But her headache was completely gone.
The Linularinan agents had tried again to come at Tan. Mienthe, her thoughts still confused and slow, got that clear only gradually. They’d tried to come and go unseen, as they had before—to steal Tan away without sound or breath or any sort of fuss. They nearly had. They’d slipped through the gaps between the Delta guardsmen and the royal guardsmen like mist in the night.
Mienthe felt horribly embarrassed. Bertaud had left her his authority, hadn’t he? That made it her duty and responsibility to protect Tan, and she’d so nearly failed. She could imagine, far too easily, how disappointed Bertaud would have been in her if she’d let Linularinan agents kidnap a man twice from his house. She’d meant to check with Geroen about how all his men had sorted out with the queen’s, but she’d forgotten, and then her forgetfulness had nearly cost Tan—everything, probably, Mienthe guessed.
“I’m sorry,” Mienthe told Tan, once everything seemed to have been sorted out and peace had descended once more on the house.
Tan, seated on a couch in the queen’s sitting room—well, in Bertaud’s sitting room, made over for her royal presence—raised his eyebrows at her. There was an air about him of somewhat affected theatricality, as though the attitude was one he put on for his own amusement and that of his companions, not to be taken seriously by any of them. This dramatic air was aided by the cane someone had found for him, a handsome thing of carved cypress wood with a brass knob on the top, the sort aged gentlemen might carry. Mienthe’s own father had carried one, and had always given the impression he might hit the servants with it, though he never had.
Tan folded his hands atop his cane and gazed over it at Mienthe, in exaggerated astonishment. “You’re apologizing to me? For what? A second timely rescue?”
“You shouldn’t have needed a second rescue!” Mienthe exclaimed.
“You’re quite right! I certainly shouldn’t have.” Tan’s tone was light, but then he hesitated and went on in a lower voice, “I’d picked up a quill. I was only going to write out some small thing, poetry for you, maybe—I don’t know quite what I had in mind. I think now—in fact, it now seems abundantly obvious—that it’s my legist gift Istierinan’s mage is using. Somehow. I think he finds me when I touch a quill. I have no notion how, but then I’m not a mage. But if you hadn’t provided a second rescue, I’d likely have needed nothing after my misjudgment but a timely funeral, and more likely have had nothing but a muddy hole in the swamp, at that.”
The queen, seated in the room’s most delicate and expensive cherrywood chair, leaned her chin on her palm and let them argue. She looked less frightened than Mienthe had expected, but thoroughly exasperated. Half a dozen of her ladies hovered around her, whispering behind their hands to one another, looking uncertain and worried and far less sophisticated and ornamental than they had a few hours earlier. The rest of the court ladies, to Mienthe’s considerable relief, were not in evidence; they had been replaced for the moment by several grim-visaged royal guardsmen who did not speak at all. They looked exactly as embarrassed about the failure of their guard as she felt about her own lack of forethought.
The door across the room opened, and Geroen came in. Iriene came with him, which was a little bold of her, since that brought her into the queen’s presence when she hadn’t been sent for. Mienthe decided she didn’t care.
Geroen gave the queen a low bow and turned, quite correctly, to Mienthe as the Lady of the Delta. “Lady,” he said stiffly. “There’s no sign of any of those dog-livered Linularinan cowards anywhere in the city. Not that my men seem overdependable in setting eye or hand on them. But the esteemed Iriene agrees.”
“Not that I might know,” the mage said, wryly acknowledging her own lack of power.
“I think Istierinan’s mage must be uncommonly skilled,” Tan murmured. “How else would it be possible to come and go so silently in so crowded a house? Never mind so boldly,” he added, with a nod to the queen.
“We’d all be glad to know how they could be so bold,” Geroen growled.
Niethe was silent for a moment. Then she touched a graceful hand to her temple for a moment, dropped her hand, and asked, “How exactly did we send those… those dog-livered Linularinan cowards… on their way?”
“Lady Mienthe did it,” Geroen growled. He gave Mienthe a quick look. “The esteemed Iriene says.”
“I?” asked Mienthe uncertainly.
“You did,” Iriene said crisply. She was looking at Mienthe with something like sympathy, but without doubt. “I don’t understand it, but I’m sure.”