StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “Anyone else catch your eye, my lady?”

  What was he doing? Still, Cwalo might have even more information about our fellow guests than Marlytt. It was worth a try. “Uh — Wellyth?”

  “Timber.”

  City girl that I am, I faltered here. “What would I do with timber?”

  “For firewood, bridges . . . siege engines. And ships.”

  I glanced at Lord Antoch. Meri sat at his feet, and he had one massive hand resting softly on her head. Lady Lyll leaned close to Lord Sposa, and was speaking to him in what appeared to be serious tones.

  “Sposa.”

  “Lord Sposa is from Gelnir. He has grain.” To feed your army.

  “And the Nemair?” I asked. “What — what do they bring to this union?”

  Cwalo picked up my Lady piece and a Flag that was not on the board, laying them side by side. “Allies. They have friends in Corlesanne. And Corlesanne has friends in Varenzia.”

  I felt a tremor in my blood. First the castle’s new defenses, and now this — Cwalo had as good as told me the Nemair were preparing for war. But was it just the sensible precautions of diplomats reading the political climate? Noble families all over Llyvraneth would want to be prepared, whenever princes Wierolf and Astilan finally came to blows over their uncle’s throne. Or was Daul right, and there was something more . . . covert going on here?

  A burst of laughter lifted from the other side of the room. “When is a sovereign not a noble?” That was Lord Sposa.

  The riddle was about coins, but Daul leaned forward languidly, and said, “When it’s Bardolph of Hanival, of course.”

  Everyone laughed, but I tensed and looked at Cwalo. He was watching me steadily.

  “And what does Lord Daul bring?”

  Cwalo said nothing, just took the Courtier off the game board and set it on the table. With it he put my Flag, my Regent, and my Cleric. Country, king, and church. It matched Daul’s own claims, his implications that he was a loyal anti-Sarist with friends near the Crown.

  “Are you sure?”

  A shrug. Almost imperceptible. What did that mean?

  Cwalo continued rearranging the chess pieces. Galleon, Lady, Courtier, and Knife together on one side of the board; Regent, Cleric, Ring, and Flag on the other. I watched the pieces, confused, but he kept stacking more and more men on the Regent’s side, until it utterly overwhelmed the others. What was he telling me? Slowly he turned the Knife toward the smaller force, its own men, and drove it through the center of the line.

  “There are questions about the war that have never been answered,” he said. “What happened at Kalorjn, who’s really to blame for the rebels’ defeat. But it’s a remarkable turn of events that for the first time ever, all the people who might be able to answer them are here together. All those still living, that is. And among them, there are some who might be, shall we say, strongly motivated to find out the truth.”

  On the game board, the pieces were starting to twist together into a glittering knot. I wasn’t completely sure what Cwalo meant, but I was beginning to suspect there was more going on here than anyone was saying. When Lyll rose and beckoned us to join the rest of the group, I gave Master Cwalo one last hard look. “Why did you tell me all of this?”

  “I think it may not be a bad thing for the Nemair to have someone fearless on their side.” He eased back in his chair and took a sip of his wine. “You know, Lady Celyn, my son Garod enjoys a game of chess every now and then.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I was full of questions the next morning — about Daul, about the Nemair and their guests, about Meri’s secret rides. I had determined to follow her, make sure she didn’t accidentally track into the woodsmen at the same time as Daul. But it was snowing again, a horrible howling blizzard that flung snow at Bryn Shaer from all directions, and Meri happily stayed tucked in bed until even Phandre declared it past time for getting up. It also meant Daul wouldn’t be able to go looking for them just yet. Or maybe, I thought hopefully, he might go out and be swallowed up by the storm.

  My information about the Sarists was good enough to keep him off my back for a few days, though I still hadn’t found his phantom journal. But I’d fallen into a rhythm, and I kind of liked it: stillroom or solar in the morning, breaking into the guest rooms in the afternoon, getting to dinner late, and falling into bed with Meri after.

