StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  I stopped for a moment, watching them. Their movements were hypnotic, curving through the sky in smooth black arcs, like lines of ink on a blank page. Something tugged at my memory, but my thoughts were too scattered to draw it out.

  One of the rooks dived toward the earth, a straight swift plummet — and my heart went with it. Daul.

  I had told him about the Sarists in the woods.

  Meri’s Sarists.

  I gave my bodice a yank and set across the courtyard at a run. Now that I knew where Meri had gone, I might actually be able to track her, but instead I turned back to the Lodge. Berdal had told me Daul spent mornings with Lord Antoch, so I headed for the Armory, a long, wide room linking the Lodge with the older Bryn Shaer, where the men often assembled while the women gathered in the solar.

  Inside, Daul was fencing with Antoch, while Lord Wellyth and Eptin Cwalo rearranged the markers on a map table. I hung just inside the door. Antoch and Daul were oddly matched, and it was like watching a bear dodge a whip. Antoch moved with an unexpected fluid grace, like Meri when she danced, though Daul slashed at him with a frenzied focus, driv ing him back and back. Daul struck a point, to a round of applause from their audience — Marlytt and Phandre hanging on the arms of Lord Sposa and Lord Cardom — and Antoch gave a bow, handing over his sword.

  Daul stepped back, wiping an arm against his forehead. “Let’s go again.”

  “Nay, Remy, you’ve beaten me enough!” Antoch laughed. “Come sit by the fire and warm up.” He turned away, but Daul grabbed his arm.

  “Again.” He raised his sword and darted back.

  But Antoch turned slowly, with a dark look I’d never seen before. He took three swift paces toward Daul and caught him by the shoulder. “Have done,” he said very softly, but the room almost shook with the warning in his voice.

  Daul went rigid, gripping his weapon. I saw Marlytt stiffen, pulling slightly away from Lord Sposa. Then Antoch’s face broke into a grin. “Come, brother — enough fighting for one morning. Peace?” He held out his hand.

  Daul shook him off, stuck the practice swords carelessly into their rack, and stalked off across the room. I pulled back, deciding this probably wasn’t the best moment to talk to him, but he stopped at a long table and poured himself a drink. Across the room, Lord Antoch shook his head and turned back to the fire.

  Very well. Daul and Meri both accounted for. Now what? I wandered more slowly down the hallway, until I found myself back in the courtyard once more. I looked up at the white tower, still occupied by its family of rooks, marching along the crenellated battlement, poking their beaks through the narrow slits. Why did that seem so strangely familiar — and significant? I watched them, tapping my fingers against my lips, until I finally tapped something loose.

  I slipped back inside, straight for the stillroom, and nicked Lady Lyll’s account ledger. I would have to bring it back immediately, of course — there was no way someone as efficient as Lady Lyll wouldn’t notice it was missing. But tucked in the stairwell, I slowly flipped through the pages until I found the catalogue of the birds at Bryn Shaer:

  Pigeons: 125

  Falcons: 15

  Gyrfalcons: 12 and two very fine

  Drakes: 5

  Crows: 24 by count

  “I found you,” I whispered into the neatly inked pages. When is a pigeon not a bird? I knew Lyll kept precise records, but I had been to Bryn Shaer’s mews, and though everyone here enjoyed poultry and falconry as much as the next nob, they didn’t have a hundred and twenty-five pigeons. I had seen one or two falcons, not a dozen or more. Lady Lyll had taken a careful account of something — something that would look innocent to prying eyes.

  But it wasn’t birds.

  A fowling-piece called a pigeon, Cwalo had said. A gun.

  I cornered Marlytt the next day. I had to drag her away from a tennis match between Daul and Lord Cardom (who was surprisingly good, for all his size). In the hall, she clutched at my arm, looking anxious.

  “Digger, please be careful. Someone is bound to notice.”

  “Did you tell me Eptin Cwalo was an arms merchant?”

  She just looked at me. “I suppose — why?”

