by Melanie Rawn
“Have you sent Frenzy back to The Waste yet?” he asked as they walked.
Glenin nodded. “Just the other day.”
The boy laughed. “What a good joke! He looks enough like a Sennie to breed with them—and his get will come out wolf, and bite everybody!”
“Yes,” said Glenin as they reached the courtyard, “but that isn’t the only reason I did it. I want everyone to be reminded of how important it is to make sure bloodlines are kept pure.”
“Like ours for magic.”
“Very much like that.” She smiled down at him. “Of course, if one of Frenzy’s cubs happens to bite Lady Lilen, I won’t mind too much!”
“I hope they bite the Captal when she visits Ostinhold, and she has to have lots of stitches that hurt.”
“We can hope.”
He held open a gate for her, with an elegant courtesy that would have satisfied Lady Allynis at the Octagon Court. “Lady Saris says you’re leaving the Castle for a few days.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Can I come with you? Please, Mother?”
“Not this time.”
“But I’m nearly thirteen, and I’ve learned so much magic—and it’s not as if anyone would recognize me,” he added shrewdly. “I’ve never been off this island.”
So much for his manners. She stopped beneath an oak tree, frowning down at him. “Do you argue with me, child?”
“N-no, Mother,” he replied; but then, because he was never cowed for long, burst out, “I want to do things, I want to help! Whatever it is you do, I want to be there with you!”
“You will do what I tell you, when I tell you to do it—like every other Malerrisi.” Then, because she could never stay stern with him for long, she relented and ruffled his curling black hair. “Perhaps I’ll take you with me. We’ll talk about it tonight at dinner—to which I expect you to show up with your clothes and yourself decently cleaned up. Honestly, I don’t know where you find mud when it hasn’t rained for three weeks!” She tweaked his sleeve, and a dried splotch flaked off onto the cobbles.
“That was from Silverclaw.”
Glenin snorted her opinion of this transparent lie as they crossed an inner court to the kennels. “Here, this is what I wanted to show you.” She nodded to the kennel keeper, and they were admitted to the dog run. “The new litter is old enough to be weaned.”
“Oh, Mother, just look! Aren’t they beautiful? All wolves!”
She let him admire the cubs for a few minutes, then said, “Go in and pet them.”
He showed not the slightest fear. She shut the gate behind him and waited for the bitch to notice the interloper. A growl and a baring of teeth stopped the boy in his tracks.
“Remember what I told you,” Glenin said.
He stood tall and stared the wolf down. “Can I have one of the cubs? To play with Silverclaw?”
“Yes, if you can master one. Why don’t you try it?”
He studied the litter, then fixed on the largest one, a female. Not for him the runt of the litter. Boldly striding to the box, he reached down.
Establish your status from the start. She repeated the lesson to herself, watching her son. The cub snarled at him, thinking he challenged her for space and food. He grabbed her by the scruff and thumped her roughly on the back.
“Mine!” he declared, seizing the wolf’s glittering gray gaze with his own. Nearly silver sometimes, his eyes were now the color of iron and just as unyielding. “You are mine now, and when I decide you’re old enough I’ll take you from your mother and you’ll do exactly as I say.”
The bitch growled again, gathering herself. Glenin held her breath. Her son, still holding the cub by the neck, stood taller and glared at the wolf. If she leaps— But Glenin didn’t have time to finish the thought, even in her own head. The wolf surged up, teeth flashing inches from the boy’s face. He didn’t even flinch. He looked through the wolf, beyond her, wearing a bored expression. Glenin exhaled slowly. By trivializing the challenge, he had humiliated the animal and maintained his own superiority.
The bitch tried again, with the same result. She turned her head when the rest of the litter began to whine. Glenin could almost follow the animal’s thoughts: she was too proud to admit defeat, and her unhappy offspring were excuse to abandon the challenge. Glenin smiled at her son, who grinned back and set the squirming female cub down.
“Excellent, darling,” Glenin said. “What will you name the new one?”
“I’m not sure. She’s pretty, isn’t she? All gray and black, not a Senison spot on her.” He bent down again to scratch her ears.
