StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “You are lost?” Graymantle repeated.

  “Yes. No. I’m just going to go back the way I came — I saw your — the little girl, and thought she might be, and — so lovely meeting you all, good night.” I made a sort of curtsy-bow cross and turned to leave.

  Graymantle gave another order in his strange language, and I froze, one hand gripping the hilt of my knife. A boy about my age or a little younger stood up from the fire. He was fair as Marlytt, with white-pale hair and blue eyes.

  “I’ll take you back to Bryn Shaer.” He spoke native Llyvrin, with a nearly imperceptible Carskadon accent. A local boy.

  Still eyeing Graymantle, I nodded warily. The boy brushed past me into the trees.

  “Stagne —” Graymantle said, and the boy turned back. The older man said a few words in that odd, smooth language with the disappear ing consonants, and the boy — Stagne, apparently — inclined his head. Graymantle accompanied us to the edge of the clearing, and put his hand on my shoulder in farewell.

  And I nearly collapsed from the weight of the magic rolling off him. Stagne grabbed my elbow and hauled me upright, but Graymantle’s hand, his arm, his whole person had lit up like he was consumed by white flame. Why hadn’t I seen it before? I had to look away, he was so impossibly bright with it — and saw that Stagne’s hand on my arm was flickering steadily too.

  “Are you quite well?” Graymantle leaned over me with concern, and it took all my effort to look at him and keep from squinting. I caught a glimpse of his left hand, which I realized he’d been carefully hiding in his mantle, and saw that the palm was branded with a deep purple star — a wizard’s tattoo. The Mark of Sar.

  Long ago, before magic had faded from the earth, wizards pledged to Sar were tattooed on each palm to show their loyalties. But that was hundreds of years ago. Nobody in Llyvraneth would be so foolish as to put the Mark of Sar on someone. Which meant he could only have received that mark in secret. Or in Corlesanne, where as far as I knew, worshipping Sar was still legal. But what were Corles Sarists doing in the woods outside Nemair lands?

  And how had this man come by so much magic?

  Oh, this was not my business.

  It took every thing I had not to break free of Stagne’s hand on my arm and flee straight back into the night. But I might actually need these people to get me home again. I shook my head. “Thank you, I’m just — very cold.”

  “Come back to the fire and warm up,” Stagne offered.

  I felt dizzy, my vision hazing over with all this magic. “No, I’ll be all right. They’ll start to miss me at Bryn Shaer.” Which was no more than the honest truth.

  “Very well. Good night, little Bryn Shaer girl.”

  Stagne led me easily through the trees, keeping up a quiet monologue that I gathered was meant to be reassuring: “Here, watch this branch. It’s a little deep there. Would you like to take my arm?” But I just shoved my hands farther into my sleeves and trudged along wordlessly after him. I could still feel the magic on my fingertips, like the prickling of a limb fallen asleep, and I didn’t like it. It had never happened before. But, then, I’d never encountered anyone like Graymantle before either.

  Back in the castle that night, I threw myself into Meri’s bed, crawling deep under the covers. Her warm plump body was like a furnace, heat and light rising from her as she breathed. I stared into the starlit darkness about her, my thoughts a whirl. Who were those men in the woods? Did anyone else at Bryn Shaer know about them? Ordinary Sarists — the kind Daul had me hunting down — were one thing. Disgruntled, passionate, a threat to the Goddess-ordained peace and order in Llyvraneth, yes. But these weren’t ordinary Sarists. These people had magic, which meant they were all kinds of danger.

  I just couldn’t decide if they were dangerous — or in danger.

  I pulled a feather pillow as tight round my head as I could, but I was still shivering when morning came.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I was edgy and addled as I dressed Meri for her ride the next day, but she didn’t seem to notice. My hands shook as I brushed her hair straight, watching the swirl of magic just dusting her skin. I imagined her suddenly flaring up as brightly as the Sarist in the woods, and nearly dropped the hairbrush.

  “Meri,” I said when she swapped me for the brush and started in on my hair, “have you ever seen anything — strange, on your rides?”

  “Strange?” she echoed. “Like what?”

