Phoenix Ashes (The Landers Saga Book 3) Read online

  “No more new tapestries,” I said. “We’ll let the moths eat the old ones to tatters first.”

  “Safire will have no say-so if they live here. She’d be the youngest wife,” Talia said hotly. “I know--I was the youngest wife once.”

  “About a hundred years ago,” I muttered.

  “What was that, Mordric?”

  “They’ll probably live at Safire and Dagmar’s old family house. Safire‘s too sweet to live here with us cats.” Eden smirked.

  “Speak for yourself,” Talia said. “And there’s nothing sweet about that one. We'll likely suffer another pestilence, seeing as she’s a . . .”

  “She’s a what?” I asked, and the whole table grew quiet.

  “Merius won’t bring her here anyway,” Whitten said finally, toneless.

  “What about Merius?” Dagmar bustled into the chamber, patting one last stray hair into place. Selwyn rose and pulled out her chair for her as she glanced around at us expectantly. “Good evening, sir,” she said to me. A nervous blond, she had twice as much sense as her witch sister but only a quarter of Safire’s charm.

  “He and Safire are returning in the next few days,” Selwyn informed her. “How’s Flavian?”

  “Still colicky.” She sighed, then brightened. “Next few days? Really? Safire's letter didn’t say they were returning now, though . . .”

  “Maybe she didn’t know when she wrote it. Mordric just told us.”

  Dagmar looked in my direction. “I trust your journey was pleasant?”

  I shrugged. “The usual. Thank you for asking.”

  “How did Safire look, last you saw her?”

  “Fine.”

  She shifted to the edge of her chair and put her hands on the table, as if she wanted to ask me for more details but didn’t dare.

  “I thought you said Safire had been ill, Dagmar,” Talia remarked.

  “I did worry she was ill--I could think of no other reason for her long silence . . .” Dagmar looked at me.

  I shrugged again. “She’s fine.” Seeing from their faces that my answer still would not stem the tide of questions, I continued. “Perhaps she was ill when I went to Sarneth, but she was fine on the voyage back, not even sea sick. She and Merius will visit in a few days when his business in Corcin is done, and you can ask her yourself.” Then I attacked my soup, damning women and their inability to accept a short answer.

  “Her letter was rather cryptic--that’s why I’m so curious, I suppose.”

  “What news of Sullay?” I asked, already knowing the answer, but hoping to distract them from Safire.

  “He should be rotting in the topmost cell of the prison tower,” Eden said sweetly. God, I wanted her, the cat.

  I shook myself--my sudden lust was both jarring and inappropriate, considering the setting. Hellfire.

  “Well, I think you hounding him is an embarrassment,” Talia said. "At the Casian‘s party, I had to justify why you involved the magistrate. Really, you’re treating him no better than a common pickpocket, and here he is, a respectable merchant. It’s disgraceful.”

  “What’s disgraceful is his behavior. He’s worse than a common pickpocket--he ordered his men to commit murder. Tell your friends that,” I retorted.

  My gaze fell on Eden. She sawed at her duck with an unladylike vigor, like me wanting this dinner over with as soon as possible. I suddenly saw her as she had been that night in Sarneth, the thin sheen of sweat glistening over her body with a honey glow. Some rogue Landers several generations back had married a vagabond woman, an exotic strain which produced amber eyes here, black hair there, and a darker complexion than was usual among us pale-eyes. It was a rare beauty in Cormalen, well suited to Eden, and perhaps partly explained her popularity at court. She was different from any woman I had known before. She glanced up then, and I quickly lowered my gaze. Damned shameless hussy, for making me think of her the way a man thinks of a favorite courtesan. I remembered the mead taste of her, the seamless way she had moved with me, and a shudder ran through me, under my skin. No, I couldn’t do this anymore. It had been nothing. As soon as I summoned my mistress at court, I would forget I had ever thought of Eden in such a scandalous way. There was nothing forbidding me from taking her as a mistress or a wife, but just because a thing was permitted didn’t mean it was honorable. She was a woman, not a girl, but too many years still separated us, and she was a distant cousin, a member of my House. Although such unions weren't forbidden, King Arian and his watchdog bishop frowned upon them except for the most obvious marriages of convenience. I’d have to make her see reason.

