Darien watched her for a long time with narrowed eyes. “You know nothing for certain yet—or so I assume. Until the baby is born, you will not be able to decode its blood.”
“That’s true,” she said. “But if, as you say, Romelle has had no other lovers—”
“That I know about,” he interrupted. “I am willing to believe her abilities of subterfuge overmatch my skills of surveillance.”
“Let us assume she has been chaste,” Zoe said. “This child is the king’s. Shouldn’t his legitimate son or daughter be the first choice for heir?”
“We have gone to a great deal of trouble to make the king’s subjects believe that all of his supposed daughters are, in fact, legitimate,” Darien countered. “To suddenly retract that would render the whole kingdom uneasy, don’t you think? Would make them wonder what other lies have been perpetrated at court?”
“I think these simple country folk you worry about already believe there is a great deal of lying going on at the palace,” Zoe said. “And I think most of them don’t care. They want order in the realm. They want safe borders and opportunities for profitable trade. It doesn’t matter to them who governs as long as he or she governs well.”
“In which case, you have lost your own argument,” he replied. “Why must the next ruler be blood of the king’s blood?” He leaned forward, his pose almost accusatory. “And, since you are the only one who can—or claims she can—determine a child’s parentage simply by touch, you might have a hard time making anyone else believe you. Or, if they believe you, care. Josetta and Corene and Natalie have all been presented as heirs of the king’s body. This fourth child is unimportant, almost inconvenient. He or she will not be a factor in the upcoming struggle for power.”
Zoe regarded him for a moment in silence. She wished her uncle Nelson was here, or Taro Frothen—either one of them, she thought, would answer her truthfully; she was less sure of Mirti Serlast and Kayle Dochenza.
“Do you seriously think that such a gift was given only to the coru line?” she asked softly. “Don’t you think your aunt Mirti can squeeze a man’s hand in hers until she feels the alignment of the bones? Don’t you think Taro Frothen can rest his fingers against a girl’s wrist and read the heritage in her skin? I don’t know how Kayle Dochenza analyzes the souls of those he meets—perhaps he has to kiss them on their mouths, perhaps he only has to feel their breath against his cheek. And I am even less certain what skill Nelson uses to read a man’s mind, but I have no doubt he can do it. I am not the only prime who can decipher your secrets, Darien Serlast. The others either have not been in a position to make discoveries—or they have decided to keep their knowledge to themselves.”
Now she was the one to lean forward. “If you must rely on the Five Families to anoint and protect the heir, you had better let them know that a fourth candidate is on the way—and that this child is truly born to the king. Because if they discover that fact after they have bound their power on behalf of one of the other princesses, I promise you, the whole court will be in an uproar. You will see alliances shattered and vows revoked. And your own days of power as confidante to the throne will be irretrievably behind you.”
“I do none of this to increase my own consequence,” he snapped. “Is that what you think? I don’t keep secrets and try to influence events merely to feel like an important man. I would have happily shoveled my responsibilities onto someone else’s shoulders anytime these past two years! But Vernon chose me to trust and I had no choice but to be trustworthy. Perhaps that is not something a coru woman can understand. I could not bend. If you think that makes me ambitious, then fine. Think the worst of me. It does not change that I have done the best I can.”
She tightened her lips and straightened in her chair. “Perhaps you have. At any rate, there is no point in wishing the past reconfigured. It is the future we must contend with. And if I were you, I would make sure Romelle’s child has a place in that future—even if just to be considered and rejected. Or you will pay for that secrecy in ways I do not believe you can foresee.”
He sat very stiff and straight for a moment, and then nodded jerkily. “I perceive the wisdom in what you say. But there are formidable obstacles to honesty in this case.”
Zoe felt a smile brush her lips and disappear. “The fact that Romelle herself may not know she is pregnant? Surely that obstacle will disappear very soon.”
He spoke with chilling deliberation. “The fact that, the minute someone believes Romelle is pregnant with the king’s true heir, both Romelle and her baby are in danger of their lives.”
Zoe stared at him, feeling as if she had been punched in the stomach.
“Surely you haven’t forgotten that someone tried to kill Josetta,” he said, speaking still in those cold, precise tones. “I have wondered if Natalie’s constant discontent has been the result of subtle poison being administered to her diet. I have had some changes made to the kitchen staff, with the result that Natalie has been a much more cheerful child in recent days. Someone is maneuvering to put Corene on the throne. I cannot believe such a ruthless person would hear Romelle’s news and quietly cede the crown. I think someone would hear that news and intensify attempts to dispose of all rivals.”
“In which case, once any of the girls is named heir, her life is in danger.”
“Perhaps. But once the decision has been made, I can be excused for marshaling more resources to protect the child named as successor.”
“I would think you would be better served marshaling those same resources to discovering who is harming to the princesses now,” she said sharply.