  Daul’s obsession with that journal fascinated me, particularly in light of the curious lock on his door, and now Cwalo’s cryptic conversation. What was in there he was so eager to find? I also didn’t like the idea that the journal might be here somewhere and I couldn’t find it. That just chafed. If there was a journal, then I’d find a journal, and maybe it would straighten out some of the twining knot of secrets I was caught in. Or at least maybe tell me why Remy Daul was so eager to prove his best friends were Sarists.

  I’d already searched the most obvious location, Lord Antoch’s suites, three times, and found nothing. There was no journal among the books in Lady Lyll’s stillroom, or the cookery manuals in the kitchens. Even Meri’s small collection of volumes, lovingly carried from Favom Court, had been gone through. I started looking under things, but I’d frankly begun to believe one of three things had happened: The book never existed, it was lost to the ravages of time, or Antoch had long ago tossed it into a fire. There was something appealing about that last option, but only because it supported Daul’s interest in the thing.

  The snowfall lasted two entire days, putting the work on clearing the avalanche even farther behind. My suggestion that the entire Bryn Shaer court hike down there to help was ignored. At last a morning dawned clear and bright, and Meri got up to ride. I got her dressed, and was fast on her heels, bundling into my coat and gloves, but I lost time trying to find appropriate footwear (I had to sneak into the kitchen and steal the spit-boy’s sturdy leather shoes — the only other person in this castle with feet as small as mine, apparently). And then I ran into Phandre in the stairwell, locked in a predatory embrace with Ludo, the servant who was so friendly with her door latch. I had to gag, then slip quietly back up the stair so she wouldn’t see me, then down the hall to the main stair, which took me to the utter wrong side of the Lodge — and by the time I got to the stables, Meri was long gone.

  I slumped against the stable wall with a sigh. I could still follow, maybe — but when I let myself out the paddock door, I saw no tracks in the snow to tell me where she’d gone. Even I should be able to track a girl on horseback in freshly fallen snow, but a treacherous mountain wind swirled along the surface, brushing every thing smooth again.

  Pox. I turned back for Bryn Shaer, but something made me pause and go back through the stables. And there in the first stall by the door, waiting hopefully for her mistress, was the white and spotted pony Berdal had been grooming days before. I looked at her, eyes narrowing. Hard to go riding without your horse.

  “Lady Celyn?” I turned; it was Berdal, coming down the center aisle with a rag in one hand. “Come for that riding lesson?”

  “I was looking for Lady Merista,” I said.

  He shook his head. “She’s not been here this morning. But if I see her, I’ll tell her you were looking for her.”

  “No, don’t — I mean, don’t bother. I’ll catch up with her soon enough.”

  Curious, puzzled, I wandered slowly back up to the house, hardly noticing the cold. Where was our girl going? I was sure Lady Lyll didn’t know about it — she hardly let Meri go to the privy alone. I felt a spike of pride. Little Meri, off on an adventure of her own.

  Which was none of my business, of course, and about which I cared not a whit.

  Back up in our rooms, I shucked off my coat and kicked open the chest where I stored my shoes, since I was just going to have to do this again tomorrow anyway, and the spit-boy had a nice cozy post in the kitchen; what did he need shoes for —

  And discovered where Merista Nemair was spending her mornings.

  Lying in the chest atop
my shoes and belts, where I always kept it, was Durrel Decath’s pearl-handled dagger.

  The one I’d lost in the woods with the Sarists.

  I dropped to my knees on the floor, staring at the clothes trunk, those cold, clutching fingers grabbing at my chest again. I picked up the knife, but it swirled now with residual magic, like finger smears on the blade, and when I wiped it with my skirts, it only got all over me. I pulled my dress up, exposing my leg — but it didn’t feel safe anymore. I dropped my skirts and left the knife where Meri had put it.

  The red jewel in its hilt winked up at me from the pile of stockings and slippers. Be a friend to her, Celyn. Pox and bloody hells.

  I started with the shoe chest, then the desk and cupboard and the prayer stand. Under the cushions of the window seat. Inside my old hiding spot (I’d found another, in the hollow beneath a loose stair tread in the servants’ stair). I even popped Phandre’s door and took a peek around her sparse belongings. Where would Merista Nemair store her girlish secrets?

