Tamsanne tipped her king on its side in concession, her face void of expression. “The nature of the vote left great bitterness. The Brood-members who sided against us—I don’t include Marie Laconte in that number, she came round after Melaney cast with us—saw that we paid for our decision.”
“It was never proved.” Dame Julie glanced toward the door. “Mind what you say. Bad things might have happened, even without what they did.”
Tamsanne laughed, a dry-leaves crackle of a laugh that made Gaultry shiver. She looked directly at her granddaughter for the first time since Gaultry had entered. “Great treachery occurred, and it was all in the name of supporting the Princess. As punishment for holding the swing vote, Melaney was transported to Bissanty. She died there, under the most horrible circumstances. But that was not the end of it. Julie was betrayed and given to a party of Bissanty soldiers, to play with like a bonded slave-woman. Those were not pretty times. Bissanty sympathizers maintained great strength in Tielmark, even after the spell that set Corinne free. I—if I had remained at court I would have lost my child—the babe I had chosen to carry at great cost to my personal honor. Only Gabrielle they could not touch, by virtue of her title. It would be pleasant to believe that Richielle and Delcora were behind none of these incidents. Unfortunately, it would not be truth. If those two had not fallen to squabbling between themselves, who knows what would have happened next?”
The babe I had chosen to carry at great cost to my personal honor.
That would have been Gaultry’s mother Severine, held within Tamsanne’s womb through the maelstrom of magic that had confirmed Corinne as Princess. Had that magic touched the baby in the womb, marking her for her short life, or had the seed of Severine’s wildness been planted earlier still?
“Grandmother,” she said. “You were pregnant with my mother when Lousielle asked you to pledge to the Brood. Help me understand. You at least must have had some sense of the long pledge that Lousielle demanded of you. Why did you take the pledge? And once you’d committed to the pledge—why didn’t you vote on the side of Kingship?”
“I may have been young,” Tamsanne said flatly, “but I had already learned that ignoring a call to power is no route to avoiding pain. But Kingship—that call was not for me to make. That was for Corinne. Richielle and Delcora—they did not want the choice left to her. Their expectation was that they would be rewarded for presenting her with a fait accompli.” She held her hands out, one hand closed as though she held a dagger, the other as though she touched its needle point.
“We had two Princes of Tielmark before us: Corinne of Tielmark praying to the ash left by the Great Twins’ manifestation, and Pallidonius of Bissanty cringing on the dais beside her—Bissanty had sent their orphan Tielmaran Prince to marry Free Tielmark’s Princess, the act that would have violated the God-pledge and returned our state to Bissanty’s
rule. Richielle had a dagger with her. An ancient dagger, called the
Ein Raku. Kingmaker
, in the wanderers’ tongue. Even as we were tallying our votes, she would have buried it in Pallidonius’s heart.”
Tamsanne shook her head. “Perhaps if she had had more patience, she could have argued us to her side. Who knows? Perhaps we could even have convinced poor fat Pallidonius of the necessity of laying down his life. He was a weak man—and he liked Melaney very much. The power of her honor and her beauty would have moved many a man stronger than he. Her beauty might have swayed him to that one moment of noble selflessness that is all we would have needed to justify our kill.” Tamsanne shrugged. “But that was not to be. Richielle’s hurry for resolution in the face of Pallidonius’s obvious defenselessness hardened us against her.”
“Is that what Tielmark must do to make a King?” Gaultry said warily. “Killing one prince so the other can bathe in his blood? That is the sacrifice the gods demand?” Her heart caught in her throat. She saw now why Julie had spoken to her of difficult sacrifices. For the first time in fifty years, the two Princes of Tielmark stood together on Tielmaran soil. What had she done, bringing Tullier back with her to Tielmark?
“Richielle thought so,” Tamsanne said. “With the
Ein Raku
in her hand, she was quite certain. Myself, I think it is the way to create a tyrant.”
“Playing consort to a god is another route to Kingship,” Dame Julie said, breaking the tension. “Or so the poets would have us believe. If it’s true, the Great Twelve have grown circumspect in offering their favors.”
