Lhind the Thief (38 page)

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.”