by Ellyn, Court
Thorn looked at her then, turned up his palms while his mouth shaped an ‘o’ that might have been a half-formed ‘no’ or ‘joke.’ His eyes were full of words, but Carah heard not a one. She decided to ignore him.
Jaedren, on the other hand, sat in Thorn’s shadow, intently watching him and Rhian carry on their silent conversation, as if at any moment he’d make sense of the nonsense. Every once in a while his eyes closed, but not in boredom-induced sleep.
Carah listened for the voices of servants in the corridor, but for once they made not a peep. A finch sang in Grandmother’s garden. As lovely as the song was, it was just birdsong. Maybe she hadn’t heard the falcons speak to her all those years ago. Maybe she had lied so Da wouldn’t punish her, and maybe she came to believe that lie.
She sprang out of the chair, paced to the window, watched the gardener trimming the greening hedges along the garden path and Esmi cutting daffodils, then huffed and flung herself down in the chair again. She was going crazy! Why didn’t Uncle Thorn just tell her how it was done? All he’d said was what not to do; a great deal of good that did.
“This is ridiculous!” Her voice thundered across the silence. “How can anyone learn anything this way?”
Thorn swung a hand. His knuckles smacked Carah square on the mouth. She gasped and pressed her fingers to her stinging lips. For a moment she couldn’t believe he’d done it. Her beloved uncle. And how cool and remorseless he was, sitting there waiting for her next move. This wasn’t the same person who told her bedtime stories and brought her lovely gifts.
Jaedren’s eyes had gone as wide as if he were privy to a scandal, and that blasted pearl fisher didn’t bother looking at her at all. As straight-faced as ever, he had to have known what Thorn was going to do, and he didn’t care!
Carah’s face flared. She swept up her book and launched it at Thorn. He snatched it in both hands, hurled it back. Carah ducked. The book missed her forehead by a hand-span, sailed into the wall and flapped onto the floor with all the grace of an arrow-skewered pigeon.
Thorn reared up from the table and jabbed a finger at the book.
Carah jumped from her chair, fists knotted at her sides. “You pick it up!”
His eyes turned to iron as he bore down on her. She covered her face with her hands, but he had no intention of striking her again. Her grabbed her by the scruff and the stays on the back of her dress and frog-hopped her to the library door. As if pulled by invisible strings, the door opened, and Thorn gave her a toss. She landed hard on her hands and knees, and by the time she scrambled to her feet, the library door slammed shut.
The turning lock spoke loudly enough.
~~~~
An ugly tension festered in the dining hall that evening. Thorn sat across the table from his niece, the usual arrangement, but tonight there was silence between them. She refused to look at him, and Thorn had trouble swallowing his laughter at her childishness. He’d underestimated her. He said she might hate him by the end of the week, but she’d managed it by the end of the first day.
Jaedren worked the table, refilling wine goblets and fetching fresh napkins and sending for the next course. He stared at the diners as if he was trying to bore holes through them, and Thorn could tell he was trying to hear any thoughts whatever.
“Do you need something?” Rhoslyn asked him.
The boy shook himself, stopped staring, and turned red. “Uh, no, Your Grace, I’m sorry.” He hurried off to the sideboard and busied himself with unnecessary tasks.
Rhoslyn whispered, “Is he able to … um … already?”
“No, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.” Thorn cast a quick, remonstrative glance at his niece. She missed it completely. “Once Jaedren has learned the way of it, I’ll give him the lecture on an avedra’s code of ethics. You shouldn’t need to worry about a new spy in your house, Your Grace.”
Rhoslyn smiled in an indulgent fashion, then picked up knife and fork as her eyes darted toward her daughter. She refrained from asking Carah how she was faring. The answer was plain. Displeasure rolled off Carah like a sulfurous cloud from a dragon’s nostrils.
Seated next to her, Eliad masterfully ignored the situation and laughed at Kelyn’s comment that he was exactly like his father.
“Why don’t you marry one of them?” Kelyn asked.
“I admit, neither a blacksmith’s daughter nor a shepherdess are beneath a king’s bastard,” Eliad said, “but I love them both.”
“Ach, no, you don’t.”
