Lightborn. Part 12

"I am glad your terms of employ include breakfast."

Fejelis gave him a scimitar smile. ". . . You've never eaten breakfast with my family."

His father's intimate dining room was a solarium on the southeast corner of the palace. Two long galleries subtended on two sides a roof-top garden. A shallow pool was its centerpiece, and the base of the pool formed a skylight to the prince's private study on the floor below. Even on a dull winter's morning the light was restorative.

This morning a wall of cloud, silver-limned, stood off the horizon on the east, sparing them too much glory. The faces of his seated family-families-turned, as one, toward him, giving him a reflex twinge of expected retribution. But whatever the other penalties of his position, being prince meant he would never be late again. Don't let it go to your head, his father's voice chided.

As one, they stood to acknowledge him, red-clad northerners on one side facing drab-hued, red-ribboned southerners on the other. Mother, brother, sister; mother's sister, brother, and cousins. Father's cousins. The fifteen people most likely to have killed his father and most likely to kill him.

Not a job for the fainthearted, as his father had once said.

He heard a sound like a suppressed sob from Liliyen's direction. While Orlanjis had cultivated charm and a reputation for blithespiritedness, and Fejelis had cultivated caution and a reputation for dullness, she had cultivated high sensitivity and a reputation for flightiness and fragility. Making her probably the smartest and toughest of them all, as Orlanjis was the most melancholy and he, the least cautious.

Of his other sister, Perrin, no one spoke at all.

Orlanjis looked harrowed and sleepless. Which would make Fejelis's opening sally a simple one. He would offer him the vacant suite on the southwest corner on the prince's floor, a suite he knew Orlanjis coveted for the sunlight and the s.p.a.ce to cultivate his desert gardens. It had stood empty too long. Moving would ease Orlanjis's nerves and remove him from the immediate vicinity of Helenja's coterie. Give him s.p.a.ce to know his own mind, away from the southerners who had influenced him for so long. Their satisfaction over Isidore's death would surely grate on Orlanjis, given the obscene nature of that death.

Helenja was staring at him, flat-eyed, certainly seeing the resemblance to her dead consort. She, too, looked as though she had not enjoyed an easy night's sleep, though she still wore no more than red ribbons to sketch mourning. What she truly felt for Isidore's pa.s.sing he doubted she would ever allow him to know.

Which, he thought, had a certain justice in it, because he had no intention of letting her know what he felt. He and his father had hidden the closeness of their relationship as carefully as any pair of unfaithful partners.

Though Helenja, too, he would court, if he could. She was no longer the willful young woman who had seen her marriage as a conquest and her consort as a temporary inconvenience, or the mother who had tried to press her silver-eyed son into the mold of a southern prince. She, and her entourage, had learned subtlety as well as survival over the years.

And how is this good? he all but heard Tam comment.

On the northerner side of his table, facing Helenja, sat his cousin, son of Benedict's younger brother. Of Isidore's four brothers, none had survived him, which left Prasav and his daughter as Fejelis's princ.i.p.al rivals, after Orlanjis. Prasav's eyes, a pale hazel gray like a tarnished mirror, were unreadable as he took in Tam by Fejelis's side. Fejelis remembered then that Prasav was lord of much of the northern and western provinces, including the poor mountain region that had bred Tam. Prasav's shrewd economies had stemmed the loss of wealth, but he had done little to ameliorate conditions in the struggling provinces. Fejelis regretted that he had not thought to acknowledge Tam's feelings in this; he would later.

Prasav bowed slightly toward Fejelis. His slight build had come from Fejelis's grandmother and he lacked Fejelis's height, but he also had her handsomeness, and his profile would grace a new-minted coin more finely than Fejelis's. He wore full mourning crimson and a caul set with emerald and jade-the caul of the northern lords who had once styled themselves princes-with his silvering hair finely braided and pulled back beneath it. Those stones were likely genuine.

