I turned to face the woman in black. “I can’t give them to you, because they need to go to the Magic Council,” I said. With those words, the sense of urgency returned. “But that’s not why I’m here.” I remembered I’d been arrested and added hastily, “Ah, why I came to the imperial city. I need to speak to Aranu Crown as quickly as possible.”
“Why?”
“Because—well, first, who are you?” I said suspiciously, remembering what Kuraf had said about enemies all over Court.
The woman laughed, a rich husky laugh that was not unkind. “You are in a position to bargain, little thief?” A pause to wipe her eyes, then she said, “I am Aranu.”
Enormous relief swept away any other reaction I might have had. “You’ve got to hurry,” I said earnestly. “Dhes-Andis put a barrier spell over Alezand, all to try to catch me, and then he was chasing after this evil book . . .”
The Empress’ eyes narrowed again. “Please, young Hrethan. Will you start at the beginning?”
I did. I started with Yellow Smock bullying the Apple Woman yet again, causing me to retaliate, and I’d reached the pirate attack on the yacht when she raised her hand, palm out. “Wait.”
The floor seemed to dip under me and I swayed.
“Sit down,” she bade, not unkindly.
I flopped bonelessly onto an embroidered chair.
The Empress got up and moved to what I’d thought was a dark mirror, framed by old silver scrollwork. She made a brief gesture with her fingers before it, and a man’s startled face appeared.
“Your Imperial Majesty—” The man said, bowing.
“Have you received any word, or signal, from Alezand?” The Empress rapped the words out without preamble.
The man looked at something out of the range of the mirror. When he looked back, he said, “Nothing at all.”
The Empress gestured to me. “Please begin again, young Hrethan.”
The man in the mirror looked at me silently, and I told my story again. His expression went from puzzled to grim. He listened without interruption, even when tiredness caused me to get my words jumbled, and I kept having to go back to explain things.
But at last it was all done. The Empress said to the mirror, “I want you and the rest of the Magic Council to go to Alezand, lift this spell, and investigate. If there is any sign of Dhes-Andis or his minions, you have my permission to do what is necessary. You will see to it?”
The man’s thin lips stretched into the tiniest, smallest hint of a shadow of a smile I had ever seen, but somehow I sensed that he very much looked forward to executing these orders. He bowed, and the mirror blanked.
The Empress turned to me. “From the various and surprising reports I’ve received over the last day, your story, amazing as it is, appears to be corroborated,” she murmured. “In spite of his protestations, it also explains why Prince Geric Lendan risked my wrath by laying a forbidden identity tracer right outside my gates. Now, show me this necklace the Meshreci have been clamoring over.”
I fingered the necklace out of my tunic, and fumbled the clasp open. The Empress leaned forward and took the necklace from my hands, then she lifted her voice slightly and said, “Morin.”
The tall woman reappeared.
“Guard this room. Let no one inside. Officially this child is in the dungeon.” She rose and touched my shoulder. “You will answer further questions, and have your questions answered, when you have rested. Sleep well, little thief! You have earned it.”
She passed out of the room. The silent woman indicated a couch nearby.
I looked at the couch.
I moved toward it.
I dropped down onto it . . .
o0o
. . . And woke up much, much later in a room that was dark except for a candle burning steadily on a low table nearby. I lay still for a while, reveling in not having to move at all.
Presently I became aware of the soft sound of running water, and I got up and crossed the room into the next. There I saw a wide pool with water pouring down from rocks. Several lamps revealed a thick towel, waiting soap, and a long swath of silk embroidered over with flowers and leaves.
I hesitated about half a heartbeat, then my clothes flew in all directions and I dropped gratefully into the water. After a long bath, I felt truly awake again. When I was dry I turned to figure out the silk, which seemed to be an item of clothing. I held it up, inspecting it in puzzlement.
“That part you are holding is trousers, and those two portions hanging down go around your neck and drape in front any way you want,” a familiar voice spoke from the doorway.
“Thianra?” I exclaimed, whirling around. She entered smiling, dressed as usual in minstrel blue.
