"Cousins, brothers, uncles, aunts, grandmothers?" Ryce asked. The wind cut through the cloth of his hunting coat, and he shivered.

"No one talks of them. It's almost as if Valerian Fox is the only Fox alive."

"That's..." The only word that came to mind was chilling. "But why would the Prime want me dead? Of what possible benefit is that?" He sighed. "No, don't bother answering." The answer was obvious. When he became King, he'd rid himself of Fox. If he died first, though, the Prime would have a chance to control a regency for Prince Garred on King Edwayn's demise. The thought was nauseating.

"Saker warned me too," he said. "He thought Fox was financing a movement against the Shenat and the Primordials and was eyeing the Pontifect's throne. He wrote me a letter from Lowmeer after his nullification."

"You still hear from him, your highness?"

"Not recently."

"A clever man." Horntail gave a grunt that was half-laugh. "I wasn't surprised when I heard he hadn't died up on the Chervil Moors. He has the ear of the shrine guardians, that man. You could do worse."

"Worse?"

"For your own Prime one day."

He snorted. "We joked about that once, but Saker's not made for a desk in Faith House or leading chapel prayer. I will talk to the King about getting rid of Valerian, though. Let's pick up the pace."

As they rode on, Horntail's mouth was a grim line surrounded by the grizzle of his beard.

Pox on't, Ryce thought, I hope Lord Anthon Seaforth is still alive.

"Brigands, that's all."

His father stared at him after uttering those dismissive words, his frown drawing his unruly eyebrows together; his eyes, small and sunken now with age, still able to make him feel like a schoolboy hauled up for teasing fellhound pups. "The reports I have this morning say you did not disport yourself honourably."

"You would rather I were dead?" Ryce asked, not bothering to conceal his bitterness.

"I would rather I had a son to be proud of!"

"Fifteen men died there yesterday. All of them feathered with arrows shot from men in trees. They had no chance to flee. Thank Va, Lord Seaforth was not among them, nor Ser Raknen Marchbury. But Lord Benford's youngest son died, and so did Lord Telman's nephew. The Earl of Fremont's grandson had to have an arrowhead dug from his thigh, and who knows if the witchery healer will be able to stop it turning putrid. The rest of the dead were their attendants, four of the huntsmen and four of my guards."

"And how many of the brigands died?"

"None that we know of."

"You should be ashamed."

"How could men with swords cut down men peppering them with arrows from the trees? You should ask who's behind this. Who has the resources? Who has the men? Who has the manor lands to train such assassins?"

"Brigands! Born bad and brought up to fight and rob honest men. Such scum have no need of training."

"Sire, have you heard a word I've said?"

"Do you call me a fool? What are you trying to say, Ryce? Who are you wanting to blame for this?"

"Prime Valerian Fox, that's who!"

"How dare you? How dare you! Valerian is my one true friend. I am fed up with your casting aspersions on an upright man of Va, who has the interests of this monarchy and this nation at heart! My interests! The one man who stands with me against my enemies."

"What enemies?"

"Have you forgotten who killed your mother?"

The words robbed him of speech. He stared at the King, at a loss.

"Shrine healers and their fobbing witcheries! They killed her."

"She died of childbirth fever." He knew that much. He even thought he remembered something of the day she'd died.

"If I'd prayed to Va, I could have saved her! Instead the Prime, the Shenat Prime I inherited from my father, told me to go to the Shenat healers and to pray at the King Oak, and I did. I did all he asked. I prayed and prayed, and they sent their witchery healersbut still she died!" He drew in a ragged breath, his chest heaving as his hands clutched at the arms of his chair and his fingers clawed around the carving. "She was all that was good and beautiful and loving, and she died because Fox was not yet the Prime of Ardrone." Spittle dripped down his chin, unheeded.

"Father, you can't know that-"

"I ought to have married again. I ought to have fathered more sons... but I never could find a woman worthy enough to be a queen such as your mother.

"Get out of my sight. Go to the chapel and bow down to our one true deity, lest you follow in my foolish footsteps that led to your mother's death! We were led into wrong paths by the wickedness of the Shenat. Witches all!" He clawed at his eyes, as if he could destroy what his inner eye was seeing. Blood-stained tears runnelled down his cheeks.

Aghast, Ryce reeled away, then turned and fled, calling for the King's manservant to attend him.

27.

Murder Most Royal

This was so infuriating! All she needed was for Torjen, the Regal's manservant, to make the trip up the spiral stair to her bedchamber to tell her Vilmar was waiting for her below.

But night after night, he never came.

She had everything prepared. Vilmar's signature was on the Law of Succession amendment with reference to her regency if he died while Karel was a minor. She had procured the sleeping draught through Gerelda and she had a backup of rat poison. Her new chambermaid slept in the cuddy, not on a truckle bed. Best of all, the glazier who came to fix a loose window pane in the retiring room had unwittingly provided her with a solution to another problem. On her request, he'd provided her with some soft grout, a horrid oily and smelly ball of it, but she knew just where she would use it. She now kept it wrapped tight in a piece of thin cambric torn from an old kerchief, which she hid in the drawer of her escritoire along with the sleeping drops in their tiny bottle and the poisoned pellets in a pill box.

