Elvenbane (51 page)

“Didn’t they tell you about it?” she said innocently, and covered her lips with a slender hand, as if she had said too much. “Oh—never mind what I said. It probably didn’t mean anything anyway.”

“Probably not,” Mero said, and picked up one of his game pieces, moving it carefully, as if he were concentrating on the game to the exclusion of all else. “They’re always hatching half-fledged plans and discarding them.”

But they always included you in that, didn’t they, dear
? Triana thought with sly satisfaction.
They never left you out of a planning session. But now it’s beginning to look as if they’re conspiring without you
—
and maybe even against you
.

She tightened her glamorie on him, wishing more than ever that she had wizard-powers to control his thoughts. All she could do at the moment was manipulate him through the actions of others.

She moved her game piece, and studied the dark head across from her, bent over the draughts board. She rather thought she was doing a good job of manipulating all of them so far. The special treatment, special quarters, and frequent gifts were making it look as if she was singling him out—which of course she was. And that was indubitably giving rise to a certain amount of envy and jealousy. She had been encouraging him to think of himself as being somehow “better” than the others—and that should be reflected in his behavior to them. Certainly it seemed that way. She knew that several times he had come upon the three friends talking intently about something—and that they had broken off the conversation when he entered the room, turning the talk to something innocuous.

Any creature with an ounce of perception would be certain that
he
was the topic of conversation the moment before. He was, of course, but probably not in the sense he thought.

As for Shana—the attention she had been giving the boy, and the concubines she’d been sending him nightly were undoubtedly the cause of the black looks the girl had been sending his way.
That
relationship was certainly dying, if not already dead.

Mero made his move, and sat back in his chair, the frown still creasing his brow. She chose another piece and moved it, taking one of his.

And now she’d hinted that there were plans he hadn’t been informed of. By now his skin must be crawling.

He moved again and, with a tight smile of triumph, took her royal piece. “I’m afraid you’ve lost, my lady,” he said smoothly. “What’s your forfeit?”

She smiled back, having had this in mind the moment she sat down. “I think this will do,” she told him, slipping off a beryl-set ring and handing it to him. “After all, it was only a game of draughts. If you want higher stakes, you’ll have to play a different game.”

He took the ring, and kissed the back of the hand that held it. “Perhaps I shall,” he replied, the frown gone from his face. “And perhaps if I lose, I shall think myself the winner, hmm?”

She laughed softly. “My word, Mero, you’re becoming quite the courtier! I had no idea you could be so gallant!”

He released her hand reluctantly. “I’ve never been moved to play the gallant before, my lady,” he replied, “but you can be assured that I will wear this, not as a token of triumph, but as a token of regard.”

Just as I’d hoped, you silly child
, she thought with elation, as he tried the ring on each of his fingers. One of her best spells was in that beryl. Once he put that ring on, he was never going to believe a bad word about her again. And once she took him to her bed, he’d be hers entirely. If she told him to fling himself off a cliff, he would.
And I think that should be the stakes in the next game or two
.

“Hmm,” Mero said, when it wouldn’t fit on any of his fingers. “I’ll have to size it to fit me.” When she started to reach for it, he waved her hand away and dropped it in his tunic pocket. “Don’t worry your lovely head about it, my lady. After all you’ve taught me, resizing a ring will be child’s play. I’ll take care of it later—and don’t worry, it will never leave my finger.”

She sat back as he began rearranging the draughtsmen for a new game.
Oh, I shan’t worry, dear Shadow
, she thought, keeping her eyes down on the board, lest the gleam of satisfaction in them give her away. That was the
last
thing that she was going to worry about.

Shadow opened the window of his room and made sure there was no one in the gardens below. A quick mental check showed that there were no watchers, human or magical, lurking about either.

He cleared the table and carefully pried the prongs from around the beryl without touching it with his flesh. When the stone popped out of its setting, he picked it up in a bit of silk, took it to the window, and flung it away from himself as hard as he could.