“The Magic Council came and cleared off Dhes-Andis’ spell. The Gray Wolves had already gone, some with Lendan, and others to the north. The senior mages brought us here.” She chuckled. “You might as well get used to Hrethan clothes.”
“Draped,” I repeated. “So that’s why the Blue Lady looked so different from—” I stopped.
“Here, and here.” She demonstrated as though I hadn’t spoken.
I pulled the slithery silk over my body and around my arms. A twist, a loop, and I was decently covered, yet my tail and my spine hair were free. “This is wonderful!”
“Hungry?”
I groaned and she said quickly, “I know. Does a horse have feathers?”
We both laughed, relief and hunger making me feel curiously light inside. I followed her into yet another room, where hot food had been set out on a low table. Pillows circled the table.
I was on the verge of asking her if she knew anything about Hlanan when I heard his voice. “May I join you?”
I whirled around. Hlanan stood in the doorway, his smile tentative. He too was clean, his hair ordered, his chin shaven. He was dressed in his customary scribe clothing.
“You’re safe,” I cried. “What happened?”
Hlanan grinned, looking more like his old self. “The King of Liacz has Morith, now. The Gray Wolves chased me until they found themselves surrounded by a regiment from Liacz. The king, it seems, is very fond of his nephew. The duchess, and those she suborned, are going to have a lot to answer for,” Hlanan said.
“And that horrible book?”
“The Council has it.”
“I don’t suppose they caught that mage?”
“The Council took my description of the correspondence. It’s up to them, now.“
“How about Faryana?”
“No one knew she had disappeared,” Thianra said. “Thanks to you, now the Council Members have her, and they are busy trying to find a way to free her.”
“Lendan knows how,” I said quickly.
“Yes, but he can use that to bargain. The empress does not want him in any position of power. There are complications surrounding Geric Lendan.”
“But everyone is all right? Even Rajanas?”
Thianra nodded. “Busy with Kuraf planning defensive measures in case Dhes-Andis, or anyone else, tries any more forays.”
The two exchanged a brief glance, then Thianra said, “I think I will go see what has happened to that breakfast.”
The door snicked shut behind her.
Hlanan took a step toward me, then turned around purposelessly. “There’s something . . .” He swallowed. “There is one. Other. Secret. But it has to wait,” he said to the waterfall beyond the broad window. And then to me, after a short breath. “I was asked to explain some of the basics of magic to you. To help you for whatever you eventually decide to do.”
“All right,” I said, aware of the emptiness inside my arms. On my long run I had imagined our reunion in various ways, but never like this, calm and yet distant. “All right,” I repeated, as if saying the words would make it true.
“Magic.” He cleared his throat. “There’s magic in and around the world, just like life. Your illusions don’t take much magic, but changing things does. Not many magicians ever master enough to make changes, but apparently you’ve inherited a gift for just that kind of magic, the greater magics. You can do good or harm, just as you will, once you’ve learned to control your gift, but there’s an effect. Not just on you but on the world around you. We call it a price. Dhes-Andis and his adherents think of it as a necessary part of magic. And that is why he must continually conquer new land.”
“Is there something wrong with Sveran Djur?”
“Much of it is blasted and warped, nearly lifeless. Scarcely anything grows there, and the people, those who are left, are miserable. Long centuries of unchecked use of magic for military purpose has drained the area of life.”
I winced. “He told me his city is beautiful.”
“It is. Or was. I do not know, having not been there,” Hlanan admitted. “But it used to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. If it still is, Dhes-Andis probably expends a tremendous amount of magic to keep it that way—again at the cost of the land around. So by his reasoning he must conquer new lands, just to gain the magical strength he needs to sustain what he and his father before him have done. Back to you. Those wild storms in Fara Bay and over the ocean after the pirate attack were the result of your ripping magic into fire-shape and sending it through the air.”
Appalled, I said, “So I’ve done terrible damage? With two spells?”
“Not direct damage,” Hlanan said. “It’s more like you stirred up a pond violently, but it’s slowly settling back to normal, minus a little of the water that got splashed out. You could do damage if you kept at it, or if you learn and use more powerful spells.”