  Like the six-foot-tall flaming candle and his merry band of outlaw wizards? That was one danger I’d bet even Berdal didn’t know about. “I don’t know, people? Your parents told us there were bandits in the forest. Maybe you shouldn’t ride out alone.”

  The brush stroked down the back of my head. “But I don’t ride out alone,” she said, and there was not a trace of anything but pure Meri honesty in her voice. She smiled at me in the mirror. “Your hair’s getting longer. Will you wear it up or down for my kernja-velde, do you think?”

  I stared at her. What did it matter? But I said, “I’m supposed to be practicing your hair.”

  She shrugged. “I like doing it. Maybe Phandre was right, and I should be a lady’s maid.”

  “Your parents would love that, I’m sure.”

  “Should I try it?” She struck a formal pose and said, “Mother, Father, I’ve decided not to wed Lord Cardom or Lord Sposa, and instead I’ll be running off to serve as Lady Celyn’s chambermaid. Will that upset your grand plans overmuch?” She gave a giggle and dropped down beside me on the bench. “You were so brave to leave the Celystra. I’d never be able to do that.”

  “There was nothing there for me. You have a lot to lose.”

  “What? Lands and a title?” She said it casually, but I heard an edge of bitterness in her voice.

  “No.” I turned to face her. “Parents who love you. A big family to take care of you. People like Durrel, and — Morva. Phandre.”

  “Phandre?” She cocked her eyebrows, but her lip twitched.

  “Maybe not Phandre,” I said, and she grinned.

  Still, a little of that cold dread stayed with me all morning. I made Meri promise she would stay close to the castle on her ride. She looked at me strangely, but agreed. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want Lady Lyll to find out I’d been running around outside the castle walls at night; I wasn’t sure what she’d say, but she was likely to curtail my movements around Bryn Shaer, just when I needed freedom.

  Worse, I’d lost Durrel’s knife. When Stagne led me out of the trees, I’d seen the lighted hulk of Bryn Shaer and launched myself toward it without a backward look, dumping the gamekeeper’s coat in a heap inside the mews, the knife not among its folds of fur and wool. I stuck my head back out into the icy night, but the snow was bare but for the deep furrow of my tracks. All that day I kept moving my hand to my thigh, checking for what wasn’t there. It wasn’t just being weaponless; there had been something about its heavy presence that I’d found comforting, some tie to the world outside the Carskadons.

  I craved the peace and calm of Lady Lyll that morning, but down in the stillroom, my thoughts were scattered and wild. I mistook the order of ingredients in an unguent I could make from memory, and it wouldn’t set up.

  “Celyn? Are you quite all right? You’re not yourself today.”

  I just shook my head, and cleaned up the mess of the ointment I’d been preparing. “I’m sorry, milady. I won’t waste any more.”

  “No worries, Celyn,” Lyll said softly. “I was thinking about you.”

  Instead of starting a new batch of ointment, I leafed through the pages of her herbal, the heavy handwritten book that guided our hands in the stillroom.

  “Where did you learn all this?” I asked her.

  Lady Lyll’s fingers brushed the pages. “Did they not have herbals at the Celystra?”

  “Books like this?” I almost laughed at the thought. “No — believe me, we had no books like this when I was there.” Lyll’s herbal would have been locked up tight
in the bowels of the Celystra scriptorium, or consigned to the balefires.

  “But surely the priests and hospitallers have the knowledge of healing? What did they do when someone fell ill?”

  Something about her voice told me she knew the answer already, but I answered anyway. “Mostly they just prayed. They said Celys would choose to save who she would, and send for Marau to carry away those who did not meet her favor.”

  “Celyn,” Lady Lyll said patiently. “Celys is a goddess of life. She has given us herbs and fruits and flowers that can cure, that can heal, that can save lives and ease pain. Does it not make sense that she would want us to use them?”

  I just shrugged, because when did the gods ever make sense?