A whole moon passed, and although Vilmar seemed to regard her fondly enough when they met in public, he never sent for her. When the next moon-month came and went, she began to despair. There was no point in her descending the stairs herself; she had no way of opening the door into the Regal's bedchamber from the inside. She didn't want to have to use the main staircase because that would mean being seen by the Regal's guards at the door to his solar.

Fortunately, Torjenhis narrow face pinched with disapproval as usualdid eventually knock at her chamber door one evening to tell her she was required within the hour.

She rubbed her body with perfume, liberally applied, then selected the most elaborate of her nightgowns. Her maid, Klara, helped her into it, then brushed her hair. She surveyed herself in the looking glass, then dismissed her and the chambermaid, saying, "You may both retire for the night. I will not require you again."

"Oh, but-" Klara began.

"I shall be most displeased if either of you are here when I return," she said sternly. "You need a good night's sleep, both of you. Off with you, right now."

She waited until they had gone, then fetched the grout, the sleeping drops and the poison. She slipped them all into the pocket of her mantle, lit the single candle on the candle holder and set off down the spiral staircase. Just before reaching the open door at the foot, she left the grout, still inside the cambric, on a stair tread.

When she entered the royal bedchamber, the Regal was seated in one of the hard-backed chairs at the table in the corner of the room. He was already in his nightgown with a rug over his knees. With a languid wave of his hand, he dismissed Torjen who had been urging him to put on his bed socks.

"You look very nice, m'dear," he said, but as the words were drawled in bored tones and accompanied by the most perfunctory of glances, she doubted it was anything more than an attempt at courtesy.

She dropped a curtsy and crossed to his side, putting on the sweetest smile she could manage. "How may I serve you tonight, Your Grace? 'Tis a little chilly in here. Would you like me to massage your back or rub your feet? Or shall I warm you in bed, perhaps?"

He ignored her words and picked up a piece of parchment from his lap. "This letter arrived from my ambassador to Ardrone. It contains news which might be of interest to you, but I was debating whether it is fit for your ears."

She blinked in surprise. Rarely did Vilmar mention his correspondence to her. "Not ill news, I trust." Her heart thumped uncomfortably fast as she seated herself in the second chair at the table, glancing at the open bottle of wine and his empty goblet.

"Judge it as you will." He looked down at the sheet of parchment he held. "It seems the King and his heir have had a falling out of considerable consequence. Prince Ryce blinded his sire and then fled to his northern estates."

"Don't be ridiculous." She blurted the words without thinking. "Prince Ryce would never do any such thing."

Vilmar snorted. "Of course, you would defend your family. However, my ambassadors are not in the habit of lying to their liege lord."

"No. No, of course not, Your Grace." She tried to appear contrite rather than stunned, but it was difficult. The idea was ludicrous. "Hashas he lost his wits then, Your Grace?"

"It seems that way."

She had no idea what could have happened in Throssel, but she was certain the ambassador had been deceived. Still, I can make the most of this. She flapped a hand in front of her face, panting. "Oh, my heart is jumping so! I think perhaps a glass of wine..." She reached for the open bottle on the table, but there was no clean glass. "Might I use your goblet?" she murmured.

He waved a hand in assent, so she filled his empty wineglass, sipped a little and then sat with her head dropping, holding the goblet below the level of the table where he could not see it. She leaned over, her hair flopping forward to further block his view. With one hand she pulled the bottle of sleeping drops out of her pocket and poured a generous amount into the wine. She stoppered the phial once more and slipped it back.

"Prince Ryce is the fool I thought him to be," the Regal was saying, his smug satisfaction obvious. "And Ardrone is finished as a rival to our wealth and power."

She swallowed her anger and smiled wanly. "I'm sure you're right, my liege. I am deeply ashamed of my own blood. That my brother should behave so badlyit is inconceivable!" She stood up and placed the glass in front of him. "I think this wine will go to my head. Let me massage your shoulders, and we perhaps can turn our thoughts to more pleasurable things...?" She moved behind him and started to rub his shoulders with gentle fingers. "Sip your wine and relax."

He almost fell asleep in the chair after finishing only half the glass. Hurriedly, she urged him into bed. He was asleep the moment he laid his head on the pillow. She tried to wake him, but he was gently snoring. She flung what remained of the wine in the glass out of the window then returned to the bed, looking down at him.

Once he might have been a strong man; now he just looked pathetic, with sunken eyes and shrunken thighs, his hair thin and patchy, his shanks spindly, his dry skin sagging on his frame. She put on his bed socks and nightcap, then pulled up the bedclothes. He didn't stir.

She picked up the ambassador's letter and read it all. There was some more detail about the argument between her brother and her father, and an attack on Ryce during a hunt, but no detail that explained how the King had been blinded or why Ryce was blamed. She frowned over it, but try as she might, it all seemed nonsensical. At least the ambassador made it clear where Ryce was; he'd gone to his own estates in the north. That in itself was oddhis southern properties were much more congenial. His castle in the north was fortified, a cold and bleak place by all reports. The kind of place a man might go to if he feared for his life.

