StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  Meri’s eyes were wide and sober, but I saw a flash of defiance in them. I wanted to be proud of her. I also wanted to slap her, shake her, club her upside the head and drag her down the mountain by her hair. I wanted not to feel anything about this.

  “Stagne,” she whispered finally.

  “The Sarist boy,” I said, and she nodded. “Oh, Meri.”

  “But he’s not my lover,” she insisted. “At least — I don’t know, Celyn. It’s all so strange.”

  She didn’t have to explain it to me. But apparently she was going to, anyway. They had met, entirely by accident, soon after Daul’s arrival when she started riding out alone in the morning. Stagne had been gathering firewood near their camp and had foraged too close to the castle grounds. They had been meeting ever since, and —

  When she faltered, I realized Meri was trying to figure out how to tell this story without mentioning magic. And I was just so tired, and I didn’t have the energy to lie anymore, or keep one more secret. So I pulled off the silver bracelet and caught up her hand, holding it tightly right before both of our faces, so she could see the tendrils of magic weaving our fingers together.

  “I knew it,” she whispered.

  I shook my head. “No, I just see it. It’s not the same.”

  Her eyes were wide and eager. “Durrel said —”

  “Durrel! What are you talking about?”

  She was nodding, transfixed by the air swirling around our hands. “In the boat, he thought you had magic, and that’s why you ran away from the Celystra, and he told my parents —”

  “Your parents think I have magic?” I yanked my hand away so fast she stuck her stinging fingers in her mouth. “Pox and hells.”

  I felt stupid; thoughts died only half formed. “I did leave the Celystra because of my magic,” I said slowly. “Because that’s where they torture people with magic. You have to be more —”

  Behind us, the door slammed, and we both jumped. In a flash, I draped Meri’s gown across her shoulders and spun to face the door, my heart racing.

  “Well, don’t you two make a pretty picture,” Phandre said, crossing the room. “I heard you yelling from halfway down the hall, and here I find you, practically naked in each other’s arms! Is there something going on I don’t know about?”

  Her voice was teasing, but Meri’s white skin flushed pink.

  “I — got wet. In the snow,” she stammered, her defiance evaporated.

  “You don’t have to explain it to me,” Phandre said, raising her hands and walking through to her own room. “Let me know when the wine is hot.” Her door shut with a click.

  I didn’t say anything else to Meri after Phandre was gone. What would have been the point? She had the tattoo — it was hers for life.

  Until some Inquisitor’s fire burned it off of her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I approached Marlytt after dinner that night. I had to secure some free hours in which to balance my growing list of insane responsibilities, and the prince was already eating into my schedule. “I need you to look after Meri for a while tonight,” I said.

  “I thought that was your job,” she said, shifting in her seat. “What are you doing? It’s something for Daul, isn’t it?”

  I leaned closer. Across the room, Meri was playing chess with her father; but she’d likely follow me if she saw me leave abruptly. “Just stay near her. Keep her entertained.”

  “And what will I tell her when she asks after you?”

  “Anything. I don’t care. I’m sure you’ll find a way to keep her so busy she won’t even wonder.”

  Marlytt’s brow creased. “What’s this all about, Digger?”

  “Nothing. He’s convinced himself the Nemair are up to something, and I need to get him off my back. So try and keep Meri out of trouble for a couple of hours, can’t you?”

  She softened. “All right. But what sort of trouble do you think she’ll get into?”

  “Don’t ask that.”

  She fingered the necklace at her throat, her expression calculating. “Wait — is this what you were asking me earlier? About Cwalo — and guns? What are you involved in?”

  “Nothing,” I repeated. “And stop asking me questions you don’t want the answers to. Can I count on you?”

  She rose and shook out her skirts, giving me her sunniest smile. “Of course. Lady Meri and I will be close as sisters tonight.”

  I probably should have asked Marlytt to keep an eye on Daul instead; he was still skulking about, and I had a feeling he was expecting something from me. I hadn’t come up with anything new since stupidly handing over Chavel’s letters, and he’d be getting bored and restless. So I dodged him too.

