The Gods of Amyrantha (25 page)

It was Shalimar who answered him, and his answer shocked Declan almost as much as the discovery of his grandfather sitting in a Tide Lord's kitchen sharing tea.

'You've got it wrong, Declan,' the old man corrected. 'Maralyce has done more than warn us
of
the danger.' With his hand protected by a scrap
of
towel, he lifted the cast-iron kettle onto the table with a grunt, and added, 'She was the one who retrieved what was left of the information the Holy Warriors had gathered on the Tide Lords during their hundred-year history and passed it on to Lyrianna of Lebeken.'

Declan stared at Maralyce in amazement.
'You
gave all that information about how to defeat a Tide Lord to the founder of the Cabal of the Tarot?'

'Fool,' Maralyce said as she took the kettle from Shalimar and refilled the teapot. 'There
was
no Cabal of the Tarot. Lyrianna of Lebeken didn't gather the information to create your wretched Tarot. I did.'

CHAPTER 23

It became obvious to Warlock after a few weeks in the royal household that King Enteny and Queen Inala were more than a little suspicious of Kylia's behaviour, both toward her new husband and around her constant companion, Jaxyn Aranville. She'd come to them — in theory — an innocent young girl, but the effort required to maintain the persona of Kylia was boring the immortal witless and occasionally she forgot herself.

Diala was starting to let the mask slip and Warlock wasn't the only one who noticed. Although they never said anything outright, the king's disapproving looks when the young princess chose Jaxyn's company over her husband's, the queen's less than subtle remarks about inappropriate friendships for a married woman, and their disapproval at some of the comments she made when she was feeling particularly impatient, were becoming more and more frequent.

As the days went by, Kylia seemed less and less inclined to appease her in-laws, which worried Warlock a great deal, and not only because of what it might mean to Glaeba. The Tide was on the way back, which meant the confidence of the immortals was growing apace. The danger Warlock feared, however, was that as he became more and more a fixture in the royal household, Declan Hawkes would be less and less likely to want him to leave. It was only a matter of a couple of months now before Boots was due to whelp.

Hidden Valley seemed further away now than it had when he didn't really believe it existed.

Warlock knew the Tide was on the turn, just as he knew in this unholy alliance it was Jaxyn, not Diala, who wielded the true power. By all accounts — according to Crasii Lore — Diala's power was limited to healing (or destroying things) on a small scale. The Immortal Prince had confirmed as much when he'd related his tale to the Duchess of Lebec while still a prisoner in the cell opposite Warlock in Lebec Prison.

Diala and Jaxyn could both manipulate the elements, it was true, but of the two, only Jaxyn was a true Tide Lord. Only Jaxyn could bring about the sort of cataclysmic event that might result in the death of millions. Diala, so the Lore and the Immortal Prince claimed, could barely raise a storm in a teacup.

Her increasing willingness to flaunt convention, however, risking the wrath of the court gossips and her husband did not augur well for Glaeba's future. Particularly as she seemed to care less and less that she was antagonising the king and queen.

Perhaps the Tide was turning faster than Shalimar anticipated. Perhaps the immortals were getting ready to make their move, not in the year or two that the old Tidewatcher had predicted, but much, much sooner.

And that meant it wasn't likely that Warlock was going home anytime soon.

Jaxyn had developed something of a routine in the palace. It mostly involved keeping the young prince out until the small hours of the morning, which meant Mathu slept a good part of the day away, leaving Jaxyn and Diala to their own devices. Jaxyn was always up and about, bright and cheerful, first thing in the morning, ready to be of service to the ladies of the court. He was supposed to be representing the interests of the Duke of Lebec, but if he actually did any work, it wasn't when Warlock was around to witness it.

Today, as usual, Jaxyn was waiting for the king and queen and the princess as they crossed the manicured lawns below the palace and approached the royal barge tied up at the palace dock. It had been decided last night at dinner that everyone would go boating on the lake this morning. The weather had been particularly fine these past few days, so Queen Inala had decided they should make the most of it and take the royal barge out.

The excursion was for more than recreational purposes. Such an outing would give the royal family an excuse to sail past some of the nearer villages, where their presence would undoubtedly be remarked. They would stop for lunch at one of them — unannounced — bestowing their royal largesse on the village and ensuring the continuing loyalty of their subjects, who considered it an unimaginable honour to meet the king and queen in person.

The royal barge was quite elaborate, designed for little more than pleasure cruising up and down the lake shore. Painted green, its brass work glinting in the sunlight, it had a crew of nearly thirty, many of whom were simply on board to serve the royal family and their guests. There were another score of amphibious Crasii responsible for towing the craft, who were already slipping into their harnesses, while the barge's captain yelled orders at the rest of his crew, the pitch of his calls increasing in urgency when he spied his royal passengers approaching.

Warlock walked behind the royal party, along with another dozen slaves, including the queen's personal chef and the king's huntmaster. Warlock wasn't sure what the huntmaster was supposed to do aboard a barge in the middle of the lake, but he seemed a regular guest on these excursions. Perhaps the king planned to stop later in the day and do some hunting in the forests that bordered much of the lake's eastern shore.

The royal party stopped when they reached the dock. The queen glanced around her, frowning, as if only just realising her son was missing.

'Where is Mathu?' she asked, directing her question to Kylia.

The princess smiled brightly at her mother-in-law. 'Still asleep, mother. He got in very late last night.'

The queen frowned. 'Didn't you remind him that we planned to go sailing today?'

'I did,' Kylia assured her. 'But he just grunted at me, rolled over and went straight back to sleep.'

'It's my fault, I fear, your majesty,' Jaxyn confessed, interrupting with an apologetic bow. 'I didn't mean for us to stay out so late.'

