The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (58 page)

JESSICA DRESSED HERSELF CAREFULLY, IN RICH COLORS THAT showed off her tawny skin. She braided a strand of tiger-eye through the coils of her blazing hair and lined her eyes with kohl and put gold in her ears. Then she hired a chair to take her to the home of the artist, Ysaud.

“Lady Jessica Campion of Tremontaine,” she announced herself to the servant who answered the door, and Ysaud did not keep her waiting long.

The artist was small and perfect, with regular features and pale, dark-lashed eyes. Jessica’s mouth watered.

“There are so many Tremontaines,” Ysaud said. “Which hole did you crawl out of?”

“A very special one.” Jessica smiled. “As you will see. I hear that you have pictures of my brother Theron.”

The artist had to tilt her head up to view Jessica’s face. “You look like him. A little. Come into the light. You are very much older. Are you sure you’re not his mother?”

Jessica smiled wickedly. “Quite, quite sure.” Their two faces were almost touching. Ysaud’s eyes marked every fine line the sun had etched in Jessica’s skin, even the down on her upper lip. She said, “I would draw your face as a landscape, I think, all peaks and soft valleys and unexpected ridges.”

“I’ve seen that place, somewhere out past the Ardish Straits. There was a wicked wind, but it’s a land well worth visiting.”

“Is it? I am much occupied here.”

“Drawing people. I know. Let me see your hands,” Jessica said, and Ysaud gave her one. “Just as I thought. You don’t take care of them properly.” She smoothed the fingers, one by one, from base to tip, gently, with her own. “I knew a woman once, a sculptor . . . she never did anything but work, in clay and dust and marble . . . and her skin, it dried right up, and cracked—right there. . . .” Her tongue marked the spot. “She could barely hold her chisel.” She traced the route to the wrist. “It was very sad.”

Ysaud’s free hand caressed the strand of tiger-eye, following it through the coils of Jessica’s hair. “Clearly, you should have warned her sooner.”

“It is an error I endeavor to correct.” Jessica took the hand she held, and moved it to the high neck of her silk chemise, laced with a bronze ribbon. “Pull,” she said.

“What will I get out of it?”

“Nothing much. There are still all the buttons.”

Ysaud laughed, and pulled—and pulled some more, bringing the thin, mocking lips to her own and kissing them crimson, biting them a rich vermilion.

“Take me to your studio,” Jessica urged.

“Why?” the artist asked, amused; “you want to see my pictures?”

“Not a bit,” Jessica murmured. “I want to see you naked, where you work.”

“I want to see you naked, in my bed.”

“We can have that, too. Why not? There’s a whole night ahead of us. Maybe a nice kitchen table, too. . . .”

JESSICA CAME AWAKE IN ROSE SATIN SHEETS, TO THE smell of burning wax. Candles were all around the bed. Ysaud was tracing their shadows on her skin with one fingertip, which Jessica bit.

Ysaud said, “You want the Theron pictures, don’t you?”

“Sight unseen?” Jessica mocked. “I know you’re good, but it’s a big investment.”

“Don’t you?” the artist insisted.

“Of course. But only for one night.”

“You don’t have much staying power, then.”

“Oh, do I not?”

And when the conversation resumed, Jessica said in a dreamy voice, “Theron never mentioned me, did he? Of course not. You didn’t know he had a sister. You must understand who I am. The actress’s bastard. Tremontaine hates me. The duchess was forced to take me in when I was a baby, to avoid a scandal. When I got to be too much trouble as a young woman, she shipped me off abroad, where I have fended for myself as best I could. In twenty years, I haven’t done badly.”

“Why are you here now, then?”

“The wedding.” Jessica smiled thinly. “It’s their great triumph, you see. Their beloved Theron, married to a great noble’s daughter, father of a whole new crop of legitimate heirs. They want me to witness it.”

“And you came? How—tame of you.”

“The wedding,” said Jessica, fingering Ysaud’s navel, “is not for some months.”

“Leaving you plenty of time to celebrate your brother’s future happiness—no, don’t stop.”

“Leaving me plenty of time to ensure my own. And while this”—she kissed a rosy nipple—“is making me very happy, indeed, the long-term prospect takes a little more effort.”

“
And
my pictures.”

“Among other things.”

“You are planning to expose Lord Theron and destroy his marriage.”

“Among other things.”

“For revenge?”

“Among other things.”

Ysaud chuckled, then gasped at the sensations shooting through her, then chuckled again. “The pictures,” she said, “are not immediately recognizable as Lord Theron. Not, at any rate, with his clothes on.”

“Then I will have to contrive to have him pose naked next to your favorite one, won’t I?”

Ysaud shuddered deliciously again. “Not necessary. I have sketches for the paintings which are unmistakable.”

“Now, those I would like to buy. I have clients abroad who are collectors.”

“Of smut?”

“Lady, of your work. Have I not told you how deeply I admire it, how honored I am to be received into your . . . presence?”

“In fact, you have not.”

“I am deeply . . . so very deeply. . . .”

THE GRAY LIGHT OF DAWN WAS FILTERING THROUGH ALL the nine high windows of Ysaud’s studio. “They are magnificent,” Jessica said, staring at the canvases. “I could sell these easily in Tabor or in Elysia . . .”

“I wish you would.” Ysaud flipped back another cover cloth. “I can’t sell them here; they’re too incendiary. I’ve already had one visit from a spy of the Council. He got all excited; I had to buy him off with a few of these.” She flipped the sheaf of sketches. “I tell you what, Jessica: give me seventy-five royals for the lot, paintings and all, and you can do whatever you want with them.”

“Make it fifty.”

Ysaud looked at her. “I need the money. You’ll easily double it. No, you take them, sell them abroad, make a nice profit, and I’ll be washed clean of the whole episode, with money in my purse. Enchanting as you Campions are, you’re also damnably distracting.”

