“You should come with me, Jalan. Recover from your ordeal and all that.”
“Maybe.” Watching Darin and Micha play happy families was not how I anticipated spending my first few days back in civilization. “But right now I need to see Father.”
“Back on your travels so soon, Jal?” Darin cocked his head, puzzled.
“No . . . why?” He wasn’t making sense.
“Father’s in Roma. The pope summoned him for an audience and Grandmother said he had to go.”
“Hell and fire.” I had questions that wanted answers and I might have squeezed them out of Father more easily than elsewhere. “Well . . . look, I’m going to get cleaned up and—wait, you didn’t throw out my clothes, did you?”
“Me?” Darin laughed. “Why would I go touching your peacock feathers? It’s all there as far as I know. Unless Ballessa took it upon herself to clear your rooms out. Father certainly won’t have got around to giving any instructions. Anyhow, I’d best go. I’m late as it is.” He motioned for his man to start hauling the chest again. “Visit us when you get the chance—and don’t rile Martus, he’s in a foul mood. Grandmother appointed Micha and Alain’s elder brother, the new Lord DeVeer, to captain the infantry army that’s been put together these past few months. And Martus had already decided the post was his. Then a few days ago some other calamity or indignity. I wasn’t really paying attention . . . something about a huge bill from a merchant. Ollus I think the name was.”
“Maeres Allus?”
“Could be.” Darin turned at the doorway. “Good to see you alive, little brother.” A wave of his hand and he was off and gone. I stood, watching, until the carriage took them from sight. He hadn’t even asked where I’d been . . .
Alphons kept his gaze front and centre at the door. The less ancient guard, Double, a dark fellow with bags beneath his eyes, watched me with undisguised curiosity. I let the insolence slip. It was good to see that at least one person found the returned adventurer fascinating.
TWENTY
With Father gone to Roma, Darin shacked up in his country retreat with my sweet little Micha, and Martus on the warpath over being presented with my posthumous gambling debts, I had no immediate family to regale with the saga of my accidental exile.
In the hope that Martus might actually pay Maeres what I owed before he discovered I wasn’t dead I kept a low profile in the house. I reinstalled myself in my rooms and called a couple of the housemaids to scrub my back and incidentals while I had a much needed bath. The water soon turned black, so I had Mary go heat up some more while Jayne helped me select an outfit for court. All in all it had proved a disappointing homecoming so far and even the maids didn’t seem as pleased to see me as they should be. I gave Jayne a little squeeze and you’d think she was a princess for all the offence she took! And that set me thinking about the last princess I met, the striking Katherine ap Scorron, owner of a particularly tempting behind and a vicious left knee. Memory of how she’d deployed that left knee put me right off my game and I sent Jayne off back to her duties, telling her I’d manage to dress myself.
Nothing felt quite right, as if the palace were another man’s boots I’d pulled on by mistake. I went to the Glass Chamber, a room where some previous cardinal had gathered a collection of glassware from the sunken cities of Venice and Atlantis, all displayed in tall cabinets. I’d avoided the room for years since the incident with the egg fight where somehow Martus and Darin escaped scot free and conspired to have me take the blame. Now, though, I paced among the old cabinets and their forgotten contents gleaming in all the colours between red and violet, led on by some old memory and the taste of blood.
Crouching in a corner, I pulled away a piece of loose skirting board, and there, glowing in a small hole in the plaster sat the rune-set cone of orichalcum that had fallen from Mother’s hand as Edris Dean killed her. When they released me from the care of the surgeon and his nurses, and when at last I had my first opportunity to be alone, I went to the Star Room, retrieved the cone from beneath the couch where it had been kicked, and came here to hide it. The thought that Garyus might want it back never troubled me, and he never asked after it—perhaps because to do so would mean accusing me or my mother of theft. I had hidden it away, and pushed all thought of the murder from my mind: the cone, its hiding place, the whole terrible business. Until Kara’s blood magic woke those memories.