Shadow Hand (Tales of Goldstone Wood Book #6)(4)

“You may, Tortoiseshell,” the prince conceded. “I felt it best to reaffirm in the eyes of all the barons my new role as their future sovereign.” Neither he nor his man bothered to comment on the fact that the barons, who had so recently deposed Foxbrush’s cousin and set Foxbrush in his place, could just as easily depose Foxbrush should they feel the need, princely colors notwithstanding. Best not to entertain such gloomy thoughts on a wedding day.

Besides, in just a few short hours, Prince Foxbrush was to ally himself via marriage to Middlecrescent, the most powerful barony in the kingdom. So long as Baron Middlecrescent was on his side, the new prince had nothing to fear. Nothing besides Middlecrescent himself anyway.

If he could only get through the ceremony today without mishap . . .

“Something troubling Your Highness?” asked Tortoiseshell, pausing in his work and studying his master’s face in the glass.

“Oh no, certainly not.” Foxbrush’s complexion, which was always rather sallow for lack of sun or exercise, had gone a pasty gray since the Occupation. He, being one of the few trapped inside the Eldest’s House for the entire ordeal, had breathed rather more poison than most. It still festered in his lungs.

Now, to make matters worse, at the very thought of his upcoming nuptials and the subsequent marriage and his soon-to-be bride, his skin broke out in a sweaty sheen. Dark patches appeared under his sleeves.

Fumbling to undo the fibula, Foxbrush slid out of his fine jacket, putting up a hand to ward off Tortoiseshell’s protests. “No, no! It’s hours yet till the ceremony, and I should hate to, uh, to rumple your hard work. Do lay it aside, my good man, and we’ll array me once more closer to. In the meanwhile, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”

Foxbrush had not had sufficient time in the months since his elevation to adjust to his new role as prince and supportive figurehead of a nation. Having grown up the only child of a reclusive mother, far off in the mountains, away from courtly life, he found the ways of the Eldest’s House a trifle unsettling. Much safer was the world of books and ledgers. A man always knew where he stood with those.

“I’ll just be in my study,” he said and, quick to avoid Tortoiseshell’s disapproval, stepped from his dressing room into said study. He drew a great breath.

His work lay on his desk by the window; work to which he had devoted himself since the Council’s decision; work that he would have to let lie for some weeks now due to the wedding trip. A pity.

No, not a pity! He was marrying of his own volition, and marrying very well at that. Lady Daylily was rich, well connected, and beautiful too, which didn’t hurt anything, though he wouldn’t have minded much if she were a little less beautiful, all things considered. But still, who was he to complain? How many men in the Eldest’s court had desired Daylily as their bride? Lionheart, for one; dozens more besides. Any one of them would give his right hand to marry Middlecrescent’s daughter.

“Well, I would give both my hands,” Foxbrush growled, though there was no one in the room to be impressed by such avowals. He sat at the desk (he scarcely thought of it as his desk; it had been Lionheart’s for so long) and surveyed his work. Stacks of agricultural reports from every barony and many of the most respected merchants, each more doom-filled than the last. Another orchard failed, another plantation fallen to ruin; export prices rising, reliable sales falling through, competitors out-pricing even the once rich tea trade . . .

Dragons eat those Aja merchants and their insipid green teas! How could they compete with the dark and hearty Southlander brews?

For the right price they could.

No matter which way he looked at it, Prince Foxbrush saw only ruin, ruin, and more ruin. Southlands was approaching collapse. That collapse might yet be a few years away, a decade even. But from where he sat with these reports swimming before his eyes, the final crash even now swept toward them.

“Dragons blast that . . .” Foxbrush stopped. There was no curse quite appropriate to curse the Dragon himself.

This marriage was the last-ditch effort to perform the miracles expected of a prince. With Daylily’s fortune safely sequestered away in the royal treasury, he would have funding enough for his Great Experiment. Foxbrush’s severe mouth softened at one corner with what might have been a smile. His gaze traveled from the reports to a large basket of figs sitting to one side of his desk. The Great Experiment, with which he would prove to the world the rightness of his rule, the justice of his reign, the majesty of his—

“Great hopping Lights Above!”

Foxbrush leapt to his feet, knocking his chair over backward with a thunk. He scrabbled through the papers, his hands shaking with sudden terror. Where was it? Hadn’t he tucked it under the fig basket, out of sight? He couldn’t have left it in the open! Could he? Oh, cruel, cruel fate! Oh, agony! Oh—

“Tortoiseshell!”

His man appeared at the study door. “Your Highness?”

“Did you see a letter among my things when you tidied up this morning?”

“The one addressed to Lady Daylily, Your Highness?”

Foxbrush’s stomach landed somewhere near his ankles. “Yes. Yes, that’s the one.” His gaze as desperate as a condemned man’s, he whimpered, “Where is it?”

“I thought it best to deliver it with all due haste, Your Highness.”

“You thought . . .”