Fugitive Prince (40 page)

As always she opened her eyes to deep gloom. The strapped shutters leaked only pinpricks of light. Airless and chill, the flinty dankness of the brick enclosed the fusty odors of soot and beeswax, the lavender sprigs in her clothes chest too refined to drive the must of mildew from her blankets. Talith lay still, never so agonized by her plight that she gave way to helpless resignation. Where once she had commanded chattering maids to serve up scalding tea and the choice snippets of the night’s gossip, now she had only her ears to record the ongoing events outside. Born and bred a pedigree Etarran, she would lie dead before she renounced her belief she could wrest back her place in court politics.

On calm mornings such as this, at the tide’s turn, the exchanges of oaths between the stevedores and crown customs men winnowed up from the harborside. By the number of epithets relating to oxen, she deduced that a carter backed his dray down to the dockside. Talith heard the exchange of bawdy jokes, then laughter, which faded once the inspection was complete. An excise officer duly stamped the bill of lading; then a grinding, hollow thunder tore the quiet, as the dockworkers off-loaded the wainload of barrels. Left to conjecture, Talith wondered if the casks held water for a ship’s stores, or whether
another cargo from the brewer’s rolled down the quay to burden the hold of a trade galley.

A ruled sliver of sunshine struck through a crack, the only snippet of natural light to brighten her chamber all day. The slow hours of her isolation racked her like torture and stretched highbred nerves to drawn glass. As if to compound that sawing misery, the bastard growing in her belly, contrived by liaison with a worshipful palace page, made her feel drawn and queasy. Talith cherished the still interval after each dawn, and the cozy warmth of the box bed. All too soon the chambermaid who served as her warden would burst in with wash water and firewood. Made arrogant by her position of propriety, the woman always grumbled in monotone while her fussy, brusque hands girded the princess into chilly clothes to endure another day of grinding emptiness.

Talith became afraid if she retorted in frustration, the screams she had smothered through four terrible years would escape all restraint, and leave her mewling with madness. If she could not hear the trills of skylarks at the meadows’ edge, the spring brought her swifts and cliff swallows, nesting under the eaves on the battlement. Through their sprightly chirps, she heard the wind freshen and snap the banners streaming from their poles on the vaulted dome of the council hall. The bustle from the docks became erased by the gusts, replaced by the clop of hooves on the paving as a tight, fast-moving cavalcade cut through the daily grind of farm wagons crossing to market.

An officer called. His querulous order was answered by the deferent footfalls of a servant. The ponderous, leaved panels to the lower vestibule were unbarred to the uneasy bristle of activity which spoke of an arriving delegation.

Once, Talith would have arisen to pace the floor in a froth of balked curiosity. Prolonged incarceration had not sapped her spirit. Female wisdom and cold rage let her stop beating caged wings long since. She had learned in her desperate patience to rechannel the cutting edge of her mind to more subtle venues of subterfuge.

She shrugged off the empty comfort of her blankets, now impatient for the maid’s prompt arrival. The woman had a haughty temper, when provoked. She was ambitious and vain, covetous of her position as a high priest’s clandestine mistress. Rich all her life, and born to position, Talith knew by her huntress’s instinct which jabs would rankle the most. The maid was a gold-digging, servant-class whore, and her nettled retorts to a princess’s needling could sometimes spring knowledge of outside events.

Yet the mincing, slippered step and piqued puffs of exhalation she
expected came replaced by the grating tread of boots, embedded against the rumble of masculine voices.

Talith exploded to her feet. She snatched a quilted robe from a chairback, and whirled, heart pounding, to confront the charcoal shadow which demarked the barred arch of the doorway.

The approaching steps ground inexorably upward. An explosion of pure rage made her blood race like magma, for this invasion came with no polite notice and no dignity; then that ire seized to ice, as the steps outside halted and isolated her maid’s obsequious soprano from the stairwell.

“…missed her courses, my brave lord. The linens for such stayed unstained these two months, though on my word, no man entered her bedchamber. Each night, I slept across the threshold to the upper staircase. Below me, always, were the guards sworn to serve the divine Light. They answer to no man but your exalted self, and to his high eminence, Cerebeld.”

A man murmured something placating. Then the steps paused. The bar clashed and the panel swung inward.

