VII. Noontide
MIDDAY SAW THE COURT LADIES RETIRED TO THE SANCTUARY TO HOLD VIGIL FOR PRINCESS ANJA. THE MARBLE-FACED BUILDING, WITH ITS queer, triangular portals and gold spires, crowned the highest point in the city. From the pinnacle at the stairhead, the view encompassed the three tiers of the walls, with the banners over the Highgate streaming like snippets of scarlet yarn in the breeze. Above, the sky hung like a bowl, the horizon notched by the serried ramparts of the peaks, dazzling under the sunlight.
‘There, do you see them?’ Sweating out the dregs of his binge, his face ashen from the rigorous ascent, Prince Kailen pointed from his perch on the paw of the stone lion flanking the Sanctuary’s entry. ‘Kerries will pluck mountain sheep off the high cliffs. You can tell where they nest by the middens of bones piled under the ledges.’
Far off, two pairs of black specks circled, the outstretched curve of their wings delicate as pen strokes in the clear air.
‘They don’t threaten cattle?’ Devall’s heir apparent leaned on the lion’s tail, a touch breathless in his neat velvet. His retinue of servants, strung out below, still laboured to climb the steep stair.
‘They can.’ Eyes shut, since the stabbing brilliance played havoc with his pounding hangover, Kailen added, ‘For centuries, the guard’s archers fare out every spring to hunt down the fledgling young. Adults who lair in the close peaks are poisoned. Naught can be done with the mated pairs flocked in the rookeries over Hell’s Chasm. The country’s too rough to clean the nests out, so we’ll never be rid of the scourge.’
‘No boon to invaders,’ the Prince of Devall observed. He peered into the shadowed interior of the Sanctuary where lighted candles flickered like stars. ‘How long, before your court ladies retire?’
Kailen yawned. ‘Not long.’ He settled his broad shoulders against the lion’s stone mane in a vain effort to ease his discomfort. ‘The priest and priestess lead the prayers at midnight and noon. There, can you hear? They are ending the ritual.’
Inside, echoing under the cavernous vault, a male speaker cried praise to the powers above. Voices murmured in answer. Then the boys’ choir chanted the final verses pleading for intercession. The singing rang out with a purity to scald human heartstrings, the liquid-glass harmony braided into the spruce-scented hush of high altitude.
The Prince of Devall inhaled the wafted perfume of the incense, ringed fingers tapping his knee. While the first of his puffing lackeys arrived, he bent his hawk’s survey downwards. ‘Merciful grace! In such close-knit quarters, how can one woman whose face is well known vanish without leaving a trace?’
‘The king’s men will find her. They must!’ Kailen cradled his aching head, the heart of the realm he would one day inherit spread below like a model in miniature. The sun-washed tableau seemed peaceful as ever.
Only small details bespoke the grave trouble slipped in through the well-guarded gates. Taskin’s patrols came and went, double-file rows of neat lancers threading through the carriage traffic in the broad avenues above Highgate. In the queen’s formal gardens, amid lawns like set emeralds, two dozen tiny surcoated figures enacted the midday change of the guard.
The sun, angle shifting, sparkled off the polished globe of a flag spire. The slate and lead roofs of the palace precinct dropped in gabled steps downwards, in cool contrast to the terracotta tile of the merchants’ mansions, crowded in rows like boxed gingerbread above the arched turrets of Middlegate. There, the tree-lined streets ran like seams in patchwork, jammed by the colours of private house guards helping to search for the princess. Their industry seethed past the courtyard gardens, scattered like squares of dropped silk, and stitched with rosettes where the flowering shrubs adorned the pillared gazebos.
Farthest down, hemmed by the jagged embrasures of stone battlements, the lower town hugged the slope like a rickle of frayed burlap, the roofs there a welter of weathered thatch, and craftsmen’s sheds shingled with pine shakes. Mykkael’s garrison troops kept their watch on the outermost walls, the men reduced as toys, bearing pins and needles for weaponry.
Beyond spread the living panorama that was Sessalie, a terraced array of grain fields and pastureland carved into the sides of the vale, joined down the middle by the white tumble of the river. On the east bank, snagged by the planks of the footbridges, the trade road snaked towards the lowcountry.
