Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [102]
“No, my lord, not today. But such reactions—if it is not summer fever—suggest the bones have urgent messages.”
He went back to his rooms, feeling hot and cold by turns. Summer fever. It must be summer fever, with the ache, with the nausea, with the loss of appetite—he refused supper and went early to bed, waving off the palace physician. Despite the open windows, not a breath of air stirred; sound carried from the courtyard below, the stables, the streets of Chaya. A child cried out suddenly; he flinched, squeezing his eyes shut and then forcing them open to see … nothing but the vague outline of the window.
Toward morning, thunder rumbled in the distance, then nearer. A chill damp gust of air blew in, and then the storm broke overhead. He fell asleep then, waking sticky-eyed, with a foul taste in his mouth, much later than usual. Rain fell steadily outside. He lay, listening to it, and turning over in his mind what he had experienced. Hints. Suggestions. His own mind had made a connection out of his own experience, something his sister could not know. He had created his own nightmare out of such fragile materials.
By breakfast, when his appetite returned, he had himself firmly in hand. It made no sense that his grandmother had betrayed his mother and him … if she had, why would she have accepted his coronation? Tried to find him an elven bride? A vast gulf yawned between her not coming when he asked for her and deliberate malice, an attempt to kill. Perhaps she and his mother had been, like many mothers and daughters he’d known in his life, annoyed with each other—perhaps they had even quarreled—but that didn’t mean anything worse. A young child, his sister, could misunderstand—
He welcomed the interruptions to his musings—messages brought in by couriers, appointments, meetings—but he hoped Orlith would not come until he felt calmer.
“Sir King, there’s a message from Tsaia—” Arian, with a letter from King Mikeli in Tsaia. He took the letter from her and tried to focus on King Mikeli’s concerns about the theft of the mysterious necklace from Fin Panir. Some, Mikeli reported, were saying that Dorrin Verrakai had arranged the theft.
“Ridiculous!” Kieri said aloud.
“Sir King?”
“This—” Kieri read her the letter. “Dorrin gave the regalia to the king; why would she steal the necklace?”
“That fellow you told us about in Aarenis might have sent thieves,” Arian said.
“Yes—that’s what Mikeli suspects,” Kieri said. “Alured’s dangerous. Though why he thinks the necklace alone will do him any good …”
“Perhaps he thinks he can use it to call the rest of it to him?”
Kieri shook his head. “I don’t think it works that way. The crown or the ring should be the most powerful, assuming that the items are innately magical. They might be drawing the necklace to themselves—in which case it should show up in Vérella.”
Night after night Kieri’s sleep was troubled, though he could not remember specific dreams, only an undefined menace. He would have to do something, he realized, about the bones and their hints. He wasn’t ready for another trip to the ossuary, and didn’t want to ask the elves. Instead, he began asking who in the palace had known his sister or even his parents.
He started with Joriam, who was polishing the big brass ewers in his bathing room. The old man’s eyes lit up.
“Yes, my lord, I do remember. Your mother now, my lord, she was a beauty, she was. Fresh as a snowdrop, but strong, the way elves are. She didn’t ride just the air and water horses, but any color—she liked to match with your father when they rode out together. The two of them, on matched horses … it brought tears to the eyes.”
“Did the Lady come to visit often then?”
“No … I wouldn’t say that. At your birth, yes: said the elven needed some elven magic and upset the midwives no end. Out with you all, she said, and there was words spoken, I heard from one of the maids. And at Midsummer, of course, and usually Midwinter, bringing snow sprites.”
Kieri had never heard of snow sprites.