Authors: Elaine Isaak
THE NEXT
day, standing as straight as he could before the mirror, Wolfram critically eyed his new haircut and the satin doublet he’d borrowed from Earl Jordan. It fell a little long for him since Jordan was a good six inches taller, but the russet set off the blond hair nicely. Still, he had to adjust to seeing himself as a prince again. He had been a hunter, a tracker, a tradesman, a fugitive these last six months. How he would ever fit back in at court he had no idea—to the extent that he had ever fit in there. He slipped the eye patch down and stared at his face. No, best to get it over with. Pulling the patch back off, he tucked it into the doublet. The missing eye made him look like the veteran of a harrowing war.
A knock came on the door.
“Enter,” he said, trying on his princely ways. They no longer fit as well as once they had.
A servant came in and bowed briefly. “The Lord Protector of Lochalyn has arrived, Your Highness. He is requesting an audience.”
“Requesting, is that what he said?” Wolfram’s eyebrows rose.
“Aye, Your Highness.”
“Where?”
“If you’ll follow me, Your Highness.” The servant bowed him out of the room and brought him past the little garden courtyard. He looked for Deishima, but did not find her there. Since she had accepted him, he had not seen her. They had walked slowly back from the grove, and he had fallen
gratefully into his bed, waking only for a light supper. This morning had been taken up with fretting over Lord Fionvar’s approach. He had so much to say, so much he wanted to ask, and yet he did not know if he would be treated as a prince or a criminal. “Requested” seemed like a good sign.
They reached the open door of one of the countess’s better chambers, not far from the keep’s famous dance hall. Dismissing the servant before he was announced, Wolfram leaned a moment on the door.
Inside, Fionvar stood with his back to him.
Lyssa, at her brother’s side as he poured a goblet of wine, was saying, “Well, I heard from the guards that you’d entered the city, I was just surprised you didn’t come straight here, that’s all.”
“Avoidance, maybe,” Fionvar answered, then took out a parchment packet. “And these.” He studied the packet and shrugged. “I wanted—” Following Lyssa’s stare toward the door he broke off.
Instantly, Wolfram straightened, resisting the tug toward his right, sorry he had not heard what Fionvar wanted. Taking a deep breath, Wolfram stepped inside, and bowed. “My lord Protector, we are well met.” Several paces separated them, but he could not miss the shock that crossed the other man’s face, the way his jaw stayed slack a moment too long.
“Wolfram!” Lyssa protested. “Should you be out of bed?”
He had fended off her visits the last two days, and she had not seen the new hair. At the concern in her voice, Wolfram felt the claws of anger at his shoulders. He wasn’t a child, nor was he an invalid, not really. He gave her a brief but pointed stare, and Lyssa hesitated, withdrawing her outstretched hand.
With a glance at his sister, Fionvar stayed in his place, carefully replacing the goblet on the table. As Fionvar bowed, Wolfram caught his eyes shutting, the tremor of unknown emotion making his hands shiver. He straightened and smiled broadly at first, then less so as he took in Wolfram’s bearing. As Wolfram watched, the smile vanished completely, replaced by a sort of uncertainty Wolfram had
never seen there before. Now that he studied him, Wolfram could see his own face there as well, in the shape of his nose, the set of his lips, the darkness of his eyes.
For a long time, the two men stood staring at each other across the room, and Lyssa kept out of their way.
Wolfram’s own perusal gave Fionvar permission to stare, and he did, taking in the scarred face, even the tracery at Wolfram’s throat. Under his father’s eyes, Wolfram scarcely dared to breathe lest something give away his weakness, his own uncertainty, or the fury that lingered in the taut muscles of his shoulders; the demon begged its due, as he had known it would.
With a turn of the hand, Fionvar gestured to the large table and cushioned chairs. “I’ve had a hard journey, Your Highness. If you don’t mind, I’d like to sit.”
“Please,” Wolfram stammered, as if he were a host who had forgotten his manners.
Placing the packet he’d been holding in the center, Fionvar lowered himself into a chair toward the middle, and Lyssa took one opposite him, still silent.
Wolfram crossed the distance too quickly, taking the end chair for himself.
“Can I pour you some wine, Your Highness?” Fionvar asked, a slight tremor in his voice.