  I slipped upstairs to swipe Meri’s journal, then lit off for an unused guest room in the old part of the castle. It was poorly furnished and freezing, with a broken window whose low stone sill I could use as a desk. Nobody was likely to find me up here. I’d need a few days at least for what I was going to do, and privacy and light to do it in. I kept waiting for Lady Lyll to ask me where all her candles were going.

  Kneeling by the window, I spread my supplies on the cold floor: a stack of papers of approximately the right size from Cwalo’s rooms, black leather and needles from the tack room, a variety of inks and pens I’d gathered here and there. I wrapped my fingertips in strips of cloth, to keep as much ink from my hands as I could. I didn’t want Meri or Lyll to ask what I’d been writing, and I absolutely didn’t need Daul sniffing around my fingers and getting suspicious.

  Most thieves — common street scum, anyway — couldn’t even read, let alone write. But I’d been clever with a pen since I’d first nicked one from my brother, wondering why he was carrying a feather around, when he scarcely ever went outside and certainly didn’t care for birds. But he’d shown me that feather’s amazing secret power, helping my little fingers master it. He’d sit for hours at one of the high Celystra desks with me in his lap, shaping my hand around the pen, tracing the letters on the page, until the day finally came when he judged me good enough to get me work in the manuscript room. My first memories were of those candlelit hours bent over words together. It was hard to believe we took such different lessons from our days writing out scripture.

  Tegen had been fascinated by my writing, curving his lean body behind mine as I worked, swiping the pages before they were dry and holding them up to the light. “What’s this say?” he’d ask, kissing the back of my neck to try and make my hand slip.

  “It’s a harbormaster’s report, and if you don’t give it back, it’s going to say Lord Verin has been shipping Talancan pigs into Gerse instead of Talancan gold.”

  Harbormasters’ reports, forged passage licenses, copies of sensitive letters — Tegen found me work doing all of it. I was good, and I knew it. Lord Taradyce had never found out the incriminating letter from Minister Engl he’d paid so handsomely for was a forgery. Tegen had gotten a better price from Engl to keep the original out of unfriendly hands. She’s just that good. I could still remember Tegen telling the doubtful minister those words, how he’d laughed later over the double cross.

  Daul’s journal was a mix of strangely varied handwriting — in places smooth and precise; in others untidy, like it had been done in the dark, during a rainstorm, possibly by someone with a fever or a broken hand. And I had to match those bits, letter by letter, ink blot by ink blot, constantly recutting the tip of my quills to match the thickness and precision of the original text, testing on scraps to make sure I had the proper pressure on the pen.

  It would have been an interesting challenge, if not for the sparkling pages that kept reminding me how important it was that I get this exactly right.

  Revealing my magic to Meri didn’t seem to change things between us, except she now considered me her confidante, which brought a whole layer of intimacy I could happily have done without. That night in bed, I heard more details of her tryst with Stagne, which sounded more heart breakingly innocent the more I learned
. And she wanted to talk about magic — what she was learning from the people in the forest, what it felt like, how it was to use it freely, to have a friend who understood her.

  It took me a brief, paralyzing instant to realize that she meant me.

  Lady Lyll knowing somehow bothered me more. As I worked beside her in the stillroom the next few days, preparing medicines I now gathered were going to treat the prince, I kept stealing sidelong glances at her, willing her to give up some clue that she suspected — had always suspected — me of harboring magic, like her daughter. It made my skin itch unpleasantly, thinking that I’d been working side by side all these weeks with someone who knew my secret.

  And the more time I spent with Daul’s journal, the more confused I became. I’d hoped copying it out might give me some hint at its importance to him, but I was more than halfway through and still couldn’t see how it connected to the Nemair’s secrets.

