House of Shadows(64)

But Miennes, of course, was present. Interfering in small ways and great. Miennes, at least, deserved the fate Taudde had crafted into those pipes. But Taudde found his angry regret growing only sharper. He had needed Miennes to step into his own trap, and the lord was dangerously perceptive and clever. So Taudde had baited his trap with truth, and Miennes had taken that bait. And yet…

Taudde knew he could have thought of a way to deal with the Lonne nobleman that would touch no one else. Or at least, a way for himself to get free of Lonne. Well, he hadn’t wished to leave Lonne and he had been seduced by the vengeance forced into his hands, and it was too late to regret his choice now. Taudde told himself that he was glad to comply with Miennes’s demand. What was the saying in this city? Something suitably coastal: to catch two fish on the same hook? Something of the kind.

But at the moment he could not be glad of anything. Even thinking of Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes’s coming grief and despair brought him no pleasure. Taudde tilted his face up to the sky. It was very late, not in fact far removed from dawn, and the air was crisp with the approaching winter. But lights glowing all about the candlelight district drowned the darkness, and no stars were visible. Music played somewhere nearby, and a girl sang… a long slow lament that somehow seemed to contain in its cadences the rhythm of the tides and winds. The music rose above the girl’s voice, crying like the voices of seabirds.

The prince and his close companions had departed first, the prince giving young Moonflower back into the care of her elders with obvious reluctance. Koriadde and Jerinte had implored Meadowbell and Featherreed to accompany them to a nearby theater, a plan to which the two keiso had acceded with pleasure. The prince had not opposed the idea, but also had not shown any sign of wishing to join them. He had headed back toward the Laodd, his bodyguard trailing at his heel. Taudde hadn’t seen Mage Ankennes go, but the mage, too, had departed, thankfully without seeming to want to examine Miennes’s pipes more closely.

Miennes himself, of course, had lingered. He drew Taudde a few steps from their waiting carriages. “Well?” he demanded, his low, mellow voice edged, to Taudde’s ear, with a hard and ugly undertone.

“He took the pipes,” Taudde said shortly. Then he stopped and took a breath. Needing Miennes to believe him and doubt nothing, he layered truth and impatience and arrogance into his tone over the anger he felt. All of it was real, so there was no reason for Miennes to doubt anything he heard. Taudde continued, “Play the set I gave you, and you will draw his life from his body and leave only a husk. What you do then, or whom you do it to, or for, is your business. I have no interest in the politics of Lirionne.” Which was decidedly not true, but he layered sincerity through the statement.

Miennes smiled as though he believed it. “I’m sure not. So. The pipes. I see. How fitting.” Then he frowned. “When I play mine? You will play them, of course.”

Taudde tipped his head slightly back in refusal. “You are the one who wants him dead. You play his death. I promise you, no one will be able to charge you with it; the mages of Lonne know nothing of true sorcery.”

“I have said, you will do it,” the Lonne nobleman said, low and dangerous. “I am astonished you object—being what you are.”

He had no idea what Taudde was. “I will not,” Taudde answered. “Indeed, I cannot. You took the other set of twin pipes as a gift and they became yours. No one now can use them for their intended task but you. I have accommodated your desire. But I am not a murderer. I will not play the pipes myself.” Though, he thought bleakly, he had become sufficiently a murderer when he had made those pipes. It was a weak claim he made now. But he needed Miennes to believe it, and so he worked hard to at least half believe it himself, at least for this moment. He added a sharp and bitter truth to anchor his deception, “But you are correct: I have no love for the Dragon of Lirionne. If this blow strikes through his heart, that is very well.”

There was a brittle silence. Miennes broke it at last with a sharp laugh. “Well, if these pipes work as you say, I suppose you are murderer enough for me. But do not,” he said, his tone again affable, “mistake me for a man who will tolerate defiance.”

Taudde did not. He was certain Miennes was already considering ways in which he might punish his new tool’s insolence. He bowed his head and answered, this time with a far easier truth. “I do not want you as my enemy, my lord. I promise you, the pipes will do your will.”

This drew a smile of renewed confidence, a warm expression that went oddly with the cold note in the Lonne nobleman’s voice. “Well, if I am to choose my own moment… perhaps I may at least do so with purpose. Not tonight, then, I think. But in a day or two, when… circumstances align most favorably. What does one play, to make them do their work? A mourning dirge?”