So his tasks for the evening were to round up Daviel, change into dress attire for dinner, and spend the evening with a crowd of influential nobles, none of whom were in on the delicious secret-that Tresco was the secret lover of one of the most beautiful and important women in all of Tethyr.
Suddenly, a strong blast of frigid wind swept through the corridor extinguishing the lanterns and throwing Tresco into darkness. He stood quietly for a moment, his body trembling more from the chill than fear. He could hear rustling nearby. Whether it was vermin or something larger, he couldn’t determine. After a few moments, he mumbled under his breath and moved his hands sharply, and the lanterns along the corridor flared with orange flame.
Tresco was no innocent. He had seen things, particularly in his adventurous youth, that were seared into his memory, as bloody and as horrible as the very day that he had first witnessed them. But in the instant after the light bloomed from his hands, he saw Evonne in the corridor in front of him, her long blonde hair loose on her shoulders, and her flowing white dress stained with blood.
Tresco’s heart skipped. His vision cleared. It was not Evonne, but her daughter, Ysabel, in the bloodstained dress, her bare feet and heart-shaped face smeared with something thick and dark. How foolish to mistake the child for her mother. But Evonne had been in his thoughts at the moment the darkness fell.
“Ysabel!” Tresco said, choking on her name. He knew all the cousins by name, and they all referred to him as Uncle, a familiarity he begrudgingly permitted. “What are you doing here!”
“Looking for Cousin Daviel,” she said, peering up at him intently.
“As am I,” Tresco said. “But this is no place for a child. Go back to the main corridor and wait there. I will continue to search for Daviel.”
“It’s no matter, Uncle,” she said quietly, her blue eyes unnaturally wide. “I’ve found him already.”
Evonne Linden was killed in Celleu the same night that the children were massacred in the Winter Palace. After a lengthy discussion in their private chambers in the palace at Darromar, the men of the Inquiry settled on “unbelievable irony” over ”unprecedented coordination.” Their official position was that a bandit climbed up the trellis to Evonne’s second-story window, unlatched the shuttered window, and suffocated her as she slept. Then he stole an embroidered bag that servants had seen her carrying earlier in the day-it was the only thing missing from her quarters- and disappeared into the night without the guards in the hallway ever hearing a sound.
The explanation satisfied Queen Anais’s followers, but left Evonne’s supporters screaming for the queen’s blood. There was a door connecting Evonne’s quarters and the queen’s quarters, and many believed that Queen Anais had killed her own sister. Anais had reason to hate Evonne, of course. Had Evonne’s revolt against Anais been successful, she would have seized the crown for herself. Evonne’s husband, Garion, had been a powerful man with many secret followers. When he died, his substantial network switched its allegiance to Evonne and was ready to take up arms at her call.
After Evonne’s death, there were several skirmishes between the queen’s regiments and Evonne’s die-hard proponents, who had begun calling themselves the Branch of Linden. After a particularly bloody skirmish on the black rocks of the Ebenspy Plateau, the Linden fighters were driven into Ebenspy Keep, an ancient castle on a rocky spike of land jutting out of the obsidian encrusted flatlands. With strong wards protecting the walls, the fighters held out for days before a coughing sickness killed half of them, and the queen’s soldiers successfully blasted under the thick walls of volcanic glass and took control of the Keep. With the ringleaders swinging by their necks in front of the High Palace at Darromar, Queen Anais was satisfied that the Branch of Linden had been eradicated.
Still beautiful in death, Evonne was buried with state honors in the hillside mausoleum with a view of the sparkling ocean in the distance. The guardianship of her daughter, Ysabel, was given to Queen Anais, in trust of Tresco Maynard. The child would live at Tresco Maynard’s ancestral home, Kinnard Keep, on the edge of Kinnard Heath, a desolate expanse of gorse and heather.
CHAPTER TEN
29 Kythorn, the Year of the Ageless One
(1479 DR)
Chult
A leaf-strewn path led them out of the grove and up a vine-tangled slope toward the heart of the island. They left the corpse tucked in the tree hollow because it seemed a better grave than a shallow hole on the open floor. Although he couldn’t see the sky through the leaf canopy, Harp judged it to be late afternoon. He found it hard to breathe in the heavy, moist air, and soon his clothes dripped with sweat and his flask was empty.
Their previous plans of a quick survey-in and out before nightfall-were looking less and less likely with every step through the brush. They would have to find a place to camp soon. The heat under the trees was rising, and the sunlight beat down through the green of the leaves, casting the world in a pale yellow glow. As the temperature rose, an eerie silence fell as if the jungle’s creatures had retreated into a quiet, shady spot to wait out the worst of the heat.
Beside Harp, Kitto was whistling a tune softly to himself. It was a tune Harp recognized from the Marderward, and the words had stayed with him all these years: “Bitch Queen take my soul away to the depths of the sea. Don’t make me stay one bleeding day. This world is not for me.”
“So what do you think of the jungle?” Harp asked. “Lots of plants, huh.”
Kitto stopped whistling and smiled down at his boots. Since Kitto never had much to say, it had become a joke to talk to him about mundane things, topics that other people would consider normal conversation, but Kitto seemed to think were hilarious. But then, most things that were normal to other people amused Kitto.
“Quite the weather we’re having,” Harp continued. “Did I tell you about the mule? She’s got the mange. We had to put her out of her misery.”
Boult piped up from behind them. “Got a bit of the ache in my neck. Oh, but the crops are quite good.”
“Can you believe the price of eggs?” Harp asked. “And did you hear about Lady Arello and the Captain of the Guard? Scandalous!”
“You’re all insane,” Verran said. “Kitto, you should just tell them they’re all insane.”
They settled into an amicable silence. But their easy trek along the open floor didn’t last long. As the incline became steeper and the vegetation grew thicker, the men spread out as they struggled up the hill, their feet slipping on loose stones that seemed to be only held together by a mat of roots on top of very shallow soil. Kitto stayed close to Harp, which meant the boy had something that he wanted to say.
They were at the back of the group, and Harp found himself breathing uncomfortably hard. Kitto waited with him as Harp paused to catch his breath.
“I need to take better care of myself,” he said, taking a drink of water from Kitto’s waterskin. “Maybe I’m getting too old for this.”
Kitto didn’t look tired at all. The wiry boy was all lean muscle, athleticism, and startling grace. Sometimes Kitto and Boult would have rope-climbing contests up the shroud ropes on the Crane. Boult was agile for a dwarf and much stronger than Kitto, but he couldn’t best the boy’s unparalleled displays of dexterousness.
“Too much ale,” Kitto said in his soft, lilting voice. “And not enough sleep.”