The Fox (88 page)

“And so?” Hadand asked, her voice unsteady; now she wanted to laugh. “You came here thinking of me as . . . what, a cousin? Perhaps as a horse?”

Valdon circled round the table, his head to one side as he laughed. “I thought of you as too removed for expectations of that kind and so my motivation was only to talk.” He grinned. “You are so very formidable, you know, with your Marlovan walk and keen gaze. Everyone is quite intimidated. Including your obedient servant.” He bowed with grace.

“So . . . what, you are hinting that you have changed your mind about dalliance?” she began, making the mistake of looking up. His eyes quirked just like Evred’s, intensifying the resemblance, but totally unlike Evred was the unhidden desire there.

Her thoughts vanished into smoke. She looked away, expelling her breath in a whoosh. “No.”

“Is it me, or politics?”

“Politics,” she said, and there was no mistaking the honesty in tone and gaze. Then her brow puckered. “Besides, I thought you were interested in Joret?”

“Let’s go outside,” he said abruptly, and they slipped through the glass door into the private garden. Each of the suites in the royal wing had one, Hadand had discovered, bounded by high walls, and those obscured by levels of greenery. There was a splashing fountain in the middle, which would make it difficult to be overheard. Moonlight graced the well-trimmed plants and circular walk around the fountain. Insects chirruped in the soft summer air. “Interested. ” A direct look. “What a limp-prick word! Fascinated! Ensorcelled! But with Joret, I am beginning to believe it has to be life or nothing. Until then, why, a tumble with a handsome woman would be sweet, even if she is a queen.”

“And you a future king,” Hadand said, feeling that she must have fallen asleep and into a dream, without having lain down and shut her eyes first. After weeks of courtly ritual and platitudes, this conversation was enlightening and strange. And fraught with possible peril. “No, it feels too much like riding a runaway horse,” she said finally. “The ride might be fine, but what about when it stops?”

“And we get thrown into the thorn bushes? Or to the wolves?” Valdon rubbed his temples. “In truth I don’t know what I’m doing, except I discovered today—when I saw her at supper, and heard her capping quotations from that cursed archaic Sartoran poetry—I want her mind, I want her body, I want her to want my mind and body. Forever. ” He lifted away his hands and frowned. “And that was the trap, wasn’t it? You and Wisthia, bringing her here? You had to know what a dilemma I’m in. They laugh about me from Fal to Danara, my old friend Lael Lirendi helpfully informed me recently. So here I am, a little drunk, very caught. By the both of you, in every way known to man or woman. The question is, what is it you want in return? ”

The conversation had been strange before; now Hadand felt as if the shadowy ground had opened up, dropping her into another world entirely. She had not once considered what things must look like from Valdon’s perspective—she who prided herself on careful scrutiny of all sides. She could not mention the treaty now. He would feel conspired against, even though she hadn’t conspired.

“Joret and I knew nothing whatsoever about your situation, ” she said, the golden light from the distant windows shining directly in her eyes.

“Aunt Wisthia did,” he said, his mouth grim, but that narrowing of anger had eased from his eyes. The humor was back. “And what, she thought I might be like my father, and fall for a beautiful face?”

“She never told us that if she did,” Hadand said.

“So you think so, too.”

“But Joret doesn’t,” Hadand said quickly. “She doesn’t think that way. She never liked being singled out just for her face.”

“What’s Joret’s story? I thought you people married off the girls at some absurdly young age.”

“Betrothal. We go live with our future husband’s family at age two. Joret had a betrothal,” Hadand said. “My brother. He died.” Her voice softened, as memory whirled her back to that spring breakfast before Tanrid rode northward as Evred’s commander. How pleased he’d been! It was what he’d trained for all his life. Now he was gone. But so were those who had killed him.
Let it pass, let it pass
.

“Because of . . . circumstances she is free to choose for herself. ” Not
quite
true, but she knew there would be no trouble from anyone important at home if Joret made an honorable marriage over the mountains.

