“Was there anything else?”
“Yes.” Marta Iole shuffled a stack of papers. “The crown is still hemorrhaging capital. Your request to emancipate the Sousine has led to even more of your nobles refusing to pay taxes. The Skyclad are still languishing in prison camps near La Belladonne—they must either be rehabilitated under your rule, or disbanded with pay.”
“I do not recommend the latter,” Dowser murmured. “Unless you wish to have half a million mercenaries roaming the daylight world offering their sword to the highest bidder.”
“And now you wish to give crown food reserves away for free.” Marta fixed me with a stare that reminded me how she’d rejected her upbringing, escaped a life she’d despised, and turned herself into one of the most celebrated and wealthy Aifiri expatriates in the Amber Empire. “What will you have me do, dauphine?”
Across the room, I caught Gavin giving me a glittering, considering look.
I swallowed a sigh, pushed against the headache beginning to pound at my temples, and clenched my hands in my skirts.
“Shall we review the tax code once more, Lady Marta?”
After the Congrès, Gavin d’Ars caught up with me in the halls, smelling exuberantly of soap and hot metal. My gardes moved to block him, but I waved them back.
“Scion, you were amazing in there,” he enthused. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought you were born into this life.”
Suspicion clanged against the flare of pleasure his words conjured. But he seemed to mean what he said. I relaxed.
Despite everything, it was hard not to take to Gavin. With his easy smile and lack of airs, he—under different circumstances—could easily have become a friend, if not an ally. Unlike most of the courtiers at Coeur d’Or, he seemed to have little notion for guile and no head for deception. I hated to admit it to myself, but Ididn’thate him.
Even if he’s angling for your throne?whispered a voice within me.
“Thank you,” I said, neutral.
“I’m on my way to the stables,” he said. “Will you join me?”
“I’ve never been,” I admitted. “I’ve also never known a courtier to see to his own horse.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t, up here in Coeur d’Or.” Gavin led me off down a side corridor. “But the d’Ars are all horse fanatics. I practically grew up in a stable. I think I knew how to ride before I could walk. Mother—” A shadow pulsed unfamiliar across his face. “Mother especially loved to race.”
“Did something happen to her?”
He hesitated. “My mother never could turn down a challenge. She tried to race an unbroken colt on a dare. He threw her into a fence and broke her neck. She died instantly.”
“Gavin, I’m sorry.” Shock spangled through me. “I had no idea.”
He shrugged. “She was Aifiri, and rode with the Husterri before she became Papa’s wife. She died doing the thing she loved best. I suppose we should all be so lucky.”
That was one way to look at it.
“Papa loved horses too.” That familiar smile crept back over his face; a deep dimple punched his cheek. “He spent a few tides at Coeur d’Or in his youth—just before Sylvain’s reign. Apparently he once pulled a massive prank on Cyril Rochelle—he stole all his best horses in the dead of Nocturne, replacing them with identical but inferior steeds. Weeks passed before Rochelle figured out what happened and by then he had no way to prove it was Papa.”
“That’s—” I was going to sayawful, but Gavin laughed, and before I knew it I started laughing too.
“Illegal?” Gavin supplied, chuckling. “Wicked? Utterly bad behavior? Yes, yes, and yes. But that’s how court used to be, if you heard Papa talk about his glory days. Xavier d’Ars, Remy Legarde, Félix Arsenault, and Sylvain Sabourin—the rogues of the realm, breaking hearts and heads from Matin to Nocturne.”
“Wait—your father and my father werefriends?”
“Great friends,” said Gavin. “Until, of course, they weren’t.”
“What happened?”
“A falling-out.” He gave a careless shrug. “Papa never liked to talk about it.”
“But—”
We stepped into a courtyard of broad cobbles behind the palais. I glimpsed a square lawn and a cluster of outbuildings—a greenhouse with hothouse flowers pressed against the glass like captive butterflies, a mill or brewery of some kind, and a magnificent expanse of stables. I trailed Gavin into one of the barns. A bar of tangerine light lanced in through the other side and sent our shadows bleeding red across the dusty floor.
