The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (57 page)

“And indeed, no one will—unless they’ve seen the sketches.”

Quick as thought, Campion snatched them from Nicholas’s hand, tore them across, and flung them into the fire.

But the fire wasn’t real either. Campion’s hips and yearning face lay obscenely disjointed on the brightly painted embers.

“It wouldn’t have helped,” Galing said. “I have more.”

Campion’s mouth opened in a soundless
No
.

“I see the fact discomfits you. As well it might. What, after all, is to stop me from offering some to Lady Genevieve as a betrothal gift?”

Campion fixed his bright, strained gaze on Nicholas’s face. “Why?” he whispered.

“Why?” Nicholas shrugged. “I’d do it to prevent the alliance of a noblewoman with a traitor who seeks to overthrow all we hold dear.”

“I’m not a traitor.”

“Then what are you? A brawler and a whore? A man who always manages to be just where a nest of traitors is talking of kings and ancient rights? And if they triumph, who will then be king, my lord? A Northern farmer’s son, a scrawny scribe with blue fingers and inkstains? Or a descendant of the last of the kings, the noble heir to Tremontaine?”

Galing wiped his brow. It was the speech he still dreamed of making to Arlen, the true vision he had of how the pieces fit together. It was a blessed relief to have someone to say it to, someone who knew the truth as he did.

“You’re mad,” Campion said.

“That,” said Galing, “is very rich, coming from you. You are shaking so hard you can barely stand. Tell me what you know.”

Ostentatiously, he sat himself down in a chair that looked like stone, gesturing Campion toward its mate. Instead, Campion went to the false book shelves and pulled on a spine titled
Wines of the South
. The shelves sprung open on an array of bottles. He poured himself a whiskey, not offering Nicholas any. But neither, Nicholas noted, did he drink it himself.

“Look,” said Galing soothingly, “you’re young. Youth will have its pleasures. And its enthusiasms. I don’t want to ruin your marriage. Or your future. Indeed, I seek to promote a happy resolution of them both. If you will confess the plot to me, I will see to it that your name is never linked to it. My word on it.”

“There is no plot.”

“There is. I know it. If you were a common man, I’d have you thrown into the Chop and tortured until you confessed. As it is . . .” Nicholas tapped his portfolio. “I will surely draw your fangs and leave you toothless, brideless, and a mockery to all the city. You may seek your kingship then wherever you can find someone who will not laugh himself into stitches over your horns and your hooves and your rather extensive personal decorations.”

Campion pushed back his hair with both hands, rubbed his temples as though they hurt him, and swung his head low, from side to side. The effect was disturbing. “What must I do? How shall I prove myself to you?”

“Write it down,” Galing said. “I will have it all from you— your dealings with the King’s Companions, your relations with St Cloud, who your allies are and what they hope from you. Give me a clear account, with all your part in it. When that is in my hands, you shall have the sketches in yours. Not before.”

“Ysaud,” the boy said miserably. “Did she give them to you?”

Galing almost felt sorry for him. He was such a pathetic creature after all, for a rebellion to pin its hopes upon. “Only upon compulsion,” he said contemptuously. “She will not play the same trick twice, never fear. I am the only one who knows; and, if you are a good friend to the city, I will remain the only one. You will marry your sweetheart, and inherit your duchy. You will even sit in Council and enjoy the social rounds and summer on your country estates. Most people would not object to such a fate.”

“Please go,” the boy said. “I cannot bear the smell of you.”

“Thank you,” said Galing. “It has been a pleasure.”

JUST FOR DIVERSION, JESSICA CAMPION WAS PRICING the tapestries in her father’s room. She had not been in it since she’d attended his deathbed, and she wanted to see if they were as good as she remembered, or if the occasion had caused her to overvalue them.

