The Councillor Read online

  Twenty paces was a very attractive distance indeed, but fifty would not be too much, with an opponent like this mercenary. The woman appeared built of stone.

  Flocke raised her hand. The two fighters nocked arrows to their bows and stood still, while the crowd gawked, waiting for a shaft to fly.

  Yet Luca did not fire at his opponent. He tilted his bow upward, toward the sky, and sent an arrow whizzing into the clouds. The crowd raised their heads as one, craning for a glimpse of the shaft. So did the mercenary, tilting her thick neck to watch the arrow soar.

  The angle of the woman’s chin exposed the gap between her helm and her breastplate: a crack about a half-inch wide, barely visible to the naked eye, but visible nonetheless.

  Luca did not miss.

  Lysande watched the second arrow fly from his bow and sink into the sliver of flesh. Gasps sounded around the tiers as the huge woman crashed forward in the dust, blood dribbling from her neck, before she had fired a shaft.

  A few people in the bottom tier began to applaud, but the rest of the crowd waited. After a moment, Flocke smiled and clapped, and slowly, the rest of the audience joined in, building to a smattering of applause. Lysande caught a mention of the “red prince.”

  “Well,” said Derset, faintly, “I think we have a winning time.”

  Lysande was still staring at the dead mercenary. Behind the corpse, Luca turned to face the box and made a little, ironic bow, looking at her.

  “Excuse me, my lady,” Derset added, “but I think Flocke wants something.”

  The Keeper was hurrying up the stairs, all the way to the box. “Councillor! We would be honored if you would present the prize.” Flocke was wearing her oily smile as she blinked up at Lysande. “It was thanks to you that we had four such colorful bouts, after all.”

  Lysande did not very much desire to descend into the ring, but Litany was beaming at her and Derset leaned over to pat her on the back. Looking at their faces, she drew a breath, and she rose and shook her head at the Axium Guards. Appearing before the people alone would look much better than appearing with a train of soldiers bristling with weapons; if she was to respect ordinary people, she could not appear before them like a woman warding off beasts. Perfault’s famous political tract, On Queens and Commoners, suggested as much.

  Confidence before the nobility. Humility before the people. Books had a strange way of making themselves useful in your life, words sprouting up when you least expected them.

  Halfway down the stairs, she felt the noise of the crowd roll over her in a thundering wave, but she remembered Derset’s remark. You can learn to stand before crowds. Even to like it. This was her own style; her own choice. She put another foot down on the stair below.

  Flocke was waiting for her at the bottom, holding out a cloth sack. The gold inside felt like lead. In front of her, Luca had returned to the center of the ring and was looking at his bow, as if he did not hear the spectators shouting.

  “You need only walk over and present this to Prince Fontaine,” Flocke said. “Make sure that you shake his right hand firmly.”

  “Is it not the custom to shake with one’s weaker hand?”

  “Prince Fontaine is left-handed, Councillor.”

  Of course he was. The right hand would have been too ordinary for him. Foot after foot, she moved slowly over the sand, keeping her eyes fixed on Luca. It helped to focus on one figure instead of the hundreds of shouting and pointing people in the tiers. The body of the horned mercenary had been removed from the ring, but a lake of red dyed the sand where she had lain, and Luca stood behind it, his bow dangling from one hand.

  She came to a stop opposite him. In the corner of her eye, a purple scarf fluttered as a woman leaned over a rail to cheer. It reminded her of queensflower petals.

  “Congratulations, Your Highness,” she said, holding out the bag of gold. “You must be very proud.”

  “Eminently so.” As he reached out to take the sack, his hand gripped hers. “Remember what I said to you, Prior. If you put the White Queen’s agent on the throne, we may all die. Do not mistake this for a game of tactos.” His voice had dropped to a whisper. “If you lose this game, you do not get to play again.”

