The Thirteenth House

by Sharon Shinn

  “So, what do we expect in Rappengrass?” Cammon was asking, drawing her attention back to the conversation at hand. “We’ve had assailants in Kianlever, Coralinda Gisseltess in Coravann, and Halchon Gisseltess in Nocklyn. What comes next?”

  “The ocean floods the whole territory,” Hammond guessed.

  “War opens,” Justin said pessimistically.

  “We have a lovely time. Everyone is charming. That would make this stop unique,” Kirra said.

  They all responded in the negative and began inventing more disasters. Plague. Earthquake. An uprising of vassals. “I know,” Cammon said. “We’re invaded by Arberharst.”

  “Do they have much of a navy?” Hammond asked with interest.

  Justin shook his head. Kirra thought, Great gods, now they’re going to discuss military strategy!

  “Not that I ever heard,” Justin said. “An army, though—a good one. Did you ever come across any of their soldiers when you were there?” he asked Cammon.

  Cammon nodded. “Oh, yeah. Troops of them going through the port cities all the time. Even my father was afraid of them, and he generally thought he could outwit anyone.”

  “So, say they hire ships to transport cavalry to Gillengaria,” Hammond said.

  “Infantry,” Justin corrected. “Too much trouble to ferry over horses. All that way? A nightmare.”

  “There were horses on the ship I arrived on,” Cammon said.

  “Sure, but hundreds of them? Like you’d need for an army?”

  Kirra stopped listening to the words, though she let the rhythms of argument and counterargument make a pleasant staccato accompaniment to her thoughts. She was watching Romar, engaged in his own debate, which seemed to require arranging beer glasses like some kind of diagram on the table before him. Tayse disagreed with him, pushing the glasses aside and drawing a picture by pulling his fingertips through spilled wine. Senneth sat watching them, a half smile on her face. Unless Kirra greatly missed her guess, Senneth was experiencing much the same emotion Kirra was feeling right now. Men and their wars and their quarrels. But how I love some of these particular men.

  Romar was watching Tayse intently; Kirra did not think he even realized that she was covertly surveying him. He sat back in his chair, crossed his arms on his chest, and shook his head emphatically. She could see his lips shape the word “no” and then the syllables of a vehement denial, though she could not actually hear what he said. Tayse and Coeval didn’t give him a chance to finish before they launched into their own counterattack.

  Still arguing with Tayse, Romar lifted one finger and laid it across his arm.

  Come to me tonight at one o’clock.

  Kirra felt her skin heat as her blood careered through her veins. Not that the invitation was unexpected, not that she was planning on sleeping in her own room, but she was left breathless by the excitement of planning a secret meeting in such a public place. No wonder that vassal’s daughter had not been able to resist her doomed romance. What a thrill, what an exultation, to know the man you loved—so handsome, powerful, and forbidden—wanted you so badly he would tell you so before all of his friends.

  But she could not pass up the chance to tease him. Keeping her eyes on Justin, though she had no idea what he was talking about, she lifted her pendant idly to her lips. I am too closely watched. I cannot get free tonight. She chanced a quick look at Romar to find his face creased with indignation. She tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t help herself. She dropped her pendant and shook her head. Only joking.

  “What? What did I say that was funny?” Justin demanded.

  She honestly had no idea. “You’re not funny, you’re boring,” she said. “Talk about something else.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Ballgowns and hairstyles. Right, that’s not boring.”

  “Anything’s better than war stories.”

  “How long before we arrive in Rappengrass?” Hammond asked, so they turned to travel talk instead. The meal progressed and finally ended, and the lot of them dispersed to find their beds.

  Where some of them would sleep that night, and some would not.

  KIRRA returned to her room for about an hour to brush and rebraid her hair and wash her face for a second time. Melly was busy mending a tear in one of the red dresses and muttering over the lack of some cleaning supply not in stock at the inn.

  “I’ll be gone much of the night,” Kirra told her. “Don’t wait up for me, and don’t worry.”

  Melly gave her a straight look—almost reproving, as if she knew very well where Kirra had been these last few nights. It would be just like Casserah to have a servant who felt free to scold her, not that Casserah would care what a maid said. Casserah didn’t care what anybody said. “I won’t wait up, but I will worry,” Melly said. “The Pale Mother knows there’s no telling what mischief you might get yourself into. Changing shapes whenever you please and going out courting trouble.”

  Kirra laughed. “I never get myself into trouble that I can’t handle.”