  “Sullay is a pompous ass whose stupidity alone should earn him the noose. Mordric’s being more than fair to him,” Eden said.

  A silence fell. Talia relied on small comments to make her cuts, and Eden’s frontal assault had finally rendered her speechless, thank God.

  “Would someone please pass the salt?” Dagmar asked, and conversation resumed, sticking to safe, dull topics the rest of dinner.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Whitten followed Baldwin into my chamber. Whitten’s shoulders slumped, and he smelled of spirits, likely some of my whiskey. Sot. I straightened in my chair by the hearth and set aside the list of instructions I had been writing to my steward Randel at court.

  I didn’t offer Whitten a chair, but instead motioned him to stand on the other side of the hearth where I could keep an eye on him.

  “Leave us,” I told Baldwin.

  As soon as the door closed, I rose and checked it to be sure the latch was secure. The servants didn’t need to hear this. Then I took my seat.

  “You heard Merius is returning.”

  He nodded, his arms crossed and his hands tucked under his armpits. I hated not being able to see a man’s hands--I had been surprised by a hidden dagger or two in my day.

  “Stand straight and keep your hands in sight. I’ll take no sullen gestures from you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Merius plans to kill you if he sees you.”

  “I expected as much.”

  “If it wouldn’t have damaged Safire’s reputation and made it impossible for Merius to marry her, I would have had you arrested, castrated, and cast out of the House. That would have been your just due under the law.”

  “But we were married. I really thought I had full rights to her, sir.”

  “She’s not an ewe or a cow, Whitten. Even it had been a natural marriage and not the marriage of convenience it was, you still would have been guilty of rape for taking her as she was--unaware, mad, in a stupor. Now, if she had been in her right mind and refused you after a legal and natural marriage, you could have annulled the union. But you still couldn’t have forced her, if she was unwilling.”

  “But that’s not the law in Sarneth or any other land . . .”

  “We don’t live in Sarneth. It doesn’t matter if it’s the law anyway--no honorable man forces himself on a woman, law or no. I’ll not argue with you about this, not when I could take the sword to you myself.”

  Whitten hunkered down. “I didn’t mean for . . .”

  “I don’t care what you meant, and neither will Merius. I’m giving you a chance, you fool, which is more than you deserve.”

  “A chance?” Whitten’s pretended ignorance, his primary defense, slipped for a moment, and I heard the anger as his voice cracked.

  “If you leave now, of your own free will, it would be best for all, including you. If you stay, Merius will challenge you, and I don’t need to tell you the outcome of that.”

  Whitten straightened. “That’s what you call a chance? You’re casting me out of the House . . .”

  “No--not officially. This is best done as quietly as possible.” The small muscles in my hand twitched in the direction of my dagger hilt, an instinct so primitive that I had trouble ignoring it. “Do you want everyone up and down the east coast knowing you as a brigand and rapist?” I managed. Perhaps if I could keep my voice even, I could control my temper. I had to co
ntrol my temper. If I killed this wretch, here in cold blood . . . better to arrange some kind of accident . . .

  “What about my betrothal to Cyranea?”

  “Broken,” I barked. “I sent her father the official letter.”

  “Don’t we need that alliance with the Helles Isles?”

  That he even considered the political implications of his departure surprised me. He had an animal cunning when cornered. “There are other ways to make an alliance besides marriage.”

  “But what am I to do?”

  I stood. “Work as a dockhand, if they’ll take you.”

  “I can't believe you're casting me out for this. She's naught but a woman, and I did her no permanent harm . . ..”

  There was a sudden welcome coolness in my hand. My dagger hilt, cold metal that drew away the heat of my rage and turned it to icy resolve inside.

  “Sir . . .” Whitten’s voice was distant, barely discernible over the pounding in my ears. “Sir? Sir!”

