| |
For the third time in as many days, Elwyn turned Duchess Flora’s message over in her hands. The thin rice paper was creased and wrinkled now. Elwyn had decoded it herself, and she knew the earl was right—they were being invited to come to Keneburg. The war would start again, and the Sigor Dynasty would return to the throne with the help of Keneshire troops.
And in theory, Elwyn would be marrying Flora’s second son, Andras. That was the lynchpin, the keystone of the whole treaty. Too bad the engagement was a fraud, and everyone involved knew it.
“It’s too dangerous to go to Keneburg,” Elwyn said.
“Oh, why’s that?” The earl looked at her over his account books, red chins rising up to meet his jowls. Holy Finster, he’d gotten fat, but that cold, dead-eyed look of his was still the same. Funny to think there had been a time when she had actually liked him.
“Look at the weather,” she said. She shook a hand free of her long velvet robe and pointed toward the tall glass windows of the study. The snow fell thick and fast. Already the drifts covered two rows of panes in the windows, and they were closing in on a third.
“Weather, my eye,” he said. “There are no great mountain passes between here and Keneburg. Once we get to Pinburg, it’s all downstream from there—literally.”
“I don’t trust Flora.”
“Flora is acting in her own self-interest,” said the earl. “It’s a motive that should be familiar to you, your royal highness. I can’t imagine that you’re too happy about going to see Andras. It will be quite a trial to pretend you’re a chaste, blushing bride, won’t it?”
“It’ll be a trial for Andras to pretend he’s interested in me,” Elwyn said. “Look, we can talk about how I’m a slut. Or how Andras is in love with my cousin. Or maybe we could discuss how Flora betrayed us. You seem to have forgotten that entirely.”
“Again, all she did was act in her interest. And now her interests happen to coincide with ours. We should take advantage of this opportunity.” The earl leaned forward over his desk. “We’ve been working on this blasted alliance for a year, Elwyn. Don’t fuck it up now.”
Elwyn tried to make her case again the next day, and then after supper to Rada and Sir Walter. She honestly thought she was getting somewhere, until Friday night, when the earl called a meeting of all the guards and declared they would be riding for Keneburg.
She refused to let him make the decision, though. Turning to her brother, she asked, “Is this what you want?”
Poor Edwin turned red. “Yes, I...I think it is, Elwyn. I want to go home. I want to see Mother and Alice again.”
The next day, while they all packed, she was furious with the boy, until it occurred to her that she had put him on the spot and embarrassed him. What else was he supposed to say under those circumstances? “I am the worst big sister ever,” she thought sadly.
She saw Anton Denisovich one last time, but she didn’t tell him she was leaving. Whatever Uncle Lawrence might say, she was no fool, and she understood they needed to keep this quiet. Besides, she didn’t really feel as if she owed Anton anything more. He had only ever been a way to pass the time.
Before dawn, under a cold, steady rain, Elwyn and her family gathered in the front garden of the Pradivani Palace. She took a last look around—the weedy gardens and the pond that smelled in the summer. The fountain that never worked quite right. The glass doors on the main house that made all the rooms frigid in the winter and boiling in the summer. It hadn’t been much of a home—just a spare palace the King of Sahasra Deva hadn’t been using. And yet, after more than two years, it felt odd to be leaving.
Edwin sidled up to her and said, “I don’t think I’ll ever miss this place, will you?”
“Depends on what happens when we get home,” she said.
Abruptly, the rain stopped, and they turned to see Lady Rada adjusting one of her magysk rings. The water streamed around the three of them as if from a giant invisible umbrella.
“Don’t get too used to it,” she said, smiling. “I can’t hold that spell for more than a minute or two.”
“It’s still nice,” said Edwin, wiping the water out of his eyes.
The earl wandered over at this moment and asked Rada if “her supervisors” at the Vizierate of Magy were inclined to send more help for “the rightful King of Myrcia.”
Rada’s tanned face reddened. “I’m sorry to say that after what happened last year, they’ve become a bit more...conservative. Pallavi Ratnam wanted to be here for this, but the Vizier has ordered her to stay in Roshan.” Rada shrugged. “So as for magysk help, I’m afraid I’m it.”
Elwyn could well believe that. A hillichmagnar working for the Vizierate had gone rogue and tried to interfere with Andras’s courting of Elwyn. In the end, he had nearly killed them all—Edwin, their uncle, Rada, Sir Walter, Andras, Cousin Donella, and Elwyn herself. If Pallavi Ratnam, who had been their one assured friend at the Vizierate, hadn’t arrived at precisely the right moment, none of them would be riding for Keneburg.