The gong that signalled the close of the vigil sounded inside the Sanctuary Devall’s laggard retinue scrambled clear of the stair, while the priest and priestess filed out, bearing the staff with the triangle representing the trinity. After them, the veiled acolytes bore the symbolic fire in a golden pan lined with coals.
Prince Kailen clambered down from the lion’s stone leg, astute enough to pay the recessional a semblance of decorous respect.
Presently the court ladies emerged, the deep shade of the Sanctuary disgorging the sparkle of jewelled combs as they slipped off their white veils in the sunlight.
‘There’s Shai.’ The crown prince moved in with athletic grace, despite his wasted condition. He breasted the flower-petal milling of skirts, bestowing kind words and sincere apologies, while the High Prince of Devall trailed in his wake, drawing a ripple of admiring glances.
The woman they sought was slender and retiring, clad in a shimmering bodice of roped pearls and a dress the shade of spring irises. She had paused by the entry, perhaps to commiserate, surrounded by a cluster of merchants’ wives, who paraded their wealth in a peacock display of jewels and stylish importance.
For royalty, they gave ground with flattering speed. Swallowed into the pack, Crown Prince Kailen adroitly deflected their courteous murmurs of sympathy. ‘Pray excuse us, we came to seek cousin Shai.’
Just as adept, Devall’s heir apparent shed their female fawning with mannered good grace. As Shai turned her head, he captured her hand, his polished expression attentive and grave as he measured her burden of grief.
At close quarters, the famous violet eyes were inflamed, and the lily complexion expertly powdered to mask over traces of crying.
‘Forgive me, Lady Shai,’ the High Prince of Devall apologized. ‘Our intrusion is scarcely a kindness, I realize. But is there a place nearby for us to retire to? Your cousin and I would appreciate the chance to address you privately’
Shai touched her trembling fingertips to her lips. ‘Not bad news?’ Her eyes brimmed. ‘You haven’t brought tragic word of the princess?’
Hemmed in by the close press of women, and wary of Bertarra’s peremptory inquiry from the sidelines, Prince Kailen interjected, ‘Shai, no. We have no ill news. No word at all, in sad fact. Taskin’s men haven’t found any trace of my sister.’
‘That’s why we need you.’ The High Prince of Devall shifted his protective grip to Shai’s arm and drew her into the shelter of his company.
Prince Kailen took station on her other side. ‘The Sanctuary has a walled garden nearby, where the priesthood retire for contemplation.’
‘The garden should do nicely. Shall we go?’ The Prince of Devall inclined his head in salute to the hovering ladies. Then he smiled and moved Shai on through the press by the sovereign grace of his kindness.
In dappled shade, soothed by a natural spring that burbled from the flank of the mountain, the High Prince of Devall set Shai lightly down. He stood, Prince Kailen beside him, while she arranged the fall of her skirts over a marble bench. Her small hands flickered with filigree rings set with moonstone and amethyst. Neat as a doll, she could not have been more unlike the princess who was her friend and close confidante.
Where Anja was diminutively tough and outspoken, her frame slim as a boy’s from her manic delight in racing King Isendon’s blood horseflesh, Shai was like elegant fine china. She preferred her petticoats hemmed in thread lace, and her sleeves sewn with embroidered ribbons.
Once settled, she raised her beautiful eyes. ‘I’ve already told Taskin everything I know, which is nothing.’ She regarded the princes, her oval face drawn, and her intelligent, domed brow faintly lined with exasperation. ‘Her Grace scarcely spoke to me since your Highness of Devall’s arrival. Whatever thoughts she had on her mind, she had little opportunity to share them.’
The heir apparent knelt, his face level with hers. ‘Did the princess not seek your opinion concerning the clothes she would wear for the banquet?’
‘Powers, no!’ Shai set the back of her hand to her mouth and stifled a small burst of laughter. ‘That’s a detail she would have left to her handmaid. Writing poetry interested her Grace far more than fussing over her wardrobe. But even if that had not been the case, you must realize, she had no time!’
