by Melanie Rawn
“You’re disgusting!” she snapped. “Go on, get out of here! I hope you get caught! Even if they don’t catch you, I hope you get lost in the Wraithenwood!”
“Been there, thanks,” he drawled. Sweeping her a low bow, he ended with, “Now, Blood Daughter, with your permission—or without it—I’ll be off. My thanks and apologies to Taig.”
“And none for me!” She planted her fists on her hips.
“You? After the aggravation you gave me today?” He checked the lute case, mounted, and paused to rub his fingers through his hair once more. Sarra had rarely seen any man but Orlin uncovered—and she had never seen hair this color in her life.
He grinned. “That’s right, darlin’—take a good long look, and regret what you’ll miss! By the way, it’s true what they say about a Minstrel’s hands!”
And with that and a wink he galloped off, vanishing over a grassy rise.
Sarra stood there, so furious she shook with it. Eventually she brushed herself off, muttering all the while.
“Men! Stupid, selfish, foul-mannered—and the arrogance! Bad enough to know any man at all—but have one around all the time? No thank you! I’m never getting married. Why would any woman want a husband? Cailet can continue the Sacred Ambrai Blood, and welcome.” She froze. “Cailet! Blessed St. Rilla, I forgot all about her!”
She started back toward Pinderon, and had gone about a mile when a lone horseman on a Tillinshir gray thundered toward her. Taig Ostin; another man. Wonderful. All she lacked.
He drew rein. “Sarra! Are you all right?”
“Just splendid,” she snarled. “Give me a hand up.”
“Sorry, I’m on the run myself.”
“Why? And where’s Cailet?”
“Safe. Which way did your Minstrel go?”
“He’s not my bloody Minstrel! And why are you running? What happened?”
“Long story. Renne will explain when you get back to town.” He looked over his shoulder. “Some think I’m after Rosvenir for kidnapping you. More think I’m with him. They’ll’ve sorted themselves out by now. Delay them if you can.”
“He rode east. I’ll tell them south.” Rosvenir? That’s an old name—and false. They died out years ago.
“East to Cantratown? Smart man.” Not explaining this reference, he leaned down to touch her cheek, smiling. “And you’re a smart girl.”
She jerked back from his fingers. “Stop patronizing me, damn you!”
Taig laughed and straightened up in the saddle. “Be patient, Sarra. Only a few more years and you’ll be joining us.”
“Lose the Minstrel and I may consider it,” she retorted.
“Now, Sarra! He didn’t hurt anything but your dignity!”
With that remark, Taig put himself firmly in second position on the list of men she would flatly refuse to marry—never mind that it included every eligible male of her own and any other Generation.
“Where did you find Cailet?”
“Upstairs in that whorehouse, if you can believe it. I don’t know how, but she knows it for a hidey-hole of ours. Steenan—the redhead, he’s with us—locked her in so she couldn’t get into more trouble. I sent her back with Orlin, then came after you. Or so everyone thinks.” With a sudden frown: “Tell my mother to keep Cai at Ostinhold if she has to tie her down. I’ll send Gorsha as soon as I can.”
Easy jump. “To free her magic? Damn it, Taig, why can’t he do the same for me? I’m Ambrai Blood, I’m—”
“—meant for other things. My mother will explain. Tell her I love her, and kiss Cailet for me.” Another glance behind. “I’ve got to go, Sarra.”
And for the second time that day a man abandoned her in the middle of the road. According to folklore, one more such occurrence before sunset and she would remain unmarried all her life. Sarra found herself actively wishing for this sign of the Saints’ favor.
Still, when the Guard and the Watch found her, she presented so piteous a portrait of helpless victim that, far from abandoning her, all eight of them escorted her back to the Witte residence. Well, she supposed, one couldn’t have everything. Keeping her hands over her face, sobbing realistically every so often, she was given at last into Agatine’s care.
Once they were private, and Sarra had rid herself of the torn, abused, stinking clothes, she made short work of her story—with a lack of aggrieved pejoratives that surprised even her—while Agatine poured wine. Orlin, sporting a black eye that made him wince with each grin, described the fight back at the bower with a relish that made Agatine snort.
