'No, my lord. Are you feeling in need of some?'
Biast’s lips huffed on a humorless laugh. 'I reach for some certainty in an uncertain time, I suppose.'
'Then you come to the wrong storehouse,' said Ingrey bitterly. 'The gods give me nothing but hints and riddles and maddening conundrums. As for my vision, I suppose I must call it, it was for Boleso’s funeral. In that hour, the god attended to his soul alone. In our hours, we may receive the same undivided scrutiny.'
Fara, rubbing her hand along one skirt-clad thigh in a tension not unlike her brother’s, looked up. The vertical grooves between her thick eyebrows deepened, as she considered this dark consolation with the wariness of a burned child studying a fire.
'I spoke at some length last night with Learned Lewko,' Biast began, and stopped. He squinted at his sister. 'Fara, you really don’t look well. Don’t you think you had better go lie down for a while?'
The lady-in-waiting nodded endorsement to this idea. 'We could draw the drapes in your chambers, my lady, and make it quite dark.'
'That might be better.' Fara leaned forward, only to sit staring down at her feet for a moment before allowing her waiting woman to pull her reluctantly upright. Biast rose also.
Ingrey seized the moment to conceal calculation in courtesy. 'I am sorry you are so plagued, my lady. But if the inquest returns a verdict of self-defense, there might be no need for you to be so imposed upon again.'
'I can do what I have to do,' she replied coolly. But she looked as though a dismissal of charges was, for the moment, a newly attractive notion. She gave him a civil enough nod of farewell, though it caused her to raise one hand to her temple immediately thereafter. Biast’s glance back at Ingrey was more curious. Ingrey wondered if he might, after all, remove the threat of a trial from Ijada by one strand of persuasion at a time, like a web, rather than in some more concentrated and dramatic manner: if so, well and good. The parallel with Wencel’s preferred techniques of indirection did not escape him.
Biast saw his sister out, but then left her to her waiting woman; he looked up and down the corridor a moment before returning to the chamber, shutting the door firmly behind him. He frowned at his bannerman Symark and then at Ingrey, as though considering some comparison, though whether of physical threat or personal discretion, Ingrey could not guess. Symark was a few years older than his lord and a noted swordsman; perhaps Biast imagined him a sufficient defense from Ingrey, should the wolf-lord run mad and attack. Or Symark and Biast together so, at least. Ingrey did not seek to disabuse the prince-marshal of this comforting error.
'As I said, I had some conversation with Lewko,' Biast continued. He sat again by the low table with the tray, gesturing for Ingrey to do likewise. Ingrey pulled his chair around and composed himself in close attention. 'The Bastard’s Order—which I take to mean, Lewko and a couple of forceful Temple sorcerers—have questioned Cumril in greater detail, at length.'
'Good. I hope they held his feet to the fire.'
'Something of a sort. I gather they dared not press him to the point of such disarray that his demon might reascend. That fear alone, Lewko assured me, was a greater goad to him than any threat to his body that any inquirer might make.' His brow wrinkled doubtfully.
'I understand this.'
'So you might.' Biast sat back. 'More disturbing to me was Cumril’s assertion that my brother had indeed planned my assassination, as you guessed. How did you know?'
So that’s why he had urged Fara out, that he might address these painful matters discreetly. Ingrey shrugged. 'I am no seer. For anyone seeking the hallow kingship with less backing than you already have, it’s a logical step.'
'Yes, but not my own—' Biast stopped, bit his lip.
Ingrey grasped the chance to cast another thread. 'So it seems Lady Ijada saved your life, as well as her own. And your brother’s soul from a great sin and crime. Or your god did, through her.'
Biast paused as though thinking uneasily about this, then began again. 'I do not know how I earned my brother’s hatred.'
'I believe his mind was well and truly unhinged, toward the end. Boleso’s fevered fancies, not any actions of yours, seem to me the springs of his behavior.'
'I did not realize he was so—so lost. When that first dire incident with the manservant happened, I wrote my father I would come home, but he wrote back ordering me to stay at my post. Reducing one rebellious but ill- provisioned border castle and a few bandit camps seems to me now a less vital tutorial than what I might have been learning in the same time at Easthome. I suppose my father wished to insulate me from the scandal.'
Or, perhaps, to protect him from worse and subtler things? Or was Biast’s diversion to the border in this crisis engineered by other persuaders? Was the print of Horseriver’s hoof anywhere in this?
Biast sighed. 'In the fullness of time I expected to receive the crown from my father’s own hands, in his lifetime, like every Stagthorne king before me. He’d had the election and coronation of my older brother Byza all planned out three years ago, before Byza’s untimely death. Now I must grasp with my own hands, or let the crown fall.'
'Byza’s was a sudden illness, wasn’t it?' Ingrey had been gone from Easthome on an early courier mission for Hetwar to the Low Ports, and had missed that royal funeral. Biast had received the prince-marshal’s banner that had belonged to his brother before him only a few weeks later. Had Boleso dwelt too unhealthily upon the precedent?
'Lockjaw.' Biast shuddered in memory. 'I was in Byza’s train at his naval camp near Helmharbor at the time. He was preparing some new ships for sea trials. Several men were stricken so. Five gods spare me from such a fate. It gave me an aversion to deathbeds that lingers still. My heart fails me at the thought of facing another. I pray five times a day for my father’s recovery.'
Ingrey had last seen the dying hallow king in person some weeks ago, just before his palsy stroke. He had been yellow-skinned, belly-swollen, and cheek-sunken even then, his movements heavy and voice low and slurred. 'I think we must pray for other blessings for him, now.'
Biast stared away, not disputing this. 'The charge against Boleso, if it is not just Cumril’s calumny, has left me wondering whom I can trust.' His gaze, returning to Ingrey, made Ingrey feel rather odd.
'Each man according to his measure, I suppose.'
'This presumes an ability justly to measure men, which begs the question. Have you taken the measure of my brother-in-law yet?'
'Not, um, entirely.'
'Is he a danger like Boleso?'
'He’s... smarter.' And so, Ingrey was beginning to be convinced, was Biast. 'No insult intended,' Ingrey added, in a belated attempt at tact.
Biast grimaced. 'At least, I trust, he is not so mad.'
Silence.
'One does so trust—doesn’t one?'
'I trust no one,' Ingrey evaded.
'Not even the gods?'
'Them least of all.'
'Mm.' Biast rubbed his neck. 'Well, the impending kingship does not give me joy, under the circumstances, but I am not at all inclined to hand it on, over my dead body, to monsters.'
'Good, my lord,' said Ingrey. 'Hold to that.'
Symark, who had been listening to this exchange with arms folded, rose and wandered to the window, evidently to check the clock of the sun, for he turned and gave his master an inquiring look. Biast nodded in return and stood with a tired grunt; Ingrey came to his feet likewise.
Biast ran a hand through his hair in a gesture copied or caught, Ingrey was fairly sure, from Hetwar. 'Have you any other advice for me this day, Lord Ingrey?'
Ingrey was only a year or two older than Biast; surely the prince could not see him as an authority for that reason. 'In all matters of policy, you are better advised by Hetwar, my lord.'
'And other matters?'
Ingrey hesitated. 'For Temple politics, Fritine is most informed, but beware his favor to his kin. For, ah, practical theology, see Lewko.'
Biast appeared to muse for a moment over the unsettling implications of that
