Lord Mayor Helfin ploughed in, a heavy-set man who had married into his wealth. Curled hair, a clipped silver beard, and pouched features wearing a strawberry flush reflected his choleric temperament. His quilted velvet clanked with jewelled chains, a threat to the ornate furnishings. While the steward hopped after him, rescuing candlesticks, he encountered the sangfroid glimmer of Lysaer’s state dress and diamonds.
Hot water crashed against glacial ice. Erdane’s mayor took the padded chair the valet had set to receive him.
The Light’s avatar, Prince Exalted of Avenor, inclined his head and ceded his gracious permission to speak.
The mayor’s chest heaved. ‘I have received a letter in my daughter’s hand, the first since her marriage that was not set under the seal of your regency secretary’
The Alliance commander looked on, unsurprised by the floundering pause. The magisterial elegance seated, coiled, in pearl silk, had a way of peeling even an honest man’s nerves.
‘She has fled Avenor?’ Lysaer said, as though some sixth sense informed him. Habit sustained that colourless tone. Not the eyes, focused with the same, fearsome intensity last seen on a wind-swept night in Daon Ramon: when, from breaking news of a son’s tragic death, the Divine Prince had been incited to close in and attack the small force defending the Master of Shadow.
The deployment had launched a disaster. Every man standing had been burned alive, with Sulfin Evend left as the last, living witness. Chilled where he lay, he watched the mayor’s bluster lose force.
‘For fear of her life, Ellaine’s fled into hiding,’ he admitted at cringing length.
No move eased the tension, no whisper of lace issued from the man in the chair.
The mayor moistened dry lips.
Before he spoke further, Lysaer bore in, furious, his majesty unimpeachable. ‘Ellaine is my wedded wife, and the mother of the child who was the crown heir of Tysan. Tell me this. Who has dared threaten the Princess of Avenor in her own home, under the Light of my justice?’
The mayor flushed crimson. ‘Your own crown council, who also arranged and paid for her predecessor, Talith’s assassination.’ While springing sweat matted his fur collar, he delivered the raw gist. ‘My daughter has seen documents, under Cerebeld’s seal and signature, stating the name of the marksman who fired the crossbolt. Ellaine’s testament, as proof, arrived in the pouch of our courier from Quarn. He rides routine post, and doesn’t know where on his route the letter was slipped into his dispatches.’
A detail had changed: illness, perhaps, slipped the mask of cool sovereignty. After an unremarked little silence, Lysaer’s stopped breathing resumed. ‘Cerebeld?’ he said, glacial.
Lord Mayor Helfin wisely said nothing.
One royal palm turned. The fingers snapped, causing the by-standing servants to startle. ‘I’ll have your state scribe draw up the indictment. Now!’ cracked the living voice of Divine Light. ‘Be very sure of your evidence, my Lord Mayor. A sentence of treason does not carry an appeal. Upon your daughter’s unimpeachable word, I will expose the truth. The trial will be public. The party responsible will be arraigned as a criminal. He and all who have served as collaborators will be put to death under the law. You will tell my commanding officer immediately, and say where my wife has sought shelter.’
‘I don’t know where she is!’ the Lord Mayor said, panicked. More than Avenor’s commander of armies had moved him to blurt out, appalled, ‘My Blessed Prince, you didn’t know!’
‘That my vested high priest has sanctioned a murder?’ Lysaer’s rebuke stung like bale-fire. ‘Do you think so little of the cause that I ask men to die for? I am no tool of politics, no weapon of factions that kill innocents in clandestine secrecy. Where is my wife, Princess Ellaine?’
Afraid, the Lord Mayor shook in his seat. ‘She hasn’t told any-one her location. Her letter implied her earnest belief that your son also died by design. Blessed lord, I beg you, forgive her! How could the princess have known that your orders were not behind the criminal acts of your high council officers?’ Through a searing, drawn moment, flames crackled in the hearth. Dumb wind rattled the casements. Then Lysaer said, ‘I will read Ellaine’s letter.’
The Lord Mayor of Erdane fumbled into his doublet. The creased sheet he surrendered had been made from pulped rags, unbleached for workaday commerce. The ragged, left edge might have been torn from some wayside inn’s string-bound ledger.
Lysaer settled the document in his lap, to a flashfire glitter of rings. ‘Your amazement demeans all that is wholesome,’ he responded, his voice chill as the gleam on a sword-blade. ‘As of this moment, every household resource you have has been requisitioned by the Light. My officers will spend every coin in your coffers to secure the life of your daughter, who is my princess. She is not your prestige. Nor is she my callous possession, to be discussed like a string of dropped pearls.’ The rebuke gathered force, shame distilled to bleak venom. ‘No mercy! Those who have threatened her may ask for no quarter, whether or not she is brought home unharmed.’ Lysaer ended the audience. ‘My Lord Mayor Helfin, you have leave to go.’
Laid raw, the fat townsman slammed to his feet. He stamped out in a rage that would empty his treasury, if only to protest the ruthless slur just dealt to his family pride.
As the door banged shut with hammering force, Sulfin Evend shoved straight, to applaud. Lysaer’s statecraft was masterful. This superb play would replenish the coffers left emptied since Daon Ramon Barrens.
Yet Lysaer’s expostulation cut across his commander’s sardonic praise. ‘Leave!’ The word smashed the composure of his hovering chamber servant. He jumped, with the page-boy hard at his heels. The valet hesitated, and found himself curtly dismissed by a summary gesture. The man went, contrite. In the emptied, cold room, light gleamed on blond hair: the Exalted Prince had tipped his head to rest against the high back of his chair.
Sulfin Evend was left to try tacit address. ‘My liege?’
The imperious face turned. Eyes wide, pupils distended with vacuous shock, Lysaer’s unseeing gaze encompassed the ranking retainer his royal orders had installed in the bed.
He had no words in him, to dismiss this last witness, no strength left, to constrain his deep horror. He crumpled, undone by his heart-sore grief. His forehead rested upon his closed fist, while the tears welled and spilled, soaking the fine, thread lace of his sleeve and spoiling priceless white velvet.
‘She had your love,’ Sulfin Evend said, his gravel-rough pity subdued.
‘My joy,’ Lysaer gasped. ‘All my joy. Ended, I find, by an ambitious animal who had her dispatched by a thug with a quarrel.’ Not Ellaine: his deceased Talith had moved him to agony. Pushed straight, rings trembling, he collected himself and considered the rest of his family. ‘What have I created under the sun, that corruption has twisted into a force that would slaughter a woman and child?’
‘Ambition serves power,’ Sulfin Evend said, harsh. The lives burned to cinders in Daon Ramon Barrens even still kept him haunted beyond equanimity. ‘You were never Ath’s sword, to see into small minds.’
‘I will have to be, now.’ Lysaer’s blue eyes stayed direct, still wide-open to turbulent grief, and a revulsion that stopped thought to witness.
Sulfin Evend threw off the bed-clothes.