Valdon heard the affection in her voice. “Your brother? I didn’t know you people had a strong sense of family— sending the boys off for years of training, and the girls being sent away even younger. Not that we serve as any great object lesson in that. Though it was different when my grandfather was alive. And I can claim
one
amusing cousin, who’s been like a brother to me.”

“Lord Randon,” Hadand said, smiling briefly. Randon had made it abundantly plain that, much as he admired Joret, it was Hadand with whom he would most happily dally, something it had taken Hadand time to get used to. At home, her rank required her to make the first move if she wanted dalliance, but once she’d adjusted, he’d given her the first genuinely good time she’d had since her arrival.

Valdon did not misinterpret that smile. “I trust we’re not about to hear of a war being declared?”

Hadand chuckled, a deep sound utterly unlike the carefully trained court titter—he found it very attractive. “No,” she said. “I fault no one for different custom. And he makes me laugh. What, by the way, is a ‘Marlovan walk’?”

“It’s, oh, I don’t know. Like this, a little.” He parodied a martial saunter, his weight balanced on the outside of his foot. Then he grinned. “No man hears his own accent; do we have a walk?”

Hadand thought of her first impressions of the gliding, tiny steps of the women, the men’s languid mince, and opted for diplomacy. “Very courtly.”

Valdon turned around on the pathway to face her. She looked up, moonlight making plain her question. He sensed no deviousness, no triumph. If anything, an almost imperceptible sense of sadness. “So if there is no conspiracy, why won’t Joret talk alone with me—or why doesn’t she invite me to talk to her, if that’s your custom?”

Hadand sighed. “Because we are guests here.”

“Guests,” he repeated. “Ah, back to politics.”

“To put it bluntly, we are told on all sides that you will make a specific alliance, and Joret has too steadfast a sense of honor to trespass.”

“Ah. Ah!” Valdon felt another of those unsettling shifts in perspective. The Iascans did understand honor, despite what had happened to their leaders the winter before.

And he had to be the one to speak.

He looked up at the peaceful stars, then down, and knew that his next words would commit him forever. “But there is no other alliance, not unless I choose.”

“Is there not talk of some important tax grant?”

Valdon waved a hand. “That part is the easiest to solve. What would be the hardest is what I have to offer Joret: a pair of fretful, greedy sovereigns, a court renowned for its viciousness, where deviousness is regarded as an art. Where consuming everything and anyone good is their only intent. What I noticed first about Joret—well, second— was how free she is of guile. What I’ve discovered of her in company is that she is smart, honest, quick. Kind.”

“All true.”

Valdon held out his hands. “Imagine that! I’ve fallen in love with someone I’ve never had the chance to court. But what happens if we do court? More to the point, if she does want me enough to stay, must she either become worse than they, or else be ground to death by the court’s teeth?”

Hadand watched the graceful winging of a night bird as she thought. The moment was poised to change all their lives. They both sensed it. She must not speak wrong. “She is a lot stronger than you think. Try her.”

It was enough.

When Hadand returned to her room, there she found Joret, her wide eyes so steady the candle flames reflected in them in eerie pinpoints of light. She made no pretence. “He was here,” she breathed. “What did he say?”

“He’s actually free to choose and he wants you. Was afraid of conspiracy, but mostly he’s afraid that the cruelty of this court will destroy you, or remake you into its image.”

The corners of Joret’s mouth deepened. “There’s a third way.”

Anyone familiar with history in that part of the world knows the results of the next morning’s talk between Valdon and Joret, recorded for posterity: there is little point in repeating it, as they were both too guarded, too anxious, for it to have much charm. Their brief words accomplished one thing. They understood one another enough to begin to speak freely.

What he never saw was what happened after, when he hastened, his gait and grin unmistakable, up through the palace to confront his father before the official Rising.

He made no attempt to hide his elation—or the direction he had come from, and so gossip ringed out behind him.

Fansara of Bantas had expected a crown ever since her parents gave her a pony when she was five and said that queens must know how to ride with grace. Everything she had ever done was the action of a future queen.