Barefoot in her nightshift and the dangling toggles of a robe just barely donned, Princess Talith received no warning beyond a dazzling scintillance of diamonds. Then a damascened glint of pale hair shone by the rags of new flame in the sconce. A lightning clap to unsuspecting rock, her senses imprinted the form of the man who entered her chamber.

Least likely of visitors, her s’Ilessid husband strode in unannounced, prematurely returned from his state delegation to Etarra.

Four years had changed him, Talith saw, eyes narrowed to the influx of light, and her arrested breathing resumed to sped rhythm from the recoil kick of shocked nerves. His stainless white dress, simple jewels, and lethal charm had been welded into new purpose. He had always had majesty. Now, presence lay on him like gold thread in velvet, or fine silk wrapped over tempered wire. His eyes of water-rinsed sapphire upon her showed no shadow of strain. On the contrary, as if passionate love had never aroused his desire, his mannered tranquillity held a luminous focus that seemed to command the dead air to forced rarity.

Despite her contempt, Talith felt the force of him ripple her flesh to a stabbing prickle of awe.

She could not sustain the keen edge of her anger. Every bastion of her cynical, Etarran pride wavered. Nor could she tear her gaze from his features. Almost, she lost to the moonstruck fool’s impulse which urged her to rush into his arms. If Lysaer saw her weakness, he had
not come to gloat. His face stayed expressionless, its lordly, fair symmetry remote in perfection as a spirit carved from light and air.

Talith could have wept then for unjust debasement, that his mere reappearance held the power to sear her shunned heart like a brand.

She wrestled to shore up her fractured composure. A wrung moment passed while she recouped resilience, then noticed the other three officials who mounted the landing behind him.

Raw fury then stained her cheeks heated pink, that her unjust state of incarceration should be made the public butt of a formal audience. She realized in cringing embarrassment that her hands fumbled to fasten the front of her robe, but failed in their task through her racking torment of raw need.

However much she had cause to resent Lysaer, her love was the stronger, a force as unruly as the surge of the tide. Left weak at the knees, she had nothing else left but her verbal wits and a hamstrung drive to vent outrage.

“How like a man and a craven, to arrive with a bootlicking dog pack to heel,” Talith said. “Or have you come in overdressed force to collect my soiled linen for the laundry girl? The gallants in Etarra would think it the rage, to see royalty wait on a servant.”

Lysaer seemed not to hear. Lordly and unruffled as masterworked crystal, he assayed neither riposte nor civil greeting, but addressed her instead with the incisive clarity she had seen him use once on an officer who had deserted. “We’ll have no display of false modesty, woman. Your robe must come off. Strip your night rail as well. I’m informed you are bearing. Shall we see?”

His train of officials pattered in from the stairwell, no doubt summoned to stand legal witness. The sallow-faced leader with the stalking tread swept her with obsidian hard eyes, his voluminous cloak of ermine and gold fretted with chains and wired pearls. The sunwheel emblazoned his cowled robe of office, and one fist, squared blunt as a mason’s maul, clutched a scepter encrusted with citrines. Behind him minced the stooped person of the High Seneschal, the sills of his cheekbones windburned to old leather by days of inclement travel. Beyond middle age, and stymied by events outside the ossified mores of state politics, he gave the cracked stone in the floor his discomfited contemplation. Vorrice came last, as the Light’s new-made instrument to seek out and destroy petty sorcery. He gave her a leering, suspicious inspection, preened as a fighting cock hung with steel spurs for a match with inferior rivals.

Talith felt their collective awareness, avid as crows lined up in an abattoir waiting to gorge on a carcass.

Her tone was syrup as she let fly her unwounded contempt. “Whose shame shall we celebrate? Yours, gutless prince, for the pathetic excuse of my barrenness?”

Lysaer never blinked. “You heard my command. I need not repeat myself.” A crook of his finger brought the traitorous handmaid scurrying to assist her disrobing.

Talith raised her chin, too proud to give way to a physical struggle, or invite them to lay hands on in force. Nor would she assist the ignominy herself. Doll stiff, she
maintained every breathtaking inch of her bearing, while the maid tugged and circled, divesting each layer of her garments.

The kiss of chill air was too sharp to hide. Shivering as the cloth slithered down and bared her defenseless shoulders, Talith relied upon words for her knives. “If there’s truth to this claim, dare you brand yourself cuckold?”

