More Than One Way To Kill A King
Story Notes: The inspiration for this is an alternate scenario that explores what would happen if Meliara arrived at Court during Galdran's rule, much like the other nobles. This of course raises complications with the man she just can't get along with in any universe: the Marquis of Shevraeth. Some of the backstory has been reworked to accommodate an earlier relationship with Mel/Vidanric – I hope the details of which slowly become clearer as the story goes on! I've read Crown/Court duel, A Stranger to Command, and all the Vidanric POV pieces so some of the facts I pull may come from those. I'll stop blathering now – I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimer: Crown Duel and all associated material are the property of Sherwood Smith. That which is not mine, is not mine.
Chapter 1
It was the incessant whispering of Lady Arasa, on the far side of the room, which first caused the Duke of Savona to finally glance away from the female dancers in the center.
Not that it was rare for the young, chipper lady to blather on while far more important things held the better claim to one's attention. But the fact that there seemed to be no familiar tone of conspiracy in her voice, and that her somber gaze circled only amongst her intimate friends, instead of wandering about the room for those she would call busy-ears? That was rare.
Russav lightly tapped the tall, slim man splayed on the cushion beside him with his fan.
"It appears that the pleasantries of tonight's music have wrought woeful discord elsewhere. What say you to this counter?" he asked, gesturing at the cluster of young, wide-eyed nobles listening in silence to whatever it was Lady Arasa had to say. His fan twirled in the mode of Careful Words.
His cousin and near-brother Vidanric, the Lord Marquis of Shevraeth, heir to the Renselaeus principality and owner of the most fabulous boots of the evening, stifled a yawn. He had been sitting nearly all night, his demeanor every semblance of a man caught in a drunken stupor. Luckily, his genuine exhaustion helped play that up immeasurably.
"I say that certain interruptions, if proven constant over time, ought to be considered part of the harmony," Vidanric said. His heavy lids and soft drawl could not have belonged to a man more bored. "It is in the breaks in patterns that discord arises."
Russav spread his fan in appreciation. "Quite right, Danric. Quite right." He sat back against his cushion and began counting silently to himself.
"Then again," Vidanric said slowly, once Russav hit twenty, "I find the air amiss of the usual music that transpires in this sort of situation."
The Duke grinned in silent victory. "Give me not even until the end of this set to find out all of it. I'd take you up on a wager to make this blasted night more fun, but I suspect you cannot even count your own fingers at this moment. And not because of this."
As he stood, he swooped Vidanric's full wine glass up with him. He couldn't resist a wink before striding off in the opposite direction of the chattering lady, confident that other forces would endeavor to bring him to her side.
Meanwhile, Vidanric wondered why he had never learned the art of sleeping with his eyes open. What good was knowing how to wield a Marloven broadsword in a ghastly situation such as this? Unless it was to cut himself a tunnel through the ground, to home and to comfort.
True to his word, Russav returned before the musicians and dancers completed the end of their set. Only this time, the jovial grin was gone. His lips were lined in slivers of white, a single faint line in his brow betraying the extent of his anxiety. His wine was untouched.
The wine, Vidanric decided, was the most concerning part of all.
Russav sat back on the couch and snapped his fan open. His brow did not even begin to smoothen until he had concealed a portion of his face - partly from Vidanric as well, his cousin noted. It was something Russav did only when the news was really and truly awful.
"Russav," Vidanric said gently.
Savona embarked on a noble but futile attempt to pretend he hadn't heard.
"Russav." Not the voice of dear Danric any longer, but layered with the clipped expectations of a military commander.
"It appears," Russav said slowly, striving for a nonchalance that he knew would evaporate once Vidanric heard the extent of things, "That the Astiars have befallen an unexpected tragedy."
At the whitening of Vidanric's face, Russav's courage momentarily fled him. He chased the remainder of the wine down to the last drop and filled both their glasses anew.
Vidanric then opened his mouth to speak, but Russav knew that anything he said at that moment would put them both in danger. His throat and stomach burning, he gasped out, "Not her. The old Count. And her brother."
