“Learnèd Doctor Roos.” He bowed, panting. “I come from the honored Governor of Ginura.”
Niclays braced himself. She must have changed her mind about letting him stay here.
“She asks me to inform you,” the servant said, “that you will be expected at Ginura Castle for an audience when it pleases the all-honored Warlord.”
Niclays raised his eyebrows. “The all-honored Warlord wishes to see me? Are you quite sure?”
“Yes.”
The servant bowed out of the room.
“So you will be received at court.” Eizaru looked amused. “Be ready. They say it is like a reef of sea flowers. Beautiful, but everything you touch will sting.”
“I can hardly wait,” Niclays said, but his brow knitted. “I wonder why he wants to see me.”
“The all-honored Warlord likes to hear from the Mentish settlers. Sometimes he will ask to hear a song or a story from your country. Or he may wish to know what sort of work you are doing,” Eizaru said. “It will be nothing to worry about, Niclays, truly.”
“And until then, you are free,” Purumé pointed out, eyes twinkling. “Let us show you our city while you are out of Orisima. We could visit the theatre, speak about medicine, see the dragons in flight—anything you have wanted to do since you arrived.”
Niclays could have wept with gratitude.
“Truly, my friends,” he said, “I should like nothing better.”
19
West
Loth followed the Donmata Marosa through yet another passageway. Torchlight baked his eyes as he edged between the sweating walls.
Days after he had last heard from her, she had told him to meet her again in a darkened solar. Now they were in a warren of tunnels behind the walls, where a clever system of copper pipes conducted water from the hot springs to the bedchambers.
At the end of the passage was a spiraling stair. The Donmata began to ascend.
“Where are you taking me?” Loth said stiffly.
“We are going to meet the one who plotted the murder of Queen Rosarian.”
His hand grew clammy on the torch.
“I am sorry, incidentally,” she said, “for making you dance with Priessa. It was the only way to get you the message.”
“Could she not have given it to me in the coach?” he muttered.
“No. She was searched before she left the palace, and the coach driver was a spy, there to ensure she could not flee. No one is permitted to leave Cárscaro for long.”
The Donmata detached a key from her girdle. When Loth followed her through the door she unlocked, he coughed on the dust in the chamber beyond, where the only light stemmed from his torch. The furniture stank of sickness and decay, with a mordant edge of vinegar.
The Donmata lifted her veil and draped it over a chair. Loth followed her toward a four-poster bed, hardly breathing for fear, and held up his torch.
A blindfolded figure sat in the bed. Loth made out waxen skin, charcoal lips, and chestnut hair that straggled to the collar of a crimson bedgown. Chains bound two emaciated arms. Red lines branched down them, following the tracery of his veins.
“What is this?” Loth murmured. “This is the killer?”
The Donmata folded her arms. Her jaw was a steady line, her eyes bereft of emotion.
“Lord Arteloth,” she said, “I present to you my lord father, Sigoso the Third of the House of Vetalda, Flesh King of the Draconic Kingdom of Yscalin. Or what is left of him.”
Loth looked back at the man in disbelief.
Even before the betrayal of Yscalin, he had not seen King Sigoso, but in his portraits, he had always looked hale and handsome, if cold, with the amber eyes of the Vetalda. Sabran had invited him to court several times, but he had always preferred to send representatives.
“A flesh king rules as the puppet of a wyrm. A title Fyredel hopes to bestow on every ruler in the world.” The Donmata walked around the bed. “Father has a rare form of the Draconic plague. It allows Fyredel to … commune with him, somehow. To see and hear into the palace.”
“You mean at this very moment—”
“Peace. I put a sedative in his evening drink,” she said. “I cannot do it often, or Fyredel becomes suspicious, but it keeps the wyrm from using him. For a short while.”
At the sound of her voice, Sigoso stirred.
“I had no idea wyrms could do such a thing.” Loth swallowed. “Control a body.”
“When High Westerns die, the fire goes out in the wyverns who serve them, and in the progeny those wyverns sired. Perhaps this is a similar kind of connection.”
“How long has he been like this?”
“Two years.”
He had fallen ill when Yscalin had betrayed Virtudom. “How did he become this?”