  He stepped back and pulled the sack with him, holding up his prize. The crowd broke into applause. Luca started to walk the champion’s circuit of the sand, following the circle of the stands. Lysande left him to it. This was his moment, after all, and he deserved his victory, even if he had won it in a demonstrably Rhimese way. She was halfway across the sand when she heard the growl.

  It came from in front of her: a low and ominous sound, like a rumble before a storm. The creature burst from the door of the wolf cage and bounded into the ring, a mass of dark fur and sharp yellow teeth.

  It was speeding over the sand now, taking in several feet at a bound. The forest wolves Sarelin had killed had never run like this. How in Cognita’s name did it get unchained?

  She wondered how her mind had time to pick at details at a moment like this; yet skills could not be wished away. She could not halt the workings of deduction. Not even if mortality was bearing down upon her.

  The wolf’s slavering mouth opened as it pounded toward her. It was seconds away. It was going to rip her to shreds in front of half of Axium.

  This is the end, she thought. Maybe she would see Sarelin again.

  Lysande could not say for sure that nothing awaited her, even if she had failed to worship in prayer-houses or stare at relics. For a second, she surrendered to hope.

  At the last moment, the coil of her arm unsprung. She drew her dagger and advanced on the wolf. The animal shied and swerved around her, so close that she could see the drool on its jaw. A second too late, she realized where it was going.

  “Fontaine!” she shouted. The animal barrelled at him, snarling. The prince of Rhime snatched up an arrow and fitted it to his bowstring. Rays of sun threw a sheen over his black armor as he pulled the arrow taut, lined up the point, and fired.

  The wolf stopped, paws scrabbling, jaws snapping at the air.

  It landed with a thump at Luca’s feet. The shaft of the arrow protruded from its neck. The Arena held its breath; all around the tiers, the crowd stared.

  After a few seconds, Flocke laughed nervously and began to applaud. “Congratulations, Prince Fontaine,” she called, pointing to Luca. “Our champion triumphs again!”

  Relief spread slowly around the audience, the crowd smiling and clapping along with Flocke. Some of them even cheered. Lysande took in the jubilant faces.

  The prostrate body of the wolf lay on the sand, and over the top of it, she met Luca’s eyes. “We must leave,” he said.

  The other city-rulers were already departing the box, too far away for her to make out their reactions. She cast a last glance at the wolf, its jaws still open in death. “Whoever loosed that wolf may unlock the cage again and set its furry companion free.” Luca came to her side. “We’re a prime meal, standing here.”

  Slowly, she walked with him across the ring, away from the body of the animal and the patch of bloodied sand. Panther. Poison. Two strikes. Silent sword. Wolf. Another two.

  Her eyes found the wolf cage, now surrounded by guards who were interrogating the young man in ragged clothes holding a bolt of emerald cloth, his eyes wide with fear. The boy had never received the chance to wave his bait. And why, in Cognita’s name, did Axiumites send one of the populace out to dangle a piece of fabric in front of wolves? Who had established this “custom”? Lysande rummaged in her mental notes, finding nothing. She noted how densely packed the tier behind the cage was. The door had been allowed to come unlocked, under so many eyes. The guards were all defending the box, she realized. It hurt, to realize that she was the one who should have anticipated this: a simple mistake, but one which had steered her to within an inch of disaster.

  When they were nearly at
the door in the stone, she turned and faced Luca, aware of hundreds of people watching them. “Are you all right, Fontaine?”

  He studied her face for a moment.

  “Quite all right, Prior,” he said. “But when my hosts set their dogs on me, I generally find it is time to leave.”

  * * *

  • • •

  A ceiling of branches sheltered her in a cool, dark world. The fruit drooped around her, so ripe that it burdened the orange and lemon trees and bent the plum bushes to the ground, and scents of bell-flowers and sacharia buds perfumed the breeze. Lysande paced among the blossoms and leaves, turning at the end of the orchard.

  An orange plopped at her feet. She stooped to pick it up, examining the swollen exterior, the dark color of the skin.

