Despite his own danger, Taudde had expected to feel triumph at this moment. Not joy, no, but at least satisfaction at vengeance achieved. He did not know how long he stood by his window, waiting for the rush of triumph through his blood. But he felt only a cold, creeping dread. Not at his own danger. He thought not. He had claimed a victory, but it unexpectedly felt to him like a defeat and he could take no pleasure in it.
The sky in the east brightened, and the wisps of cloud around the jagged peaks turned to rose and gold in the light of the hidden sun. The light poured past the mountains, illuminating their high traceries of ice to jewels and flame. Then the sun rose over the mountain peaks, and the magecrafted lights that lined the streets of Lonne flickered and went out. The sea and sky turned from gray to blue, and the roofs of the city reflected that color back again so strongly that the tiles almost seemed to be made of lapis rather than slate.
Shortly after dawn came the first of the street vendors, calling out their wares: fruit and pastries, bread and fresh-laid eggs. There was nothing in those mingled voices to suggest any unsettling news from the Laodd. Yet.
The morning went forward. No word of death and disaster came down from the Laodd. The palace-fortress of Lonne only loomed as quietly as always above the city, which went on with its customary business. At first Taudde wondered whether the news was simply not being made public. But he realized gradually that this public calm could not possibly mask private disaster: If the Dragon’s heir had died in the night, word of it could not possibly have been so completely withheld from the city. Whispers of the loss would have come down on the wind. No matter how quiet or distorted, the unease would be felt in the streets.
The only possible conclusion was that the heir had not died. It was simply not possible that he had died. This knowledge should have carried with it disappointment, rage, a grim sense of failure. But instead, Taudde felt a shocking, unexpected relief: He had failed to do murder. He was not a murderer.
As a boy, staggered by grief after the death of his father at Brenedde, Taudde had longed for vengeance against Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes. As a youth, he had dreamed of facing the King of Lirionne across a sharp-edged blade; later, he had dreamed he might someday make a harp of bone, string it with sorrow and rage, and play vengeance for Kalches and for his own father out of its music. But it seemed now that leading the king’s son out of life with pipes tuned to the paths of death had never been part of that dream.
On the other hand… on the other hand, whatever had happened, or failed to happen, to the prince… well, if the prince had not died, was it possible Miennes also still lived? Taudde dispatched Benne to Miennes’s house, requesting the favor of an appointment. He was surprised, relieved, and grimly pleased when the big man arrived back with the news that the household of Lord Miennes was in great disarray following the sudden death of the lord in the night, presumably of an unsuspected weakness of the heart. So Taudde’s spell had gone only half astray. This was all very well and good, but what then of the other half of the spell?
Taudde dismissed Benne, who went stolidly away. He himself went up to his room to think. If Lord Miennes was dead, that was very well. Taudde did not regret that death in the least. But now?
If Ankennes had not already moved against Taudde… what did that mean? Taudde took a deliberate breath, trying to calm himself and think. Had the Laodd not taken his sorcerously delivered warning seriously? Or had the prince’s bodyguard not discovered it yet? Or was Mage Ankennes even now answering close questions, and Taudde merely did not know it? Or was the mage merely, like Taudde, considering what he might do next? The urge to do something was very powerful, and yet Taudde feared to act before he knew more clearly what had happened.
Another question occurred to Taudde and at once assumed considerable urgency: If Miennes had indeed played the pipes—as it now seemed he must have—then who else had been caught in the music besides the scheming Lonne lord? Because it was very clear that the second set of pipes had gone astray.
Taudde found that creeping sense of dread again slipping through his veins, as though the chill of it moved right along with his blood. He had tried to be glad, and then had been at least willing, to murder the heir of Lirionne. That this murder would also rid him of Miennes had in a way become a mere advantage and not the object of the exercise. After giving the ensorcelled pipes to the prince, he had found himself increasingly horrified by what he had done, but then it had been too late to reconsider his act.
But Prince Tepres had not died. So someone else had possessed the ivory pipes when Lord Miennes had lifted his set of horn and silver to his lips. Someone to whom the young prince would have given them freely. Some young friend of the heir… not a noble, or word of that death would surely have come down from the Laodd. Perhaps the cheerful young Koriadde? Taudde liked Koriadde. He did not want to wonder whether the prince had perhaps given the ivory twin pipes to that young man. But the prince must have passed them on to someone. Koriadde was as likely as anyone else, surely.