‘And you think he will do the same here?’
‘I know he will. Those closest to Cera and me will be the first targets.’
There was no fear on his face, only quiet determination. ‘Where did you launch your attacks from?’
‘We were hidden within the town. No one knew we were there.’
‘And your role?’ he asked bleakly.
‘Gurvon likes to have someone inside. My role was to subtly sow discord and misinformation.’ She sighed. ‘These were old comrades; it wasn’t hard. They believed I was one of them right till the end.’
He looked thoughtful. ‘So you think he will attack this way: isolate us and pick us off.’ He exhaled heavily, and she could see the fear
now, the disquiet of a commander afraid for those in his charge. ‘Is there an insider already among us?’
‘There will be people at court he has already got his claws into. Wherever he goes, Gurvon finds out people’s dirty secrets; he will be blackmailing courtiers and servants over their thefts, their adulteries and indiscretions.’
Lorenzo’s eyes met hers. ‘How may we best counter this, Donna Elena?’
‘By sealing off part of the keep for our own protection. By restricting access to the safe area and constantly rotating who may enter. By being vigilant. We can make it hard for him, but that won’t be enough. We must also counterattack where and when we can. We must use the eyes of the community. We will need Mustaq al’Madhi.’
‘Mustaq is not to be trusted. He is the head of the largest Jhafi crime syndicate in Javon.’
‘Then he is ideal. He will have eyes in places we cannot reach. Gurvon is probably already here, with the rest of his gang. Most of those I worked with are dead. I won’t know most of the new ones. He may have found a new body for Sordell too.’ All at once the shadows, even in the sunlit bower, were stirring like waking panthers. ‘Let us go in.’
Lorenzo gripped her shoulder as she went to pass him. His hands were big and strong: a swordsman’s hands, and they were warm through the cloth. ‘Ella – what about us?’
They were the same height. She met his eyes, trying to read him. ‘Is there an “us”?’
He didn’t answer, at least, not with words. His other hand cupped the back of her head and he pressed his lips to hers. Her gasp of surprise became an open mouth that tasted his. Heat and wine and sweetness and a tongue that invaded her mouth, tasted hers then withdrew. She stiffened against him, and found she had no will to move away.
‘So,’ he breathed, ‘you tell me, Ella-amora.’
Amora: lover
… Her heart thudded. She felt horribly exposed before his soft brown eyes. She wanted to flee, to hide, to not deal with
this. ‘Didn’t you just propose marriage to
someone else
, Lori?’
He sighed. ‘It was pretence and you know it. What I feel for you is not.’
She swallowed awkwardly. ‘Lori, for you to court me so soon after Cera would invite scandal, and it would invite Gurvon like a corpse invites the jackal. We cannot be seen together.’
He stroked her cheek. ‘Then we will not be
seen
.’
The thought made her blood thunder.
‘Must I woo you like a knight-errant?’ he breathed in her ear. His arms stroked her shoulders, firmly, invitingly.
‘I don’t do poetry and dances,’ she replied, trying and failing to make her voice light.
‘What do you do?’
She made herself meet his eyes, summoned all her will and hardened her heart. ‘I don’t do anything at all.’
He sighed softly, not in the least put off. ‘You still owe me a kiss, Elena.’
‘You just had one.’
And it was delicious
, she admitted to herself.
‘But I didn’t need to ask for it,’ he replied. He flashed a smile, bowed and walked away.
Cera had retired to her rooms after rejecting Lorenzo’s proposal. Elena joined her there. Cera was looking wan. ‘Ella, where have you been?’ she asked. ‘I don’t like it when you’re not with me.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. It’s Massimo who’s put out, not me.’ Cera shrugged. ‘He’ll get over it.’ Her face was shadowed with suspicion. ‘They have always been honourable,’ she whispered as if to reassure herself. She looked up at Elena with a sour expression. ‘So tomorrow all the young men will be vying for my attention again. How tiresome!’
Elena studied her. ‘What’s wrong, Cera?’
Cera slumped onto her bed, plucking absently at her gown. ‘Me – I’m what’s wrong!’
Elena sat beside her and put an arm about her. ‘My darling, what could you possibly imagine is wrong with you?’
Cera rubbed furiously at her eyes, pulled herself from Elena’s grip and sat facing her. ‘It was what Massimo said to me after I’d rejected Lorenzo – he took it back immediately, but I knew he meant it!’