  Melly’s gaze dropped to the fabric again. “That’s what many a young woman before you has thought.”

  So she did know. Red and silver hell. This was why Kirra had never wanted to burden herself with servants. Kirra crossed to the door and waited a moment, listening to the quiet in the hall. No one seemed to be stirring. “Don’t wait up,” she repeated, and stepped outside.

  Amalie’s room across the hall, Coeval at the door. She nodded at him gravely, as if she pondered matters too serious for him to comprehend, and strode along the hall. Down the steps, out into the deserted courtyard. As soon as she was sure she was deep enough in shadows that no one would be able to see her, she changed. Romar had liked her hummingbird well enough to want to employ it as a code word; therefore, she would assume that shape again.

  She launched her tiny body into the air, paused to sip nectar from a night-blooming flower, and made a fluttering, indirect circuit around the exterior of the inn. Plenty of windows were open as guests sought to cool their rooms with the fresh night air. Some were shut; one was guarded by a white owl, drowsing on the sill. Kirra darted above him, winging away as fast as she could. He hadn’t seen her, or if he had, he had not realized who she was. He didn’t even open his eyes as she hurried past.

  The Wild Mother was kind. She had made sure Romar’s room was not adjacent to Amalie’s. No mistaking the regent’s room, for the shutters were open wide, the room was aglow with candlelight, and Romar himself stood at the window, scanning the night sky.

  She flew over and hovered right before him, her wings beating the air so mightily they could not be seen. He stared at her a moment, not smiling, then he held out his hand. She dropped into his palm and let her wings fall still. It was not possible that her small heart could beat any faster. He drew her inside and latched the shutters behind her.

  CHAPTER 32

  NOT until Kirra was on her way back to her room did she encounter any trouble, and even then it came from an unexpected source. No cats in the shadowed courtyard to pounce on her as she shifted shapes. No late-arriving guests to ogle her as she stepped back inside the inn. Even the clerk was asleep behind his desk and did not see her enter. She had just hurried down the hallway and had her right foot on the stairwell when Justin entered from the back door, obviously heading in her direction.

  “What are you doing up?” she asked without thinking.

  “My shift at the princess’s door,” he said. His sandy eyebrows gathered into a scowl. “Why are you out roaming around?”

  She shrugged. “Restless. Sometimes I wander.”

  Now his frown was even blacker. “Where did you wander to tonight? Romar Brendyn’s bedroom?”

  She was so stunned she could only gape at him.

  But Justin wasn’t done. “What do you think you’re doing, Kirra? How could you be so stupid? Chasing after a married man—”

  It took her that many sentences to recover. “I don’t think this is any of your business,” she snappe
d, and put her hand on the rail.

  He knocked it off and moved to block her before she could run past him up the steps. She had never seen Justin so furious. Astonishment, more than the physical barricade of his body, kept her in place.

  “This is wrong—this is stupid—you can’t go after Romar Brendyn, you can’t,” he railed. “Half the young lords in Gillengaria are in love with you, and you’d throw yourself away on a man you can’t have? Where’s your pride? Where’s your honor? You shame yourself and him and his family and your family. If you—”

  “I don’t want to hear this from you! Let me pass!” she exclaimed, making as if to push past him, but he would not budge.

  “I don’t have a family! I have no one to hurt by my actions, but I wouldn’t behave this way,” Justin continued. “But you! You’re a daughter of Danalustrous. And you’re styled like your sister! Have you thought how you might damage her reputation by your behavior? You owe it to her—”

  “Justin. I will not have this conversation with you. I will not.”

  “You owe it to yourself,” he persisted. “Don’t you know you will only end up breaking your heart? How can this man make you happy? How can he do anything except hurt you?”

  “My heart, my hurt, are not your concern!”

  “You owe it to Donnal,” he said.

  She stopped trying to brush past him and stood staring at him. Her own face, she knew, was stricken. His was still dark with fury and concern. “Donnal doesn’t know anything about this,” she whispered.

  “Of course he does! Donnal knows where you are every minute of every day, even if you aren’t shaped like Kirra, even if you cannot see him watching you. What do you think he’s thinking? What do you think he’s feeling?”

  She shook her head. “I cannot—my life is—I cannot live my life for Donnal’s sake. We are further apart than Tayse and Senneth. There is—you don’t know—”

  “He loves you.”

  “I’m not free to love him in return!”

