StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “How did you get that wine?” Meri asked abruptly. “That first night?”

  “What?” We’d paused by a narrow gap in the stone, and I could see straight down the tunnel . . . into the back of the Lodge wine cellar. Well, why not? Cheaper to use the tunnels that had been here for centuries than dig your own. “I stole Yselle’s keys.” I was about to move on when the bobbing light flashed on something just beyond the gap — an empty wooden crate, stamped with Eptin Cwalo’s insigne. I stepped toward it.

  “Oh, I know what’s back there,” Meri said. “I saw the crates when Mother and Master Cwalo unloaded them. Loads of wine, and I think the other crate was pears.”

  Wine and pears. I’d seen the falconry inventory in Lady Lyll’s account book, and something had to account for the entries recorded there. Cwalo’s cargo was the missing piece that made it all make sense — the ledger, the mangled embroidery, the armies marching across the model landscape that Daul rearranged again and again. Those green toy soldiers weren’t massing in the sculpted foothills because of wine and pears.

  “Meri, wait here.” Forgetting I was walking off with our only light, I squeezed through the gap until I stood behind the storage racks, the lamp casting a wan glow into the empty space beyond the last shelves. My little mouse friend was nowhere to be seen — but there in the deepest shadows was something I’d missed, my first time around.

  Another door.

  I was starting to think that Bryn Shaer might actually have too many secret passages.

  One of the shelves had been dragged over from another part of the room to hide the door; black smudges on the stone wall opposite showed me where it had formerly stood, and lines in the dust on the floor gave up its path across the room.

  “Celyn?” Meri’s wavering voice floated out of the darkness.

  “Hold on,” I said. I drew closer and felt my way around the shelf. It had been cleverly positioned to look like it was flush against the wall, but there was plenty of room for me to wriggle behind and reach the latch.

  It was locked, of course. And not one of the flimsy Bryn Shaer locks that fell open if you shook them hard enough. This was a serious, heavy iron padlock. I had to rest the lamp on the shelf to work it with my picks, but three tries in, I had it. The tumblers fell into place, and the latch clicked open. I gave the door a gentle push, and it swung inward easily.

  I lifted the lamp and stepped inside — and shone the light on something I was never meant to see. “Sweet Tiboran’s breath,” I swore, and clutched the light so hard its brass handle bit into my fingers. I didn’t want to drop it — not in here.

  Barrels — no bigger than small ale casks — stood stacked all around the room; sixty, a hundred, maybe more. They were end-up, not sideways, as you’d store wine or beer, with a crest in Vareni stamped on each one. I crept in, lifting my light as high as I could. Behind the bar rels, tucked deep into the retreating darkness, I saw the blacker black of iron, the bulky shape of a small wagon. I sucked in my breath. A cannon. I turned, casting the glow around the room. Two more cannons. Four. A row of matchlock muskets, mustered up against the raw stones — polished and ready to be hefted and fired. There were dozens, scores . . . I lost count. This wasn’t some forgotten artillery, tucked away for storage and abandoned years before. These guns were modern, new, and ready. Waiting.

  And they were hidden. With barrels and barrels and barrels of gunpowder.

  “Celyn!”

  Meri surprised me and nearly knocked the lamp out of my hand. I gave a little shriek and fumbled to hold my grip. She pushed past me into the storeroom.

  “Celyn, what is this?” Meri turned slowly, taking in the scene. “What does it mean?”

  “You saw your mother unpack those crates? Are you sure?”

  “Well, not unpack them. What’s going on?”

  And that was the point at which even Tiboran apparently ran out of lies. I just couldn’t think of a single thing to say to Merista Nemair that explained away the armaments hidden beneath her parents’ castle. Well-fortified castles were proud of their armies and fortifications and their weapons stores. They didn’t tuck them underground, behind locked doors concealed by heavy furniture.

  “We’re not supposed to have weapons,” she said slowly.

  Meri wasn’t stupid. No matter what I’d tried to tell myself. This was the girl who’d talked us past the Greenmen in Gerse, who’d been teaching herself magic in secret for weeks, who’d ingratiated herself with a band of outlaw wizards, who’d gotten a Sarist tattoo and possibly even a Sarist lover. Who’d figured out that I had some kind of magic.

