The Lord-Protector's Daughter (5 page)

That night, Mykella lay in
her bed with all the lamps snuffed, looking up through the darkness at her unadorned plaster ceiling, thinking. What was the greenish blackness below and beneath the purple glow of the Table? Why hadn't she seen it earlier? Why did the purple feel so unclean and repulsive?

Question after question swirled through her mind. Was Joramyl the one diverting tariff golds? If so, why? Just to line his pockets and pay for his extravagances? Or was he plotting more? And if he were not the one, who could be? Why would Kiedryn do it? Could Berenyt be somehow involved? Or one of the tariff collectors? That might be the most likely possibility, but if that were so, then why hadn't Joramyl pursued it beyond mentioning it to her father?

The only certainty she had was that it could not be her father. Much as she hated to admit it, he had neither the interest nor the skill with figures, and he never spent enough time with the ledgers to do something like that. Nor was he involved personally with collecting the tariffs.

Mykella felt hemmed in at every turn. She didn't dare discuss the problem with Joramyl, and she couldn't bring it before her father without some sort of proof. Everything would be so much easier if she had the powers that Kiedryn had claimed for Mykel the Great. Even being able to move around unseen would be helpful. Yet, if he had possessed such powers, and Rachyla had been so strong, why didn't any of his descendants have those powers? Or had the early Lords-Protector had them, and the abilities had faded over the generations? And why was the proclamation naming Rachyla as a successor missing? Or had she just missed it in her hurry?

From her bed, she absently scanned the wall-shelf to the right of her small dressing table, taking in the carved onyx box that had been her mother's and the pair of silver candlesticks, the base of each a miniature replica of the eternal green stone towers that flanked the Great Piers. At that moment, she realized that the room was pitch dark, with the window hangings closed and not a single lamp lit, yet she could discern the shape of every object in her chambers.

Could she? She slipped from under the coverlet and walked to the wall-shelf. The onyx box was there, and the candlesticks, but was there more light than she had thought? How could she tell? Abruptly, she closed her eyes, trying to “see” without them.

Slowly, using her senses that were not sight, she reached out for the candlesticks, lifting the one on the left easily, without fumbling, then set it down. She moved sideways to the dressing table, her eyes still closed, and picked up the silver-handled hairbrush that had also been her mother's. Then she lifted the powder box and set it down. Her hand was trembling.

She
knew
she'd never been able to do that. It had to be something awakened by the soarer's touch. But why her? She had no real power in Lanachrona. She didn't even have any appreciable influence over her father or her brother.

She shook her head, then smiled wryly in the darkness. Too bad the palace corridors weren't kept that dark. Then she could just walk wherever she wanted, seeing where to go while others saw nothing.

Mykella was up early on
Sexdi and one of the first in the family at breakfast, although Salyna was already there. Feranyt followed, and then Rachylana, who wore a clinging green dress that was almost more suited to a ballroom than to the daily routine of a Lord-Protector's daughter.

Mykella wore one of her usual black tunics and trousers. She forced herself to wait to ask what she wanted to know until her father had finished eating and was taking a second mug of spiced tea.

“What was Lord Joramyl like when you were growing up, Father?” Mykella inquired casually, taking a sip of the plain strong tea she preferred to the cider most women drank or the spiced tea her father liked. “He seems so proud and distant now.” Arrogant, self-serving, and aloof were what she really thought, but saying so would only have angered her father.

“He's always been proud, but he was always kind to Mother and your Aunt Lalyna. He'd bring them both special gifts from all the places he served in the Southern Guards. Your aunt's favorites were the perfumes he brought back from Southgate when he was your grandfather's envoy there. She even took the empty bottles when she left for Soupat.” Feranyt shook his head. “I knew she'd have trouble with the heat there, but Father insisted on it.”

Mykella couldn't help but notice that her father did not mention how Joramyl and her mother had gotten along. “He's rather formal with us. Was he always that way with most others in the family?” That was as close as she dared get to what she really wanted to know.

“He's always been hard to get close to,” Feranyt replied, with a slight frown.

“Did you play games together?” Mykella pursued, deciding that she'd best change her line of inquiry.

Feranyt chuckled. “Joramyl was never one for games. Except for leschec. He got to be so good at it that he beat old Arms-Commander Paetryl. We didn't play it together, not after we were very young. He was too serious about it for me.”

Mykella could sense that even thinking about Joramyl and leschec bothered her father. “Did you spar with weapons?”