Abruptly, he pushed back from the table and sprang to his feet. “Do you think I am not?” he demanded. “Even now, I have men in Chialto and Soeche-Tas, hunting for the two sailors who crewed Josetta’s boat in the regatta. One of them shipped out on a merchant vessel that is due back in port within a nineday—one of them crossed the mountains with a peddler’s caravan. It might take me another year, but I will find them and I will discover who paid them. I have other inquiries afoot—” He paused and shook his head, as if annoyed that he would stoop to justify himself to her. To anyone. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I have done what I can. I will do what I can. Believe me or not, as you will. I am done here.”
He gave Zoe an abbreviated bow as she slowly stood up. “I thank you for sharing with me the knowledge that you stumbled upon,” he said. “I would ask you to refrain from repeating it for as long as your conscience allows. And I would reiterate my hope that you join Vernon and the rest of the Five Families to celebrate the viceroy’s visit when he comes.” He bowed again. “That is all.”
He strode for the door. “Wait,” she said.
More than halfway across the room, he turned. His expression was bleak. “Waiting seems to have done me no good at all up to this point,” he said.
Her smile was painful; she was surprised he was even able to attempt a joke. “I apologize,” she said.
His expression didn’t change. “Surely I misunderstood.”
She smiled a little more naturally as she took a few steps in his direction. “I did not mean to imply that I thought your attempts were—inept. Or insufficient. Or ill-advised. I doubt I would have managed as well as you have in circumstances this complex and fraught with danger. I was merely expressing my own worry and fear. Clumsily, I suppose.”
He had not moved from where he had frozen at her command. Hunti man, unbending. Not making it easier for her in any way. Forcing her to come all the way to his side. While they had sat before the window, the lingering gold of dusk had illuminated their conversation, but this deep in the room there was nothing but shadow. She could no longer see his face clearly.
“If I were the king, I would trust you, too,” she said, once she was close enough to practically whisper the words. “What I fear is that no one, not even you, can keep everyone safe.”
“I fear the same thing,” he said, his voice very low. “I am—worried—that
even now there are events unfolding that I know nothing about and cannot control.”
“What kind of events?”
He made an indeterminate motion with his hands. “Something to do with the viceroy. The king seems more excited about this visit than I would have anticipated.”
Zoe grinned in the near-dark. “Maybe he is feeling healthy enough to reconsider that fifth wife,” she said. “Maybe the viceroy will be bringing one of his daughters with him.”
“That would be momentous,” Darien agreed. “Though I would argue vociferously against a marriage with the people of Soeche-Tas. My father visited the place some years ago—on an expedition that also included your father, as a matter of fact—and he told me stories about their customs that shocked me to the core.”
“Those are stories I might want to hear someday.”
“When you’re in the mood for a gruesome tale, perhaps,” Darien said. He shook his head. “I can’t think another marriage is on Vernon’s mind, and yet something clearly is. For the past year he has consulted me on every decision, no matter how small. For the past two or three ninedays, that has not been the case. It worries me.” He sighed heavily. “Everything worries me.”
“I am sorry to have added to your burdens,” Zoe said, and she meant it.
“Sometimes you are the thing that worries me most,” he said, and reached out and pulled her into his embrace.
It was what she had hoped for, so she did not resist. She merely lifted her face to meet his kiss, hungry and searching on her mouth. His arms around her were so strong that for a moment she could allow herself to be utterly weak; she could drift against him, knowing he would not permit her to melt away. She wanted to fit herself to his body, her soft surfaces against his solid bulk, sheltered at last, in a still, calm cove of ease and safety.
His arms tightened; for a moment, sweela heat washed over them, a reminder that both wood and water were susceptible to fire. She clung to him, willing to be swept away, but only if he came along with her. But he groaned against her lips and grudgingly loosened his hold.
“I find myself trusting you,” he whispered. “But everybody knows that only a fool puts his faith in a coru woman.”
She laughed against his mouth. “A fool or a desperate man,” she whispered back. “Which are you?”
“Both,” he said.
“You fascinate me,” she murmured, “but everyone knows that a hunti man makes for a stern and joyless lover.”
“I would like the chance to prove to you that the conventional wisdom is wrong.”
“Now?” she asked, teasing.
“If only that were possible. But with your friends returning at any moment and the king plotting who knows what catastrophe—”
“Perhaps once the viceroy is gone,” she suggested, still speaking against his mouth. In between sentences he was snatching quick kisses, brief and breathless. “Perhaps the world will slow down and time will stretch out. It sometimes happens.”
“Although time is more likely to speed up and then fall to pieces, but we will hope for some balance in our lives sometime in the coming season,” he said. He kissed her again. “I must go.”
“One thing I’d like to ask you,” she said.
He had released her from his embrace but his hands were on her shoulders, as if he couldn’t quite let her go, and her wrists were hooked around his forearms, as if she wanted to hold him in place. “Again, I’m filled with foreboding,” he said.
“Tell me your last secret.”
There was a brief silence. “You’ll hate me for it.”
“That’s ominous.”
“It’s what I fear.”
“I didn’t hate you for this one,” she reminded him.
He kissed her with an air of finality, and dropped his hands. “Oh, but this time the risks are so high,” he said. “After the viceroy is gone. When the world stabilizes. We’ll talk some more then.”