  He stood frozen for an instant on the far side of the hearth, then lunged behind a chair as I stepped toward him. Craven cur. He had his dagger in its scabbard on his belt but made no move to draw it. I approached slowly, every muscle taut and unyielding as a snake about to strike. His eyes followed me as he shrank behind his coward’s shield, his only other movement a slight tremble in his arms and hands. The tension inside tightened unbearably as I rounded the chair. Finally, I uncoiled and sprang towards him. He yelled and knocked the chair over on its side. He tripped on the chair and fell. One of Talia’s embroidered cushions went flying and landed on top of Whitten. I bounded over the chair. In my haste, I stabbed the cushion instead of him, cutting a long slash in the fabric when I tried to free my dagger. Feathers exploded from the slash, then floated down in a blinding white haze. I sneezed violently.

  “God damn it,” I swore.

  Whitten clambered to his feet and ran for the door. I raced after him, but he was already out in the hall, his boots pounding the floorboards as he went toward the main staircase. I followed partway down the hall, then suddenly stopped, my harsh breathing loud in my ears, a blood red haze obscuring all but what lay directly in front of me. What was I doing? I couldn’t kill him here, out where the servants could see. God knew what kind of rumors that would provoke. But I couldn’t let him go, either, the sniveling bastard. I wiped my mouth with my hand, my breath still absurdly loud, then sheathed my dagger before I continued down the hall at a normal pace. With each step and each breath, I concentrated on the tension still binding my muscles, much like those stunt men at fairs who concentrated on escaping impossibly knotted ropes. I couldn’t spring at him again. I couldn’t let the rage take me again. If I had stayed calm, I might have managed to kill him. Instead he had gotten away because I had lost my focus. How many times had I lectured Merius about keeping his focus in a battle? Yet here I had let myself lose control.

  I descended the stairs, using each step down as a way to measure my breaths. Breathe in, breathe out. The shadowed front hall was empty. No Whitten here. I took a candlestick from a side table and searched the entire lower floor, even going into the dust-draped chambers of the closed wing. A few servants scuttled past me on missions of their own, only one daring to ask if I needed anything. I silenced him with a look and continued about my business. After an hour, I had to conclude that Whitten had fled the house, which was what I had known all along. The tedium of the search, though, had at least let me find my usual sense of controlled calm.

  I trudged back to my chamber. Randel could find Whitten for me. The sot wouldn’t get far, maybe even only as far as Calcors. It likely wouldn’t take Randel long to find him and then arrange a convenient accident. He was a sot, after all, and sots had accidents all the time. My brother Gaven had been a sot, and look what had happened to him. Galloping his horse past the bridge in the dead of the night and plunging headlong into the river on the way back from the tavern--naturally he had been drunk at the time. He was often drunk. I smiled grimly to myself as I entered my chamber. I righted the chair that Whitten had knocked over, then cleaned up what I could of the cushion. The servants would never miss it. Talia had hundreds of these damned things strewn all over the Hall.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  The hour had passed for going to bed. Usually I could sleep here with no concerns--the dreams about Arilea that had haunted me had ended after Safire had exorcised her ghost or whatever insane ritual the witch had performed last July. Perhaps she had sent Arilea to hell--the harpy wouldn’t have been content in heaven. The beautiful harpy. Fair of face always, fair of manner when it had suited her.

  I sighed and sat on the bed, the bed where we had got Merius and where she had died in childbirth eleven years later. We had got seven children here during my stints home from court, but only Merius had lived. As to why the others had died, no one could say for sure. Bad humors between mother and child, the apothecary had said. A hellspawn curse, the women in the kitchen had muttered. Curse, hell. Unless it was the curse of the anger that had always simmered under our passion for each other. She had resented my long silences, my time at court, my need for solitude. She had complained that I kept myself, even my feeling for her, hidden under a mask. Perhaps, though I wouldn’t have called it a mask. A mask implied some dishonest action on my part, and I never hid myself or my feelings--merely I kept myself like a dagger in a scabbard, only to be drawn when needed. I hated the pointless display of men who paraded about with the puffed arrogance of a peacock, all show and no substance. Was that what she had wanted of me? If so, she could have died when she was a hundred years old and still been waiting.

