A moment later, Elspeth’s nursemaid rushed in and swept the child up. The nursemaid threw a helpless look over her shoulder at the queen before hurrying out, taking the howling heir-presumptive with her.
Subdued conversation resumed. Not long after, Queen’s Own Talamir and Selenay departed together.
“Well,” Lelia said in a low voice.
“Well,” the man next to her said, looking down at his plate of baked honeyed apples.
“You have to say one thing about the heir-presumptive, Grier,” Lelia said, craning her neck to look at the place on the wall where a smear of porcelain, honey, and fruit marked the tantrum. “She’s got a hell of an arm.”
Grier nearly choked. “Lelia. That’s no way to speak of our future monarch.”
“Horsefeathers. Your
brother’s
more likely to earn that right before Elspeth.”
Grier didn’t answer, focusing on his dessert. Lelia watched his jaw work as he chewed, her own sweet forgotten. She touched his shoulder.
Suddenly, Grier stuffed an obscene amount of baked apple pastry in his mouth, looked her square in the eye, and said through a mass of dessert, “Marry me?”
It startled her into laughter. She punched his shoulder, and Grier smiled, but she didn’t answer him.
“Lady Chantil hates me,” Lelia said sweetly as Grier escorted her away from the dining table.
Grier rolled his eyes.
“No, really,” she insisted. “Did you see that look of cool disdain she shot me? I just
know
it’s hiding a seething cauldron of boiling hatred.”
He kissed her cheek. “Stop being silly.”
Lelia bit back a retort. She didn’t
feel
silly. Grier’s disregard for her comment only made her want to slug him again.
They parted ways, Grier wandering back in to circulate and chat with what remained of the courtiers. This was how they closed nearly any night they had dinner with the Court. She left to go practice, and he stayed a candlemark or so to chat. It was their preferred arrangement. They both treasured their freedom.
She strolled the long way back to the suite, taking the time to turn this latest display of the brat’s temper over in her head. What new gossip would it spread?
Good thing Selenay’s Bards love her,
Lelia mused,
else word of this would be more broadly known. Then again, a scathing satire might be what she needs. It could provoke her to
do
something.
She opened the door to Grier’s apartments.
Like, say, building the first dungeon in Valdemar’s history and throwing me in it.
Lelia took her favorite perch on the windowseat. Grier’s maidservant had already kindled the hearth and set out a pitcher full of minted water. The Bard poured a glass and took up her gittern, Bloom.
Tonight she worked on pieces in progress. She kept two notebooks: one for her latest completed songs (though she’d yet to meet a Bard who thought any of her works “complete”), and one for songs still rough-hewn, waiting to be teased from the misty grayness of her creative well.
Then she surrendered to music itself, letting her hands wander, lover-like, over the gittern, her eyes lightly closed. Her Gift unfurled, the firelight flickering against her lids. She pressed deeper, her music her only companion on the journey down into the underworld of her thoughts, and the deeper she settled, the closer she came to—
There.
She couldn’t explain the shift in her Bardic Gift, but now she
felt
things, pulses of life. She
felt
the servant pass by the door to the suite. She
felt
one of the Palace cats creep past, on the prowl for gently born mice. They pulsed like heartbeats within the range of her Gift, beating a steady rhythm even through the stone walls.
Like any born with the Bardic Gift, she had always been able to overwhelm people with her music. Even more so, she could use her voice to command—she’d stopped murderers in their tracks with a single word.
But being able to sense lives without actually
seeing
them? Was that Bardic or . . . what else
could
it be?
She didn’t have an answer, so she played, until her wrists ached and her fingertips went numb, until she felt Grier come in.
She looped her Gift around him, drawing him close. When she opened her eyes he stood before her, mesmerized.
She stilled the strings and met his gaze. Her Gift snapped shut, and with it went the other-sensing.
“Lord—” He swore. “Do you have colddrake blood in your veins?”
“I should hope not.” She set Bloom aside. “Besides, they need eye contact to work.”
“You’d know.”
She smiled wryly, looking out over the gardens, searching for a lone figure wandering among the half-dead rose hedges.
