Sara Douglass - The Serpent Bride

“How is it a lady from the Outlands manages to control the rights to Deepend?” Maximilian asked. He’d known there had been an absentee lordship on the place — Escator had the right to use the bay for its shipping but each year Maximilian paid heavily for the privilege to the steward of Deepend — but had always believed it belonged to one of the more reclusive Central Kingdom families.

“The Brunelle family has lineage that stretches back many centuries,” Vorstus said. “Lixel writes that they picked up the Deepend rights via a fortuitous marriage two hundred years ago.”

“And now the Coil, via Ishbel, offers those rights to me,” said Maximilian. “Why? Of what benefit can this be to them?”

“You’re the least objectionable man on the aristocratic marriage market,” said Vorstus blundy, and Maximilian laughed, now with genuine amusement.

“Ah!” he said. “Now I see. The Coil doesn’t want anyone from the Central Kingdoms getting them, eh?”

“Indeed,” said Vorstus. “There’s bad blood between the Outlands and the Central Kingdoms, as well you know —”

Maximilian grunted. The various kingdoms and principalities of the two regions had been posturing and threatening each other with war for years.

“— and perhaps the Coil, who Lixel says are closely allied with the Outlanders through blood and geography, think to establish an alliance with Escator so that they may have a friend on the rear flank of the Central Kingdoms.”

“So we get to the heart of the matter,” said Garth, silent until now as he studied Maximilian’s reactions. “Is the thought of the economic advantage of the woman enough for Maxel to forget her more ghastly acquaintances?”

“There is no need for anyone beyond this room to know of the Lady Ishbel’s ‘more ghastly’ acquaintances,” said Vorstus softly. “She is the well-dowered Lady Ishbel Brunelle, of Margalit. An Outlander, to be sure, but one wealthy enough, and well-mannered enough, for that slight geographical stain to be conveniently forgotten. Maximilian,” Vorstus leaned forward, “ no one need ever know of her time with the Coil.”

“You really want me to consider this, don’t you,” said Maximilian.

“Aye,” said Vorstus, “I don’t think you can ignore it. Escator needs her wealth, and you need a wife to mother you a family. Damn it, all you need do is meet with her, talk, and if you don’t like her then walk away.”

“How would I know,” said Maximilian, “if she really is ‘just a ward’ of the Coil, and not some fully blooded member of their vile Order? I don’t want some witch slitting open my belly in the middle of the night to see what the weather will be like for her tea party the following week.”

Vorstus held out his right hand, showing Maximilian the mark of the quill on the back of its index finger. “If she was a priestess of the Coil then she would be marked with the sign of the Coil, the coiled serpent, somewhere on her body, just as I am marked with this as a member of the Order of Persimius. Just as you are marked with the Manteceros.”

Maximilian absently touched his right bicep, where, just after his birth, the mark of the Manteceros — the semi-mythical protector of the Escatorian throne — had been tattooed in blue ink made from the blood of the creature itself.

“She would have to be marked, Maxel,” Vorstus continued, “and if she isn’t, then she is truly what the Coil claims her to be — a simple ward when no one else was left to ward her.”

Egalion grinned. “Does that mean Maximilian gets to spend his wedding night going over her with a magnifying glass?”

Maximilian smiled politely, but his eyes were far distant.

The group broke up a half hour later. It was not a moment too soon for Maximilian, who needed to be by himself to think.

Egalion and Garth left, but Vorstus hung back a moment to hand Maximilian the sheaf of documents.

“Maxel,” Vorstus said softly, “when you go through these papers, do be sure to cast your eyes over the map of the Outlands that Lixel enclosed most helpfully. I’m sure it will prove … interesting.”

Late that night Maximilian moved restlessly about his bedchamber. The palace at Ruen was a massive structure of dark red stone, rising more than five windowless storeys from street level before splintering into fifty-three towers and spires. Maximilian could never quite decide whether it was the most beautiful structure he’d ever seen, or the ugliest, but he loved it. He’d been born within its walls, and raised here by loving parents for his first fourteen years before Cavor snatched him and condemned him to the Veins. Now, once more encased within its red stone walls, Maximilian appreciated the palace for the isolation it allowed him. Maximilian liked people, but he also loved solitude, and at night in his bedchamber, which rested at the summit of the highest of the palace towers, he could indulge that to the fullest.

There was something about living at the pinnacle of the tower, about being so high and having the castle stretch down beneath his booted feet, that sated some deep need within Maximilian.

But tonight that isolation irked him. He couldn’t stop thinking about the Coil’s offer of Ishbel Brunelle as a bride. His first instinct was to refuse her: he was repulsed by her association with an order as abominable as the Coil. Even if she had taken no part in any of their murderous ceremonies, nor even if she swore horror herself at their activities, Ishbel would always be tainted in his mind with their depravity.

But on the other hand she did come from a good family — Maximilian had spent an hour this afternoon poring over the information Lixel had sent … if not poring over the map that Vorstus was so eager for him to read. Vorstus could annoy Maximilian at times with his secretive eyes and his ambiguous words, and Maximilian was in a perverse enough mood that he did not want to immediately do what Vorstus wanted.

The documents kept Maximilian occupied enough. Gods, this Ishbel came with such wealth trailing at her skirts! Escator’s economy was virtually moribund. It had depended so greatly on the gloam mines, and when they had been destroyed during Maximilian’s release there was nothing to take their place. Maximilian had worked hard to increase trade, but he’d concentrated on trade alliances with Tencendor, and when that country had sunk beneath the waves five years ago then so also had Maximilian’s hopes of an economic resurgence in Escator within his lifetime. The Central Kingdoms to the east, his only other useful trading partners, were locked in exclusive trading alliances with the far northern nations of Berfardi and Gershadi. The Coroleans were too hopelessly unreliable and treacherous to consider as allies in anything, and as for the great southern lands beyond the FarReach Mountains … well, they were so isolated by reason of both the mountains and lack of ports, as well as being totally uncommunicative, that Maximilian had never even considered them as potential trading partners.

Besides, what did Escator have to trade with anyone? A tiny surplus of agricultural produce and a surfeit of geniality essentially encapsulated all Escator had to offer, and Maximilian honestly couldn’t think of anyone desperate for a bucketful of beans delivered with a smile.