  She had flown into several rages over me not letting her stay at court except for a few major parties and balls each year. She had loved being on display and playing at intrigue, but after Merius had been born, such was out of the question. Besides, I had never felt certain that all her flirtations were innocent, especially after Gaven. Now I knew she had only been trying to get my attention with her games, but at the time, I had been a jealous young husband, ready to draw my sword on any suspected paramours.

  If she hadn’t died when she had, we likely would have come to some other bad end. After all, the anger between us had killed all of our children except Merius, who was too stubborn to be affected by bad humors or whatever the hell the apothecary had called it.

  I propped myself against the bolster, tossing aside extra pillows with a curse. Who had put those there? Probably some more of Talia’s fussing. She had the tastes of a picky spinster. How dare she mess my chamber? I grabbed the half full bottle of whiskey and drank straight from it, afterwards holding the bottle on my stomach above my belt buckle. The glass was cold through the linen of my shirt.

  There came a knock at the door, and Eden slid into the chamber, quickly shutting the door behind her and turning the key in the lock. We considered each other for a long moment, all the thoughts and images I didn’t dare contemplate at dinner returning in a flood.

  “I hoped you were Baldwin--I need more hot water.”

  “You always think I’m a servant.” She sauntered forward, her sinuous movement tightening the muscles under my skin. I could spring up and grab her as readily as a man half my age, but I stayed in place and watched, taking short, careful sips of my whiskey.

  “I’d rather you were a servant.”

  “Why?” She perched on the edge of the bed near my knees, a lock of her hair slipping loose from its moorings. I resisted reaching out to fix it.

  “Because then I could order you to leave.”

  She put her hand on my leg, just above the knee, her light fingers stroking my skin through my trousers. Warmth spread up my legs and through my body--it was only the whiskey taking effect. That was all.

  “If you order me to leave, I will. I’m at your command, sir,” she said, her voice husky.

  “Is that so?” No, it wasn’t just the whiskey. I could only delude myself so far.

  “Is there anything you’d like me to
do? Turn down your sheets, perhaps?”

  “Eden, don’t be a fool.” My hand brushed her skirt, the velvet warm under my skin, warm from her. She grew still when I ran my fingers down her hip and over the curve of her rear, the crackle of the fire and the whisper of her breathing the only sounds. Her shape reminded me of a well-made violin, generously curved in all the right places.

  “Whiskey?” I offered her the bottle.

  She took a swig, steady as a man. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to seduce me, sir, plying me with liquor in your bed.”

  “Is that how the prince does it?” My hand settled in the bend of her waist, gripping her.

  She stiffened under my hand. “The prince doesn’t seduce me.”

  “That’s not what Cyril told me.”

  “That gossipy old maid? You get your news from him?”

  “Cyril has many faults, and complete honesty is one. I told you to mind yourself while I was away, Eden.”

  “I did mind myself.”

  “So why am I still hearing these rumors?”

  She bridled. “You’re holding me too tight.”

  “Indeed.” I chuckled. The whiskey bottle clunked on the floor as I flipped her down and under me, my movements so quick that she didn’t even have the chance to resist. We stared at each other for a long moment, her chest rising and falling, rising and falling against my arm as she tried to catch her breath.

  “How did you do that?” she asked finally, her voice even.

  “I’ll show you sometime.”

  “It takes years of practice with a blade to be that quick.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “The whiskey wasn’t corked. It’s going all over the floor.”

  “I don’t give a damn.”

  “Let me up, Mordric.”

  “When I feel like it.”

  “When will that be?”

  “When you answer some questions.”

  “What if I lie?”

  “You’ll be sorry.”

  Her breath quickened, just enough so I could tell, some bizarre marriage of fear and desire. She probably wasn‘t even aware of it, but I bet if I touched her now, I‘d find her roused. Good God.