The Emerald Storm (The Riyria Revelations #4)

“What would help is to be able to tell him why he doesn’t need to attack.”


Archibald shook his head. “Saldur and Ethelred are still insisting on secrecy regarding the—”

The chancellor raised a hand stopping him. Archibald looked confused and the chancellor pointed at the chambermaid on her knees scrubbing the floor near the windows of his office.

Ballentyne rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. Do you really think the scrub girl is a spy?”

“I have always found it best to err on the side of caution. She doesn’t have to be a spy to get you hanged for treason.”

“She doesn’t even know what we are talking about. Besides look at her. It isn’t likely she’ll be bragging in some pub. You don’t go out at night boasting at bars do you, lass?”

Ella shook her head and refused to look up so that her brown, sweat-snarled hair continued to hang in her face.

“See!” Archibald said in a vindicated tone. “It is like censoring yourself because there is a couch or a chair in the room.”

“I was referring to a more subtle kind of danger,” Biddings told him. “Should something happen. Something unfortunate with the plan such that it fails—someone always has to be blamed. How fortunate it would be to discover a loquacious earl who had boasted details to even a mindless chambermaid.”

Archibald’s smirk faded immediately.

“The third son of a dishonored baron doesn’t rise to the rank of imperial chancellor by being stupid,” Biddings said.

“Point taken.” Archibald glanced back at the scrub girl with a new expression of loathing. “I had best return to Saldur’s office or he’ll be looking for me. Honestly, Biddings, I’m really starting to detest staying in this palace.”

“She still won’t see you?”

“No, I can’t get past her secretary. That Lady Amilia is a sly one. Plays all innocent and doe-eyed, but she guards the empress with ruthless determination. And Saldur and Ethelred are no help at all. They insist she plans to marry Ethelred. It has to be a lie. I simply can’t imagine Modina wanting that old moose.”

“Particularly when she could choose a young buck like yourself?”

“Exactly.”

“And your desire is true love, of course, with absolutely no thought how marrying Modina would make you emperor.”

“For a man who went from third baron’s son to chancellor, I am surprised you can even ask me that.”

“Archie!” bellowed the voice of Regent Saldur, echoing down the hall outside the office.

“I’m in with Biddings!” Archibald shouted back, through the open door. “And don’t call me—” He was interrupted by the sudden rush of the scrub girl running bucket in hand from the office. “Looks like she doesn’t like Saldur any more than I do.”





***




Arista had spilled scrub water onto her skirt causing it to plaster the rough material to her legs. Her thin cloth shoes made a disagreeable slapping noise as she ran down the corridor. The sound of Saldur’s voice made her run faster.

That was close, too close. Yet even as she fled through the corridor, she wondered if Saldur, who had known the princess since birth, would recognize her. There was nothing magical about her transformation, but that did not make it any less impenetrable. She wore dirty rags, lacked makeup, and her once lustrous hair was now a tangled mess. It had lightened, bleached by the same sun that tanned her skin. Still, it was more than just her appearance. Arista had changed. At times when she caught her own reflection, it took a moment to register that she was seeing herself and not some poor peasant woman. The bright-eyed girl was gone and a dark brooding spirit possessed her battered body.

More than anything else, the sheer absurdity of the situation provided the greatest protection. No one would believe that a sheltered, self-indulgent princess would willingly scrub floors in the palace of her enemy. She doubted even Saldur’s mind would grant enough latitude to penetrate the illusion. Even if some thought she looked familiar—and several seemed to—their minds simply could not bend that far. They could no more accept that she was Arista Essendon than the notion of talking pigs or that Maribor was not god. To entertain such an idea would require a mind open to new possibilities, and no one at the palace fit that description.

The only one she worried about, beside Saldur, was t empress’s secretary. She was not like the others—she noticed Arista. Amilia saw through her veneer with suspicious eyes. Saldur clearly surrounded the empress with his best and brightest and Arista did all she could to avoid her.

On the road north from Ratibor, Arista fell in with a band of refugees fleeing to Aquesta and arrived nearly a month ago. The spell led her to the palace itself. Things grew more complicated after that. If she was more confident in the magic and her ability to use it, she might have returned to Melengar right away with the news that Gaunt was a prisoner in the imperial palace. As it was, she felt the need to see him for herself. She managed to obtain a job as a chamber maid, hoping to repeat the location spell inside the castle walls at various locations, only this turned out to be impossible. Closely watched by the headmistress, Edith Mon, she rarely found enough free time and privacy to cast the spell. On the few occasions she succeeded, the smoke indicated a direction but the maze of corridors blocked any attempt to follow. Magically stymied, Arista sought to determine Gaunt’s whereabouts by eavesdropping while at the same time learning her way around the grounds.

“What have ya done now!” Edith Mon shouted at her, as Arista entered the scullery.

Arista had no idea what a hobgoblin looked like, but she guessed it probably resembled Edith Mon. She was stocky and strong. Her huge head sat on her shoulders like a boulder, crushing whatever neck she might have once had. Her face, pockmarked and spotted, provided the perfect foundation for her broad nose with its flaring nostrils through which she breathed loudly, particularly when angry, as she was now.

Edith yanked the bucket from her hands. “Ya clumsy little wench! Ya best pray you spilled it only on yerself. If I hear ya left a dirty puddle in a hallway…”