“I would like to go and change my clothes, first,” she said.
The guard shook his head. His expression gave her a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. “I am sorry, Highness, but it is not permitted.”
She ran through all the possibilities as they escorted her toward the throne room. Could it be her meddling with the Kallikans? Or had something about Jenkin Crowel’s injuries been whispered in the king’s ears? That would be easy enough to deny—Dawet was too clever to leave any loose ends.
As she walked across the great throne room between the two tall men she could not help wondering if the covert glances from the courtiers betrayed the same squeamish sort of fascination they might have felt for a famous criminal.
Oh, sweet mistress Zoria, what trouble have I caused now?
King Enander and his advisers were waiting for her in the Perin Chapel, a high-ceilinged room much longer than it was wide. The king sat on a chair with the great altar behind him, at the feet of Perin Skylord’s monstrous marble statue. The god held his great hammer Crackbolt, its massive head resting on the floor just behind the chair occupied by the Lady Ananka, the king’s mistress, who was one of the last people Briony wanted to see. Equally loathsome was the presence of Jenkin Crowel, the Tollys’ envoy at the Syannese court, although it suggested she had guessed right: one of the bully-boys had probably talked. Crowel smirked at her; his giant white neck ruff made him look like a particularly ugly flower. It was all she could do not to go to him and slap his pink, insolent face, but she struggled for calm and found it. She had learned a few lessons since Hendon Tolly had provoked her almost to madness at her own table.
She dropped to her knee in front of King Enander and looked down at the floor. “Your Majesty,” she said. “You summoned me and I have come.”
“Not hastily,” said Ananka. “The king has waited for you here a long time.”
Briony bit her lip. “I am sorry,” she said. “I was with Mistress Ivgenia e’Doursos and your messengers only just found me. I came as soon as I heard.” She looked up to the king, trying to gauge his mood, but the expression on Enander’s face was a disinterested mask that could have augured anything at all. “How may I serve you?”
“You claim to serve King Enander?” said Ananka. “That is strange, since none of your actions show anything like it.”
Whatever was happening here, it was obviously bad. If Lady Ananka was to serve as her inquisitor the cause would be lost before Briony even knew what was at stake.
“We welcomed you to our court.” She saw now that Enander’s face was flushed as though he had been drinking heavily for this early hour of the day. “Did we not? Did we not open our arms to you as Olin’s daughter? ”
“Yes, you did, Majesty, and I am most grateful ...”
“And all I asked of you was that you not bring the intrigues of your… troubled homeland into our house.” The king frowned, but it seemed as much in puzzlement as anger. Briony felt a moment of hope. Perhaps it was a misunderstanding—something she could explain. She would be contrite, grateful. She would apologize for her youth and headstrong ways, trot out whatever nonsense the king wanted to hear like Feival performing a soliloquy of girlish innocence, and then she could go back to her chambers for some blessed, necessary sleep…
A movement at the corner of her eye caught her attention. It was Feival himself, who had come so quietly into the great chapel that Briony had not even heard him. She was relieved to see at least one familiar face.
“You were extremely generous to her, my lord,” said Ananka. Was Briony the only person who could hear the venom dripping from the woman’s tongue? What good was beauty—a mature beauty, but beauty nonetheless—if it cloaked such a viperous soul?
Please, merciful Zoria, Briony prayed, help me to keep my temper. Help me to swallow my pride, which has landed me in trouble so many times.
“So if all that is true,” said Enander suddenly, “why have you betrayed my hospitality and betrayed me, Briony Eddon? Why? Common intrigues I could understand, but this—you have struck at my very heart!” The pain in his voice was real.
Betrayed? Briony suddenly felt icy fear envelop her. She looked up at Enander but the king would not meet her eye. “Majesty, I ...” She found it hard to form words. “What have I done? May I know? I swear I have never ...”
“The list of your crimes is long, girl.” The high collar of Ananka’s elaborately beaded dress made her look like a Xandian hood snake. “If you were of common blood, any one of them would have you in the House of Tears. Lord Jenkin, tell the king again what she did to you.”
Jenkin Crowel, still with a thin purple shadow beneath one eye, cleared his throat. “Within a few short days of arriving in your gracious court as a legitimate envoy, King Enander, I was set upon by thugs in the public street and beaten almost to death. As I lay in the dirt in a pool of my own blood one of the ruffians leaned down and told me, “That is what happens to those who stand against the Eddons.”
“That’s a lie!” Briony shouted. It was, at least in part. After she had become convinced that Crowel had poisoned her little maid in an effort to kill Briony herself, she had instructed Dawet to hire some bully-boys to give Crowel a taste of his own cruelty, and then say to him that next time he tried any dangerous tricks his payment would be worse. No mention could have been made of the Eddons because Dawet would never even have hinted to those men who they were actually serving.
“I know what I heard,” Crowel said, doing his best to look both suffering and noble. “I thought I was dying. I thought they were the last words I would ever hear.”
“You are as much a liar as your master.” Briony forced herself to take a breath. “Even if I were behind such a terrible thing, would I have them use my name?” Just the sight of Crowel’s doughy, self-satisfied face fanned the rage inside her until its flames billowed. “If I was taking revenge for the treachery your master has shown my family, then the name Eddon would be the last thing you would hear all right, you pig, but you would never have got to your feet again!” Enander and the others were staring at her, Briony realized. She swallowed. “I am innocent of this charge, King Enander. Would you take the word of this… this upstart over the daughter of a brother king?”
The king narrowed his eyes. “Were this the only accusation against you, and the only witness, you would have some case to make, Princess. But there is more.”
“I am innocent of any wrongdoing, Majesty. I swear. Call on your witnesses.”
“Is it not as I told you, Enander?” said Ananka in a tone of triumph. “She plays the innocent so well. And yet she plotted nothing less than to steal your son and your throne!”
Enander’s throne? Oh, gods, that was treason. Even princesses might be put to death for treason, and not quickly. It was all she could do to force out the words. “I have no idea what you are talking about, Lady Ananka—I swear my innocence in front of Perin and all the gods!”
“You tried to entrap Prince Eneas, girl. Everybody knows. You made up to him, played the blushing virgin, all the while trying to lure him to your bed and bend him to your will! And that was only the beginning of your plot!”
“This is a dreadful lie!” Briony cried out. “Where is the prince? Ask him yourself. Our dealings were always honorable—which is more than I can say for what you do to me here!”
“He is beyond your reach,” Ananka said with obvious satisfaction. “Beyond your lies and cozening. Eneas has been sent away from Tessis this very hour, with his soldiers. The glamour you have drawn over him will do you no good.”