Page 30 of The Castle & the Cloister

The postulant’s eyes snapped as she rose, but she took the baby and spoke for the king alone as she did. “I beg your leave to return the queen and the prince to their quarters, Majesty. This is no place for them.”

Orden could not agree more. What Ariana was doing in the audience hall was beyond him—he’d sent no summons and hadn’t expected to see her until he visited the queen’s rooms that night to meet their son.

“I’d like nothing better,” he said, and found himself raked up and down by the postulant’s steely gaze. The woman hadn’t a shred of deference. Deliberately, Orden turned his back on her and gestured to his guards.

“I think we’ve had quite enough of standing around here,” he called to all assembled, because if they stayed in the audience hall much longer, he’d cease to be able to ignore the prisoner’s body on the floor, or the way Afon’s malevolent attention kept swiveling to Ariana. “If you’ll all follow me, the Inver table and a night of celebration waits for us, now my son has arrived. Council business can keep till morning.”

And so they feasted. Such things were monotonous drudgery to Orden, who preferred open air and genuine company to the pageantry and artifice of court festivities. Though he was solicitous of Gileta, who sat at the high table, and watched Afon and Gwylen warily, who sat at the far end of the room, he could not help thinking all the while ofAriana, and her blood on the floor. Very late faded into very early, and Orden still sat at his banquet table, letting the candles gutter and die. He was nearly alone by now—the only courtiers left were asleep, smelling of strong spirits and snoring softly on benches or under tables. The handful of guards assigned to oversee their king were bright-eyed and alert, for the morning watch had arrived an hour back to spell their nocturnal counterparts. All the council delegates and their retinues had long since excused themselves and gone to bed, save one.

At the far end of the room, Afon still sat, a glass in his hand, his chair tilted back, his eyes glittering in the half-light. Perhaps it was foolish, but Orden never left his table until every other noble or official had departed or fallen into a drunken stupor, and he intended to do no less with Afon. He’d learned as a youth studying his more intemperate father that many of his clan saw poor performance at the banquet table as an indication of weakness. To display weakness in Inverlyn was tantamount to inviting assassination attempts, and Orden had dodged enough of those in his time.

Anger carried him through this particular feast. Neither Tribune Ataxis nor Ariana should have had to bleed because of Afon. Orden let his fury seethe and fester, bearing him up when he might otherwise have succumbed to weariness. He did not look Afon’s way. Did not acknowledge him. The two sat, silent figures in a silent room, and waited.

As the sun rose, Lucian stood from where he’d lurked in the shadows at the banquet hall’s far corner and raised a glass in mocking salute to them both, before approaching the high table and its lone imperial resident.

“What is hedoinghere?” the spymaster said, bowing low over Orden’s shoulder and speaking in his silken voice, made for the telling of secrets. “Does he expect to forestall the war in some way, or find a weakness to exploit in us? Or does he simply wish to rattle your cage?”

“I pay you to find out such things,” Orden rumbled. “And am extremely out of temper that you haven’t done so yet.”

Lucian shrugged. “Not for lack of trying. Afon and his inner circle are tighter than a—”

The king shot him a warning look, and Lucian cut off one of his favorite and more distasteful turns of phrase.

“He’s a closed book, Majesty. Him and that moon-faced ambassador of his. And there’s only the two of them at court now—they dismissedthe guards that oversaw Ataxis after he was killed. Sent them home to Caervallion, leaving me precious little scope for ferreting out information. It was wise of you to declare war first and to send away so many of the more conservative courtiers. Hadrian will eat from your hand so long as he thinks there’s a chance of getting his son back onto Honorian soil without offending Tyrus, so he won’t see what the others might have—that Afon Caervallin is everything the Invers once were. Some would be drawn to such fire still.”

“Choose your words more carefully,” Orden said, his voice soft. The spymaster suddenly stiffened. Without appearing to move at all, Orden had laid hold of his pugio and shifted his arm so that the blade pressed against Lucian’s inner thigh. “You skirt perilously close to treason.”

