Authors: Sharon Shinn
Indeed, the whole cavalcade of soldiers and royal heirs had made an untidy return to the open area at the base of the tower, and everyone was milling around, awaiting a decision on what to do next. Two quick glances told Corene what she most wanted to know: Foley was once more on horseback, looking battered but essentially whole, and the four attackers were dead. Their bodies had been slung across the backs of several rather skittish horses whose erstwhile riders held their reins and attempted to keep them calm.
Garameno spotted Corene and edged his horse over. “How is she?” he asked sharply.
“Bruised but otherwise unhurt, or so it seems,” Corene responded. She gestured to the corpses. “I thought you wanted to question them?”
“We did,” Garameno said. “But they made it impossible to take them alive.”
Jiramondi urged his horse closer so he could join the conversation. “We can guess at their motives even without an interrogation,” he said. “Alette’s father seems to have decided it is a liability to have her in the Malinquese court. We might need to restrict her to the palace from now on.”
“Or provide a better guard,” Garameno said grimly.
“I suppose you can let her decide which she would prefer,” Corene said. She wasn’t so sure that Alette would consider confinement to the palace a better fate than death.
“Can she be moved? Can she travel?” Jiramondi asked. “Or should we send someone to fetch a carriage?”
“She can travel,” came Greggorio’s voice from behind them, and they all whirled around.
He was leading Alette out of the tower, one arm supportively around her waist; her head rested against his shoulder, but her eyes were open and alert. Her jacket had fallen open a little, and against her brown skin Corene could see darker bruises forming on her throat.
“I’ll carry her,” Greggorio added.
Garameno wheeled around. “Bring his horse!” he shouted.
The next few minutes were a flurry of activity as the remaining horses were fetched and most of the people currently on foot scrambled into their saddles. Once Greggorio was mounted, Foley handed Alette up to him, and she sat across his lap, leaning her cheek against his chest. Her eyes were closed again.
The soldiers had gathered around the royal party in a tight phalanx and they were starting to move slowly south when suddenly Alette stirred and sat up. “My scarf!” she cried. “My scarf—where is it?”
“What does that matter?” was Garameno’s irritable reply, but Corene and Melissande instantly pulled on their reins and guided their horses through the line of guards, back to the site where Alette had been snatched. Melissande was the one to swing down and pick up the crumpled length of yellow fabric.
“It is dirty and— Look at that, a muddy footprint, right in the middle! But I do not think it is actually torn,” was her assessment. “Such a fortunate thing!”
They rejoined the ranks and the whole group finally got under way, heading south, toward the walled city and the relative safety of the palace. Corene ignored Liramelli and Steff, who glanced around as if looking for her, and worked her way through the unwieldy mass of riders until she made it to Foley’s side.
“How badly are you hurt?” she demanded.
“Not very. Cut on my arm, cut on my shoulder, probably a bruise on my thigh.”
“You have to let me see when we get back to the palace.”
The look he gave her was full of amusement. “I don’t think I do.”
“What—you’re too modest to let me see you half undressed?”
“Partly. And partly I don’t think you have any experience binding a wound, so what’s the point?”
She was affronted. “You’d let
Josetta
tend your injuries.”
His amusement deepened—but behind it she saw some other reaction, harder to decipher. Surprise, maybe. “She never had to.”
“But you
would
have let her.”
“She had training in a sickroom.”
“It’s just that—when I saw you fighting him—when I saw the
blood
—I thought—well, I thought—”
“I’m not going to get myself killed and leave you undefended in a foreign land,” he said softly.
He had switched to Welchin, just in case anyone could hear them over the clatter of hooves and the low murmur of conversation. She did the same. “I wasn’t thinking about
me
,” she said, low-voiced but indignant. “I was afraid for
you
. You were suddenly in danger and there was nothing I could to do help you.”
He was smiling again. “Well, I’m grateful you realized that, at least,” he said. “I wouldn’t have put it past you to come running up with a rock to clout one of those fellows in the head.”
“If I’d seen a rock, I might have done it,” she agreed. “But don’t change the subject.”
Now he sighed. “What’s the subject?”