“The Queen’s Own does love his wine,” she said when she finally spied him. He usually appeared around this time, and he had not failed her tonight. He strolled the moonlit gardens alone, goblet in hand.
“How do you know he’s drinking wine?”
“If I were him it would be.”
Grier leaned over to watch with her, smelling of soap and green herbs, his long, raival-gold hair tickling her cheek.
“You have an unnatural fascination with that man,” he said, turning and walking into the bedchamber. He left a garment trail, the velvet and leather clothes sighing as they fell.
“He is a fascinatingly unnatural man.” Lelia retrieved her gittern and toyed with a complicated arpeggio. “Jealous?”
Grier laughed. “Heavens, no. Bemused, more like. So—guess what my cousin asked me for tonight?”
Lelia accepted the abrupt change of subject gracefully. “Oh, I don’t know. Could it be . . . money, a favor, or a place to stay?”
He poked his head into the room. “Right on the third!”
“Did you tell her you’re entertaining a Master Bard with an unnatural fascination for the Queen’s Own?”
“Next time, definitely. This time, though, I told her it’s not
her
family’s suite, and to stop being a leech.”
Lelia gasped in mock surprise. “You
didn’t
!”
Grier stepped out and struck a heroic pose; all the more comical because the only thing hiding his nakedness was his waist-length hair. “I did!”
“Kemoc will be upset.” Lelia walked over and twined her arms around his neck, running her hands through all that hair. Grier was neither pudgy nor scrawny, but no one would mistake his frame for anything other than what he was: a gently born Healer more experienced with poultices and patients than swords and soldiers.
“Kemoc’s . . . kindhearted.” Grier waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Someone’s got to stand up to the cousins, or they’ll stomp all over him when—”
Abruptly, he deflated. “Gods damn it,” he muttered. “I don’t
want
him to be king.”
“I’m sure it’ll all work out.”
“Do you really think so?” Grier met her gaze. “Do you think Elspeth will . . . get better?”
“I don’t know what in the hells is going on with Selenay and her child, Grier,” Lelia said honestly.
He rested his chin on top of her head. His arms wrapped around her and his shoulders relaxed.
“So are you going to answer my question?” he asked.
She blinked into his chest, trying to connect this with that, finally making the connection to the question he’d asked with a mouth full of apples.
She tilted her head up to look at him. “No.”
“Ah, well.” He kissed her. “Once again, I shall have to endeavor to persuade you otherwise.”
She chuckled as he covered her face with kisses and carried her into the bedchamber.
Lelia flopped onto Maresa’s couch. “I’m perishing.”
Her friend raised a brow.
“Of boredom,” Lelia added.
Maresa snorted. “Your Death Bell Darling’s not keeping you sufficiently entertained?” “Death Bell Darling” was Maresa’s name for Grier, based on the circumstances he’d met Lelia by.
Both coming out to the Field to try to find who the Death Bell cried for this time,
Lelia thought, remembering. They’d both admitted to feeling a mixture of guilt and relief that it wasn’t
their
loved one the Companions mourned. Then Grier had suggested a drink, which had led to more drinks, which had led to—
“Is he still asking you to marry him?” Maresa asked.
“Nightly.”
“Lelia, you need to let him
go
.”
Lelia shrugged. “We’ve an agreement.”
“Regardless. He’s in love with you.”
Lelia shrugged again.
“And what if Wil—”
“Maresa,” Lelia said, an edge to her voice.
“What?”
Lelia sighed, draping an arm across her forehead to block out the late morning sunlight and her friend’s disapproving look.
Ah, Wil,
Lelia thought.
You’re better off belonging to Valdemar and your Companion than to a ridiculous Bard. And I’m better off not thinking about you.
“Well,” Maresa said into the uncomfortable silence, “if you’re so bored—what about a performance?”
Lelia uncovered her eyes, grateful for both the suggestion and the change in subject. “Go on.”
“You know that new tavern, the Fancy Dancer?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“That’s pretty much the story,” Maresa said, her eyes twinkling. “They asked me for a Master Bard. I thought I would offer you the chance before I reached out to other contacts.”
