CHAPTER TWO

Baron Lixel’s Residence, Margalit

T he journey to Margalit took almost three weeks, longer than expected. The winter was closing in, and drifts of snow had forced Ishbel and her escort to spend long days idle in wayside inns, waiting for the weather to improve enough that they might continue their journey.

Ishbel had spent most of the idle days praying that the weather would close in so greatly she’d be forced to return to Serpent’s Nest. Of course it hadn’t happened. The snow had always cleared in time for her to move forward, and, by the time they reached Margalit, she had managed to convince herself that no matter the trials ahead, she would manage.

Ishbel hoped only that this Maximilian was tolerable, and that he would be kind to her, and that the Great Serpent had not lied when he’d said that she would return to Serpent’s Nest, and that it would be her home, always.

She would be strong, because she had to be.

And, damn it, she was the archpriestess of the Coil, no matter how much she might hide that from Maximilian. She had courage and she had ability and she had pride, and she would endure.

Despite her carefully constructed shell of determination, it was a black moment for Ishbel when she first saw the smudge of Margalit in the distance. For an instant all the terrifying fear of her childhood threatened to swamp her, but Ishbel managed to bite down her nausea and panic, and maintain a calm exterior as they rode closer and closer to the city.

Then she took a deep breath, called on all her training and courage, and the moment passed. Margalit held no horrors for her now. All that was past.

Ishbel was to stay with Baron Lixel, Maximilian’s ambassador to the Outlands, in his house in Margalit.

The house sat in one of Margalit’s more desirable quarters. It was a large, spacious house, single-story like most of the Outlanders’ buildings, with thick walls, high ceilings, and decorative woodwork around doors and windows. Lixel had rented the property from the Margalit Town Guild when he’d first arrived in the city, and Ishbel had no reason to suppose that Lixel knew that the house was, in fact, one of the properties in her not-inconsiderable inheritance.

Baron Lixel was there to greet Ishbel on her arrival, and he was not what Ishbel had imagined. Her fears had led her to expect a stern, forbidding man, uncommunicative and dismissive, but Lixel proved exactly the opposite. He was a pleasant man in middle age, very courtly, courteous, attentive without being fussy and with a charming habit of understatement in conversation, and Ishbel hoped it foretold well for Maximilian.

Ishbel spent a pleasant evening with him. Lixel seemed to intuit her anxiety and, surprisingly, managed to put Ishbel at her ease with his charming conversation and easy manner.

On the morrow Maximilian’s party was to arrive, and the negotiations for the contract of marriage to commence.

Lixel knocked on the door of Ishbel’s chamber at mid-morning, and bowed as she opened it.

“Maximilian’s delegation has arrived,” Lixel said, offering Ishbel his arm. Then, as she took it, he added,

“They won’t eat you.”

Ishbel gave a tense smile. “I feel very alone today, my lord. This is all most strange for me.”

They walked down the corridor toward the large reception rooms of the house. “You do not wish to wed?” Lixel said.

“I am missing my home, my lord, as noxious as that home must be to you.”

Ishbel was pushing Lixel a little too far with this statement, but she knew that his response would tell her a great deal about the man, and also, possibly, his master.

“A home is a home,” Lixel said, leading Ishbel out the door and down the long corridor toward the main reception room of the house, “whatever its strangenesses. I do not think Maximilian will begrudge it in the slightest if you yearn for a home you have lost.”

Not lost, Ishbel thought. I will return to Serpent’s Nest one day.

“I would not have thought him so generous toward the Coil,” Ishbel said, pushing just a little more.

“I was not speaking of the Coil,” Lixel said quietly, and led her into the reception room.

Ishbel might have responded to that, she still had time before they met the gaggle of people standing at the far end of the large chamber, but just then she caught sight of the leading member of Maximilian’s delegation, and she stopped dead, unable to repress a gasp.

It was a birdwoman. An Icarii. Ishbel had heard about them, and had heard about the land from which they had come, but had never seen one.