When Devall looked blank, Prince Kailen propped his back against a nearby beech tree and explained. ‘Since our mother Queen Anjoulie died, my sister has held the keys to the palace.’
‘She manages the staff,’ Shai went on, the veil she had worn in the Sanctuary caught up and wrung between her tense fingers. ‘For years, her Grace has made the decisions that run the royal household. The kitchen defers to her wishes. Visiting royalty meant stock must be slaughtered, with additional provisions bought in from the countryside, and perhaps a dozen village girls hired to help handle the chores and the linen.’
The High Prince of Devall absorbed this, then stated, ‘Could such women have insinuated themselves in the palace, then acted in covert conspiracy?’
‘Highness, no! They are no more than unskilled children.’ Shai’s tremulous smile came and went as she added, ‘The oldest of them is barely fourteen years of age. The girls make up beds, and sweep cobwebs from corners the older drudges can’t reach. The strongest ones haul the hot water for the laundresses, and probably stoke the fires under the cauldrons that scald your evening bath water.’
Prince Kailen agreed that the hirelings posed Anja no threat. ‘The girls are the offspring of farmers known back to the seventh generation. They don’t read or write. I doubt any one of them has travelled a step past the riverfront market, and Taskin himself runs the inquiry to make sure they are of good character.’
The heir apparent of Devall frowned and changed tack. ‘What about Princess Anja? Lady Shai, you know her, none better. Did she show no sign of tension, no change in habits?’
‘By glory, you men!’ Shai regarded her paired escort in amazement. ‘Princess Anja is madly in love! Every habit she had has been thrown topsyturvy, which left every one of us guessing.’
‘What about make-up?’ the foreign prince pressed. ‘Did her Grace use more powder or eye paint than usual, perhaps to mask signs of strain?’
‘Of course she would, silly! For excitement, not strain!’ Shai dealt the lowcountry prince’s wrist a light slap with her veil, as though he were a dense-witted brother. ‘Any maiden offered a match such as yours would take pains to maintain her best looks. Particularly her Grace, who never cared if she freckled from too much sun, or scratched her skin in the brambles.’
The Prince of Devall looked down, perhaps abashed, his ringed hands clasped in tight anguish. ‘I want her back, safe! You must know, she is dear to me. Scrapes and freckles notwithstanding, I love her for her sharp wits, and her reckless humour, and for the sterling kindness that makes Sessalie’s people adore her.’ He glanced up, his features drawn to wounded entreaty. ‘I could search my whole life and not take a finer woman to wife, or bring home a stronger queen for my realm. I need Anja because she has captured my heart, until I could look at no other.’
Shai touched her crushed veil to her lips; her violet eyes welled with tears. ‘Oh, your Highness, I see how you cherish her. Don’t you think I would give anything to restore her Grace to your side?’ Shoulders bowed, she struggled to master her grief. ‘Nothing I know could have caused the princess to leave us. Beyond any doubt, she must be in the hands of someone who seeks Sessalie’s ruin.’
‘You didn’t notice anything amiss?’ Prince Kailen pleaded, low-voiced and equally desperate. ‘Anything, Shai, no matter how small. That one little detail might hold the clue to safeguard the princess’s life.’
As the maiden shook her head in distress, the High Prince of Devall entreated, ‘Think carefully, lady. You may not be aware, but last night, one of the palace drudges was found dead, with no mark on her of natural causes.’
Shai widened filled eyes. ‘Mercy on that poor woman, and upon all of us, for our failure. I’ve told Taskin I know nothing again and again!’
Torn raw, Shai appealed to Prince Kailen. ‘Your Highness of Sessalie, I scarcely saw her Grace more than a moment, and only from a distance since the Prince of Devall rode with his train through our gates! On that hour, the princess was giddy, even breathless with excitement. I swear by every bright power above, she could not have suspected the least shadow of danger. She had but one thought, one dream, on her mind. That guiding star was the name of his Highness of Devall, who came to lay claim to her hand!’
‘That’s quite enough!’ cracked an intrusive aged voice. ‘Your Highnesses, yes! Both of you.’ A stick-thin old matron invaded the grotto, fierce carriage as upright as any commander laying into brash recruits.