  I paced down the hall. Marlytt didn’t need to be involved in this, but she was still my best source of information. “But you said he was from Yeris Volbann, didn’t you? That’s west of the Carskadons.”

  “Digger, you’re talking nonsense.”

  “Am I? Cwalo came here with you and Daul — from Breijardarl. That’s east. What was he doing over there?”

  She gave her dainty shrug. “Exactly what he said he was doing — buying fruit and wine? I think you’d be glad of that too, that he and Lyll so thoughtfully stocked the larders before we were all snowed in here.”

  I let her go. The Nemair had been sending shipments over the mountains for months before we arrived, and big things too: furniture, cloth, casks of ale, tapestries, all the fine wood and stone used to build the Lodge. The disassembled crates were stacked in the older part of the castle, but it would hardly be a difficult matter for a man as shrewd as Eptin Cwalo to label something “pears,” when what was really inside was — gyrfalcons. It made too much sense; what good were new artillery walls without new artillery? What if Cwalo wasn’t just a wine merchant desperate for daughters-in-law? Cardom, ships. Wellyth, timber. Sposa, grain. In his account of what the assembled families had to offer the Nemair, he’d left one out: Cwalo, guns.

  It was like having an itch under my corset — it was going to niggle away at me until I scratched it. Daul was going to niggle at me. With a whistle and a wave to the rooks who’d given me the idea, I set off to find Bryn Shaer’s missing birds.

  My search took me back to the old part of the castle and its raised battlements. I wanted another look at the walls — not that I’d know what I was looking at. Maybe I could persuade Eptin Cwalo to give me another tour. Marau’s balls. A stair inside the white tower wound up to a wide walkway overlooking the whole castle. Arrow loops spiraled up alongside it, making a series of tiny windows in all directions. I remembered Antoch miming a firearm on the battlement. Would these tiny slits be useful for the new artillery, or were we too far away from anything to get good range?

  And then I banged my head softly against the wall for even having such a thought.

  I pushed my way through a short arched door onto a raised walkway ringing the tower. Wind whipped at my head. I could see all of Bryn Shaer’s lands, down to the dip of the Breijarda Velde. Men and dogs were still working at clearing the snow, and from up here, they looked tiny and ineffectual. They probably looked tiny and ineffectual down there too. Something in the snowy distance closer to the castle caught my eye — a lone figure on a white horse, bundled in a red coat, streaming across the white fields toward the trees. Oh, Meri, I thought. We need to teach you a thing or two about stealth.

  And then I remembered she had eluded me already, and kept her lone morning jaunts a secret to everyone except perhaps the groom. Maybe she wasn’t doing too badly on her own after all.

  I pulled my coat closer and tried to recall what Cwalo and Antoch had told me about defending Bryn Shaer. The way they had talked about artillery and artillery walls, it had sounded more hypothetical than real, but there were five main towers — each corner of the outer bailey, the white tower I stood upon, and a square gatehouse perched right above the sheer drop Cwalo had so enthusiastically pointed out to me. Five towers, five drakes. Even I knew you’d need a big gun to defend a tower. Like a cannon.

  So where were they?

  Behind me, I heard the door being shoved open. Startled, I spun, and Daul stepped out onto the ledge with me.

  “What are you doing here?” I glanced past him; the curve of the tower partially blocked his view of Meri, moving with excruciating delay toward the fringe of trees. I made a mad decision and headed toward him.

  “Looking for Sarists?” he said, a note of amusement in his voice.

  “Of course I a
m,” I snapped. “Don’t you know they’ve added snow and crow droppings to the Inquisition’s Catalogue of Transgression?” I made to push past him, but his arm came up and blocked my path.

  “Not so fast. Any more entertaining lies to sell me this morning?”

  “What?”

  “Sarists in the woods,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous slip of sound. “Very diverting. You truly are Tiboran’s own child. To think I very nearly believed you.”

  “I wasn’t —” I stopped myself just in time. “You didn’t find them.”