Elena pursed her lips. ‘What did he say?’
She hung her head. ‘He asked if my father knew the kind of safian bitch he’d bred.’
Elena stared, speechless.
Why the arrogant, hidebound prick – I’ll rukking geld him—
‘I don’t dance, or make silly conversation with their young knights like the other women do, so they make crude jokes about me.’ Cera’s face tightened. ‘They think any woman who is not some vacuous broodmare is
unnatural
. Why can’t they see I’m just trying to protect the kingdom?’
Oh Cera, welcome to my life, darling girl. Men are never slow to scorn women who insist on wearing swords
. ‘I have heard such things all my adult life, Cera,’ she said softly. ‘People – men particularly – feel threatened by those who do not conform to the norms.’
‘Politics and trade interest me, fashion and poetry and dance-steps do not,’ Cera said.
‘I know – but Cera, we’ve both heard that sort of rubbish before. What’s really the matter?’
Cera hung her head. ‘I need the people to love me, Ella. If they turn against me, we Nesti are lost. I won’t give up my independence so the Aranios or Kestrians can stage a bloodless coup-by-marriage. The barons don’t want a woman as regent. They want Timi as their puppet, and I won’t have it.’
Elena squirmed uncomfortably. Being the kindly confessor was not a role she excelled at, but she was pretty sure Cera still hadn’t revealed what had really upset her. ‘You know what they’re like; they won’t change. But their aims are aligned with yours: they want Javon strong and united, so they will support you. And there are other concerns, Cera.’
She explained Gurvon’s likely tactics, and they took supper together in Cera’s parlour while planning how to seal off the royal towers and minimise the security threat. It wasn’t until the bells
tolled six times that Elena realised that it was midnight already. They both yawned.
Cera gripped Elena’s arm as she rose to leave. ‘Grazie, Ella-amica.’ She pulled her close and hugged her. ‘Being with you always makes me calmer.’
‘My pleasure, Cera. Do you need help getting out of that gown?’
Cera stood and stretched, yawning again. ‘Please. Poor Tarita will be fast asleep.’
As Elena helped her into her nightclothes, she stroked the dark curtain of hair. ‘You are very beautiful, Cera,’ she said softly. ‘When you find the right man, he will be a lucky fellow indeed.’
Her words upset Cera again and she seized Elena’s hand. ‘I’m frightened, Ella – what if they’re right about me?’ she whispered. ‘What if I do have that sickness in me?’
Elena frowned. ‘It’s not a sickness, Cera, it’s something people are born with. The Rimoni Empress Claudia was one of their greatest rulers, and she kept a whole harem of girls for herself.’ She braced herself to ask the question. ‘Do you believe yourself to be safian?’
Cera hung her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Why don’t I want the boys they throw at me? They’re all handsome and well-built and charming. What’s wrong with me?’
‘Cera, you’re tasting authority and power, and you’re enjoying it. You’re seeing these suitors as a threat to that, that’s all. I doubt you even see them as men; they’re just pawns in the tabula of politics.’
‘But I don’t find them even a little bit attractive.’
‘Cera, you’re – what, eighteen? You’re not yet grown-up. Many people don’t develop any interest in the opposite sex until they’re in their twenties. You’re going through more than any young girl should, and you’re holding up magnificently. You’ve got far more important things to worry about than whether your heart goes thump when a boy smiles at you. Frankly, I’m glad it doesn’t.’
Cera ducked her head and nodded apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll sleep now. Thank you.’
‘Goodnight, Cera,’ Elena told her, feeling emotionally drained as she sought her own bed. The memory of Lorenzo’s face swam before
her as she slid between the sheets. In her dreams she watched him on his knees again, proposing alternately to Cera and herself, before turning into a knife-wielding Gurvon Gyle. He slashed and whirled and in a trice Cera was dead and Elena was staring in disbelieving horror at the dagger in her own breast. She woke unsure if it were nightmare or omen.
Gurvon Gyle sat entirely still, like a lizard on a wall afraid to move in case it is seen by a predator. And the man in the chair opposite was assuredly a predator. The decrepit room they shared had no other furnishings. The stone was crumbling, bugs crawled in the corners and it stank of rot and decay.
