Chapter 10 #2
Durlain slipped past me, fire still in hand, and strode to the other side of the room with long, curt strides. Before I could stop him, his free fist came up and gave three sharp knocks on what was presumably a connecting door to the next room.
There was a moment of perfect, deafening silence.
Then the door flung open, and the tall, broad-shouldered silhouette of another fireborn man appeared from the brightly lit room beyond – light hair shorn short, left horn broken at the tip, blue coat half-pulled onto one arm.
His features were lined in the way of men who’ve spent too much of their lives in sulphur clouds.
They didn’t smoothen at the sight of Durlain, those creases around his lips and eyes; if anything, the stranger’s face tightened further as he stiffened on the doorstep, his hand half-raised in what might have become a fireball to the eyes had we been any other intruders.
Durlain didn’t so much as flinch.
For a heartbeat, no one moved around the dusky room as the two men considered each other in that strange, charged silence.
Only after several long moments did I realise my own unthinking hands were a twitch away from shaping thorn and hurriedly yank them apart – but the fair-haired man didn’t so much as glance at me as he finally lowered his arm, took a single step back into his own room, and said, with what sounded like mock-politeness, ‘Your Highness.’
So he knew Durlain under his own name.
Which was interesting – all the more so because he seemed decidedly unenthusiastic about knowing the prince of many faces at all.
‘Mondren.’ Durlain’s tone was a flawless match in its faintly displeased but pointedly civilised evenness. ‘I trust you’re well?’
‘I have been doing splendidly in your absence, thank you.’ Only then did the other man throw me a swift look – his weathered features unchanging as he took stock of my knives and my damaged wrists, then returned his gaze to the deathmade prince standing before him without comment.
‘I’m overjoyed to see Your Highness in good health as well.
With the intention of keeping matters that way – might I ask whether there’s any particular reason you’re currently standing in my wife’s bedroom? ’
Was that a threat?
If it was, Durlain seemed supremely unbothered by it. ‘Just the usual, I’m glad to say. I hope the lady is available?’
The look Mondren gave him was strikingly similar to the look Durlain had levelled at the brand new conservatory a few minutes ago, and carried about an equal amount of fondness.
Without a word, the man turned away, pulled the second half of his coat onto his shoulders, and stalked off with a slightly uneven gait that suggested old injuries.
Only once the next door had shut behind him did we hear him raise his voice. ‘Vai! Surprise guests for you!’
Durlain began lighting candles around the room with the fire he was holding, looking for all the world as if this was a perfectly regular visit to a couple of beloved old friends.
‘Couldn’t we just have rung the doorbell?
’ I hissed, still standing by the narrow doorway and feeling uninclined to move away from the fastest path out of whatever this situation was.
In hindsight, maybe sharing an inn with Belloc had not even been that bad.
‘I’m sure they wouldn’t have been more likely to kill you if you’d—’
‘Oh, Mondren wouldn’t try to harm me,’ Durlain coolly reassured me, not bothering to turn as he flicked out the flames in his palm and moved on to the window to tug the curtains shut. ‘He doesn’t like losing fights. Would you mind closing that door? Cold draughts.’
I was beyond the point of objecting.
Estien politics were a familiar game to me: loud loyalty to one’s own faction, open hostility to everyone else’s, and bloody violence as a perfectly acceptable method to settle differences of opinion.
Whatever the hell was going on in Averre, it appeared to manifest as neither friendship nor enmity – and I didn’t have the faintest clue where that fell on the scale of danger.
Should I be ready for imminent escalation? For a cosy invitation to dinner?
I closed the door.
I checked my knives.
I checked my knives again.
By the time I started the third round, painfully aware of Durlain’s eye on me, rapid footsteps came hurrying down the corridor.
I’d just managed to jerk my hands away from my hips when the door swung open and the lady of the house sailed into the room – looking expensive and undeniably majestic and, most of all, like the polar opposite of what I’d expected any personal acquaintance of Durlain to look like.