The tiny beryl quickly sailed out of sight. The bit of silk fluttered to the ground.

He nodded with satisfaction, and went back to the table.

A cloak brooch supplied another, unused beryl of the proper size and shape. He pried the gem out of its setting and placed it in the ring, using magic to soften the prongs long enough to mold them securely about the stone. Then he smoothed out the place in the cloak brooch where it had been, inscribing a leaf-shape in the softened metal, making certain that he left no traces of his tampering.

There
. He put the brooch down beside the ring, and eyed them both critically.
That should do
.

The past few days had been agony; it had especially hurt him to say those awful things to Shana. She was a good girl, and she deserved better than that—but he’d had no choice, not if he was going to convince Triana that her glamorie was still in place.

The knock on the head he had taken during the fight had evidently dispelled it. The first thing he had noticed was that Triana’s little affectations no longer were endearing, they were annoying. Then he had realized that for the first time in several weeks, he was able to think for himself. That was when he remembered that they had all come here only as a stopgap measure, a temporary hiding place, and that they had
originally
planned to get back to Shana’s Citadel, enlist the wizards in their cause, and work towards freeing the slaves and saving the halfbloods still in hiding.

None of that had happened. Instead, he had drifted into a sybaritic dream with Triana at the center, ignoring his friends, his causes, everything he had thought was important. Shana had seemed both childish and an arrogant, overbearing fool. Now, while he still found her arrogant, he realized that she was not being childish when it came to Triana. She was suspicious of the elven lady, and had every reason to be.

He’d been casual about his relationship to Keman—but after he’d had a chance to think about it, and to observe Triana with clear eyes, he’d been angry. She’d been using him. At least he could say this much for Shana, she never used him. And Triana had been toying with him. He didn’t know what her game was yet, but he was certain she had one.

That was when he decided to find out just what, exactly, she was up to—and the best way to do so was to fool her into thinking he was still enthralled and spellbound.

Even though, to do that, he had to keep up the act with his friends.

That had hurt, more than he wanted to admit. It had hurt especially when he’d had to insult Shana to her face.

He hadn’t realized until then how much he liked her, and seeing her crumple under his insults had made him feel as if he were the lowest thing in the world.

But it looked as though things were about to come to a head. Taking Triana’s hint, he had set up the chessboard instead of draughts for their second game—and she had lost. Deliberately, he was sure—he’d made a couple of very clumsy moves that could have given her the game, which she had totally ignored. She had dimpled, fluttered her eyelashes, and told him to name the forfeit. He had, naming what he figured she was expecting. After all, she’d been keeping him at arm’s length for weeks now; deliberately heating his blood, then putting him off. And now he knew why. She had been weaving a glamorie around him, and a physical consummation would complete it. She wanted to be sure that the hook had set before she brought in the fish.

“You,” he’d said slyly.

She had simpered and acted shy; he insisted. The long-awaited rendezvous would take place after dinner, in his rooms.

But that was hours from now—and he had a feeling, from the way she had hurried out, heading for
her
rooms, she had something she wanted to do.

Like calling someone on the teleson and telling them she had the “wild girl” everyone has been looking for.

He had every intention of finding out just what she was up to.

One advantage of being a servant, he thought wryly, was that no one ever paid any attention to what you did. The last time he’d been here, Valyn had been given rooms just like these. Shadow had stayed in the suite most of the time, unwilling to take the chance of having his illusory disguise dispelled. And since Shadow hadn’t seen the elven manor yet that wasn’t riddled with secret passageways, when he got bored with waiting, he’d gone looking for the doors into the ones here.

He’d found them, easily enough. And as usual, the passages had opened onto just about every room in the building. Now, if the ones in the guest rooms all worked alike-He examined the fireplace, and found the same little carved knobs he’d located in the other room. He twisted each of them in turn—

A panel beside the fireplace swung open without a sound. He slipped inside and closed the door after him.