‘The Duchess of Phail,’ Prince Kailen murmured, a wry curve to his lips. ‘Don’t let her fool you. She’s a treasure with steel principles, and an unbending penchant for kindness. Used to rescue the frogs I brought home in my pockets, and box the ears of the pages if she caught them at bullying spiders.’
The elderly woman bore in, her porcelain-fine frame stiff with outrage. ‘Can’t you rude brutes see a thing with young eyes? Lady Shai is already devastated. Your badgering questions just add to her heartbreak without helping the princess one bit.’
‘Lady Phail, we are going,’ Prince Kailen said, his hands raised in abject surrender. ‘Trust me, we respect Lady Shai and have no desire to savage her feelings.’
Lady Phail gave a snort through her patrician nose. ‘Well, that broth of tears has already been spilled!’
Her disgusted glance measured one prince, then the other, as though she debated which of the pair most deserved to be thrashed with her cane. In the end, Shai’s distress put an end to debate, inept male minds not being wont to give ground for any wise woman’s sensibilities. Lady Phail ploughed straight on past, clasped her frail arms over the weeping woman’s bowed shoulders, and delivered a glare like a lioness.
‘Get along, boys! You’re making things that much worse with your gawping.’
Hazed past the finesse of his lowcountry manners, the High Prince of Devall bowed and beat a retreat. Kailen, no fool, snatched his sleeve as he turned, and deflected his course down a bypath that wound through the shrubbery. The tactic was timely. Past the screening of leaves, a bouquet of coloured silk flashed in the midday sunshine. Bertarra’s carping rose loudest over the chorus as the other court ladies descended to console Lady Shai.
The heir apparent of Devall glanced over his shoulder in bemused appreciation. ‘Your sister rules that shark pack of harpies?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Kailen grinned. ‘With all of our mother’s cast-iron charm.’ As though his sore head had begun to relent, his blue eyes brightened with fond memory. ‘Bertarra’s scared green of her.’
‘Well, I see how your sister acquired her strong will.’ Broken out of the fringing border of evergreen, the Prince of Devall approached the stone arch leading back to the sanctuary courtyard. ‘We’re no closer to finding where Anja might be.’
‘Well, you’ve satisfied one point,’ said Kailen, dispirited. ‘Lady Shai doesn’t know anything.’
‘That,’ said the high prince, ‘or else she’s a consummate actress.’
‘Lady Shai?’ Prince Kailen glanced sideways in unbridled surprise. ‘She’s intelligent, and no fool. But she’s never dissembled, not once in her life.’
The gate’s shadow fell over them. Gloom darkened the heir apparent’s maroon velvet to black, and muted the shine of his rubies and gold studs. His profile, trained forward, showed no expression.
‘The suspicion’s unfounded,’ insisted the crown prince. ‘When my sister played pranks, it was always Shai’s face that got her Grace into trouble.’
‘Not this time, to our sorrow.’ The heir apparent of Devall stalked towards the steep stair and began his descent, his fierce steps ringing on the carved granite. ‘You do realize, I will find her Grace, no matter the means or the cost. If an enemy has marked her out for a target, I shall not rest until they are smoked out. Your realm’s honour and mine are as one in this matter. As Devall’s High Prince, I promise this much: when we catch the man who has dared to lay hands on my beloved, I will see him sentenced to the ugliest death allotted by law in my realm.’
By the change in the watch, Commander Taskin had questioned the wine steward’s boys and ascertained that none had seen the sorcerer’s mark on the broom closet. The bottled vintage brought upstairs for the feast had been fetched in the late afternoon the day prior. No one but the drudge who swept and mopped tables had occasion to visit the cellars during the evening. The old woman who was dead of an unknown cause, since the king’s most learned physician had encountered no proof of a poisoning.
The patrols ridden out to search by the river had lamed a good horse, finding nothing. By now, any trail would be chopped to muck, since the seneschal’s move to involve the crown council had posted an official note of reward. Brash adventurers from all walks of life scoured the brush, and talk of a scandal ran rampant. Princess Anja’s plight was bandied by drunks in the taverns, while half of the Middlegate merchants tied black streamers to their doors, given over to premature mourning.
