Ivory Lyre Read Online Free PDF Page B

Accacia! And young—far
too young for you, of course. More nearly my age, I would think.”
Roderica suffered from jealousy of Accacia, for all that they were
friends. And no wonder. Accacia, with her long auburn hair and
thick lashes framing golden brown eyes was, if nothing else,
certainly the most beautiful girl in the palace. She would marry
Prince Abisha at year’s end in a ceremony that threatened to
overshadow even the terrible wars.
    “And the horses . . .” Roderica
was saying. “Oh, they are lovely horses, but the king haggled over
the price—two hundred pieces of gold for each one. I’ve near heard
of such a price. . . .” So Roderica had been
listening, too. Roderica might be silly and loud sometimes, but
Kiri knew there was another side to her, a puzzling one. She could
never tell what Roderica’s mood would be and wondered if sometimes
she used the drug cadacus, meant for the queen. Roderica spent much
of her time with the sick queen and was the crippled woman’s only
friend. She had been her handmaid since she was a small child and
was the only person the queen would now tolerate. Kiri thought
Roderica eavesdropped in order to supply the bored queen with
palace gossip. Maybe she brought her news of Accacia, too, and
whether she still had relations with the king.
    “Why would such a handsome prince travel
alone?”
    Accacia asked. “Why does he not have
attendants, some pretty traveling companions? And why did he travel
all this way, past dozens of other kingdoms, to sell his horses?”
She sighed. “What a terribly dull journey, all that water to
cross.”
    “He came up the Channel of Barter on a
lumber barge out of north Thedria,” Roderica said. “He came this
far, I heard him say, because . . . Oh, I heard them
clearly, they were taking tea in the hall and—”
    “And you listened from the pantry,” Accacia
said, smiling.
    “Yes,” Roderica said without shame. “He came
this far because, he said, he thought the king would give his
horses the best care.”
    Accacia laughed. “No one would travel all
that way for such a stupid reason.”
    “But they are very special horses,” Roderica
said with her typical superiority about horses, because her father
was the king’s master of horse—though Roderica herself looked like
a broken stick on horseback.
    “Humph,” said Accacia. “They can’t be that
special. He was fussing around the stable yard at all hours last
night, coddling those horses.”
    “You watched him?”
    “I . . . was late coming in.”
Accacia could see the stable yard clearly from her windows. “He was
at it again this morning. Trying to make it look as if those horses
are the most valuable things in Tirror—just to keep the price up,
of course.”
    Kiri held her tongue with effort. Accacia
cared nothing for horses, except if they were flashy and could show
her off to advantage. Kiri thought Accacia would find a way sooner
or later to ride one of Prince Tebmund’s mounts. As for Accacia’s
opinion of Prince Tebmund himself, she was no great judge of
character.
    Still, there was something about Prince
Tebmund, strange and so unsettling that Kiri couldn’t decide what
she thought.
    She knew she was naturally suspicious.
Hadn’t she grown up spying, purposely suspicious of everyone? Now,
when she caught herself siding with Prince Tebmund despite her
disapproval of him, that frightened her. It was not comfortable to
feel so confused about someone, not comfortable to feel he should
be a friend, or as if they had something in common. It was not safe
for the cause she served.
    Kiri left Accacia’s apartments deep in
thought, hardly hearing her cousin’s final scolding. She went
directly to the training field beyond the stables. Keeping to the
shadows of the almond grove, she watched the first demonstration of
the four Thedrian horses.
    She was not allowed in the stables, though
she went there anyway. Roderica’s father didn’t like her critical
looks, for