“Bilairy’s balls!” Tobin muttered, tasting blood on his lip. “What did I do that for?”
As bad luck would have it, Alben and Quirion happened to be passing just then. That figures, thought Tobin; Quirion stuck to the older boy like dog shit on a shoe.
“What’s the matter? Did she bite you?” Alben drawled.
Tobin shouldered angrily past them, bakshi stones forgotten.
“What’s the matter?” Quirion called after him. “Don’t you like being kissed by girls?”
Whirling to make some retort, Tobin tripped over his own feet and fell against one of the ancient tapestries that lined the corridor. The hanging pole snapped and the whole dusty mess came down on him like a collapsed tent. The other boys howled with laughter.
“Blood, my blood. Flesh, my—” Tobin whispered, then clamped a hand over his mouth. Their laughter faded away down the corridor, but Tobin stayed where he was, horrified at what he’d almost done. Hugging himself in the musty darkness, he searched his memory again, wondering if he’d somehow summoned Brother against Orun, after all.
Be confided the encounter with Una to Ki and Tharin the next day as they sat by the fire in Tharin’s room, but leaving out the unpleasant aftermath with Alben. He was none too pleased when his friends burst into laughter.
“Tob, you bump brain!” Ki exclaimed. “Una’s had her cap set for you since we got to Ero.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You mean to say you haven’t noticed how she’s always watching you?”
“I’ve thought so, myself,” Tharin said, still chuckling. “But she’s a—just a girl!”
“Well, you do fancy girls, don’t you?” Ki laughed, unwittingly echoing Quirion’s taunt.
Tobin scowled down at his boots. “I don’t fancy anyone.”
“Let him be, Ki,” said Tharin. “Tobin’s young yet, and not used to court. I was the same myself, at his age. As for this sword-training business, though.” His expression turned serious. “She said it herself; her father doesn’t hold to the old ways, and Duke Sarvoi’s not a man to cross. She’ll do better to stick with her shooting and riding.”
Tobin nodded, though a disapproving father scared him a great deal less than the girl’s regard. His lip still hurt where she’d kissed him.
“All the same, you may feel differently in a year or two,” said Tharin. “She’s a fine girl from a powerful family. A pretty little thing, too.”
“I’ll say!” Ki put in warmly. “If I thought she’d look twice at a lowly squire, I’d be happy to stand in your shoes.”
The sudden warmth in Ki’s voice and his wistful smile made Tobin’s belly tighten, as if he’d eaten something bitter.
Why should I care if Ki fancies her? But he did. “Well, I only told her that to be kind, anyway,” he grumbled. “She’s probably forgotten all about it.”
“Not that one,” said Ki. “I’ve seen the way she watches us.”
Tharin nodded. “What she told you about her grandmother is true. General Elthia was the equal of any man in the field, and a cagey strategist, too. Your father thought very highly of her. Yes, I can see a bit of the old warrior in young Una. That’s the trouble with these new ways. There are too many girls with the blood of heroes in their veins and the stories still green in their hearts, kept in skirts by the fire.”
“No wonder she’s jealous of a common soldier like Ahra,” said Ki.
“I don’t imagine Erius will let that go on much longer, either. And then where will they all go?”
“You mean there are lots of them? Women warriors?” asked Tobin.
“Yes. Just think of old Cook—or Sergeant Catilan, as she was known before—working away in your father’s kitchen all these years. Erius forced out a lot of the older ones. She was too loyal to argue, but it hurts her pride still. There are hundreds more like her, scattered about the land. Maybe more.”
Tobin stared into the fire, imagining a whole army of dispossessed women warriors, riding like ghosts into an unknown distance. The thought sent a shiver up his spine.
Chapter 9
Arkoniel stretched the stiffness from his shoulders and went to the workroom window. Unfolding the letters Koni had brought that morning, he slowly reread them.
