The Thirteenth House

by Sharon Shinn

  His fingers closed even more tightly around the bars and he glowered down at her. He was radiating irritation and impatience but seemed as if he was trying to retain some scraps of courtesy. “If we’re not going to try to file down the window bars tonight,” he said at last, “then let’s start from the beginning. Why did the king send a Danalustrous serramarra after me? Did he at least send anyone with you who might be able to help?”

  She couldn’t help grinning at that. “Yes, indeed. I’ve got a King’s Rider with me and two other mystics. Between us—”

  “Mystics,” he interrupted. “That’s why he sent you. You’ve got some—magical ability. You can do something special.”

  “Change shapes,” she said calmly. “And heal people. Have you been wounded? I can fix you right up.”

  He shook his head. “No, no. Except for abducting me in the first place—and conveniently forgetting to give me a fire—my captors haven’t done much to abuse me. But you—even if you can change shapes. What good does that do me? How will you get me out of here?”

  “Well, among other things, my shape-shifting ability allowed me to slip past the guard and find you tonight,” she said. She was still amused. “And tomorrow—”

  “That’s it! You can shift me, too,” he said. His voice was brisk, unalarmed. He hadn’t paused to consider the wonders or the horrors of being turned into some other creature; he just assumed such a transformation would serve his ends, and he accepted the necessity. “So why can’t you do that now?”

  “Lord Romar. Please. You go too fast,” Kirra said, using her most winsome voice. “I cannot shift you. I can only change myself. We will have to use other methods to free you.”

  “Why can’t you change me?” he argued. “You mean, you’ve never tried it? I’m willing to risk being turned into a rather ugly rat if it means getting out of this cell a day earlier.”

  How was it possible that in this situation, with so much else to cover, she was being drawn into this particular discussion? “I cannot change you because it is forbidden for shiftlings to transform any living creature except themselves. I can change objects. I can change plants. I can change myself. I cannot change other people.”

  “But—”

  “Can’t, because I do not have the ability. Won’t, because the prohibition is something I hold sacred,” she continued, cutting him off. “We will find another way. Trust me. I have come this far.”

  He stared down at her another moment, still mutinous but clearly deciding he should channel his energy into more fruitful discussions. “You said you had a Rider and two mystics with you,” he said. “There are at least five people in this house. Can you kill all of them with your small group?”

  “I would prefer it didn’t come to killing,” she said. “And, in fact, there are seven people arrayed against us—two guards, two servants, and three men who appear to have arranged your abduction. And, yes, I think my companions and I can outwit them.”

  He finally decided he had no choice but to submit to her will. “How, then? What’s your plan?”

  Before answering, she glanced at the barred window set in the wall. “What do you overlook? What part of the grounds?”

  “The back of the house. Kitchen gardens. The stable’s off to the left some distance.”

  It would have been too much to hope that his window gave out over some deserted flower garden on a track that none of the occupants ever followed. “How often does someone come to the door? To bring you food or ask you questions?”

  “So far, twice a day. Breakfast in the morning, dinner in the evening. My captors have not been to see me at all.”

  That caught her attention, changed her train of thought. “Your captors. Do you know who they are?”

  He shook his head. “We were surprised on the road. I had four men with me and I saw three of them die in the attempt to save me. I don’t know if Stellan escaped—”

  “He did,” Kirra interrupted. “That’s how we learned you’d been taken.”

  Romar nodded. “One small piece of good news, then. At any rate, there were possibly twenty of them arrayed against us. At first I thought they were bandits, but it quickly became clear their plan was to take me alive, whatever the fate of my men. And if I was being kidnapped—well, there had to be a political motive. So I looked for crests and insignia, but I didn’t spot any. We traveled two days to get here—” He glanced around his cell. “Wherever here is. I have no idea who took me or even where I am. I assumed the king would know more than I would, if some kind of ransom has been demanded.”

  “There may have been. We left before any demand arrived, within hours of Stellan’s appearance. So I know very little more than you do—not even who owns this house. I can tell you that we are on the northern edge of Tilt territory, very close to the sea.”

  He was staring at her, the expression easy to read even by moonlight. “If you don’t even know who took me—how were you able to find me?”

  Kirra grinned. “Magic,” she said. “We have a reader with us.”

  “What?”

  Oh, he was going to be worse than Justin, wholly skeptical of a mystic’s skills. “A young man named Cammon,” she explained. “He’s a reader—a sensitive. He has a tremendous capacity for picking up on the auras and emotions of the people near him. Actually, he’s getting better at picking up those emotions from a distance, too. He was able to lead us to you.”

  Romar was still stupefied. “All the way from Ghosenhall?”

  Kirra felt her laughter bubble up. “No, don’t be ridiculous. Stellan told us where the attack had occurred, and Donnal tracked you most of the way north—”

  “Who?”

