“Speaks to you?”
Dorrin took the crown in her hands; light flashed from the jewels. She set it gently back in the center of the cloth and covered it. “Yes. I do not know when it came into our family, but I know it has lived surrounded by blood magery for a very long time and perhaps it—whatever it is—is confused at being at last free.”
“In the archives,” Duke Mahieran said, “the oldest records we have speak of the rituals attending the coronation of the old kings, the kings before we came over the mountains. What just happened—” He nodded at the three objects. “What just happened,” he repeated, “would fit those old rituals, or the stories told about them.”
“I brought these things to give you,” Dorrin said, turning to the prince. “You are the rightful heir of this kingdom; you will be our king; you should have them.”
“Not if they’re going to nip his fingers off,” Duke Mahieran said.
Seklis came closer. “Let me see that cloth again … if you can keep the crown from leaping to someone’s head.”
“Her head,” Duke Mahieran said. “That seems to be its chosen head. And the stones, you notice, are sapphire and diamond … Verrakai colors. Not ours.”
Dorrin unfolded the cloth again, and lifted the crown in her hands. It sang along her arms, commanding, pleading, for her to put it on. She did not, but waited while Seklis peered at the cloth.
“Sunlord,” Seklis said at last. “I think that’s the Sunlord’s symbol. Very old, that would make it. And it’s all embroidery, the entire surface. The cloth under it is white.”
“What does it mean?” Mahieran asked.
“Many questions to which we have no answers,” Seklis said. “But the only one that concerns me now is your purpose, Duke Verrakai, in bringing this here, now. That crown wants your head, unless I’m mistaken.”
“It has said so, but I am not royal-born, and the prince is. I thought here, perhaps, it would speak to him.”
“No,” Seklis said. “I think not. The old Tsaian crown was said to be of rubies, broken up during the sack of the palace in Gird’s day. This is not Tsaia’s crown.” He turned to Mahieran. “Would you know what realm in the south once had a ruling family with these colors?”
“No,” Duke Mahieran said, rubbing his nose. “And I advise against risking the prince’s life by trying that crown on him, if it does not choose.”
“You brought it as a gift?” Seklis asked.
“Yes,” Dorrin said. “As well, if I were found to be hiding a crown in a closet, you might think I meant to use it at some time, perhaps to claim the throne the prince is about to take in full power … especially since you already know the Verrakai retained some magery, and that I, too, have it.” She looked from face to face. “Indeed, from what was said earlier, it seems you have heard rumors of a crown, have you not?”
“Indeed we have,” the prince said. “I—the Council—discounted what Verrakaien said at their trial, and those trials were held in secret, but later rumors began in the city that the Verrakaien not only believed they were descended from kings, but had the proof of it, and a crown hidden that their magery could wake to great power.” He tipped his head toward the table. “Like that one.”
“We could not trace the rumor to its source,” Duke Mahieran said. “The market wardens heard it first, and assumed it came from some southern caravaner. Then a Girdsman told her Marshal, and the Marshal brought it to another, whose grange was just then buzzing with it. Marshals told High Marshals; in days it was all over the city. The Verrakaien would return, return with proof at last that they should rule Tsaia and have power to enforce their will.”
“A Verrakai started that rumor,” Dorrin said. “Have you found any that had changed bodies, as I wrote you?”
“Does the person whose body is taken know it?” the prince asked. “On the night of the attack, Haron Verrakai appeared like Duke Marrakai—fooled many of us—for a time, but Duke Marrakai does not remember being taken.”
Dorrin shook her head. “No, that is a different thing, a glamour cast to confuse the eyes.”
“Can you do it?” the prince asked.
“I’ve never tried,” Dorrin said. “I do not know how.” She felt around inside her magery, but nothing happened that she could feel. Yet those facing her fell back a step. “What?”
“You—you look like Kieri Phelan,” the prince said. “As like as his twin.”
“I don’t know what I did and I don’t know how to undo it,” Dorrin said. When she looked at her hand, it looked like hers, but with a faint outline of another overlaid on it. She concentrated and suddenly that outline disappeared. “Am I … back?”
They nodded. “I hope that doesn’t happen by mistake,” Dorrin said. “I still don’t know how I did it. And I don’t want to.” She wrapped the crown again, then the other items, and placed them back in the padded sack. They called to her; she bespoke them in her mind, telling them they would be safe.
“You want us to take these things?” Duke Mahieran said.
“I do. I thought perhaps the prince could wear them, that they would recognize someone of true royal blood—I was willing to think our family had stolen them long ago, in Gird’s time—but I see now that might be dangerous to him. Still, if they are in your treasury and you know it, you can be sure they are not in my possession. That I am not plotting to put that crown on my own head—even if it does talk to me.”
The prince nodded, then looked at Duke Mahieran and High Marshal Seklis before turning again to Dorrin. “It is not yet the day of my coronation, and for matters of state I must still consult the Regency Council. But here are two members of that Council. I propose, for your own safety, to take your oath of fealty here and now, before them. You will give it again with the other peers, but your oath now will lend weight to your protestations that you intend no treason. Are you willing?”
“Of course, Lord Prince,” Dorrin said.
“That is well said, my lord prince,” Seklis said. “We three have reason to believe the Duke honest, but others will not.”
And would an oath make her honest? Had not her uncle forsworn himself a dozen times over?
“Are these chairs safe?” the prince asked.
“Yes,” Dorrin said. She pulled one around, sat in it, and stood again.
“I would have taken your word,” the prince said. He sat; Duke Mahieran and High Marshal Seklis moved to either side of him. Dorrin knelt before the prince, and phrase by phrase repeated the oath of fealty.
“Rise,” the prince said when it was done; he stood and once more they clasped hands.
“So how do we convey these things in a way that continues to show your loyalty?” the prince said. “I cannot think that sneaking them into the palace in a sack is the best way to do it.”
“Perhaps not, but soonest is best,” Duke Mahieran said. “Our visit here tonight will not have gone unremarked … and if we come away with a mysterious sack, that story will be all over the city by midmorning tomorrow.” He turned to Dorrin. “Is there anything like a chest or casket here that you could put these in?”
“I haven’t investigated all the rooms,” Dorrin said. “Every one I found had multiple traps … there were chests in the bedrooms my uncle and his brother used.”
“But those, you said, were guarded by blood magery,” Seklis said. “My lords, it is very late, and Duke Verrakai knows of peril in this house. It is my recommendation that she wait until morning—full daylight—to transport those things to the palace, and do it herself, with her own escort. We are not taking them from her; she has offered them. And by then, perhaps, she will have found a suitable container, though the sack would do.”
Duke Mahieran chewed his lip. “Gird knows I don’t want to wake any evil here tonight, if a box that wants to bite my fingers is not already evil.”