I clasped my hands together. “I am willing to learn.”
“I know,” he said. “I told them that. But that brings me to the second thing. I was asked to prepare you for the formal—that is, the public—ah, interview come morning. A very serious interview. Before the entire court.”
I remembered then how I’d been brought into the Empress’ city. “You mean a trial? So I’m still under arrest?”
“It was the only way to get you from Geric’s hands,” he said seriously. “Meanwhile, Kressanthe’s accusation still stands.”
“So I’m still in trouble for snaffling Faryana’s diamonds?” I was disgusted. “All I can say is, we’re lucky I stole them.”
“Yes,” Hlanan said. “But that’s something that cannot be said in public. Try to understand. When you stole them, you did not know they were enchanted, right?”
“No. Yes. No,” I said, remembering. “I sensed that they were something special. I was about to take the ones from right off her neck, but these felt different.” I frowned, trying to recall. “Besides,” I had to laugh, “I was afraid she’d notice the ones she’d been wearing were missing and set up a squawk.”
“Then you committed a theft.”
“And that’s a matter for an Empress?” My nerves shot cold.
Hlanan said swiftly, “You are not in danger from the Empress. But you are from Kressanthe’s people. Here’s what’s going on. Lendan is trying to defend himself by making claims that you are secretly Dhes-Andis’s apprentice, and he will use the magic spells you created as proof, as well as the theft. He’s denying his own connection with Dhes-Andis, and with the Duchess of Morith. Don’t worry about that. We’ve caught him in enough lies, and this is not the first time he has been in trouble.”
“Oh yes. He was refused magical training, right?”
“Among many other problems. But he’s also been wooing Kressanthe’s father, the King of Meshrec, a known trouble maker, but whose command of the strait between the two continents makes him important in international circles. He is demanding you be handed over to him for justice since the crime was committed against his daughter in a port city belonging to one of his allies.”
“But if we just tell them what Lendan did—”
“But we can’t, “Hlanan said. “As far as the King of Meshrec—as far as the world outside is concerned, they are perfectly ordinary diamonds. Right now the set is being copied in secret by a very skilled jeweler. The new set will be handed over to Kressanthe tomorrow, and the Empress is going to claim that since she made the arrest in her city, and recovered the jewels, any judgment falls to her. No mention of magic will be made, and you can just wager that Lendan will not mention it, either, lest a line of inquiry gets opened that he would find it very difficult to answer.”
“What happens if I just come out with Lendan’s sneaky trick on Faryana?”
“The best preparation against a liar who is really an enemy is not to let him find out how much you know,” Thianra said from the doorway, as she wheeled in a cart loaded with things that smelled wonderful. “If we are quiet about Faryana, Geric will go off to woo Meshrec in order to get the diamonds from Kressanthe. If he can. Kressanthe is pressing the matter purely for the attention, so she may or may not give them back, depending on how much flattery he can manage before he chokes.” She paused, smiling ruefully.
I couldn’t help laughing at the idea of Geric mooing soft words about glorious eyes and starry romance to the pouting princess, all the while trying to grab the necklace from her.
“Anyway, if he does get them, he won’t know if we replaced them or broke his enchantment,” Thianra said. “It gives us time.”
“We need time, for a number of reasons,” Hlanan said, shaking his head. “But since you know little of politics or magic, they can wait.”
“So tomorrow I go on trial in front of these high and mighty nobles, and I confess and give them up, is that it?” I asked.
“That’s it,” Thianra said. She laughed and added, “Suitably humble and chastened, and we’ll have to coach you on protocol. I assure you, it will be severely formal. But you won’t have to say much, and it will not last long.”
“And after?” I said. “What about after?” My gaze strayed to Hlanan, who was toying with his cup again.
“That’s for the Empress to decide,” Thianra said. “But I’m reasonably sure that whatever happens will be something you wish.”
“All right,” I said, trying to understand Hlanan’s avoidance of my gaze. “Last question, since you two seem to know so much. Do you know anything about Jardis Dhes-Andis’s family?”
