“There is a train getting into Slough in twenty minutes. I plan to be on it. Make it happen.”
“Yes, sire. And, sire, Prince Alectus and Lady Callista await below. They request an audience with Your Highness.”
The regent and his mistress resided in Delamer, the capital, and rarely called upon Titus’s mountain keep.
Titus swore under his breath. “Show them into the throne room—and have Berman exercise Marble.”
Dalbert hurried off. Titus took himself two levels below, shrugging into a day coat as he went. He rarely entered the throne room except on the most public of occasions—it was ridiculous for him, essentially a puppet, to be in a room meant to symbolize the justness and might of his position. But today he wished to get rid of his visitors fast, and the throne room discouraged small talk.
The ceiling of the throne room rose fifty feet on two rows of white marble pillars. The obsidian throne was set upon a waist-high dais. Titus walked past it to the arched windows. Beneath him was a drop of a thousand feet to a ravine cut by a blue, glacier-fed river. Beyond, purple peaks shifted like slow waves.
Alectus and Lady Callista appeared on two of the four low pedestals that transported audience seekers from the reception room to the throne room.
Alectus was the youngest brother of Titus’s grandfather, a handsome, morally flexible man of fifty-eight. Lady Callista was a beauty witch—the greatest beauty witch of her generation. Of the last three hundred years, it had been argued.
She was on the brink of forty. Unlike many other beauty witches, she had not resorted to questionable magic to keep herself looking half her age. Instead, she had aged gracefully, allowing a few wrinkles to spread here and there while maintaining her sway over legions of hearts.
Ever since Alectus had been appointed regent, she had been his mistress. Some whispered that Alectus had even proposed to her, but she had declined. She was the capital’s leading hostess, its arbiter of style, a generous patron of the arts—and an agent of Atlantis.
Alectus bowed. Lady Callista curtsied.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” asked Titus, offering neither seats nor refreshment.
His bluntness surprised Alectus, who looked toward his mistress: Alectus had no appetite for confrontation, or any kind of unpleasantness.
Lady Callista smiled. It was said that to this day, love letters arrived for her by the wheelbarrowful. There was a great deal of skill in her smile, a smile meant to make a boy who had done nothing with his life feel accomplished and remarkable—virile, even.
Titus felt only revulsion—she was most likely the one who had betrayed his mother, informing the Inquisitor of the latter’s secret participation in the January Uprising.
“We received a note from the Inquisitor,” she said, her voice a dulcet murmur. “Her Excellency is concerned that she doesn’t see enough of you. She’s quite fond of you, Your Highness.”
Titus rolled his eyes. “She is getting above herself. What do I care whether she is fond of me? She was a nobody before the Bane plucked her out of obscurity.”
“But now she is the Inquisitor, and can cause much unpleasantness.”
“Why would she do that? Does she wish to incite a new uprising?”
At the word “uprising,” Lady Callista’s smile faltered slightly, but she was quickly all warmth and concern again. “Your Highness, of course she does not want that. Once you come of age, the two of you will see a great deal of each other. She hopes for a respectful, productive, and mutually beneficial association.”
“I appreciate your diplomacy,” he said, “but there is no use gilding a turd. I cannot stand that upstart, and she is jealous and resentful of me. Save me the time and tell me what she really wants.”
Alectus choked at Titus’s language. Alectus never had problems being deferential to the Inquisitor. He was ill suited to wield power himself, but he yearned toward it as a vine reaches for a higher branch. And parasite that he was, he was probably happier the more powers the Inquisitor concentrated onto herself.
Lady Callista’s next smile was strained. Had the Inquisitor been nasty to her? Usually Lady Callista’s smiles were entirely effortless.
“The Inquisitor would like to speak to you about what you saw this afternoon.”
“I saw nothing—I already told her.”
“Nevertheless, she believes that with her help, you might remember more.”
“Will I still be continent when I emerge from her ‘help’?” The Inquisitor’s methods were widely feared.
“I’m sure she would treat you with utmost courtesy and consideration, sire.”
Titus assessed his situation. He must leave without delay. Yet the Inquisitor must also be placated somehow.
“Your spring gala is to take place in a few days. I will attend as the guest of honor. You may invite the Inquisitor. I will grant her a brief audience during the course of the evening.”
He made appearances at various state and charitable functions during the year, usually those involving children and young people. A gala was not quite the same thing, but he would stir curiosity, not controversy.
Lady Callista opened her mouth. Titus preempted her. “I trust you are grateful that I will take the trouble.”
It was time she remembered that he was still her sovereign.
“Of course,” she murmured, conjuring another smile.
Now they were down to mere formalities before he dismissed them. “Is there anything else that requires my attention?”
“My choice of a new overrobe for the gala,” said Alectus, jolly now that his task had been discharged by his mistress. “I cannot make up my mind, and Lady Callista claims to be far too busy.”
“Thousands of details need to be seen to before the gala,” said Lady Callista, in her you-silly-man-but-of-course-I-love-you-madly tone.
“Close your eyes and make a random selection,” Titus said, forcing himself not to sound too impatient.
“Indeed, indeed,” Alectus agreed, “as good a method as any.”
“I wish you both a good day,” said Titus, his jaw hurting with the strain of remaining civil.
Alectus bowed. Lady Callista curtsied. They stepped on the pedestals and disappeared to the reception room below.
Titus let out a breath. He glanced at his watch: still ten minutes to make the train.
But Lady Callista reappeared, looking suitably apologetic. “I beg your pardon, sire, I seem to have left my fan behind. Ah, there it is.”
What did she want now?
“Do you know what curious news I just heard, sire?” she asked. “That by the bolt of lightning you saw, a great elemental mage has revealed herself—a girl of about your age.”
Of course she would ask him about the girl—what good minion of the Inquisitor’s would not? He acted bored. “Should I care?”
“She could be very important, this girl.”
“To whom?”
“Atlantis does not expend its wherewithal on needless concerns. If the Inquisitor is after the girl, she must be important in some way.”
“And why are you telling me this, my lady?”
Lady Callista approached him and placed a hand on his arm. This close she smelled of the subtle yet potent fragrance of narcissus. “Does it not concern you, sire, that the Inquisitor is halfway to finding this possibly very significant young woman?”
Very few of his subjects touched him without express permission. Lady Callista dared take the liberty because she had once been Princess Ariadne’s dearest friend. Her touch was warm and maternal, her person present and interested in a way that his perpetually preoccupied mother had never been.
Titus yanked away. “Madam, if you seek someone to stand up to the Inquisitor, you are looking at quite the wrong man. I am the heir of a princely house well past its hour of glory. That is burden enough. I am not going to spearhead some quixotic cause for which I have neither the desire nor the talent.”