“Is this appropriate table talk?” Rhoslyn asked. The duchess tolerated the presence of Eliad’s playthings during the daylight hours, in informal settings like the garden, but not at the family supper table.
“Pardons, Your Grace.” Eliad looked contrite, but the talk resumed just the same. “Besides, I’m rebelling.”
“Against decency?” Kelyn asked.
“Well, not decency exactly. But why should the requirements that bind my brother bind me? It’s the Black Falcon who must take a wife, not I.”
Thorn picked up his wine glass, found it nearly empty. “Does not Lord Drenéleth need heirs as well?”
Eliad grinned. “I plan to live forever, didn’t you know?”
The nearest wine flask stood on the far side of Carah’s plate. Thorn gestured for it. For the first time since he’d tossed her from the library, Carah met his eye. She glanced at the flask and shrugged in a puzzled way.
Rhoslyn heaved an heated sigh. “Carah, pass your uncle the wine.”
“He hasn’t asked me, Mother. And that’s what we have Jaedren for.”
Hearing his name, the squire hurried toward the table, but Thorn waved him back. He tried again, projecting his request a little stronger, hoping she’d catch it, but her mind was closed. Grinning at him, Carah lifted her own glass and sipped.
Very well. His fingers beckoned, and the flask came to him. Ignoring the gasps from the others, he refilled his glass and said, “You’re right, Carah. I should’ve asked aloud, because you’re no longer my pupil. And take note. You can’t keep a promise either. You have proven a disappointment. And I won’t waste my time with you.”
She regarded him with the same surprise as when he’d popped her mouth this afternoon. Her eyes welled. With desperate dignity she rose from the table, bowed her head toward both ends of the table, and strode from the dining hall.
As soon as she was gone, all eyes turned on Thorn. “I thought you said it was vital she learn,” Kelyn said.
“She’ll learn. Some stones are harder to crack than others. This one happens to be monumental.”
~~~~
On that first night, after she cried herself to exhaustion, she decided her uncle was bluffing. He would recant in the morning.
She prepared herself carefully, rehearsed her excuses and her requests concerning his teaching methods, then after breakfast she hurried down the corridor to the library. The doors were shut. As she reached for the knob, the locked clicked into place.
For the rest of the week, Carah was forbidden access to the library. Thorn was hard to track down anywhere else. She waited in his rooms until late into the night, but exhaustion eventually drove her to bed. He appeared at supper only occasionally, and Carah refused to beg in front of her parents. When Thorn released Jaedren to attend to his squiring duties or studies with Etivva, he and the pearl fisher rode from the castle grounds on those great black steeds. Patrolling the area, they said. One afternoon, Carah tried to follow, saddled her golden desert pony all by herself, but at the gate, Captain Maegeth refused to order the portcullis raised.
“Uncle Thorn’s orders?” she demanded.
Maegeth nodded. “In conjunction with your father’s. If they say it isn’t safe, then it isn’t safe.” Old and crusty, she would not be swayed by pleas or tears.
A prisoner. In her own house. Sharing a roof with her jailors. While that fawning little boy received the training promised to her!
She moped, but no one took pity. Even Moth
er’s sympathy was shallow. “You mustn’t be so difficult, dearheart. He knows what he’s doing, and you disobeyed. Perhaps we should have let you feel the consequences of your actions more often. I’m sorry.”
After four days of getting nowhere, Carah lodged herself in her rooms. She declined the invitation to join the family for supper and let her food grow cold. She was missing everything! The things she’d always hoped for were passing her by, and everyone blamed her for it. She sobbed until her pillows were soaked and her eyelids so swollen they throbbed. She kicked chairs and flung shoes and tore at her hair with the silver comb Thorn had given her. During the day, when things didn’t seem so bad, she tried to fill the hours with other duties. She inspected Da’s preparations for the Assembly but didn’t argue with the cook about the menu as she usually did. Impressive dishes and orderly outbuildings and a flat, smooth racecourse didn’t matter at all. She wrote plenty of letters. One to her brother in Windhaven; another to Lady Maeret who headed the ladies’ riding society; another to Madam Dagni in Thyrvael, asking how much longer before she could expect her new jewelry box with the peridot carbuncles, even though she’d inquired about it only a week ago.