“He’s not your father,” Thianra said quickly. “But apparently, and I just found this out myself, he is your uncle.”
Our blood, he’d said. He hadn’t quite lied. I made a sour face. “What happened?”
“Your people came from another world long ago.” Thianra passed out plates, and we all began to load them with pastries, stirred eggs, little crispy potatoes of many colors, and fresh fruit. “They reappeared some years back. Dhes-Andis’s older brother went to them as ambassador—actually to spy out their weaknesses—and ended up falling in love with your mother. What he didn’t know was that love, or some other change of heart, had caused your father to completely foreswear the villainous plans they’d laid.”
“The Council says they think Dhes-Andis expected that any children would be gifted in magic beyond the normal range. They were to be trained by the emperor, and used in his plans. When you were born, your parents tried to disappear rather than hand you over,” Hlanan said.
“They disappeared from their allies as well, rather than endanger them, but Dhes-Andis is good at hunting people down when he wants them, and the Council thinks he might have caught them before they could do gate-magic and go to her world. They apparently tried to hide you somewhere, and separated to go to ground. No one knows who you were given to, or what happened subsequently,” Thianra said, and bit into a tartlet. “Oh, that is superb.”
“Everyone thought the three of you were dead by the emperor’s decree,” Hlanan said, toying with his fork. “He probably spread that rumor around himself, as he didn’t want anyone finding any of you first. It could be that your parents didn’t survive. But you did.”
“I see, “ I said, with an effort to be casual. “So that mystery is solved. Uh, will you two be there tomorrow?”
“I will, in my function as lowly court scribe,” Hlanan said.
“But I’m just a minstrel, and so I’ll not,” Thianra said, smiling crookedly.
The door opened, and the Empress appeared. “Well, my children?”
“All caught up,” Thianra said, rising to her feet. Hlanan had as well. So I uncurled my legs and hopped up.
“Except one thing,” Hlanan murmured.
“We shall resolve that one now,” the Empress said, and to my surprise, walked up and put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Lhind the Hrethan thief, very few people know this, but they insisted you be in on the secret: these two are my youngest children.”
I stared. “What?” I remembered that one ought not to squawk questions at an Empress, and backtracked hastily. “So that is why you looked familiar! Um, Your Imperial Majesty.”
The Empress’s lips twitched as Thianra chuckled. Hlanan regarded his plate of food as if it had bugs crawling in it.
So that was his one other thing.
The Empress gestured for them to sit down. “All four of my children have different fathers. They have been trained well, without anyone knowing anything more than that I have children. This is our tradition. Hlanan is my youngest.”
“And so . . . you are going to pick one as an heir?” I asked, remembering what Kuraf had told me. “Or is that already done? The older ones?”
“One of my older sons has striven for excellence as a commander, his goal to defend the empire as my heir,” the Empress replied. “That decision has yet to be made. I have to admit that I favored Thianra from the beginning. Though there are exceptions to everything, I think women are better managers. Men tend to throw things when flouted, like armies. Thianra had the best training of them all, and she was ambitious enough to make me happy . . . until she fell in love. There’s no gainsaying that passion.”
“With someone?” I turned to Thianra, who laughed and shook her head.
“With music. Though she’s dutiful, I can bring before her a gathering of the world’s sharpest rulers and diplomats, but she spends the evening talking to the hired players about tri-tones and the differences in wood for instruments.”
Thianra saluted her mother with a bite of egg. “Music, the great leveler. Far more interesting than armies and laws and balancing money exchanges.”
I waited for Hlanan to say something, but he had begun to eat in an absent way, his attention distracted. I said, “Rajanas knows who you are?”
Hlanan had put down his fork and was twisting that silver ring on his little finger. “From our days together on the Shinjan galley. He said to tell you, by the way, that you are always welcome in Alezand whatever you decide to do. And Kuraf offers you a home.”
He was facing me now, as if . . . as if the worst was not yet over?
The Empress clapped her hands to her knees and got to her feet. “My children, I wish I could stay and chat. Lhind, I want to hear more about your life. A lot more. But I have a chamber full of people waiting to talk to me, and I need to make certain that everything proceeds exactly as I wish tomorrow.” She bent down and flicked my cheek. “Ask Hlanan to take you out to the waterfall. I think you will like it.”
