StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “Astilan will be king,” Lord Decath finished. A heavy silence fell over the hall. This same conversation was held in every taproom in Gerse: Bardolph had no surviving children, and had refused to confirm one of his two nephews as his heir. His obvious favorite was Prince Astilan, an avowed Celyst with a cruel streak who’d served in the royal army and had the backing of the military and the support of the church. But the king had never made it official, and many discontented Llyvrins favored Wierolf, the younger prince, who from all accounts lacked his cousin’s convictions and connections. He’d earned the nickname “the Lazy Prince” from his habits of hunting and carousing while Astilan was training for battle.

  From where I stood, they looked very much the same: no better and no worse than their uncle. And in the gap left by the quibbling heirs, the Inquisitor slipped right in and cozied up to the king, spreading his malice across Gerse and beyond. I twisted the silver bracelet on my wrist.

  “All the same,” Lord Decath was saying, “Wierolf does have his supporters. I fear, though, that no matter how devoted they are, they’ll still be woefully unprepared. Astilan represents the current regime; he’ll have the support of Bardolph’s councilors and most of the noble houses.”

  “Yours, milord?” Lady Nemair asked with a smile. Decath just raised his goblet to her and demurred.

  “Does anyone even know what Wierolf is up to these days?” Durrel put in. “There are so many rumors, it’s hard to know what to believe.”

  “That young man will have to settle down if he wants to be king,” Lord Nemair said. “Thirty-one years old and still can’t sit still long enough to attend a privy council.”

  “Do let’s speak of something else,” Lady Amalle pleaded. “You must be looking forward to Lady Merista’s kernja-velde, although we’ll hate losing her. She’s been such a joy in our household.”

  “Can’t be helped, Lady,” Lord Nemair said. “The girl must come home. We need a chance to coddle and spoil her for a few months, before some ambitious young nobleman steals her away again.”

  Merista blushed furiously, but her eyes shone.

  “I’m not sure Celyn understands what she’s signing on for,” Durrel said, grinning at me from across the hall. “I’ll imagine her own kernja-velde was not quite such an elaborate affair.”

  “Oh, you’ll love it!” Phandre said to me, and actually managed to sound genuine. “It’s a house party — everyone comes and stays with the family, and all the marriage prospects are paraded before the girl and her parents.”

  Lady Nemair cleared her throat. “While I suppose that’s a techni cally accurate depiction of events, I believe Lady Phandre ne glects the point. This is a time for seclusion and study for Lady Merista, when she learns the skills and duties of being a wife” — here Phandre snorted, to a black look from Lady Nemair, who continued — “and reflects upon the childhood she’s leaving behind. Your coming-of-age was not like this, Celyn?”

  Here I snorted, but I covered it up better. “No, milady.” Mine had ended in a brawl, in which Tegen’s nose was broken.

  “When will Caerellis be ready?” Lady Amalle was saying. “You must stay here while your staff prepares for your arrival.”

  Lady Lyllace blotted her lips with an embroidered napkin. “We’re not returning to Caerellis,” she said. Her voice was like low, soft music. “His Majesty, in his infinite royal wisdom, has absorbed that property back into his own royal body.”

  I tensed. Lady Amalle was confused too. “But where —”

  “We’ve been restoring Bryn Shaer,” said Lord Nemair.

  “Bryn Shaer?” Lady Amalle echoed. “In the Carskadons? That old fortress? Surely it’s not habitable, after — how long has it been?”

  I looked to Merista for an explanation, but she was just staring, white-faced, at her parents.

  “Forty-two years,” Nemair said, tearing into some bread. “But we’ve had our people working on it, off and on, for the last five or six. Cleaning up the place, building a new, modern lodge, fireplaces in all the bedrooms, that sort of thing. Spared no expense. It will be a . . . palace again.”

  “It will be perfectly habitable. Merista, wait until you’ve seen the views! It’s incredible in the winter.” Lady Lyllace smiled at her daughter, who nodded automatically.

  “Celyn, have you ever been to the mountains?”

  “I — uh, no, milord.”

  “You’re in for a treat, my girl. Bryn Shaer means ‘Bear’s Keep,’ and the place is aptly named. Silverback bears come right up to the walls, and —”

  “Well, not in the winter, my lord husband.”