She began to set up the game pieces for a new game. “I have begun to search the songs, as I told Benet. He has given me free rein to question the little guild of the court bards—the keepers of the histories. Questioning those bards—” Julie’s mouth quirked in a wry expression. “They are not very used to unearthing their oral histories at another’s bidding, but I have made some progress. There are ballads that tell of Kings made in love and war. If there’s a precedent for ritual assassination, I have not discovered it, whatever Richielle had decided was the matter’s truth.”
“Is Tullier in danger?” Gaultry asked.
“He would be, if the goat-herder were to make her reappearance,” Dame Julie said. “The matter that Benet has pledged the boy his protection wouldn’t slow
her
.”
“Richielle,” Gaultry breathed. “Could she be behind the attacks on Tullier?”
“Oh yes,” Dame Julie said. “If she were alive and in Princeport, she’d certainly be on his tail. There are rituals that she’d need to prepare, but she’d certainly be after him.”
“If Richielle is alive, she’s not in Princeport,” Tamsanne said. Dame Julie shot her an inquiring look. Tamsanne shrugged and cast the goddesses’ sign. “I have not been completely idle since my arrival. And Richielle—it is in me to worry more about Richielle than about Delcora’s confused young daughter.”
It was a stretch for Gaultry to imagine Dervla as either confused or young. “Do you think the High Priestess planned the attacks against Tullier?”
“It has to be someone well-connected,” Tamsanne said. “But I would be quicker to suspect a Tielmaran with Bissanty sympathies, considering the soldiers involved with the first attack. Dervla herself has suggested that it might be Argat Climens.” She smiled at Gaultry’s reaction. “You had not heard that? It is true, Vaux-Torres has too many Bissanty connections for her own good.”
Gaultry frowned. Somehow she did not want it to be the Duchess of Vaux-Torres. “Tell me more about the goat-herder,” she said, seizing on that suspect in Argat’s place. “Why do you fear her? Even if she’s still alive, wouldn’t she be so old now that she’d be weakened?”
Tamsanne shook her head. “Richielle was strong with the old wanderers’ blood. A people who lived long and slow, accumulating power. It was not just goats that Richielle herded. She imagined that she could herd us too—otherwise she would never have sworn anything to Old Lousielle.” She hesitated. “The goat-herder has an ancient Rhasan deck. Older even than mine, and stronger. And she was never so scrupulous as I, in offering readings from that deck.”
Something in Tamsanne’s description sounded familiar. “Did she predetermine the cards she drew?” Gaultry asked.
Tamsanne looked at her sharply. “She did. How did you guess?”
“There was someone I met in Bissanty,” Gaultry said faintly. Past events wove together in her mind. “Tullier’s half-sister Columba. A woman she called a marsh-witch did a reading for her one time. For Columba, and for her lover. The marsh-witch pulled three cards. The first two might have been ordinary readings. But the third—the third compelled them to a new future.”
“That sounds like Richielle,” Tamsanne said. “When was this?”
“I don’t know. Ten years past? Five?” The night had been moonless and tempestuous when Gaultry visited the crumbling temple where that reading had taken place. She did not know how long the building had lain in ruin, only that after the taint of Rhasan magic had taken it, it had been abandoned.
“Then Richielle must be alive.”
“Alive, and in Bissanty,” Gaultry said. “What would she be doing there.”’
“The wanderers never acknowledged the new borders,” Tamsanne said. “To Richielle, our border with Bissanty is a political fiction that does not apply to her.”
“I need to find Tullier,” Gaultry said anxiously. “He’ll need to know this.”
“You should find some time to talk to your sister,” Tamsanne said.
“I will. After I talk to Tullier.”
As Gaultry left the cottage, Dame Julie picked up one of her horsemen. “I’ll take you fairly this time,” she said, and opened a new game.
S
he caught up with Tullier in the deer park outside her rooms. “I have bad news,” she told him.
“Beyond what Lepulio had to offer?” Tullier kicked the turf underfoot. “You know, he still thinks I’m Sha Muira. Every offer he made was based on that. What could possibly be worse than that?”