  The guards and the spectators at the Arena had been questioned, but no answers had emerged. If the wolf had been set on herself and Luca, then maybe the silent sword had been meant for one of them, too. In all the swapping of plates, it might have ended up in front of Cassia by accident. But if that was so, Luca might not be the traitor.

  He had scattered words like Rhimese rubies at her feet, each one resplendent with facets of knowledge, glimmering all the more when they rolled from shadow into light. He had sought to purchase her trust with rumors, disbursing them while they sat together: here, a clump of the White Queen’s powers; there, a clump of Sarelin’s veiled past. A more prosaic speaker would have sought to fill in every detail, but Luca had left gaps. There, she thought, lay the danger. You could pick apart a lie, but your imagination would brick up spaces.

  Who was she to put on the throne? One of the three city-rulers who might have killed Sarelin and might now be trying to murder Luca Fontaine—or Luca himself: cobra-keeping linguist, bastard prince, fratricide? It was the kind of choice that Fortituda, goddess of valor, gave to seekers in the ancient stories, but she had never asked for a choice, and she was on no quest.

  Scholars did not get invited on them. Only if you wielded a sword could you be declared a heroine, if the Silver Songs were to be believed.

  As she paced back and forth, Luca’s words echoed in her mind. If you have any doubt about your choice, better to choose no one at all.

  She would like nothing better than to pick none of them and pass the crown to some deserving Axiumite soldier, like Raden, but long years in Axium Palace had taught her how the silverblood families would react to that.

  And then there was the matter of how her choice would relate to elementals. The bodies on the cart swam into her mind, and Charice’s face . . . always Charice, speaking.

  They had never spoken of their first time, since it happened, but Lysande had written it into her memory with careful strokes, recording how she had woken to the irradiance of moonlight from the window, the silver painting Charice’s limbs, the two of them no longer entwined but facing each other on the bedsheet. She had listened to the other woman breathing softly. After the encounter, she had lain there, relishing the memory of skin against skin, reliving the warm trail of Charice’s lips along her inner thigh, a prelude of kisses that left a pleasant burn, like the aftertaste of spirits. Sometimes you knew that a moment was precious; you were sure that no matter how long it lasted, it would need to live longer, for some day in the future when you would call it up again.

  Now, she was glad that she had distilled it and stored it away. She was even glad that they had not referred to that night, during any of the times they had lain together since. Every detail could be stoppered.

  Her thoughts shifted from Charice to the wolf bounding at her, and the tiny carving of the chimera on the silent sword. Were they not tied together, though—Charice and this decision? It would be so much simpler to convince herself that elementals were only dipped in this mess insofar as the White Queen was involved.

  And then there was the assumption she had made; the very reckless assumption that Charice had left because of the riots, and not for some other reason.

  Better to choose no one at all.

  Leaves rustled behind her, and Litany’s wiry form emerged from the trees. “Are you ready, Councillor—I mean, Lysande?”

  “Surely the time isn’t up?”

  “Lord Derset sent me to bring you back, if you please.”

  They moved through the trunks and overhanging branches in the stillness of the orchard. The last tree was laden with fruit, four apples jostling for space on a single bough. Lysande tossed the orange in her hand and caught it again, looking at the four ripe balls.

  She fell into step beside her new attendant. The perfume of the fruit trees drifted into her lungs, heady and thick. It seemed to waft into her mind.

  The Pavilion glimmered today, its pointed roof strung with dozens of little candles of silvery wax, flickering in rows. A split mirror to the side of the door showed Lysande two tall women, their hair straggling over their shoulders, smiling rather unconvincingly. She raised a hand, and both women raised their hands in reply. On the doorstep, she smoothed her collar and straightened her locks, covering the single tress of silver with red strands and refastening her pins, until she had entirely concealed the hard glitter of the deathstruck hair.

  The city-rulers greeted her from a circular table piled with platters of sun-fruit, winternut bread, and dragoncherry cake. Goblets clustered around jugs of red wine, waiting to be filled. Derset stood at the back of the room, his high-necked robe impeccable and his hands folded over his stomach, an assortment of guards stationed beside him. He gave her a tiny nod as she walked in.