  I wanted to put all the pieces together, and I had a feeling that the prince was at the heart of them. But I certainly couldn’t just ask Lady Lyll what I wanted to know, so it seemed my only option was to keep slipping down to the hidden chamber under the stillroom, and prodding at the only person who seemed to know even less about what was going on than I did.

  Those first few days the prince was still drifting in and out of fever dreams, and half the time I wasn’t sure he even believed I was real. I expected him to slip up any moment and tell Lady Lyll — or whoever was tending to him — that a maid named Celyn had checked his bandages and dosed him up with poppy. But days went by and Lord Antoch’s guards never seized me by the hair and had me flung into the dungeons, so I figured I was more or less safe.

  “Someone’s bound to find out I’ve been here,” I said on my third or fourth visit. He was clear-eyed and lucid, but his face still had that ragged, sickly look. “I’m not helping you, and I don’t even want to think about what they’ll do if they catch me.” I’d had the good sense to stop playing nurse, at least.

  “You’re helping. Look, I’m getting stronger already.” He pushed himself up in bed to prove it, though the movement left him pale and breathless. “Besides, you’re the only person who stays long enough to talk to me. The others hardly say anything — and I think that one of them doesn’t speak any Llyvrin.”

  Yselle. So that answered one question. “She’s Corles,” I said. “I don’t understand a word she says either.”

  “Tell me more about this place, Celyn just-a-maid. Where is it? What is its name, who are its keepers?”

  “I —” I hesitated. I still wasn’t sure what he knew, or was supposed to know — but then, he was the one in the most danger here, and Marau’s balls, if the man was ever going to be king, starting off completely ignorant about his own situation was a stupid way to begin such a career. But maybe we two befuddled wretches could help each other. “Only if you tell me what happened to you.”

  Finally he nodded. “What I remember, anyway.”

  “You’re at Bryn Shaer,” I said. “It’s a fortress in the Carskadon Mountains.”

  “I know it. I was in Olin . . .”

  “Bryn Shaer is held by An —”

  “Antoch Nemair.” The prince gave a cough that sounded weak and strained. “Right. His wife — what’s his wife’s name?”

  “Lady Lyllace.” He mouthed the name even as I said it, his face screwed shut as he fought for the words. “Do you know them?”

  “No, I just —” He didn’t have to finish. He just knew the names of major nobs and landholders. Of course he did. “It’s hard to remember,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Olin?” I prompted gently, the name twitching at my memory.

  The prince looked at me a long moment, and I couldn’t decide what was in that steady, unnerving gaze. Why didn’t people mention that about him, when they told tales of what kind of a man he was? Finally he dropped his head back and spoke to the ceiling. “It’s a hunting lodge. It belongs to an old friend of my mother. I was there for the stag.”

  I wondered what kind of figure he must have cut, just weeks ago, riding through the forest on his great royal horse, a bow in his hand. Suspecting this might be a long story, or at least a difficult one, I poured him some water. His hand lifting the cup to his mouth was steadier than it had been even a few days ago. Fighting with the silver in his wounds or not, that medallion he wore must be very powerful. I wondered what such a thing might be worth — a charmed pendant, to keep a prince alive.

  “We had chased the quarry into a clearing, but when I got there, it was empty. My — companions were nowhere to be found, and nor was the deer.” Wincing, he said, “I heard a shot, and I remember falling, and that’s it. I don’t know about —” He gestured to the bandages binding the gruesome sword wound. Then he turned to me, and the expression on his face was anguished. “Celyn,” he said, “we don’t use firearms for deer.”

  “No,” I said gently, and although I had no idea if that were true or not, I understood what he was asking me. “Nor swords, I imagine.”

  “No.” He looked into the distance then, and his eyes were damp. I fought a weird urge to reach out to him, although there wasn’t a thing I could do to make what had happened to him any better. Lured by his friends into an assassination attempt? What did you do with that?

  “You’re very lucky,” I said, though the words were hollow. How lucky did I feel when I got away from the Greenmen who’d killed Tegen? I pulled away and stared at my knees.