“First you must hear the truth,” the Donmata said. “My father remembers enough to tell you.”
“Marosa,” Sigoso croaked. “Marossssa.”
Loth flinched at his voice. It was as if a knot of rattlesnakes were nesting in his throat.
“Where are you, daughter?” the king asked very softly. “Must I come and find you?”
Expressionless, the Donmata turned to him and set about removing the blindfold. Though she wore velvet gloves that covered her to the elbow, Loth could not breathe while she was so close to her father, fearing Sigoso might bite through the velvet or make a grab for her face. When the blindfold came away, Sigoso bared his teeth. His eyes were no longer topaz, but gray all the way through. Hollows of cold ash.
“I hope you slept well, Father,” the Donmata said in Inysh.
“I dreamed of a clock tower and a woman with a fire within her. I dreamed she was my enemy.” King Sigoso stared at Loth, flexing his arms in their chains. “Who is this?”
“This is Lord Arteloth Beck of Goldenbirch. He is our new ambassador from Inys.” The Donmata forced a smile. “I wondered if you would care to tell him how Queen Rosarian died.”
Sigoso breathed like a bellows. His gaze darted between them, a hunter sizing up two morsels.
“I ended Rosarian.”
The way he spoke that name, rolling it about on his tongue like a comfit, gave Loth a chill.
“Why?” the Donmata said.
“That venereal slut refused my hand. The hand of royalty,” Sigoso spat out. The cords in his neck strained. “She would rather whore herself for pirates and lordlings than unite with the blood of the House of Vetalda—” Spittle ran from his mouth. “Daughter, I am burning.”
With a glance at Loth, the Donmata went to his nightstand, where a cloth lay beside a bowl of water. She soaked the cloth and set it on his brow.
“I had her a gown made,” Sigoso continued. “A gown of such beauty that a vain harlot like Rosarian could never resist it. I had it laced with basilisk venom I bought from a merchant prince, and I sent it to Inys to be hid among her garments.”
Loth was shivering. “Who hid it?” he whispered. “Who hid the gown?”
“He will not speak to anyone but me,” the Donmata murmured. “Father, who hid the gown?”
“A friend in the palace.”
“In the palace,” Loth echoed. “By the Saint. Who?”
The Donmata repeated his question. Sigoso chuckled, but it splintered into a cough.
“The cupbearer,” he said.
Loth stared. The position of cupbearer had been defunct for centuries.
The gown would have been planted in the Privy Wardrobe. The Mistress of the Robes at the time had been Lady Arbella Glenn, and she would never have hurt her queen.
“I hope,” Sigoso said, “that there was some of the strumpet left to bury. Basilisk venom is so strong.” He hacked up a laugh. “Even bone yields before its bite.”
At this, Loth drew his baselard.
“Forgive my lord father.” The Donmata gazed soullessly at the Flesh King. “I would say that he is not himself, but I think he is as much himself as he has ever been.”
Disgusted, Loth took a step toward the bed. “The Knight of Courage turns his back to you, Sigoso Vetalda,” he said, voice quaking. “Her hand was hers to give to whomever she desired. Damn you to the Womb of Fire.”
Sigoso smiled. “I am there,” he said, “and it is paradise.”
The gray in his eyes flickered. Red flecks ignited inside them, like embers.
“Fyredel.” The Donmata snatched a cup from the nightstand. “Father, drink this. It will ease the pain.”
She pressed it to his lips. Never taking his gaze from Loth, Sigoso drank what was inside. Overcome by what he had heard, Loth let the Donmata usher him out.
His mother, Lady Annes Beck, had been with the Queen Mother when she died. Now he understood why neither she nor Sabran had ever been able to utter a word to him about the day Rosarian had been laced into that lovely gown. Why Lady Arbella Glenn, who had loved her like her own child, had never uttered a word again.
Loth sank onto the steps. As he shook, he became aware of the Donmata behind him.
“Why have me listen to him?” he asked. “Why not just tell me?”
“So that you could see and hear the truth,” she said, “and deliver it to Sabran. And so that you would believe it, and not leave thinking that a mystery still lies in Yscalin.”
The Donmata sat on the step behind his, so their heads were level. She placed a silk-wrapped bundle into her lap.