He was in Lysaer’s bed. It was daylight. His sinews felt slackened to caramel, and every bone in his body seemed recast in lead. ‘Damn you for meddling,’ he said in gruff fury.
The Divine Prince sat in the stuffed chair by the bedside, immaculately dressed. Lace cuffs masked his wrists and shadowed his rings, and a sumptuous white doublet smothered everything else up to his clean-shaven chin. The impact was one of forceful, pale elegance, composed as a sword-blade in ice. ‘The soporific you drank was too weak to lay you out for as long as you’ve rested.’
‘How long?’ croaked Sulfin Evend, then swore with invention to learn he had slept the day and night through, and lost most of the following morning. ‘Why didn’t somebody waken me?’
‘Somebody has.’ Lysaer’s prankish smile and arched eyebrows almost concealed the bruised shadows left by his ordeal. ‘You are meant to be ill. Why disturb the felicitous appearance?’ Still seamlessly talking, he encouraged the valet, who, undaunted, bore in with a razor and basin. ‘The fibbing gets tiresome. I don’t have your field captain’s knack for singeing language, or your uncle Raiett’s charmed gift for dissembling diversion.’
‘Raiett doesn’t lie. He evades, that’s his secret.’ Sulfin Evend shoved back his rat’s tangle of dark hair, scowling to fend off the servant. ‘I don’t care for charades. What’s changed?’
Succinct, Lysaer stated, ‘I need you awake.’ His piercing assessment suggested far more, as he watched his Lord Commander seethe with clenched fists amid the rumpled billow of bed-clothes. ‘Are we not under threat?’
Blue eyes locked with inimical steel grey, and Sulfin Evend attacked first. ‘Liege, you shouldn’t be upright.’
‘Appearances are everything,’ Lysaer amended. ‘You’re in that bed, sick, upon my direct orders. The Mayor of Erdane is due momentarily. He’s expecting an audience. I suggest, for time’s sake, that you let my valet do his work to make you presentable. Or not, of course. You may stay looking furious and degenerate, as you wish.’
The accents of refined Hanshire breeding clashed with a phrase borrowed straight from the barracks. His hawk’s profile livid, Sulfin Evend concluded, ‘I don’t fancy another man’s mincing hand, gripping cold steel at my throat.’
‘Well, I don’t care for strewn lather spoiling my bed,’ Lysaer said with disarming delicacy. His nod summoned the valet. ‘You’d make a poor job. One look, and you’d notice. Your fingers aren’t steady. Allow you the razor, you’d rip your own veins without someone’s outside assistance.’
Pinned as the valet raked back his loose hair and fingered his chin with light expertise, Sulfin Evend clamped his jaw in offended forbearance.
‘I do realize, today, that I owe you everything,’ Lysaer stated point-blank.
No rage could withstand that aimed barb to the heart. Given the accolade of absolute trust, Sulfin Evend suffered himself to be handled. Combed, shaved, and tucked back like an invalid under perfumed sheets, he endured the ignominy as the Mayor of Erdane was ushered in by no less than the same callow page. Insult to injury, the rabbit-faced chamber steward also manned the ante-room door. Both had been restored to their posts, a folly too late to redress on the verge of a royal audience.
Already, Lord Mayor Helfin ploughed in, a heavy-set man who had married into his wealth. Curled hair, a clipped silver beard, and pouched features wearing a strawberry flush reflected his choleric temperament. His quilted velvet clanked with jewelled chains, a threat to the ornate furnishings. While the steward hopped after him, rescuing candlesticks, he encountered the sangfroid glimmer of Lysaer’s state dress and diamonds.
Hot water crashed against glacial ice. Erdane’s mayor took the padded chair the valet had set to receive him.
The Light’s avatar, Prince Exalted of Avenor, inclined his head and ceded his gracious permission to speak.
The mayor’s chest heaved. ‘I have received a letter in my daughter’s hand, the first since her marriage that was not set under the seal of your regency secretary’
The Alliance commander looked on, unsurprised by the floundering pause. The magisterial elegance seated, coiled, in pearl silk, had a way of peeling even an honest man’s nerves.
‘She has fled Avenor?’ Lysaer said, as though some sixth sense informed him. Habit sustained that colourless tone. Not the eyes, focused with the same, fearsome intensity last seen on a wind-swept night in Daon Ramon: when, from breaking news of a son’s tragic death, the Divine Prince had been incited to close in and attack the small force defending the Master of Shadow.
The deployment had launched a disaster. Every man standing had been burned alive, with Sulfin Evend left as the last, living witness. Chilled where he lay, he watched the mayor’s bluster lose force.
‘For fear of her life, Ellaine’s fled into hiding,’ he admitted at cringing length.
No move eased the tension, no whisper of lace issued from the man in the chair.
The mayor moistened dry lips.
Before he spoke further, Lysaer bore in, furious, his majesty unimpeachable. ‘Ellaine is my wedded wife, and the mother of the child who was the crown heir of Tysan. Tell me this. Who has dared threaten the Princess of Avenor in her own home, under the Light of my justice?’
The mayor flushed crimson. ‘Your own crown council, who also arranged and paid for her predecessor, Talith’s assassination.’ While springing sweat matted his fur collar, he delivered the raw gist. ‘My daughter has seen documents, under Cerebeld’s seal and signature, stating the name of the marksman who fired the crossbolt. Ellaine’s testament, as proof, arrived in the pouch of our courier from Quarn. He rides routine post, and doesn’t know where on his route the letter was slipped into his dispatches.’
A detail had changed: illness, perhaps, slipped the mask of cool sovereignty. After an unremarked little silence, Lysaer’s stopped breathing resumed. ‘Cerebeld?’ he said, glacial.
Lord Mayor Helfin wisely said nothing.
One royal palm turned. The fingers snapped, causing the by-standing servants to startle. ‘I’ll have your state scribe draw up the indictment. Now!’ cracked the living voice of Divine Light. ‘Be very sure of your evidence, my Lord Mayor. A sentence of treason does not carry an appeal. Upon your daughter’s unimpeachable word, I will expose the truth. The trial will be public. The party responsible will be arraigned as a criminal. He and all who have served as collaborators will be put to death under the law. You will tell my commanding officer immediately, and say where my wife has sought shelter.’
‘I don’t know where she is!’ the Lord Mayor said, panicked. More than Avenor’s commander of armies had moved him to blurt out, appalled, ‘My Blessed Prince, you didn’t know!’
‘That my vested high priest has sanctioned a murder?’ Lysaer’s rebuke stung like bale-fire. ‘Do you think so little of the cause that I ask men to die for? I am no tool of politics, no weapon of factions that kill innocents in clandestine secrecy. Where is my wife, Princess Ellaine?’
Afraid, the Lord Mayor shook in his seat. ‘She hasn’t told any-one her location. Her letter implied her earnest belief that your son also died by design. Blessed lord, I beg you, forgive her! How could the princess have known that your orders were not behind the criminal acts of your high council officers?’ Through a searing, drawn moment, flames crackled in the hearth. Dumb wind rattled the casements. Then Lysaer said, ‘I will read Ellaine’s letter.’
The Lord Mayor of Erdane fumbled into his doublet. The creased sheet he surrendered had been made from pulped rags, unbleached for workaday commerce. The ragged, left edge might have been torn from some wayside inn’s string-bound ledger.
Lysaer