The Queen's Weapons Read online

  “Jillian is back. She wants to talk to you.” He should leave it at that. He should. “She’s staying at the Healer’s eyrie. On her own.”

  Lucivar stared at him, then made a twirling motion with one finger. “Turn around.”

  “What?”

  “Turn around.”

  Not sure what was about to happen, he turned around.

  “Hmm,” Lucivar said. “Since I’m not seeing a dent in your ass the shape of Jillian’s boot, I’m guessing you didn’t say outright that she couldn’t take care of herself and stay on her own.”

  He chose not to confirm or deny.

  Lucivar laughed. “While you were busy evading one female and trying to boss around another, did you remember to pick up the food?”

  Turning, he narrowed his eyes at his father. “Yes, I picked up the food—but I gave some to Jillian when I escorted her to her eyrie.”

  “Of course you did. She’s family.”

  In harmony with each other, they went to the kitchen to put together the midday meal.

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Titian sat by the pool that was fed by a mountain stream. A small defiance, refusing to hear her father’s call to come in and eat. Maybe not the best defiance, since Daemonar told her he’d bought steak-and-ale pies from The Tavern, and she really was hungry. But it was a way to get back at her father for setting this impossible test that she had to pass in order to go to school and study art. Her refusing to eat would upset him. A lot. Not that she wanted him to be upset. Not for long, anyway. But . . .

  A plate with a piece of pie, lightly dressed greens, and bread generously spread with butter appeared before her.

  “You going hungry will make Lucivar crazy, but it won’t make him back down,” Jillian said as she settled on the grass beside Titian. She held out a fork. “So you might as well eat.”

  “He’s not being fair,” Titian said. She took the fork, her resolve wavering as she breathed in the pie’s delicious smell.

  Jillian smiled. “Actually, he’s being very fair. And I say this as someone who fought a few battles with him when I was your age.”

  She didn’t remember a lot about that time, just that Papa and Jillian seemed to wrangle a lot over some boy, but this wasn’t about a boy. This was about her life.

  “I want to go to school in Amdarh,” she said.

  “And he wants you to be able to defend yourself. If you and a good friend were out walking and you were suddenly attacked by a . . . by a crazed dog as big as a pony, wouldn’t you want to be able to form shields around yourself and your friend to avoid being savaged? Wouldn’t you want those shields to hold until the city’s guards could reach you and deal with the dog?”

  “Well . . . sure.”

  “Your father wants that too. He wants those shields to hold. And if you’re pushed to it, he wants you to have some skill with a weapon so that you can whack the crap out of that dog while you’re waiting for the guards.”

  “Jillian!”

  “What? You live with three Warlord Princes. You’ve never heard any of them say ‘crap’?”

  Uncertain of the ground, Titian ate the pie. While she was chewing over Jillian’s words, she somehow polished off the greens and the bread as well.

  “Papa doesn’t want me to go.”

  “Of course not. You’re his little girl. Hell’s fire, Lucivar was miserable when he escorted me to Little Weeble for my first apprenticeship in a court, and I wasn’t that far out of reach that he couldn’t check on me every day. He didn’t, and I think it cost him, but he could have.”

  “The school is in Amdarh. Uncle Daemon will be there.”

  “You think your uncle will be any less strict?”

  “No.” But Uncle Daemon wouldn’t beat on the shields she could create until they failed. Would he?

  “Daemonar will help you work on building stronger shields,” Jillian said. “So will I. I’ll be around for a while.”

  “But the paperwork has to be turned in soon if I’m going to start school in the fall with the other students.”

  Jillian bumped arms. “I bet that if you work on those shields and show your father that you can protect yourself, you’ll find that all the arrangements have been made and all the papers signed. Your father didn’t set up this test so that you would fail. He expects you to succeed, and then he’ll have to let you go. But I’ll tell you what Prince Sadi told me. After you’re gone, send a letter home once a week to let your parents know how you’re doing.”

  “Papa doesn’t like to read.”

  “I said that, too, but I wrote the letters, and I realized long after that first apprenticeship ended that Lucivar had read those letters often enough to remember every detail.” Jillian smiled. “Write the letters for your mother and father, but include a sketch or two with each letter, something especially for him.”

  “You’ll really help me work on the shields?” Titian asked.

  “Of course I will. I’ve got some time now if you want to get a little more practice in today.”

  She smiled. “Okay.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Sighing, Lucivar backed away from the glass doors and dropped the sight shield. He’d chucked Daemonar and Andulvar out the door right after the meal, giving them permission to fly a couple of circuits around Riada on their own. Nothing new for his firstborn, but a heady freedom for his youngest.

  Marian wasn’t in her workroom, reading or doing needlework. She wasn’t in the bedroom napping. He went out the door in the laundry room and found her in her garden weeding.

  “Are you sure you feel up to doing this?” he asked as he knelt beside her.

  She just looked at him.

  He sighed, ripped a weed out of the ground, and tossed it in the basket.

  “Did Jillian convince Titian to eat?” Marian asked.