The man was weaving strands of light with his fingers. He didn’t look like a torturer, but his reputation hung heavily about him. Inquisition Grandmaster Fraxis Targon was neat and clean, so fastidious that he shaved twice daily. He wore hair cream despite the crippling midday heat, slicking his thin blond hair and thin moustache. He looked like a shopkeeper. Only his eyes, so pale as to be almost white, betrayed the cold distance that he maintained from life. His stare was utterly dispassionate, utterly uncaring. He might rip a man’s heart out with the gnosis as blandly as he crushed a cockroach. Rutt Sordell clearly thought so – the scarab housing Sordell’s soul was hiding in Gyle’s pocket, and had not stirred for hours.
The pattern of light frayed as the Inquisitor lowered his hands and scowled. Another blocked scrying. Targon could blast through Elena’s wards, but that would alert her instantly, so for now they had to probe, and to rely on information from Gyle’s small network of spies within the palace. None were highly placed, nor capable of taking aggressive action, but at least they were inside.
‘Have a care you aren’t detected,’ Gurvon told the Inquisitor sourly. His agents had reported that Elena had formed a friendship with the commander of Cera Nesti’s guard, Lorenzo di Kestria. They insisted it was just friendship, but the thought made his stomach tighten.
It is not jealousy. It is just a matter of honour that I castrate and disembowel the man
.
‘Her skill is insufficient to detect my probing,’ the Inquisitor rumbled. ‘I grow impatient at your caution, Gyle.’
‘We need to get Coin into position first,’ he argued.
‘With the Anborn woman dead, no one could stop us.’
‘No, but the whole of Javon would erupt into war against all things Rondian. It is only the continued reign of the Nesti Regency that is keeping that in check.’
Surely Mater-Imperia told you this
, he thought angrily.
‘Mater-Imperia did tell me that,’ Targon said, answering what Gyle had believed a private thought. He felt himself go cold. ‘You play your little games of king-making and think yourself subtle and perceptive, Gurvon Gyle, but I was raised to the Ascendancy by Magnus Sacrecour and I will act as I see fit. When I choose to strike, I will strike, and you had best pray that you are well out of my way.’ The Inquisitor leaned back in his chair. ‘In the meantime, spymaster, I believe it is time to go on the offensive. The local criminals are hunting for you house-to-house. It is time to give them pause.’
Gyle redoubled the shields about his mind as he bowed his head. ‘You will begin it?’
Targon nodded. ‘And then you will start upon the princessa.’ The man’s smile never reached his eyes. ‘Leave me and send in the serving girl.’ His eyes were hooded. ‘I must continue her instruction.’
Cera Nesti sat on the window seat, the perfumed night wafting through the open casement. Elena had set the wards – she had seen the grille of light as her protector lit them – and nothing else could get inside. She looked up as something landed on the sill just beyond the unseen wards. A crow?
‘Shoo,’ she called, ‘get away—’
But the bird turned a beady eye towards her, and then
changed
.
There was nothing gradual about it: one moment it was a big black bird and the next a grey-clad man. She opened her mouth to scream, but he put his fingers to his lips and whispered, ‘Shhh – wait.’ He put a hand up as if reaching for her and the wards lit up,
a mesh of blue-skeined light. ‘See, I cannot reach you. This illusory form cannot penetrate Elena’s wards. You are quite safe.’
She knew him. ‘You are Gurvon Gyle.’
The man inclined his head. ‘I am.’
Cera stared at the man, trembling slightly.
I should get Ella
…
Gyle raised a placating hand. ‘I am only here to talk.’
She swallowed. Her enemy, so close –
what do I do?
‘Why should I talk to you?’
‘Why shouldn’t you? I cannot hurt you, so please, hear me out. I will be brief.’ His face radiated sincerity. ‘I do not wish to see you harmed, Cera, nor do I wish to harm your little brother.’
Elena was probably doing her evening exercises, Cera remembered.
Sol et Lune, this is my
enemy,
talking to me
.
Maybe I can learn something from this
…
She looked around, checking that she was alone, feeling guilty, as if she were betraying herself, then said, ‘You killed my family. How could I trust you?’
Gyle looked sad, almost apologetic. ‘I was commanded to remove Javon from the shihad. I had no choice. If you soften your policy towards the shihad, I will guarantee the safety of you and Timori.’
She felt her temper flare. ‘My people would never let me – nor will my conscience.’
‘When all of your house are ash and all those who have pinned their futures on you are dead, how will your conscience feel then?’