But the promised explanations were not forthcoming. Fooled with a sleeping draught in the wine, as she drifted off her last thought was that she’d break every one of that fake Rosvenir’s fingers in three places each if he ever put his damned “Minstrel’s hands” on her again.
Cailet
1
To nearly all those living at Ostinhold in 951, Maichen and Sarra Ambrai were just people who came for a visit and then left, something that happened all the time. It was sad that the pretty blonde lady had died, and her baby with her, but sometimes that happened, too. Certainly no one connected the incident with the vanished Ambrai First Daughter.
Only five people of the nearly one thousand in residence knew the truth: Lady Lilen, her three eldest children, and her Healer. Margit Ostin’s death in 961 reduced the number to four. The servants who waited on the family were later Warded by Gorynel Desse just in case. Lilen, her children, and the Healer were not. At some future date, Cailet’s identity as an Ambrai would have to be established. Interrogation must reveal no trace of magic in their memories.
Cailet herself was heavily Warded—not against memories, for a newborn had none, but against the magic that curled within her, waiting. Shining. Growing, even as Desse Warded it with all the cunning he possessed. When he emerged from the work after almost nine hours, he muttered something to Lilen about Cailet’s given name being appropriate, and then collapsed and slept for a whole day.
She grew up as Cailet Rille, and it was never quite clear how she was related to the Ostins. This was not unusual. There being only about three hundred extant Names, discerning close cousin from total stranger was naturally something of a problem. It had been thirty-three Generations since the defining Fifth Census; even if two people shared a Name, it was probable that they shared only a twenty-times-great grandmother. The tangle of kinship meant six years of apprenticing before one became even a junior clerk at Census.
Though Cailet’s official status was somewhat vague, she was treated as if she had been born Lilen’s own child. This, too, was common. Favorite nieces or cousins often grew up in a First Daughter’s household instead of their mothers’. The Tigge Name for instance, made a point of exchanging offspring. But while in theory every Tigge was equal, children of First Daughters had primary inheritance rights. This kept holdings intact, but inevitably some Tigges were more equal than others.
Lady Lilen was, in the common parlance, a First Daughter Prime; that was, she was descended in direct First Daughter line—in her case, for seventeen Generations. The bulk of the Ostin fortune was hers to do with as she saw fit. And as she felt morally bound to provide for all the sprigs on her gigantic tree, she ran the largest, most complex, and least visible Web on Lenfell.
In the year Ambrai and the Ambrai Name were destroyed, more than twelve thousand Ostins were employed in nearly nine hundred ventures worldwide. The smallest was a bookshop in Firrense. The largest was Ostinhold. Between 951 and 961, all the Ostins laid as low as their phenomenal numbers allowed—for Lilen’s mother’s brother had been husband to Allynis Ambrai.
Scraller Pelleris, alternately shaking with rage and trembling in terror at his own business connections to the Ostins, enlisted Anniyas’s help in attempts to ruin them financially. The First Councillor directed similar action against every known Ostin interest. Lilen allowed some of these efforts to succeed. To diver
t funds from the Rokemarsh fisheries into the failing Gierkenshir shipping line would be to invite inquiry as to why the latter was headed by an Eddavar (Lilen’s cousin, who doubled the connection by marrying a Solingirt whose father was an Ostin). But Lilen could not and would not let Scraller wreck Ostinhold. After some lean years and some tricky financial juggling, at last Scraller—and Anniyas—gave up.
One result of losing businesses from the Web was an influx of unemployed relatives. Guilt-ridden, and conscientious as always about her kinfolk no matter how distant, Lilen gave welcome to them all. In ten years, the population of Ostinhold increased to over three thousand. They made themselves useful—no one idled in The Waste—but they also had to be fed. And, being Ostins, they kept breeding.