  “Yeah, she did. And now they’re out there practicing shields.”

  She smiled. “You’re teaching your daughter how to leave us. That’s your job.”

  “I don’t like my job.”

  “Yes, you do. Not today, but you do.”

  Couldn’t argue with that.

  He watched his darling hearth witch weed the flower bed. He wanted to smash boulders into gravel, not daintily pluck weeds from among the flowers.

  “Have you heard from your brother lately?” Marian asked.

  “Not since Daemonar made the Blood Run.” He’d have to talk to Daemon soon, get his assessment of the school and the teachers and . . . “Why?”

  Marian gave him a kiss that held some sympathy swirled with amusement. “I’m just wondering what sort of argument Jaenelle Saetien is presenting to Daemon to convince him to let her go to the same school. After all, if Titian and Zoey will be attending . . .”

  Lucivar sat back on his heels. “Oh, Hell’s fire.”

  “What’s that saying about misery and company?”

  He snorted. “Like that, is it? Well, get in the boat with the rest of us while I tell you about Jillian’s scheme.”

  She was not astonished. She wasn’t even all that surprised when he told her. Instead she looked thoughtful and said, “I hadn’t realized she’d gotten this far.”

  Lucivar blinked. “You knew about this?”

  “Jillian had mentioned it the last time she was home.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “She wanted to surprise you.” Marian smiled. “I think she didn’t want you to ask Daemon until . . .”

  “Never. She wants to do this on her own, without his help or mine. Otherwise, how will she know that her work has merit?”

  “Oh, dear.” She burst out laughing. “Your daughters are being difficult, aren’t they?”

  Difficult? Hell’s fire, yes. Which meant they were growing into the
women he hoped they would be.

  TWELVE

  Daemon walked through Tersa’s cottage, giving the downstairs rooms a quick inspection. Manny lived next door and still did the day-to-day tidying, but she had reached the late autumn of her years and her eyesight was fading. Not so much that she couldn’t cook or bake or get around on her own, but he noticed that she needed more help these days with some tasks, which was why Helene, the Hall’s housekeeper, sent some of her younger staff to the two cottages each week to “help with the heavy lifting.”

  The arrangement worked for everyone, mostly because Helene’s argument for providing the help was that it gave him peace of mind. Which was true. Knowing his mother and the woman who had been his caretaker during the violent and painful childhood he’d endured with Dorothea SaDiablo were looked after helped quiet the cold, deep rage that could rise in him with little warning.

  Tersa wasn’t in the cottage, but her psychic scent and the feel of her fragmented mind told him she was nearby. He went out the back door and headed for the herb beds in the garden. She’d been weeding, but now she sat back on her heels, staring at the plants.

  He angled his approach so that she would see him—assuming she was seeing anything in the world around her. He crouched beside her, balancing on the balls of his feet to avoid getting dirt or grass stains on his black trousers.

  “The plants are growing well,” he said, wondering if they were going to talk about the herb bed in front of them or something else. With Tersa, he could never tell.

  “They are growing well,” she agreed. “So are the weeds.” She pointed to one plant, then another. “Hard to tell which is which.”

  “Not so hard if you recognize one.”

  “Can you tell one from the other?” She brushed a hand over the two plants. Now they looked the same.

  A chill ran down his spine, twanging the leash that held his temper.

  Tersa scooped up a double handful of soil. “Good soil, rich with tradition, nurtured by the power that rules. But some gardens have imported Terreillean soil. Weeds like that soil. They grow fast and thick. The roots aren’t so deep yet that they can’t be plucked from the garden. They aren’t so widespread that they can’t be purged.”

  No, they weren’t talking about plants. Centuries ago, Tersa had spun a tangled web and had seen the first warning of trouble in Kaeleer. He’d seen that web, had read the warning—and had become dangerous to everyone in that part of the Keep. When the rage had quieted, he couldn’t remember what he’d seen and neither Tersa nor Witch would tell him. All his Queen would say was he would recognize the danger that the web had revealed.

  That was why one of his visits to Tersa each week began with an innocuous question about the everyday world. Sometimes she answered the question; sometimes she plucked an answer from the fragments of her mind that he couldn’t translate into something that made sense. But he came every week and asked a question, waiting for this day.

  This day, when she would give the second warning, and he would know that the threat had grown to the point where he would recognize it.

  “What can get rid of the weeds?” he asked quietly. “What can cleanse the Terreillean soil out of Kaeleer’s ground?”

  “Ice. And fire.”

  Cold and heat? Or his icy rage and Lucivar’s hot temper?

  She rose, a smooth movement—and a sharp reminder that his mother, with her tangled hair and tangled mind, was just approaching her autumn years. Then she handed him the basket of weeds and said, “Put those in the compost bin.”

  He emptied the basket into the bin before returning to the kitchen and setting the basket by the door.

  She turned toward him, her face brightening with a delighted smile. “It’s the boy. It’s my boy.”

  She said the words as if he’d just arrived.

  “Hello, darling.” He walked up to her and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Have you come to visit?”