She remembered staring at the woven pictures as she and the old duke played chess; sometimes he’d fall asleep, and she would sit patiently, silently making inventory, testing her fledgling knowledge of the world’s goods: the paintings and fine fabrics, the carvings and silver that furnished the room. Yes, indeed—she inspected the back—the tapestries were Ardish work, from one of the great studios. She had a client who would surely want them, if Sophia were inclined to sell. Jessica snorted. Fat chance. The room was a shrine to the dead duke. Sophia would probably sell her last gown and wear the tapestries before she’d part with a single one of them.

Riverside House made Jessica jumpy—not because her father had died there, but because she had grown up in it. Of course, the duke had not been living in it then. He’d decamped shortly after her birth, gone off to the island of Kyros with one of his famous lovers. She remembered them both together, in the white house above the blue sea, the summer she had been sent to visit. She was eight. He wanted to see his daughter. The Duchess Katherine had bundled her off with her nurse, who had gotten very friendly with the sailors. Jessica had climbed a rigging, and they said she was a natural. She’d decided then and there she’d have her own ship someday. She told Marcus so when she got back, and she reminded him of it when she turned sixteen and dowries were discussed.

“I don’t want a husband,” she said, “and I never will. Katherine hasn’t got one; why should I?”

Characteristically blunt, Katherine answered, “Because the city isn’t going to put up with you running through its daughters until you’re fifty. We’re offering to get you settled now, before you create so much scandal that even money won’t buy you into a decent family.”

Jessica did not like to remember exactly what she’d said then; it had been coarse, without finesse. She’d learned a lot since then about getting people to do what she wanted. But the upshot was that she left the city on someone else’s ship, with stake in the cargo and a few trinkets to sell abroad— trinkets she hoped Katherine had never missed. She’d always thought she’d stop someday at Kyros, see how the old man was getting on. But she’d never managed to route herself that way. There wasn’t really much on the island but honey and ruins and goats and olives.

She found her father again back home in Riverside, anyway, lying in this room, transparent with illness, easily bored, still with a tongue on him, though, the terror of his physicians. She was twenty years old, Theron’s age now, almost. She wondered what the old duke would have made of his son. Strange that they’d never even seen each other. But that was men for you—men, and death, she reflected, to be fair.

There was the ivory swordsman she had brought her father, still on the chest by the bed. She picked it up, and Theron walked in.

Well, not walked, exactly. Burst. Stormed. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

She only looked at him. That usually worked.

“I’ve been searching the house for you! Davy said you’d not gone out.”

“Nor had I. Or does this room somehow count as out?”

With one of his peculiar lightning shifts, he looked at the ivory in her hand and said brightly, “Ah! Adding to your hoard?”

She said, “Theron, sit down. Or at least stop pacing. You are welcome to count the silver when I leave, but please wait until then, all right?”

He stopped still, saying blankly, “What?”

She couldn’t figure him out. Sophia said it was wedding nerves, and that he was high-strung. Sophia, of course, did not know about the incident with the knives in the tanner’s yard. Jessica was saving it in case it should prove useful later. Knowing Theron, there was probably more where that came from. He was a Campion, after all.

“Never mind,” she said. “Just tell me what you— Oh!” She thought it through. The pattern began to emerge. “It was that man, wasn’t it? Stupid of me. The one who just left— Galing, right? He said something to you, did something to set you off—the pictures, right? The dirty ones? He showed you— No, wait, you wouldn’t need me for that. So they must have been— Oh, no. Oh, Theron, no.”

“No, what?”

“No, tell me you didn’t pose for some dirty pictures which Galing now has his hands on and is trying to blackmail you with.”

Eyes wide as a child’s, he nodded. “But not—not exactly. I mean, it wasn’t exactly like that.” He told her about Ysaud. Halfway through, she began to laugh. Furious, he ripped open his collar, showed her the leaves etched into his skin. Here in this room, it sobered her up. “You should not have let someone mark you like that,” she said. “Not you, Theron.”

“Don’t you find it beautiful?” he asked defiantly. “She is a great artist.”