“I was terrified for you. And I’m so grateful you’re all right. And I hope I never have to see you put in danger again.”
He was silent a moment, his eyes apparently fixed on the road before them. Then he turned his head and gave her a straight, sober look. “In the future, I won’t risk myself for anyone else but you, if you like,” he said. “I rode to her aid today because I thought she was important to
you
. To spare
you
from the tragedy of her death. Was I wrong?”
Strange that such a quietly delivered speech could make her backbone prickle and her hands grow suddenly chilly on the reins. “No,” she said quickly. “That was exactly what I wanted. Please keep her safe anytime you can. Alette and Melissande and Liramelli and Steff. All of them.”
A glimmer of another smile. “And Filomara’s nephews?”
“They can take care of themselves. Well, unless it’s
easy
to help them. Unless all you have to do is punch someone in the nose.”
He laughed out loud and she laughed with him, but somehow she felt the conversation hadn’t gone exactly as she’d planned. But she didn’t know what else she would have wanted to say, what she would have hoped to hear.
All she knew was that when she’d seen him covered with blood, fighting for his life, her heart had almost stopped. She had had the clearest, starkest realization:
I can’t live if something happens to Foley.
She didn’t know what to do with such a thought. It was too big, too
unmanageable, to unfold and examine with calm attention. So she crumpled it up as small as it would go and crammed it into the back of her mind, and urged her horse forward so she could ride beside Melissande all the way back to the palace.
• • •
T
heir party made quite a stir as they rode into the courtyard and instantly began calling for aid. Steff slid off his horse, tossed the reins to a footman, and said, “I’ll tell my grandmother what happened,” before striding inside. Corene caught the resentful looks that Garameno and Jiramondi threw after him, but Greggorio was so focused on Alette that he didn’t seem to notice.
Melissande and Liramelli and Corene huddled in a disconsolate group in the courtyard and watched the rest of the party disperse. “I do not think I shall go on any more expeditions to Malinqua’s famous towers,” Melissande decreed. “There is always too much excitement, and always of a most unpleasant nature!”
“Always involving Alette, if you’ve noticed,” Corene said.
“Ah—so if we exclude her from her plans, we should have very quiet outings,” Melissande said with a nod.
“We can’t exclude her! We’ve just now become friends!” Liramelli exclaimed.
Corene patted her shoulder. “She was joking.”
“It is how I try to come to terms with the terrible events of the day,” Melissande explained.
“I want to talk to her and see if she’s all right, but I just know the physicians won’t allow us into her room,” Liramelli said.
“No, I am sure they will want her to be kept very quiet,” Melissande said. “So we must wait until after dinner and then we shall sneak in. And if they have left anyone behind to nurse her, we must get rid of those people so we can talk to her in private.”
“If she feels like talking,” Liramelli said.
“After a day like this? I’d want to talk,” Corene said. “Come on. Let’s all get changed for dinner.”
The meal was strained, since the prefect, the mayor, and other city officials were present and Filomara had forbidden anyone to speak of
Alette’s adventure in the presence of others. So conversation was circumspect and meaningless, but at least it was brief. Filomara ate quickly then rose to her feet, signaling for Steff, her nephews, and the city administrators to join her for an extended conference. As the room emptied out, Corene and Liramelli and Melissande made good their escape.
“And now to check on Alette,” Melissande said.
A slender maid and a stout woman who might have been a nurse had been installed in Alette’s room, and they made a valiant effort to stop the visitors at the door, but there wasn’t really much hope of that. Liramelli spoke to them with quiet authority and Melissande with insistent charm, while Corene just brushed past them to step inside.
“We were told to keep everybody out,” the young maid said anxiously.
“You tried, but we have been completely uncontainable,” said Melissande, who followed close on Corene’s heels. “We promise not to stay for long!”
They sailed through the main room and into the smaller space that served as Alette’s bedroom, closing the door on the protesting servants and throwing the lock for good measure.
They found Alette curled up in a window seat, gazing out at the city lights visible against the night sky. She was wearing some kind of diaphanous nightgown mostly covered up by a blanket that she appeared to have borrowed from the canopied bed. The room was in semidarkness, with only one faint wall sconce giving off any light, and it was difficult to see her expression as she turned toward them.