“Please,” Wolfram said again, then scowled at himself. He had already let Fionvar get the upper hand, getting him to sit down before he fell down.
Turning away to pour the wine, Fionvar began, “To say that we’ve been worried would be something of an understatement, Your Highness, as I’m sure Lyssa has told you. Of course I want to hear your story, but the queen takes precedence, and I’m sure you’d rather not tell it twice.”
Wolfram had expected many things from this meeting, but this game of diplomacy was not one of them. “How does the queen?” he asked lightly.
Fionvar set the jug down abruptly, splashing a bit of wine on the table. “She’s well, aside from your absence.” He offered Wolfram a goblet and sat back when it was accepted.
“She’s worried about Duchess Elyn, as well, Your Highness, who has not been doing well of late.”
Lyssa frowned. “I was sure she’d outlive us all. What’s the trouble?”
With a glance to Wolfram, Fionvar said, “She’s old, of course, but there’s a new shakiness and some difficulty walking. Fearsome as ever, though.” When his gaze returned to the prince, he seemed afraid to meet his eye.
Lyssa grunted, crossing her arms as she, too, turned to Wolfram. “I thought you’d let your hair go dark,” she commented, narrowing her eyes.
“I am—” he started softly, then louder, “I am not who I was when I left Lochdale.” He directed this toward Fionvar. “I know I made a mess of things the day I left,” he told Lyssa, “so I asked the wizard to change my hair.”
“Is that an apology?”
“No,” he said, “it’s a peace offering.”
Fionvar’s head rose at that, his fingers playing with the chain of office he always wore. The question formed on his face before he voiced it, but he leaned forward and asked carefully, “Why do you need to make an offering to us, Your Highness?”
Wolfram brought his fingers together, phrasing his response. “I have not been the prince I should have been, but I am striving to be better.”
Leaning her arms on the table, Lyssa said, “You’re making me nervous, Highness. What have you done?”
“Must you always assume the worst of me?” he snapped back, the fury rushing through his tense muscles as a howling force. “Great Lady, I am doing the best that I can, and you don’t even know the half of it.”
“What should I assume from your past behavior? That you’re suddenly transformed into this responsible, thoughtful, obedient prince, or that you’re about to spread another pile of lies?”
“Lyssa,” Fionvar said, with an undertone of warning.
Grinning fiercely, Wolfram said, “Do not speak to me of lies, Lyssa—sometimes even you prefer them.”
Lyssa leapt to her feet, shooting her brother a startled look, then slammed her arms across her chest and turned away.
His palms up in a bid for peace, Fionvar glanced between them. Wolfram stared at him, transferring his rage, praying that Fionvar misinterpret their words and their anger. Fionvar slowly swallowed, and said, “I know you had a thousand questions when you left, Your Highness, questions that should have been answered years ago.”
Breathing carefully, Wolfram nodded, not letting his relief show.
“I am ready to tell you everything you wish, Your Highness.” He gazed steadily, his face intent, his hands open.
Nodding once more, Wolfram spotted the forgotten parchment packet. He could smell something sweet and vaguely familiar. “What’s in there?”
Fionvar blinked, then laughed, flopping back in his chair as if all the tension had gone out of him with that one question. With a quirk of a smile, Fionvar prodded the package closer to Wolfram. “I found them in town. My peace offering.”
Turning back, Lyssa came a little nearer the table as Wolfram unfolded the end and released a whiff of sweet steam into the still room. Staring into the bag, Wolfram’s mouth went dry, and something stung behind his missing eye. Honeyed chestnuts. After all these years, Fionvar remembered.
With a quick movement, Wolfram bundled them back up. “Thank you,” he mumbled, then paused. “I’m not ready to know everything, not yet.”
Fionvar regarded him for a moment, then said, “I am here, Your Highness, when you’re ready.”
The words carried an unexpected weight, and Wolfram turned the packet of chestnuts on the table, not wanting to acknowledge what had been said, not daring to find out if there were other meanings left unspoken. Uncomfortable under Fionvar’s eyes, Wolfram said, “There is something I must tell you, my lord.” He took a deep breath and glanced at Lyssa. “The princess Deishima of Hemijrai has agreed to marry me.”
Mouth dropping open, Fionvar twitched as if he had been struck.
