Читать книгу Scarlet Nights - Lucinda Betts - Страница 7

Solstice recognized the room to which Sergeant Flint led her, recognized the lush handwoven carpets from Tedresi, recognized the rich paintings on the walls and the assorted settees throughout the room—but nothing looked the way it should. The carpets were red and gold; the paintings were oversized and vibrant, but something wasn’t right. Fighting a growing panic, she scanned the room, looking for the cause.

“You may wait here,” Sergeant Flint said. His voice was colder than the floor under her bare feet, and with a jolt, she understood what had changed: her place in her world.

“Thank you.” Even her voice had changed. It used to carry gracious authority, and now it trembled. And she had done this to herself.

“Queen Sureya will be here shortly.” He turned on his heel and walked toward the door.

“Flint?” she asked. What had happened? What had she done to herself? “Sergeant Flint?” she asked again, using his formal name.

“What?” He stopped and looked at her. The disbelief and dismay she’d seen in his eyes when he’d found her in Grip’s embrace was gone. Now she saw nothing, no emotion, no respect or empathy. He had shuttered himself away from her.

Aware of the cold sweat covering her body, Solstice realized she’d be lucky if the rest of Marotiri’s citizenry behaved so well. They’d all hate her. They’d all spurn her. She’d forsaken their beloved queen.

For a heartbeat, a memory sucked her back in time. She remembered telling Axel, her childhood friend and almost-sweetheart, that she’d heard the voice of She Who Listens. She had chosen this new goddess over the staid One God. Axel had gone from loving her to hating her as quickly as Flint had—and as unjustly. In fact, more unjustly. She was counting on Flint to disparage her. It was part of her plan.

“What do you want?” Sergeant Flint asked. Impatience laced his voice.

“That man who came up the back stairs?” she asked slowly. “Axel de la Couere?”

“What about him?” His tone was so cold.

“Why is he here?” She shook her head, knowing the question wasn’t quite right. “Why did he come now?”

Sergeant Flint snorted. “You’re in no position to ask questions.” He started toward the door again.

She swallowed her pride. “And Lord Grip?” she asked his retreating form. “Where is he?”

“It doesn’t matter. He won’t save you and neither will I.” He reached the door. “I leave you to the queen.” Flint closed the door then…and locked it.

The metallic sound of the key in the door unhinged the fear she’d locked in her heart, and she began to shake. Solstice was a prisoner. If Sergeant Flint felt her betrayal so strongly, what would her queen think? What would her dearest friends in court think?

She already knew what Axel thought.

The door opened then, and Queen Sureya entered. Solstice met her gaze for a moment as the queen sought something from her—but then Solstice couldn’t bear it. She looked at her feet in shame.

“Hand-to-Be Solstice.” The queen sounded warm and kind. “What have you done?”

Solstice curtsied. “My lady.” She aimed for the perfect blend of humility and adoration—but then she stopped. Until this moment, she’d never had to consider the tone of her voice while addressing her queen.

“Lady Solstice.” The dismay she saw in her queen’s face hurt—it hurt worse than she’d expected. Oh, why had Solstice done this to herself?

In that heartbeat, Solstice knew she should tell the queen everything. Forget what her heart and head told her. Forget the need to protect her monarch. Solstice should simply lay this burden where it belonged. Her queen was strong enough to deal with any problem. After all, she alone had tamed the Jatiss. She had tamed the king.

Except, the queen couldn’t travel to Greenhaven without raising questions, and she couldn’t send anyone on her behest without raising the same questions. If Solstice whispered the truth in Queen Sureya’s ear right now, the queen might end up like the librarian: dead, murdered in her sleep.

“Oh, for goodness sake, stand, Hand-to-Be.” The queen’s white skin gleamed in the early afternoon sunlight, and Solstice stood, wondering why her queen still addressed her as Hand-to-Be.

“Yes, my liege.”

“You’ve never been obsequious a day in your life. You’d better not start now.”