That was his mistake. The freed cub had gotten an old rag in her mouth, and when a hand touched her head she whirled and snapped. Her teeth sank into the boy’s thumb, and he cried out in surprise—and anger.
“Slap her!” Glenin ordered, but even as she spoke the boy had dealt the cub a clout to the head. He picked her up again by the scruff, shook her, and once again stared her down.
“Mine!” he repeated fiercely, a growl in his voice that brought a whimper from the cub. “Don’t you ever bite me again!”
Glenin waited until he released the animal, letting her drop three feet to sprawl on the straw-strewn kennel floor, before opening the cage. “Come out of there and let me see your hand. How could you have been so foolish? I told you never to challenge a wolf for something already in its mouth!”
“I did it on purpose,” he insisted as he locked the gate behind him. He did not proffer his hand for inspection. “She has to learn that she belongs to me, and nothing belongs to her unless I give it to her.”
“Let me see your hand,” Glenin commanded, and after a moment he yielded. He yielded to no one but her. “Not too bad—the skin’s barely broken. Go have it washed and salved.”
“You understand, don’t you, Mama? I had to show her.”
“Yes, I understand. But be more careful. Your hands—and your life!—may depend on it one day. And you have more important work to do than taming a wolf cub to your will.”
“It was just practice,” he replied, grinning up at her.
Wondering if the grin wasn’t just as effective as the snarl, Glenin could not but relent and laugh.
6
“HOW’RE we going to find one opal earring in all this junk?”
Mikel gave his sister a look of dismay. Taigan was frowning at the jumble of boxes, cases, and coffers on their mother’s dressing table. They had been detailed to find a certain earring in support of their father’s efforts not to be late. Ten minutes ago, Fa had come into the music room and told Aidan to get dressed. The program at All Saints’ had been changed at the last minute from Son of the Ryka Legion to a solo concert by Sevy Vasharron of Falundir’s compositions. Thus it was that while Aidan and Fa hurriedly changed to formal longvests, the twins were supposed to find their father’s jewelry—“Somewhere in that mess in your mother’s dressing room.”
The task looked impossible. The “junk” Taigan mentioned consisted of a whole Shir’s ransom worth of jewels, strewn with the carelessness of the colossally wealthy all across the wide table. In between the glittering array were the mysterious paraphernalia of the elegant First Daughter: soft-bristle brushes, tortoiseshell combs, gold hairpins, clear glass bottles, ceramic jars, crystal flacons, silver pots, glazed canisters, and only their mother knew what all else. Mikel assumed and Taigan knew that these had something to do with the fact that Sarra Liwellan was one of the most beautiful women on Lenfell, but at eleven years old they had already come to the correct conclusion that Fa had a lot to do with that as well.
Mikel stared in consternation at the chaos. “I guess we’ll just have to poke around until we find it,” he said, doubt of success wrinkling the pattern of freckles across his nose.
Throwing both long golden braids back over her shoulders, Taigan pursed her lips and got to work.
The first thing
Mikel found was a box of loose gem-stones that enchanted him. One large, dark ruby in particular caught his attention, and without knowing why he imagined it set in silver—but the necklace that took shape in his thoughts was draped around the slender throat of a young blonde woman who was definitely not his mother. Puzzled for a moment, disoriented by the strength of the image, he put the ruby down and glanced at his sister. “Any luck?”
“Well . . .” Taigan shrugged. “I found this, but there’s nothing special in it. Take a look.”
Mikel considered the contents of a large, plain wooden box. A single glove; a few dried flowers; gold hoop earrings (simple, not their mother’s style at all); a battered old identification disk; a gold-and-amethyst pendant earring; and a man’s wristlet of dark green jade flowers. The twins traded glances again, disappointed by the “treasure,” then jumped as Fa yelled from the bedroom, “Did you find it yet?”
“We’re working on it!” Taigan called back.
The twins foraged through the table and ransacked the drawers. The opal turned up at the same time Collan Rosvenir appeared, wearing a turquoise brocaded longvest over plain black trousers.