Lyssa pounced forward, slapping her palms on the table. “What? She agreed? What are you talking about?”
“I have asked Jeshnam Deishima to be my wife, and she accepted,” he said carefully, drawing himself up. “There’s nothing difficult about that.”
“Difficult? Holy Mother, Wolfram, what were you thinking? Don’t you think you’ve had your revenge already?” She slammed a fist against the table, and the goblets jumped, sending a spray of red wine across the wood.
“This princess—what did you call her, Jeshnam?—is the one you took hostage to get off the ship?” Fionvar cut in.
“She’s the sorceress, the one who had him thrown to the leopards,” Lyssa supplied, “and led the tiger to them. Great Goddess, Wolfram, what did she do to you? Or is this some perverse joke?”
Wolfram’s temples pounded. “She didn’t do anything, Lyssa. I asked her, or did you miss that part?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” To Fionvar she said, “You see? You see what he’s been like? I should have left him in the leopard pit or taken him home, let Elyn whip some sense into him—”
“Lyssa, shut up!” Fionvar rose, leaning on the table, glaring at his sister. “Will you just for a moment, please, shut up.”
“Bury you both!” In two strides she reached the door and burst into the hallway, slamming it behind her.
Kneading his temple, Wolfram watched a dribble of wine snaking toward him. The demon snarled inside him, and he struggled to keep it in check, not to give these people another reason to dismiss him.
“Tell me about this marriage, Your Highness,” Fionvar said quietly, seating himself again. His fingers interlaced on the table, gripping each other.
“What we did was wrong,” Wolfram burst out. “In taking her from her people, we destroyed her life—they would have killed me for touching her hair, yes, but for her to be in the
woods with no chaperone, for that they would kill her.” His head jerked up as he added, “Nothing happened, there was nothing between us, even when Lyssa left.”
Fionvar nodded, looking grave.
“While I was—recovering—Lyssa banned them from the keep; Deishima and my man Dawsiir were living in the stables with no money, and no place to go. There she was, abandoned in this strange country, terrified. She couldn’t go home even if she found a way, and I did this to her.” A wash of shame crept up his neck, and Wolfram pulled his hands together in his lap. “I did this.”
Picking up his neglected goblet, Fionvar took a slow drink and set it gently down again. His every movement was methodical, and Wolfram wondered what must be going on inside, if Fionvar had his own demons.
“So you would marry this princess to repair the damage you think you have done?”
Squirming, Wolfram pointed out, “Look at the trade possibilities, the kind of luxury goods they can offer us, not to mention the skilled craftsmen—the fabric alone would be worth an alliance.”
Fionvar raised his eyebrows. “You would marry her to bring our nations closer together?”
Wolfram’s temper flared and he shoved the chestnuts out of the way. “I would marry her because she taught me how to breathe, because she tore up her veils to bind my wounds. She showed me compassion when she had nothing to gain but misery. She is the best thing that ever happened to me, can you understand that?”
With the slightest of smiles, Fionvar said, “I would like to try, Your Highness. Will you introduce us?”
“Come on.” He flung himself away from the table, jerking open the door to startle Lyssa standing on the threshold. With a growl, he swept by her, feeling the heat in his cheeks, longing to take back all that he had said, everything he had never meant to reveal.
“Where are we going?” Lyssa asked, striding at her brother’s side.
“To meet the prince’s betrothed.”
“You’re not going to let him go through with this!”
“It’s not my place to deny him.”
“How can you say that, my Lord Protector of the Crown?” she demanded. “You must see that this is some scheme—”
How Fionvar shut her up again, Wolfram did not know, but the rest of the walk was in silence. He swung automatically into his long, accustomed stride, and the ache in his side intensified with every step. Refusing to show any weakness, he took them past the garden. He slowed a little as they turned the corner, trying to breathe more deeply, to get himself back under control before he made this introduction—perhaps the most important of his life.
Dawsiir’s bench opposite the door was unoccupied, and Wolfram frowned. Turning to the door itself, he found it open. The room stood empty, and all traces of Deishima were gone.
FIONVAR AND
Lyssa exchanged a look. “This is the princess’s room?” Fionvar asked.
“Of course it is, bury it!” Wolfram hovered in the doorway, then stepped inside, turning at the center of the little room.