  Finally I heard a sigh. Thinking it was my cue to leave, I rose, but the prince spoke again. “What kind of woman is she?”

  I blinked. “Milord?”

  “What kind of woman would you say Lady Lyllace is? Is she trust worthy? Scheming? What is she like?”

  “I —” Gods, how to answer that question? “Trustworthy? I hope so, though I haven’t had cause to test that. She’s — good, I think. Kind. Wise, strong. What?”

  The prince was smiling strangely at me. “I hear your answer in your voice, Celyn just-a-maid. You’ve said enough.”

  But I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet, I thought a little wildly: the collection of former Sarists, the possible rebellion she was planning, the guns she probably had stashed behind his room. . . . I pressed my head back against the ledge of wood behind me. “Milord, I think —” I took a hard swallow and launched myself toward madness. “I’m going to tell you some more names.”

  He eyed me strangely. “Go ahead.”

  I listed them all: Nemair, Cardom, Sposa, Wellyth, Séthe, and Daul. The fog from his injury had affected his memory, but if he’d managed to dredge up Lord Antoch and Lady Lyll, who’d been quietly living overseas for years now, then he should hear the rest. His face remained impassive when I started my list, but midway through I saw him start to tense up — just barely, just a hint of anxiety he was trying to hide. I had seen that look when I had tended his wounds.

  A frown creasing his brow, he shifted himself into a new position. “Are those the other — guests? Wintering at Bryn Shaer?”

  Somehow it didn’t surprise me that he’d worked that out. “Do you know who they are?”

  “Oh, yes.” Wierolf said gravely.

  “I just — I thought you should know.”

  “I’m glad. I think I need to have a conversation with the woman who changes my bandages.”

  Daul’s journal remained an irritating distraction all that week. Though I made good progress on my forgery, I still had no idea why anyone would care so much about this dull little book. It didn’t mention anyone or anything of note, beyond a few choice hunting grounds or notable huntsmen who’d died a hundred years before the writer put ink to paper. In fact, Meri’s scrawlings, scattered throughout the book’s once-empty pages, were the only thing of interest.

  Once I had the text in hand, I turned my attention to the binding. It wasn’t my best skill — lacing the pages into the leather cover involved a needle, and I was just sure I’d botch the job by bleeding all over
it. The cross-shaped seal I’d nicked from Daul’s desk was meant for pressing wax, not leather, but with the help of a little water and a heavy stone wrapped in linen, I was able to pound a convincing approximation of the seal of the House of Daul into the binding.

  Finally, a little more than a week after finding the prince, I was done. It was good work: nice, the binding tight; the script convincing; the missing pages of Meri’s notes now accounted for by a new set of page numbers. The one peculiar thing I noted was that a leaf at the very front had been sliced out of the original volume, so I carefully drew the point of Durrel’s blade along the spine of my copy, nicking the leather with the tip, just like the real one. When I checked my work against the original, I saw that the scratches continued under its pasted-down endpapers.

  Taking care not to tear anything, I slid the knife blade under. The glue was old and brittle and the whole sheet popped away in one piece, revealing a strange series of cut marks incised into the wrong side of the leather. It was as if someone very angry with the book had attacked it, but as I examined the scratches, I started to make out a meaning in all those sharp, intersecting diagonal lines. I took one of my pieces of scrap and laid it over the cover, tracing the lines lightly with a dry nib of my pen, until I had scratched the same shape into the paper. Meri would have recognized it: It matched her tattoo.

  It was a peculiar thing: a Sarist’s book, with a hidden Sarist symbol, but no Sarist content? I wondered yet again what Daul was after. In the end, the binding on the new one was a little less black, and a little less flexible — but I doubted Daul would notice.

  I waited until Meri had ridden off to meet Stagne one morning, then slipped off for Daul’s rooms.

  “I have it. Let me in.”

  It was almost as if those words were the magical key that sprang the lock on that door. I should have tried them before. The door swung open, and Daul gave me a slow, thin smile.