“What do you think, Mishka? Teggie? Will I pass inspection?”
“Perfect,” said his daughter.
“I know,” he grinned back. “Now, tell me you’ve found my opal or—”
“Here,” Mikel said.
“You’re astounding, both of you.” Quick hugs, then a struggle with his thick curling hair on the way to the door as he fumbled with the earring’s clasp. “And don’t stay up too late!” was the last thing the twins heard before the outer door closed behind him.
Mikel was drawn inexorably back to the wooden box. Feeling a little guilty, he sat on the floor and dumped its contents on the thick-napped Cloister carpet.
Taigan plopped down beside him. “So what do you think she saved this stuff for?”
“How should I know?” Taking up the identity disk, he peered at the engraving. “‘Jescarin, Verald—’ Didn’t he used to be Master of Roseguard Grounds?”
“A long time ago. He was killed in the Rising.”
Mikel closed his fingers around the almond-shaped disk—and gave a sudden start. “It’s cold! I mean, I feel cold when I hold it—”
“Let me.” She took the disk from him, green eyes squeezing shut in a comically intense expression of concentration. When her eyes opened again, Mikel made a face at her, knowing she was making fun of him. “I don’t feel anything. You’re crazy.”
“No, I’m not.” Mikel picked out a few pink roses, long since withered. Not quite knowing what he was about to say, he stared at the flowers. “Mother wore these in her hair—and she didn’t much like them either.”
“That’s easy enough to figure,” Taigan scoffed. “She never wears pink.” Or peach, or apricot, or lilac, or daffodil, or any of the other insipid fruit-and-flower hues to which a girl of Taigan’s age and coloring was condemned. “When I get older, I—”
Mikel wasn’t interested in his sister’s gripes. “Here—take these for a minute.”
He gave her the gold earrings. She cradled them in her palm, sighing her impatience with this stupid game. Then—
“Mikel—I feel something.”
“What?”
Slowly, exploring the evocations of the gold in her palm, she said, “Not exactly a feeling. Not like being sad or happy. It’s more like—”
“—like a sense, tasting or smelling or touching.”
“Yes! Or when you’re not feeling well, and I know it even if you’re in another room.” All at once she dropped the earrings. “I don’t like this.”
Mikel was holding the jade wristlet. “I’ve never seen him wear it, but this is Fa’s.” He hesitated, rubbing a thumb across the tiny carvings of flowers. “No—not Fa. But somebody close to him, somebody he knew—”
“That’s enough.”
“What? We haven’t even started looking—”
“We have homework,” Taigan snapped. “And you know how Taguare is when we don’t get our assignments done.”
“You’re scared. You just don’t want to admit it.”
“I’m not scared! This is just dumb, and I’m going to go do my homework.” She grabbed the glove and the earrings and a fistful of withered flowers, shoving them back into the box. But the glove caught on the little turquoise ring Auntie Caisha had given her at her last Birthingday, and her fingers closed around the silk without her wanting them to, and she gasped.
“Teggie—!” Mikel gripped her shoulders, and together they were inundated in memories not their own.
“Hurry, Maicha! We haven’t much time—”
A black-skinned man in sorry old threadbare clothes, his green eyes blazing with urgency. She trusted him implicitly—and hated him almost as much as she trusted him.
“I can’t find Sarra’s cloak—and I haven’t told Mother—”
A wild glance around a sumptuous bedchamber, lingering for an instant on a little blonde girl with huge, frightened black eyes—it’s such a long journey, damn you, Gorsha—
“I’ll explain everything to Allynis and Gerrin when I return. There’s no time, Maicha!”
—eyes flashing past the bed—oh, my husband my beloved my betrayer—
“Wrap Sarra in a blanket if you must, but we have to get out of here now. Anniyas’s people are all over the city.”
—arrested by the sight of a mirrored reflection, her own reflection, pale and tousled and frantic, beautiful even in fear, one delicate hand clutching a single black silk glove—
“Teggie!” Mikel shook her, snatched the glove from her hand, flung it away onto the carpet. Taigan’s breath caught on a sob. “What was that?”