“Perhaps she’s gone for a walk, Your Highness,” Fionvar suggested.
“She wouldn’t,” he snapped. “I practically had to drag her out last time.”
“What makes you so sure she was willing to marry you?” Lyssa asked brightly, her arms tucked behind her, feet apart in a stance like a waiting warrior.
“She said yes.” His head and hands throbbed, and the bare patch of skin twitched wildly. He fumbled the eye patch loose from his doublet and slipped it on.
“It wouldn’t be the first time a girl says yes to appease an unwanted suitor, then ran away—the gate’s right there, she and her man could’ve slipped out anytime.”
“Why are you doing this, Lyssa?”
“Isn’t it better this way? You only asked her out of some misguided obligation, now you don’t have to go through with it, and we don’t have to figure a way out of it.” She glanced to Fionvar in expectation of his support, but he kept his eyes on Wolfram.
“It may be,” Fionvar said carefully, “that she had second thoughts.”
“She wouldn’t leave like this; you don’t know her.”
“Do you?” Lyssa shot back.
A spasm of pain shuddered through him, and Wolfram reeled. He sagged onto the bed, holding his head in both hands. “She said yes,” he mumbled.
“Look, maybe she really has gone for a walk, she has your friend with her, right?” Fionvar said.
Wolfram gasped in a breath and let it out, then another. Bit by bit, he fought back the demon, ignoring whatever was said around him. He took a deep breath, let it out slow. On the next inhalation, he held his breath a moment and frowned. Drawing back his hands, he raised his head and sniffed. There it was again! Deishima’s cool, herbal scent still lingered, and with it hung a whiff of animal, something wild and grubby. Monkeys.
Wolfram’s eye popped open. “She didn’t just leave, she’s been kidnapped.”
“What?” said Lyssa and Fionvar together, their quizzical faces showing the family likeness.
“She was kidnapped,” Wolfram repeated as he rose to shaky legs. “Can’t you smell the monkeys?”
Frowning, Lyssa said slowly, “She was kidnapped…by monkeys?”
He jabbed a finger into her face. “Don’t mock me.”
“I’m just trying to understand what you’re talking about, Your Highness.”
“Great Lady, Lyssa, can you let him explain?” Fionvar asked wearily. “What do you think happened?”
“I can smell monkeys in here. The only person who deals with the monkeys is Esfandiyar, he’s a chief priest who came over on the ship. He must’ve come here and taken her away.”
“She’s been here a week, why wait so long?” Lyssa challenged.
“How would they know where we were?”
“So how did they figure it out now?”
“Maybe they have a spy.”
“They do—Deishima!” she countered. “The girl figured she had to get out of here now that you were after her in more ways than one.”
His face burned as he glared at her. “Stop it, Lyssa, just stop it.” To Fionvar he said, “Can’t you smell it?”
Sniffing, Fionvar shook his head. “There’s no blood, no sign of struggle.”
“She’s so small I could pick her up with one arm—”
“And you did,” Lyssa cut in, “holding a knife in the other. For love of the Lady, Wolfram, of course she agreed to marry you—she was probably terrified.”
“You weren’t there—”
“Who was?”
“Dawsiir saw the whole thing.”
“He doesn’t even speak the language; but you produce him, and I’ll ask what he thinks.” She spread her arms magnanimously.
“You were there when we left the boat,” he said, a pleading note slipping into his voice. “They tried to stop us. There’s something they don’t want us to find out about, and she could have told us. You said so yourself.”
“Is this true?” Fionvar asked.
“I thought so, at the time.” She shrugged. “Now? Who knows. All I remember is some men who seemed to block the way. Maybe they were just unloading baggage.”
In his mind, Wolfram went back to the ship. It wasn’t just baggage, they were up to something; they had to be. “What about the tiger?”
Lyssa smoothed a hand over her bald head, her expression almost sad. “You kidnapped their princess, Wolfram, I guess they ran out of leopards.”
“No, it wanted her; it would have killed her if I hadn’t gotten in the way, she knew that, too. There is some ritual they want to perform, but she said they couldn’t do it without her. Now they have her.”
“She also said she was no good to anyone now that she’d been ruined. By you.”