By his side, facing Orlanjis, sat his eldest daughter and heir, Ember, a decade Fejelis's senior. She swept the gathering with depthless brown eyes, and met Fejelis's nod of greeting with one that managed to be both sympathetic with his hopes for this breakfast and amused at his folly. She was an immensely accomplished woman, possibly the most capable of their generation. Fejelis would not have given an artisan's day wage for Prasav's long survival past his first serious lapse in trade or politics.

As Isidore had more than once remarked, he could receive no better education in politics or strategy than surviving his family, and Fejelis supposed-he was sure-it was a fatal ambition to wish for more than survival. But how he wanted to harness Helenja's contacts and determination, Orlanjis's imagination, Prasav's mastery of economics, Ember's elegant strategy, in restoring earthborn independence, wealth, and pride.

And if they were not constantly having to guard against one another, a plethora of expensive mage's contracts-like the very one he had signed with Tam-could be dispensed with.

Fejelis took his place at the head of the table, Helenja to his right. Tam, prompted by a subtle gesture, moved to his left. The mage regarded the cutlery dubiously. Peasant, Fejelis thought, amused, though he was hardly in a position to judge. True southerners ate with their fingers. It was difficult to poison fingers.

He considered the dishes set before him, each one with its gla.s.s cover. He selected one, and pointed it out; the servant, after a moment's hesitation, spooned a little onto Tam's empty plate. With a flicker of his fingers, Fejelis indicated the correct fork. The mage took a small, dubious bite. Though Fejelis had selected one of the moderately spiced dishes, he could still see the perspiration moistening Tam's upper lip.

"Let's-try this another way," Tam said, a breach of the etiquette that dictated silence for the first courses. He touched the lid of first one dish, then another, almost as a priestess of the Mother of All Things would bless the four sacred chalices at the midsummer ceremonials. He stood up to reach those dishes that were farther away. The ones that were beyond reach he floated toward him, held lightly, and set back in place. Fejelis could tell that he was expending effort, moving inert matter, though he doubted anyone else could except for the four mages of the Temple Vigilance, standing guard along the walls. He did not look in their direction, but simply settled back and watched the show. Using magic to move objects was not a low-rank skill. Which was probably Tam's point.

Tam set the last dish into place, and sat collectedly down.

"You need to check the plates and the cutlery as well," Fejelis murmured. Tam pa.s.sed his hands lightly over Fejelis's setting and his own and nodded.

Fejelis would dearly like to open his hands and bid them all eat without regard for precedence, but Tam had already done custom enough mischief. Fejelis indicated his selection, waited as the servant spooned out the brightly hued grains and vegetables. His mother tapped lightly on her plate with a spoon, recalling the attention of her own mage, who had been watching Tam's performance with an ambiguous expression. Prasav gestured to his own food taster, a gaunt individual who looked like no food had agreed with him for five decades. No mage, but possessor of an a.s.set like Floria's. Orlanjis obediently waited for his mother to be done, while Liliyen, with a giggle, gestured imperiously with a ringed finger to her own server, her veiled glance bent on Tam. Fejelis sincerely hoped this was not the blazing up of one of Lili's infamous infatuations. Ember commented with a raised brow, her hands still on her lap. Each member of the breakfast table had him- or herself served in turn, as protocol decreed. Tam requested plain rice and vegetables. Fejelis warned him off an innocuous-looking white sauce and watched Ember suppress a smile.

The sun broke above the bank of cloud, gloriously. It cost Fejelis his only moment of discomposure, remembering how his father's head would turn at such moments. He loved the sun-there could be no death more cruel. His eyes, he knew, were glistening. Liliyen chose that moment to glance up, to see, and to break into m.u.f.fled sobs, drawing the attention of the entire table to her. Thank you, little sister.

The savory was cleared away, the sweet pastries brought out, each carried within reach of Tam before being set down. Custom allowed conversation now, though no one could speak before the reigning prince.