  Who’d saved my life.

  The girl who’d told me it was her duty to be ready when war came. Like her parents, the war heroes. I turned to her.

  “I think your mother is planning another rebellion.”

  “With Eptin Cwalo?”

  “With everyone here.” Briefly I sketched out the hints from Cwalo, the Kalorjn connection all the guests shared, the coded embroidery. I left out Daul, the prince, the Traitor of Kalorjn . . . and my part in all of this. Meri listened thoughtfully, nodding, and interrupted me while I described Lady Cardom’s stitchery.

  “Four, not five? Gairveyont has five de pen dent houses,” she said. “They were all loyal in the war, but the smallest, Bryn Gairve, borders on Kalorjn. Maybe Lady Cardom’s daughter couldn’t convince all the houses to support them, if Gairveyont went to war with —” She faltered. “With us.”

  That was a better theory than any I’d come up with. Would Daul work that out from the scraps of stitchery?

  And then Meri said something surprising. “Do you think Master Reynart is working with her?”

  “Now that,” I said, turning to look at her, “is an excellent question.”

  Meri was somber all the rest of that day, uncharacteristically silent when I tried to talk to her about it. She just shook her head and kept saying, “I need to talk to Reynart.” Not her mother — I supposed that was something.

  I’d found the guns, but that only made my questions niggle at me more. I thought maybe Wierolf could help me make sense of things, so at the next opportunity, I slipped down to see him. He was getting stronger, fast, and it was starting to worry me a little. Once he was well enough to move around, what was to keep him confined to this little space? The last few afternoons, I’d found him standing or pacing his rooms — first a tentative shuffle from the bed to the prayer stand and back, then the weary walk of a man whose very boredom was exhausting him, now the wound-up stride of a lion determined to slip his cage and run free again. We’d not discussed the Traitor of Kalorjn again, which was fine by me. I had enough on my mind, now that I’d found Lyll’s “birds.”

  Today he stood in the middle of the room, shirtless, shifting his stiff body through a series of mea sured poses. The shiny pink skin near his wounds twisted as he moved, and I feared they would break open again. He reached for his shirt and fumbled into it awkwardly. His left arm was still not much good to him.

  “Thank the gods, are you going to feed me?”

  I had nicked a loaf of spice bread from the cooling tables in the pantry, and I laid it on the shelf behind the bed. “Your arm was high, just now,” I said. “You need to keep your elbow down or you’ll expose your . . . flank.” I winced.

  The prince gingerly fingered his side. “You think?” He eased himself down on the edge of the bed. “You know the Kaal-haia? You are full of surprises, Celyn just-a-maid.”

  “The what?”

  “The Kaal-haia, a technique for self defense and hand-to-hand combat. It was developed by monks — and you don’t care.”

  I’d never heard its nob name before, but I’d learned my share of street fighting over the years. “Brothers,” I said simply.

  “Ah.” Wierolf cupped the heel of the hot bread in his hand. “How many?”

  I started. “What?”

  “Brothers. How many? Older or younger?”

  I clamped my mouth shut for a he
artbeat. “One. Older. But there were always other . . . guys around.” I was mixing my stories now. Tiboran help me untangle them later.

  Wierolf nodded. “It was like that back home too. There were always cousins or wards or hostages to spar with.” He seemed to trip over the word hostage. “In fact . . . you remind me of my cousin Deira. She was always kicking me in the shins when we were kids.”

  “Hey! I can leave you to starve, you know.” But I knew who Deira was. She was the sister of Astilan, the nephew Bardolph hadn’t issued a death warrant for. I watched him eat, talk of brothers and cousins making me feel inexplicably sad. Why were the families of the world so unfairly parceled out? I’d have loved a big brother like Wierolf, maybe even a little sister like Meri, but instead I’d had . . . oh, hells. What was the point of that line of thinking?

  “Here.” Abruptly — or as abruptly as his injuries would allow — the prince rose and held out his hand. “Do you know the Fifth Forms — the ones that start with the crow postures?”