Taskin, short of sleep, weighed out his next options. He dreaded to face another interview with the king, with nothing conclusive in hand. The prospect of forcing a house-to-house search raised his temper to an edge that his officers knew not to cross. They shouldered the orders he saw fit to dispatch, and assigned men to the tasks without grumbling.
Jussoud sensed the subdued atmosphere in the palace wardroom upon his delayed return from his morning call at the garrison. The commander, he learned, had sent the day sergeant to grill the gate watch for the third time.
‘Bright powers, they saw nothing,’ the wizened old servant who polished the parade armour confided. Evidently the gallery above was not occupied, which loosened his garrulous tongue. He spat on his rag, dipped up more grit, and talked, while the helm in his hands acquired the high shine expected of guards in the palace precinct. ‘Last night was a botch-up. All those carriages, coming and going, filled with greatfolk, and each one with their grooms and footmen and lackeys? Can’t keep tight security on the occasion of a royal feast. Anybody forewarned and determined could have slipped in through Highgate unremarked.’
Jussoud set down his burden of remedies, hot and out of sorts from his uphill trek through unusually crowded streets. ‘Where can I find the commander?’
‘Himself?’ The servant returned a glance, bird-bright with sympathy. ‘He’s up the east tower with Dedorth’s seeing glass. You think you’re going up there?’ The oldster pursed his lips in a silent whistle. ‘Brave man. Tread softly, you hear? Last I saw, our commander was in a fit state to spit nails.’
Dedorth’s glass, at that moment, was trained on the fine figures cut by two princes, descending the steep avenue of stairs leading down from the Sanctuary Taskin addressed the officer who stood in attendance without shifting his eye from his vantage. ‘I want a watch set to guard Lady Shai. Also get two more reliable men and assign them to stay with the crown prince. Right now, soldier! As you go, tell the sergeant at large in the wardroom I plan to be down directly’
‘My lord.’ The officer strode off down the steep, spiralled stair, armour scraping the stone wall as he gripped the worn handrail. His footsteps, descending, faded with distance, then subsided to a whisper of echoes.
Alone in the observatory’s stifling heat, as the noon sun beat on the bronze cupola, Taskin swung the seeing glass on its tripod stand. Its cut circle of view swooped over the alpine meadows, then the scrub forests that clothed the rock pinnacles under the glare of the snow line. He scanned the folds of the glens, then the deep, tumbled dells with the leaping, white streamers of waterfalls. Deer moved at their browsing, tails switching flies; hunting peregrines traced their lazy spirals on outstretched slate wings. A mother bear drowsed near her gambolling cubs. Of human activity, he found none.
The trade road, repeatedly quartered, had yielded nothing out of the ordinary, and Dedorth, closely questioned, had been little use, immersed through the night in his vacuous habit of stargazing. The old scholar had not learned of the upset at court until his sleepy servant had fetched up his breakfast at sunrise.
By then, Princess Anja had been over ten hours gone.
Taskin laced frustrated fingers over the bronze tube of the glass. His circling thoughts yielded no fresh ideas; only rammed headlong against his enraging helplessness. Accustomed to direct action, and to successes accomplished through competence, the Commander of the Guard chafed himself raw. Scores of men at his fingertips, and an open note on the king’s treasury, and yet, he could find no lead, no clear-cut outlet to pursue.
King Isendon’s anguish tore at the heart. Taskin fumed, empty-handed, stung to empathy each time he encountered his own daughter, secure with his grandchild at home. Never before this had the quiet realm of Sessalie been rocked to the frightening rim of instability. The very foundation underpinning his life seemed transformed overnight to the tremulous fragility of cobwebs. Nor had the gossip of merchants and farmwives ever carried such a poisonous overtone of potentially treasonous threat.
The bitter sense gnawed him that he dispatched the king’s horsemen over black ice, with no point of access to plumb the deep current that endangered the firm ground under their feet.
‘Powers!’ Taskin whispered, prisoned by the close air, with its bookish must of dried ink and unswept cobwebs, ‘let me not fail in my duty to Isendon, to keep his two offspring from harm.’
