“I suspect I would, my lord Verengir,” Branwyn replied. “Am I meant to strike out on my own, or follow the high lord like a stray kitten, or—” Over his shoulder she saw Rognozi stroll out of the room, deep in conversation with a man she didn’t recognize. “Ah.” She bit back a curse. “I suppose that eliminates one possibility.”
Verengir glanced behind him and chuckled, but kindly. “I thought so. Rognozi means well, unless he has reason not to, but it’s probably been a generation since he’s had a guest who doesn’t know the way to his house. And it’s Master Verengir, or Zelen. I won’t be the heir except under truly unfortunate circumstances.”
“Branwyn, then,” she said, and held out a hand.
Habits died hard, and she wouldn’t have been sure what else to do in any case, but she was still a little startled when Zelen took her fingers lightly in his, bowed again, and touched his lips lightly to her knuckles. “A pleasure, Branwyn.”
Her hand tingled at the contact, and the rest of her body wasn’t far behind. “Likewise.”
“Would you care for an escort, or simply directions?”
“An escort,” she said, “if you have the leisure.”
“Oh,” Zelen replied, “I expect I can manage it. I didn’t come with a carriage, but I can hire one easily enough.”
“I’d prefer to walk, if you’ve no objection. It’d help me learn the city better, and I’ve spent about an aeon sitting lately.”
“A trouble I know well. Shall we?” He offered a crooked elbow, and Branwyn took it.
A pit of vipers, Yathana had said about the Heliodar court, never being averse to clichés. Branwyn wasn’t prepared to say that she was wrong, but a few of them did have lovely scales and hissed very prettily.
* * *
Impulsive gestures had their flaws, and the downside of offering his arm to Branwyn when they were still in the council chamber was that they had to part when they reached the Star Palace’s outer hallway and footmen brought their cloaks. It was not the most elegant moment Zelen had experienced.
Branwyn’s cloak was thick black wool, lined and trimmed with gray and brown fur, and an inch or two shorter than her gown: practical, again. She started to reach for it before the footman put it on her, bumped his hand in the process, and grinned awkwardly. “Apologies.”
“Sickeningly helpless, aren’t we?” Zelen said when another man in livery had helped him into his red brocade cloak. “I promise I do know how to dress myself, rarely as I may call on the skill.”
Laughing, Branwyn took his offered arm again, though with a carefulness in her movements that made Zelen sure she spent little time in such a position. He would have wagered as much even before: her skin was smooth for a warrior’s, but the marks of sword and bow were still there. She smelled mostly of the mint-scented soap common to the better sort of inn, but slightly of leather and metal as well. “I admit, I’m not used to servants.”
“And that,” Zelen said, “is probably the other reason Rognozi left you. He expected that your retainers would get directions. His man probably spent a few minutes trying to find them.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” said Branwyn. “I hope it wasn’t inconvenient for him.”
“No, he’d give up quickly enough. Rognozi was born and raised when nobody would travel alone, that’s all. Not even a soldier.”
A glint in her eyes and a slight tilt of her lips showed that Zelen had guessed right.
The gilded magnificence of the Star Palace gave way to the gardens. Trees blazing crimson and gold in autumn colors lined the pathway toward the gates. Beyond them were bare flower beds and rosebushes where the last petals of the season spread blood-red on the ground, casualties of the rain that had slackened to an unpleasantly damp mist.
“I hadn’t heard the name Thyran since I grew too old for tutors,” Zelen said.
“Mostly, neither had I,” said Branwyn, and sighed. “That’s part of what I’m up against, of course. Even the worst—or best, in a way—of necromancers couldn’t raise a man a hundred years dead, and the council knows it.”
“Then what happened?”
She gave Zelen a look that felt as though she mapped every inch of his face, then said: “He never died.”
They came to the garden gates, where the trees parted and fanciful wrought-iron and silver bars allowed a view of Heliodar’s shining many-colored roofs. A few still stood half-fallen-in, and there were gaps that didn’t appear in paintings from a hundred years before. Zelen had gone all his life without really calling that to mind, and now his attention was drawn to the absences, the scars that still lingered.
“The general who faced him set off a spell and took them both out of time,” Branwyn went on once they’d passed through the gate. “Then, one of Thyran’s more historically minded surviving minions discovered his whereabouts and how to break the enchantment. He didn’t get a wonderful reward for his pains, but he succeeded.”
“A hundred years of sleep didn’t improve Thyran’s temper, I take it?”
“No.”
They took the road down, though not very far. Rognozi’s mansion sat just below the palace on Ravens’ Hill. Zelen searched vainly for a comment with wit to it, abject fear not being quite the thing to show to a woman one admired, short-foundationed though that admiration might be.