“Father forbid it after I broke Joramyl's wrist. If I hadn't, that fight would have ended up with one of us badly hurt. I was better, but Joramyl wouldn't ever quit.”

The more her father said, the more concerned Mykella became, especially with what she had discovered about the missing tariff golds. Perhaps her father had mentioned what he was saying before, but she'd never paid that much attention, and now her own concerns gave a new meaning to her father's childhood memories. “Do you think that he feels he'd be a better Lord-Protector than you?”

“Mykella! How could you ask that?” murmured Rachylana, leaning close to her sister.

“Father?” Mykella kept her voice soft, curious, hard as it was for her.

“I'm sure he does.” Feranyt laughed. “Each of us thinks we can do a better job than anyone else, but things turn out the way they do, and usually for good reason.”

With her worries about what she had discovered, Mykella couldn't believe what she sensed from her father—a total lack of concern and a dismissal of Joramyl's ambitions.

“Joramyl's passion for detail serves us well, dear, as does yours. I'd like to think that my devotion to doing what is right should be the prime goal of a Lord-Protector. If one does what is right, then one doesn't have to worry about plots and schemes nearly so much.” Feranyt smiled broadly. “Besides, you can't please everyone. Joramyl only thinks you can, that ruling is like finance and numbers, that there is but one correct way to approach it. If he were ever Lord-Protector, he'd quickly discover that's not the way it is.”

“If anything happened…do you think he'd be a good Lord-Protector? As good as you are?” Mykella pressed.

“Probably not, but he'd be far better than anyone else in Tempre, except for Jeraxylt, of course.” Feranyt inclined his head toward his son. “But enough of such morbid speculations.” He rose. “I need to get ready for a meeting with an envoy from the Iron Valleys. Their council is worried about Reillie incursions from the northern moors and the eastern slopes of the north Coastal Range.”

“What does that have to do with us?” asked Jeraxylt.

“I'm certain I'll find out in great detail,” replied the Lord-Protector. “They're claiming that the Reillies have been armed with weapons having a Borlan arms mark.”

“We sell to whoever pays,” Jeraxylt said. “Are they going to demand that we stop selling goods because they can't defend their own borders?”

“I doubt that they will express matters…quite so directly, Jeraxylt. Nor should you, outside of the family quarters. There is also the question of iron and nightsilk. It would be far more costly to obtain iron from anywhere else, and no one else has nightsilk. So we will talk, as you should do when your time comes. Talk costs little, and often solves much.” Feranyt smiled, then turned and walked from the breakfast room.

Rachylana quickly followed, as did Jeraxylt.

Salyna looked to Mykella. “You know Rachylana will tell Berenyt everything you said this morning about his father? She's probably already trying to find him.”

“I hope she has better sense than that.” Despite what she said, Mykella knew that Salyna was right. She rose and offered her younger sister a smile. “What are you doing today?”

“Watching Chatelaine Auralya supervise the kitchens. I'm learning from her. It's more interesting than adding up numbers in ledgers. For me, that is. I don't have your talents, and Father won't let me spend all my time practicing arms.”

“We all have different talents,” replied Mykella. What else could she say?

“You ride well,” Salyna pointed out.

“So do you, better than I, better than most men.”

“I'm not bad with a blade, Jeraxylt says.” There was a shyness and diffidence in Salyna's words, but pride beneath them.

“You've been using a real saber?”

“A blunted one, like all the Southern Guards do when they practice,” Salyna admitted. “It's fun, and I can hold my own against some of the younger guards. I can see why Jeraxylt likes being in the Guards.”

Mykella couldn't imagine sparring with blades as being fun. “I don't think there have been any women in the Southern Guards.”

“There were women Myrmidons,” Salyna said.

Mykella frowned. “They were Alectors, though.”

“The Alectors ruled before the Great Cataclysm, for thousands of years, and women had power. So did Rachyla, and she and Mykel created Lanachrona.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I read it in some of the old journals in Father's study, before he knew I was interested. He moved them after he found out I'd been reading them.” Salyna smiled. “I'd already finished them by then.”

“Did he say anything…about your reading them?”

“He just told me he was removing them so I didn't get any wrong ideas. He said I had to live in the world as it was now, not as it had been.”

Mykella sighed. That sounded so like her father.

“Father has trouble seeing beyond what is,” Salyna said. “Mother told me that…just…before…before she died.”

Why had Aelya told Salyna and not Mykella? Because Salyna was the tallest and strongest and most beautiful?

