Lady-Protector Read online

  She turned back to Salyna. “Have you seen Treghyt recently?”

  “No.” Salyna frowned. “Why?”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “Do you think…?”

  “I don’t know. I need to find out.” She turned as there was another knock on the study door. She sensed Chalmyr outside, along with another man. “Yes?”

  The private scrivener eased the door open slightly. “Captain Maeltor is standing by, Lady-Protector. Do you have any orders for him?”

  “I do. If you would have him come in.” Mykella walked from the window back to a position before the carved desk that held so many memories, all centered on her father.

  Chalmyr opened the door wider and gestured to the officer.

  Maeltor was a captain Mykella did not recognize, barely half a head taller than she was, and that meant he was indeed short for an officer, but with broad shoulders and a muscular build. He carried his cap under his arm, and his face was olive-tanned under black hair. He inclined his head respectfully, then straightened, his black eyes alert. “Lady-Protector.”

  “Captain … I don’t recall seeing you here before.”

  “No, Lady. I’ve just been promoted from undercaptain, and I was passing through before taking up a new post with Fifth Company in Dekhron.”

  Mykella nodded, then spoke. “There are a few other tasks that need to be taken care of. I’d like you to have some men take Maxymt into custody. He is the head clerk of the Finance Ministry, and that study is at the far end of the north corridor on this level of the palace. It should be open, but Chalmyr will have a key. I’d also like you to see if someone can locate the healer Treghyt so that I might talk to him.”

  “Yes, Lady-Protector. Is there anything else?”

  “Not for the moment, Captain.” I’m afraid there will be, though.

  Maeltor nodded, then turned and departed, closing the study door behind him.

  “Maxymt won’t be there,” Mykella predicted. “Neither will Treghyt.”

  “If either saw what you did on the steps,” said Salyna, “they’ll be on their way to the Iron Valleys, or taking a boat across the river to Squawt country.”

  “There are others I won’t see again, either,” mused Mykella, “and that alone will tell me who else was with Joramyl.”

  “Or those who believe you will think that,” pointed out Salyna.

  “That’s all too possible. Some of them may even be guilty.” Mykella took a deep breath. “For the moment, will you take over running the palace? I know that’s not something…”

  Salyna smiled. “I can do that. Chatelaine Auralya will be more than glad to tell me if I’m about to make a mistake.” Her smile widened into a brief grin that quickly faded.

  “Only for a while.” Mykella paused. “In a few days … when the worst settles down, you can…” She stopped.

  Salyna was shaking her head. “Things will settle down. They’ll never be the same, though.”

  “You won’t ever have to go to Southgate. Ever. Or anyplace else.”

  “Mykella … sooner or later … I’ll have to go somewhere if I want to have a life of my own. We both know that.”

  “Later doesn’t mean sooner. If you want to be matched, he will have to meet your approval, in person, and mine. You can also have the choice not to choose.”

  “Thank you. It would be nice to have some choice, or not be forced into choosing. What about you? You’re going to take the commander, aren’t you?”

  “That’s possible. I haven’t said anything.”

  “He’d be a fool to refuse.”

  “That’s why I haven’t said anything.”

  Salyna merely nodded, but Mykella could sense a certain amusement behind her sister’s pleasant expression.

  Mykella paused. What else could she say? “Would you mind checking on Rachylana?”

  “I can do that.”

  Mykella watched as her youngest sister slipped out of the study. What if Areyst turns out not to care for me? She didn’t think she’d misread his interest, an interest that she had sensed months before … but … What if it’s only interest … and not much more?

  After she had set Chalmyr to drafting the documents promoting Choalt and Areyst, Mykella was still pondering over all the difficulties that lay before her when Salyna returned more than a half glass later.

  “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t want to talk to me. She’d bolted the door. I talked to the door, and finally she let me in when I asked if she wanted the entire palace to hear what I had to say. She wasn’t happy. She’s been crying all the time since the ceremony.”

  “It’s all my fault, of course.”

  “Mykella … what you did was necessary, but it is your fault.”

  “So it would have been better for Father’s poisoning and Jeraxylt’s planned ‘accident’ to go unnoticed, for Joramyl to seize the office of Lord-Protector, all so that she could marry Berenyt? So that I could be hurried off to Dereka, and you could be matched to the son of a spoiled Seltyr in Southgate?”

  “She thinks she loves him. You killed him. That’s all that matters to her now.”

  Mykella could only shake her head.

  “Captain Maeltor, Lady,” announced Chalmyr from outside the study door.

  “Have him enter.”

  Maeltor stepped into the study.

  “I take it that Maxymt has fled,” said Mykella.

  “Yes, Lady.”

  “That’s not your fault. I should have sent someone as soon as I finished the investiture. What about the healer?”

  “His study is untouched. It’s very neat. He’s not there. I sent several men to his home, but they have not returned.”

  “Thank you. For now, I’d appreciate it if you’d stand by in the antechamber until Commander Areyst returns.”

  “Yes, Lady.”

  Once Maeltor had left the study, Mykella turned and studied the desk, as well as the chair behind it. She’d need a higher chair if she were to use the desk, let alone not to appear dwarfed by it. She shook her head.

