she looks… so, so. .. magnificent and so solemn! And she’s the Lady Regent’s amanuensis, now. I have to be careful. Some days I wish I didn’t have to grow up. Life was simpler back then.
Jehane nodded with regal calm. “Come then, young mistress, young master. The Lady Regent will examine you in this matter of the treason of House Liu.”
Yseult shot a quick look at Huon and straightened her back. Her fingers pinched a small fold of the sideless surcoat and the cote-hardie under it and lifted it, a scant inch from the floor. She glided forward and followed Jehane out of the room.
Two large men-at-arms in black armor stood at the door like the legendary metal men of the ancient world except for the faces under their raised visors, others beyond, in the corridor.
Things may have seemed simpler in bygone days, thought Yseult.
Even then she couldn’t help admiring Jehane’s magnificent pale green ermine-trimmed cote-hardie with the elaborate dagged sleeves faced in silver silk, black marks echoing the ermine. Either she had perfect taste, or the Lady Regent did and insisted on it for her immediate staff, or both. Probably both.
But they weren’t, not really. I just never noticed what was going on over my head. Mother has been intriguing for years, and so has Uncle Guelf. What an inheritance!
Probably her father had as well, and her mother had helped. It was the play of great lords, the game of advantage.
The audience chamber to which they were escorted in the Dark Tower was an uncomfortable room despite the handsome stone of the floor and walls and the roof of carved plaster arabesques. Harsh light from the bare high windows fell in spears on the spot before a large desk of carved walnut on the slightly raised dais. The Lady Regent sat there, wrapped in a great cloak of priceless black-and-white ermine. Two Associates’ daggers lay on the desk before her, points towards the accused, their bright edges glittering against the dark silky wood.
Yseult sank into a deep curtsy and held it, as Huon did his bow.
“Rise, and approach,” the Regent said.
Yseult took a deep breath as they did, and let her eyes take in the room.
It was large and chilly, with a great medallion of the Lidless Eye set in the wall behind the desk, jet and niello and obsidian and raw gold. Yseult looked for the hot-water radiators. They were there; bronze pipes running in through the classic cast-iron radiators.
So the Spider wants us to be cold and uncomfortable. Did she think I wouldn’t notice and would just be frightened, or did she expect me to notice? Or is she testing to see if I do notice, and just caught that look at the radiators? Oh, yes, that’s it.
Hard wooden chairs ranged in an arc before the dais, but Yseult and Huon were not offered a seat. Jehane sank in a deep curtsy to the Regent and sat quietly next to a girl about her age; she took up a little blond-wood writing desk on her lap and dipped a pen ready in the tiny bottle of ink built into it.
Standing beneath one of those glaring windows was the Grand Constable, Baroness Tiphaine d’Ath, in dark elaborate male court dress and an ostrich plume in the clasp of her chaperon hat. Yseult shuddered under the cold gray gaze.
Quietly Yseult identified some of the others. Chaka, Lord Mollala, young and burly and chocolate dark like his sister Jehane, with a frown on his scarred and bluntly handsome face. Sir Garrick Betancourt, and Lady Delia de Stafford, in subdued formal dress much less fanciful than what her reputation as a leader of fashion would make you expect.
Ranged along the back and sides were the faceless, black-armored men of the Protector’s Guard. Two flanked the Lady Sandra, their naked long swords over their shoulders.
In the Lord Protector’s day they would have been behind me and Huon. Ready to take off our heads. Lord Chaka’s father stood like that once, after the Princess was kidnapped by the Mackenzies while she was visiting with him. He was pardoned, though.
The Regent studied them from behind the desk in a silence that stretched. Yseult looked up into the dark brown eyes under the cream-silk wimple with its platinum band. She’d heard of drowning in someone’s eyes, usually in bad love songs, but never like this. Such an ordinary face, smooth and slightly plump and middle-aged…
For an endless time all was still. Then Sandra spoke, her contralto voice quiet and emotionless as water of rocks in an ornamental garden.
“This investigation is convened. Let it be noted that We-”
She used the royal pronoun, a sign that the business was very, very official. Jehane’s pen scratched and scritched steadily on the paper. She wrote quickly and neatly in shorthand, a little silver clip holding her sleeve back from the ink.
“-are not sitting in Star-Chamber.”
Yseult’s eyes went up involuntarily. Star-Chamber did have stars on its arched ceiling, or so rumor said. Sessions of that court were strictly secret. Sometimes even the sentence was never announced, just carried out.
“Let Huon Liu and Yseult Liu be sworn.”
A smooth-faced priest in a black robe brought out a great Bible in a tooled-leather cover, and a silver-gilt reliquary. Yseult put her hands on them and swore:
“… by my hope of salvation and in the sight of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
Everyone crossed themselves; she kissed her crucifix as well. And I mean to tell the truth!
The Lady Regent joined in the gesture. She was a petite woman in her fifties; a gray cote-hardie showed beneath the ermine robe, buttoned by steel-gray Madras pearls and silver.
All these powerful lords, Yseult thought. And Lady Death, whose name is fear, and the Regent dominates the room as if she were a giant made of fire.
She had wielded unquestioned power from the Willamette to the Yukon and inland to the Rockies for twenty- three years; fourteen of them all by herself, this little woman in silver and gray. The Lady Regent didn’t blink for a long count of five.
Then: “We are gathered here to hear and ponder the matter of the children of the House of Liu. These are Yseult and Huon Liu, children of the late Eddie Liu, well loved by my late husband, and Mary Liu.. . not so well loved by myself.”
Yseult swallowed. The brown eyes studied hers, moved to her brother, and a very small smile showed.
“I suspect that despite natural piety, you are not well pleased with her right now yourselves, children. She has been so stupid. Ambition can be dealt with; it’s even useful. Against folly and self-deception, even gods contend in vain at times.”
The very slight tinge of playfulness leached out of Sandra Arminger’s voice. Something like the metal on the edge of a razor replaced it.
“Your mother is guilty of high treason. This is not in doubt. Her actions, her letters, the testimony of Castle Gervais staff; the actions of Guelf Mortimer, her brother, and Alex Vinton, who she made privy servant to your elder brother, all speak unambiguously for themselves. She intrigued with our enemy, the Church Universal and Triumphant and its Prophet Sethaz. She intrigued with them long before we became aware of their focus on our lands and people. She could have warned us; and we would have been much better prepared in September-but she didn’t. Many good and loyal vassals have died because she didn’t.”
Yseult made herself breathe and forced her eyes to stay open. She wouldn’t have done all this just to kill us. We’d simply be dead.
“Thus, the one hand. On the other”-one small, beautifully tended hand reached out and tapped a stack of letters on the desk, bound with a purple ribbon-“if these are to be believed, your brother is the pattern of a gallant and loyal knight. And they are from the Princess Mathilda, and Rudi Mackenzie, and Father Ignatius of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict. My daughter is naturally of a more kindly nature than I, but she is nobody’s fool and neither is Rudi Mackenzie or the knight-brother, and they all sing the praises of Sir Odard’s courage, his skill at arms, his steadfastness, and his cleverness. Yes?”
Yseult took a deep breath. The praise for her brother and through him for her family and House made the blood rush back to her face and gave her strength; she could feel it curling up from her stomach into her heart and mind.
She blurted: “Odard… Odard is a true knight. And he truly loves the Princess Mathilda, my lady Regent. He would die for her.”