Plenty of couriers rode from Ilswythe’s gates unhindered. Carah doubted hordes of invisible ogres slavered outside the gates, waiting for her to stumble into them. It had been months since the last reports of a disappearance and that all the way from Endhal on the Leanian coast.
Tired of indulging in self-pity, she decided she had to escape the confines of the castle or go mad. Her horse might not be able to slip through the gate unnoticed, but perhaps she could. She dressed plainly, tossed the hood of her cloak over her head, fetched a bucket of scraps from the kitchen stoop, and headed toward the north gate. Captain Maegeth usually patrolled the main gate and her headquarters overlooked the King’s Highway and the village to the south.
The two sentries on duty at the north gate straightened at her approach and true to their training, they stared straight ahead. She slipped through the sortie gate without drawing a second glance. What lady carried a slop bucket?
The age-old dance around the bonfire had brought on spring, all right. The hills and meadows slowly shed their winter-gray cloaks. Green grasses sprouted shyly, and wild daffodils nodded yellow bonnets. Breathing deeply of the moist, earth-scented air, Carah meandered east toward the river. The cataracts tumbled white over the round, black stones. She swept up fistfuls of smooth rocks and hurled them into the current, roaring as the rapids roared.
With mud-caked fingers, she sank down among the swaying grass and gazed up at the afternoon sky. Stripes of high clouds made the sky seem more unreachable than when it was flat, opaque blue. The pattern echoed a furrowed field. The farmers in the village said it portended rain. She’d heard it would be a wet spring and a hot summer.
The sun sank, and the furrows turned from white to pink. Like gashes. She shuddered at the thought of the pearl fisher’s scars. She’d almost pitied him when she saw them.
She could have helped. Like with her mother’s finger. If she had received training.
Like hell she would help that lout! Even if those gashes were fresh and festering, she’d turn away. Why did Uncle Thorn have to bring him here, him with his obvious contempt and stunning eyes? Curse them both.
“Sure Dathiel warned you to stay inside.”
Carah sprang from the reeds. Rhian strolled leisurely her direction, leading his horse behind him.
“Oh, leave me alone!” Any other commoner would have fled at her order, but not the pearl fisher. He just stood there with his eyebrows quirked in an I’m-not-impressed fashion.
“You heard your uncle’s report. You know why he mandated your protection.”
“He won’t mandate it enough to train me,” she spouted and turned away from him. The water roiled angrily around the boulders.
“That’s your doing.”
If he wouldn’t be ordered away, she’d dismiss him by ignoring him.
“Your da saw you out here. He sent me to escort you back. Be upset with him, not me. I’m just doing as I’m told.”
“Why send you?”
“Because everyone else has more important things to do.” His dry tone indicated his disagreement on that score.
“Nothing is going to happen to me.”
“Oh, aye, it’s invulnerable y’are, unlike hundreds of others.”
His sarcasm put her teeth on edge. She rounded on him. “Get this straight. Just because my uncle is unspeakably rude to me doesn’t give you the right.”
“He is hard and relentless. He has to be. You have to be, or you won’t cut it. Like all them rotting in some ogre’s belly somewhere. You want to ignore what’s happening because it’s too unpleasant? Or because the training is too hard for your sensibilities? That’s too damn bad. If you weren’t so stubborn, I could help you.”
“I don’t need your help.”
Rhian laughed. “Because you’re doing so well on your own.”
“Mocking me may be the last mistake you ever make.”
“You’ll tell your da? He’ll chain me up in his dungeon for telling his little girl the truth? Hnh, I don’t think so.”
“You dare claim to know what my father would and would not do? You’ve lost all sense of your place.”
“My place? Are you a lady or are you avedra? Sure you haven’t even figured that out, have you? As avedrin we’re equals, Carah—if I stoop to thinking of you as my equal.”
“You conceited, arrogant fishmonger!” If only she could summon a little fire from her fingers.
“Apply your insults to yourself, girl. Get on the bloody horse.”
A high-pitched wail of torment rose between her teeth, and she stomped her feet, hating him. This bastard of a commoner treated her worse than Kethlyn ever did. “I hope the next ogre takes your head off!”