Solstice swallowed. This territory was too unfamiliar. She wasn’t a practiced liar, especially where her queen was concerned. “Yes, my liege.” She tried to meet Queen Sureya’s gaze again, and failed.

“You’d best tell me what you’re doing here.” Her elegant fingers gestured vaguely. “And what you were doing with Lord Grip.”

Knowing a cue when she heard it, Solstice tried to bring some truth to her tone. “I love Lord Grip, your highness. We want to wed. I want nothing in this world so much as I want him.”

The queen looked at her, her expression impassive. Solstice wished Grip were here now, holding her, bolstering her claim. What had the soldiers done with him?

“I think…” Queen Sureya spoke softly, her red hair floating around her shoulders as she walked around Solstice. “I think I don’t believe you, Lady Solstice.”

“I have nothing more to say.” Solstice felt suddenly desperate. The queen would see through her lies. She knew Solstice too well. “I love Grip,” she continued. “Banish us if you must, but we must remain together.”

“And what does Lord Grip say to this?”

Solstice took a deep breath and tried to reassure herself. Grip would protect her. He was on her side completely.

“I—”

“Stop.” The queen held up her hand, her skin shockingly white. Solstice tried to push back the ungenerous thought. “I don’t want to hear any nonsense about you loving that boy.”

“But, I do! I—”

The queen sighed. “I’ve known you for years, before you reached full adulthood even. I’ve known Grip nearly as long. And while I know friendship often gives way to something deeper…” Her eyes locked on to Solstice’s. “I know that isn’t what’s happening here now.”

Solstice said nothing.

“Tell me the truth.” The queen’s hard gaze refused to leave her.

“I…” Solstice let her eyes slide to the walls. Spies might be watching from behind them even now. “I’m sorry, your majesty. I cannot.”

Solstice watched the queen’s eyes silently examine the walls and come back to her. Did the queen know she wasn’t safe even in her own palace walls? Did she know that even now, some dark force that Solstice couldn’t hope to pinpoint might be watching?

How could she? Not even a ruling monarch knew everything.

“It’s not that you can’t tell me. You simply won’t.” Queen Sureya’s voice was soft, but the tone couldn’t have been more solid than the rock formations surrounding the city.

“I cannot,” Solstice said again. She met the queen’s violet gaze, begging her to believe her. “No more than that.”

The queen took a deep breath and nodded. “You realize I’ll have no choice, then.”

Solstice swallowed. “Yes.”

“You’ll never marry that boy.”

Solstice stifled a sigh of relief. Marriage wasn’t in her true plans, although she would have endured it if she’d had to.

“And I’ll have to punish you.”

Solstice hung her head, the shame unfeigned. “I know.” With its uncivilized dragons, and its undying support of the One God, Greenhaven was one place no one from Marotiri proper wanted to go. Yet that was the punishment Solstice sought. And it was her homeland.

“I understand from your performance here that you want banishment to Greenhaven—with Grip as your escort.”

Solstice wanted to jump across the space separating them and slap her hand over her queen’s mouth. Wildly she looked at the walls, knowing as she did so that it was futile. She’d never see the eyes that watched or the ears that listened—and neither would Queen Sureya. Hopefully, the spies would interpret the words as figurative rather than literal.

And the queen’s eyes followed hers to the walls. Queen Sureya slightly tilted her white chin, her orange freckles catching the light. She understood.

Solstice threw herself at her queen’s feet. It was the only thing she could do to maintain the charade. “I love him!” She wept. Real tears sprang from her eyes and coated her queen’s sandaled toes. “I love him beyond reason. Send us to Greenhaven. I don’t care! Send us anywhere. Anywhere! As long as we’re together.”

“Child.” The queen’s voice held infinite patience as she bent to pull Solstice from the floor. She embraced her, supporting her with her arms.

“My queen.” Solstice inhaled the warm scent of Queen’s Sureya’s perfume. Like her monarch herself, the scent haunted and seduced.

“Solstice!” The queen hissed in her ear, pinching with her strong fingers. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on right now, I will banish you to Greenhaven, forever!”

