the seer prove genuine, we shall not forget your generosity to us.”
Tennant bowed, his velvet cape swirling around him.
“Gullys!” the Queen called. “Is there anything more?”
“No, Majesty!” the chamberlain called, after a last look around the room.
“Then we’re done.”
“This audience is concluded!” Gullys announced. “The Queen thanks you for your attendance! Please leave in as orderly fashion as you came in!”
The crowd began to break up. Many of them tried to linger, staring at the white woman who waited at the foot of the throne, but the soldiers stationed on the walls moved forward, shepherding them out. Elyssa was relieved to see that her mother’s attention, too, was on the albino; she crooked her finger, signaling Brenna to come forward. As Brenna climbed the stairs, the Queen’s Guard drew together without speaking, forming a block in front of the throne.
“Let her through,” the Queen ordered.
“Majesty,” Givens, the Captain, protested. “We haven’t even searched her. The Mort—”
“The Mort are too devious to send such a conspicuous creature as an assassin.”
“And Tennant is not a man to give gifts from the warmth of his heart, Lady.” Givens was digging in now, a bulldog expression on his face. “He’s ambitious, yes, but even a weasel doesn’t give away a bag of gold. There is danger here.”
The Queen considered him for a moment, then turned to the white woman.
“Are you a danger, seer?”
“Seers are always dangerous, Majesty,” the albino announced in a low, warm voice, startling for its contrast with her icy appearance.
“Always dangerous? How so?”
“The term seer itself is misleading, Majesty. The sight is incidental to what we do. In reality, we are vessels of time, and nothing is more dangerous than time.”
This answer clearly intrigued Elyssa’s mother. Queen Arla was an easy mark for anything dealing with the unseen world.
“Let us at least search her for weapons,” Givens pleaded hopelessly; he too had seen the gleam in the Queen’s eye.
“I am unarmed,” the albino replied. “But you may search if you wish.”
“Not necessary,” the Queen decreed, waving Givens away and beckoning Brenna closer. The Captain gave way, but reluctantly, his hand on his knife as the seer ascended the last few steps and knelt before the throne. She was not as old as Elyssa had first thought; her face was still unlined, and might even have been beautiful . . . if only the rest of the package was not so grotesque.
“What can you offer us, Brenna?” the Queen asked.
“What do you wish, Majesty? Knowledge of infidelities, of pregnancies, of intended marriages?”
“I can get gossip from my servants,” the Queen replied dryly. “What else do you sell?”
“The road to greatness, Majesty.”
The Queen’s eyes sharpened with interest. “Meaning what?”
Brenna reached out, heedless of the guards who drew swords around her, and picked up the blue jewel that lay on the Queen’s chest. Almost automatically, Elyssa grasped her own sapphire. They were identical, the Queen’s Jewel and the Heir’s Jewel, heirlooms that supposedly went all the way back to William Tear. Like all Tear relics, the sapphires were supposed to be magical, but Elyssa had worn the Heir’s Jewel since her eighth birthday, when she was officially declared the heir to the throne, and she had never seen any magic in it. When she ascended the throne, she would remove the Heir’s Jewel and put on the Queen’s, and the second jewel would be put away for her firstborn; it had been so since the time of Matthew Raleigh. As far as Elyssa knew, no one had ever dared to touch her mother’s sapphire, but the seer was now examining it closely. After a single stunned moment, the Queen snatched the jewel back.
“Men have died for less, palmist,” Givens snarled. “Step away.”
But the Queen checked him with a gesture. She was looking at Brenna oddly, and Elyssa sensed an unspoken conversation taking place.
“Leave us,” the Queen said abruptly.
“Absolutely not,” Givens replied. Elyssa waited for her mother’s explosion, but the Queen turned a surprisingly benevolent eye upon Givens. She had a soft spot for him . . . for all the men who had fallen into her bed over the course of her reign, Elyssa thought sourly. Lady Glynn had often said that the basis of a good Crown was fairness, but her mother played a merciless game of favoritism.
“Givens, you may stay. Clear the rest of the room.”
Givens frowned; he didn’t like it, but the Queen’s latitude only went so far. He signaled the rest of the Guard to leave, and Elyssa too tried