He waited for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness. It wasn’t totally dark here; there were peepholes that let in light on both sides of the passageway. There was a thick, wet smell of mildew, and dust cushioned the floor like a heavy snowfall. Obviously, they didn’t use these very often. He wondered if Triana even knew they existed. He suppressed a sneeze and moved cautiously towards his goal, doing his best to disturb the dust as little as possible, holding his handkerchief to his mouth and nose to give him something to filter the dust.

Triana wasn’t the type to want to go to an office every time she needed to talk to someone. Her teleson was probably in her room.

It was a good thing that his goal wasn’t too far away—as careful as he had been, he was still kicking up dust. The air was full of it, and not all of it was being filtered out by the handkerchief.

This would be his bedroom—his dressing room—Triana’s bathroom—He heard voices once he reached the area of Triana’s rooms. Triana’s—and one other. It sounded like simple conversation, not the voice of someone giving orders to a subordinate. It could be Triana talking to Valyn, but he didn’t think it was. The voice sounded too deep to be Valyn’s.

He hurried his steps a little—and in a few moments more he was able to make out words. He recognized Cheynar’s voice immediately, and knew that his suspicions were being borne out. Triana
did
keep her teleson screen in her own rooms—and she
was
in contact with the elders.

“—enough of dancing around the bushes, my lady,” Cheynar was growling, as Shadow stifled another sneeze and stopped where he was. “Let’s get to the point, shall we? Do you have news of these renegades, or not?”

Shadow froze, hardly daring to breathe. So Triana
had
been talking to Cheynar about them being here! Shana was right; she had intended to betray them all along.

“Well, my lord,” Triana said slowly, “there is certainly someone living in my woods—if not your renegades, then certainly some other wild humans. I confess, they are too clever for me or my men, and I would appreciate your help in flushing them out.”

Shadow touched carefully at her thoughts, and heard her thinking,:
I’ll put together a hunting party, and lose them, then double back and meet Cheynar’s people. I probably ought to put Mero to sleep though, and hide him somewhere until they’ve gone. He’d probably try to rush to the rescue, or something equally heroic and stupid. And he hasn’t even begun to outlive his usefulness to me
.:

“That’s easily done,” Cheynar replied. “I can be there in two days. Is that soon enough?”

“Perfect, my lord,” Triana told him, her voice bright with satisfaction. And thought:
.-That’s more than enough time to set everything up, including a campsite for Cheynar’s men to find, so that it looks as if three of them been living there for some time. I wonder how Dyran is going to react to discovering his son is a renegade
?:

“Then I will see you in two days’ time, my lady,” Cheynar said.

“You certainly will, my lord,” Triana told him. “You certainly will.”

Outside, a full moon sailed peacefully and serenely over the treetops. Inside, in the suite shared by Shana and Keman, there was anything but peace.

“I’m not being stupid, and I’m not being overly sensitive,” Shana said patiently, doing her level best not to fly into a temper in the face of Valyn’s skepticism. “And I swear to you, I am absolutely not saying these things because I’m jealous of Triana.
You
heard Keman! You heard what Mero told him! He is completely unbiased, and he certainly doesn’t have any reason to feel threatened just because Triana has a pretty face.”

“I would have said,’seductive nature,’“ Keman put in, unhelpfully.

Shana stifled a groan. She had been trying to keep that particular aspect of their erstwhile hostess out of the conversation, knowing what it would do to her credibility.

Valyn reacted predictably. He put on that superior expression she hated so much, and said, in a tone that just oozed sweet reason, “But you do, Shana; you couldn’t help it. It’s a perfectly natural reaction. And after all, you’re a guest in
her
house; of course that puts you on an uneasy footing with her. You feel you have to compete with her, and yet you can’t. I understand that. But it doesn’t make Triana bad.”

Shana wanted to shake his shoulders and scream at him:
I’m not some animal, to be set off just because I’m on another female’s territory
! But she kept her temper in check and repeated what he evidently had not heard. “Keman isn’t a female, and he isn’t in the least threatened by her and he—”