Solstice wavered. She wanted to tell her queen that she served her faithfully even now. She wanted to unload the entire ugly truth.

But she couldn’t.

Because the queen herself didn’t know how many snakes slept at her breast.

Instead Solstice protected her beloved queen. “I love him!” she lied. “I don’t care if you banish us to Greenhaven forever. I’ll join the slavers to be by his side!”

With a huff of something that might have been disgust or disbelief, Queen Sureya pushed Solstice away. “Begone from me,” she said.

“Yes, my queen.” Solstice curtsied, her eyes on the floor. She didn’t want Queen Sureya to see the relief there.

“Enough of this,” Queen Sureya said. “Flint and Halide tell me you know the back-stairs intruder, as they’re calling him.”

“ Back-stairs intruder’?”

“Axel de la Couere.” The queen watched Solstice’s face carefully, but Solstice had nothing to hide on this topic.

“I don’t know why he’s here.”

“But who is he, my Hand-to-Be?”

“Lord Axel’s family was neighbor to mine as a child. We were…” Solstice paused, looking for the right word. “Friends” seemed too weak.

“Sweethearts?” the queen asked.

“No.” Solstice laughed, knowing it sounded sad. “We were too young. We were friends only. Very good friends. Until slavers stole his brother and I heard the voice of She Who Listens in my dreams.” Solstice paused for a moment, remembering his outrage. “He saw my calling as a betrayal.”

“He worships the One God?”

Solstice shrugged. “He did then. I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Or heard word from him?”

“No.”

“Did he ever recover his brother?”

Again, Solstice shrugged. “Not that I know of. But I wouldn’t have heard after I came to court.”

The queen kept her eyes locked on Solstice’s. “It’s not so usual, is it? To have a black girl like yourself find such a close friendship with a white boy.”

Solstice cocked her head. What was the queen insinuating? “I’ve never cared about skin color, your majesty. You of all people know that.” The friendship between the queen and her Hand-to-Be was famous—or notorious—throughout the land.

“I don’t doubt that. But what did your families think?”

“As far as I know, my parents liked him.”

“And if you had married him?”

Solstice blinked. What would her father have thought? Or her mother? “I—” She wanted to say they would have approved any match, but she wasn’t sure. Her parents had been proud people. They might have been able to weather the social stigma attached to such a marriage, but they wouldn’t have welcomed it.

“And would you have defied them for love?” the queen asked.

“I—” Solstice said again. She was about to say she would have, but that wasn’t the truth. “I would have done what was right for my family. If they objected…” She shrugged. “I would have tried to talk some sense into them.”

“And why is Axel de la Couere here?”

Alarm raced through Solstice. She knew that the appearance of upright behavior was as important—maybe even more important—than the actual fact of upright behavior. If she were the queen, and Axel appeared on the same day that Solstice honored the goddess with the only man forbidden to her, she would suspect that something bigger was afoot.

She met her monarch’s violet eyes. “I don’t know, your majesty. In all honesty, I don’t know.”

The queen held her gaze a moment, and Solstice couldn’t read her expression. Finally the older woman nodded. “Very well.” She touched Solstice’s cheek, and the sensation of the familiar touch nearly undid Solstice.

“I’m so sorry, my queen.”

Again, Queen Sureya nodded, her red hair taking on the appearance of fire as the sunlight hit it. “I want you to go back to your chambers and dress yourself appropriately.”

“Yes, my queen.”

“And then I want you to report to Aster at the Temple Chamber.”

“What?” Despite herself, Solstice flashed a glance at her queen, her eyes wide. “The Temple Chamber?”

“Of course.” The queen’s lips curled into a slow smile. She reached out and stroked Solstice’s cheek again. “You didn’t think you’d be banished without a royal Punishment, did you?”

“I—” Solstice paused and swallowed. “I suppose not,” she lied.

“For old-time’s sake,” the queen said. “You won’t regret it, you know.”

“As you wish,” Solstice said. Her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.

“Exactly.” The queen allowed the guards to open the door. “As I wish.”

