Read Online Treason's Shore by Sherwood Smith - Free Book Online Page B

Wisthia, a dear and I’ll always treasure her memory, wasted so much space when she was queen. Imagine a breakfast room, a music room, a sewing room, a morning room, in addition to the formal dining room and the study room we knew so well! Why can’t you do all that in one or two rooms at most?”
    Because she was caged here, Tdor remembered Fareas-Iofre saying after her single visit to the royal castle. Queen Wisthia made an Adrani world within our Marlovan world, and found meaningful work, which probably made her feel less a hostage.
    Noise issued up from the stairway leading down to the guard compound, and a door banged open behind them. Evred and Inda entered.
    “And here’s where you live,” Evred said. “Your main room is this one. Private rooms behind all those doors.”
    Everyone watched Inda as he turned around, taking in the stone walls of the oddly shaped room with its single slant of light coming down the narrow corridor with the inset window, the plain flagged floor. The only furnishings were a low raptor-footed table, a neat stack of old mats covered with crimson wool, and a bench between a couple of the doors. Signi, lingering at the back, thought she’d seen more comfortable prisons.
    But Inda grinned as he turned around a second time, his coat skirts flaring out. “All this space! Hey-o, Tdor, come up in this alcove—there’s a bench built into it. We can sit here and look out at the parade court.”
    “During your many watches of free time,” Hadand said, and laughed.
    Inda shrugged, hands out. “I’d be fine with a hammock and enough air to swing it in.”
    Only Inda was oblivious to the subtle reactions in his auditors. He marched to the main bedroom, peered at the inset window, and turned around to exclaim, “We can see the academy roofs from here, too.”
    Hadand opened the double doors to the hallway. “The mulled wine will get cold soon.”
    Hadand had glimpsed Signi waiting purposefully just behind Evred, so she slid her hands round Tdor’s and Inda’s arms and marched them off, leaving the question of work, Tdor, Signi, and who would sleep where back in the Harskialdna suite.
    Evred checked at the sight of Signi the Venn waiting not two steps away, her face raised expectantly. Until now she’d deferred so expertly he’d scarcely noted her presence.
    He suppressed a pang of irritation, a reaction that had grown far milder since the first day she’d been forced into his life. “You wish to speak to me?”
    “Yes, Harvaldar-Dal.” Her accent was almost gone now. “With your permission, I would like to make a journey around your kingdom. Renew the bridge and water spells.”
    Gratitude flicked into suspicion. No. It was possible she would send observation reports to her homeland, but she could do that anyway. She was a mage. He could send an army after her, but they could catch her only if she willed it. And she had done nothing to indicate she was a spy.
    He waited until the reaction had cooled. “Did Inda request this service of you?”
    She turned to study him. In a way her wide gaze, so infrequently encountered, almost hurt as much as Inda’s, but for different reasons. But he sustained it as she said, “He did not. Perhaps you remember that I once explained how Inda found me: I was to go to Sartor for a greater purpose.”
    “To reveal the Venn system of navigation. I remember that. Has this changed?”
    Her hand passed across her face; she did not hide her perplexity. “I don’t think so. But I don’t know. The last I heard, Dag Erkric was preventing our access to Sartor, or rather, having it warded. Until I know for certain that I will not walk into a magical trap if I go, I await more definite orders. Until then, I perceive there is work needed, and it is the kind of work that I have the training to do.”
    Evred let out his breath. One of the first and most pressing of the demands on him as king was to try to negotiate a return of the mages that the Magic Council