Lightborn (22 page)

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 glass 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 passed 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 asset 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 muffled 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 substitute.”

“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 glass 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 pass 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 pronoun 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 assets 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 eyeballs 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.”

“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 entitled 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 documents.

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 mass of red outside.

The red, interestingly, seemed to be parting. To his side he could hear the small chink of the vigilants’ chain armor as they came to point. The door opened, and the secretary came in, looking harassed 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.