But her voice was unmistakeable. “My friends,” she said warmly. “I had hoped you might come.”
They crowded around her, bending down one at a time to hug her, casting around the room to find chairs to drag over to the window.
“How are you?” Liramelli demanded. “How badly are you hurt?”
Before she could answer, Corene threw a hand out and nodded meaningfully toward the door. “Speak softly,” she said, her own voice not much above a whisper. “And in Coziquela. They are undoubtedly listening at the door.”
“And they undoubtedly speak Coziquela,” Melissande retorted, but she, too, kept her voice low.
Liramelli leaned closer. “Where are you hurt?”
Alette’s right hand lifted to touch her throat, a spot on her chest, her left knee. “Bruises here and here and here, but the physician said nothing was broken.”
“Well, that is something we must be thankful for!” Melissande exclaimed.
“You must have been terrified,” Liramelli said.
“Yes. I thought I was going to die there.”
Corene frowned. “There was a cart. Maybe they were only going to kidnap you.”
Melissande threw her an incredulous look. “
Only
kidnap her?”
“No, I mean—of course that would have been horrible, but—”
Alette shrugged. “I heard them shouting at each other. One said, ‘Kill her!’ and the other said, ‘Not here!’ I don’t know why.”
Liramelli was nodding. “There’s an old superstition. If someone is slain within the shadow of the towers, the killer will die within three days. You can stand with your back to one of the towers and walk out as far as its height in any direction, and you will find there has not been a murder committed within that circle for two hundred years.”
“That is most intriguing. In a grotesque sort of way,” Melissande commented.
Corene was still frowning. “But would Dhonshon assassins know that particular myth? I mean, I’ve been here half a quintile and I never heard that story. And would they
care
?”
“Oh, those men were not from Dhonsho,” Alette said.
They all peered at her in the dark. “They were not?” Melissande said. “But the color of their skin—and the insignia on their clothes—”
“Yes. I misspoke. Their heritage is Dhonshon, but they were not my father’s men. Not sent by him to kill me.”
“How do you know?” Liramelli said.
“The one who held me by the arms—he kept shouting in my face and I could smell the zeezin on his breath.”
“Zeezin? So?” Melissande said.
But Corene remembered a conversation she’d had with Jiramondi during her very first dinner at the palace. “Dhonshons use zeezin in funeral rituals, yes?” she said. “They wouldn’t
eat
it.”
Alette nodded. “Exactly. These men were probably born here in Palminera, and raised here. They are more Malinquese than Dhonshon.”
“You don’t think your father might have hired them to—to hurt you?” Liramelli said. Corene noticed that she couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
Your father might have hired them to kill you?
Alette permitted herself the smallest smile. “My father would never work with strangers. And never with someone who did not love Dhonsho with every drop of blood in his body.”
“But then who hired these dreadful men?” Melissande demanded. “And why hire Dhonshons? It makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” Corene said in a hard voice. “Someone from Malinqua wants Alette dead. But he—or she—wants it to look like Alette’s father killed her. That way there can be no outrage directed at the Malinquese crown.”
Liramelli covered her mouth with her hands as if to hold back a cry; Melissande sank back in her chair, nodding thoughtfully.
“Yes, of course. You are absolutely right,” Melissande said.
Liramelli dropped her hands, but her face was still etched with horror. “But it
doesn’t
,” she cried. “Who in Malinqua would want to kill Alette?”
“Oh, that’s right—you were at Sarona’s funeral when we had this conversation before,” Corene said. “We think someone in Malinqua didn’t like the fact that Greggorio was so close to Sarona—was afraid that he might marry her—and that’s why she was killed. Greggorio’s been very kind to Alette, too, and apparently somebody noticed that.”
“He was especially kind this afternoon,” Melissande said, her lovely voice surprisingly grim. “He was the one who first realized she had been attacked, so he clearly was watching her. And he raced over to help her, without so much as a dagger in his hand. If someone is looking for evidence that Greggorio feels affection for Alette—”