Strange how a pastry could dry between one mouthful and the next. Rather than sip, he carefully chewed and swallowed. ". . . I don't think you know Magister Tammorn," he said, choosing informality. "The final contract will be available by this afternoon." Their brightnesses received immediate notice of any published contracts from the Mages' Temple, proving, as his father had observed, how magic could be a boon to bureaucracy.

"Where is Mistress White Hand?" said one of his more distant northern cousins, who Fejelis noted had eaten only what Tam and Fejelis had.

". . . Mistress White Hand is currently absent from the palace. Magister Tammorn kindly agreed to subst.i.tute."

"What is his rank?" said his consort. She was a notorious miser who would surely be reckoning the costs.

". . . Magister Tammorn is considered fifth-rank."

"I am told," Prasav said, "that he is underranked, because of problems with discipline."

That flush on Tam's face was surely more than spice. He should know the custom of treating contracted mages, vigilants, and servants as though they were not present. Children, too, until the age of four. Orlanjis had reacted with screaming tantrums. Fejelis had tested the bounds of invisibility with mischief, as had Perrin.

". . . I am satisfied," Fejelis said, "that Magister Tammorn is fully qualified for his contracted tasks."

"And these are?" Ember said, with a cool glance at Tam. "There was no report of a contract in the digest."

". . . I expect that the draft will be waiting for me on my desk. . . . To determine who, and what, killed the prince, and to stand in, for the moment, for Mistress White Hand."

"Yes, and what has become of Mistress Floria?" Helenja said, her voice cutting across his.

". . . I requested that she be detained."

He let them wait until he had taken a bite of a small almond square, laid it down, and continued. ". . . There was a question about her behavior on the night the prince died."

"I heard she has run to the Darkborn," Ember said.

". . . There appear to have been some irregularities in the behavior of the arresting party-shots were fired-and she appears to have decided she was safer in the hands of the Darkborn than her colleagues." His eyes briefly held his mother's. He had no proof, and doubted he ever would, that the guard captain had been paid or otherwise given incentive to shoot rather than arrest Floria.

Helenja's hatred of Floria had a foundation that her son found both ironic and hypocritical. Southern custom emphasized the sharing of meals between intimates. But for their entire life together, the prince had shared his dishes first with another woman, rather than his consort, as a precaution against her, and her relatives', attempt to murder him.

Oh, Mother's Milk, Fejelis thought, half despairing. After this morning, there'd be those in the southern contingent who would style himself and Tam lovers, for the purpose of slander if not out of conviction.

"And will you request her surrender?" Helenja said.

Fejelis simply nodded. He had, as he had said to Tam, no choice. But he would have to do so in a way that did not offend the Darkborn.

"You would be wise to," his mother advised him. "You do not wish to be seen to be obstructing the search for those responsible for your father's unrighteous deposition."

Fejelis tilted his head toward his mother, acknowledging both point and hit.

"Has he anything to report?" Prasav asked, with a bare twitch of the head toward Tam.

". . . Nothing that I am prepared to share."

"Ah, then I shall withhold my congratulations"-this straight across the table to Helenja-"until another time."

The dowager consort's broad face set. "Believe me, Prasav, you will get no congratulations from me. I know you have coveted the princedom for years."

On the far side of Helenja, Orlanjis abruptly pushed his chair away from the table. "Fejelis-Prince Fejelis-may I be excused? I don't . . . feel very well." He stood bent over, hands kneading his stomach. Fejelis forced his clenched hands to relax on the arms of his chair as the entire southern contingent came to their feet as one and carried their distressed favorite out.

All eyes, except Prasav's and Ember's, turned to the half-eaten iced tart on Orlanjis's plate, and then to Tam. Who placidly reached for another tart himself. Fejelis swallowed the taste of ripe peach and tilted his chin down to conceal his pulse from Prasav's keen eye. Much as he wished to follow Tam's example, he could not, but he gave a short nod, as though drawing his own meaning from the mage's calm, and pulled a deep draft from his gla.s.s of lemon water.