It wasn’t until the door closed that Solstice thought to wonder if she’d been successful. Would Queen Sureya banish her to Greenhaven with Grip by her side? Would she have any chance at all to save her beloved queen from the forces of evil the queen didn’t know existed?

With his sword at the ready, the queen’s soldier led Axel to a spacious room. “Wait here,” the soldier said.

“Wait?” That was the last thing Axel wanted to do. He couldn’t escape this palace fast enough. He needed to talk to his second-in-command, for one thing, and he couldn’t do that locked in this posh room. Kamir would never find him here. For another, he needed to put some distance between himself and Solstice. A lot of room. “Do I have a choice?”

“No choice.” The soldier pointed to a settee. What kind of monarch met her prisoners in a sitting room, anyway? “Sit.”

The guard was young and likely well trained. Axel considered taking him down. Except, then what? Could he bolt out of the palace unseen? Could he get his men and escape Marotiri? Not without the queen’s help. And if slavers were hiding in the queen’s palace…

“Sit,” the soldier said again. “The Supplicant Queen will be here shortly.”

“Great.” Axel walked toward the chair, and the soldier left, locking the door behind him. Axel wouldn’t sit, though. Solstice was here. Here! His heart had leapt when he saw her—until he realized what she’d been doing. He’d walked in on her while she was fucking, and apparently, her fucking mocked even this land’s lax standards of decency.

He shrugged out of the blue trader’s robe, hoping the change would make him more presentable. Looking down at his dusty boots and sweat-stained cavalry pants, he doubted it. Even without the robe he smelled of horse sweat and campfire. No queen would grant him the time of day, much less the boon of his freedom. Not with his white skin and filth.

He walked toward the window, aware of the dusty footprints he was leaving on the carpet. He saw a verdant courtyard below, replete with a huge fountain and enough green grass to keep his mare fat for weeks—but the distance was too great. A jump would at least break his leg, and he’d still have to find his horse.

“Not thinking of leaping to your fate, I hope.”

Axel turned at the voice and stopped in his tracks. The Supplicant Queen was truly a beauty. Her red hair floated around her face like a cloud, and even at this distance he saw the violet of her gaze. But it was the luminous whiteness of her skin that caught his eye. Had he ever met anyone who celebrated it like she did? Her scarlet tunic stayed over her bone-white shoulder with the thinnest thread. The brush of a fingertip would leave her naked before him.

“If I had been thinking such dark thoughts,” he said, “your beauty would have stopped me.” He bowed low.

“Ah.” The Supplicant Queen walked closer with a panther-like grace. “You have the tongue of a courtier.”

“The tongue of a courtier?” He laughed as the dark side of his mind wondered what kind of tongue she had. Overlaid against the queen’s austere beauty, Solstice’s face flashed through his mind. Solstice’s heart had always enchanted him, but he couldn’t trust her. He couldn’t trust this queen either. “If need be.”

“And you have need?”

He ignored the double meaning—he had no desire to honor the goddess of harlots, even with the queen. “Dressed as I am,” he said, pointing to his dusty clothes, “charm might be all that saves me.”

“Charm you have aplenty,” she said, her eyes raking his chest and thighs. “And you do need saving. Why were you climbing through my secret staircase?”

Axel bowed again. “My apologies, Queen Sureya. I didn’t know to whom the stairs belonged.” He looked at her. “At least, I didn’t know they were yours until I was locked within.”

She gazed at him a moment, and he had the feeling she was more able to read the truth than were most people. “Then how did you discover the staircase?” she asked.

Axel considered. He had to play this perfectly. This queen might worship the harlot goddess. And despite her white skin, she might house slavers within her walls—the same slavers who’d abducted Grey. But she also held his life in her hands.

“Ah, Lord de la Couere, I see you’re considering lying to me.”

“I—” The woman was smart. Solstice had barely mentioned his name to the guards, and the queen knew it…unless she knew it from some other source?

She arched a red eyebrow. “Don’t try to deceive me. Who did you chase into my palace?”