In the most careful language he could muster up, Russav relayed what he'd learned from Arasa. The old Count and Branaric had responded to a call of distress near the southern border of Tlanth. Thinking it a domestic dispute, they set out with one guard riding escort.
The call of distress turned out to be their own, for they were met not by a tearful farm girl but a pack of brigands. By then, the story would take a familiar turn for many in that room, for it was widely known that the brigands of Remalna had a taste for noble blood — and seemed to be very skilled at hunting it down.
The Count and the riding guard had been killed, but Branaric had fought the brigands down and fled, wounded, on horseback. He spent two days leading them on a chase through the mountains so convoluted that the brigands quickly got themselves in a tangle, and he finished them off.
By the time he reached the old Tlanth castle, he was near death. As of the timing of Lady Arasa's news, he was still trapped in that deep healer's sleep, his body slowly mending what it could. What it could, because it was rumored that he had been struck in the lower back as he fled, in a way that would cost him the use of his legs. Perhaps forever.
Vidanric was silent during the telling, but never had Savona seen his knuckles so white.
"The youngest Astiar," he concluded, for he had no idea what Danric would do if he heard her name at this moment, "Is safe. Understandably distraught, but she was ultimately not remarkable enough to gain the attentions of those that mean ill-harm."
"I believe," Vidanric said, in an even voice barely above a whisper, "It is time we make our exit. Russav, if you would be so kind, I—I find myself terribly indisposed…"
His face slipping back into the heavy-lidded Court mask, the Marquis of Shevraeth downed the wine poured for him by the Duke. Then he leaned against Savona and bleated something belligerent.
At the head of the room, Galdran Merindar watched disdainfully as a drunk, slurring Marquis had to be escorted out by an exasperated, but also very drunk-looking, Savona. Beauty was a most tiresome license in forgiving buffoonery - they would never be considered leaders of fashion if not for the handsome pair they made!
Oh, but he was in too good a mood tonight to be truly rankled. He regretted only that they were not around to catch the burning embers of the latest news - yes, he knew he could count on that air-brained gossip of a girl to spread the word of the Count of Tlanth's demise. Court was long overdue for a reminder of his power, and of his ever vigilant watch.
Not that the scrapple of Tlanth's army, made up of starving townspeople, would ever be a match for his force, but that was not the point. People had been killed for acts of treason far less serious.
With the count and his sorcerous wife deposed, that army would scatter as haphazardly as it was formed. All that was left to do then, was secure the upper hand that he had so successfully won…
Once safely within the Renselaeus residence, Vidanric no longer felt exhausted. He headed straight for the writing desk, knelt down, and began writing feverishly across a fresh sheet.
"Had you a suspicion?" Russav asked.
Vidanric exhaled slowly, eyes never leaving the paper. "It was a possibility that grew more and more likely with time."
"Through her?" Despite the wine, for all talk of the liquid courage it would bring, Russav still couldn't say it!
Here Vidanric stopped writing. "We have not been in contact since the summer before Colend. We are very much distant associates at this point, if not shadows in memory."
"Oh, come now." Russav made a dismissive gesture.
Vidanric smiled wryly. He did not mention that the cease in communication had been one way. That before they had parted so terribly, he had given her the golden box with which he had communicated to his parents from Marloven Hess. That in Colend, after weeks of sending her several letters, he had finally received a reply. From his mother, informing him that the box had been returned to Renselaeus, unopened.
She had not read a word.
However, the distant association…in this, Vidanric acknowledged his own part. Once he had heard the extent of Tlanth's activities, he had to bury whatever connections still tied him to that provincial county. Which were now, of course, being as furiously dug up as a hungry dog digs up a bone.
"Stars," Russav breathed. "Don't remember too much of Branaric, he only came up that one time, didn't he? But he was always laughing. Didn't seem to mind looking silly."
Vidanric nodded. "Branaric Astiar, to the best of my knowledge, is a pacifist by nature, if not by purpose."
It was the mild way Vidanric said it that made Russav frown, knowing that there was more meaning behind those words. He wasn't sure if he liked moments such as these. Sometime in the many years he'd been gone, Vidanric's mind had been honed into something else entirely. He was always two steps ahead, projecting the ripple effect of each event five months, five years into the future, just as Russav was still grasping to understand the past.