'You
appear to have had no trouble getting out of bed this morning,' the king remarked, turning his attention from the barge to the young lord. He looked even more unhappy about his son's absence than the queen.

'I probably didn't drink as much,' Jaxyn admitted with a smile. 'Would you like me to fetch him for you?'

'I would,' the king announced. 'In fact, you can inform my son that we're expecting him to join us on the royal barge within the hour.'

'Oh!' Kylia exclaimed in disappointment. 'Do we have to wait for him, papa? It's such a lovely day. We'll miss the better part of it if we have to hang around here while Mathu gets dressed.'

'Don't you
want
your husband to join us?' the queen asked with a suspicious frown.

'Of
course
I do,' she replied with a laugh. 'But I don't think we should lose the day just because Mathu's a silly sleepyhead. Can't we go on without him? Jaxyn could fetch him out of bed and make him row out to us once he's ready, couldn't he? It'd do him the world of good anyway — a just reward for being so thoughtless about your plans.'

The queen thought on it for a moment and then glanced at her husband who shrugged and nodded in

agreement. 'The exercise will do him good, I suppose. Damn that boy for being so irresponsible.'

'I'll have him clean, dressed and on board within the hour,' Jaxyn promised. 'May I borrow Cecil to give me a hand? I'll need someone who knows his way around his highness's wardrobe if we're to get our recalcitrant prince ready in time.'

With a frown, the king absently waved his hand in Warlock's general direction and turned his attention back to the barge. Like the good slave he was pretending to be, Warlock bowed to the king and turned to follow Jaxyn. As he did, he caught the look that passed between Diala and the Tide Lord.

It made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

Something is going on,
Warlock concluded, a shiver of fear running down his spine to the very tip of his tail, wondering what the two of them had planned.

Is Mathu's absence this morning deliberate? Are they planning to do something to him?

The death of the crown prince would serve little purpose unless Kylia was pregnant, Warlock decided, fighting back a sudden panic attack.
Was
she pregnant? Warlock had seen no sign of it, but that didn't make it impossible. Given she was sleeping with a mortal, there was no reason why she couldn't be with child, he supposed.

Perhaps that's their plan. Perhaps they intend to kill Mathu and then announce Kylia is pregnant with the next heir to the throne?

It seemed a very roundabout way of doing things, though, even for a Tide Lord.

He would find out soon enough, however. And the tragedy was, there was little Warlock could do to stop Jaxyn doing whatever he desired. Declan Hawkes had warned him that he might face a test to prove he wasn't a Scard. Was the test going to be today? Was it going to be standing back and letting a Tide Lord kill the Crown Prince of Glaeba?

Am I going to have to witness a murder, just to prove I'm a loyal servant of the immortals?

Is that what Declan Hawkes
wanted
him to do? To stand by and do nothing?

He's the King's Spymaster. Surely his mandate includes protecting the crown prince from harm?

Then again, Warlock might be imagining things. Jaxyn might mean to do exactly as he stated. He might go upstairs, wake the prince, demand he dress, warn him his father was annoyed and then help him row out to the barge for a pleasant day on the lake with the king and queen ...

But Warlock hadn't imagined the look that passed between Jaxyn and Diala.

With a conviction that bordered on a premonition, he knew somebody was going to die today.

The uncertainty what to do about it, however, ate at Warlock like a canker as they crossed the lawn on their way back to the palace.

Is this what I agreed to?
he wondered, staring at the back of Jaxyn's head as if the answer lay somewhere ahead of him.
Stand by and do nothing to prevent the death of an innocent young man for the greater good of mankind?

And what about Crasii-kind? How would complicity in such a crime aid his own people — the slaves of Amyrantha?

It won't aid them at all,
he realised with a sigh.

But even if he wanted to, even if Jaxyn
was
heading back to the palace to murder Prince Mathu, not fetch him for an outing on the lake, there was not a thing Warlock could do to stop him and if he
tried
to stop him, he would end up just as dead as poor Prince Mathu might soon be.

For the first time since being recruited into the Cabal of the Tarot, Warlock began to understand what Declan Hawkes had been getting at when he asked if he thought himself up for the job.

This is the test. Not a test to see if I can follow the orders of a Tide Lord so they believe I'm a Scard. This is a test to see if I have the fortitude to go on.

That, he knew, was the bigger picture. From the moment Jaxyn and Diala had set their power-hungry sights on Glaeba, the royal family was probably doomed. But after they'd taken power,
that's
when it would be important for the Cabal to know what the two immortals were planning.

And what choice do I have, in any case? If I object to anything jaxyn does,
Warlock reminded himself,
if I so much as flinch, I will die.

By the time they entered the palace, Warlock was trembling with anticipation and fear. He forced it under control. It would take nothing more innocuous than a simple glance over his shoulder for Jaxyn to realise the Crasii was fretting about something. If he noticed that, Warlock was on the fast road to annihilation.

You can do this,
Warlock told himself with a confidence he didn't feel.
You can carry this off.

Forcing his tail up a little, so it appeared he had nothing to worry about, Warlock hurried after Jaxyn toward the lower atrium and the stairs that led to the family suites on the upper floors of the palace, deeply afraid of what the Tide Lord had in mind.

CHAPTER 24

Arkady's next meeting with Chintara was due several days after Tiji arrived from Glaeba with her disturbing news that Declan Hawkes suspected the Imperator's Consort might be the immortal, Kinta.

She wasn't nearly as nervous about the meeting as she thought she might be. Perhaps it was her previous friendship with the consort. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Kinta was merely immortal, rather than a Tide Lord capable of tearing the world apart in her wrath. Maybe she was becoming jaded with the whole notion of Tide Lords. Arkady smiled at the thought, glancing through the perforations at the front of her carriage. She turned to look at the little chameleon.