Everything. There was no room in her mind, or heart, for anything except the prospect of power, and the exquisite anticipation of using it. Years of flattering that disgusting bore of a queen, listening to the wine-sodden beast who was now king, putting up with the neglect of their fool of a son while waiting for her crown: those were the price she’d had to pay to gain power.

But now, when she was about to succeed at last—every-one had said so, and deferred accordingly—there comes, along with that dried-up old raisin of a widowed queen, a blue-eyed daughter of the Deis bent on destroying everything.

Imagine her fury when Fansara saw clusters of courtiers hurrying and scurrying across the public garden toward the queen’s wing for the Rising. She knew immediately something had happened, and paused only for a moment to check her reflection in a pond: yes, her peach silk looked queenly, her hair perfectly coifed, face smooth.

Inside the royal chambers the bright-feathered peacocks of court were circling around that Marlovan mare with her muscular arms and her stride like a quarryman. Glances Fansara’s way, mirthful glances, without any semblance of goodwill, annoyed Fansara; when the others did not defer as she glided up to take the principal cushion, her irritation heated to fury.

The queen wasn’t through with her bath yet—she slept later and later—so the women strolled idly about, or sat and nibbled the fresh bread and fruit laid out for them while they waited—for what? They should be seated around Fansara, as always. What had happened?

A sidelong glance from that fat little butterball from the Ashan plains. “Lady Joret, did the prince have any plans for today’s picnic?” Her voice was shrill with triumph.

“If he does, I believe he will say so,” was the reply, in that ugly accent from over the mountains. Joret sat down on a cushion—just any cushion, as usual, paying no attention to her position in the room—and reached for bread.

Fansara watched in horror as they others promptly sorted themselves out in rank order and took places around Joret. As if she was already forming a court!

Fansara rose again, on pretext of finding something to drink, and took her time cutting through the still-circling women, forcing them to defer. She stopped directly before the barbarian. “Tell me,
Lady
Joret. Is it true that Marlovan barbarians all eat with knives, like our meanest shepherds grubbing in the hills?”

Fansara smiled indulgently at the tittering on the edges of the crowd, rustlings of gowns, whispers. They all looked like frightened mice as they turned from her to the barbarian.

Who moved a hand to her sleeve. When she snapped her hand out again, she was suddenly holding a long dagger.

Women gasped. Some scrambled up, hands at their throats, some squealed and scurried away, leaving Joret alone there on her cushion.

Joret’s wide, lambent gaze, the same color as the morning sky behind them, did not waver. “I will demonstrate how we eat,” she said, her lips parting to show the edges of her even, white teeth.

And with slow, deliberate, delicate care, she sliced that dagger through the bread so it fell into wafers. Then she brought the steel to her lips and licked it all down its length. A long, slow lick, so long and so slow it was unnervingly sensual, as was the way she used the dagger to flick butter over the bread. Then she cut it into tiny pieces, which she speared on the point and ate with that same slow, deliberate, measured care—the blade glinting this way, that way, and then again that shivery licking, now on both sides, all the way up to the tip.

The room was profoundly silent, the women watching with unwavering gazes of horror and fascination—several with a covert, though growing, admiration—until she finished.

They were shocked to discover that the queen was there, had been there for some time. She too had watched in appalled and fascinated silence. She was even a little afraid, as Joret calmly pulled back her lacy cuff to reveal the sheath, and slid the knife home with an audible
click
.

And so, a week later, while the Iascan queen was closeted with the Grand Council over the wording of her treaty, Fansara found Valdon at her shoulder in the evening, inviting her to dance.

She had dreamed about that long silver dagger for a week, and about Joret’s blue, unwavering gaze. There had been no more comments about sailor’s walks, or brick-layers, or really much of anything, and the dagger had made no reappearance, but all the women of court now knew it was there in her sleeve. In fact she carried two.

And so, when Valdon asked Fansara while they danced the length of the room to consider an appointment to Sartor as ambassador—as Lord Jasil was getting old and wanted to retire from the severity of life under the current Sartoran queen—she bowed to the inevitable and said yes.