Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [107]
Her blade skirled and thrust. Caladnei shouted again at the pain in her head-and a wooden blade slid home to touch her just under her breasts, thudding painfully up and in, at her heart. She put a hand on Alusair's weapon and bent over to catch her breath, reflecting ruefully that she wasn't half the swordmaster the princess was.
"Did you die gloriously?"
The calm question made both of the panting, sweating women look up. The voice belonged to Laspeera, and she never disturbed them at practice unless matters were urgent or of the utmost importance.
Caladnei waved away the question with a smile as she struggled for breath.
Alusair handed her sword to the healer, strode up out of the sand, and asked, "What news, Lasp?"
The senior war wizard reported the news from Arabel and her encounters with various murmuring critics of the Mage Royal on the way to them, as the two women did off their tunics and headscarves, washed with mint-water, toweled down, and put on fresh tunics.
Shamra was holding out a hair-ribbon to Caladnei as Laspeera recounted the words of the elder Lord Helm-stone, her mimicry of his tone as exact as her recall of his utterances.
The Mage Royal frowned, stiffened, and snapped, "Later, ladies!"
The place where Caladnei had been standing was suddenly empty. Shamra was holding out a ribbon to emptiness. She blinked once, and calmly turned and put the ribbon back on the side table from which she'd taken it. Alusair and Laspeera were exchanging raised-eyebrow looks.
"One of her telltales went off," the war wizard murmured. "I wonder what disaster's unfolding now?"
The princess sighed as she made for the door, binding back her hair as she went.
"I miss Vangerdahast," she said. "He never told you anything either, but he had this sneering, testy way of doing it that somehow reassured you that he had everything under control. I miss that feeling."
Laspeera's smile, as they went out of the practice hall together, was thin. "You're not the only one. Nor am I. The nobles were never so restless under Vangy's eye."
* * * * *
Behind them, the healer smiled. Out of habit she turned to make sure nothing vital had been forgotten, and struck Alusair's wooden sword against the door post. It was still slick with sweat, and slipped from her fingers-but it never clattered to the floor.
Just for an instant, Shamra's hand blurred into something dark and very like a tentacle, that plucked the blade from the air and reshaped itself once more into the healer's fine-fingered hand.
She was alone, Laspeera's back just disappearing through an archway.
Hefting the wooden sword in her hand, the healer let her smile broaden. Not so wide as to show fangs or seem strange-but as eager and deadly as the sudden glitter in the eyes above it.
Soon it would be time to move at last… very soon. With magic enough, she could hold the throne if she took it. And taking it would be so easy. Wring the neck of a babe, and catch Alusair alone and treat her to the same fate before word spread of little Azoun's doom… and slay Filfaeril, take her shape, and play the sorrowful queen waiting to be wooed by the right noble.
It would not be such a bad thing, to rule a kingdom as fair as this one, if she could keep all these idiots from shattering it around her.
"What can I say, good my Lord, to convince you to join us?"
The elder Lord Helmstone was angry-gods above, couldn't the man see this was the right thing to do? He wasn't a dullard, after all.
"Nothing that comes to my mind," Lord Everran Summertree replied, in a voice that was sharp with disapproval. "Cormyr can ill afford-Helmstone, we can ill afford-another war right now, with so many dead and their crops implanted, and Sembians eager to snap up land in return for just enough coin to see starving crofters warm and fed through the coming winter. Our realm needs peace to rebuild, not another petty squabble over whose shoulders carry this or that title, or even whose backside warms the Dragon Throne!"
Lord Helmstone sighed-the angry gust