Likely killed after some mockery of a trial. So what do we do with him?'
'We stop him from talking?'
'Perhaps, but that would not undo the things he has said and the emotions he has stirred. What is better than silencing him?'
'If he must talk… we should have him say what we want him to, instead of what we don't.'
A smile slowly bloomed on Corinn's face. The answer did not surprise her-she had thought of it herself already-but it did please her. She reached out and mussed his hair and said, 'Clever boy.'
Aaden accepted the praise with a shrug.
'You may go now,' Corinn said. 'I'll tell you later what this criminal had to say for himself.'
But Aaden had more on his mind. 'Grae said he would go riding with me tomorrow, all the way out to Haven's Rock. He claims he has a fishing line long enough to reach the water from the top. There's no way that's possible. He must be joking! I can go, can't I?'
'You like Grae, don't you?' Corinn asked, trying to make the question sound light and casual. 'You've spent even more time with him than I have.'
'He fenced with me. Not like the others but steel to steel. I could've gotten cut.' The prospect of this seemed to delight the boy.
'Is that so?' Corinn raised an eyebrow. This was not actually news to her. Very little that Aaden did went unreported to her. For that matter, very little that Grae did during the last few weeks escaped her either. She knew what Aaden did not mention about this sparring: that the blades they used were light, with no edge at all. Grae could certainly have hurt him nonetheless, but ten pairs of Marah eyes had been pinned to him the entire time, ready to repay any injury with a quick death. Corinn asked, 'Don't you think that's dangerous?'
'No. Not really. He said I was quicker than him. Quicker than he ever was, he said.' Almost as an afterthought, he added, 'He wouldn't hurt me, anyway. He likes me.'
'Of course he wouldn't,' Corinn said. 'And of course he does.'
Aaden's delay in leaving meant that he was still in the hallway when Rhrenna led Delivegu into the viewing area. After the formalities of greeting the queen were seen to, the Candovian said, 'Your son looks more like Hanish Mein every day.' He motioned toward the corridor to explain the comment's origins.
Corinn eyed him a moment, deciding how severe to be with him. At a glance he was just as elaborately garbed as ever, his shirt brilliantly white, his black breeches tight enough that they seemed to have shrunk to fit his form. The hoops of his gold earrings sparkled, and he wore bracelets on one wrist that clanged together as he moved. But for all the gaudy finery, his face did not betray his usual arrogance. Perhaps his time out of favor had mellowed him.
'You knew Hanish Mein?' Corinn asked.
'To look at, yes. Only to look at. He didn't know me, but he was hard to miss when he had the reins of power. I liked his style.' As an afterthought, he added, 'Then, I guess you did, too.'
Or perhaps it had not mellowed him, Corinn thought. She was unsure as yet. She ordered him to explain his claim and document the identity of the man sitting in the room below them. Delivegu did so readily enough. He explained that he had gained intelligence that led him to a certain commoner's message service. There he had intercepted a message meant for the rascal. He hurriedly transported himself to the message's destination. It was a gamble, a considerable personal expense, but it paid off. He did spot the man. He spied on him long enough to satisfy himself of his identity, and then he decided on a way to capture him.
'How did you do that?'
Delivegu shrugged and looked the closest he could to sheepish. 'I'm not proud when it comes to such matters. I came up behind him when he was fumbling with the keys to unlock his rented room. I hit his head with a club.'
'Without warning?'
'Of course. How better to do it? And lucky I did, for he didn't go down from that one blow. He turned and reached for me. I needed to hit him twice more before he dropped to his knees. Then he was easier to deal with. A bit, at least.'
'How did you know it was Barad?'
'Before I approached him, I questioned an acquaintance of his. A young man with, I daresay, insufficient resilience to resist me.'
'This initial information you gained-that which took you to the message service-how was that come by?'
Delivegu cleared his throat. 'I have something to report that you may find disturbing.' He paused, brow furrowed in an expression of consternation that looked odd. 'I wished you to know the other details first, but this part cannot be avoided. You're right to ask. Hear me through, please, before you respond.'
Corinn kept her eyes fixed on him as he proceeded. She kept them pinned to his features, focused first on his face as a whole and then on its smaller components: the crook of his nose, the motion of lips, the black hairs of his beard. The focus was necessary, for otherwise she feared she would betray the fact that her heart pounded at twice the rate it had a moment before. She would not even look at Rhrenna, who was hearing the news with her. She knew her face had flushed red, but her expression remained unchanged. Alleys and spying. Following a servant… What he was telling her was-
'As you can imagine, I had to be quite rough with Barad. He's a big man, you see, so I had to be careful. Anyway, he was a little bit out of it, and he asked me, 'Did he betray me to her?' I had explained to him that I was in your employ. When he asked, I almost asked him, 'Who?' The word was on my tongue, but I snipped it.' Delivegu demonstrated just how precisely he did so by making scissors of his fingers. 'Instead, I said, 'Of course, he betrayed you. He's royalty after all. Why would he side with commoners?' I said this to provoke confusion or disagreement or something. But he responded with none of those. He simply accepted it sadly.
'So…' Delivegu inhaled a long breath, then said plainly, 'There can really be no doubt, Your Majesty. Barad, your enemy among the people, was in a partnership with King Grae. As I traveled with Barad I returned to this subject several times. He didn't give much, so I told him how it was. How King Grae had come to you speaking of a plot they had concocted together. How you and he worked to find a way to capture him. I even said that you and the Aushenian were secretly engaged. It's a skill I have, finding the truth even when the one I'm interrogating doesn't say a thing. There's no question, though. He was in league with Grae, and now he believes Grae betrayed him. I deliver him to you in the hope that you will mete out justice as is right.'
Inside Corinn's head a hundred different thoughts assailed her. On her face she made sure that nothing could be read. Despite the internal turmoil, she heard herself say calmly, 'We'll see about all this soon enough. I will speak with him now.'
Delivegu straightened like an obedient servant, eager to please and seemingly happy at her reaction-or lack of reaction. Corinn paused at the door and let Delivegu advance ahead of her. Leaning close to Rhrenna, she whispered, 'While I am with him, bring Grae to the upper terrace. Let him see to whom I'm speaking. Watch his face. Tell me if he shows signs of recognizing him.'
Time must have passed, but she lost track of it. Why it was so hard to concentrate she could not say. Her mind felt sluggish but also touched with a panic that might spread if she were not careful. It was not just thinking of Grae, not just the disbelief that she might have read him so wrongly, not just the gasping knowledge that he had held steel and fenced with Aaden, not even realizing how very close she had come to folly.
In addition to all this, emotions she had not allowed within herself for years rushed in. Memories of her father, of Igguldan, of Hanish: the men who had betrayed her, each in his own way. Was Grae another of these? Was she still the fool she had been at sixteen? More, images of her mother during her illness, the memory of crying and crying and crying on her bedspread as the woman-she who was dying-tried to comfort her. More, there came a bone-deep longing, which she almost never acknowledged, to sit and speak with Aliver, right now, as adults, both of them living.
And then she was striding through the doorway behind Delivegu. She walked into the room and circled around to the front of the chair. The guards followed her with their eyes, and she watched as the prisoner's square profile came into view and then changed as it filled out. She pulled in her attention, blocked out the noise, and concentrated all her being on the exchange she was about to have. It felt necessary to focus her eyes on a single point, while the rest of the world blurred. The man's eyes were brown, spaced wide. Rolling toward her, they looked heavy, as if just moving them would be a monumental task, as if they were stone. She could almost hear the grinding rumble as they shifted.