  Like a lot of thieves, I knew some basic tavern medicine — how to stanch bleeding, stitch a cut, bind a broken bone — but nobody understood how to keep poison from a wound, save a rotten limb, or bring down a dangerous fever. There were always guesses, of course, and people more than willing to make a profit on those guesses. Apothecaries and potioners’ shops abounded in Gerse, selling ridiculous decoctions that were as likely to make you worse as better. And when summer fevers ravaged the city, as they did nearly every year, the Celystra’s response was to shut tight its doors to protect its own, and ring the temple bells out in prayer.

  But here was real knowledge, real medicine to treat the sick and the injured. Forbidden knowledge in Llyvraneth. If Bardolph hadn’t closed the Sarist college in Breijardarl, Llyvrins might have learned this too, along with astronomy and anatomy and the other sciences Lady Lyll had talked about.

  “How do they get away with it?” I said, reading an entry showing disorders of the liver. I held my fingers to the rusty-red pictures, as if there were some power to be absorbed from the page, beyond the simple, clear meaning of the words. But these words were just words, plain and simple and true — and yet powerful in their own way for all that.

  Lady Lyll touched my wrist with her warm hand. “We let them, Celyn,” she said, and her voice was low and fierce. “We let them.”

  I didn’t know what to do with her fierceness, and so I just hid my head in another batch of the ointment I had fouled. Lady Lyll stepped out for a moment to fetch more water from the kitchens, and I was left alone in the stillroom for the first time. I looked around me, almost in awe of this room of hidden knowledge. I was hungry for it — to understand the secrets inside every bottle, every packet, in all those books. It was even more intoxicating than Antoch’s library. Taking advantage of Lady Lyll’s absence, I pulled another volume off the shelf.

  I thought at first it was the gamekeeper’s ledger, for there was a detailed listing of game birds, along with numbers and shorthand notations I couldn’t make out, but it was in Lady Lyll’s firm, tidy script. Tucked between notes on the new construction at Bryn Shaer — tile orders and the payment of Breijard workmen — I found something familiar and out of place: a scrap of embroidery, rows of black and scarlet on white linen, with some of the stitches cut out.

  I ran my fingers along the cut bits, frowning. One mangled sampler was strange. Two was suspicious. I cast my eye along the pattern, which was mostly obscured now, but counting the repeats and the images that remained. I thought there were five repeats. No, she could only find four. I had dozed through that conversation, but it pricked at my mind now. Was there more to this than just silk and linen?

  The more I looked at the stitching, the more I felt sure of it. Hidden in those torn stitches was a message. From Lady Cardom to Lady Lyll, about what? I tried to remember. Something about Lady Cardom’s daughter, and the place she lived. Gairveyont. A castle on Llyvraneth’s southeastern coast. Four repeats, when Lady Lyll had been hoping for five. Five what? They’re only offering their daughter because they want our help.

  Help with what? I turned back to the page in the ledger book about the construction, thinking about those fortified bailey walls. Five ships? Five cannon? Five — rosebushes? I had no clue what I was looking at.

  But Tiboran hadn’t marked me as a fool. I knew it was something. I stuffed the scrap of cloth into my bodice, just as Lady Lyll pushed open the stillroom door.

  I brought the embroidery to Daul, interested to see what he’d make of it. We met in the servants’ hallway behind the Round Court, both pieces of cut-up stitchery in my hand.

  “What is this?” he said, predictably.

  “Isn’t that your job? ‘Let me decide what’s suspicious’?” But I recounted the conversation between Lady Lyll and Lady Cardom. “Maybe it has something to do with the new defenses.”

  Daul sighed and took them. “Very well. I will look into it. Is that all?”

  I bristled. “I went to a lot of work to get those. I hid in a freezing window for an hour. You could at least pretend to be interested.”

  “Bring me something interesting, and I will.”

  “Fine. But I want to be paid.” Enough of working for threats and intimidation. I wanted something real out of this job.

  His gaze sharpened. “You have something, then?”

  I gave a faint shrug.

  “The journal?”

  “Forget the damn journal. This is better.” For the first time, I had something I knew he wanted, and the power of that made my blood feel hot.

  He rolled his head back in exasperation. “Five marks — if it’s something useful.”

  “Ten. It is. And I’m going to need a knife.”

  “I need a thief, not a mercenary. Who are you planning to use it on?” But I heard amusement in his voice.