Thus it was that Cailet, born Ambrai but called Rille, grew up as just one among scores of children at Ostinhold. She was a rather plain child and for the most part went unnoticed. She did not distinguish herself in any way: she committed a normal amount of mischief, fell into the middle range of scholarship, and was chosen neither first nor last in games. She sang in the children’s choir organized by Miram Ostin, but never soloed; she had no trouble with basic mathematics, but higher functions defeated her. Cailet was simply an average little girl.
Which was precisely what Gorynel Desse had labored to accomplish with his magic by Warding hers—the powerful magic of a child named for Caitiri the Fiery-eyed.
One morning a few weeks before her tenth Birthingday, Cailet was on her way to school when she heard a maid tell a groom to saddle First Daughter’s horse. Geria was riding to Viranka’s Tears, a nearby village that boasted the only sweetwater well (other than Scraller’s) in a hundred miles. Cailet immediately abandoned class and raced up three flights of stairs to the chamber kept for Geria’s infrequent visits. It was just up the hall from Cailet’s own room, where she made a brief stop to scrounge in a drawer for her purse.
After a respectful knock elicited permission to enter, she found Geria finishing her makeup. During application of brown pencil to her brows—plucking had been popular for a time but now exaggerated arches were the rage—Cailet begged Geria to purchase a book she was wild to read. It was the third installment of an adventure set during the First Wraithenbeast Incursion, about a brave band of friends who fought the Wraithen horrors. Although it was only four weeks until Wildfire, she simply couldn’t wait for Lady Lilen to give her the book as a Birthingday present.
“Here’s money,” Cailet said. “It won’t take long, First Daughter, please?”
Geria—who reveled in her title and treated her siblings as if she had been born Lilen’s only child—glanced down at Cailet’s palm. Five carefully hoarded copper cutpieces, tarnished and slightly sweaty, vanished into the First Daughter’s purse.
“If I remember,” Geria said, bending to check her hair in the mirror.
“The bookshop’s in Eskanto Alley, where all the printers used to be before Scraller outlawed new books. Why’d he do that, First Daughter?”
“Because he’s wise enough to know that anything worth writing has already been written and printed,” Geria answered absently, applying a fingerful of rouge to her lips. “And most of that isn’t worth reading, anyway,” she added.
Cailet was long accustomed to Geria’s total lack of interest in anything requiring even minimal mental effort. She thanked the First Daughter again, cast a last look at the embroidered purse where her precious cutpieces now resided, and bowed herself out.
Geria returned from Viranka’s Tears that evening with her purchases: skin cream, fine-milled soap, candies, a lace shawl, and earrings made of Scraller’s Silver (a vein discovered beneath the keep had yielded richly for a year before dying out; he parlayed the rarity into a demand—another “scrall”). But nowhere in the First Daughter’s room could Cailet’s small commission be found.
“Oh, that,” Geria said when Cailet ventured a question. “I didn’t get to the shop. It’s a filthy street, I wonder that you’re allowed to visit.”
Cailet gulped back disappointment and asked politely for her cutpieces.
“I haven’t got them,” replied Geria, tossing her head to admire the swing of silver at her ears. “These cost more than I thought—Saints, the prices here, and practically nothing to buy! Anyway, I used your money. I knew you wouldn’t mind. So you see even if I’d had time to look for your book, I wouldn’t have had enough to buy it.”
As it happened, Cailet did mind. Very much. It had taken five weeks to earn those cutpieces, doing errands for Ostinhold’s harried steward. Now she had no money—and no book, either.
Cailet stared at her scuffed boots. “May I please have my money back, First Daughter?”
“It’s not convenient for me to repay you right now. Ask my mother for it.”
“Please, First Daughter, I don’t like to do that.”
“Whyever not? She can easily afford five cutpieces.”
“I just—I don’t like to ask her for money.”
Times were tightening again, what with the galazhi suffering from some mysterious ailment. Now that Scraller and Anniyas had withdrawn from the financial battlefield in defeat, Lady Lilen’s first rule had been reestablished: each Ostin property must be self-sufficient, never borrowing from the others unless destitution had one ragged foot already in the door.
“I don’t like to ask,” Cailet repeated.