  I didn’t hear the rest of the winter marvels Lord Antoch described. The mountains? Spend the winter in the Carskadon Mountains? “Doesn’t it snow there?” I heard myself ask, and everyone laughed.

  “Only a little,” Lady Lyllace said, but something in her voice was too merry.

  After that, conversation moved on to other topics, but Merista sagged a little beside me. I plied her for more information.

  “I don’t really know,” she said quietly. “Bryn Shaer was closed by the king or something, many years ago. He gave it to my parents as a wedding gift.”

  I did some swift thinking. The road to the Carskadons would take me halfway toward Yeris Volbann. If we left before winter set in, I could probably make the rest of the trip on foot, maybe hook up with a caravan on the road. . . . I had Merista’s silver bracelet, and Raffin’s money, and Chavel’s letters — it was a good start.

  The meal dragged on, until I thought I’d go mad. Every time I was sure it was over, a swarm of servants appeared from the kitchens, laden with yet another course of food and wine. Finally I’d had it. I pulled into the background, keeping my mouth shut until everybody forgot about me, and then slipped out.

  I found a door that led out onto the tower roof and stepped outside, crossing to the battlement to look down. Dusk had sped along, a band of pink low along the horizon, closing another day between me and Tegen. Tiboran’s moon was round and full, staring at me expectantly. I made a rude gesture at it.

  Somewhere in the southern distance was Gerse. Would I be able to see it from up here? I climbed up onto the battlement to get a better look, and had to grip hard to the edge as the wind buffeted me like a banner, whipping strands of hair into my face.

  “What in the name of all that is holy are you doing?”

  Strong hands seized me about the waist. I tensed and kicked out instinctively, but these stupid nob shoes weren’t going to do any damage. I wheeled in the grasp — and saw that it was Durrel.

  “Milord! I did not hear you approach.” That sounded dignified, at least.

  “What —” He set me down. “What were you doing?”

  I tried a smile. “Would you believe I was looking for a way to escape?”

  Durrel looked down over the balcony walls. “I might, at that,” he said quietly. “I’ve contemplated the very thing myself, more than once.” Nodding into the sky, he added conversationally, “A liar’s moon.”

  “What?” It came out sharp, my heart banging.

  “Tiboran’s moon is full,” he said, his voice easy. “Isn’t that what they call it?”

  I let out my breath in a slow hiss. “I don’t know, milord.”

  “Why’d you leave? You missed Morva’s famous sloe plum aspic.”

  “That wasn’t my place,” I said honestly.

  “And climbing castle towers by moonslight?”

  I had to grin. “My place.”

  Durrel raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He leaned against the round rough battlement wall. A blast of wind howled round the tower and hit me squarely. Shivering, I wavered on my feet.

  “Here.” Durrel doffed his doublet and draped it around my shoulders. It dwarfed me. Warm from his body, it still reeked of sour wine and river air, and a musky, salty scent that must have been Durrel’s own. I took a step away from him. It was too easy to stand here beside him, as if I’d known him for years
. As if I were the girl I was pretending to be.

  “Why did you help me?” I said abruptly.

  “What do you mean?”

  I waved an impatient hand at him. “You couldn’t possibly have known my father.”

  He sighed and met my eyes. “I guess . . . you looked a little like I felt.”

  “Miserable?”

  “And scared, and lost, and desperate, like you were running from something and couldn’t get far enough away.” He looked out over the tangled landscape below us. “I don’t think anyone should have to feel that way.”

  “You don’t know anything about me.”

  A shrug. “I don’t have to.”

  “I could be dangerous.” Why was I pressing the point? A conversation like this was likely to get me killed.

  A smile played at his lips. “No, you looked more in danger, than dangerous.”

  I turned back to the distant Decath fields, washed with moonslight and shadow. The silence grew too comfortable. “Are you really getting married?”

  He barked out a rough, abrupt laugh. “I really am. To the indomitable Talth Ceid — a great wooden block of a woman fourteen years older than I am. With four children.”

  “That explains the drunken flight from Gerse.”

