out visiting. She stammered something about the lord being busy, but Savedra broke in with her brightest smile.
“It’s all right. I won’t stay long. I’m sure he won’t mind. I can see myself up.” She turned toward the sweeping marble stair before the woman could argue.
Savedra tried to marshal her thoughts as she climbed. What could she say to him? Surely she could sway him. He’d been her doting uncle all her life, and Nikos couldn’t be held accountable for his grandfather’s sins. And Ashlin-Her throat tightened at the thought of the princess. Ashlin didn’t deserve to suffer for a political marriage she didn’t even want, but it was rankest naivete to think that would stop anyone who desired her out of the way.
The library door stood open a crack, spilling a bright sliver of gold across the hall. The hinges didn’t squeak as she laid a careful hand on the wood. But her greeting died unspoken as she looked inside.
A woman stood on a stool in the center of the room, surrounded by lamps. A tailor crouched at her feet adjusting her hem, his mouth glittering with silver pins. A beautiful woman, to judge by the figure wrapped in white silk, but her face was veiled, dark hair carefully pinned up.
Savedra froze in the doorway, pulse quickening in her throat. In her turmoil over Nikos and Ashlin, she had almost forgotten Phaedra. Or whoever Varis’s mysterious book-stealing friend truly was. She nearly fled to regroup, but her toes scuffed on the edge of a carpet and Varis turned.
“Vedra.” For the first time she could remember, he didn’t look happy to see her. He covered it quickly, though, pulling on a smile and bowing over her hand. “Hello, darling. You’ve caught me at a rather inopportune moment, I’m afraid. Which is what happens when one doesn’t announce oneself. Or knock.”
“Inopportune? Like the time Mother walked in on you with the twin contortionists?” Her smile ached as she held it in place.
“Acrobats. They were acrobats. And not, I might add, doing anything unusually acrobatic at the time. Your mother likes to exaggerate that story more than it deserves. She didn’t knock either, as I recall. Besides, I’d much rather be walked in on doing something worthy of gossip. This hardly qualifies.”
“Mysterious women are always worthy of gossip.” She curtsied toward the woman on the stool. “Forgive me for interrupting.”
The woman waved a hand dismissively, earning a
Her voice pricked the nape of Savedra’s neck, soft and husky and oddly familiar. But not, as she’d imagined from Iancu’s description, Sarken; this woman’s native tongue was Selafain. The words were casual, the woman’s face not quite turned her way, but she felt the weight of her stare like a hand. Her arm throbbed beneath her sleeve. Did they know?
“Is there something I can do for you?” Varis asked.
“I only wanted to say hello. You’ve looked tired lately-” She shrugged, artless concern. That at least was true. For an unannounced evening visit to find anyone else unbuttoned and disheveled was normal; for Varis it was alarming. Beneath his open collar she glimpsed the edge of a dark and ugly bruise, and her blood chilled. She’d seen a similar mark on Isyllt Iskaldur, when the necromancer had delivered her report to Nikos. A vampire bite.
“I have, haven’t I?” He ran a hand over his scalp and sighed, surreptitiously tugging his shirt closed at the neck. “Even debauchery can be exhausting sometimes. The parties multiply so this time of year, and the planning and invitations and costumes…” He gestured toward the tailor.
“I understand. I’ll leave you to it, and to your guest.” She smiled at the woman, but found no hint of an answering expression behind the veil. “We should have lunch sometime. You can come to the palace and scandalize everyone.”
His smile looked like a grimace. “Yes. We should do that.” He leaned in to kiss her cheek, his lips soft and cool. “I appreciate you thinking of your decrepit old uncle.” His hand settled on her back, steering her toward the door so lightly and unobtrusively that she hardly noticed it.
“Buying dresses for other men’s wives?” she asked as they started down the stairs.
“Someone has to. I can’t bear another season of the Hadrians setting fashions.”
He took her arm, and released it again when she flinched. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. A bit of clumsiness, is all.”
Neither her tone nor face faltered, but Varis blanched. His eyes darkened and splotches of color bloomed in his cheeks. “That lie, my dear, is as old as the hills, and unworthy of both of us. Did he hurt you?”
She drew back from his cold rage, tongue slow with confusion. “Did who-No!” Realization made her stomach lurch. “No, of course not!” She forced her voice low when she wanted to shriek. “Nikos has never hurt me. He never would. How can you think that?”
“I’ve seen how the Alexioi treat their pets.” Anger made him a stranger.
“He is not his grandfather.” And so much for saving that particular secret.
Varis’s face twisted, finally settled back into his usual sardonic half-smile. “Indeed. Nor his father either, I suppose. That doesn’t seem to have helped you, does it?”
“He does the best by me that he can. We have both of us always understood how it would be.” Unbidden, the memory of Ashlin’s skin surfaced. She hoped her stinging blush could be taken for anger. “If you act against him-or the princess-you act against me. Please, Uncle. Don’t make us enemies for the sake of a man decades dead.”
He turned away, folding his arms across his chest. “I act for the living and the dead. And I have more cause than you can pry out of your mother.”
“Then tell me! Make me understand this.”
She caught the glitter of his eyes as they rolled upward. Toward the library. “I can’t,” he said softly, and the wrath drained out of him like water. “I don’t want to hurt you, Savedra.”
Her jaw tightened. “You already have.”
He lifted his chin, as chilly and urbane as ever. “Then you’ll forgive me or you won’t, darling. That’s up to you. Perhaps when this is over I can explain it to you.”
Her spine straightened in response, and her voice cooled to match. “I hope you can. I hope I can forgive you when I hear it.”
She turned away, sweeping down the rest of the stairs and snatching her cloak off the peg before the miserable housekeeper could reach it. She didn’t turn back, but out of the corner of her eye she saw him, frozen pale and motionless as marble. If he called to her, it was lost beneath the shutting of the door.
Safely enclosed in her waiting carriage, she let her face crumple, pinching her nose against the building pressure in her sinuses. She wanted to scream, but restrained herself for the driver’s sake.
She couldn’t fall apart yet. And she couldn’t do this alone. Her mother wouldn’t endanger the house, and Nikos couldn’t allow anything to threaten the throne. Ashlin might help her, but Savedra couldn’t risk the princess again. Captain Denaris was loyal to the throne-
No. She sat up straighter. She didn’t need a soldier or a courtier; she needed a sorcerer.
Savedra yanked open the panel that connected the interior to the driver’s seat. “Take me to Archlight.”
“What happened to your hand?” Dahlia asked later, as Isyllt measured mint and tarragon for tisane.
“A knife, with a would-be assassin on the other end.” Her fingers flexed at the memory, bone and tendon aching around their pins. The fresh scars on her throat were obvious; she’d been careful not to show the bruise on her thigh when she got out of the bath. Ciaran must have noticed it, but had chosen not to comment.
“What happened to the assassin?”
Isyllt frowned at the teakettle. “I don’t know. I never found her again, only her masters.” She stroked the band of her ring with her right thumb-that had been the only time she’d ever been parted from her diamond, and she meant to keep it that way.
“It would sound better if you’d killed her.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” She set the kettle on the stove, shivering at the heat pulsing from the tiles. A previous, more culinary-minded tenant had installed the expensive green-glazed cooker; Isyllt had promised herself one if she ever moved into a house of her own.
“What about your wrist? Was that the same assassin?”
Burn scars ringed her left wrist, ridged and glossy tissue in the shape of a man’s hand. “No, someone else. He isn’t dead either.” She smiled a little at that memory, though there had been no humor in it at the time. “We’re friends now, actually.”