Ember's raised eyebrow said, as surely as if she had spoken aloud, Surely you don't believe that display.

Prasav turned to the lesser family members on his right, and Fejelis realized he was about to dismiss them. He rapped his plate sharply with his knife, reminding them all whose table this was. He had a question for Prasav about a boundary dispute between himself and a Darkborn duke, which neither was willing to pa.s.s through the low-status Intercalatory Council. He and Isidore had discussed using such disputes as leverage to elevate the status of the Darkborn-Lightborn interface.

Admittedly it made for breakfast conversation as dry as the pastry, but he kept herding the conversation in the direction he wanted it to go. When he allowed the family to excuse themselves, Prasav made no attempt to stay behind. Fejelis had no doubt he would receive full measure of his cousin's advice and opinions later. But at least the tales carried to Helenja would not include confidences over breakfast.

". . . So do I fire my food taster, or curse the brat for a flawless performance?" he muttered to Tam, once his guests were gone. He was fairly sure which one, but he knew his voice was too brittle; he could still taste peach.

Tam put a hand on his shoulder and leaned close. "It wasn't poison. Not in anything he ate."

The slight emphasis on the p.r.o.noun made Fejelis look sharply at him. ". . . I may be maligning Orlanjis," he admitted. "Ever since he was little, he's had stomach pains when he's upset. But Mother of All, Tam, his timing."

Tam's fingertip traced a small circle in the air, signing that he had closed off their conversation. "There was something in the white sauce."

". . . The white sauce? Orlanjis didn't touch it. Only Mother and . . ." He stopped. The implications were unavoidable. "Do you know what it was?"

Tam gave him a dry look. "Fejelis, I've studied the underlying structures beneath a.s.sets like Mistress Floria's, but I haven't got eighteen years of experience." He tugged his red cuff. "Floria was scolding me for letting Juli chew on this, only yesterday. But there was something there inimical to life. I neutralized it, but I'd thought by tasting it I could have learned more."

Fejelis snorted. ". . . Trust me, with that sauce, you wouldn't have. When your vision starts to blur, it's not your eyes watering but your eyeb.a.l.l.s cooking. . . . Are you sure it's not just the spice you sensed? Mistress Floria can have difficulty telling the difference."

"I'm pretty sure."

". . . Curse it," Fejelis said. There'd been little chance of such a poisoning succeeding, at this table, but . . . "And so it begins."

Fejelis "And lastly," said the master of protocol, "there is the question of the prince's name."

Fejelis rubbed his forehead, wondering how, over the course of a morning, the caul could have shrunk so.

He had known this one was coming, of course. As prince, he was now ent.i.tled to choose whether to follow the naming conventions of his father's people or his mother's people, or select his own. It was a choice every bit as fraught as that long-ago haircut.

". . . I think," he said, "that since this has come on me suddenly, I must take time to consider." There was no harm, he thought, in making that point, though he was already decided to keep his father's family name, Grey Rapids. As his father had once dryly remarked, one of the side benefits of having the southerners as enemies was that the northerners sought to differentiate themselves by being exceptionally well behaved.

The white sauce at breakfast, alas, had given the lie to that.

"Of course, Prince Fejelis," the master of protocol murmured, gathering together his doc.u.ments.

Fejelis let him dismiss himself. As his father had also observed, the prince might rule the land, but the staff ruled the palace, and woe betide the brightness who disrupted their routine. He opened his notebook, and checked off half a dozen items dispensed with over the last fifteen minutes, and contemplated the thirty added.

He glanced up at the skylight, where fish shadows slowly turned against the sky, and out toward the waiting room. The glazed wall was covered by a translucent drape, but he could still see the shifting ma.s.s of red outside.

