LITMIR.BIZ

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when Lysaer’s mother cuckolded her marriage in liaison with his father’s most hated enemy.

      Gratified by the vengeful jab of his fingers through her sleeve, Talith lifted one porcelain shoulder in a shrug. At her throat, the jewels flashed, enticed, trembled in liquid invitation. “Why not say aloud what every servant in your palace already whispers behind your back? That time enough has passed since my ransom. A year and a half gone, and all your court watching my belly like a pack of starved midwives. What pretense is left? My time in captivity was innocent of dalliance.”

      Unlike your faithless mother, her swift, weighted pause suggested. Locked eye to eye, his arctic blue to her molten amber, Talith said, “Since you can’t claim avoidance for a nonexistent bastard, what keeps you from sharing my bed?”

      Lysaer stroked a light finger beneath her chin, while a frown of consummate puzzlement came and went between his brows. “My love, you’re distraught.” By an act of brazen sympathy he behaved as if they stood alone, though the guardsmen behind exchanged discomfited glances. They knew well enough his nights were spent in the royal suite, since their ranks supplied the watch set over the prince’s apartments.

      “No doubt, you have cause for distress,” Lysaer temporized. “I realize how desperately you desire to conceive. But chasing me about in a lather is unlikely to help your fertility.”

      Talith hissed out a breath at this vicious twist. “How dare you!” Her lashes swept down, a black veil for a murderous flare of hatred. “You’ll never be able to bury your lapse with state excuses, or claim I am flawed or infirm. If I’m barren, my ladies-in-waiting all know, it’s because your elaborate show of appearance masks the fact that you won’t couple with me. Tell me, your Grace, what are you hiding? A mistress? Boy lovers? Revulsion on the chance I fell victim to incest?”

      “Here, I’ll be late. Your troubles must bide for a little bit.” As she snapped breath to sink her barb of victory, Lysaer cupped her face, slipped a quick kiss on her lips, then handed her off to his ranking man-at-arms. His low, rapid orders cunningly disarmed her most brilliantly raking response. “See my lady to a healer for a posset to soothe her nerves. Say I’ll return to check on her the earliest instant I am free.”

      She threw him a withering epithet.

      In pained sorrow, the prince shut his eyes: as if by flat denial he could pretend for a heartbeat such beauty did not harbor so vile a contempt. Then he roused himself, straightened. Every regal inch of him contained into painful, mannered sympathy, he reassumed his place with his chancellor and Lord Justiciar. Despite Talith’s glare like an auger at his back, he expanded the circle of his confidence.

      “I’m sorry for the scene.” His hushed voice carried backward as his party advanced through the echoing, high vaults of the hallway. “The loss of her brother at Dier Kenton Vale so soon after the months she was kept in duress by the Spinner of Darkness have left Talith strained and unsettled. We must all be patient. Give her care and understanding. I’m certain the moment we manage to conceive our first child, her usual staunch nature will prevail.”

      The chancellor murmured banal commiseration. Less suave, the guardsmen showed pity, while the red-faced valet who watched from the dressing chamber gave the princess the gawky, bold stare that admired for sheer, brainless loveliness.

      Talith swept off with the appointed guardsman, chin raised in smoldering rebellion. Born a pedigree Etarran, she was too well seasoned to the ways of court infighting to augment Lysaer’s strategy with protests. If he sought to discredit her as a woman undone by harsh circumstance, he had to know, the new-forged, burgeoning spite in her heart would admit no defeat while she breathed.

      “On my life,” she called after her royal husband in a tone like dulcet poison, “I’ll birth you an heir to make the s’Ilessid name proud, even as your lady mother did before me!”

      Appalled by the sharp, sudden pallor that blanched his prince’s face, the Lord Justiciar of Avenor’s state council tipped his gray head in assurance, “Give her time. She’ll weather her disappointment over children. Women do.” He pursed his lips, prepared to continue his fatherly advice.

      But Lysaer raised a hand and touched him silent. “Not here.”

      The royal train reached the outer postern. Composed and brittle as an artwork in glass, the Prince of the Light mastered the short ceremony while a heavy box of coins changed hands from Avenor’s Minister of the Treasury into the care of his chancellor. He stepped with his retinue through the outer doorway into the blast of winter wind. The cold nipped his cheeks back to color. Against the luminous, aquamarine sky, his hair gleamed like the tinseled weave shot through a ripple of Atchaz silk. His poise, now restored, was steel masked in felt as he dealt his justiciar a swift and shaming rebuke. “A year and a half is criminally soon to say whether my lady’s unfit to bear an heir. Discretion is called for. Her Grace’s distress will fare all the worse if unkind rumors start to circulate.”

      Beside the bronze finials of the palace gate spread the circular plaza which centered the city of Avenor. This site retained its design since the Paravian ruin underwent Lysaer’s restoration. His master masons had found the proportions and placement too pleasing to disrupt. The facades of the formal state buildings had arisen on the rims of Second Age foundations. The ancient worn slates, with their cracked channels of queer inlay, were now paved over in amber-and-white block incised with a sunwheel pattern. The vista with its innate grandeur presented the ideal setting for Lysaer’s noon practice of dispensing largesse to the poor.

      Since the crushing defeat in Vastmark, the coins struck for this purpose were embossed with the new order’s blazon upon one side, and stamped on the other with a sigil of ward against darkness. Dubbed shadow-banes by their recipients, merchants in Tysan took them in trade, then resold them as amulets for more than their value in gold.

      No edict was signed to curtail the practice. “Why sap the foundations of the common people’s hope?” Prince Lysaer gave instruction to his council. “For as long as the Shadow Master lives at large, their terror is real and justified. Let folk grasp whatever comfort they may. Suffering and losses could harm them soon enough. Folk will fare better for not feeling helpless in their worry.”

      Speculation became rooted into belief. The name of Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn was anathema, and feared, and the coins, dispensed with the blessing of Lysaer s’Ilessid himself. They could not be other than talismans infused by his blessed gift of light.

      Prince Lysaer never walked in the public eye without due presence and ceremony. His daily custom of charity became a dazzling display of royal pageantry, while the poor and the downtrodden elbowed forward to claim the trinkets which held the reputed power to protect them.

      This day, the plaza was packed to capacity, despite the bracing wind that snapped the fringed banners on their poles. The out-of-town merchants and the bored rich who thronged to observe from the balconies clutched their caped cloaks and furred hoods. Below, in jostling chaos, the waving, cheering supplicants pressed to catch sight of their savior. More than the city poor and village crofters shouted and surged against the guardsmen’s cordon. Petitioners now traveled from far-distant cities to receive Avenor’s royal alms. A second row of pikemen ringed the central dais to keep order, their polished buckles and appointments backed by white silk bunting tied up with gilt cord and tassels.

      Lysaer stepped through the gateway just before the advent of noon. The wind’s icy buffet ruffled his ingot gold hair. His white-clad person seemed etched into air, set off from the commonplace sea of dark woolens like a mote struck into incandescent purity by the silver-ice fall of winter sunlight. The welcoming roar which greeted Prince Lysaer rocked echoes off the high, amber brick of the watch-towers. Engulfed in a mounting crescendo of noise, he ascended the dais stair, his honor guard and high council ministers a parade pace behind him.

      The thronging stew of voices grew hushed as Lysaer s’Ilessid took his place. He accepted the bullion coffer from his chancellor, then addressed the adoring crowd. “Hail the Alliance of Light! Through the dedication of all people, moral strength shall prevail against darkness!” He tipped up his face. As though his appeal

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