Lelia sat up, thinking. “When?”
“Oh, a week from whenever you return the contracts,” Maresa said.
“Brilliant. I’m in.”
“Any idea on a set?”
“Mm.” Lelia’s strumming hand moved unconsciously. “Have you heard of the Ostrum Cycle?”
“No. Wait.
Yes.
” Maresa squinted at her. “As your handler, I strongly advise against you playing the whole thing. Or half of it. Or one-
tenth
of it.”
“Pah,” Lelia said. “Even Ostrum never expected anyone to play it from start to finish. Only pretentious third-years ever try.”
And I was a
very
pretentious third-year,
she thought.
“So . . . you’d be doing the Ostrum Selections?”
Lelia cocked her head. “Sure. I like that name.” Keeping her tone light, she said, “I’ll do two sets. One candlemark each, and a candlemark break between. Can you wangle that?”
“Should be easy.” Maresa tilted her head, a faint worry-line between her brows. “Why the extended break?”
Lelia was saved from having to answer, as Maresa’s two-year-old chose that moment to burst into the study and climb up on his mother’s lap. Topher’s brown-gold hair came from his father, Mayhiu, but he had his mother’s green, green eyes, sparkling like emeralds. He would slay the ladies someday, the more so if he wound up with his mother’s Bardic Gift.
Topher turned around to stare at Lelia, sucking on his thumb solemnly.
“I think your son is telling me to go,” Lelia said, rising.
“Trust me, if he wanted you out he’d say so,” Maresa replied. “What’s your favorite word, Topher?”
The thumb popped out of the child’s mouth. “
No!
” he announced loudly, with a volume and sharpness any Bard could envy—and wince at.
Lelia smiled. “You have my sympathies.”
“No!”
“Thank you.” Maresa stroked her son’s hair.
“No!”
Lelia bent down and kissed his forehead. “See you later, Tophy-apple.”
“Luloo!” He exaggerated a wave. “Bye bye!”
She waved back and left, heading to the Palace, and certain boredom.
Dinner was the same as always: five courses complete with meat, bread, cheese, and gossip.
Lelia listened more than she contributed. The chatter was nothing new (the queen, the Borders, whether Elspeth would ever be the heir-in-right), but a few new threads were sneaking in, and both were centered on Talamir.
Lelia had to admit that Talamir didn’t look well—his skin was more translucent than usual and dark smudges lurked under his eyes. Everyone at Court picked up on it. And talked about it.
Discreetly, of course.
The other topic was sheer speculation: Talamir’s “plans” for getting Elspeth under control. Would he pack her off to Evendim to live among the fisherfolk? Foster her with the Holderkin? Spirit her away to the Dhorisha Plains? Lelia thought there might be a germ of truth to the idea of removing the child from Haven, but little substance behind the actual location.
The air in the hall was more stifling than usual, and mid-meal she went out to get a breath of air. Grier didn’t accompany her—
he
was locked in conversation with the Chief Councilor, debating tariffs and trade routes.
She wandered into the gardens, letting the looming darkness of the rose hedges swallow her.
Maybe that’s why Talamir comes here,
she thought.
It’s quiet.
No sooner had she thought it than someone spoiled it.
“ . . . an antiquated practice.”
Lelia stopped within the shadows of two thorny giants. The man’s voice was one row over, practically next to her, but she couldn’t see him—not in this darkness, not through the thick vegetation.
“I agree
completely
,” a woman answered. “Did it make sense back in old King Valdemar’s time? Of course! But Selenay has to see how disruptive it is, forcing us to go without an heir. Why, the infighting and jockeying has already begun.”
“And it’ll only get worse! I say make Elspeth the heir-in-right and damn the pretty horses.”
Lelia stood, mildly stunned.
Are these people even aware of what they’re suggesting? Do they have
any
grasp of history?
“The Heralds are just
so
. ...” The woman searched for words. “Elitist.”
Lelia clenched her fists, her short nails digging into her palms.
This coming from someone whose wardrobe probably costs more than most folk earn in a lifetime!