  Lysande took her seat at the table. Every pair of eyes fixed upon her. She could hear Dante’s fingers tapping the wood. One more time, she ran through the analysis of each culture’s qualities in the poet Inara’s Scroll of the Cities, retracing the notes she had made for her treatise, weighing them. Recalling texts felt like speaking a familiar language.

  “I will be brief with Your Highnesses.” She looked around. “I am required by the law of Elira, set down in the Legilium, to choose our next ruler. Last night and this morning have shown me a little of who you are. And your talents.”

  “Are you giving the crown to the winner?” Cassia was watching her closely.

  Perhaps she should have taken more scale. And yet she knew, somehow, that she could do this; the choice to alter the tournament had set something burning inside her, something that she had not known was capable of igniting.

  “Prince Fontaine has won a tournament, but I watched you all fight bravely in the ring. It is clear that you all know how to defend yourselves. And the realm.”

  “What is it to be, then, Councillor?” Jale asked. “Shall we pass the crown from person to person? One of us has it at the beginning of the week, and another at the end? Perhaps we can draw up a plan.”

  They all laughed—some a little too quickly—and Lysande shook her head.

  “There will be no need for swapping, Your Highnesses. I have decided.” She paused, and drew a deep breath. Imperative. Sarelin would be imperative. A phrase from the Scroll of the Cities hung in her mind, yielded from her own transcription: The best ruler may not take the shape you think.

  “I am appointing you all to work together as the very first Council of Elira.”

  She could have heard a needle strike the floor in the silence.

  “What?” Cassia said.

  “You will rule together until the White Queen is dead or imprisoned and Elira is secure.” Lysande looked around the table. “You will share the duties—managing coin and works within the realm, dealing with our neighbors, and overseeing the armies. The selection of a monarch must be postponed until the most urgent danger has passed, at which time you will all vote on it together. Of course, in the meantime, you will each need to appoint someone to take care of your city in your stead.”

  “No need,” Dante said. “Valderos has four successors named in line: one for each goddess. I dr
ew up my list a year ago.” He thrust his jaw out.

  “Whereas Rhime has around twenty successors, self-appointed, with arrows trained on my neck,” Luca said. “They will be so pleased to have an excuse to fire.”

  “I am confident that you are all capable of choosing the best steward of your own city, and keeping a tight grip on them, for the realm.”

  Several of the guards looked at each other. Never quaver, never yield, Lysande thought. The words sounded in her head in Sarelin’s voice. She clung to the memory of the queen in her armor, smiling and presenting Lysande with the quill, the sun striking the dent in her breastplate. She could almost feel the calluses on Sarelin’s palms as those hands brushed hers.

  Yet her memory of the queen was more complicated of late. Sarelin exhaled a forceful breath, beside her, those broad shoulders still spattered with the aftermath of an execution.

  She looked across the table at Luca. Of all the city-rulers, he was the only one watching her without surprise.

  “This could be a good thing,” Dante said, slowly. “It could be our first chance to bind the cities together since the war.”

  “Sharing power means shedding blood,” Cassia said. “Such an alliance will split the realm.”

  “Not if we rule well,” Jale said.

  Luca did not say a word, but she noted the half-smile on his lips.

  “What do you think of this, Lord Derset?” Dante asked.

  The advisor stepped forward. “Matters of such gravity are for Your Highnesses to approve. Still . . . I would say that our Councillor has worked to bring us the best resolution, at a time when the realm is tied together by the thin ribbon of good intent.” Lysande hoped her smile was enough to convey her gratitude.

  “Spoken like a true diplomat,” Luca said. “But you leave one city out, Lord Derset.”

  The other city-rulers exchanged glances. Lysande waited.

  “The capital. We cannot have a council of Elira without Axium, surely,” Luca said, smoothly. “If we are to represent the realm, we must have a member from each of its fine cities.”