Outside, the afternoon was quickly waning. The tower shadow stretched like a crooked finger across the new snow blanketing the meadow. Except for the churned-up trail left by Koni’s horse, it was smooth and white as a new bed sheet: no snow forts beyond the barracks house, no foot trails snaking away to the river or woods.
And no echoing laughter outside his door, Arkoniel thought glumly. He’d never been lonelier. Only Nari and Cook remained now; the three of them rattled about the place like dice in a cup.
He sighed and turned back to the letters. His presence here remained a secret, so they were ostensibly addressed to Nari. Arkoniel smoothed the first parchment against the windowsill, rubbing his thumb idly over the broken seal. Both boys had written to him of Orun’s death. Iya had sent word earlier, but he was most interested in their versions.
Tobin’s was brief: Orun had had some sort of fit, brought on by bad news. Ki’s was the more useful, though he’d not been with Tobin when it happened. Arkoniel smiled as he unfolded the double sheet. Despite Ki’s initial resistance to writing, and a less-than-beautiful hand, words seemed to flow as easily from the boy’s pen as they did from his lips. His letters were always the more detailed. He told of the bruises on Tobin’s neck and the fact that he’d been carried home unconscious. Strangest of all, he’d closed with the line: Tobin still feels awful bad about it. Iya had made no mention of any regrets in her letter, but Arkoniel guessed that this was no idle platitude. Ki knew Tobin better than anyone, and had shared his friend’s loathing for their guardian. Why would Tobin feel badly about the man’s passing?
Arkoniel folded Tobin’s letter into his sleeve to return to Nari, but added Ki’s to the neat stack on his writing table.
I nearly killed him, but I did not, he reminded himself, as he did each time he placed a new letter on that pile. He wasn’t sure why he kept them, perhaps as proof against the nightmares that still haunted him, dreams in which he did not hesitate and Ki did not wake up ever again.
Arkoniel pushed the memory away and glanced at the window to check the sun’s progress. Yesterday he’d stayed too late.
When he’d first come here, the keep had been a tomb haunted by both the living and the dead. He and Iya had cajoled the duke into restoring it to a proper home for his child, and for a time it had been. It had become Arkoniel’s home, too, the first he’d known since leaving his father’s house.
The place was falling back to rot and ruin now. The new tapestries and painted plaster already looked faded. The plate in the hall was tarnished with disuse, and spiders had reclaimed their kingdom in the rafters of the great hall. Without regular fires in most of the rooms, the whole place was once more damp and cold and dim. It was as if the boys had taken the very life from the place with them.
He turned back to the desk with a sigh to complete the day’s notes. When the journal was safely locked away, he cleared up the wreckage of his latest failed efforts.
He was nearly finished when something brushed softly past the door, no louder than a mouse’s whisker. Arkoniel caught his breath. The glass rod he’d been cleaning slipped from his fingers and shattered at his feet.
Just a rat. It’s too early. Golden light still lingered in the eastern sky. She never comes down this early.
Gooseflesh prickled his arms as he lit a candle and walked slowly to the door. His hand trembled and a rivulet of hot wax ran down over his fingers.
Nothing there. Nothing there, he repeated, like a child in the dark.
As long as Tobin and the others had been downstairs, he’d managed to hold his fear at bay, even when Bisir’s unexpected stay had trapped him up here for days on end. With others in the house, he didn’t mind so much the half-heard whispers in the corridor.
Arkoniel had climbed the tower stairs only twice since his first encounter with her angry ghost. Driven by curiosity and guilt, he’d gone up the day after Tobin left for Ero that first time, but felt nothing. Relieved but unsatisfied, he’d worked up the courage to return at midnight—the same hour Tobin had taken him there—and this time he’d heard Ariani weeping as clearly as if she were just behind him. Torn between fear and anguish, he fled and slept in the kitchen with the tower key clutched in his hand like a talisman. The next morning he threw it in the river and moved his bedchamber to the toy room downstairs. He would have shifted his workroom, too, but the furnishings were too heavy and it would have taken him the rest of the winter to carry down all the books and instruments he’d amassed. Instead, he resigned himself to keeping daylight hours.