But an idiot Russav was not, nor Vidanric impatient. Enough time passed for Vidanric to finish his letter in silence. The candlelight flickered, their shadows distorting on the walls; the pen provided the music, a steady and rapid scratching.
As he was scrawling his signature, Russav finally spoke. "You are suggesting that whatever the Merindars meant to accomplish did not happen."
"You were a firsthand witness to the Astiar spirit, all those years ago. Those in question meant more than to send a message with the Count's murder. They intended to end a plausible threat of rebellion."
"Old Astiar? The biggest fight that cantankerous wagoon would pick is more likely to be with his socks, for ending up on the wrong feet!"
"Indulge me in an exercise. Suppose that those in question move on to other matters, satisfied that Tlanth is no more. Imagine their confusion then, when activity has not ceased. With the Count gone and Lord Branaric unfit for command, where will their suspicions turn next?"
Vidanric tilted his pen at Russav, an invitation for further cogitation.
Now the color drained from Russav's face. "She would be exposed."
"I confess my surprise, that two attempts at murder would be made only upon the Tlanth males, and not the last two descendants of a royal lineage. Whether it is a blistering oversight or a mark of a far more intricate plot, I cannot yet tell."
"You really think it?" Russav's face was flushed. "You think she's been running it all, unbeknownst?"
"I would not be surprised if, contrary to a recession, Tlanth's efforts to scrounge up an army intensifies," Vidanric noted. "For in attempting to smother the spark, those in question may have ignited a flame."
Russav whistled. "Revenge. But by then it will be too late."
Vidanric handed the now-dry letter to Russav, who scanned it quickly. In it, the Marquis of Shevraeth presented his felicitations to his dear mother the Princess. He spoke of the entertainments of the week, the new clothes he had bought, the fine wine drunk that night. Tucked into all the nothings was a brief mention of Tlanth, with the Marquis wondering if a turn at Court wouldn't do wonders for the lady's spirits - but only if she was of high wit and fashion, and as pretty as her Calahanras mother, for otherwise what a sour note she would be!
"I trust in my mother to put the right machinations in place," Vidanric said. "I am also not discounting the reliability of those in question to gloat over their conquests, as they have done before."
"You mean she will be summoned here as hostage?"
"Perhaps. And I must assume that I do not hold my suspicions regarding the true commander of Tlanth's army in solidarity."
They said nothing further on that. If Galdran was a bad apple in the great Merindar family tree, it was because the one next to him was poisoned to the core.
Russav caught the apprehension on his cousin's face. "Your solution doesn't come with the reassurance it ought to?"
"I must confess, I am not as prepared as I'd like," Vidanric admitted. "Nor am I in good spirits about the inevitable reaction. Renselaeus was a happy interlude, but she will not see it that way. She will be miserable."
Her face, so filled with hurt and rage - that was the last time he'd seen her. How much stronger would her anger be once she saw what he had become, or what she thought he had become? For he had not forgotten the last thing she had said to him.
Vidanric banished those thoughts as best he could. "But I see no other choice. In my extensive travels around the world," and here his voice went wry, "I learned about fish that live in harmony with their predators. By latching onto the underbelly of one that would sooner eat them, they have found the safest spot in the sea."
Russav raised his eyebrows dramatically. "In my extensive travels around the garden outside my room, I discovered a type of parasite that makes its home within a flower. It then destroys the flower, consuming it from within." He held his hand out, made a fist, and then shook it menacingly.
For the first time that night, Vidanric laughed. His ink-stained fingers splayed open in approval. But it was short-lived, and his face changed to worry again. "You know what this means, don't you?" he said cautiously.
"Yes," Russav said, knowing that whatever it meant to him, it meant to his cousin infinitely more. And finally he found the courage to say her name.
It would be the first time Vidanric would hear it in that lofty, courtly drawl - and how strange and false it sounded indeed! - but it certainly wouldn't be the last: "It appears that Lady Meliara of Astiar will finally make her debut in court."