  “Yes, yes, it does.” He shifted against the cold stone walls. “It’s a good match, all things considered. Both families will be strengthened by the alliance. What about you?” he said. “Any prospects? That brother of yours hasn’t cast you up on the marriage block yet?”

  I coughed back a laugh at the image — then remembered I had invented this persona. “Much cheaper to sell me to Celys, and he gets to look pious. So devoted to the Goddess, he tithed his little sister.” There was a strange note in my voice I couldn’t quite shake.

  Durrel eyed me sidelong. “Do I detect a somewhat less . . . robust devotion in you, Celyn Contrare?”

  This time my laugh broke free. “Maybe.”

  “So, have you really decided to leave us tomorrow, then?”

  “What?”

  “The caravan to Bryn Shaer leaves in the morning, as you’d have known, if you’d stayed for dessert.”

  “Tomorrow?” What was wrong with me? Yesterday I couldn’t get out of here fast enough. “I guess so,” I said.

  “I wanted to see you before you left. I have something for you.” In a sleight of hand that would have done a thief proud, he produced a slip of night-black, and held it out to me in his open palm. “It’s cold in the Carskadons in winter; you’ll need these.”

  Gloves. Almost invisible in the growing darkness, black lambskin with embroidered black vines running along the cuffs and up the thumb. Fitted snugly to my small hands, even the fingertips smooth and supple, they might have been made for me. A thief’s gloves. I wanted them. “Thank you,” I said before I forgot myself.

  As I lifted my arm to admire them, Durrel said, “Meri gave you her bracelet?”

  I looked at it, embarrassed. “I couldn’t get her not to.”

  He was nodding. “No, it’s good. I’m just surprised. Sometimes I forget she’s not a little girl anymore.” He looked off into the distance for a long moment. “There’s something else.” This time there was a strange note in his voice. I’d heard that sort of tone before — just before someone asked me to do a job that might cost me my head.

  “This is where I repay you for saving me?”

  A laugh. “Something like that. I’m glad you’re going home with the Nemair. They’ll be sympathetic to your situation. Believe me, my aunt and uncle are the last people who would send you back to that convent.”

  I eyed him warily. I didn’t say I was taking my gloves and running the instant we hit the road to Yeris Volbann.

  “But more than that, I’m glad somebody will be there for Meri. She may be legally an adult, almost, but she’ll always be like my little sister. She’s lived with the Decath since she was eight years old. We’re the only family she remembers. I’d be grateful if you’d keep an eye on her — be a friend to her.”

  “Milord, I — that is not my skill.”

  “Really?” he said. “Now why do I doubt that? I have a feeling about you.” He held out his hand again, this time with a sheathed dagger balanced in the flat of it. The scabbard was ornamented in silver, the hilt a swirl of pearl inlay. I shook my head and took a step back.

  “Take it,” he urged.

  A dagger was valuable. And I needed one, after losing my own blade. I took the weapon from his hands and drew it. The steel glinted in the light of Zet’s moon, and I saw the crest of a crowned dog bowing in red enamel on the hilt. This was a Decath weapon. This dagger was very valuable. “They’ll think I stole it,” I said.

  “No, they won’t.”

  “Why would you give this to me?”

  He gave a little grin. “A stray cat needs her claws.” Durrel bent low over me, until his mouth was very near my ear. “Stay with them, Celyn. Please.”

  I clutched the dagger tight in my gloved fingers. I had a feeling Durrel did not often have to beg a girl for something, and I was starting to feel the weight of all these gifts. Damnation. Every instinct I had was telling me to run, but if there was one thing even a thief believed in, it was that you did not turn your back on someone who’d pulled you out of a scrape. That was a debt you honored. With your life, if need be.

  Finally I nodded.

  “Are you — a Sarist?” I scarcely whispered the words into the night.

  He looked surprised. “Not me. I wish I had their conviction. I’m just a pawn on the vast Decath game board. I’m not allowed to have thoughts of my own. But I have a feeling it took a great deal more courage than I lay claim to, to do whatever you did in the last few days.”

  Courage. To leave Tegen behind in the hands of the Greenmen? “I’m no hero.”

