Chapter XXVII
XXVII
I would caution you against any friendship with or confidence in Orden’s new Priest. Of course, we both know he should not be alive—an accident of fate that I will someday rectify.
But he has the king’s ear, and so his downfall must be planned carefully.
Perhaps you could bring your political power to bear against him?
I understand you are a man of great faith, but it would be a pity if I was forced to speak publicly of Darias’s involvement in your theft of Glora Inver’s lands.
You’ve taken such pride in your ability to conquer any obstacle you set yourself upon—a shame if our clan learned that you went crying to the old king for help in suborning the interests of a woman, and one who is no better than a servant now.
It would, I expect, damage the reputation for competence you have striven so hard to build.
—FROM LUCIAN INVER TO HADRIAN INVER
It was long past midnight, the Priest had been unable to prevail upon Fia to relocate herself and Justus to his cell rather than the queen’s rooms, and every minute that crawled by felt like a liability.
The great drawback to choosing Hadrian Inver as an ally—besides his stunningly low opinion of the Priest, which was, in fact, the point—was Hadrian’s chronic absence from court.
After leaving the king’s company on the road home from the cloister, Hadrian had returned to his principal estate, eighty miles distant from Inverlyn, at the near edge of the western forests.
The Priest dispatched a message bird to him the moment he had Glora’s support, but though Hadrian was a man of action, decisive and fit enough for traveling at speed, the earliest he could be expected was the following night.
A great deal could happen in a night and a day and another night again.
Priests and postulants and queens could be killed, and empty thrones taken.
The Priest did not like waiting. He did not like it one bit.
He paced his cell restlessly, unable to sleep and unwilling to subject himself to the outer cavern, where the sorias’ ghosts were every bit as discontented as him.
It was their singing, muffled by the door but rising to a sudden wail, that warned him someone was crossing the cavern.
With his breath coming hard and fast, the Priest pulled his blade from its sheath and pressed his back to the wall on one side of the cell door.
Whoever came through, he’d sell his life dear.
If they were guards, he could kill three easily, and as many as half a dozen, with luck.
The guards were blunt instruments, trained to throw their weight about with the citizenry while the bulk of the Inver army was in Vesper.
They had none of the desperation or precision a king’s son or daughter must learn to survive.
They might wield blades, but they could not become one, as the Priest was able to at need.
A brisk knock punctuated the sorias’ keening, and the Priest’s pulse slowed at once. Assassins didn’t knock.
But neither did Lucian the spymaster wait to be invited in. The moment his knock had died out he was through the door, the faint warmth of a lantern settling between him and the Priest.
“I think you’ll agree that this has been a woefully unsatisfactory assassination,” Lucian said without preamble, sounding for all the world as if he and the Priest had long been co-conspirators and held each other in fond regard.
Immediately, the Priest’s back was up. Whatever the spymaster had to say, he did not like camaraderie from Lucian.
It went against the natural order of things.
“Have you heard from anyone that they’re planning to move on the throne? ”
The Priest had indeed been busy assessing potential challengers, and it did not matter to him if Lucian knew the information he’d gleaned.
In fact, it served him well for the spymaster to believe that they had truly closed ranks in an attempt to determine Orden’s best successor, little though he enjoyed cozy chats with the odious man.
“Safira Inver has her personal guard on the way to the city—they’re two hundred strong, and can’t possibly arrive until three days from now,” the Priest said, moving to stand by the bureau.
He set his knife down but kept it very near at hand.
Lucian, by contrast, had settled into the wicker chair by the door, and a soft sound signaled that he had put his booted feet up on the Priest’s bed.
Fastidious in all his habits, the Priest fought an urge to grit his teeth.
“Charin Inver is working on a plot to enlist the serving staff and a number of city residents as a temporary force with which he might overthrow the castle guard—it will never succeed, but he’s enthusiastic.
Melian Inver claims to have poisoned Orden, which is possible, given the abrupt nature of his death.
She has no succession plan, but she’s adamant that the death was her doing. ”
“Melian the mad?” Lucian asked with a snort of disbelief. “She’s tried to poison half the people on this mountain. She never succeeds.”
“Not anymore. She used to be more lucid, and better at it,” the Priest said bitterly. He’d been subjected to two particularly nasty poisonings as a boy, and was certain Melian had been behind them.
For the most part, what the Priest had found in his questioning of the Invers was a body of nobles who’d been entirely unprepared for Orden’s death, and any fight for the succession.
They’d grown contented and lazy, secure first in the iron-fisted reign of Darias, followed by Orden’s confident and decisive rise to power as he slaughtered his father and siblings.
No one had expected anything less than a long and prosperous reign from Orden, followed by one of his children seizing the throne as was tradition—if not Justus, then Celina, for she was Inver too, and an upbringing by sorias was no guarantee the girl wouldn’t end up as ruthless as her sires.
The Priest told Lucian as much, and the spymaster heaved a weighty sigh.
“Well,” Lucian said with studied indifference. “If there’s no fit contender for the throne, I suppose we could invite Afon to take it. In the interest of preserving stability and keeping the nation intact. You’d be surprised how well thought of he is, among the people.”
There it was, the Priest realized with a pang of dull shock.
The heart of all this maneuvering. How long Lucian had been in Caervallion’s pocket didn’t especially matter.
What did was the man seated opposite him, suggesting something that was as good as anathema, even to a Priest with very little faith.
The Priest knew that from this point on, he must choose each word and step with exquisite care.
Lucian had shown his hand, and any hint that the Priest was a threat to his true aims would undoubtedly have lethal consequences.
Yet he must not appear too eager to support the spymaster, given their long enmity and the radical nature of Lucian’s succession plan.
“You would find a great many people opposed to that course of action,” the Priest warned. “Even if Afon has made inroads.”
“Perhaps not as many as you’d think,” Lucian said, still in that same uncaring tone.
It did not take a student of human nature to realize that this was what he greatly desired—what he’d likely schemed toward for years.
Damn. The Priest had suspected Lucian might be feeding Caervallion information in order to line his own pockets, but this went far beyond that.
“There is more to Afon Caervallin than meets the eye.”
“Nothing of Afon Caervallin meets my eyes,” the Priest answered. “But I don’t need them to realize he’s a degenerate in a crown.”
“I’ve wondered about that,” Lucian said softly. “If you’d recognize him, had you your sight. Very few have, he’s so changed, but Orden did from the very first.”
The Priest’s pulse picked up tempo, beginning to run through him with a sick sort of anticipation.
“Orden may have claimed and held the throne,” Lucian went on, “but he never liked to get his hands overly dirty. It left a lot of loose ends. You, for one, though that was an accident. I certainly never intended for you to live. Not that I did with Carian, either—that was purely the will of the gods. And I was pleased when I learned he was alive and on his way to seizing Caervallion. Two Inver siblings on rival thrones—what an opportunity, for someone in my position to hedge his bets.”
The Priest kept very still, unwilling to stir lest Lucian recall who he spoke to, and cease unburdening himself. The spymaster seemed bent on boasting, though, determined to show the Priest his cleverness.
Hubris. It made dead men of its bearers.
“Of course, he looks very changed,” Lucian said.
“The poison I used aged him terribly and burned his voice. I’d no idea it could be counteracted, but a group of Silithien sorias came across him near the Caervallin border, where I disposed of the body.
They had no idea who he was and brought him back from the brink of death.
He swore himself to the moon goddess after that, and made a sacrifice of all the sorias who’d saved him but one.
He does have a distinctly Inver way of interpreting the faith.
So you see, it would only be fitting for your elder brother to claim Darias’s throne—it’s his by law, anyhow. ”