  “I have.” He waited until she went to the sink to wash her hands before asking, so casually, “Who were you talking to out in the garden?”

  The clarity in her gold eyes had nothing to do with sanity and everything to do with who he suspected she had been before she’d been broken, before she’d sacrificed her sanity to regain some of the Hourglass’s Craft.

  “Tersa? Who were you talking to?”

  “The Queen’s weapon.”

  * * *

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Surreal called in the two trunks she used when traveling to the SaDiablo estates and left them where the senior maid assigned to look after her room and wardrobe at the Hall would be able to sort the clothes that needed washing from those that just needed airing.

  She wasn’t looking forward to meeting with Sadi to discuss the events she was sure were going to break a District Queen’s court and divide a village between two aristo families who claimed grievous harm had been done to their children. Grievous harm had been done to both children, but it was the boy who had died just hours before she’d arrived. And it was the boy she’d personally escorted to the Keep to be confined while he made the transition to demon-dead—and to await the High Lord’s pleasure.

  She had a feeling the prick-ass’s time in Hell would be short and painful since he had dosed the girl with safframate—a drug that, in very small doses, would enhance a lover’s staying power and was mostly used within a court under specific circumstances. In Kaeleer, anyway. In Terreille, it had been used to create a sexual need beyond sanity, making the person a desperate participant in what amounted to prolonged rape, whether that person was male or female.

  Sometimes the sexual need erupted as violence. Lucivar had torn women apart under the influence of safframate, had left courts choking on the carnage his rage had produced. Daemon had never experienced an erection or arousal under the influence of safframate, but Surreal wondered if the Sadist had been born in the pain produced by the drug when that pain had no outlet.

  Whether the boy had given the girl too much or whether the girl was one of the individuals who reacted with rage instead of arousal didn’t matter at this point. Surreal hadn’t been able to tell what the girl had used to strike the first blow that put the boy on the ground because she’d ripped through skin and muscle and had managed to pull out the boy’s entrails with her hands.

  There was no law against murder among the Blood, but rape was punished by slow execution, so while she had a little sympathy for the boy’s shocked parents, she sided with the girl’s family, especially after a quick search of the boy’s pockets uncovered a vial with a second dose of safframate.

  Now she had to tell the Warlord Prince of Dhemlan that a drug he hated was being used in his Territory in the same way it had been used in Terreille. And she had to tell him that she suspected that the boy’s father had supplied his son with the drug. Which meant they would be studying the ebb and flow of sexual activity in and around that village, from the District Queen’s court on down because a man who gave safframate to his son probably used it himself to “persuade” women who didn’t want his attention.

  Having a good idea how Daemon would react, she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to stay with her tonight, just for company, or if she hoped he would choose to sleep alone—or sleep in the High Lord’s suite, away from the family wing.

  Well, she would decide about the sleeping arrangements after she had a chance to measure his mood and temper. A quick psychic probe when she’d first arrived home told her he was in Halaway, probably visiting Tersa. That, too, would determine what she needed to ask of him for her own safety, as well as the safety of everyone else at the Hall.

  No point waiting inside when her own skin felt itchy from the need to move. She’d go out to the back lawn and work with the Dea al Mon fighting knives, going through the warm-ups and exercises that kept her skills as sharp as the blades she used.

  She’d
changed clothes and was lacing up the ankle boots she used for these exercises when Jaenelle Saetien knocked on her bedroom door and walked in before she had a chance to answer.

  “It’s courteous to wait to be invited,” Surreal said, struggling to keep her tone mild. “Especially when you get so upset about anyone entering your room before you give permission.”

  Jaenelle Saetien just shrugged, as if she couldn’t make the connection between her intense desire for privacy and respecting someone else’s privacy.

  Some days Surreal dealt with the girl who had grown up in this house—a girl who was usually full of curiosity, intelligence, courage, kindness, and enough sass to stand up for herself without forgetting courtesy and manners. Other days she wrangled with a pissy, bitchy stranger who wore her daughter’s face. Couldn’t tell day by day—or even hour by hour—which one it would be.

  She might have enjoyed being pissy and bitchy at the same age if she’d grown up in a different way and could have indulged in such emotions. Or maybe she’d just channeled those feelings into the way she’d used a knife for some contracts.

  “I’m going outside to work with the Dea al Mon knives. You’re welcome to join me.”

  Jaenelle Saetien wrinkled her nose. “Who wants to get sweaty?”

  Someone who wants to survive. And the girl I saw today got a lot more than sweaty. “Suit yourself. If you have anything to discuss with your father, you should do it before I sit down with him.”

  “Why?” That habitual hint of annoyance changed to a concern that might be genuine. “Did something happen on your trip?”

  “Yes, it did.”

  Hesitation. “Do you have to tell him today?”

  “Since this will produce a storm that will roll through every village and court in Dhemlan, yes, I have to tell him.”

  Jaenelle Saetien looked alarmed. “What happened?”

  “A boy died, but it was the way he died and why he died that will produce the storm.”