The Councillor Read online

  Yet you could not hold what you had never possessed, even if you tried with every particle of your being. Lysande wanted to dive and grab Sarelin, but the soles of her feet would not obey. She remained rooted to the ground as the queen tumbled into the darkness.

  She opened her eyes and a shower of light greeted her. Despite the glow, she shivered.

  The golden quill awaited on her desk, and she forced herself to pick it up, focusing on her phrasing as she spelled out Sarelin’s news; once she had sped through her writing, she combed her hair quickly in front of the mirror, pausing, for a second, to finger the deathstruck strands on the left side of her part. The lock of silver hair evaded understanding, even to her. The longer she looked, the more clearly she could see that it was not silvered by natural age but by a queer and sharp flecking of radiance, like the glitter of angry stars. Was it a failure of her own scholarship that, after all this time, she could not confirm whether a heightened color or a bleaching of the strands made the hair shine?

  “Be proud of your mark,” Sarelin had told her, a few years ago, when she had visited Lysande’s room to escort her to the jubilee, stopping in front of the small mirror. “Be proud of the bold and curious thing that sets you apart.”

  “Easy to say when you bear the scars of battle, and the realm loves you for it.” Lysande had put a finger to her hair. “You charged through a fire—I merely survived one.”

  “Other children survived the blazes of the White War. All manner of little brats from the Addischild family seem to have lived through them, though the goddesses know it would have been cheaper for the crown if they hadn’t had a lake to dive into back then.” Sarelin pointed a finger at Lysande’s hair. “But you, only you, bear this glorious mark.”

  “You know it looks . . . queer. It makes people feel unsettled.” And not from admiration, Lysande wanted to add.

  “Well, I have to work very hard to make people feel unsettled. You should be pleased.”

  She had looked down with a dutiful smile, avoiding Sarelin’s stare, fearing to find a hint of pity in it, but when she had looked up again, Sarelin had been gazing at her hair with a pensive expression. “Perhaps it is not the hair itself that matters, Lys. Perhaps you were always going to stand out. The hair is just a reminder.”

  The words sounded in her head with the clarity of a silver bell.

  Carefully, she tucked the deathstruck lock beneath other strands and smoothed her ordinary, red hair over it, until it was entirely concealed.

  She descended from the staff tower and strode through the hedges and fountains of the grounds. Light ribboned the walls, just sufficient for Axium Palace to glow a pale, cold, glistening silver, turning the twenty-four spires atop its buildings into needles. Their gleam reminded Lysande of the dent in Sarelin’s armor, the mark that had become more famous than the crown since the war; a dent that she had once seen a captain kneel to kiss. Lysande had sketched the scene, later, inside the back cover of her own book. For a moment, she had been tempted to draw a smile on Sarelin’s face. But on reflection, she found that she preferred the expression she had seen: a grim look, tinged with determination. Some women would have worn the evidence of the White Queen’s blow as if it was a badge of talent, the mark that sealed a permanent victory. Sarelin had never made that mistake.

  Lysande crossed the lawn, now, passed the target range, and entered the library. Columns of hard-bound tomes shone in the slivers of dawn that pierced the windows, throwing out a light brighter than that of the oil lamps. It comforted her to smell the leather and to feel the presence of so many books around her. She could never be alone in a realm of shelves, where characters from ancient stories might speak to her in smooth metaphors and pleasantly gnarled phrases, and places she had never seen might spring into life, painted in the full range of hues that her imagination supplied, offering a pale green forest, a mountain daubed with gray limestone, or an ocean splintered by the dying sun. Making her way to the volumes on the far side of the chamber, she selected a book whose cover bore the words A Study of Northern Flora and Fauna and sequestered herself in the quietest corner, focusing her attention on the pages.

  Her finger traversed the entry on panthers. A map of the habitat, a list of suggestions for hunting, a picture with anatomical notes . . . and at last, the characteristics of Elira’s common panther . . . she sped through the list and stopped at the words green eyes. Her breath quickened. She tried to calm it in vain.

