Viyeki could only nod.
“Good. The queen’s confidence in her noble ministers, like her love for her people,” said Akhenabi, “is wonderfully deep. But not endless.”
A door opened in the wall. Akhenabi glanced at it, then back to Viyeki; the meaning was clear.
Viyeki bowed and said, “We all sleep until the Queen wakes us,” then performed his rituals of leavetaking before backing out of the vast white bedchamber.
Outside, his thoughts as disordered as if he had taken a bad fall, it was all he could do not to stumble down the palace stairs and corridors like a drunkard. He could make no sense out of what had just occurred. Did the queen truly know what was happening, or did she still wander in dream while only seeming to have wakened? Was Akhenabi an enemy or an unlikely ally, and was Viyeki really meant to send his favorite, Tzoja, out of his household entirely? Most disturbing of all, what on earth could the Lord of Song have meant by saying, “The War of Return is not over”? Were those merely words meant to inspire? Then why abandon the work on the outermost walls? Viyeki had feared many things from this audience, but had not imagined confusion as its main product.
His household guards and his secretary were waiting for him outside the palace gatehouse. Yemon could have no idea what had happened during his audience, but recognized that his master’s thoughts should not be interrupted, so he accompanied Viyeki all the way back to the residence in silence. Neither did he ask any questions when they were finally through the doors of the house itself, because Viyeki left them all suddenly and without further orders, shut himself in his study and latched the door behind him.
His wife Khimabu could not rouse him when she was preparing to go to bed—Viyeki told her loudly and angrily to go away. And much later, when Tzoja knocked softly at the study door and called to him, the mother of his child received no answer at all.
6
An Aversion to Widows
Even several days after they had departed Hernysadharc, the queen was still angry.
Spring was coming on quickly even as they traveled farther north, the snow reduced to patches upon the open meadows, in treetops, and on the upper slopes of the hills; the breeze carried warm hints of grass and flowering things. It all should have made for a pleasant ride, but Miriamele could not shift the mood that had seized her.
“Your Majesty looks a bit fierce,” her husband said. “Frightening, a lesser man might even call it.”
Simon was only trying to amuse her, she knew, but she was not in the mood. “If you must be told, I am still furious with that preening, giggling bitch, Tylleth.”
“Then you think she is a real danger?” Simon’s look said he truly wanted to know. Miri felt a sudden wash of gratitude that she had found such a man, one who cared what she thought because he trusted her and loved her, not because of the crown on her head.
Could I rule with any other? I cannot imagine such a world.
“If she were merely some chattering magpie of a courtier Hugh was bedding, no, I would not,” she told him. “But she has him wrapped around her finger. And you heard what Eolair said. Witchcraft!”
Simon frowned. The two of them were riding a short distance behind the vanguard; for once they had the chance to speak privately. “Perhaps. But even so, don’t be so quick to put all the blame on her,” he said. “Hugh has changed since I first knew him, and not for the better.”
“Doubtless. But you didn’t speak with her as much as I did. Although not for lack of the woman trying to get you to notice her.”
Simon frowned. “Do you think so?”
“Think so? Blessed Elysia, she was all but rubbing her bosom against your arm when they showed us around, sliding against you like a cat in heat.”
“I did not notice.”
“You don’t convince me—how could any man fail to notice that woman’s breasts? She was all but carrying them around on a cushion and calling them the crown jewels.”
Simon grinned and for a moment was a boy again. “Well, then, you’re right, my dearest—I did notice. It embarrassed me, because I knew you were looking. I promise you, I care nothing—”
“That is not the point. Don’t be thick.”
“Ah, wife. You still retain your power to charm me.”
“Stop. I won’t be put off by your good mood. That woman frightens me. Even Inahwen—gentle Queen Inahwen!—calls her a danger. She is trying to raise demons! As Pryrates did!” Both of them had almost met death at the red priest’s hands; she knew Simon would not pass over it lightly.
“Yes, yes, I heard everything Eolair had to say.” Simon shook his head. “But we already have plenty of other problems, my dear. And Hernystir may be under the High Ward, but they are also a kingdom in their own right. What should we do? Seize the king’s mistress and put her on trial for trying to raise demons? Aedonite rulers passing judgement on pagan nobility for witchcraft? Many of the Hernystiri are already chafing at being ruled by foreign Aedonites. We might as well send in the questioners of the Sacred College.”
“Don’t blind yourself, Simon,” she said, more harshly than she intended. “Not everyone means well, as you do. You are too na?ve sometimes.”
“Please don’t treat me like a child, Miri.” For the first time, her husband’s equable mood soured. “Don’t instruct me as if I was still a scullion. Not after all these years.”
After that, they rode for a while in silence. She was sorry to have scolded him, but not enough to apologize. Her husband’s inclination to trust was part of the reason she still loved him so powerfully, but that didn’t mean she was wrong.
Miriamele had already conceived a deep dislike of Hugh’s intended before Eolair had told them of his conversation with Queen Inahwen. Certainly Lady Tylleth’s easy familiarity—as if Miriamele, a queen herself and the daughter and granddaughter of kings, were nothing more elevated than an elder sister—had set her teeth on edge. But the woman also seemed amused by everything going on around her, not like Miriamele’s dear friend Rhona, who genuinely could not help finding things funny, but in the superior way of someone who treasured a secret that everyone else would be shocked to know. Hearing about Inahwen’s fears had only solidified Miriamele’s own concerns. Still, Simon was right about one thing—the High Throne had many other problems more tangible and more pressing. The horrible mess of the Northern Shipping Alliance’s near-war with the old meddler Count Streawé’s daughter, the Countess of Perdruin, had the potential to throw trade into chaos up and down Osten Ard, to name only one.
But as she thought of such things, Miri found a core of sadness inside herself that had little to do with the affairs of state.
“It was hard, being away from home on his birthday,” she said, the first words either she or Simon had spoken in some time. “I did not expect it to be so hard after all this time. But it was.”
Her husband accepted the offered peace. “For me, too, my dear. I sometimes feel like a cat.” He saw her look and smiled sadly. “I mean, Old Shem the groom used to say that he had to watch the stable cats carefully, because if they had a small spite, a rat bite or wound from another cat’s claws, all would seem well and healed on the outside, but the wound would still be festering under the skin. Sometimes it would kill them weeks later, when they seemed to have been long past it.”
“Now that’s a lovely, reassuring thought.”
He flushed. “I meant only that grief . . . that sometimes we have not healed as well as we thought, my love.”
She saw that she was doing it again, biting at him when she most needed their old companionship, the thing that bound them together from the very beginning as surely as the love they later came to feel. The subject of John Josua especially brought it out in her, as though her husband somehow bore the blame for that agonizing loss instead of being another victim. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It is hard sometimes. I thought it would be easier as the years went on. I suppose most of the time it is. But when it isn’t . . .”
“I try to remember all the good that came from his life, cut short though it was. I remind myself of the good things we still have . . . Morgan, and Lillia.”
“Do you count the Widow too?”
He smiled, but there was a pained twist to it. “Idela is the mother of our grandchildren. And I don’t think she is as dreadful as you sometimes paint her.”
“John Josua should not have married so young. And he should not have married her.”