“I do, all the time.” Geria paused. “But then, I’m First Daughter. Very well, Cailet, the next time you come to visit me at Combel, I’ll have your money for you.”
“I’d like it now, please. I need it.”
Swinging around from the mirror, Geria frowned. “For what? Some silly book? You’d do better to spend it on skin cream. Saints, how I loathe Ostinhold. I always come away looking ten years older. And I won’t bring the children here, it’s far too unhealthy for them.”
Cailet, fair skin tanned brown and fair hair bleached white by the relentless sun of The Waste, said, “All the same, I need my money back.”
“You’ll have to wait.” Geria resumed position before the mirror. “Just like me,” she muttered.
Cailet understood the reference, and flushed with hot anger. Geria had married Mircian Karellos in 958 and moved to the Ostin house in Longriding. Barely a year later, after the birth of First Daughter Mircia, she persuaded her mother to give her the more elegant mansion in Combel. Having found its revenues inadequate for her growing family—Gerian had been born last year—First Daughter was at Ostinhold to ask for the large seaside residence in Renig. If she couldn’t get the house, she’d settle for more money. Thus she lingered past her usual three-day visit, waiting on her mother’s decision.
But Cailet knew what Geria really waited for. As First Daughter, she would inherit the management and the profits of the Ostin Web. Even after providing for her sisters and brothers from the Ostin Dower Fund, she would be the richest woman in North Lenfell. But first her mother would have to die.
“Y’know, Geria,” Cailet said, deliberately using name and not title, “you’re not a very nice person.”
A blink of greenish-brown eyes. “What?”
“You’re selfish and greedy, and if you didn’t look so much like Lady Lilen nobody’d ever believe you’re her daughter. I want my cutpieces back. Now.”
Geria laughed. “Incredible! Get out of here before I have you thrown out.”
Something inside Cailet began to burn and tremble. She did not like Geria; she never had, and she was sick of pretending respect for someone who didn’t deserve it.
Geria happened to glance at her then, and whatever she saw in Cailet’s face made her painted brows swoop down in fury. “Ungrateful brat—you’ve lived off our charity since the day you were born! Now that I think on it, I’ll keep the cutpieces to start repayment of everything you owe—and I’ll collect it all one day, see if I don’t!”
Cailet locked gazes with her. An
ger flared deep inside, but outwardly she was as cool and steady as frozen stone. And she knew of a stone-cold certainty that she did not want to listen to this woman anymore.
“Be quiet,” Cailet breathed.
Geria’s lips moved. No sound came out.
Still holding the First Daughter’s gaze, Cailet calmly took the purse from the dressing table. Upending it, by feel she counted out five cutpieces from the dozen jingling on the glass tabletop and replaced the rest.
“So you’re a liar as well as a thief,” she observed. “We’re even now, Geria. I won’t tell anybody about this—and it won’t happen again.” Pocketing the money, she added, “You should’ve married Scraller. He’s just your kind.”
Only then did she relinquish Geria’s eyes. A blink, a gasping breath—and Cailet’s armbones nearly snapped as Geria grabbed her.
“What did you do to me?”
“Took back what was mine. Let me go.”
“You stole from me! How dare you! Give it back, you thieving little whelp!”
Geria fumbled at the pocket of Cailet’s shortvest, cursing all the while. Cailet struggled, more frightened by the surge of fire within her than by Geria’s fists, then called out to the only defense and protection that had never failed her.
“Taig!”
He was there like magic, already drawn by the shouting. “What the hell—? Geria! Let her go!”
“Little thief!” She delved into Cailet’s pocket and came up with two cutpieces. “She stole from me!”
“Did not!” Breaking free at last, she hurtled toward Taig. He caught her against him, one cool hand smoothing her hair. “It’s my money, Taig, I asked her to buy a book—but she didn’t, and said she spent all her money and mine, too—I won’t go to Lady Lilen for it, Taig, it’s not right!”
“Shh,” he murmured. “Of course it wasn’t right, Cai.”
“She did something to me!” Geria accused. “Fixed those Wraithen-eyes of hers on me and—”