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.
CHAPTER THREE
Palace of Aqhat, Tyranny of Isembaard
Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard, walked along the wide corridor of his palace of Aqhat.
He”d returned from Lake Juit a few days earlier, together with his maniac Ba”al”uz, his ten
thousand men, and the man he had pulled from the lake.
It was this man that Isaiah now went to visit. He had not seen him since he”d deposited
him, dripping wet, on the wharf of Lake Juit for his servants to attend.
He approached the entrance to an apartment, and the guards standing outside stood back,
bowing as one and touching the tips of their spears to the floor.