“She didn't say anything to me.”

“You were always the practical one. She probably didn't think you needed that advice.”

Truthful as Salyna's response sounded, Mykella could also sense that her younger sister felt that way as well. She paused. In the past tenday, she'd begun to know what people felt. Was that because of the soarer? Or was she just imagining she knew what they felt?

“Mykella…why are you looking at me like that?”

“I'm sorry. I was just thinking that you really think I'm that practical.”

“I do. Aren't you?” Salyna's words came out with a wry tone.

Mykella managed to laugh. “I'd like to think so. Sometimes I wonder.” As she did at the moment, when she was basing her actions on suspicions without hard proof, and feelings she could sense and had never been able to sense before.

“That's something you don't have to wonder about.”

“If I'm going to be practical, I need to get to the Finance study,” Mykella said.

“See?” Salyna grinned.

After leaving Salyna and washing up, Mykella walked slowly toward the Finance chambers.

Kiedryn was already at work, and Mykella settled herself at her own table, where she began to check the individual current account ledgers. There were no new entries of tariff collections from the bargemasters or the other rivermen. She didn't expect any, since all the accounts were current, and the next collections would not be posted for several weeks at the earliest. So she walked to the shelves and took down the ledger that held the current accounts of the Southern Guards.

The accounts there showed a surplus. Mykella frowned. The Guards had not used what had been set aside. In fact, the expenditures were almost one part in ten lower than at the same time in the previous year, and that was with barely more than half of winter left to run in the year.

At that moment, she heard a hearty voice in the corridor outside the Finance chambers—Berenyt's booming bass.

“Just heading in to see my sire—if he's there. If not, I'll harass old Kiedryn.” Berenyt was two years older than Mykella, despite the fact that his father, Joramyl, was younger than his brother, the Lord-Protector. Berenyt had taken a commission as a captain in the Southern Guards and ended up in command of Second Company, one of the two charged with guarding the palace and the Lord-Protector, and one of the three stationed directly in Tempre.

Mykella couldn't make out to whom Berenyt was speaking, but she could sense that the other was male, and vaguely amused. She was not. After what she'd seen in the Table and what she'd discovered, she didn't want to see him anytime soon, much less talk to him.

That hope was dashed as the tall and blond Berenyt pushed his way into the Finance study and planted himself before Kiedryn.

“Is Father in?”

“No, sir,” replied Kiedryn. “I haven't seen him yet this morning.”

Mykella could easily sense what the chief clerk had not said—
I've never seen him this early
. She tried to visualize herself with the shelves of ledgers between her and Kiedryn…and Berenyt.

Berenyt turned in her direction, frowning, and blinking. “Oh…there you are, Mykella. For a moment…” He shook his head. “You haven't seen Father this morning?”

“We seldom see him in the morning,” Mykella replied. “I've always assumed that he had other duties.”

“He does indeed.”

Behind the words Mykella detected a sense of
more than you could possibly understand
, mixed with condescension and amusement. She managed a simpering smile, although she felt like gagging, and replied, “He offers much to Lanachrona.”

“As does your father.” Berenyt's words were polite enough and sounded warm enough, but the feeling behind them was cool and a touch scornful. He turned from Mykella back to face Kiedryn. “I hope to find him somewhere, but if I don't, please tell him I was here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mykella merely nodded, if courteously.

Berenyt ignored her and stepped out of the chamber, closing the door firmly enough that it shook in its frame.

For the slightest instant, a look of disapproval crossed Kiedryn's face, then vanished.

Mykella just sat at her table for several moments, not really looking at the open ledger. For an instant when he had first looked in her direction, she thought, Berenyt had not really seen her. Had that been her doing? Or his abstraction and interest in other matters? How could she tell?

She really wanted to work more with the Table, but she dared not go down into the depths of the palace too often because, sooner or later, the guards would reveal how often she was going there, and either Jeraxylt or her father would discover her destination. That would lead to even more questions, and those were questions she dared not answer truthfully—and she detested lying, even though she knew that sometimes it was unavoidable, especially for a woman in Tempre.

The soarer's words kept coming back to her, although she had not seen or sensed the winged Ancient except the two times. Was using the Table her Talent? Just to be able to see what was happening elsewhere? And what about her growing ability to sense what others were feeling? Or the ability to see without sight in the darkness?

Did her suspicions about the missing tariff funds have anything at all to do with saving her land? What, really, could she do? And how?