“Bury it, Lyssa, that’s why I was going to marry her!” He shoved past her out the door and collapsed onto the sunlit bench, one fist digging into his side, trying to ease the
spasm. His whole body quivered, and he wanted to hit someone or break something.
Tense whispers emerged from the room, and Lyssa stalked out, with Fionvar following more slowly, looking thoughtful. Wolfram leaned his forehead on the pillar at the end of the bench. He winced with pain. Deishima was gone—where? why? He had smelled the monkeys, hadn’t he? His mind whirled as he fended off unconsciousness.
“Perhaps you should rest, and we can go talk to the city guard, surely they would have seen something,” Fionvar said. “Your Highness?”
Wolfram nodded, rubbing his head on the stone of the pillar; cool and rough, it helped him focus. “The guards, of course.” He rose unsteadily, and Fionvar caught his elbow as he staggered. He wanted to pull away, but could not manage it.
“You’re not coming,” Fionvar told him firmly.
“I have to know,” Wolfram gasped, hunched over his right side, his eye squeezed shut.
Steering him toward his own room, Fionvar said, “Look at it this way. You’re no good to anyone if you fall apart—least of all to her, if you’re right.”
The bastard was right, again and again. Wolfram’s head must be more muddled than he thought. “Bury you,” he muttered, falling full length on the bed. “If you’re not back to tell me what you know, I’ll be gone, I’m warning you.” He cradled his head in both arms and wondered how he would ever follow through on that threat.
SHUTTING THE
door behind him, Fionvar turned to Lyssa. “Find someone to guard the door, I’ll wait.”
She gave a half bow and hurried off, returning in a moment with a strapping manservant. Giving explicit instructions that the prince was not to leave his room, they left in the direction of the stables.
“Dawsiir brought the horses,” Lyssa explained as they walked. “They had some plan about meeting up in the glen
where I left Wolfram and the girl. I guess Wolfram never intended coming home.”
“Mmm.” Fionvar frowned. “He did look awfully relieved when I said he could wait on telling the tale.”
“He probably needs more time to make up a good one,” Lyssa remarked. Then, “Sorry.”
“Granted, he’s made mistakes—indeed, many of them—but this is hard enough without your pouncing on him every time he opens his mouth.”
Lyssa reddened and glanced away. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“What has he done that’s gotten you so upset?”
Shrugging, she tossed her head as if taming the wild red hair that used to curl over her shoulders. “He makes everything so difficult.”
“Especially loving him,” Fionvar murmured, glancing up sharply as Lyssa stumbled. He narrowed his eyes at her. Something had happened, something more than Wolfram’s usual chaos. “It’s Melody, isn’t it? She and Wolfram?”
Giving him a keen stare, Lyssa replied, “I suspect them, nothing more. I haven’t any evidence, but, knowing him…”
“Did he really ask that girl to marry him?”
“Probably. He’s been acting queer in different ways lately. He went mad when he found out they were staying in the stables, kept talking about our duty to her. Honestly, I don’t know what he sees in her that gets him going like that. I can’t imagine he’d really marry her just to save her honor.”
Considering this, Fionvar rounded the corner to the stable yard and stopped as his heart seemed to pinch within his chest, and he knew the answer, the one thing nobody else had offered Wolfram in a very long time, himself included. It was not the compassion Wolfram claimed, but something more precious: trust. Fionvar and Lyssa and Brianna and all the rest could make hours of conversation from things they only suspected Wolfram had done, not to mention the fiasco of his mistress being the Usurper’s daughter. Yet this girl, who had as little cause as any of them to believe anything the prince told her, this girl had apparently agreed to marry him.
She had offered him a gift more wondrous than she even knew. If it were true, then Fionvar would do all in his power to let this betrothal stand. And if that girl had lied and run away, then she was all that Lyssa thought and more.
“What is it?”
Fionvar shook his head. “Just thinking.”
“You think too much, you always have.”
“Maybe you don’t think enough,” he said lightly, but she sprang once again into motion and let him catch up at the stable.
Most of the outside stalls held the large, leggy horses favored by messengers, but one held a small, fine-boned horse of deep brown gleaming to red when she tossed her head. “That’s one of the Hemijrani horses,” Lyssa said. “There were two, one for each of them.”