  “Just staying alive’s heroic these days.” He drew back and took my shoulders in his hands. They were warm and strong. “Be well, Celyn Contrare.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Something was following me. I ducked behind a corner and listened for the footsteps. Light, scuffing — in the dark I couldn’t be sure whose. I pulled myself tighter into the shadows and held my breath. The footsteps slowed, turned. Fifteen feet away, maybe closer. Searching.

  I cast about for an escape. Any move would put me straight in my pursuer’s vision, but was I fast enough to scale that wall? Would the trellis hold my weight? Could I make it across the road and into the sewers before he grabbed me?

  Should I turn and fight?

  Pale fingers traced along the shadowed walls, searching for gaps. I held my breath until my chest was bursting, counted footsteps, weighed my options. Stay hidden. Don’t call attention to yourself. But the tension was unbear able. I ran.

  I was almost at the sewer when fingers brushed my neck, caught my belt. I swallowed a yelp and spun around, jamming the heel of my hand upward. It hit something hard and sharp, sparking pain through my forearm. I struggled, turning left and right, trying to pull free. Finally I ripped my knife from its sheath and sawed at my belt.

  Too slow. A long arm curved around my face, and I had to bite — hard. My knee jammed upward, and my attacker doubled over in the street. I resisted the urge to kick him while he was sprawled in the gutter, but cut the turquoise scarf from his face with my blade. I shoved my trophy into my sleeve and scrambled up the side of the tavern.

  Wintry sunlight spilled through the leaded glass and throbbed against my aching eyes, and for a moment I couldn’t remember where I was; my dream and its memories seemed more real than the last several days had been. I had known I was in trouble as soon as I breezed into the Mask & Barrel that night, brandishing the kerchief.

  “Damn it, Digger, you weren’t supposed to hurt anybody!” Tegen had said. He held a rag to his chin; his lip was swollen. I might have felt penitent, but not with that crowd assembled.

  “You grabbed me! What did you expect?”

  “I caught you! You were
supposed to surrender! Pox, I think you broke my damn jaw.”

  I pulled off my cap and shook down my hair, sliding up toward the bar. His strong arm blocked my progress. “If you’re caught by the City Guard, do you plan to beat the hell out of them until they let you go?”

  I scowled. “I don’t understand. Of course. You don’t expect me to let them catch me, do you? Isn’t that the first rule? Don’t get caught? Stay alive, no matter what?”

  I pressed my fingers against my eyes, trying to blot out the memory. I was alone in the bed; Meri was in her dressing gown, staring out the tiny window and its view of nothing. The country outside Favom had given way to a dark, forbidding forest, and this roadside inn was apparently the last habitation that dared to push back against Celys’s demesne.

  Meri turned from the window. “Bad dreams?” she asked.

  Her eyes went past me, to the bed. “Oh.” The bedclothes were a tangled mess, stripped from the mattress. My pillow looked as though I’d fought a battle with it. I shimmied to the side of the bed and swung my feet to the ground.

  “I have bad dreams too, sometimes,” she said softly.

  I withheld my snort. What kind of nightmares could haunt pretty Meri’s sleep? Someone taking away her pony privileges?

  I had been included in the party to Bryn Shaer after all. Merista’s parents didn’t just resemble their daughter physically, they also shared her easy sympathy, and when Meri recounted my harrowing escape from the Celystra, they insisted I stay with them. The only snag had come when Lady Nemair insisted on sending a letter to my “brother.”

  “The convent will surely have reported you missing by now, dear. We must let him know what’s become of you.”

  I couldn’t help protesting. “I’m an adult.”

  “Well, of course you are, but I’m sure he’s still worried about you.”

  “My brother stopped worrying about me a long time ago. Milady.”

  She just clucked and petted and wrote the damn letter. I scrambled for an address to send it to, then realized it didn’t matter. Deliver a letter to any house on — what was it, Ruby Lane? — and the recipient would merely be perplexed and bemused by the news of Celyn Contrare. Nobody would have any reason to put her together with the thief on the run from Greenmen. And I could manage a man’s handwriting well enough, should a return letter ever be required. I finally agreed, inventing a direction. I even consented to put down a few lines of my own, apologizing for my impulsiveness and begging my dear indulgent brother’s forgiveness. Marau’s balls.