Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6) (2 page)

O
NCE MORE
,
FAILURE
.

Once more, new life did not spring
from blood, no matter how much blood flowed. New growth
did not flourish from desolation, new breath did not stir
the still air. When the dying stopped dying, there was
an end of it. No more dying. No new living.

Once more, rootless, drifting, searching.

But it could not make
mistakes. How could it? It did not think; it merely
acted, instinct driving every deed. Therefore, it could not learn.
Therefore, it would try again. And again. And again.

Once
more, searching, searching, searching . . .

. . . for one as lost as itself.

The Eldest’s groundskeepers were not folks to judge. The rest of the kingdom could turn up its collective nose or raise condemnatory eyebrows
as it willed. As far as the groundskeepers were concerned, a week of relaxed duties and a full day off with free cake and mango cider sent from the Big House itself was reason to celebrate.

Let princes marry whom they will. Let councils depose whom they will. Let the worlds gossip and the courtiers go about their intrigues; only let there be cider, and the sun may still shine!

So the groundskeepers gathered, on the day of the crown prince’s wedding, beneath the shade of a mango grove. It wasn’t much shade, for these were young mangoes, newly planted the year before. The old, stately grove that had once stood on this site had been destroyed during the Occupation. . . .

But there. They would not think of that. Not on such a fine, lazy morning. The new trees cast shade enough, the cider slid nice and cool down the throat, and the crown prince would wed his lady in the Great Hall of the Eldest.

“Lord Lumé, I hope he’ll pull it off this year!” said Graybeak, Stoneblossom’s husband, around a mouthful of crumb cake.

“Pull what off?” asked Tippertail, who was Graybeak’s best mate in the fields.

“This marriage, of course,” Graybeak replied. “I hope the crown prince manages to get it done. The last one didn’t, did he, now? And they made as much fuss or more over his wedding week.”

“Only we didn’t get crumb cake,” said Flitmouse solemnly. And this was acknowledged with grave nods. No crumb cake; how could that marriage possibly have gone over well?

“Good thing, if you ask me,” said Stoneblossom, who never needed to be asked before stating an opinion, “that they went and got rid o’ that one, that Prince Lionheart. And lucky for Lady Daylily that she didn’t marry him first!”

“Hear, hear!” the groundskeepers agreed, clunking their mugs together as a toast.

“But surely Prince Lionheart couldn’t have been
all
bad.”

This was spoken by a newcomer, another groundskeeper from a different quarter of the Eldest’s estate, judging by the color of his hood. What
he was doing here in South Stretch was something of a conundrum to the gathered crew, and they glanced at him sideways, not exactly unfriendly, nor exactly welcoming. Stoneblossom had given him a smaller slice of crumb cake than the rest.

When he spoke up now—fulfilling the role of uninitiated newcomers everywhere by putting his foot in his mouth—the others fixed him with stares of contempt.

“Not
all
bad?” said Graybeak. “Where were you those five years when he left us, run away to safety while we remained imprisoned? And where were you when, on the very week of his nuptials, he brought a dragon into the Eldest’s City—”

“Don’t be speaking of that!” said Stoneblossom with sudden severity. For when Graybeak spoke, all eyes had filled with haunted memories: memories of a cold winter’s day. Of smoke. And fire.

“Don’t be speaking of that,” Stoneblossom repeated. “Don’t go calling bad luck down upon this day by mentioning such things. The devil-girl was banished, the prince sent packing without his crown. It’s a new day for Southlands.”

“Aye,” said her husband, taking a deep draught of his cider. “Aye, a new day, a new crown prince, and very soon a new princess.”

“Here’s to the princess!” cried Tippertail with determined jollity, and the others took up his cry and clashed their mugs with such enthusiasm that hands and faces were soon sticky with cider. “Here’s to the princess!”

They raised their mugs again. But one little boy, a second cousin of Stoneblossom’s recently come to South Stretch, missed connecting his mug to Tippertail’s when something else attracted his eye, nearly causing Tippertail to lose the whole foamy contents of his mug down the front of the boy’s shirt. But the boy scarcely noticed, for he was busy pointing and saying, “Ain’t
that
the princess?”

Stoneblossom turned a stern eye upon the lad, prepared to scold him for a fool. But she took a moment to glance the way he pointed. “Iubdan’s beard!” she gasped and nearly dropped the plate of crumb cake she’d been passing round. “Look you over there!”

The groundskeepers turned to look beyond their little world of celebration out to the broader grounds in which they earned their bread each day. The Eldest’s parklands were not what they’d been before the Occupation. Elegant hedgerows and shaded avenues, long rolling swards of green—all now had given way to scorched craters and ruin. Trees stood like great, burnt matches, and the ground reeked of poison.

Dragon poison.

Once a dragon set upon a kingdom, its poisons remained in the soil for generations to come. It mattered not if the dragon flew away again, never more to be seen.

There was only so much the groundskeepers could do to restore order, much less splendor. But they were true if unsung heroes, doing battle every day to reclaim their king’s domain, far out of sight of the lords and ladies they served, lords and ladies they never saw.

So it was that, one by one, the groundskeepers muttered and swore as they watched none other than the prince’s bride, running alone down a broken path not far from their grove.

“It cain’t be her,” said Graybeak with dubious authority. “She’s gettin’ married.”