The handmaid recoiled in prim righteousness, ready to repeat her avowal that no man had passed through her guard; yet the princess, her disdain fixed like acid upon Lysaer, gave that unctuous objection no chance. “Why not ring the bells in praise of another miracle? Ath’s all-powerful avatar shouldn’t balk at a child conceived by sublime intervention. Let your bitch of a watchdog swear by her truth. Give the realm an heir begotten by miracle, and blessed by the glory of the Light. Another lie is scarcely more preposterous than the last. What a stirring opportunity to fan the ardor of your campaign, and win more adulation from the masses.”

Lysaer gave back his pitying patience. “I am truth’s minion. My born calling can’t be sullied by the rags of false gallantry, even to protect your infidelity.” His eyes on her stayed an implacable, blued steel. “Nor would I exploit an honest servant’s gullibility. The Master of Shadow is at Riverton, and sorcerer enough that he once gained covert entry to the most rigorously guarded keep on the continent.” No one could forget the furor over that, since Duke Bransian’s citadel had been widely considered impregnable. Lysaer closed his point. “If you chose to be my enemy’s lover, this tower would pose his demonic skills small impediment.”

“Had Arithon wished, he’d have done his work earlier, without the inconvenience of skulking.” Talith held herself erect, ablaze with the unalloyed arrogance of pedigree, while the plain, dull cloth of her night rail slipped down and puddled around her cold ankles.

“Bring the torch,” the priest Cerebeld snapped to the handmaid. The High Seneschal flushed red to his wattles, pecking her with swift, sidelong glances as he opened cupboards and chests, and fingered the contents to mask his driving discomfort.

Princess Talith endured, desperate and unflinching, her fine skin fretted to gooseflesh. While the one man she loved with her whole heart in marriage showed her nakedness no trace of natural humanity, others who were enemies leered in unconstrained male amazement. The exquisite torment of her beauty became her last weapon against tears, as Lysaer’s state witnesses sweated in their clothes and ached in stifled frustration. Their lust left them slack jawed as they cataloged her attributes like an ornament unveiled for private auction. The subtle details lay beyond her to hide the giveaway pallor of morning nausea; the ripe fullness of breast, and the first, softened curve of hip and belly. Nor could she mask the smooth, dewy skin that seemed lit like the satin reflection on a pearl.

“Let the light be brought closer,” Vorrice urged, sand on granite, while the thick, hurried breathing of the High Seneschal sawed through suspended silence.

The ordeal seemed a puppet’s play, distanced by the sudden clangor as the bell tower tolled the hour. Outside in the freedom of sea-bright, clear air, gulls still cried and swooped. The snatched, wind-torn cry of a ship’s officer called for his galley to cast off her lines.

Talith felt every current of disturbed air on her skin. The minutes dragged by, until the frame of the ordinary must splinter away under tension. Her bravado became a meaningless shield before an unbearable, annihilating shame.
Please Ath, let her waken to safe, lonely darkness and the after-sweat of a nightmare.

Yet the ponderous, honeyed vowels of Lysaer’s new High Priest crushed hope into damning testimony. “My Lord Prince of the Light, I corroborate the handmaid’s suspicion. The woman is certainly bearing.”

The High Seneschal coughed in queer, strangled haste, then blurted, “I concur.”

“By the Light of Divine Presence, I would see her burn for infidelity with a sorcerer,” Vorrice intoned, then licked his moist lips, his pouched eyes shining with eagerness.

Lysaer looked aside, magisterial in rebuke. “No such cruel sentence shall occur without proof, nor shall the law act without a proper hearing and tribunal.”

Talith broke into a violent shiver. “My lord prince, I must speak.”

Lysaer gave her plea no reaction, but removed his steady gaze from his officer. The torch flame hazed his pale figure in light as he pronounced in gentle sadness to the handmaid, “Our business is finished. You may help the accused with her robing.”

That frightening, unnatural distance warned Talith that her last
option left was escape. She still had Mearn’s rope and grapple secreted between the boards of her box bed. That private option braced up her pride as Lysaer stepped toward the doorway. He chided his officers that Ath’s tide would not wait. Vorrice and Cerebeld came to heel like two dogs dragged stiff legged off a fresh kill. The seneschal followed, still cringing. Lysaer’s muted words of disposition arose, wreathed in hollow echoes from the stairwell, as if the wife he had once cherished was deaf and mute, and a stranger.