“I’m a trader from the far west,” he said. He would use the same practiced lie he told officials who questioned his presence in their lands. “I followed a man from the desert through the city to your water shrine. My men followed others into the caves.”

“And you were chasing them because?”

“The traders broke their end of a trade agreement. The man I chased, I merely wished to…” He touched the daggers the soldiers had allowed him to keep. “I merely wished to speak with him.”

She walked a few steps around him. Again, she reminded him of a panther. With one swipe of her claw, she could eviscerate him. “You’re telling me that you were chasing merchants?”

“Yes.”

“And your men, the ones lurking in the caves outside the city? They were chasing merchant traders as well.”

His heart thudded. She’d captured his men. “Yes, my lady.” He hoped Kamir had interrogated the slavers before the queen’s men found them.

“Funny, your second-in-command, Lord Kamir, says the same, and yet…” She paused. “Something seems out of place.”

He bowed, wondering if he were making a mistake. Should he tell her the truth? What if she would eradicate the slavers as eagerly as he would? But then, what slaver would have the audacity to hide in her very palace, if that were true? “No, my queen.”

“You weren’t chasing slavers? Like the ones who abducted your brother, perhaps?”

Axel felt like he’d been punched in the gut. How did the queen of this foreign city know about his brother? How did his brother’s abductors end up on her proverbial doorstep?

“Ah,” she said. “I see I’ve astounded you.”

“Yes.” She certainly had.

“Lady Solstice told me of your brother, that he’d been taken.”

“Yes.” That cleared up the mystery of how she knew his name. But rage simmered in his blood. Why would Solstice tell the queen of his darkest moment? The bitter taste of disgust filled his mouth. Solstice had never known what was precious. “My brother was taken by slavers, it’s true.”

“I am sorry for your loss.”

Something in her tone seemed sincere. He looked at her, her luminous skin. Did he have an ally here? “Was someone in your family taken?” he asked. Would she know his pain?

“No.” Her red hair reminded him of flames. “My family was slain by the Jatiss.”

“I see,” he said, although he didn’t. The woman standing before him was responsible for ending the war between the people of Marotiri and the Jatiss. He hadn’t realized the Jatiss had killed all she’d held dear. Regardless, she didn’t understand the pain of having someone stolen into a life of servitude. “You have a forgiving heart, then,” he said.

She looked at him like she was taking his measure. “Under certain conditions my heart forgives.” She circled around him like a cat. “But I wouldn’t necessarily find comfort in that, if I were you.”

“I assure you I meant no harm by entering your palace in such an unconventional manner.”

“That, at least, sounds like the truth.”

Relief. Maybe she would release him, then. “I speak only the truth to you,” he said.

“That, I don’t believe.”

“Your majesty?”

“Your reputation precedes you.” She sat on one of the settees and bade him, with an elegant hand, to do the same. Despite his dirty clothes, he obeyed.

“What reputation is that?” He waved at the fine art on the walls, hoping she was talking about his trader front. “I sell nothing of this caliber, although I have some Tedresi crystal goblets you might appreciate.”

“I’ve heard from some of the minor queens and kings that you’ve brought them gifts—for their dungeons.”

“Dungeons?”

“Lord de la Couere, let’s not play games. The gifts to which I refer are not goblets but slavers and their minions.”

He swallowed. Her flesh was white. Rumors said she had no patience with slavers…and she suspected the truth about him. He should simply lay this mess at her feet. She might actually help him.

Except that the lead slaver was within her walls, and rumors could be wrong. He looked at her a moment. Her lush breasts strained against the thin silk of her gown, and he had the feeling that if he leaned over and kissed her parted lips, she wouldn’t object. How could she? She honored She Who Listens.

He couldn’t trust her.

“My stairs,” she prompted. “The ones no one has used in decades. How did you find yourself there?”

“I beg to disagree with you, my lady. Those stairs are far from unused. My horse is there, along with two others. Even now you’ll likely find sconces burning along the walls. Someone inside your palace walls was expecting someone else to use them today.”

“And it wasn’t you they were expecting?”