  After she had signed three books out of the library, she walked into the courtyard with her head down, still contemplating the same phrase, and nearly crashed into a wall of silver armor.

  Captain Raden Hartleigh halted, his “sorry, sorry, Lys” washing over her. Raden was not a short man, but nor did he possess Lysande’s commanding height; for all that, he seemed to take up more space than the average Axiumite, the breadth of his shoulders giving him the presence of a well-plated bull.

  “Becalm yourself, Raden. My bones are not noble enough to be fragile.”

  “What were you doing, galloping along without looking up?” Raden said.

  “Thinking.”

  He returned her smile. “I’ve done enough of that for a year. Thought I’d never get rid of that pair.” He jerked his head at two nobles watching them from an archway. “The silverbloods are all riled about the appointment of a new Councillor. I must’ve told them twenty times that even if I had the envelope, I wouldn’t give it to them.”

  Lysande tried not to look at her doublet pocket, where a flat piece of paper lay. “You’d think they’d be pleased to keep out of it.”

  “They think they’ve got the right to rip the thing open and scrawl their own names. I warned them, plain enough: as Her Majesty lives, there’s no need to put a city-ruler on the throne, and no need for a Councillor to choose one.” Raden’s look darkened.

  She tried to stop the surge of memory, but it was no good: again she saw the pillows emblazoned with the Axium crown, and Sarelin perched atop them, her hawkish gaze softening as Lysande sat down beside her. Blood crusted the queen’s robe. Lysande had placed her fingers carefully below the stain and peeled back the silk to reveal three pink gashes, one of the cuts slicing so deep that she glimpsed intestine.

  “I know this isn’t an easy time for you.” Raden’s voice sounded distant. “All this talk of an heirless monarch . . .”

  Lysande felt something ripple within her. She clasped the books to her chest.

  No, she thought. She can’t be inked into some sealed account.

  “Let’s speak of something else, then,” she said. “Like this heinous panther. Are you sure about what you told me last night?”

  “Couldn’t miss it. The thing looked right at me, before it lunged at her. Thought I was going half-mad. Seeing coins in midair, or something. Of all the colors, yellow eyes . . .”

  Lysande fell silent. They walked together back across the grounds, with the ease of those who have shared many silences. In her mind’s eye, Lysande picked up the four bunches of nectar roses that had arrived at the palace and considered the thorns poking out from each stem.

  “Did you notice the prince of Rhime’s gift, Raden?”

  “A hundred cadres’ worth of nectar roses? I think even the stable-hands noticed.”

  “I was thinking more of how quickly he sent them.” Sarelin had once declared that the only weakness she would discuss with the prince of Rhime was his own, and Lysande did not think the queen had mellowed just because she was injured. All of the other flowers had been sent by Axiumite nobles. How had the prince of the eastern city learned so quickly of the queen’s hunting accident?

  “It’s not those flowers I’m worried about,” Raden said.

  She was aware of his glance. “I know the paucity of viva-flowers in the royal medicine-garden as well as you do, Raden.”

  “Fortituda save her,” Raden muttered. She stopped an
d faced him. Without a word, she embraced him, and he held her too, stepping back after a second and giving her the customary brusque pat on the shoulder to finish, the nearest thing to an Axiumite consolation. Raden was never one to overstep a customary line.

  He peeled off to greet a group of guards at the stables, and Lysande returned to her chamber, poring over A Study of Northern Flora and Fauna at her desk. She was nursing Haxley’s Guide to Eliran Wild Beasts, ignoring the cramp in her neck, by the time the first mist of evening blanketed the palace. She did not douse the candles until her fingers had stiffened.

  The same dream woke her, swelling in the half-dark before dawn, and she embraced her fear, using it to drive her work, forcing herself to finish the statement about Sarelin’s recovery. She reached the royal suite at a stride in the mid-morning. After several knocks, a man padded out, nodding slightly to the guards before hastening down the corridor. Lysande noticed that the laces on his doublet were half done-up.

  When the queen finally emerged, her silver cape billowed.

  “Don’t give me that look.” Sarelin beckoned Lysande in.

