Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [151]
“I treated her with all honor,” Kieri said firmly, sitting down again. “She came uninvited, as you know; what you may not know is that she arrived before her baggage, having ridden away from her escort and tried to escape them. They followed at speed; they could not stop her, but were with her when she came to the palace in the dead of night.”
“I was not told that.”
“I presume they were ashamed at having lost her, even for a short while,” Kieri said. “While I slept, my staff gave them rooms to suit their claims of royalty; I did not see your daughter until a day later, after she had rested and her baggage arrived. In the meantime, another uninvited princess had arrived, from Kostandan.”
“From Kostandan? Who would they send, that half-cripple Ganlin?”
“Half-cripple?”
“Did she not limp along half-sideways? She fell from a horse as a child and could not walk at all for most of a year—she is some kind of relative of my wife’s, so I heard things.”
“She limps but little, and only when she is tired,” Kieri said. “A pleasant girl, but another who did not wish to come. Her aunt is a formidable woman, and I wonder now if she told such tales when she returned home as your daughter’s escort did.”
“There can be no good tales told,” the king said, his expression hardening.
“Can there not? Listen, then. Your daughter—and the Kostandanyan princess—had rooms in the guest wing of the palace. Their attendants were nearby, unless they were warded by female members of my household—King’s Squires, in fact, well able to protect them should the need arise. They had the freedom of the rose garden, when their attendants permitted. When I met them at dinner, they and their escorts, they were both unhappy to be here—”
“And no wonder,” interrupted the king. “Seeing what came of it.”
“And each desired a private audience. I chose instead to speak to them only in company for some days. The couple escorting your daughter told me she was your pledge of desire for peace, a strong girl and perhaps willful, but certainly able to bear me strong sons. I asked if she was willing, and they shrugged—the woman shrugged—and said she might take some persuasion, but I was surely strong enough to master a mere girl.” Kieri paused; the king said nothing. “I am not minded to ‘master’ the woman I marry and force a girl who does not want me. ‘Court her but a little,’ the woman said, ‘and she will realize her good fortune.’ ” Kieri poured himself a mug of water and sipped. “It sickened me, but I did not yet know the girl was truly unwilling, and for courtesy I agreed to talk with her. We walked in the rose garden.”
“Roses are a soft southern flower,” the king said.
“My mother planted that garden,” Kieri said. “I would not change it.” He sipped again. “So we walked, and I asked her why she had come. She answered shortly at first, but finally said she had been drugged and carried away in the night. With my history, you can imagine, perhaps, how that affected me.”
The king looked thoughtful. “I did not know,” he said. “Now I see … it made you remember …”
“I always remember,” Kieri said. “And I would not marry an unwilling woman, certainly not one who had been treated that way. I told her so; her first expression was relief, but then fear. I asked what frightened her, and she said your anger. You would punish her, she said, and she would never have the life she wanted.” He paused again; the king’s expression had softened slightly. “That is when she told me about the knife, and about what her guardians had told her were your orders.”
The king’s eyes flew open. “Orders I did not give. I will not say I never thought of that, because I did, but in the end I rejected it. No child of mine should play assassin; it is unworthy of royalty to do such deeds, and she, in particular, would feel that.”
“But she thought you had. She begged my help. She begged me to contrive an escape for her. She would do anything, she said, be it never so hard or humble. She would cut her hair and dress