She dropped the letter back on the table, shivering, then walked to the door into the dressing room, where Torjen was nodding off in one of the chairs, waiting for permission to go to bed.

"The Regal sleeps," she said. "Please draw the bed curtains and dampen the fire. Then you may go to bed."

She didn't wait for him, but left the door open and retreated to the stair with her candle. Quickly, before Torjen had entered the bedchamber, she picked up the grout in its wrapping and rammed it inside the well of the lock in the door jamb. When she pulled the door closed, the thin cambric ends were flattened between the door and jamb. The deadlock on the door was unable to click into place, but she knew that if Torjen looked at it, he would think it properly closed.

Back upstairs in her own bedroom, she was glad to see she was alone. Quietly so as not to wake the chambermaid, she paced back and forth across the room trying to make sense of the news from Ardrone, and failing miserably. Va, how she hated being helpless and uninformed.

Well, that period in her life would soon be over. She'd make sure of that.

She waited until after she'd heard the midnight tocsin, then picked up her candleholder again and returned to Vilmar's bedchamber. When she pushed the door, it swung back open with minimum resistance. She pulled the kerchief out, and the grout came with it, leaving no sign that anyone had tampered with the lock. Leaving the door open, she placed the candleholder and the kerchief on the lowest step and crept into the room.

It was in near darkness. There was a little moonlight filtering in through the thick glass of the window and a dim glow from the dampened fire, but that was all. If Torjen had left any candles burning, they had since guttered. The only sound was that of the Regal's noisy breathing from behind the curtains of his bed.

She crept over to the door to the dressing room, to find Torjen had left it ajar. Listening at the gap, she could hear him snoring in the room beyond. With infinite care, she closed the door and retreated to the stairway to collect her candle. This she took to the table between the bed and the window. She opened up the curtains around Vilmar's bed to let in a little light and picked up one of his many pillows.

Apparently she had not given him enough of the sleeping draught to kill him. She regarded him dispassionately as he lay on his back, mouth open, snuffling. Then, climbing up on to the bed, she knelt with a leg on either side of his body. He still did not move.

"They say," she said softly, "that you murdered your first wife. She was Ardronese, and royal, related to me, but you killed her because she didn't give you any children. Well, neither did I, Vilmar Vollendorn."

He didn't stir.

She shrugged and placed the pillow over his face. Pressing it down with her hands, she lay on top of him, spreading her weight over his face and upper body to make it hard for him to move. She expected him to struggle, and prepared herself. He moved under her, trying to turn his face sideways. His legs kicked, but his movements were feeble, the faint attempts of a drugged man to escape a fate he was incapable of recognising. She maintained the pressure long past its need.

When she lifted the pillow, he was silent, his breathing stopped. His mouth sagged open. She reached out to pick up the candle and brought it to his face. His eyes were open, and he was now staring at her with a blank, sightless gaze, quite lifeless.

She stared back.

"That," she said, "was no more than you deserve, Vilmar Vollendorn. What price your Bengorth's Law now? How many have died just to keep a Vollendorn backside on the Basalt Throne?"

His eyes did not blink.

She smiled at him. "Let me tell you this: the next arse that sits there has not a drop of your blood. So much for the supposed power of A'Va." She tapped him on the nose. "You should have put your faith in Va."

Wriggling off the bed, she stood at his side to replace his cap on his head, rearrange the pillows and straighten the bedclothes. Then she leaned forward to close his eyelids. With one final check to make sure she had left nothing behind, not even a drop of candle grease, she closed the bed curtains.

After padding across to reopen the door to the retiring room where Torjen still snored, she left it open just a crack, then returned to the spiral staircase. From there, she took one last look at the room. All appeared to be in place. She picked up the grout, pulled the door shut behind her and, smiling, made her way back to bed. No one could point the finger at her; the Regal had been asleep when Torjen drew the curtains around the bed, and the closed door to the spiral staircase meant that she could not have returned.

She would sleep well that night.

She woke the next morning to the news of Vilmar's death.

No one suspected a thing. The court was plunged into mourning and she was the only person truly ready for it. She had long since laid her plans to divide and rule the Council of Regency, and knew her success depended on her alignment with her son so that any disagreement with the Regala would also appear to be disloyalty to the Prince-regal. She had already been playing one off against another while the Regal was still alive.

With Lady Friselda, she didn't even bother to be subtle. The first time she met the ward's-dame after news of the Regal's death, the old woman was pale-faced and red-eyed. Mathilda could almost feel sorry for her. Almost.

"You've never liked me," she said briskly. "And I have resented your interference between my husband and me. One thing I have admired, though," she added after the first sentiment had time to register, "is your loyalty to my beloved husband."

"I always supported my cousin," Friselda said.

"I understand he paid you an allowance, as well as supplying you with your well-appointed solar."

Lady Friselda inclined her head. "That is so."

"In return, you acted as his spy."

The old lady said nothing.

"I imagine you might find retirement from court both boring and a pecuniary embarrassment."