“Makes sense, if they ran off, that they would have taken both horses, don’t you think?” He reached a hand out to the beautiful, delicate animal which snuffled him, then dismissed him. “This horse kept up with Fenervon?”
“He’s heavy,” she growled, affronted. “I don’t know if they’d take both horses. Dawsiir seemed to consider that one of them belong to Wolfram. I thought he was on the level. He’d done Wolfram some service and gotten a right of passage in return.”
“I wondered why the prince referred to him as his man. So that means the guards would have no reason to detain them.”
“Let’s go find out.”
They walked the dusty street as far as the main gate, the only one typically open to free passage, and Lyssa’s call brought down a mail-clad sergeant.
“Well, we had a group of them darkies in last evening, my man said. Left again this morning they did, early like.”
“Did they have a girl with them; she might have been covered head to toe?”
“Aye, riding double—if it was a girl, hard to tell with the shawls and what.”
“That’s true,” Lyssa said. “She would have been very small.”
“Aye, sounds right.”
“Were they in a hurry?” Fionvar asked. “Could you tell if there was any coercion?”
“The girl, you mean? No, didn’t seem like it. They went pretty leisurely, turning for the Lochalyn road. Seemed like they was coddling her, I’d say, taking it slow cause she had to hang on.”
“You saw her hands, then?” Fionvar inquired, wondering what else they could glean.
The man nodded. “All them bracelets, hard to miss with the sun glinting, and especially the jingling.”
“Thanks, you’ve been a big help.”
Brother and sister turned back toward the keep, Fionvar standing with his arms crossed, head bowed.
Lyssa touched his arm. “I know you want to believe him, and support him, Fion, but look at his record. We’re supposed to believe that the smell of monkeys means she’s been kidnapped? Maybe she just put him off until her rescuers could get here. It certainly sounds like she left willingly.”
“You’re right as far as that goes.” He let himself be soothed into motion again.
“And he’s been through a major trauma, he’s probably smelling all sorts of things. Alyn told me Wolfram panicked when he had the tiger skin in his room. A near-death experience changes a person. On the other hand, this paranoia of his about the Hemijrani started long ago, but it seems to be getting worse.”
“Well, he’ll be better off back home, in his old haunts. Great Lady, I haven’t even told him about Asenith and the baby.”
“I don’t think he’s up for that yet, not ’til he’s gotten over this nonsense about asking that wench to marry him.” She laughed. “He must have been out of his head.”
“Not as far out as you think, Lyssa. Go easy on him, would you?”
She gave a noncommittal grunt.
The manservant gave a quick bow as they approached Wolfram’s room. “No sound, my lord.”
“Good. Wait here, would you? We may still need someone on duty.” Fionvar knocked quietly and heard a mumble in return. “I left so quickly, I didn’t know what had happened to him,” he whispered. “It’s killing me just to look at him.”
Bowing her head, she said, “I’m sorry, I should have been there.”
“You got him here, Lyssa, thank the Lady for that.” He pushed the door open.
The only light came through the arrow slit in the opposite wall, making a streak of golden sun on the sheepskin rug. Wolfram lay curled on his side in the patch of sun, like a cat seeking warmth, or a child afraid of demons. Gazing at the ceiling, Fionvar took a deep breath. So much time had gone by since he had held that child in his arms that he had forgotten how; and Wolfram now would only push him away, only hate him even more than he already did. “Your Highness.”
Lyssa crouched down. “Are you well? I’ll fetch the wizards.”
“No,” he croaked, pushing himself to sit up. “I’m fine. I can’t get used to beds is all.” He clasped his arms loosely around his knees, keeping his face down. “What did you find? Not her, I gather.”
“She left with a party of Hemijrani early this morning, willingly from what we can tell.” Wolfram was already shaking his head, but Fionvar went on, “They came in last night on horseback and left that way this morning, with the addition of your friend and the girl. No sign of coercion.”
“Where did they go?”
“The Lochalyn road. Makes sense, if Faedre and that lot came to talk the refugees back home.”
Getting to his knees, then all the way up, Wolfram raised his head at last, and his eye was bright. “Then it must be time to go home.”
“You can’t ride,” Lyssa said, standing between him and the door. “Not in your condition. The countess said at least a month in recovery, taking it slow.”