Elwyn shuddered at the memory of the terrifying magy battle just as the umbrella spell gave out, and the rain came pouring in on them all again. She hoped that wasn’t an omen for their mission. Or a metaphor.
They went up the Shikander Valley and were out of town long before the sun came up. That first night, they camped in tents near the top of the low pass, and in the morning, they headed down into the valley of the River Zara. They spent their second evening at the ruins of the abandoned city of Prasid Shahar. It was a fantastic place—a haunting remnant of a lost civilization. But even though it was only two days’ ride away, they hadn’t been through it since their flight to Briddobad, almost three years ago.
Elwyn remembered that Edwin had been frightened by the looming old temples, crumbling and covered with trees. This time, though, he seemed as entranced by the ruins as she was. They climbed to the top of one of the towers together, ignoring the earl’s demands that they “be careful.” There was one of the temples that Rada advised Elwyn not to allow Edwin to see, but of course Elwyn let him go inside, anyway. The temple had statues of people having sex. He left quickly, and she could tell it had embarrassed him to see those things with her.
The next day, they crossed into Myrcia at Darrasford. The earl made a little speech about the “rightful king returning to his homeland, never to leave again.” Edwin looked very touched, and he said a few words of thanks. Like Elwyn, he wasn’t much of a public speaker; he was going to have to work on that, poor kid.
Finally, on the tenth of January, in the middle of a driving sleet storm, they arrived outside the wooden walls of Pinburg. Sir Walter rode ahead to inform the duke of their arrival, while the rest of them put up a tent and waited. The earl took out a bottle of fortified wine, and they passed it around, toasting to “having taken the first step.”
After an hour, Walter was back, wearing a perplexed look. “The duke bids you welcome, your majesty,” he said, bowing to Edwin, “but he asks that we ride around the city to his hunting lodge at Brixby. It’s about five miles, apparently.”
“He’s putting us up at his hunting lodge?” said Rada, frowning. “Why not at his palace in town?”
“Because he doesn’t want to be associated with us,” said Elwyn. She looked at the Earl of Hyrne. “This isn’t a good sign, you know.”
But the earl was undaunted. “Nonsense. His grace is showing a commendable degree of caution. We must keep quiet, at least for a little while longer.”
They had to cross the River Kelwinn on a farm ferry, so they didn’t get to Brixby and the duke’s hunting lodge until late afternoon. It seemed little more than a log cabin, at least from the outside. On the inside, though, it was very cozy, with tapestries and rugs everywhere, and a roaring fire in every room. Several of the duke’s most trusted servants had been sent out to prepare the place, and though they couldn’t have had more than a few hours’ notice, they had done an admirable job. There was hot water for bathing, and Elwyn lingered in her tub for a very long time, until the water was almost cold.
The next day, the duke sent word he was coming out to see them, and the earl made everyone take another bath and put on their very best clothes, including little gold circlets for Elwyn and Edwin. Beyond that, Elwyn chose a new dress of blue velvet and silver silk. Anton had told her the colors matched her eyes. They also happened to be the colors of the Sigor coat of arms. More practically, it wasn’t so tight in the bodice as some of her other dresses, so she would be able to breathe.
“We must all do our best to impress the duke,” said her uncle.
But she didn’t need him to tell her that. There were only ten dukes in Myrcia, and even the poorest of them owned vast lands and commanded hundreds of knights and men. Some of them, like the odious Lukas Ostensen, Duke of Severn, were firmly on the side of the Gramiren usurpers. Others, like Duchess Flora, changed sides on a whim. Roger Barras, Duke of Pinshire, though, had usually been a supporter of Elwyn’s family. Or at least he had been in the past. Earstien only knew how he felt now.
Duke Roger arrived with his chamberlain and several of his senior knights. He knelt to Edwin in the proper way and shook hands with the earl, and he bowed very low to Elwyn and said he was “overjoyed to see the princess looking so well.”
One of his knights laid out a map on the kitchen table, and they all gathered around while the duke described how he was sending supplies and weapons to the surviving bands of rebels in the mountains to the north.
“In public,” he said, “I have been obliged to bend the knee to King Broderick, but—”
“Baron Gramiren,” the earl said sternly. “He’s not the king.”
“Quite right, quite right,” said Duke Roger hurriedly. “As I was saying, I have been obliged to make a pretense of fealty to the usurper. But,” he turned to Edwin and bowed, “I remain your servant, your majesty.”
There was a lot of handshaking and backslapping after this, and wine flowed freely. Elwyn wasn’t entirely convinced, though. The duke was trying to make it sound like he was doing a great deal for Edwin, but in point of fact, he wasn’t doing much at all. It sounded to Elwyn like Duke Roger was trying to have it both ways.