Axel shook his head. “I had no plan to come into the city today. Not until the trader bolted for Marotiri proper and your palace.”

“Not even to visit Lady Solstice?”

“No.”

“But I thought you were old childhood playmates.”

“I had no intention of visiting Lady Solstice.”

“Where did the so-called trader go?” She fired questions like an expert archer fired arrows: one after another, and they all flew true. “Once he was within my walls?”

“I don’t know, your majesty.” Axel ran his hand over his hair and wished he were anywhere but here, preferably in a bath. “I only know where they didn’t go. They didn’t go to the room where Solstice was fu—” He cut himself off. He’d been about to use very uncourtly vocabulary. “Where she was…”

“Where Lady Solstice was honoring the goddess with Lord Grip,” she finished for him.

Honoring the goddess, he thought. Fucking was fucking no matter what you called it. “As you wish, your majesty.” He nodded his head.

“So I’m housing an unscrupulous trader in my palace?” Again, that arch expression. “How disturbing.”

Axel didn’t answer.

“Tell me about Lady Solstice,” the queen said. “How is it that you were this close to her home and you weren’t going to pay her a visit?” She arched a russet eyebrow. “Is the trader business that successful that you’ve no need to visit near kin and curry favor?”

Here, at least, Axel felt safe in telling the complete truth. “I didn’t think she’d enjoy a visit from me, my lady. We didn’t part on the best of terms.”

“But you were friends?”

He paused, wondering if their relationship could be characterized as friendship. It had seemed deeper with that. Until she’s joined the whore-queen’s court. “Yes.”

“Lady Solstice tells me you didn’t approve of her choice to honor She Who Listens. But where I grew up, most white-skinned people honored her. Not in your family?”

“Like most in Greenhaven, my family honored the One God—and so did hers.” He adjusted himself in the chair and tried not to waft more dirt into the room. “Most of us avoided the Shrine to the Hag Goddess there.” He gave a nervous laugh. “Maybe it was the name.”

“And you objected to her choice to honor the goddess?”

“How can I object to what’s in another’s heart?”

The queen’s lips curled into a half smile. “How indeed?” She paused. “And do you still feel dissatisfied with Lady Solstice’s choice?”

“It’s not for me to judge that, is it?”

“I’m not asking you to judge. I’m asking how you feel.”

“I feel like these questions have nothing to do with the trader who fled to the sanctuary of your palace.” “I see.”

Axel straightened his linen shirt—and immediately regretted it when dust and horsehair billowed into the elegant room. “As you can see, your majesty, I’m not fit company for you. Will you accept my apology and allow me to take my leave?”

She gave him that half smile. He wondered if any man alive could look at that smile and not think of fucking her. “So you can hunt down your…traders?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Axel de la Couere, tell me now.” She paused and touched his arm. “Is the man you chase truly a trader? And what of the men your men chased? Are you certain they are traders?”

For a crazy moment, he considered telling her the truth. His heart told him the truth was needed here. But his eyes, wanting to look anywhere but at the beautiful face before him, caught on a huge pennant hanging on the south wall: a black trefoil in a field of scarlet. The same pennant hung in the secret stairwell.

He moved his gaze back to hers and held them steady. “They are truly traders,” he said finally.

Her eyes closed for a moment, and she nodded. “Very well.”

“Am I free to leave?”

She stood and he followed. “No.” She walked toward the door with her panther’s grace. “You will enjoy the pleasure of a bath in our Temple Chamber.”

“But my men—”

“Your men and your lovely mare have been attended. They await your return in the morning.”

He bowed then, deeply grateful. It’d be better to pick up the slavers’ trail now, but the morning would work nearly as well, especially if it meant a bath. “Thank you, your majesty. Thank you for your kindness.”

She paused at the door and gave him that heart-stopping smile. “Oh, I don’t know about kindness. You’re to be punished tonight, for breaking the statue in my fountain and for trespassing in my palace.”

“Punished? I don’t understand.”

She opened the door, the huntress smile still in place. “But you will.”