Grand Conspiracy: Second Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      For the second time, Lysaer’s raised arm checked the defensive rush of his bodyguard. ‘That’s surely no news, though you were in King Eldir’s court, I understand, on the day I blessed and settled her ashes.’

      Mearn bore in like a terrier. ‘If I was in Havish, that doesn’t change that you honored her shade four months after the hour Princess Talith passed the Wheel!’

      Resigned, Lysaer straightened from his perusal of a chart. Unruffled by the hard length of his day, he confronted the s’Brydion style of ripping censure with calm like grounded bedrock. ‘Should you concern yourself?’

      Mearn reached the edge of the trestle, stopped. He planted gauntleted fists on the edge. The studs bit into creaking wood as he leaned and bore down on his knuckles. ‘Your seneschal claims she committed suicide.’

      His blue eyes serene, Lysaer replied, ‘I believe him.’

      For one second, two, prince and clansman locked stares, the former all fired, untarnished elegance, and the latter rumpled and taut as stressed cord. Cattrick looked on with folded arms, while the tense royal guardsmen stood by with mailed hands welded to their sword grips.

      Then Mearn spun about in abrupt, liquid grace. ‘You believe him.’ He paced, the short, blunt spurs on his boots flicking off small points of light. He expected no answer. When he reached the shuttered window, he faced about and braced his angular frame against the sill. ‘They say on the streets that you have pressed suit for the Mayor of Erdane’s eldest daughter.’

      ‘My offer for her hand in marriage has been accepted.’ Lysaer was not smiling. His jewels might have been frozen stars, so controlled was his breathing. ‘The official announcement will be made next week.’

      Mearn pushed back his cuffs and latched his thumbs through his sword belt. He might not bow, had never acknowledged Lysaer’s claim to title. As the scabbard and sheath at his hip were not empty, no man present dared mistake his clanbred defiance of court etiquette. ‘Well then,’ Mearn said, ‘since you’re to marry so soon, you must understand the personal edge to my impatience. I’ve stood as my brother’s ambassador for seven years. You’ll agree, it’s time I returned home to Alestron and settled myself with a wife.’

      Before Lysaer could speak, he jerked up his chin. ‘No leave is asked. I’m not one of your subjects.’

      Lysaer smiled in carved, regal tolerance. ‘No need to stand upon thorny clan pride. I never made such a claim. Please give your brother the duke my regards and the blessing of the Alliance.’

      The words held dismissal. A polite man would leave. Mearn remained planted like immovable oak, his eyes pale ice in the gloom.

      Lysaer chose diplomacy and ignored him, bent back to review the outspread leaves of scale drawings. He asked questions of Cattrick, who resumed answering with unruffled brevity. Minutes flowed into another hour. The shutters fretted in the play of the sea breeze, and the half-burned-down tallow dips gyrated to the wayward tug of the drafts. Outside, the yard workers indulged their light spirits, keyed to fast talk and euphoria. They seemed reluctant to leave. Their royal visitor was held by some to be god sent, and the rumors of miracles and divine favor gained fresh force with each passing month. Through Cattrick’s clipped consonants, the foreman’s exasperated remonstrance mingled with the metallic clangor of tools being put away. ‘Well, don’t just gawp with yer jaws hanging open. Damn fools. Honest citizens might think this was a boys’ brothel, the way you lot hang about, staring at a closed doorway.’

      ‘You wishing?’ somebody whooped, half-choking with laughter, and the clutter of voices diminished as the yard at last settled to the night watch’s step and the wash of the first riptide breakers.

      The parchment drawing of a brig’s revised lines remained spread on the table as Lysaer finally straightened to end his detailed inspection. Others, loosely rolled, not yet tied with string, lay in a jumbled heap to one side. Mearn still held his place, a taut form melted into close-woven shadow. His watching eyes caught the unsteady light like pinned sparks as the royal men-at-arms regrouped for their charge’s departure.

      White velvet and diamonds lent Prince Lysaer a wintery majesty as he voiced his commendation for Cattrick’s watertight management. ‘The neglect brought on by my absence will be put right the moment my handfasting to Erdane’s daughter can replenish the funds in the treasury. Rest assured, her dowry will bring in enough gold to amend the quality of your raw materials. You’ll have whatever sum you name then. Make an itemized list and send it under seal to my seneschal.’ He paused, his smile bestowed like new morning. ‘Until then, be diligent. After the Shadow Master’s blatant acts of piracy, the trade guilds must be given a show to mend their shaken faith. I will ask that my newly launched fleet be ready to sail into Avenor with flags flying to commemorate my nuptials.’

      ‘Your Grace,’ Cattrick acknowledged, his bow neat and perfunctory. ‘You’ll have a display worth your confidence.’

      He accompanied the prince as far as the doorway, saw him out into rising wind and a night fallen dense as stuck tar.

      Cattrick closed the door and reset the bar. For a large man, he moved carefully. The loft’s gapped, wooden floor creaked to his tread as he crossed back to the table and began one by one to tidy and roll up the ships’ plans. No fool, he judged as Lysaer had, that Mearn s’Brydion enjoyed any chance to pick fights. He chose not to comment. The clan hothead deserved to be ignored for his scathing lack of manners, his interruption, and his irritating effrontery.

      Mearn proved unkindly disposed to the silence. He shifted foot to foot through the distant bark of laughter from the garrison sentry who exchanged parting banter and secured the yard gates. Through the clattering hooves of the royal departure, he pushed off from the sill and completed a stalking cat’s stride. A stiletto appeared from nowhere. Steel scribed a hot flash as he threw the weapon across the tentative halo of flameglow.

      The blade struck and sang quivering, impaled through the scroll which Cattrick had just laid aside.

      ‘I know ships,’ Mearn opened through the diminishing whine as stressed metal subsided into stillness.

      Cattrick’s lips peeled back in the smile that made even Arithon s’Ffalenn take cold stock. ‘That’s a claim that demands a forfeit, in this place.’

      Mearn laughed. His teeth were crisply white as a ferret’s. ‘If you are speaking to Lysaer’s lackey, I believe you. Don’t lie. I have a second knife.’

      Cattrick straightened, linked his broad hands, and stretched until the joints in his shoulders cracked. ‘All right. The knife’s a provocation. Remember that. And I won’t need to lie. If I am speaking to Lysaer’s lackey, he wouldn’t leave the yard gates with his life.’

      Mearn’s eyes lit, cold as balefire with challenge. ‘Imagine my joy. I do think perhaps I might like what I hear.’

      ‘Then why not tell me, if you know your ships?’ Cattrick yanked out the knife, flicked his wrist, and let the pierced parchment unroll with a scraping hiss until it lay flat on the trestle.

      ‘Well enough. That’s fair.’ Mearn advanced and chose a stance on the opposite side of the board. ‘The irony shouldn’t escape you, I made certain. Now we both have knives.’

      Cattrick unbent to a rough, booming laugh, then yanked open the drawstrings of his sleeve cuffs and shoved them back to clear his wrists. ‘You clansmen have arrogance СКАЧАТЬ