Far below, the latch on the outer door clanged. A deliberate tread entered the stairwell. Taskin marked the step as Jussoud’s, the muted slap of woven rush sandals distinct from the hobnailed soles of his guardsmen.
Loath to be caught in maudlin vulnerability, the commander spun the glass and reviewed the vigilance of the garrison watch on the crenels of the lower battlements. He found no man slack at his post, under Mykkael, which lent him no target upon which to vent his trapped anger when Jussoud reached the observatory.
Unmoving, his attention still trained through the glass, Taskin opened at once with a reprimand. ‘You are late, by two hours.’
Jussoud leaned on the door jamb, his empty hands clasped. His reply held slight breathlessness from his climb, but no surprised note of rancour. ‘If you’ve been at the glass since the midday gong, you’ll have seen the press, above Middlegate.’
‘I need not see, to imagine,’ Taskin answered, now stubbornly combing the warren of streets by the Falls Gate. ‘The seneschal’s been very busy, all morning, setting stamps upon royal requisitions.’
‘So I observed,’ said Jussoud. ‘Every man with a grandsire’s rusty sword is abroad, seeking reward gold and adventure. They’ll be clouding your evidence.’
‘If we had any,’ Taskin snapped, suddenly tired of watching the anthill seethe of the commons. ‘Two leads, both of them slipped through our fingers. A dead drudge and a drowned seeress. The loose talk claims Mysh kael killed them. Did you listen?’
‘To what purpose?’ Jussoud sighed. ‘Could his talents enable a sorcerer’s work? I don’t know. Logic argues the desert-bred’s not such a fool. Capable of setting a death bane, or not, why should a man with his training strike to kill in a way that would cause a sensation? As for the seeress, he had been in the moat. I saw his damp clothes cast off on the floor where he left them. For a murderer who supposedly drowned an old woman, he had taken no trouble to hide the incriminating evidence.’
Taskin lifted his head, his regard no less ruthlessly focused as he abandoned the seeing glass. ‘Mysh kael’s true to his oath to the crown, you believe.’
‘If I had to set trust in surface appearances,’ Jussoud admitted, reluctant, ‘the debate could be carried both ways.’
‘I sent down a lancer to bring the man in. He is also delayed, by now well beyond the grace of a plausible excuse.’ Taskin straightened, all business. ‘Do you know what became of him?’
Jussoud stared back, his grey eyes unblinking. ‘He waylaid Mykkael in a darkened stairwell.’
‘Fool.’ The commander’s long fingers tightened on the seeing glass, sole sign of his inward distress. ‘He’s alive to regret?’
The healer nodded. ‘Unharmed, and unmarked, in fact. Mykkael stopped him cold with a blow that stunned the nerves that govern involuntary reflex. Then he used direct pressure and cut off the blood flow through the arteries to the brain only long enough to drop your guardsman unconscious. I find that sort of efficiency chilling, a precision far beyond any nightmare I could imagine.’
‘Barqui’ino drill alters the synapses of the mind.’ Taskin stepped back, leaned against the stone wall, while the pigeons cooed in liquid murmurs from their roosts in the eaves overhead. ‘Then you’ve seen this desertman use skills that can kill, and leave no telltale bruise on the corpse.’
Jussoud said nothing. His sallow skin shone with sweat in the spilled glare of sun off the sills of the casements.
‘Where is my guardsman?’ Taskin said, his probe delicate.
‘On his feet, under orders, as far as I know still searching the town for the captain.’ Reliant on trust earned through years of intelligent service, Jussoud dared a tacit rebuke. ‘Shaken as your guard was, and exhausted after a night of rigorous duty, he was more afraid to return empty-handed. His search at this point will scarcely bear fruit. Mykkael left the garrison, masked under your officer’s purloined cloak. The garment was found later, draped over the drawbridge railing. Even the keep gate watch could not say where the captain went, or what he pursued on his errands.’
Taskin grimaced. ‘I’ll have that guard recalled. How many more men should I send to accomplish the charge of fetching Mysh kael uptown for review?’