But today he’d lingered in the workroom too long. Taking a deep breath, Arkoniel gripped the latch and opened the door.
Ariani stood at the end of the corridor, tears streaming down her bloody face, her lips moving. Frozen in the doorway, Arkoniel strained to hear, but she made no sound. She’d attacked him the first time they met after her death, but still he waited, wanting desperately to hear her words, to give some answer. But then she took a step toward him, face shifting to an angry mask, and his courage failed.
The candle cast antic shadows around him as he bolted, then it went out. Squinting in the sudden darkness, he went down the stairs two at a time and missed his footing before his eyes could adjust. He trod air for an instant, then fell heavily, tumbling down the last few steps into the welcome lamplight of the second floor corridor. Resisting the impulse to look back, he limped quickly toward the stairs to the hall.
One of these days he was going to make a ghost of himself.
Chapter 10
Lord Orun had left no heir. That being the case, his property went to the Crown, absorbed into the very Treasury he’d so ably administered. It had been, in Niryn’s estimation, the only good work the man had ever done. Orun’s exacting honesty when it came to his official duties had always amazed the wizard.
The house and its furnishings were soon disposed of, and the new Treasury Chancellor installed. That left only Orun’s household servants to be dealt with, and few on the Palatine would have taken the gift of them.
The more notorious spies were quietly put out of the way by those they’d helped compromise. Orun had had a passion for blackmail. Not for money—he had wealth enough of that sort—but for the sadistic love of control over others. Given that, together with his other unpleasant pastimes, none but a select few mourned his passing.
And so his spies were poisoned or garroted in alleys, the prettier catamites whisked quietly away into certain other households, and the rest sent from the city with good references and gold enough to keep them away.
Niryn followed these proceedings closely and had made a point of attending Orun’s burning. It was there that a young man standing among the few mourners caught his eye.
His face was familiar and after a moment Niryn recognized him as a minor noble named Moriel, whom Orun had tried to force on the prince as a squire. Orun had left the fellow a small bequest in his will, no doubt for services rendered. He looked to be fourteen or fifteen, with a pale, bitter face and sharp, intelligent eyes. Curious, Niryn brushed the boy’s mind as they stood by the pyre and was pleasantly unsurprised at what he found there.
The following day he sent the promising young fellow an invitation to dine with him, if his grief allowed. The messenger soon returned with the expected reply, written in the same purple ink his late protector had favored: Young Moriel would be delighted to dine with the king’s wizard.
Chapter 11
Iya was not sorry to see Orun out of the way, and had shared Tobin’s obvious relief when Chancellor Hylus appointed himself temporary guardian. She hoped Erius would leave the good old fellow in charge. Hylus was a decent man, a relic of the old times before Erius and his mad mother had tarnished the crown. As long as Erius still valued his counsel, perhaps Niryn’s sort would not triumph.
She clung to that hope as she fastened the hated Harrier brooch to her cloak each day in Ero.
She had to pass the Harriers’ headquarters when she left the Palatine. White-robed wizards and their grey-uniformed guard were always about in the yards around the old stone inn. It reminded her of a hornet’s nest and she treated it as such, passing on the far side of the street. She’d been inside only once, when they numbered her in their black ledger. She’d seen enough during that visit to know that a second visit would probably prove fatal.
So she kept her distance and was circumspect in seeking out others like herself, ordinary wizards forced to wear the shameful numbered badge. There were far fewer in Ero these days and most of them were too frightened or suspicious to speak to her. Of all the taverns once patronized by their kind, only the Golden Chain was still open and it was full of Harriers. Wizards she’d known for a lifetime greeted her with suspicion and few offered her hospitality. It was a frightening change in the city that had once most honored the free wizards.
* * *
She was wandering disconsolately through the half-deserted market in Dolphin Court one evening when she was suddenly engulfed by a searing blast of pain. Struck blind, she couldn’t hear or cry out.
They have me! she thought in mute agony. What will become of Tobin?