  “I wasn’t giving you any look,” Lysande said, as the doors slammed behind them. “I’m merely concerned for your health. Are you sure you should exert yourself?”

  “He did all the exerting.” Sarelin was smiling as she lifted the cover from a platter of hazelnut tarts. “And I won’t be lectured by you about late mornings. I still remember the day I found you curled up with that Lyrian harpist after the jubilee.”

  Lysande looked away, as if that would hide the roses blossoming in her cheeks. She saw Sarelin hold a tart out to Trichard, then pick up her crown. Every time the queen put the ornament on, it seemed to speak to Lysande of battle, with its silver cut thickly, inlaid with diamonds that glittered and gave out shards of light; yet for all the solemnity of it, Sarelin’s eyes danced. After a sip of vivantica, she rose and kissed Lysande on the brow. She walked to the end of the room and threw open the double doors to the private garden.

  Lysande took her arm and walked into the grove. The roses were blooming here, unfurling like wounds on the skin of the earth. Their fragrant scent filled the air, and silence reigned, except for the sound of Trichard chattering to himself.

  “It means a lot to me, you know. To be sure that you’ll help things get sorted when the day eventually comes,” Sarelin said.

  “I hope it never comes.”

  “Don’t be a stubborn ass. That’s my job.” Sarelin smiled. “You’ve heard them, going on about the envelope, as if it carried pure gold cadres instead of a Councillor’s name.”

  They walked on, their elbows linked like chain mail, through the patch of verdant green. Lysande’s tall frame cast a slightly longer shadow than Sarelin’s, though she noticed, as always, the breadth of Sarelin’s shoulders. She opened her mouth and shut it again.

  She could feel the shape of the envelope in her pocket. Her mind churned up memories of afternoons sitting in the library while motes of dust pirouetted in the thin beam of gold from the oil-lamp, copying out the history of Elira’s succession, shaking her head at some of the less suitable people to be invested with the crown. And there was a niggling memory, too, in which she argued about the “unconscionable brutality” of Sarelin’s policy of execution, quoting the anti-Conquest philosopher Perfault to justify her thoughts. Sarelin had pointed a finger and told Lysande to stop being “a damned plugged-ear idealist.”

  Magic. Ethics. They had argued these topics until the sun dwindled to a red ember in the sky.

  “Listen, Sarelin.” She waited until the queen was looking at her. “Do you remember the night you came home from the hunt?”

  “If I couldn’t, my ribs would damned well remind me.”

  “I watched you bleeding onto the bed. You can’t imagine what it was like, watching the life drip out of you, minute by minute, hour by hour. I stared at those gashes in your side until the sun was rising. I expect you’ll chide me for being an over-thinker again, but I noticed that when you reached out in your sleep, it wasn’t to touch the fresh wounds. It was to stroke the battle-scars on your jaw.” Lysande faced her directly. “And when you moaned something in your sleep, it was a word I recognized.”

  “Not something about the treasury, I hope.”

  “It was Mea.”

  Sarelin paused, one of her hands touching the head of a rose. Lysande did not drop her gaze. She was conscious that she did not need to speak of the day that Sarelin had ridden into the flames, feeling the fire disappear around her, and staring at her unburnt mare, before combing the enemy lines and finding no trace of the White Queen who had terrorized the land.

  Sarelin could make all the jokes she liked. They were only gauze atop a wound.

  “Promise me something. In return for making me keep the envelope. Don’t go hunting. Not for a while,” Lysande said. She was not going to falter at that snort. “If you’re going to keep the chopping block and the executioner for elementals, at least ready yourself for what may come after. It’s just as you said when they were lifting you out of the carriage—everyone in the Three Lands will know you’re injured—and if you ride out again, someone could—”

  “Could what?”

  “Loose something with teeth or claws on you.”

  “And who is this ‘someone,’ then?”

  “I think you know.” Lysande’s fingers tensed. “Or at least, when you sleep, your tongue knows her name.”

  Sun glanced off Sarelin’s crown. A breeze tickled the flowers around them.