The red, interestingly, seemed to be parting. To his side he could hear the small c.h.i.n.k of the vigilants' chain armor as they came to point. The door opened, and the secretary came in, looking hara.s.sed and slightly pale against his red. "Prince Fejelis, some representatives of the Temple are here to see you."

". . . Show them in," Fejelis said, by which time the mages were in the doorway of greater privilege. None of them he knew, a man and two women, all wearing the formal robes and chains of their rank. The two most senior mages under palace contract followed. Servants carrying chairs were already filing through. Fejelis closed his mouth, rather than give any further redundant directions. The three Temple mages deployed themselves, facing him. The two vigilant mages moved off, carefully indicating allegiance to their contract, or at least neutrality.

Fejelis waited. With mages, ordinary protocol did not apply. Furthermore, he had no idea of their names. He wished Tam were here.

Or perhaps not, because the woman in the center gestured, and the second woman stood up to lay a sheet on Fejelis's desk: the contract that he and Tam had negotiated the previous night.

". . . Is it not in order?" Fejelis said.

The woman in the center gazed steadily back at him with a northerner's pale eyes. Unlike the other two, who were handsome to an unsettling degree, she was broad-faced, broad-nosed, and broad-l ipped, and around his mother's age. Which in a higher-ranked mage meant she could be anywhere from eighteen years old and fed up of looking so cursed young-with which he could empathize-to more than a hundred and making no apologies. Her chains suggested fifth-rank, though her authoritative air suggested otherwise.

"Surely you are aware that the Temple is conducting its own investigation."

". . . I have no doubt," Fejelis said.

"And that the findings would be made available to you."

". . . Thank you."

"Is that not satisfactory?"

". . . It is quite satisfactory," Fejelis said. ". . . It is not sufficient."

By the ripple in her lips, she had very nearly snapped, Explain.

". . . My father's death represents a-singular, as far as I can tell-failure in the Vigilance."

"All men die," the mage said-not entirely comfortably.

". . . But not by magic. We contract with mages to protect ourselves. The last prince to have died by magic was, what, nearly two hundred years ago, and that was only after due warning by the Temple that his contracts had been canceled. My father had no such warning."

He held his breath. He was convinced that nothing he had done even approached that long-dead prince's outrages against the Temple, but it was quite possible that he had offended them all unwittingly.

"Our objection," she said, "is to the individual contracted. You are surely aware, Prince, that he was born outside the lineages." Fejelis simply nodded. "He came late to training. And in the past his standing has been in question."

". . . In what way?"

"He was disciplined for practicing outside the compact."

He did not blink. Did not look at the mages vigilant. Did not, he believed, reveal in any way that he knew exactly what she meant. They could probably feel the strain in his vitality, but he had no choice but to trust that the mages vigilant would fulfill their contract and guard him against magical intrusion.

". . . He is in good standing now, is he not?" he said, after a suitable pause. "Magistra-" She tendered no name in response to his suggestive hesitation. ". . . Magistra, please rea.s.sure the high masters that I have no doubts about the integrity of the Temple. But I prefer to leave the contract with Magister Tammorn in place. I look for a quick resolution and so will use all the resources I can command."

She did not rise. "A number of contracts arranged with your father will need to be renewed."

Essential contracts, like those of the mages vigilant, were inherit-able, and he was glad at the moment they were, and not adding to his growing list. Of the others, he had a feeling the price had just gone up. ". . . Magistra," he said.

The man said, "If I were you, I would ask Magister Tammorn what he stole from your father's room yesterday."

Fejelis couldn't quite conceal his surprise. "What do you mean, stole?"

One of the mages vigilant stepped forward, at no prompt Fejelis could see. She was a slight, fair-haired woman with a high arched nose and prominent cheekbones, a face idiosyncratically interesting rather than beautiful. "I was one of those called to inspect your father's room. I noticed a small box of Darkborn design and workmanship. After Tammorn left, the box was no longer there."