  “You.”

  He did laugh then, a thin sound like the barking of foxes. Something stiff cracked in my own face, and I thought perhaps I was almost smiling.

  “You’re very amusing, little mouse. Give it to me.”

  I hesitated. I had to tell somebody — this knowledge was too big for me alone. I was crawling with it, like fleas, and I’d go mad trying not to scratch. Let Daul get bitten for once.

  “There are Sarists camping in the woods behind Bryn Shaer.”

  Daul’s expression shifted from surprise to . . . something else. “I don’t pay for fantasies.”

  I shook my head, described the camp I’d seen. Well, campfire.

  “A band of filthy beggars, no doubt.”

  “No doubt. And they stole their purple cloaks.”

  He wheeled his gaze around, leaned very close. “Outlaws. Brigands.”

  “Not these guys. Their leader had a purple tattoo on his hand.”

  Daul pulled himself away from me and smoothed down his doublet. “That’s worth a half-noble at most,” he said, fishing for the coin. I caught it smoothly as it sailed toward me. “Get yourself a knife from the kitchens. I trust a girl of your talents can handle that much.” He pushed past me into the Round Court. “I’ll give you the rest of your fee when you bring me the journal.”

  Turning the coin over in my hand, I watched him leave. It was a neat solution to my problem; I had found Daul some real Sarists, and in chasing them down, maybe he’d turn his attention away from me for a few days. I tried not to think too much about what would happen if he caught them.

  After dinner, everyone gathered in the Lesser Court for games. I played a match of chess with Eptin Cwalo while the others engaged in a lackadaisical round of riddles, a silly game that usually started out innocent and degenerated after the glasses were filled a few times. Meri excelled at it — both in guessing the answers and in posing cryptic questions.

  Cwalo had taken the seat closest to the fire, and the flames leaping all about his small shiny face made him look weird and sinister. Luckily the particular brand of chess he’d chosen, a fast-moving game popular in the south, was one I knew well. I played it by raucous, reckless tavern rules, knocking over his pieces and sacrificing my own with abandon. A slow grin of delight spread across his pasty features.

  “My word, Lady Celyn — you have a fearless streak about you.”

  I grinned back and hooked his Court
ier from the game board. “I just hate to lose.”

  “When it’s a cold soup!” Meri exclaimed from across the room. “When is a pigeon not a bird?” She was smiling widely, her color high. Antoch looked on, ever the proud father. Daul sat beside them, thin legs stretched out lazily, watching everyone with a sort of bored, scorn ful gaze.

  “When it’s a fowling piece,” my opponent offered in a low, smooth voice. I scrunched my face in confusion, and Cwalo explained, “There’s a large gun for hunting birds they call a ‘pigeon.’ No one knows why.”

  “Master Cwalo, do you know every thing?” I turned the game piece over in my hands, a silver figurine in the shape of a nob sketching a bow.

  “Perhaps not every thing, milady.” He reached toward me to Bargain back the lost man, brushing his hand against my sleeve. “But do you know who is exceptionally well-informed?” he said. “My son Andor.”

  “Your sons again! Did you ever think I might like some of these other families, their sons? What would you say then?” I made a ridiculously demure move with my Maid — one that put her directly in sight of his newly reclaimed Courtier.

  “I’d say your interest was not misplaced.” He sat back in his tall chair, eyeing me through the pyramid of his fingers.

  “Indeed?” I slid my Maid down the game board. “If I were a maid in the market for a husband, do you think they’d have anything to offer me?”

  “Mayhap. Who are you interested in?”

  “I find Lord Cardom pleasing,” I said lightly. “What sort of assets does he have?”

  “The Cardom are from Tratua. They can offer you ships.” He put the Galleon on the board, between the Maid and my Lady.

  It was fun playing the nob with Cwalo. “What kind of ships?”

  “What kind do you need?” Cwalo’s voice was still casual, but he spoke quietly, and his eyes had gone cool and serious. I stared at him for a moment, then hazarded a dangerous, wild guess.

  “Warships?”

  “That could be arranged.”

  I breathed in sharply, suddenly sure we weren’t playing a game anymore.