She was, first of all, human.
She was also dressed in a cloud of puffy skirts so wide it barely fit through the doorway, jewels glittering on every bare stretch of skin.
Honey-blonde hair curled wildly around her round face.
Her makeup was a riot of colour on her russet skin, inches away from excessive – the overall effect so overwhelmingly melodramatic that even courtly ladies would have been taken aback.
If Durlain reminded me of crows, she brought to mind a peacock dressing up for the party of the year … except, perhaps, for her eyes.
A single glance was all she gave me as she nimbly shut the door behind her. But it was a hard, purposeful glance, and I vaguely felt like I’d been slapped in the face with it.
Her look at Durlain was barely any milder. Swirling around to him, she dipped into a curtsy so exaggerated she might as well have stuck out her tongue at him, then let out an affected sigh and said, ‘Your Highness. Rather terrible timing, I’m afraid.’
Sweet hell.
A human woman, in that dress, all but telling a fireborn prince to fuck off to his face – what in the world was happening in this place?
Durlain, bewilderingly, seemed unsurprised by the slight, offering no response but the minimal lift of an eyebrow as he propped himself against the massive dressing table. ‘I’ll be very happy to make it quick, if that’s of any reassurance. What do you know about current affairs in Garnot?’
No greeting. No introduction. Not even a how are you doing? to soften the blow.
His tone wasn’t laced with the acid to which he’d treated me for days, and it didn’t carry any of Givron’s repulsive joviality either.
There was just blank, almost indifferent flatness, something so coldly pragmatic it didn’t leave room for niceties – reminding me strangely of our escape from the Svein’s Creek prison, or at least of those first minutes before I’d nearly killed us both with my ill-timed search for knives. Durlain Averre, at work.
Alternatively – Durlain Averre, fearing for his sister’s life.
If Mondren’s wife had hoped for a more civil greeting, she hid it well.
Draping herself and her armfuls of skirts on the edge of the bed, she threw back her head and declared with the air of a woman quoting a favourite playwright, ‘Tell me – has anyone, in all the ages, ever truly known what transpires in Garnot?’
‘Vai.’ There was a warning in that one syllable. ‘Not the time for theatrics. It’s about Muri.’
She stiffened at that. ‘Where is Muri?’
‘Not relevant.’ A barefaced lie, and he didn’t even blink at the ice-cold delivery. Not that close an alliance, then. ‘I’ll be out of your hair in the morning, but it’s a matter of some urgency. I’d much appreciate your help.’
That just sounded like a demand.
He’d also invited us to stay the night, I realised with a crack of mortification, yet once again, the other woman didn’t so much as frown in response. The affected mannerisms had vanished like smoke, too. ‘What do you need?’
‘The Averre negotiations,’ Durlain said slowly, meticulously, as if reading some mental note out loud.
‘If we have any understanding of what is being negotiated, and why, and by whom, exactly, that would be very useful to know. Alternatively, if we can’t find that information as swiftly as I’d like to have it, I might need to send a couple of ravens around. ’
‘Understood.’ She bounced off the bed again, skirts bouncing along around her hips. ‘The good news is Audra is here. The bad news is she hasn’t been sober in a week, but I’ll see if I can get anything coherent out of her. Have you eaten?’
I expected him to return a healthy dose of sarcasm to that question – something like do I look like I’ve just walked out of a picnic? or at the very least I must have missed the many culinary establishments Odine has to offer. But Durlain merely gave a slow exhale by the window and said, ‘No.’
‘Alright. Don’t come downstairs – too many people who’ll recognise you.
I’ll have a meal sent to the study and ask for a word with Audra.
’ She swept around, then came to a halt with her hand on the doorknob, blonde head turning to face me again.
‘And for the love of hell below, show your fugitive companion the way to the wardrobe, will you?’
With that, she was gone.