“Who else is it, then?” his wife demanded, and he had no answer. For who else could it be? Who else in the Eldest’s court boasted such a crown of curly ginger hair piled and pinned with fantastic elegance atop her head? Who else could wear a silken gown of silver and white, with billowing skirts and billowing sleeves; indeed, with so much billowing one half expected her to take flight? Who else could wear a coronet set with pearls and opals, a coronet that she even now—as the groundskeepers watched aghast—tore from her head and cast aside?

It was she, the prince’s bride-to-be. It was the Lady Daylily.

And she was running, skirts gathered, as though for her life.

“Should we go after her?” whispered Tippertail.

“And what?” Stoneblossom replied. “Drag her back, kicking and screaming? She’s a lady, she is, far beyond the likes of us. Let her run where she wills.”

No one spoke the thought that nevertheless flitted within their staring eyes: There would be no wedding today.

“More crumb cake?” Stoneblossom suggested.

There are few things more useless than a bridegroom on his wedding day. He goes where he is told, wears what he is told, sits where he is told, stands where he is told; and between these events he waits in stasis, praying to anyone who might be listening that he won’t faint or stutter or otherwise make a clown of himself on this Day of Days. However necessary he is to the due process of things, at least temporarily, he is otherwise merely another warm body to be hustled around.

But he might at least look smashing while he is about it.

Prince Foxbrush, his mouth compressed into a tight knot, straightened the already straight fibula on his shoulder and admired himself. He was not a man to make the ladies sigh, certainly not by classical princely standards, being of rather narrow frame with a tendency both to squint and to stoop. He flattered himself, however, on having a decent turnout in red velvet and blue silk, the official colors of the crown prince, everything cut to the latest trends in Continental fashion, complete with a bejeweled collar and a crisp white cravat.

His man stood behind him at the mirror, brushing invisible nothings from his shoulders. “What do you think, Tortoiseshell?” the prince asked, turning his head to inspect his reflection from a new angle.

“A dashing figure, Your Highness,” said Tortoiseshell, who knew how his bread was buttered. “Quite striking. And may I congratulate Your Highness on the bold choice of wearing the princely colors rather than the traditional ceremonial white?”

“You may, Tortoiseshell,” the prince conceded. “I felt it best to reaffirm in the eyes of all the barons my new role as their future sovereign.” Neither he nor his man bothered to comment on the fact that the barons, who had so recently deposed Foxbrush’s cousin and set Foxbrush in his place, could just as easily depose Foxbrush should they feel the need, princely
colors notwithstanding. Best not to entertain such gloomy thoughts on a wedding day.

Besides, in just a few short hours, Prince Foxbrush was to ally himself via marriage to Middlecrescent, the most powerful barony in the kingdom. So long as Baron Middlecrescent was on his side, the new prince had nothing to fear. Nothing besides Middlecrescent himself anyway.

If he could only get through the ceremony today without mishap . . .

“Something troubling Your Highness?” asked Tortoiseshell, pausing in his work and studying his master’s face in the glass.

“Oh no, certainly not.” Foxbrush’s complexion, which was always rather sallow for lack of sun or exercise, had gone a pasty gray since the Occupation. He, being one of the few trapped inside the Eldest’s House for the entire ordeal, had breathed rather more poison than most. It still festered in his lungs.

Now, to make matters worse, at the very thought of his upcoming nuptials and the subsequent marriage and his soon-to-be bride, his skin broke out in a sweaty sheen. Dark patches appeared under his sleeves.

Fumbling to undo the fibula, Foxbrush slid out of his fine jacket, putting up a hand to ward off Tortoiseshell’s protests. “No, no! It’s hours yet till the ceremony, and I should hate to, uh, to rumple your hard work. Do lay it aside, my good man, and we’ll array me once more closer to. In the meanwhile, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

Foxbrush had not had sufficient time in the months since his elevation to adjust to his new role as prince and supportive figurehead of a nation. Having grown up the only child of a reclusive mother, far off in the mountains, away from courtly life, he found the ways of the Eldest’s House a trifle unsettling. Much safer was the world of books and ledgers. A man always knew where he stood with those.

“I’ll just be in my study,” he said and, quick to avoid Tortoiseshell’s disapproval, stepped from his dressing room into said study. He drew a great breath.

His work lay on his desk by the window; work to which he had devoted himself since the Council’s decision; work that he would have to let lie for some weeks now due to the wedding trip.
A
pity.

No, not a pity! He was marrying of his own volition, and marrying very well at that. Lady Daylily was rich, well connected, and beautiful too, which didn’t hurt anything, though he wouldn’t have minded much if she were a little less beautiful, all things considered. But still, who was he to complain? How many men in the Eldest’s court had desired Daylily as their bride? Lionheart, for one; dozens more besides. Any one of them would give his right hand to marry Middlecrescent’s daughter.

“Well, I would give
both
my hands,” Foxbrush growled, though there was no one in the room to be impressed by such avowals. He sat at the desk (he scarcely thought of it as
his
desk; it had been Lionheart’s for so long) and surveyed his work. Stacks of agricultural reports from every barony and many of the most respected merchants, each more doom-filled than the last. Another orchard failed, another plantation fallen to ruin; export prices rising, reliable sales falling through, competitors out-pricing even the once rich tea trade . . .