Gaultry could tell he was still quite upset. She hesitated, not wanting to burden him with more.
“What could be worse?” Tullier repeated, contrarily eager for her to tell him now she had lost the desire to talk.
“You remember how your brother Lukas used a Rhasan reader to bind your sister?”
The boy nodded. “The Rhasan forced her to violate her pledge of chastity. As punishment for profaning herself, she had to cede Lukas her Blood-Imperial. How could I forget? It made him almost strong enough to kill us both.”
“The Rhasan reader was a Tielmaran witch. Richielle of the Common Brood.”
“Wouldn’t she have been too old?” Tullier was dubious. “Gaultry, I
know you like to think that Tielmark is strong—but it’s a gnat that bites the Empire’s side, no more. If you didn’t have the God-pledge to protect your borders—”
“That’s all true,” Gaultry said impatiently. “Nevertheless, it was a Tielmaran witch who played fast and loose with your Blood-Imperial. Why would she do that? Neither Lukas nor Columba were positioned to inherit Imperial thrones, and Lukas gained prodigious power through what she did for him. What did she hope to accomplish? What did Lukas give her in return?”
“Are you sure it was this Tielmaran witch?”
“I am. The way the Rhasan deck was used, it could only have been Richielle.”
Tullier refused to be worried. “So in the event that we meet her face to face, we’ll have to take care not to accept any reading she offers.”
“She may be able to force one on us.” Gaultry frowned. “You should be taking this more seriously. Who knows what powers she’s gained since she gave Lukas his strength?”
“If she’s so set on upsetting the Imperial order, why are you worried? Isn’t that what you want?”
“What I hope for in Tielmark is that we maintain the freedoms that set us apart from Bissanty.” Gaultry looked at his narrow, boyish face. He had suffered so much in his short life, and now she had brought a new threat to loom over him. “This Kingship matter—there is so much more to it than I first understood.
“Tullier—something I learned today makes me want to send you away from Tielmark. Not to Bissanty. To the islands, or perhaps to the south, where you could meet with the Sharif.”
“What has happened?” Tullier asked calmly. She almost smiled. He could be so dramatic, when he needed reassurance, yet when he felt doubt in her—he was solid as a rock.
“I think someone wants to make Benet king by killing you. As the Bissanty mirror of Benet’s power, some think you the appropriate Kingship sacrifice.”
He took the news more steadily even than she had expected. His reaction, a sort of level historical curiosity, should not have surprised her. He was even able to supplement what she told him with the garbled account that was the Bissanty version of those same events.
The Bissanty story mentioned nothing of the Brood, or even of magic. It told only that Prince Ighion Pallidonius had been unexpectedly spurned
by the young Corinne, and sent home in humiliation—a scenario any thinking Bissanty should have found suspicious.
“The whole story just never sounded right to me,” Tullier observed. “There was so obviously more to it. But from the Bissanty view, those events were overshadowed by what was happening at home. Ultimately, the Pallidon was lucky he spent that spring in Tielmark. There was a wave of Imperial fratricide while he was away—and Ighion P. was always a gentle man. He was far better out of that. He wouldn’t have survived if he had stayed at home.” He paused. “You know, this Pallidonius whom Corinne had rejected, he was my father’s older brother. He reigned as Emperor in the end—he’s Sciuttarus’s father.” The boy’s eyes crinkled. “Now
there’s
a contrast in ruling styles! Sciuttarus prides himself as a man of iron.”
Gaultry would never have put these connections together herself. To Gaultry, the Princes before Benet were vague, almost mythological figures. Thirteen princes had reigned on Tielmark’s throne from Clarin’s time to Benet’s, but only Briern-bold, who had ruled at Tielmark’s centenary, and Berowne-the-mad, Briern’s ill-fated son, had seemed like real people before she came to court. Tullier, by contrast, had been drilled in the personal idiosyncrasies of emperors dating back centuries. He could debate their motivations, argue on their policies and their victories and failures.