  “What?” asked Salyna.

  “So many things to do. Big things … little things.”

  “You can’t do them all at once,” Salyna said, her tone reasonable.

  “No … but if I don’t do most of them soon, matters will get worse.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  At that moment, there was another rap on the door.

  “Commander Areyst, Lady,” announced Chalmyr.

  Salyna looked to Mykella. “He didn’t mention Cheleyza.”

  “Have him enter.”

  Areyst stepped into the study. While he’d clearly blotted his face, it was still shiny, and his tunic was damp in places. “The Lady Cheleyza has fled Tempre, Lady-Protector. My men are attempting to discover which road she may have taken or whether she fled by the river.”

  Mykella couldn’t say she was totally surprised by her aunt’s departure. She did have to admire Cheleyza’s speed of action. “Commander … if you would come with me…” As she sensed his concern, she added, “We’re only going to the lower levels of the palace.”

  Salyna’s eyebrows rose.

  “You’d better come as well, Salyna,” added Mykella, absently fingering the pouch at her waist that held the keys to all the locks in the palace, keys she had carried from the day of her mother’s death years before.

  Both Areyst and Salyna followed her as she walked swiftly from the study to the main staircase, then down and along the west corridor, not quite so far as to the rear door to the gardens, but to a locked door—one that looked like a closet door. It wasn’t, but the door to the narrow staircase down to the lowest levels of the palace.

  “What’s down here?” asked Salyna.

  “You know, but you’ll see why.” Mykella eased the proper key on the iron ring into the lock, turned it, and opened the door.

  Three sets of boots echoed dully down the narrow stairwell to the s
mall foyer at the bottom, where Mykella paused and glanced at the ancient light-torch in the bronze wall bracket before heading through the archway that separated the staircase foyer from the subterranean—and empty—hallway that extended the entire length of the north side of the palace.

  “Mykella…” ventured Salyna.

  “There’s nothing down here that shouldn’t be.” Mykella wondered momentarily if she should have used her Talent to slip down to the Table chamber unseen. But then, how would you have explained your absence? That’s going to be a problem.

  Brisk steps brought her to the door set in the middle of the wall closest to the outside foundation, a door of ancient oak, with an equally antique lever handle. Yet that lever, old as it had to be, seemed newer than the hinges or than even the replacement stones that comprised the doorjamb. She pressed the lever down, and the hinges still squeaked as she opened the door.

  In spite of herself, she shook her head. She had asked the palace steward three times to have the hinges oiled. Was the staff that fearful of the lower level? She turned to Areyst. “This is the Table chamber.” Then she looked to her sister. “Did Father ever bring you here?”

  “Just twice. It bothered me.”

  Mykella could tell that Salyna was uneasy although there was nothing overtly that strange about the windowless stone-walled space some five yards by seven, without furnishings except for a single black wooden chest and the Table itself—a block of blackish stone set into the floor whose flat and mirrored surface was level with her waist—her lowest ribs really, she had to admit. The faint purple tinge that had bothered her for the last several seasons and that in years, so far, she was the only one to sense, seemed to have faded since she had destroyed the Ifrit’s creation that had emerged from the Table and tried to enslave her. It was hard to believe that the Ifrits were essentially the descendants—or perhaps cousins of sorts—of the legendary Alectors. “If you’d close the door…”

  Areyst did so, not speaking as Mykella walked over to the Table and glanced down. Once she had doubted the old tales about how, before the Cataclysm, the Alectors and even Mykel the Great had been able to travel from Table to Table all across Corus. Then she had found that she could do so, although some Table chambers she had visited were blocked from outside, and one was located somewhere that was so cold that she’d almost frozen to death before managing to return to Tempre. Now, those Tables, a few buildings, the eternal and indestructible highways, the Great Piers, and the green towers were all that remained from that time.

  Mykella looked at her own reflection in the mirror surface of the Table—short black hair, broad forehead with clear skin, green eyes with a darkness behind them, a straight nose, shoulders too broad for a woman as small as she was.

  “Might I ask why we are here?” Areyst finally asked.

  “To see if I can determine if the Table will show where Cheleyza might be at this moment. I don’t know if you can see what it displays, but we might as well try.” She did not look up as Areyst stepped up to her left and Salyna to her right.

  Mykella concentrated, fixing an image of Cheleyza in her mind and projecting it toward the Table. Her own reflection faded, and the silvery black gave way to swirling silvery-white mists. Then, an image appeared in the center of the mists—that of a wide barge with ten men or so at the sweeps. Mykella concentrated on the barge, and the image in the Table enlarged enough that she could make out the dark hair and fine features of Cheleyza looking out from a hooded winter jacket toward the rear of the barge. Then she tried to get a better sense of where the barge was.

  “It’s all fuzzy…” murmured Salyna.

  “She’s on the river,” said Areyst.

  “Do you know where?” asked Mykella. “I don’t recognize what’s along the bank … the north bank, isn’t it, from the light?”

  “I can’t be sure, but it looks like the stretch on the Vedra west of Tempre, no more than ten vingts from the Great Piers.”