  “You know I listen to your advice,” Sarelin said. “You tell me to get more guards, I get more guards. You tell me to stay in bed and heal, I stay in bed. You tell me not to drink before meeting those fool advisors, I put down the bottle. You, and only you, my singular friend, can buy a taster monkey worth its weight in gold and have the Treasurer pay later.” Sarelin’s arm uncurled itself from hers. “But ask yourself. Would you hack off your own limb? Hunting’s a part of me. I fight, I feast, I slay brutes. That’s what the Iron Queen does.”

  “She also conquers her enemies, and remains in one piece.” Lysande knew she was walking on shaky ground, but she kept her balance, holding on to the thought. “Look, it’s strategy. I’ve thought it over. Here, you’re surrounded by dozens of personal guards. If you ride out into Axium Forest again, do you think you will be as lucky the second time, if Mea Tacitus sets something on you?”

  The silence that followed the name was so dense, Lysande felt it cleave to her.

  “Go on,” Sarelin said, at last.

  Lysande gathered every shred of her tenacity. “It’s the panther. I know you don’t want to hear about those ‘dull as weak wine’ books, but science is clear on it—the eyes—they’re not native to the realm. I’ve been researching it in Lady Haxley’s Guide to Eliran Wild Beasts. They should have been green eyes, not yellow.” The fear swelled, and she pushed it down, forced it into retreat. “Haxley writes that there are panthers people can train and lead, outside of Elira. I think someone waited until you were stalking game, with your armor off, and set that panther on you. I think they knew that was the only moment you would be unprotected. I think—” She became vaguely aware that the garden had gone quiet. “Where’s Trichard?”

  Sarelin shrugged. “In the roses, I expect, munching on my best heart-petals. What’s this about the panther?”

  Lysande’s mind was full of yellow eyes and the words in the Guide, but when Sarelin’s words clicked into place in her mind, she ran along the length of the flower-beds, looking for a flash of gold. “Trichard! Here, Trichard, Trichard!”

  No reply came. She dropped to her knees and began to crawl, pushing the leaves back as she searched among the bushes, until the thorns pricked her fingers and drew blood.

  “Trichard!” she shouted. “Trichard!”

  She saw it at last—the patch of orange-
gold among the dark green leaves. The monkey was lying under a rose bush. Almost before she laid hands upon the body, she knew what she would find, but she pressed her fingers to the throat and the tiny chest anyway, searching for a pulse.

  How? she thought, staring into Trichard’s frozen eyes. How did you die?

  There was no obvious sign of blood. No paralysis. No trace of poison at all; but the closed eyes and the lifeless body told their own story.

  “What is it, Lys?”

  She ignored the question, turning the animal over and combing through the fur with her nails. No manifest marks or swelling. Yet the monkey’s skin was somehow already cold.

  The sound of Sarelin’s voice pierced her thoughts. Sarelin. If the monkey was dead . . .

  She turned just as the queen fell, grabbing at a branch but failing to gain purchase and tumbling onto the grass. Sarelin’s black eyes clouded with confusion. For a second her lips opened wordlessly, then she convulsed, gasping for air.

  “Fortituda judge me,” she gasped. “Vindictus . . . strike my enemies . . .”

  “No!” Lysande dropped Trichard and sprinted over.

  Sarelin scrabbled at her bodice. The spasms wracked her body and she roared and lashed out. One of her arms struck Lysande as she clutched at her throat, clawing the skin.

  The physicians were gone. Lysande screamed for the guards and heard the door opening, boots slapping the floor. A woman in armor reached her first, stopping when she saw Sarelin, the man behind nearly smacking into her.

  “Don’t stand there gawping.” Sarelin’s shout tapered into a rasp. “Get Hartleigh. Tell him to skewer the bastard who did this!”

  Lysande stared after the guards as they hurried out. She could run out with them, but by the time she returned . . . she stared at Trichard, lying stiff and cold on the ground.

  “Listen to me,” she said, grabbing hold of Sarelin’s shoulders, as the jerking ceded to a stiff twitching. “I can go, too. I can get Surrick—anyone—”