“Majesty,” Lucian said, with a wounded note in his voice. “I always speak with care. Afon is everything the Inverswere. Not what they have become, through your influence and august reign.”

Orden kept his knife in its place. “Bullshit, you little adder. Tell me about Gwylen, the ambassador. Why is she in Afon’s confidence?”

For the first time that he could recall, Lucian faltered. Delight flooded Orden—he’d never seen the spymaster discomfited before. “She is a master of poisons and their remedies. I believe Afon uses her as an assassin when it suits him—Gwylen serves as my counterpart, if you will. And Afon has needed her services to preserve himself a time or two, I’ll warrant.”

“Has he?” Orden asked drily. “Perhaps that’s why you seem so incapable of killing the man discreetly at my behest. I’d like to speak to this Gwylen. Find a way to ensure the two of us cross paths in a private place. Preferably sometime today.”

Once again, that nervous look. “I will attempt to, Majesty.”

“What do you mean, you’ll attempt to? See it done.”

“Gwylen has… vanished,” Lucian admitted with great reluctance. “I believe she’s left the castle proper entirely, and possibly Inverlyn. A city guard may or may not have seen her departing one of the gates several hours ago, but the report is vague at best.”

At last, Orden sheathed his pugio, the movement so deft as to be invisible. “You mean to say your counterpart, as you call her, is loose in Honoria without supervision, making whatever mischief she pleases? You had best pray nothing comes of this, Lucian, or I will kill you myself.”

“Ah, look, Afon is leaving.”

“Perhaps he means to vanish as well. Better scuttle off like the spider you are and keep track of him, before you misplace him like his lackey.”

Finally rid of both the Caervallin king and Lucian, Orden shoved his chair back with a loud scrape and swept out of the room. His guards fell in behind him, marching to keep up with their king’s long stride. Orden wanted a cold bath to cool his burning spirit. He needed to erase the image of Ariana bleeding not ten yards away from Afon.

“Ice water,” Orden snarled to his valet, as he reached his quarters and slammed the door in the faces of his guards. Miciah left swiftly to prepare the requested bath, and Orden was left in solitude, a rare and welcome occurrence.

He flung himself down in the carved oak chair drawn up to his ponderous desk and stared out the bank of windows that looked south and east, across the Solis Plains. The sun was rising, glittering across the sea, and everything that stretched to the horizon, Orden was responsible for. The awareness rested like a millstone around his neck.

So, too, did the thought of Ariana. She was the antithesis of all that Orden had been brought up to, and he wanted so badly to possess and protect her, and to lay the world at her feet. Yet he worried that she would be safer back in her failing cloister, or among Dolenza’s folk, or across the sea. If Orden faltered just once, there would be no mercy for his gentle queen.

The quiet sounds of Miciah directing servants and preparing the bath rose, and a few moments later, the valet appeared at the edge of Orden’s vision, signaling silently that his orders had been followed. Rising, Orden strode over to the lifeless gray hearth. A great copper washtub stood before it, filled near to the brim with water and chunks of ice brought down from higher up the mountain. The king shed his clothes, waving away Miciah’s assistance, and stood naked for a moment, steeling his nerves against the coming shock of cold. A ribbon of white scarring laced across one of his ribs, and another bunched ropily at the small of his back, the reminder of botched assassination attempts when he was a boy. Failed poisonings had been worse by far, and left no marks—gods preserve them all if Gwylen could not be found. Fainter scars crosshatched the king’s upper arms, though those were not the product of malice. They were virtus marks, leftbehind by the Inver habit of inflicting pain upon one’s child in order to inure them against it. Darias had been committed to the practice, rigorously applying it to both Orden and his elder brother, Carian, as the two most likely successors to the throne.

Stepping into the frigid water of his bath, Orden bit back a hiss and submerged himself to the shoulders. The cold shot through him, sharpening his senses and filling him with renewed vitality.