  “That’s not far,” said Salyna.

  “It might as well be a hundred vingts,” replied Areyst. “There’s no bridge across the river until Hieron, and that’s more than four hundred vingts. The road on our side of the river isn’t much more than a dirt track after the first thirty vingts, and there’s no road at all on the Squawt side.”

  “She’s going to get away? Just like that?” asked Salyna.

  “Do you have a better idea?” asked Mykella evenly.

  “No … but it seems so … wrong.”

  “Sometimes that happens. Unhappily, I doubt we’ve seen the last of dear Aunt Cheleyza.” Mykella looked to Areyst. “I had Chalmyr draft the documents to promote you and Majer Choalt. We might as well go back to the study so that I can sign them.” And see what else has gone wrong.

  She turned and headed toward the door from the Table chamber.

  2

  Late that evening, after a modest supper by themselves in the family dining area, Salyna and Mykella sat in the family parlor, Salyna on the settee and Mykella in the armchair across from her. Rachylana remained closeted in her room, refusing to leave it except for necessities, and only when Mykella was nowhere close. Outside in the chill darkness, a light drizzle fell, and tiny raindrops coagulated and ran down the windowpanes in narrow rivulets. Only one wall lamp was lit, and Mykella noted absently that the mantle was soot-smoked.

  “I can’t believe Cheleyza left so quickly,” observed Salyna. “She must have fled the palace right after the ceremony and packed her things immediately. She couldn’t have taken that much. She hardly had any time at all.”

  “She thinks she’ll reclaim whatever she left later. She’s taking the river Hieron. From there, she’ll make her way to Harmony, and she’ll try to get her older brother and any allies he has to attack Lanachrona and overthrow me in order to make her child the heir and eventual Lord-Protector,” said Mykella, recalling what her uncle’s widow had told her about her background when Mykella had been forced to apologize to Cheleyza over the dress “incident.”

  “Her child? I didn’t know she was expecting.”

  “She’s carrying Joramyl’s child. That was the reason she tried to poison Rachylana at that afternoon gathering—”

  “How did you know it was poison? You’ve never said.”

  “I just knew.”

  Salyna looked at her older sister. “Knew or knew?”

  “Sometimes … I can sense poison. It makes people look bluish. It was the same poison Uncle Joramyl used to kill Father.”

  Salyna paled. She swallowed. “Mykella … you’re scaring me.… Again.”

  “You didn’t think I’d have done everything I’ve done if I didn’t know what was happening. I told Father about Joramyl. He wouldn’t believe me.” That wasn’t totally true, Mykella knew. She’d told their father that Kiedryn hadn’t been the one stealing golds from the Treasury, and she’d tried to point out that Joramyl had been the only one who could have, but her father had been adamant that he could totally trust his brother.

  After a long silence, Salyna said tentatively, “But Rachylana didn’t die.” She paused. “You were alone with her. You did something, didn’t you? To save her?”

  “Yes. But she didn’t drink as much of it, and I was there when it struck. I tried to save Father the same way … but he’d had too much, and it was too late. Joramyl saw that no one got to Father until he was almost dead.” The last of Mykella’s words dripped venom.

  “I should tell Rachylana … about how you saved her.”

  “She won’t believe you, and she’ll want to know why I couldn’t save Father. Then she’ll be blaming me for that.”

  “Mykella … how did it all … happen? What changed you?”

  Mykella thought. How much did she really want to say? Finally, she said, “It happened because of the soarer. She came to my room just before season-turn, and she touched my forehead and told me I had to find my Talent if I wanted to save my land.”

  Salyna shivered. “The Ancient said
that?”

  “She didn’t speak. It’s more like her words come into your thoughts. Things … they didn’t happen all at once. I discovered I could see in almost-total darkness, and I began to sense what people felt. That was when I discovered that Joramyl was stealing golds, but I found that out by talking to traders and Seltyrs and comparing tariff receipts to the ledgers. When I showed the ledgers to Father, he just told Joramyl, and Joramyl forced poor Kiedryn to write a suicide note and drink poison. I even saw Joramyl, in the Table, riding somewhere with a man covered with a hood. Afterwards, I realized that it must have been Kiedryn. It was like that for weeks, all fall long, in fact. Everything I tried turned out wrong…” Mykella shook her head.

  “But you looked so powerful and strong today.”

  “I made too many mistakes along the way, and people died.… Kiedryn, Jeraxylt, Father, the clerk who handled the Southern Guard accounts, the poor guard who was blamed for Jeraxylt’s death … maybe others I don’t even know about.”

  “Do you … kill…?”

  “No. I learned that from practicing on killing animals in the slaughterhouse just before they were about to be killed. No one saw me, and some of them dropped dead just before the hammer hit them. But I didn’t figure out how to do that until after Father died.”

  Salyna’s eyes were wide. “You still scare me, Mykella.”

  “Why? Joramyl killed more people than I have, and he used poison and treachery. So I can kill people with Talent. You’ve trained with arms, and you can kill them with a blade. I’d end up cutting myself to pieces if I tried that.”