  I was lost. They were so much bigger than I’d ever suspected from her, but as I looked around the room, I forced myself to stop and think. Really think about this. About the dreamy smiles on Meri’s face after her morning “rides.” About the fair-haired local boy who’d walked me back so confidently to Bryn Shaer. In the dark. It was possible.

  As I stood there, the window seat kept tugging at me. It was hollow for storage — we kept blankets there — but the compartment wasn’t as deep as it should have been. I pulled the cushions off and flipped the lid, tapping and pressing along all the seams in the boards of the bottom. Was I looking for a panel, a door, a spring? I dug my too-long fingernails into every gap, feeling for a latch. But there was nothing. On the outside, then. I worked my hands along the carvings at the base, the sculpted rosettes and swooping leaves, until my fingers found the place where one rose’s center sat a little too deep. I gave it a gentle push, heard the click, and watched the panel spring back to reveal the hollow.

  “Oh, Meri — very nice.” What obliging parents the Nemair must be, to outfit their daughter’s bedroom with a secret compartment. And to outfit their daughter with two heavy silver chains and a thick silver bracelet. And a protector like Cousin Durrel. And a secure mountain stronghold in which to pass into adulthood unthreatened.

  I sat back on my heels. Life for a nob with magic would come with peculiar challenges. Up until now she’d been able to lead a relatively sheltered life — her parents were overseas, and she was young enough not to be much in demand in society. But she was just about to come of age, get married, and be thrust into public life, with all the visibility and gossip and touching that came with that life. I knew how easily a nob’s secrets could be exposed. Was it possible that along with the training in housekeeping and the social graces, the Nemair had brought Meri to Bryn Shaer for her to learn to manage her magic?

  Nobs’ children with embarrassing secrets — too many fingers, a susceptibility to fits — were normally offered up to the Celystra for a soft life as honored servants of the Goddess. And the Celystra was only too eager to accept them, and the fat dowries they brought with them.

  I could imagine all too well what the Celystra would do with a girl like Merista Nemair.

  I reached my hand inside the hidden opening. The cavity was not large — you couldn’t hide a whole Sarist rebel down there, or even his spare clothing.

  But it was plenty big enough for a couple of missing books. I pulled out the first small volume: the gray primer on magic from Antoch’s library. It left behind enough of its not-quite-light for me to see the object that had been sharing its quarters. I fetched it into daylight as well: a worn book of black leather, a mark embossed on the spine: a wide, curving cross inside a circle. The seal of the House of Daul.

  First Daul, now Meri? What was in this book that made it so irresistible? My fingers practically itched as I cracked it open.

  To — nothing. I flipped through a few pages in smooth black script, but it seemed to be nothing more than some kind of treatise on hunting. There were detailed chapters on dressing the horses, the best weather and terrain for various game, and endless advice on training the dogs. Definitely a nob’s book, but why was Daul so keen for it? And why did Meri have it?

  Pox, this didn’t make any damn sense. And it wasn’t my business. We never read the documents we stole, not any more than necessary to be sure they were the right ones. What was I doing? Getting involved, that’s what.

  And that was the third rule.

  Stay alive.

  Don’t get caught.

  Don’t get involved.

  But I hadn’t signed on for this job. I’d been recruited. I figured I had some right to know what I was being asked to do. And I didn’t like being played.

  I sat with the book on my lap and scowled at it. Well, why do people usually want documents stolen? Because the documents say something bad about them or contain secrets they don’t want revealed. I turned to the end and made my search more carefully. Sections of pages through the book were blank, as if the author’s thoughts had been interrupted and he’d started back up again at random, and as I flipped through the empty leaves, I found something. Someone had filled a page or two with childish, exuberant drawings — a sketch of a typical Gersin river house, a bounding deer whose head was too big, a black mountain menaced by a great dark cloud.

  But there in a corner, among a squiggle of random shapes and inky finger-smudges, was something else entirely. Someone had taken blue and red inks, and traced them over each other to make purple. And in that makeshift, forbidden violet ink, someone had drawn stars, a whole constellation of them. Purple stars, with seven points, the seventh longer than the rest. The symbol of Sar.