  Stupidly I nodded yes, and before I realized what I was agreeing to, he had pulled me to standing with his good right arm. “What are you doing?”

  “I need a sparring partner. Can you see Lady Lyllace running through the Wolf-and-Boar with me?” The prince moved me into place in the center of the room. “Good. So, just stand there. You don’t have to do anything.” He gave a slow twist to his neck, a roll of his shoulders. “Hey, relax. Think of it like we’re dancing.”

  I barked out an involuntary laugh. “Even better,” I said, but backed up a pace and stood as still as I could.

  As Wierolf slowly worked his way through the poses, clumsily trying to make his reluctant limbs obey him, it was all I could do to keep my mouth shut and not offer commentary. Shoulders down. Turn your hips out for that kick — you’ll get better reach. But he knew all that; he just couldn’t make his injured body bend to his will.

  Yet. I saw determination in his face — in the set of his jaw, the evenness of his gaze, the steady rhythm of his breathing as he moved through the forms, drilling the moves over and over. There was no doubt that this prince of the realm would make himself heal, pushing through the pain and weakness until he had control again. And once he had conquered his own body, he could turn his will to other goals.

  He tracked closer to me, swinging an arm toward my ear, darting a punch at my eyes. I blinked, and Wierolf grinned. His weak left arm was slow to respond, and flew awkwardly, but I could see him learning, adjusting to its limits. As I watched, something flashed to my left, just at the edge of my vision.

  “Was your brother at the Celystra with you?”

  I struck out, whapping his fist away from my jaw and seizing his other wrist, twisting it upward so he stumbled to his knees.

  We hung there a moment, the prince gazing up at me, bemused and breathless, me frozen in place, unable to move from the shock of striking His Royal Highness.

  A grin spread across Wierolf’s sweaty face. He pulled gently on his arm, and after a moment, I let him go. “Nice. I think, Celyn just-a-maid, there’s a little more to you than you’re letting on. What other secrets are you hiding? Maybe a knife in that basket of yours?”

  “That’s not funny!” I was tired of pretense, of nobody being what they said or appeared, and of trying to keep everyone’s lies straight. “And what about your secrets, Your Highness?”

  To his credit, he barely reacted — just watched my face for a heartbeat, gave the shadow of a nod, and backed off a few paces. “How long have you known?” he asked, reaching for a towel.

  “Since that first night.”

  “How did you know? We haven’t met before, have we?”

  I managed not to laugh at that. Instead I opened my fist to reveal the ring with the royal crest I’d palmed when he struck at me.

  He did react to that — his dark eyes grew wide and he glanced hastily at his naked hand. “How did you —”

  “It slipped off when I blocked your blow.” Well, there was technical truth in that. I handed it back. He gave it a strange look, as if expecting it to speak to him, before sliding it back onto his thumb.

  “Just who or what are you, Celyn of Bryn Shaer? One of Bardolph’s spies? Is he training little girls as assassins to kill me in my sleep now?”

  “It’s a little late for that, I think.”

  His gaze shot to my face. “Is that what you were doing, then, hovering over my bed that first night? Plotting a new and stealthy way to murder a prince? Bardolph making sure they finished the job?”

  The thing was, I could have been — and both of us knew it. But I shook my head. “I was trying to figure out how not to get involved.”

  It was Wierolf’s turn to laugh. “Too late for that,” he echoed, but his voice was bitter. He finished mopping his face with the towel, and dropped it in a heap next to the washbowl. “Do they know you’ve been coming here?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then you haven’t been spying on me?”

  I flushed guiltily. Brilliant. If there was one time for Tiboran to desert me . . .

  “I see.”

  “Your Highness —”

  He didn’t look up, just gripped the edge of the bed with white knuckles, his breath ragged. “I’m tired, Celyn. Leave me.” And, at last, I heard the royalty in his voice. There was no disobeying that.

  As I slipped toward the hidden door, he spoke again. “And tell your friends I said hello.”

  I paused, my hand on the edge of the door and took a deep breath. “Are you a prisoner here, or a guest?”

