“And that you have things to tell the queen. Things she really ought to hear?”
The Talayan nodded.
“I can probably arrange that. You’ll have to start by telling me, though. Have a seat. Let’s do this like reasonable men. I, by the way, am Delivegu Lemardine. The best friend you have at this moment.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
By the time Sire Dagon reached his compound in the league quarters, his clothes were so disheveled he could barely walk without tripping over portions of his flowing garments. The sole of one of his shoes flapped maddeningly, and he had lost his ceremonial skullcap. His lip was fat from having been punched by a commoner, and dark liquid soiled his front. His own vomit. Several layers of it had been squeezed out of him by more than one sight, but mostly by the glimpse he caught of the things that had writhed in and around and over Queen Corinn’s face. What were they? He asked, but he did not want to know. There could be nothing good in knowing the name of such things.
He plowed through the servants waiting to greet him and went straight to his office, ignoring their exclamations of concern. He could think of nothing save the horror of what he had seen and the dread at what he had done. Never before had his timing been so disastrous. Absurdly, fantastically disastrous.
“What have we done?” he asked himself, once seated and panting in his office chair. He really was not sure. He knew what he had done. Yes, but not what the effects of it would be now. Nor what the Santoth had done to Corinn. Nor what they would do to the world. He could not get his mind around it, but the terror squeezing every fiber of his body told him he had to, and quickly.
“Sire?” His secretary peeked in the open door. “You’re upset, I see. Should I send for Teeneth? She would want to-”
“No! This is no time for concubines, you-you…” No insult came readily enough, so Dagon let the sentence hang, unfinished.
“Of course, sire,” the man began again, his voice simpering from the first word. “Do you need-”
Anger rose in Dagon like alcohol tossed onto a fire. He suddenly hated that this man was talking to him, distracting him, making it harder to get a grasp of his thoughts. What’s more, the room was full of people! They were his people, but he loathed them. “Get out!” he shouted. “All of you. Spies and leeches. Out!” He tossed a paperweight at the secretary. It missed him but grazed a servant across the temple. In a flutter of motion, the servants abandoned their posts and dashed for the door. One knocked over an end table. Another caught it before it hit the floor.
“Wait! Come back.”
They all hesitated, secretary and servants, unsure whom he meant.
“Send for Grau and the others,” Dagon said to the secretary. “All of them. Bring them here.”
Seeing the man scurry away at the task gave Dagon a moment’s comfort. Yes, he needed his brothers! That was why he had no control of his emotions. He should not be without his brothers at a time like this. In the chaos of exiting the Carmelia, everyone in such a mad frenzy, Dagon had lost sight of the other leaguemen. One minute he was among them; the next some ruffian yanked the silver chain from his neck as he pushed him down to be trampled. By the time he gained his feet again-much abused in the process-he found himself alone within a mob. He tried to put the dreadfulness of that out of his mind.
Like him, the other sires would just now be arriving back at their guest quarters. They had to meet that very night. They had to decide what to do and how to do it. Dagon knew that the arrival of the Santoth changed everything. He did not know how it changed everything, but that it had was a certainty. He was sure the others would see it the same way. None of them had planned for this. What he had planned for-and just executed-was something very different. And that was what made things worse!
“You fool, Grau! Your stupid plan. Your bloody compass!”
The compass. The very gift that the queen had lifted with her bare hands just a few hours ago. He found something almost sexual in the positioning of her palms as they cupped the polished gold. And Aliver. He had run his fingers over it, tracing the words of the inscription as he read them out. Dagon could barely grasp that such a beautiful piece of science and artistry had become a tool of death, but he knew it had. Those brief touches, Grau had assured him, were all it would take.
I t had all seemed so perfect when Sire Grau first shared his scheme with him. The queen and the new king eliminated in one untraceable action. No bloodstained knife. No arrow in the breast. No assassins to employ and then, in turn, have assassinated. No. It was as simple as league chemistry was complex.
“We have a poison,” Grau had said through the mist-filled air in his quarters that afternoon in Alecia.
“We have always had poisons,” Dagon replied.
“Yes, but this one our chemist can paint onto whatever object we request.” The old man demonstrated this with an imaginary brush. “It goes on as an invisible film. It dries there, leaving no trace to the eye or to touch. No smell at all. When they first showed me, they pointed at an apple that had been coated in the stuff. I almost picked it up despite myself, such was the illusion that nothing was there at all. If I had touched it, though, you and I would not be speaking now.”
All those who handled an object thus treated died. Not immediately. Their deaths were delayed. The poison needed to work its way into their systems. From the tests the league had done-and they were nothing if not thorough with testing-those who were so poisoned died within a cycle of the moon, sometimes a little longer or shorter. The end, when it came, was swift. They would drop to sleep and not wake. They would be found glassy- eyed, their tongues green, their fingers mottled with spots. In short…
“They will look to have overmeasured a concoction of the mist,” Sire Dagon had finished.
Grau showed his pleasure by exposing the filed points of his teeth. “Oh, the vices of royalty. We all know Leodan was an addict. Why not his children as well? The crown sits heavy, doesn’t it, on a brow as delicate as Corinn’s. What’s most charming about this poison is that it doesn’t overstay its welcome. All traces of it fade away from the treated object after the first few days. The poison-I don’t know-it evaporates or something.” The long- nailed fingers of his hand drew the process vaguely in the smoky air. “Anyone trying to find traces of it after the unfortunate death will find nothing whatsoever.”
“So no fingers can be pointed at us.”
“Fingers can point,” Grau said, shrugging, “but that’s all they’ll be able to do.”
“And how would we guarantee that the Akarans will touch a particular object? With all their servants and-”
“The coronation,” Grau had cut in. “We will put it in their hands ourselves at the coronation.”
S o they had. And now it was done. The siblings-and a good number of servants and any guests unfortunate enough to have handled the compass-would be dead within a month. They were walking corpses.
Dagon had been so pleased. Sitting in his box as the ceremony continued, he even began wording his condolences to young Prince Aaden. Dear Noble Lad, he had mouthed in his head, I can scarcely fathom the cruel hand fate has stricken you with…
He had to stop himself remembering it. It no longer amused him that he had planned to claim to the boy that he would gladly exchange his own life if it would spare Corinn’s, or that he imagined sitting with the boy as they studied the compass together, both he and the young prince touching the then harmless instrument.
No, he need not think back on that. What mattered was thinking forward.
“How have things changed?” Dagon asked himself. He did not notice that he spoke his thoughts out loud, or that most of his servants had crept back into the room and resumed the regular posts. He did not even flinch when a servant handed him a lit pipe. He just took it. He sucked on the mouthpiece, the gurgle of the water loud in the room. He held it for a long time and exhaled the greenish vapors along with his words. “We have sorcerers living in the world, that’s how things have changed. The Santoth.”
He inhaled again. It felt good to do so. The mist was in him now. With it came the possibility of calm. The tension that had crawled across his skin grew coy, flirtatious. He thought briefly of Teenith, his concubine, but this was no time for seeking solace in her arms. After a few more inhalations, he said, “Now, what do I know of these Santoth?”