  Was this what Daul was after? This page of scribbles in some old hunting guide was the compelling evidence he sought against the Nemair? Even as my fingers trembled, I scowled at the improbabil ity of it.

  And then I turned the page, and any desire to hand the journal over to Daul shriveled up inside me. I knew that handwriting — I was get ting to know the handwriting of everybody at Bryn Shaer — and I felt those cold fingers scrabbling at my heart again as I read the words Meri had been copying out: The Seeing Dream. To Appear Without Form. The Sacred Circle. The Dreamless Sleep. It went on for pages — not just the words, but symbols and diagrams, all copied from the Sarist book we’d found in Antoch’s rooms.

  Meri was teaching herself magic. Word by word, through rote memorization, using the pages of a half-empty book she’d found in her father’s study, she was working her way through the principles and lessons of the old mages.

  I held the journal tightly in my hands, wondering. Did she do this alone? Was there anyone working with her, to show her how to shape the symbols, make the words more than words? Or must she do this in secret, late at night, under the guise of sewing by moonslight — her bedfellow and companion possibly even under the influence of this Dreamless Sleep? You sleep so soundly, you never notice.

  I pressed my fingers to the pages Meri was using as a workbook, watching the mist bunch together on the paper. Somewhere she’d crossed from scribbles to spellcraft. Did she know? Was there some special ink required? What put the magic into the paper? All good questions, and I didn’t want to know the answers.

  The spring I turned eleven, temple guards captured a man with magic inside the cloistered gates. He was a harmless old gaffer who traded his skills as a tinker for fruit and honey grown inside the Celystra. There was no proof he’d been seditious, or even that he’d ever used his magic. By all accounts, he was a devout Celyst, and came to worship every week at the chapel, laying prayer stones for his family. He liked the convent children, and once brought a small girl a sugar mouse.

  When he was exposed, they stripped him naked, cut off his hands and burned them, then suspended him upside down from the Hanging Ash, so he’d bleed to death right there in the green courtyard.

  He was killed because someone had seen th
e magic on his skin.

  Because I’d told my brother what I’d seen.

  I learned to keep quiet after that, that my touch was dangerous, and secrecy was the only way to ensure survival. There was no way of knowing who to trust, so it became safer not to talk about it at all, just pretend I was like everybody else, I didn’t see anything. And as soon as I could, I’d done the thing Meri and Durrel had thought so brave. I’d run away from that place and tried not to look back. Tegen was the only one who knew my secret, and he’d found out by accident. We never spoke of it, and he’d never told another living soul, until yelling, Digger, run! with a knife to his throat.

  Was it like that for Meri? A fight to always stay hidden, stay unnoticed, pretend she was like everybody else? My parents are heroes, you know. Sarist heroes, of a rebellion that would have decriminalized magic. What was it like to be their daughter — their magical daughter?

  I looked up, past the window seat, out into the snowy world below. Had she found someplace where she didn’t have to hide, even for an hour a day, weather permitting?

  Without thinking, I reached for the magic book, flipped it open, and laid my hand palm down on the pages, until I had one hand on the journal, one on the primer. The air turned watery and thick, shimmering against my skin. I could only see it, and how I hated the hiding and the fear. Being able to wield it must be unbearable.

  Carefully, I closed the journal and the book and replaced them inside the hidden compartment. I did my job, tidying up the linen chest and the window seat, making sure the room was perfect and undisturbed. I laid out Meri’s clothes, and changed into a fresh dress for the day.

  And then I strapped Durrel’s dagger to my thigh, right where it belonged.

  I’d found what Daul wanted, but there was no way in seven hells I would give it up to him, not now.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I charged out of Meri’s rooms with purpose but without direction. The hallways of Bryn Shaer were empty, and I scurried downstairs to where Lady Lyll would be waiting in the stillroom, but the little workroom was locked, and there was no answer when I tugged on the door. No Meri, no Lyll. I had Daul’s journal, but couldn’t give it to him. Full of energy and nowhere to fling it, I let myself back out into the courtyard, where wind and servants had swept most of the snow into the corners. It was a cold, clear day, and the rooks wheeled around the white tower, voicing their eerie cries into the thin air.