That night, after Rada and Walter had retired to their room to enjoy their usual wedded bliss, and after Edwin got sleepy and stumbled off to bed, Elwyn played hostess for the earl and duke as they sat by a crackling fire in the big hearth in the parlor. The room was full of hunting trophies, and the duke, remembering that Elwyn was a keen huntress herself, told her the stories of how he had taken the most impressive ones, like the black bear and the snow leopard. She poured wine and brought the two men a cheese platter and perched on the arm of the duke’s chair and smiled and laughed at all their lamest jokes. Normally she loathed doing that sort of thing, but she could hostess with the best of them when the situation called for it. And it called for it now. She wanted to hear what they said when they were alone. She wanted to know what the duke really thought about Duchess Flora’s rebellion.
Unfortunately, the earl seemed to guess what she was trying to do, and he told her—very politely, but with a stern look—that they had all the wine they would require, and that she didn’t need to stay up, when she so clearly needed her rest.
She didn’t go to bed, though. She stepped around the corner, half-hidden in the shadow of a giant elk head, and listened.
“Flora wrote to say I should send cavalry.” The duke sighed heavily. “I don’t know how much I’ll be able to do, to be honest.”
“Cavalry would help,” said the earl. “Anything would help, Roger.”
There was an uncomfortable silence that stretched on for a minute or more. Then the duke sighed again and said, “How serious is this betrothal between Andras Byrne and the princess?”
Elwyn held her breath. Had the duke guessed the truth?
“It’s quite serious,” lied the earl. “I don’t think they’ve set the date yet, but I can assure you the Sigor and Byrne families will be united soon. More wine?”
“H’m, yes, thank you. Young people can be fickle—I don’t mean Elwyn in particular, of course.”
“Yes, you do,” thought Elwyn.
“Naturally,” said the earl. “But in this matter, I am assured that her mind is made up. She will have Andras, or she will have no one at all. She’s spoken of retiring to a convent, in fact, if this marriage should fall through.”
Behind the elk head, Elwyn made a face and shuddered. Her uncle was laying it on a bit thick.
“Well, I hope it wouldn’t come to that,” said the duke. “If things with Andras don’t work out—and I’m not saying they won’t—but if they didn’t, perhaps Elwyn might consider my boy, Stanley.”
Elwyn made the same face again, only harder. Stanley Barras was a fine boy, no doubt, but if she remembered correctly, he was 14—half her age.
“H’m, yes,” said the earl. “I’m sure I’ve heard Elwyn speak very highly of young Stanley. But her heart is settled on Andras. There it is.”
“There it is,” agreed the duke sadly. “Of course, I wouldn’t wish to get ahead of myself, but his majesty will require a wife, as well. Stanley’s twin, Meredith, is almost the same age as Edwin, as you may recall.”
“Oh, of course,” said the earl. “She’s at Atherton now, isn’t she?”
“Yes, along with Beatrice, who’s two years older. Of course, Roberta is only 11, but she’s here now, if perhaps Edwin might like to spend some time getting to know her.”
In the shadow of the elk head, Elwyn gritted her teeth. So that was the duke’s game. He wanted a marriage alliance like Duchess Flora before he’d stick his neck out for them. That was clever of him, of course, but you expected more loyalty from an old family friend. For a few seconds, Elwyn was tempted to go back into the parlor and tell the duke that her betrothal to Andras Byrne was a sham. But then, if she did that, he would probably start pressuring her to marry his son, Stanley.
The earl said, “I think Edwin would love to spend some time with Roberta before we leave. And now that I think of it, I’ve detected signs of cooling in Elwyn’s ardor for Andras. It might not hurt to have other options, just in case.”
Oh, Earstien. He was trying to be clever. Except he was so bad at it. He was trying to make it sound like Elwyn might consider Stanley, after all. But if rumors of that made their way back to Duchess Flora—and naturally they would—then their alliance with Keneburg would be in jeopardy. And if that happened, then they might as well have stayed in Briddobad.
Elwyn rushed out from behind the elk head. “Goodness, are you two still here?” she said, smiling. She peered around at the chairs and sofas. “I had a book with me earlier, and I thought I left it in here. Apparently not.” Then she pouted at the earl. “You should go to bed. Staying up too late and drinking too much isn’t good for you.”
The earl looked at the duke and rolled his eyes. “You see how my niece runs my life. Ah, well. I suppose she’s right. I’m exhausted.”
Elwyn took his arm and led him to the stairs, and she managed to keep smiling until they parted at the top. Then she scowled and muttered, “Fuck it all.” She understood the point of the fake betrothal, and she was willing to bear the burden of it. But she was getting damned sick of having to lie about it to everyone. And it would only get worse once they got to Keneburg.