  “Donnal. Another mystic who accompanies us. He’s a shiftling, like I am, and he took wolf shape to follow your scent. Till we lost it in the rain, but by then Cammon had located you, and he brought us straight to the house earlier tonight. He says you’re full of rage,” she added inconsequently.

  “Yes, well, who wouldn’t be enraged to be attacked in bright daylight by traitors to the throne?” Romar demanded. “And then to be left in a cell for close to a week, not told why, not told what’s going to happen next—I want to pull the house down with my bare hands. I’m not surprised this magical boy of yours picked up some anger.”

  “We haven’t seen our hosts, either,” Kirra said. “The servants say the house has been mostly shut up, but Cammon says there are three men here who exude the air of authority. We feel they must be the ones who have arranged your capture. He doesn’t know the members of the nobility well enough to recognize personalities at this distance. If I get a chance, I’ll go looking tomorrow, but—”

  “But that’s a lower priority than getting me out of here,” Romar interrupted. “Yes. How are we going to do that?”

  “We need to get you a rope,” she said, “so you can climb out the window after dark.”

  Once again he was staring at her as if she was a complete lunatic. “I can’t climb down the wall, even if I have a rope,” he said in a tight voice. “There are bars across the window. Perhaps you didn’t notice.”

  Kirra bit her lip to keep from laughing again. People unaccustomed to magic never consciously thought about how to incorporate it into every situation. “The bars are not a problem,” she said. “I will change them to something brittle. I am more concerned with finding you a rope. And perhaps a knife—some kind of weapon.”

  “Yes, indeed,” he said. “I would most like to have a weapon.”

  She grinned. “I’ll see what I can do. It would be much easier if we had a fire to see by, or at least a candle, but I can’t call flames with my fingertips as Senneth can.”

  She could see the word “who?” hovering on his lips again, and then he remembered. “Senneth. The missing Brassenthwaite serramarra. I met her at the palace a couple of months ago.”

  “So you remember Senneth, but you don’t remember me,” Kirra said lightly. “And yet, I’ve met you more than once. I even a
ttended your wedding.”

  “I remember you,” he said, sounding surprised that she would think otherwise. “You wore red the day I was married.”

  “I often do. Danalustrous crimson,” she said, more lightly still. What an odd thing for a man to remember. But she had much more important matters to focus on. “Let me come in there and look around and see what I can turn to my purpose.”

  “Come in here,” he repeated. “How will you—oh. You’ll change shapes, I suppose, and crawl under the door. Perhaps I shouldn’t watch.”

  “Watch or not, makes no difference to me,” she said cheerfully.

  But he turned away. “They left me with a candle and some flint,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll get us some more light while you—do your magic.”

  Romar stepped back toward his sleeping mat while Kirra shrank herself into mouse shape, scurried under the grille, and resumed her human form. She thought he must have been watching, at least surreptitiously, because he was at her side with a lighted candle in his hand just as she was throwing back her heavy hair.

  “What are we looking for?” he asked, sounding as if he was trying hard to keep any sense of marvel out of his voice. “What basic materials do you need to change something into something else?”

  She paced gracefully across the cold stone floor of the cell, using the gliding step that her stepmother had taught her was proper for a lady. Absurd to even be thinking of such a thing at such a time, but she had been so eccentric already; she didn’t want Romar to think she was wholly without social graces. “Oh, ideally, the objects should have some relation to each other. We could tear your blanket into long strips and tie them together, and that would alter quite nicely into a rope, but then you wouldn’t have a blanket.”

  “I can sleep cold,” he said instantly.

  “Yes, but whoever brings your breakfast in the morning would notice you had a rope on your bed instead of a cover, and that wouldn’t do you much good,” she pointed out. “The next best thing might be—what were you wearing when you were taken? Does your coat have any braid?”

  It turned out that Romar Brendyn wasn’t much for elaborate dress, so neither his shirt nor his overcoat sported any fancy trim that Kirra could rip free. But she was able to tear the silk lining out of his topcoat and shred that into ragged strips, and she knotted these together into a respectable length. She passed the thin, frayed cord through her fingers, touching silk but thinking about hemp, and she felt its weight and texture change against her palm.

  “Rope,” she said, coiling it before her on the floor.

  “That’s not even remotely credible,” Romar said flatly. “That someone can do such a thing. I watched you, and I can’t believe it.”

  She smiled. “Very handy, don’t you agree?”

  “Can you change anything you please to anything else?”

  “No. For instance, I can’t change a bird into a rosebush. I can turn things into other things. And I have to be touching the object in order to effect the transformation. And if I try to change too many things—or myself too many times—I can exhaust all my power and have to rest for a while.”

  “For how long?”

  “An hour, a day. It depends on how much of my magic has been used up.” She handed him the rope. “Let’s hide this under your mattress. I’m afraid you won’t have a very comfortable sleep tonight.”