Rhian went still at that. Those aquamarine eyes froze over. “It may yet, so don’t give up hope. Come back or don’t. It’s no concern of mine.” He turned to toss the lead over the horse’s neck, but his glance arrested on a distant hill. Alarm stiffened his frame. “Shit,” he hissed and vaulted into the saddle. The Elaran horse laid her ears back; her nostrils flared, and she tossed her head, begging for the freedom to flee. But Rhian held her in check and lowered a hand. “Don’t make me drag you up here.”
“Like hell I’ll ride with you.” The very idea! “I’ll walk, thanks.”
“There’s no time! They’re right there, damn it.” His finger jabbed at the hills across the river.
Carah saw nothing but windswept grass. At second glance, the grass did seem to lay down strangely. It parted as if making way for someone’s legs. Then it stopped. Carah cast Rhian his own I’m-not-impressed peak of the eyebrows.
He grit his teeth. “Thorn was right. I never should’ve wasted my breath on you.” He swung his horse around, dug in his heels, and suddenly vanished. The thump of galloping hooves receded.
Good riddance. Carah started back toward the gate at her own pace, palms open to catch the caress of old seed heads as she passed. A tingle of fear grew at her nape. Against her principles she glanced back. The trail of flattened grass had spread. It neared the river now, aiming for the calm waters below the cataracts. A rustle on her right. The stomp of a footfall. The shuffle of another.
Carah whirled and raced for the gatehouse. Terror urged her heart into her throat. Her breath came in burning, ragged gasps. The rush of feet behind her, a brush of fingers upon her shoulder, and Carah collapsed to her knees with a shriek.
Rhian appeared ahead of her, hauling the horse to a stop. “That easy, Carah! That easy they could have you, and you couldn’t do a thing to stop it. Please!” He lowered his hand, and Carah didn’t hesitate. She tripped forward, grabbed his wrist, and let him haul her up behind him. He spared one more glance toward the river, then off they galloped for the gate. The portcullis clattered upward so slowly. As soon as they rode through, Rhian ordered the gate wardens,
“Shut her tight. Quick now.” An infectious sense of calm pervaded his voice. The guards cranked the capstan, then swung closed the massive bronze-banded doors. Each took two men to move.
Only when the iron bars slid into place did Carah realize her arms were still locked about the pearl fisher’s waist, her cheek pressed to the flat place between his shoulder blades. She scrambled down, more embarrassed of being seen embracing him than she was afraid of being snatched up by ogres.
Da rushed down the gatehouse steps and scrutinized the extra precautions. “What happened?”
Rhian handed off his horse and started for the tower stair. “I’ll let you know when they’re gone, m’ lord.”
“They?”
Rhian returned a poignant look that explained who ‘they’ were. “Where’s Dathiel?”
“Wherever Jaedren is, I assume. Are they close?” Rhian didn’t answer but disappeared in the stairwell. Kelyn looked his daughter over, reached out to steady her. “Are you all right?”
She was shaking head to toe. “I … Da, I—” She broke away and ran for the keep. Uncle Thorn emerged onto the steps, Jaedren in tow. The excitement in the courtyard must have drawn them from the library. Carah dropped to her knees, even with servants and sentries looking on, and grabbed her uncle’s hand. “I’m sorry!” she sobbed. “The ogres are out there, but I can’t see them. I’ll do whatever it takes. I won’t fight you anymore. Please. I’m so sorry.”
Thorn said not a word. He drew her to her feet and kissed her muddy fingers, and with an arm secured around her shoulders, he ushered her inside.
~~~~
A full company? You’re sure? Thorn asked silently.
Breathless from his hasty descent from the gatehouse towers, Rhian collapsed into a chair in the gentleman’s parlor. The scent of brandy was infused into the rug and upholstery after centuries of use. Don’t insult me. Of course, I’m sure. You’d think I knew how to count naenion by now. A fire flickered in the hearth. Twilight gathered outside the windows. Jaedren rushed to him with a mug of hot mead. “Can I have that cold?” Rhian asked. He felt sticky with chilled sweat.