“I take it that’s my dismissal for the day?”

“Oh, for the year, I think. You’re a bit rich for my blood. And you’ve gotten what you came for.”

“I’ve enjoyed it,” said Jessica Campion.

She went whistling out into the street—a deplorable habit, to be sure—and took herself down to a Riverside tavern, the only place where the old Duke Tremontaine’s daughter could be sure of getting a really solid breakfast and not be disturbed, while sporting a string of tiger-eyes around her waist.

JESSICA WAS STILL AF RAID OF KATHERINE, THOUGH. And so she deemed it politic to send her a letter:

Dear Cousin,

You asked me once to turn all my gifts to serving the
family, and I refused you. I have been happy with my
choice. And grateful to you for giving me the means to set
up in life. I’m going to express my gratitude in the next few
weeks by causing a scandal of no mean proportions, which
will embarrass you greatly. But it will come out all right in
the end. I am telling you this now only because I don’t
want you to suffer or to think that I would really do anything to harm you or Sophia or Theron. It will, however,
look as if I am, and so if I were you I’d go to the country
and not come back til it’s over. And by the way I need a lot
of money, 150 royals or so for now. If you were a client
I’d ask for much more, but I am serving the family and will
not see immediate profit; it’s all for expenses.

She chewed on the end of her pen, and finally wrote,
Your
loving daughter
, and crossed it out—Katherine had been as a mother to her for all of one day before turning her over to a series of nurses—
Your devoted cousin, Jessica.

chapter
IV

TWO DAYS AFTER HIS VISIT TO LORD THERON Campion in Riverside found Lord Nicholas Galing a prey to doubt. After an unprofitable morning spent pacing the floor of this study and replaying in his mind what he had said to Lord Theron and what Lord Theron had said to him, Nicholas put on a coat of leaf-green and went to Lord Filisand’s.

Despite the bright and beckoning weather, Lord Filisand’s stuffy rooms were not thin of company. Spring in the city brought not only unfurling leaves and flowers in the gardens of the Hill, but also the Spring Sessions and the joint meeting of the Council of Nobles and the City Magistrates. As Nicholas threaded his way through the little knots of men in the greater salon, he overheard snippets of discussions on taxes, on the leather monopoly, on the rivermen’s objections to the new storage tariffs—dull topics to one who had been sailing the deep waters of treason and intrigue.

“There you are, Galing.” It was Lord Condell, sleek and graceful as a cat, with sapphire clips in his soft, fair hair. He tapped Nicholas on the wrist with his fan. “Have you heard the latest? The Tremontaine bastard’s back in town—Jessica, the lady pirate.”

Nicholas would have liked to astonish him by announcing that he had just been speaking to the lady, but discretion prevailed. “No!” he exclaimed, all polite incredulity. “Where is she living? She’s not at Tremontaine House, I suppose.”

“That’s the thing,” said Condell. “She’s rented a house—a considerable house—on Albans Street on the Lower Hill.”

“Not Lady Caroline’s Folly?”

“The same. Ballroom, conservatory, stables and all. What do you think of that, eh?”

Nicholas beckoned to a footman carrying a tray, chose a leafy green roll and bit into it. Something was up. Two days ago, Jessica had looked very much at home at Riverside. Had she quarreled with Lady Sophia?

“Everyone knows there’s no love lost between her and Duchess Katherine,” Condell was saying. “Depend on it, this is some scheme to bedevil the poor woman.”

Nicholas swallowed. “Or else she’s simply decided to come home and settle down,” he said in a bored drawl. “Surely pirating, if that’s what she does, is a young man’s—er, woman’s—game.”

Condell snapped open his fan. “Are those any good?”

“What? Oh, the lettuce rolls.” Nicholas took another and held it out to the older man. “Very tender and fresh—an embodiment of Spring, in fact. Do try one.”

Condell peered doubtfully at the crisp green roll. “I like my food cooked,” he said. “She deals in art—figurines from Elysia and tapestries from Ardith—that sort of thing. She has a ship, sails everywhere, with a crew of women, it’s said. A real virago. I can’t see her settling down.”

“Well,” said Nicholas, sick to death of Campions, “time will tell. In the meantime, what do you make of Filisand’s new protégé? Think he’s grooming him for the Crescent’s staff?”

LATER THAT WEEK, LORD NICHOLAS GALING RETURNED home from his tailor’s to find a large square envelope, addressed to him in an ornate secretarial hand, lying in creamy splendor on his hall table. Opening it, he found an invitation from Lady Jessica Campion, begging the pleasure of his company at a soiree the following evening. The occasion was a suite of paintings by the artist Ysaud, which Lady Jessica wished to display in her native city before packing them off to grace the court of an (unnamed) foreign monarch.

Nicholas turned the invitation over. On the back were scrawled the following words:
I invite you at my brother’s
urging. He says to tell you that he has something to give you.
J.C.

WAITING FOR A LITTLE KING TO REACH HIS MOMENT of trial is among the greatest trials a wizard must himself face. In a way, it is the wizard’s test as much as the Little King’s, testing his skill in reading the demands of the time, the ability of his candidate, the needs of the Land. For in the end, the Land chooses the king it needs to serve it.

Basil St Cloud spent this time of waiting as his predecessors had passed it before him: in study. He was, he feared, a weak wizard, and most woefully unprepared. He’d had no magister to teach him, no colleagues with whom to dispute and discuss the theory of transformations, the signs of omen, the mysteries of grove and pool. All he had was the voices of the past, the voices of the dead speaking to him through the documents, the legends and the histories he’d been living amongst these past weeks. These, and his dreams, gave him an inkling of what he must do to bring the Land alive again.