She felt some of her giddiness fade—at the thought that he wouldn’t confide in her, at the realization that he was actually leaving, she wasn’t really sure. “The world never stabilizes,” she says. “It only changes.”
He bent in to kiss her on the cheek, a curiously comforting gesture. “But some things endure,” he said. “Word of a hunti man.”
Josetta was back the next day, trailed by two guards in addition to the watchful Foley. “Darien insisted,” she said when Zoe asked about her expanded escort as they traveled to Sarone’s. “He says there is too much chaos because of the plans for the viceroy’s visit, and things can go wrong. Corene has three guards following her everywhere, too, and Natalie. Although Natalie goes nowhere without Romelle, and Romelle scarcely leaves the palace, so I don’t know how much danger she could possibly be in.”
“Is Romelle still feeling unwell?”
“Yes, but only in the mornings. I think she just doesn’t want to go to Elidon’s breakfasts anymore.”
“Now, that’s something I should have thought of when I lived at the palace! Although it’s tedious to pretend to be sick. Every day, at that. I think it’s much better for me just not to live in the palace at all.”
Josetta wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think I would want to live in a hotel all the time, either.”
“It has its disadvantages,” Zoe admitted. “Keeli has found a house for me here in the city but I haven’t had time to look it over. Would you like to go see it today?”
Josetta agreeing to that suggestion with enthusiasm, they cut short their swim by about twenty minutes to tour the house Keeli had picked out. It was not nearly as large as Sarone’s place, but Zoe had asked for something small enough to be manageable, and she considered it charming. Public rooms and necessary spaces were thoughtfully laid out on the bottom story, while upstairs a cluster of bedrooms offered places for the owner and any guests to sleep in comfort. All the walls were covered in paints or papers of soothing blues and greens; there was a fountain in every room. Even the kierten featured a wall of running water endlessly splashing down a slab of malachite into a grillwork drain. It was clear a coru family had lived here in the past.
“I love it,” Josetta said, “but no room for a pool!”
“Close enough to walk to Keeli’s,” Zoe said. “And not far from my uncle Nelson, either. It does seem perfect.”
“Then I think you should buy it.”
“Then I think I probably will.”
On firstday, Nelson invited her to dinner, a small affair where only family members were in attendance. It gave her a good opportunity to observe Kurtis’s son and daughter, rambunctious ten-year-old twins with hair so red it lit the darkness. She liked the way they tumbled through the room, rarely in their seats for more than five minutes at a stretch, but she had to admit the mood was much more peaceful after the meal, when their mother took them up to bed. The rest of them moved to a sitting room filled with extravagantly plush furniture and more candles than she had ever seen in one place at one time. The flames were reflected from dozens of small mirrors, doubling the light.
“You’ll be at the palace tomorrow afternoon for the reception?” Kurtis asked.
“I’ve been issued an invitation that read more like a command,” she answered with a laugh. “I would not dare miss it.”
“Did you see the viceroy’s convoy arriving this morning?” Rhan demanded. “There had to be fifteen carriages, one right after the other! Traffic on the Cinque was snarled for hours.”
“I saw that! I pushed to the front of the crowd, because I wanted to get a good look at the viceroy’s face. I spotted him once before during a parade and I thought he looked like someone who was not very nice.”
“I don’t believe he is,” Nelson spoke up. “Your father met him years ago when he and Damon Serlast and a whole delegation went to Soeche-Tas. I think the word Navarr used to describe the viceroy was ‘debauched.’”
“So you know he has to be a lecher or a drunk if a sweela man despises his excesses,” Rhan said with a grin.<
br />
“What did he do that was so awful?” Zoe asked. Darien hadn’t told her, but she didn’t think her uncle would be so squeamish.
Nelson squinted, as if that would help him remember details. “I think it was the whole Soechin society that repulsed him. He said the viceroy sent concubines to his room every night and was astonished when your father turned down their services.”
“My father did?” Zoe said dryly. “I find that surprising.”
“They were girls. Ten and eleven years old,” Nelson said in a quiet voice. “Each night, they sent him someone younger, thinking the problem was that he considered his potential bedmates too old.” He shrugged. “The whole country is obsessed with youth, but I admit this was a particularly disturbing story.”
Zoe took a deep breath. “No wonder he was so opposed to the alliance with Soeche-Tas.”
“Yes, though I think he tried to argue against it for political reasons, not cultural ones. I’m not sure how widely he told the story of the concubines sent to his room. He knew his own reputation might turn it into a ribald tale, instead of a tragic one. Damon Serlast only told the tale once that I overheard it, but it was clear he never cared much for the viceroy, either.”
“No, and now I hate him as well!” Kurtis exclaimed. Zoe wondered if he was thinking of his own red-haired daughter and how poorly she would fare in the viceroy’s land.
“How long will he be here, do you know?” she asked.
“Five days, so I hear,” Nelson replied. “And all his attending advisors go home with him, which will finally put the city back to normal.”
“I’m looking forward to his departure,” Zoe said.
“As are we all,” Nelson said. “I’m eager to spend my days at court talking about something besides Soeche-Tas.” He laughed. “Now that I am welcome back at court, at least let me have conversation that matters!”