  He finally did look up, then. “Sometimes I’m not sure.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A few nights later Meri, Phandre, and I sat together around the fire, our feet on the Kurkyat tuffet, just like that first night a month ago. Phandre was ranting on about some injustice Lyll had done her — forcing her to pot honey or seating her in the wrong place at dinner, or some other atrocity — but Meri and I were lost in our own thoughts. I hadn’t gone to see the prince again, telling myself it was just too dangerous now. It was too easy to be unguarded in his presence. It had been a stupid thing, visiting him, and it was past time for me to start thinking, before somebody really got hurt. I told myself I didn’t care what he was doing, down there in the dark and cold, all alone.

  As my thoughts circled the bottom of my cup, Meri’s door burst open, and Yselle flew in, yammering a storm of frantic Corles. She crossed the room, curtsied to Meri, and hauled me to my feet.

  “Yselle!” Meri broke in and separated us, then tried to listen to what the housekeeper was saying. She said a few words in Corles, then turned to me with a look of confusion. “I don’t know, but she says she wants you. My mother wants you.”

  I stared at them both. “For what?” I said, my voice a lot shakier than I liked.

  Meri shook her head. “I’m not sure. Maybe I should come along.” She reached for her robe, but Yselle forestalled her in a fierce snap of Corles.

  “No, it’s all right,” I said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  But I wasn’t sure. This was how it happened — someone bursting into your bedroom in the middle of the night and dragging you off with no explanation, so your family never saw you again. Had Wierolf given me up to Lady Lyll? Would Yselle throw me into some secret chamber here at Bryn Shaer, to rot in the dark and cold until the world forgot about me? How long would that take? Not that long.

  The worried expression on Meri’s face did little to reassure me. I gave her a faltering wave and followed Yselle into the corridor. She continued to speak to me in swift, rattling Corles that washed over me like a chill, and I trailed along in her wake, my dread building with every step.

  Lady Lyll was rummaging about in the stillroom. I paused in the doorway. “Your Ladyship, I —”

  She turned, and a look of — what? Relief? — passed across her face. “Oh, good, Celyn, you’re here. Come with me, please.” She dismissed Yselle with a nod and steered me into the stillroo
m. Once inside, she thrust a basket into my arms, crammed full of bandages and bottles. The trapdoor was standing open, and I couldn’t help staring at it.

  “There’s an easier way, but this is quicker,” Lady Lyll said. “How are you with ladders?”

  “Ladders, milady?” I said stupidly, as Lyll reached behind the workbench and drew out a short, simple frame ladder — the obvious bit that the trapdoor passage had been missing all along. “Uh, passable, I suppose.”

  “Good. Follow me.”

  I just stood there, completely undone by surprise. Lyllace was halfway down the ladder, but she looked back up at me. “There’s a — situation,” she said. “I don’t have time to explain properly, but I need someone with a cool head and a steady hand.”

  Immediately I was overwhelmed with worry for the prince, but I stopped myself from questioning Lady Lyll; I would find out what happened soon enough. Down in the passage, she lit a lamp and led the way down the stairs and through the narrow corridor. I saw the box of light from the prince’s open door well before we actually crossed his threshold.

  He was back on the bed, stretched out awkwardly, weakly pressing a ball of rags to his abdomen. It was soaked red, a red pool spread below him on the sheets. I balked at the door and could move no farther.

  “Celyn!” Lady Lyll barked, and I sprang forward. The prince’s eyes fluttered, but I didn’t think he saw me. As Lyll knelt beside Wierolf and gingerly lifted his hand and the rags away, it was all too obvious what had happened.

  The barely healed wound — the one that had nearly killed him scant weeks ago, the one he’d been straining overmuch by practicing his fighting moves — had broken open, and was bleeding freely. All over. Everywhere. It looked fresh, like someone had stuck a knife straight into him again.

  If I hadn’t stood there like an idiot and let him kick at my head . . . “Is — is he going to die?”

  “Die?” Lady Lyll looked up sharply. “Of course not! What do you think we’re doing here? Quickly, now — give me a hand.”