She walked out, followed by Thianra; the last thing I heard before the door closed was their voices, both sounding very alike.
“It’s your foreheads,” I said to Hlanan. “The resemblance is there.”
He dropped his hands. “Can you forgive me?”
“Forgive you? For not telling me about that?” I hooked my thumb toward the door. “But it’s traditional not to tell people. I learned that from Kuraf.”
“For all the burden that comes with knowing,” he said in a low voice.
“So you want to be the heir?” I asked, finally getting what he could not quite bear to tell me. As if he feared it would be a burden too weighty for me to bear.
“I think I do.” He let out his breath in a short sigh. “I do.” He up his hand with the ring. “We all had to go out into the world to experience it, and to learn. Used to hearing myself described as smart, and bored with the scribal training that my father had insisted on, I left a lot earlier than most. And almost immediately found myself on a Shinjan galley. The only protection we had were these rings. I could have used it to transport myself home from anywhere, but to walk out on problems without solving them would mean I was a failure.”
“Did your mother go through that?”
“Some day ask her about working as a ship’s cook in the fleet fighting the slavers away from the south coast countries.” His grin flashed, then he was serious again. “I told you that once we escaped, Ilyan Rajanas and I each chose ways to learn to deal with the harsher parts of the world. He turned to the military, and I to magic.” He halted, and gave me an uncertain glance.
“I remember that,” I said. “I remember everything you told me.”
“And everything I didn’t tell you.” He looked away, his hand turning his cup around and around. “Here’s another truth. I don’t know where we are going, that is, you and I. My only experience with women was that one time, with the duchess. Ever since, I’ve kept my distance. The boring scribe no one notices. I understand it’s a kind of disguise, called hiding in plain sight. But it didn’t prepare me for meeting . . . you.”
“I probably have less experience than you do,” I said.
He nodded. “The grime and the essence of fish. Also excellent disguises.” He squared his shoulders. “So this has been my goal.” He lifted his chin.
“Being chosen as heir?” I asked.
“If I can prove my worthiness to myself first,” he said quickly. “The thing I learned on that galley is how much damage someone in power can do. How many lives can be lost as the result of one person’s will. I believe a good emperor should not have to use armies. My brother disagrees. Maybe I’m wrong.” He lifted his gaze to mine, then said in a rush, “I want to prove myself by taking down Jardis Dhes-Andis of Sveran Djur, and freeing the Djurans from his evil rule. And I want to do it without starting a war.”
I rubbed my hands. “Now that is a splendid plan.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, taking a step nearer.
“I mean if you want to do that, let me help. Oh, I know I’m ignorant, that it can’t be done today. But everybody keeps telling me I have potential. So if I meet these Hrethan, and assuming they don’t throw me out on my ear for being a thief, they can teach me about magic. I think you and I make a fine team. Don’t you?” I finished a little wistfully.
“Lhind,” Hlanan said, taking another step. “I believe that you’re probably the one person he’s afraid of. But is that what you really want to do?”
“Right now it is,” I said, and closed the distance between us. “This is what I know right now. I never felt so right until we were fighting side by side against that duchess, and then when we stood by the river. Maybe it was even before that. The first time we talked, you expected the best of me, because you expect the best of yourself, and you look for the best in everyone. I hated it at the beginning, because I knew you were right. Now. I think . . . I think I love that. I think I love you. As little as I understand love.”
He took my hands, and there was the real smile at last. Crooked, but there. “You can’t be more ignorant than I am, but we can explore that together. There’s time, and yet the thing I fear most is that the expectation of my position might become a burden to you, who has cherished freedom above all things. I might become a burden. If we do succeed against Dhes-Andis, and I must return to state affairs.”
The future emperor of Charas al Kherval, twenty kingdoms spread over two continents and countless islands, held my hands tightly, waiting for me to make the first move.
And so I did. “State affairs,” I said, “can wait their turn. And so can evil emperors. About that kissing. Can we try that again?”