“I don’t know! It was me, but it wasn’t—” She pulled away from his steadying hands and knuckled her eyes. “Get rid of this stuff, Mikel. I don’t like it. It hurts.”
“But who was she?”
“No. I don’t want to talk about it. Put it all away.”
He did as told, careful to pick everything up with just his fingertips. After a time, with the closed box resting on the carpet, he murmured, “I wonder why she kept all this. If it hurts her the way it does you and me. . . .”
Taigan shivered, trying to disguise it with a casual shrug. “If you’ve got the nerve to ask her, go right ahead.”
7
A week after first overhearing Ellus Penteon’s situation, Collan was able to put a face to the name. Recalling what the two men had said about Penteon’s “regular day” at Wytte’s, Col spent most of the appropriate morning and all afternoon there, and was at length rewarded.
Ellus Penteon wasn’t just good-looking. He was gorgeous. Tall, dusky-skinned, long of leg and broad of shoulder, his narrow waist encircled by an ornamental gold chain, he made the high-priced local bower lads look like gawky farmboys. His face was a marvel: wide mouth, big hazel eyes, square chin with the hint of a dimple, and skin an ant could slide on. The wonder of it was that he seemed to have no consciousness at all of his beauty. Collan thought that perhaps it was because he was not tremendously bright, but that couldn’t be it; the man was a scholar, after all, a gifted teacher. It astounded Col that someone with looks this spectacular could be so utterly unaware of them.
Yet in talking with him—casually, in the soak pool—Col discovered that it wasn’t lack of awareness but refusal to acknowledge. That made sense: Penteon’s looks had gotten him much that mattered to him, but what really mattered to him had nothing to do with his looks.
They chatted about their children. They spoke of the difficulties of running a home while teaching—Collan at the Conservatory, Ellus at St. Jeyrom’s. Because both were well-versed in Bardic Canon, they also talked of songs and poetry. Collan offered to come lecture at Penteon’s class at St. Jeyrom’s; Penteon offered to send along a variant manuscript of an old ballad cycle that
he thought might interest Collan and Falundir. He also asked in an offhand way whether any of Col’s students might benefit from additional tutelage—“Not on the lute, for I’m no hand at it, but in diction, memorization, that sort of thing.” It struck Collan as strange that a man with a house to run, children to raise, and students to teach six days a week was looking for something else to do. Maybe he wanted the money; maybe he just wanted to fill up his time so he wouldn’t have to spend as much of it with Mirya Witte. But there wasn’t a mark on that dusky-brown skin, or a single hint that she ever touched her husband with anything but the tenderest of caresses.
A curious thing happened in the changing room. Domni Pierigo Wytte, son of the lady who ran the establishment, took Ellus Penteon apologetically aside for a private talk. Collan heard little of it, but the three words he did hear were enough: “membership fee” and “late.”
Col stopped by a tavern on the way home, a boisterous place where one could hear the latest and most reliable gossip in all Sheve. What he learned there was that Mirya Witte was late with every bill she owed. Her mother was disinclined to contribute even a handful of cutpieces to her First Daughter’s support. She could come back to Pinderon and live in the family home, or she could make do with a less extravagant style of living.
So, Col thought. It was money after all. Kind of pathetic, though, for Ellus to think that the paltry sums he might earn by tutoring music students would contribute anything truly helpful to Lady Mirya’s coffers.
That night, Lindren announced that after a week of looking, she’d seen the perfect estate for Miram and Riddon. “Out on the peninsula—fresh sea air, wonderful views, a vineyard and wine press, a huge old house with lots of room—”
“But not for sale,” Riena said glumly. “And nobody lives in it! A dozen workers’ cottages filled to capacity, but nobody in the big house at all. It’s criminal to let a property like that stand empty.”
“I think I know the place you’re talking about,” Col-Ian said slowly, and the beginnings of an idea twinkled in his mind. “Stone pillars at the main road, gate covered in ivy, overgrown rosebushes the size of small houses?”