Fifteen chimes later, Den returned to his place behind the butcher shop counter. Captain Batay’s request had been odd, but Den had managed to find what the man asked for. Upstairs in the Brodson home above the butcher shop, on the lint brush Den’s mother had used to tidy the blue suit he’d worn the night he had put his claiming mark on Ellysetta Baristani, Den had found three long, curling strands of flame-colored hair.
Why the Sorrelian needed Ellie’s hair, Den didn’t know. Butthe man had left with a smile on his face and a glass vial containing the three strands of hair in his pocket.
Outside, on the street corner, a ragged pamphleteer’s boy began his morning cry: “Tairen Soul steals local man’s bride! King and Queen cower in fear! Read the shocking truth they don’t want you to know! Only three coppers!”
Several ragged scraps of paper trembled in Queen Annoura’s hand. Before her, Lady Jiarine Montevero, a former Dazzle and current lady-in-waiting, stood waiting while Annoura read the pamphlets Jiarine had just delivered.
“There are many of these, you say?” Annoura asked.
Jiarine nodded. The long, dark curls draped over one shoulder bounced with the motion, and her sapphire-blue eyes shone with earnest concern. “Many times many, Majesty. The presses must have been running all night.”
Annoura resisted the urge to crumple the leaflets and instead set them aside on the pearl-inlaid surface of her desk. “Thank you, Lady Jiarine.”
Jiarine’s gaze followed the discarded pamphlets. Her brows drew together in confusion. “My Queen? You cannot mean to ignore this. The pamphleteers have always been a thorn in the palace’s heel, but this time... Majesty, those leaflets border on treason. They call your husband a puppet of the Fey, and you—”
“I read what they said, Jiarine,” Annoura said, her voice as flat and hard as a marble tile. “You need not repeat it to me.”
“I’m sorry, Majesty.” The lady bobbed a curtsey but continued earnestly, “It’s just that the people are already nervous because of thedahl’reisenmurdering innocents in the north. And now the Tairen Soul has returned for the first time in a thousand years. Suspicions and fears are rising on many estates. The lords are worried. They can’t help wondering if thedahl’reisenattacks and the Tairen Soul’s arrival aren’t in some way connected.”
The thought had occurred to Annoura, as well. “I understandyour concerns, Lady, but I assure you, the king and I are intimately familiar with the state of our kingdom.”
“There’s even a growing number of historians who are beginning to question whether the Eld Mages were really behind the assassination that started the Mage Wars,” Jiarine persisted. “I know we’ve all been raised to believe that was true... but what if it’s not?”
Annoura recalled her Steward of Affairs making some mention of the study in one of his reports a few months back, but at the time she’d dismissed it as nothing more than a handful of elderly men who’d addled their brains inhaling too much moldy parchment dust. She still didn’t put much stock in the idea. Give an obsessive scholar a single sentence, and he could extrapolate entire reams of hidden meaning from it—all of it overanalyzed nonsense.
Then again, obsessive scholars and their myopic passions could serve a useful purpose when it came to discrediting political rivals. Rain Tairen Soul had already proven himself willing to use threats and intimidation to force Dorian’s compliance. Annoura would not stand idly by while her husband’s immortal kinsmen ordered him about like a trained pet. She made a mental note to have her steward find out more about those scholars and their theories.
For now, however, there was the matter of these pamphlets to deal with. Dorian was no puppet, and she—Annoura glanced back down at the illustrated pamphlet and her teeth snapped together—she was no little mouse queen squeaking in fear and fleeing the tairen’s paw.
“Thank you, Lady Montevero,” she said. “That will be all.” When Jiarine opened her mouth as if to protest, Annoura cut her off. “You are excused, Jiarine.”
The lady’s mouth closed and her expression faded to controlled blankness. She sank into a formal curtsey. “Your Majesty,” she said, then took her leave.
When she was gone, Annoura snatched up the pamphlets, stalked out through a different door, and headed down a series of corridors to Dorian’s private office. He was seated at his desk, a pair of spectacles perched on his nose as he pored over a stack of documents. She tossed the pamphlets on top of the papers he was reading. “Have you seen these?”
Dorian’s lips thinned as he glanced at the ragged leaflets. “Corrias showed them to me this morning.”
Her arms folded across her chest.And he’d said nothing to me?“What are you doing about this, Dorian?”
“What can I do, Annoura?” He leaned back in his chair, removed his spectacles, and regarded her with weary exasperation. “You know as well as I do that for every pamphleteer I stop, a dozen more spring up. Short of putting the city under martial law, I can’t control what they do. I can only go on as I have been—doing my best to keep Celieria safe and strong.”
“You cannot be seen as a puppet of the Fey. If the lords lose faith in you, you lose your ability to rule. You know that. The nobles are unsettled enough as it is. First thedahl’reisenbegin slaughtering peasants; thenhecomes—Rainier vel’En Daris—for the first time in a thousand years, carrying unfounded tales of Mage power growing in Eld. The timing is suspicious. Can’t you see that?”
Dorian rubbed the bridge of his nose. “So I should alienate the Fey—and terminate more than a thousand years of alliance—just because Rain Tairen Soul has come back into the world? What if he’s right? What if the Mages really have regained power?”
“There’s not a shred of proof to support that.”
“Which is why I refused to invokeprimuswhen he asked me to. I’m letting the lords decide whom they trust most, just as you advised.” He pushed his chair back from the desk and walked over to one of the shuttered windows to look out at the manicured gardens below. His spine was straight, arms folded across his chest, feet slightly apart as if bracing to survive a blow.
Annoura knew that stance. Intractability wasn’t far behind.And Dorian, when he dug in his heels, was impossible to budge. Time for a change of tactics.
She crossed the room to his side and laid a hand on his arm, tugged gently but insistently until he turned to face her. His expression was closed, hazel eyes distant. She framed his face in both hands and gazed up with a look of compassion and sympathy, stroking the hair at his temples with gentle fingers.
“Dorian,” she said softly, “beloved, heart of my heart, I know this is difficult for you. I know how much you love them—Lady Marissya, Lord Dax, even the warriors who accompany them each year.” He’d told her so many times, and she’d seen the reverence in his eyes whenever he spoke of theshei’dalin. In the first years of their marriage, before she felt secure in her husband’s affections, Annoura had actually been jealous of the effect Marissya had on him. Her hands grew tense for a moment before she forced them to continue their gentle stroking. “But the Tairen Soul is a stranger to us, a dangerous one at that. Celieria is entrusted to your keeping, my love. You must do what’s right for us, regardless of what the Fey want.”
“Thatiswhat I’m doing, Annoura.”
“I know,” she soothed. “I know. But the people—and the Lords of the Council—must be made to see it also. And up until now, all they’ve seen is you giving in to the Tairen Soul’s demands. You broke a lawful betrothal on his behalf. You’ve allowed him to install a common peasant as his queen and ordered our court to dance attendance on her.”