  “ ‘You didn’t find them,’ ” he echoed. “You’re fortunate I enjoy riding out into the wilderness chasing the fantasies of little girls, but I would advise you to adhere more closely to the truth than you’re probably accustomed to, if you don’t want me to dissolve our little partnership.”

  “Good! I wish you would.”

  Daul leaned in close enough that I could smell his clove-scented breath. “I think you misunderstand me. If you stop working for me, little mouse, you’ll never work for anyone again.” The icy wind shrieked around the tower. “Just remember how many sheer drops there are in these mountains, and how very much snow.”

  I pulled back. “I’m tired of your threats,” I said, but I sounded unconvincing.

  He held my arm and squeezed. “Show me some good work, then, and perhaps I won’t feel so compelled to make them.”

  Below us, Meri had finally reached the woods. Smoothly she dismounted and tethered her horse to a tree. And then just stood there, stroking its nose.

  “Why are you doing this? Going after the Nemair?”

  His gaze went straight over my head, out into some shadowy distance. “Because someone has to. You know that too — I’ve seen the way you look at them. What is it you called them — nobs? Men like Antoch Nemair think they can get away with anything, and it has to stop. He’ll find out soon enough that lands and a title won’t protect him from the Goddess’s justice.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  His gaze fell on me, clear and sharp as ever. “You don’t need to understand. You need only to obey. Go along now; I believe you have a report due.”

  I wasn’t budging, not until Meri disappeared into those dark trees. “Report of what?” I asked wildly. “I haven’t found anything else!” Just the hints from Cwalo and Lady Lyll’s weird notations, which, without evidence, added up to exactly nothing. Oh, yes, and the little matter of magical Merista Nemair and the wizards in the woods.

  A figure in violet, with a fair pale head, stepped out of the trees and opened his arms to Meri. Stagne. I had to keep Daul occupied until they turned back into the forest.

  “What’s in that journal you want so badly? Don’t you have enough evidence yet to send your Greenmen friends?”

  Daul’s expression darkened. “No. The journal is . . . a personal interest.”

  “A personal interest?” I repeated. Mainly because Meri and Stagne were still lingering by Meri’s horse, stroking and patting it. Sweet Tiboran — was I going to have to kiss the man? “I charge extra for personal interest.”

  “Enough.” He loomed over me, and for a moment really looked like he could send me over the edge, and it would be nothing for him. “What was amusing grows tiresome. Do the work you’re capable of, or there will be consequences.”

  “Wait — what about this?” In desperation, I dipped into my bodice and pulled out the letters I’d been carrying for weeks, crumpled and warm from being up against my body. “They’re not from Bryn Shaer, but I think they might be useful to you, in some way.”

  Daul’s gaze sharpened, and he released his grip on my arm. I used my freedom to unfold Chavel’s letters. “Look. Here’s a letter from Secretary Chavel to somebody in Corlesanne — asking after ‘friends’ in Varenzia. That could be suspicious,” I added hopefully. “I don’t know what that second page is, but that last one —”

  Daul’s eyes lifting over the paper and settling on my face were enough to stop me cold.

  “Well, you can see for yourself,” I finished.

  “Where did you come by these?”

  I shrugged. “Are they any use to you?”

  Daul was difficult to read, but he gave the third letter — the one that had so shocked Marlytt with its news of a royal bounty on Prince Wierolf — only a cursory glance.

  “I thought that was the important one,” I said. “That’s not news — a price on Prince Wierolf’s head?”

  Daul gave a mirthless laugh. “No, little mouse, that’s not news.” He folded the letters carefully and slipped them inside his doublet. “In fact, they’re worse than worthless.”

  “Then why are you keeping them?”

  That slow, dangerous smile I was coming to hate. “Because clearly they have some value to you.”

  “Give them back, then!”

  “When you bring me something I can use. Incriminating letters written by the Nemair. Evidence of treason. My journal.”

  I glanced down to the woods. Meri and her purple friend had stepped away from the trees. If Daul turned to go now, there was no question he’d see them. I grabbed for one last wild chance. “Stockpiled weapons?”