Then, as in a vision, she saw a face framed in white fire, but it wasn’t Tobin’s. Stretched with agony surpassing her own, the man seemed to stare straight into her eyes as the flesh shrank and sizzled on his skull. She knew that face. It was a wizard from the south named Skorus. She’d given him one of her tokens years ago and not thought of him since.
The tortured face disappeared and she found herself sprawled facedown on the dirty cobbles, gasping for air.
He must have had the talisman with him when they burned him, she thought, too overcome to move. But what did this mean? The little pebbles were minor charms, containing the tiniest spark of magic to find and draw the loyal ones when the time came. She’d never imagined they could also act as a conduit back to her. But this one had, and through it she’d experienced a fraction of the agony he’d felt as he died. Dozens of wizards had been burned, perhaps scores, but he must be the first of her chosen to be caught. She was amazed at how quickly the pain passed. She’d expected to find her own skin blistered, but fortunately the charm had channeled only the dying wizard’s last feelings, not the magic that killed him.
“Old mother, are you ill?” someone asked.
“Drunk, more like it,” another passerby laughed. “Get up, you old hag!”
Gentle hands helped her to her knees. “Kiriar!” she gasped, recognizing the young man. “Are you still with Dylias?”
“Yes, Mistress.” He’d been an apprentice the last time they’d met. He had a proper beard now and a few lines on his face, but his clothes were as ragged as a beggar’s. Only the Harrier badge at his throat marked him for what he was. His number was ninety-three.
He was looking at hers, as well. “Two hundred and twenty-two? It took them longer to find you, I see.” He gave her a rueful look. “It’s something we notice nowadays, sad to say. Are you feeling better? What happened?”
Iya shook her head as he helped her to her feet. Kiriar and his master Dylias had always struck her as good sorts, but she was still too badly shaken to judge or trust. “It’s a hard business, getting old,” she said, making light of it. “I could do with a drink, and a bite to eat.”
“I know a good house, Mistress. Let me stand you a hot dinner for old times’ sake. It’s not far and the company’s good.”
Still wary, but intrigued, Iya leaned on his arm and let him lead her out of Dolphin Cou
rt.
She felt a moment’s alarm when Kiriar turned his steps back toward the Palatine. Was he a clever betrayer after all, luring her to the Harrier stronghold?
A few streets later, however, he turned aside into one of the goldsmith’s markets. Hard times had struck here as well, she noted; many of the shops were deserted. She’d passed half a dozen before it struck her that most of them had belonged to Aurënfaie artisans.
“Gone home, a lot of them,” Kiriar explained. “The ’faie don’t hold with the new ways, as you can well imagine, and it’s growing clear that the Harriers don’t trust them. Now, if you’ll just stop a moment.”
He disappeared into a darkened stable. A moment later he returned and led her through a lane behind it. This in turn led to a narrow alley, overhung by sagging balconies and the strange, spicy aromas of ’faie cookery.
Narrow side ways branched off among the buildings here and there. Reaching one such juncture, her guide stopped again. “Before we go any farther, Mistress, I must ask you this. What do you swear by?”
“By my hands and heart and eyes,” she answered, catching sight of a crescent moon scrawled on the wall just above his shoulder. The telltale shimmer of a blast aura flickered around it as she spoke. “And by the Lightbearer’s true name,” she added for good measure.
“She may pass,” someone whispered from the shadows to their right, as if that wasn’t already evidenced by the fact that the blast aura had not struck her down. Iya looked at her ragged companion with new interest. He hadn’t left that powerful spell there, or his master; she could count on one hand the wizards she knew who could have.
Kiriar gave her an apologetic shrug. “We have to ask. Come, it’s just down here.”
He led her into the dirtiest side street she’d yet seen. The smell of piss and decay was strong. Skinny, notch-eared cats slunk past in shadows, or hunched watching for rats in the garbage piled along the wall. The buildings on either side nearly touched overhead, shutting out the waning winter light.
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