‘None.’ Jussoud absorbed the commander’s surprise, unsmiling. ‘You won’t have to collect Mykkael, even if his stiff-necked pride would allow it. The captain asked me to deliver his report from the garrison, and to add, he will meet you himself at the Highgate. You can expect him in person by mid-afternoon.’
The older campaigner’s silvered brows rose. ‘How arrogant of the upstart, to dictate to me. What facts has he chosen to deliver, meanwhile?’
Jussoud recited, choosing Mykkael’s own words, and clipped sentences that did not elaborate. The close details he had overheard from the garrison’s watch officer shed no more useful light on the knotted problems at hand.
‘Nothing and nothing,’ Taskin snapped, eyes shut through the pause as he gathered himself. His ascetic face looked suddenly drawn against its lean framework of bone. Then his eggshell lids opened. Direct as forged steel, he said. ‘So much for bare facts. Now say what you think.’
Prepared for that command, Jussoud nonetheless chose his honest words with reluctance. ‘I think Mykkael knows, or is hardset in pursuit of firm evidence that will reveal the fate that’s befallen her Grace. He said she’s endangered. Not why or how. I’d hazard two guesses. That he’s loyal, but has a strong reason not to trust where he shares his information. Or else he’s involved with an ugly conspiracy, and doing a magnificent job for the party that wants to obstruct us.’
Taskin nodded, relieved, his respect for the healer grown to the stature he would have accorded a peer. ‘We aren’t wont to warm to a man of his breeding. The court gossip condemns him. His background checks clean, but he was a hired sword and a mercenary. He might have been commissioned a long time in advance, and sent here to win his key position through the opening of our summer tourney’
‘He is a weapon, well sharpened to spearhead whatever cause buys his service,’ Jussoud agreed in blunt summary. ‘He could be the best chance we have to find Princess Anja, or he might be the cipher to cast Sessalie to the wolves that would tear her succession asunder.’ A fraught moment later, he braved the soft inquiry, ‘Will you leave the man free, or restrain him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Taskin answered, his trim shoulders set to withstand an unprecedented burden of uncertainty. ‘You’re an astute judge of character, Jussoud. What do you feel this case merits?’
The commander watched, primed and sharp as a predator, and captured the nomad’s split-second hesitation. ‘Ah, Jussoud, you have doubts.’
The easterner sighed. ‘Just one. Not substantial.’ Mykkael had not said his own hand had killed a child; but the flicker of fear that had crossed his dark face well suggested the chance that he might have.
‘No need to elaborate,’ Taskin excused. ‘As always, your thoughts and mine seem to move in lock step. I value that, even if, with this desert-bred, the waters are dangerously clouded.’
‘Then what will you do?’ Jussoud asked, well aware he might not receive a straight answer.
Yet Taskin chose to share his rare confidence. ‘Let’s first see if Captain Mysh kael keeps his promised appointment at Highgate. If he comes in by free will, I plan to hear him. Should he have sound reasons for today’s behaviour, I’ll wait to see whether he chooses to disclose information I can use. The facts he delivers to my discretion had better hold value and substance. Once those hurdles are crossed, last of all, I must weigh the manner in which he answers to justly earned punishment.’
At Jussoud’s wary glance, Taskin said, starkly grim, ‘Oh yes, I will have to take that risk, won’t I? The brazen creature has made sure he’ll be tested. I have no choice but to handle him now that three counts lie against him, with only one of them mine, for an act of direct insubordination. He’s incurred a diplomatic insult, formally registered, that for the realm’s honour, I cannot ignore. You’ve just witnessed the third, a far more serious charge of striking a crown guard in obstruction of a royal duty.’
‘Bright powers avert!’ Jussoud warned. ‘I respect your prowess, my lord, and your sound grasp of command, but I’ve also seen Mykkael in action. Do you actually know he can kill you, that fast, on the strength of an ingrained reflex?’
Taskin drew in a shuddering breath. ‘I doubt my imagination falls short on that score. But Princess Anja’s survival may come to rely on this southern barbarian’s raw instincts. Either he’s our best hope to recover her, alive, or he’s a loose bolt of lightning, too deadly for any man’s hand to restrain. If he’s too volatile to bide under a crown soldier’s discipline, loyal or not, we can’t risk such a weapon among us.’