  She was not even surprised when his immediate response was, “I don’t need to be comfortable.” He was as prickly as Justin, in his way, impatient of delay and scornful of comforts. Less irritating than Justin, of course, though she supposed that could change if she spent much time with him.

  “Now then,” she said, glancing around by wavering candlelight. “What might we turn into a knife?”

  The obvious choice was the spoon that lay by the bowl at the door, but Kirra didn’t want anyone to notice that something crucial was missing. She pulled a hairpin from the tangle of her hair and used that instead, shifting its form, its material, and its purpose.

  “A wicked little dagger,” she said, handing it over to Romar, who slipped it inside a pocket of his trousers. “I wouldn’t use it if you didn’t have to, at least until the trap is sprung. If you kill off the servants before we free you, you might not get out of here alive.”

  “I may not anyway,” he said. “I still don’t understand what you have in mind.”

  Kirra took those ladylike steps across the room to the window and wrapped her hands around the bars. Before working any magic, she gazed out to see what she could determine by capricious moonlight. That open space right before her must be the gardens, soggy and unappealing after the rain. The dark silhouette to the left was probably the stables. There wasn’t much cover for a good hundred yards, till a line of scrubby trees hunched themselves into a windbreak along the western edge of the property.

  Romar had come to join her by the window, and Kirra pointed. “There. We’ll have a horse and another rider waiting for you right past that line of trees tomorrow night. Wait till it’s full dark—wait till your last meal has been brought to you. Break the bars, climb out, run for us. We should be able to cover a lot of ground before anyone knows you’re gone.”

  “If they come after us—”

  “The important thing is to get you out of here and back on the road,” Kirra interrupted. “If there’s a pursuit, you and Cammon will ride for safety while Justin and Donnal and I attack the others.”

  “You! And two men!” he exclaimed. “If there is a fight on my behalf, I will lead the charge.”

  “You are the valuable individual here,” she said, her voice a little sharp. “Yours is the life to be protected. And, believe me, between us, Donnal and Justin and I can account for more than two soldiers and three noblemen. We’ve done it before.”

  Now he turned to look down at her. He had left the candle over by his mat, so she could only see what portion of his face the moonlight chose to illuminate. He was an amazingly handsome man, she thought, though this was not the time and place to be noticing such things. He had an aristocrat’s fine features, stamped with intelligence, and his face was quick to show his emotions. Just now he seemed to be struggling with respect, protest, and curiosity.

  “I hate the thought of running like a coward while others defend me,” he said in a quieter voice than she was expecting. “But I find myself wondering what in the silver hell has brought a serramarra of the Twelve Houses to the place where she thinks she can take on professional blades and kill them on the road.”

  “Yes, it’s a most interesting story,” Kirra agreed. “We’ll tell it around the fire on our journey tomorrow night.”

  “Something to live for,” he said.

  Kirra smiled. “I imagine you have many other items on that list.”

  He laughed but did not reply. “What else is left to be done here?”

  Kirra ran her hands up and down the two center bars of the window. “I must turn these into something you can break easily with your hand. There—these two are old wood. You should be able to snap them without much trouble. Give me a moment to convert them all.”

  “Not all of them,” he said. “I must have something to anchor the rope.”

  She laughed. “Naturally. I shall leave this one on the left pure iron.”

  Romar watched her more closely this time, seeming fascinated and a little fearful. “How long will the sorcery last?” he asked. “When will these items revert to their proper materials?”

  Kirra shook her head. “This is what they are now. They will not revert.” She could not help but give him a look of limpid mischief. “Oh, they do say that sometimes magic dies with the mystic. So I suppose if I am accidentally killed in a brawl tomorrow while you’re in the process of climbing down the wall—well, you could find yourself in desperate straits, clinging to the end of a slip of silk as you try to find purchase on the side of the house. But I plan to live out the day, so you should be quite safe. Don’t give it another thought.”


  He looked as if he wanted to be irked with her but found himself, against his will, amused. “In fact, I am happy to learn you will be alive at day’s end,” he said instead. “You have that story to tell, after all.”

  Kirra ran her hands once more down the changed bars, just checking, but all of them seemed splintery and ready to break. She glanced around the room, wondering what else she could do to improve Romar’s comfort or his odds for survival, but nothing occurred to her. “My best advice now would be to sleep as well as possible and eat what you can,” she told him. “Keep yourself strong. If you hear a commotion tomorrow afternoon, that will be us leaving. But we won’t go far. We’ll be waiting for you behind the trees tomorrow night.”

  “I’ll be there,” he said.

  Kirra glided back toward the door, and he followed her. “Wait till it’s safe,” she cautioned him. He seemed like the kind of man who needed such a warning, and probably wouldn’t heed it even then.