  Daul wheeled around and looked hard at me. “Did you say weapons? Firearms?”

  I stepped back, nodding warily.

  Daul broke into a wide, wolfish smile. “But that would be a grave offense,” he said. “According to the Covenant of Kalorjn — which Antoch himself signed — former Sarists are strictly prohibited from owning any artillery, let alone raising a standing army. If the king were to find out that the Nemair were secretly buying and storing weapons on this property . . .”

  “I get my life back?”

  “Exactly, little mouse.”

  Meri had actually given me the best place to start looking, the very day we’d arrived here: Tunnels under the castle, all the way to Breijardarl.

  Lyll and Antoch had made it very plain that those tunnels were in dangerous disrepair, that they weren’t part of the restoration. But if the tunnels were one of Bryn Shaer’s most important defenses, then surely they’d want to make sure they were as war-ready as the walls and towers.

  And just a tiny thread of a voice whispered that those tunnels went to Breijardarl. Right under the snow-blocked pass. Away from Daul and too-shrewd merchants and wizards lurking in the trees and Sarist revolutionaries planning their next rebellion.

  And Greenmen waiting for Daul’s report. My report.

  After leaving Daul, I joined Lady Lyll in the stillroom, where she put me to work sorting through a bowl of seedpods. She stood with her back to me, cataloguing our work, moving easily through the motions of labeling bottles and scribing notes in her ledger. The heavy pleats of her skirt fell in smooth, even folds that never seemed to wrinkle. Watching her now, it seemed impossible that this peaceful woman might be mixing up a war as deftly as she stirred a batch of head ache tincture. I wanted it to seem impossible. I wanted her to just be Meri’s mother, the bighearted, soft woman who had taken me in without a question. I wanted to be a girl who didn’t find that suspicious.

  “Milady, did you once tell me there were tunnels to Breijardarl underneath the castle?” I blurted it out like that, hoping — I don’t know for what. For her to laugh and give me some reason to think I was crazy, that Daul was crazy and a bird was a bird, and for her to put her hand on my head and smooth my hair and say, Digger, you worry too much.

  Lady Lyll scrubbed with a rag at a stain on her workbench. “There were. Before Llyvraneth was one nation, there was frequent fighting between Kellespau and Briddja Nul — particularly who laid claim to exactly what land in the mountains. Bryn Shaer was constantly in dispute, so one of the landholders — Ragnhald Shortbones, I believe he was called! — supervised the excavation of almost the entire mountain between here and the pass. It was really quite an amazing undertaking. Though of course they had magic to help, in those days. I don’t know how you’d accomplish such a thing without it.”

/>   I buried my hands deep in the seeds and let them pour through my fingers. “I’d love to see them.”

  Lady Lyll turned to me with a smile. “Wouldn’t it be exciting to explore them? Unfortunately, the cellars here are unstable, and part of the tunnels collapsed about a hundred years ago. There’s been no reason to open them up again, of course, now that Briddja Nul and Kellespau are at peace. Not to mention the expense. Even Antoch and I haven’t been more than a few hundred yards inside them.”

  “Oh,” I said, and I was almost relieved.

  “And so I must urge you, Celyn — I know how much you like to wander off by yourself — not to go looking for them. It’s much too dangerous. I can’t imagine what we’d tell your brother if anything should happen to you.”

  I blinked at her. Her broad face looked gentle, genuine, but there was a core of iron in her words, just the slightest edge of something I couldn’t make out. She never mentioned my brother; was that meant to be a threat of some kind? Or merely the sensible cautions of an overprotective mother? I shook my head, said, “No, milady,” and told myself that I was definitely imagining things.

  I rose to join her at the workbench, but I set the bowl too close to the edge, and Lyll’s next movement knocked it to the floor, scattering seedpods every where. I bit back a curse.

  “No matter,” Lyll said. “We’ll just count them again.” She crouched on the floor with me to gather the spilled seeds. The spiky pods snagged in the fringe of the rug as I picked them up, lifting the corner of the rug off the floor, and I couldn’t help peeking under it.