Mienthe had expected Bertaud to be in company with King Iaor, with maybe half a dozen attendants besides. But her cousin was quite alone. He was sitting in a high-backed chair drawn up close to the windows. There was a book open on his knee, but he wasn’t reading it. He was gazing out over the city, past the city, at the clouds piling up over the sea, purple and gold against a luminous sky, crimson in the west where the setting sun turned the sea to flame.
He did not see Mienthe at once. She watched him in silence for a moment. The brilliant light showed her fine lines at the corners of his eyes, deeper lines at the corners of his mouth. He looked older in this light, only… not exactly older. Her cousin looked, Mienthe thought, as though something had recalled to him some grief or hard memory.
Then, though she was standing motionless, he must have heard her, for he turned his head. The golden light of sunset seemed to fill his eyes with fire, and yet behind the opaque veil of fire, they were dark. Even bleak. Some of the other girls Mienthe knew who also liked epic romances would have instantly spun a tale of love and loss to explain that bleakness. Mienthe didn’t think what she saw had any such simple explanation. She didn’t understand her cousin’s unspoken sorrow, yet somehow she recognized it. She stood mute in the doorway.
Then the setting sun touched the surface of the sea, the angle of the light coming in through the windows changed, and the moment passed.
“Mienthe,” Bertaud said, rising to greet her. With the light now at his back, it was impossible to make out his expression at all.
Though Mienthe listened carefully, she could hear neither grief nor loneliness in his tone. She said, “Tan’s awake, did Geroen tell you? I went to see him.” She’d been a little worried that her cousin might not approve, but he only nodded and invited her, with a gesture, to take a chair near his.
“What did you think of our spy?”
“Oh…” Mienthe tried to think how to answer. “He has enough charm, when he wants to. I think he must have been a good spy.”
“Indeed. He’s resting now, I suppose? Well enough. I’ll want to speak with him tonight. Or possibly Iaor will. Or perhaps both of us.”
Poor spy, to have both the king and her cousin looming over him at once.
“I left orders for one of Geroen’s men to attend him at all times. I want him to stay close for a few more days, and I don’t think I necessarily trust that man to obey any command he’d rather conveniently forget.”
Her cousin was smiling a little as he said this last, but Mienthe thought he wasn’t really amused. He wasn’t used, she decided, to having to doubt whether anybody would obey him, and he didn’t like having to wonder.
Mienthe nodded and started to speak, but then stopped. The sun was nearly down, flashing flame-red against the flat horizon where sea met sky. Other than that distant blaze, the world had gone dark. The dark and hidden depths of the marshes rolled out beyond the city; nearer at hand, the earliest stars glimmered into sight to meet the warmer glow of lanterns and lamps in the streets below. Bertaud took a taper from the desk, struck it to life, and stretched up to light the lamps that hung from the ceiling on bronze chains.
And outside the windows of the solar, a sudden blackness moved against the sky. It spread out, bulking enormous—not a bird, no bird would be so large, but certainly not clouds across the sky; it moved too fast and looked all wrong for that. She held her breath, half expecting it to crash against the windows—shattering glass would fly everywhere—she took a step back in fearful anticipation. But then the dark shape, if she’d really ever seen it at all, dwindled and disappeared.
Mienthe took a step closer to the windows, blinking, wondering whether she’d actually seen something or merely imagined it.
Behind her, Bertaud made a wordless sound that held an extraordinary combination of astonishment, longing, intense joy, and anger.
She turned. There was a man in the solar with them. A stranger. He was much older than Mienthe—older than Bertaud, she thought, though she did not understand why she thought so. His black hair was not streaked with gray and his eyes were ageless, but Mienthe was sure that he was actually much older than he looked. He had an austere, proud face and powerful deep-set black eyes. His clothing was all of black and a red as dark as dying coals.
And there was something strange about his shadow. It wasn’t just the flickering light of the lamps: The shadow itself flickered with fire; it was made of fire, but with eyes as black as those of the man who cast it. And it was the wrong shape—not the shape of a man at all, but Mienthe could not have said what form could have cast it. She took another involuntary step back, expecting the rugs and drapes and polished wood of the solar to blaze up in flames. But the shadow seemed to contain its fire, and nothing else burned. Then the man turned his head, glancing at her with a strange kind of indifferent curiosity. Mienthe saw that although his eyes were black, they, too, were filled with fire. She stared back, feeling pinned in place with shock and terror, like a hare under the shadow of a falcon.