The birdwoman turned, looking directly at Ishbel with a discomforting frankness. She was clad all in black—form-fitting leather trousers and a top which allowed her wings freedom. She moved again, taking a half step forward, and Ishbel had her first glimpse of the stunning grace and elegance of the creatures.

The entire group had turned at her entrance now, and Ishbel tore her eyes away from the birdwoman long enough to see that several other Icarii were within the delegation.

Maximilian controlled Icarii?

Ishbel took a deep breath, hoping it wasn’t obvious, set a smile to her face, and walked forward.

She was the archpriestess of the Coil, and she would manage.

“You were very surprised to see me,” StarWeb said. “You paled considerably.”

They were alone, standing on the glassed veranda that opened off the reception room. Everyone else was still inside, talking, drinking, negotiating, but as soon as practicable after the introductions and initial chat, StarWeb had requested Ishbel join her for a private word.

“I have never seen one of your kind,” Ishbel said. “I was shocked.” Her mouth quirked. “The Icarii are almost myth here in the Outlands.”

StarWeb thought about being offended at the “your kind,” but decided that for the moment she would accomplish more without assuming affront. Full-on confrontation would prove far more effective.

“Then in your marriage,” she said, “you shall have to get used to us. There are many of ‘my kind’ at Maximilian’s court.”

“You know him well?”

“I am his lover.” There, Ishbel, StarWeb thought, make of that what you will.

To StarWeb’s surprise, Ishbel showed no emotion whatsoever. “That does not mean that you know him well.”

“But I expect that,” StarWeb countered, “should you become his wife, you shall come to know him well.”

“I expect,” Ishbel said, “that any man who has endured what Maximilian has experienced in life will be a man who lets only those he truly loves know him well. If he allows me that privilege, then I shall be honored.”

“That was very good, my lady,” said StarWeb. “You managed to be self-effacing and insult me all in one.

You shall do very well at a royal court, but I do not know that it should be Maximilian’s.”

“Will all Escator welcome me as generously as you, StarWeb?”

“Let me be frank with you, Ishbel—I may call you Ishbel, yes?”

“I would prefer that you did not.”

“Very well then, my lady, let me be quite frank with you. None of us here”—StarWeb gestured to the Escatorian delegation inside the reception room—“nor any back in Ruen among Maximilian’s inner circle, entirely trust this offer. We don’t trust who it comes from—the Coil are universally loathed—”

“Not by me,” said Ishbel quietly. “The Coil took me in when no one else would. They nurtured me, and were kind to me, and subjected me to none of the practices in which I hear rumored they indulge.”

“Apparently so, my lady, for I believe your belly is still intact under that silken gown of yours. But allow me to return to the point, if I may. There are many about Maximilian who wonder about this offer and its timing. We wonder why a lady as lovely as you, and with such a dowry as yours, has only now decided to put herself on the marriage market, and to such a minor player—no, no, don’t protest, Maximilian isn’t the haughty kind—when she could have tempted a much nobler man, an emperor perhaps, or maybe even the Tyrant of Isembaard, for I have heard rumor he is looking for a new wife.”

“My dowry,” said Ishbel, her tone low, “would attract no emperor or tyrant. Particularly with, as you have been so kind to point out, such a home as I have enjoyed these past twenty years. Yes, the Coil is universally loathed, but not by me. I owe them a loyalty, StarWeb, that perhaps you cannot understand.

It is one of love and gratitude. It is one of family. If you want a reason why I have not married in the past eight or nine years, when one might reasonably have expected me to take a husband, then it is because no man has interested me enough.”

StarWeb looked at her carefully. “Yet Maximilian does.”

“I think a man who has spent seventeen years in a black pit thinking his life at an end will have more understanding, more tolerance, than most.” Ishbel paused, her eyes glittering. “Yet perhaps I am mistaken, if the kind of woman he takes as lover is any indication.”

“Maximilian is a quiet man, of manner and mind,” said StarWeb, “and you are a very unquiet woman, Ishbel. I do not know how I shall report you to him.”

“Report me as a woman who can speak for herself,” snapped Ishbel, “and who does not need an arrogant and threatened lover to speak on her behalf.”

And with that she pushed past StarWeb and rejoined the reception.