“Slaves are marked like that,” his sister said grimly. “In places where I’ve been, slaves are marked with patterns cut in their skin, as other people’s property.” He raised his head, shook it as if shaking off some binding. “All right,” she said, “it’s the stupidity of youth; thank heaven none of mine left visible marks. I understand about the artist. Now, what does Galing want?”

Theron pulled his jacket tight about himself. “He wants me to confess to treason.”

Jessica sighed. “You
have
been busy. And you were such a nice little boy.”

“But I didn’t!” the nice little boy cried. “He came here with some mad tale of conspiracy, University, the kingship— Oh, Jess.” For the first time since he’d come into the room, he looked at her clear-eyed, direct, as if he finally recognized her. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Treason sounds serious, Theron. Tell Katherine.”

“No!” He shook his head violently and actually pawed the ground with his foot. “No, she mustn’t know. She’d probably believe him, not me. She’s already turned me with a haying fork from this field to next. . . . It’s all her fault, really. I
had
to get married, to get her off my back! I don’t think she cares who I marry, as long as it makes me look harmless and gets me out of the city for a while. That’s how bad it is with her.”

His half-sister nodded in complete sympathy. “Well, then, let’s think. This Galing—what’s his interest? Will he take money?”

“I don’t think so. He didn’t ask for money. He wants a full confession—a
report,
he called it.”

“Why don’t you just make something up?”

Again, the violent headshake. “I cannot—there are others. People at University he wants me to accuse.”

“Charming man. And when you fail to deliver, he sends your sketches to the Randalls?”

“So he said.”

“Let him.”

“
What?
”

“Let him. Who cares?”

“But the disgrace! And I’m not a traitor, Jess. Those men he wants me to accuse, they’ve done nothing. I cannot have this creature triumph over me!” Theron blew air out through his flared nostrils, shaking his head again in that disquieting way. “To think he holds me in his hands—to think of him— oh, God—
looking
at me, those pictures—”

“Ahhh.” She studied her half-brother, the heir to Tremontaine. He revealed more of his heart than he knew; he always had. But, then, there always had been someone standing by to wrap it in warm blankets at the least sign of a chill. Even now that he’d been betrayed by his mistress and by a fellow nobleman, he didn’t seem to recognize betrayal as the human condition. He probably wasn’t as innocent as he claimed, either. He’d done
something
to get both Katherine and Galing roused. If she helped him, she’d be helping to perpetuate his illusion: that mistakes could be rectified; that people were kind; that he would always be loved.

And he would be in her debt. Well, let it be his problem. For herself, Jessica was beginning to see a very neat, very amusing, maybe even profitable piece of business. She said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Get the sketches back from Galing, of course.”

“But you said he wouldn’t take money.”

He looked confused, as she’d intended. Delicately, he persisted: “You have a certain renown for finding and acquiring works of art—by your own stratagems.”

“Steal them? From Lord whosis Galing?” She played out the outrage, then relented: “Come on, Theron. He’d only get more from Ysaud.”

“They must all be found—found and burned.”

“Oh, hardly. Hardly that. I acquire art, I don’t destroy it. I’ve got a much, much better idea.” But she wouldn’t say what it was, only, “It’ll be fun. And it will get everyone what they want—except Galing, of course. And . . . maybe, the Randalls. I can’t guarantee you the Randalls.”

When he said nothing, she took his chin in her hand and turned his face to hers. “Theron. You understand what I’m saying? You’ve asked for my help, and I will give it. But I may be giving you help you don’t know you need.” She looked at him for a long time. Her eyes were the same green as his own, as their father’s in the portrait. “Say yes, Theron. Say that you understand and accept my help—or things will go very ill between us.”

“I understand,” he whispered. “But do not disgrace me, sister.”

“You worry too much,” she said, “about disgrace. This is an old, old city, and ours is an old, old family. It’s like a splash of blood on the sea, your disgrace—quickly absorbed and forgotten. But I will not disgrace you, if you try not to disgrace yourself.”