Everyone stilled. Alanna’s hands were to her mouth, staring at the frozen tableau in front of her. Chest heaving, Zander held his naked sword-tip pressed into her chief bodyguard’s throat, drawing the faintest bead of blood. Limaq dropped his own blade with a clang, staring into Zander’s eyes. Then Alanna’s head turned at the rustle of clothing from the doorway and she stared, bewildered, before dropping into the required obeisance as the Tahl-Mat stalked in, eyes stony, her ladies fanning out behind her.
The Queen did not signal for her to rise. Her voice was arctic. “You may have washed in the fountain of my garden and conveniently fallen down the steps of your terrace the following morning to explain the grazes, Lady Kjeldahl, but the subterfuge was worthless. Several of your attendants suspected your infidelity anyway.”
Alanna jerked upright, eyes alarmed that they had seen through the cover-up. The Lady Dohmat smiled smugly. Then the accusation of infidelity sank in, and the sudden fear subsided. Wrong end of the stick.
The Queen was still speaking. “Then with your indiscretion in dismissing all of your other guards and attendants earlier this evening, Captain Zander had no choice but to admit to me the suspicions of the Great Tahl; the true reason he was posted here as a member of your zalmat.”
Everyone started when Limaq suddenly prostrated himself, tearing off his helmet and banging his forehead on the tiles. “I have broken faith with my liege.”
Zander’s expression was stony, unreadable as he ripped off Limaq’s insignia with the tip of his blade, staring down at his sword-brother.
“Death will be swift for you, Alt Limaq,” declared the Queen coldly, glancing down. “Xanir does not forgive betrayal in his sword-sworn.”
Gulping, head whirling with conjecture — how had Zander set this up? Beforehand? – Alanna was dragged up to face the coldly triumphant eyes of her mother-in-law. “However, the Great Tahl wishes to visit his own punishment on the Kjeldahl whore upon his return. Take her to the Tower.”
Hauled toward the door, stunned, Alanna took one last glance back into her rooms. Zander was crouched over the now silent Limaq, binding his wrists behind him with a whip-length of cord. He looked coldly back at her and nodded brusquely as though in dismissal.
Her guards hauled her out, but Alanna was quietly reassured. That had been the exact same nod that Zander had given her when she had confirmed her love for Xanir and sworn to keep silent. A captain to a soldier he was entrusting with a mission.
She would keep silent.
*
Monday. It must be Monday. Week ten. Alanna stood on the tiny window ledge of her prison at the top of the Graune tower, the tallest tower in the palace, from which the assassin had zipwired on her wedding night. She was wedged into the v-shaped embrasure inside the arrow-slit opening that faced out over the gardens, beyond them the paddocks, and further, the city. Palms braced to steady herself against the cool stone and eyes watering in the light, she stared out through the narrow gap. In the cool of the early morning, groups of temple cleaners were gossiping and calling greetings to each other while they raked the sandy gravel outside the temples, cleaning up the wilting flowers from the weddings celebrated the previous day and other rubbish from the daily tramp of traffic through the huge square.
Automatically shading the lens as she lifted her spyglass, although the sun was behind the tower right now and couldn’t reflect from it, she focussed on the face of one woman outside the Temple of Bahrir who was facing directly towards her, piecing together the words from the lip movements. After ten weeks of practice, she was practically fluent if the person was face on, even in Tahlm’ese.
A shock ran through her. “…says that Em Feliz isn’t really dead — he was captured by the outlanders and they’ve got him somewhere, doing horrible things to him to find out what he knows.”
The person the woman was chatting with, squatting with her back to Alanna, spread her arms and shrugged as she replied.
“I know, but everyone has a breaking point, and they’re vicious dogs, those northerners. Look at what their princess did, seducing Alt Limaq into cuckolding the Tahl — would’ve thought that was impossible too, wouldn’t you?”
The pang was dull, after the number of times Alanna had ‘heard’ their opinion of her over the last months. To the Tahlmese, she was a wicked seductress who had used exotic arts to bewitch her poor bodyguard until he hadn’t been able to resist, and look where it had gotten him — dying a traitor’s death by the rope and leaving Xanir Tahl with one less of his sword-sworn as he fought to keep the Sianese from the coast.
Her stomach lurched. The last time she had left this tower had been the day after her arrest, when she had been led to execution square and forced to watch as her supposed lover was hanged. She had spent the horrible episode being hissed at by the crowd, while reminding herself silently of all the ways she had been taught to feign a hangman’s death.