  “That’s not it!” Justin struck back. If he hadn’t been almost whispering, he would have been shouting in her face. But both of them were keeping their voices lowered in the hopes of not waking the clerk or drawing the attention of customers still in the taproom. “You take him for granted. You think he will always be there, when you think about him at all. Don’t you know how precious every friend is? Don’t you know how quickly you can lose people—lose anybody at all?”

  Justin himself had lost everybody, mother and sisters and some of his friends; he never talked about any of those losses. Kirra put her hands across her eyes and realized she was trembling. With anger, with weariness, with sheer emotion, she didn’t know.

  “I do not want to lose Donnal. I do not want to lose anyone,” she said, speaking very distinctly. “But I cannot live my life for him. For my family. For anyone but myself. I am sorry if that shocks you. I am sorry if that disappoints you. I cannot live my life to please you, either.”

  “You owe me more than this,” he said in a low voice, and her eyes flew open. She dropped her hands.

  “What? I owe you?”

  He was shaking his head. “You are the first noblewoman I ever believed in. The first serramarra that I didn’t hate.”

  “There’s Senneth,” she said dryly. “And you do so hate me.”

  “Senneth doesn’t count. She’s—she’s Senneth,” he said, and he didn’t have to explain any better than that. Kirra knew what he meant. “But you—I had spent my life despising the aristocracy. For their wealth, their arrogance, their ease. For having so much while everyone else had so little. But you—” He shook his head again. “You’re different. You live a life that matters. I respect you.” His voice changed. “Or I did.”

  Now she was the one shaking her head. “You can’t—I’m not—damn it, Justin, how I live my life has nothing to do with you! How you live your life has nothing to do with me! Do I chide you every time you take up with a barmaid? Do I care if you’ve slept with every serving girl from here to Ghosenhall? Do I—”

  He was staring at her. “I haven’t,” he interrupted. “I don’t. I want to be like Tayse. It’s not good enough unless it’s love.”

  By the laughing silver goddess, the unreliable Silver Lady. Fierce, abrasive, impossible Justin was a romantic at heart.

  She closed her eyes again. She was suddenly so tired that she almost dropped her head forward to rest it against his chest. “I love him, Justin,” she said in a low voice. “And I cannot have him. But I will have what part of him I can steal. And nothing you say, nothing anybody says, can change that. And if you think I’ve betrayed you and every single one of the Twelve Houses, well, then, so be it. This is the path I choose.”

  His hands were on her shoulders; he pushed her back and shook her, just a little. “You’re so lost on this path.”

  She pulled herself free and he released her, standing aside so she could finally climb past him. “Every path is tangled and overgrown,” she said over her shoulder, not looking back at him. “All of us are lost.”

  SO that was not a restful night, but she found herself too edgy the next day to want to sleep the hours away in the coach. Possibly because whenever she closed her eyes, as she had the night before, her mind replayed for her Justin’s words, Justin’s face. Even when she clenched her hands and willed herself to remember Romar’s face instead, Romar’s hands, Romar’s body. What she saw was Justin’s anger. What she heard were Justin’s reproaches.

  Easier to find a horse and ride the whole day, contending only with the discomforts of the body.

  They had been on the road for about three hours when Senneth shook herself loose of a conversation with Valri and brought her horse alongside Kirra’s. “You look tired,” Senneth commented.

  Kirra gave her a sideways glance. Justin, Tayse, Donnal (if you believed Justin), and possibly Cammon all knew where she had spent her recent nights. Impossible to believe that one of them had not informed Senneth, who might have figured it out on her own. “Nocturnal activities,” Kirra said briefly. “I’m already braced for your disapproval.”

  Senneth smiled faintly but without much amusement. “I’m in no position to tell anyone else how to walk away from love.”

  “Exactly what I told Tayse,” Kirra said, nodding darkly. “But that didn’t stop him.”

  “But I know from experience that hearts can withstand more punishment than you’d like to think,” Senneth added. “You can hurt a lot more and for a lot longer than you’d ever believe. I hate to see a happy girl like you fall into pain and despair.”

  “I am perfectly capable of deciding how much unhappiness I can bear,” Kirra said. “I will take care of my own life, as I told Justin.”

  Now Senneth did look amused. “Justin?”

  Kirra nodded. “Yes! Last night. He caught me on the stairs, returning from—returning to my room. He stood there and yelled at me for ten minutes. I was never so astonished. Justin.”

  Senneth was trying to smother a smile. “I overheard him lecturing Donnal the other day, too.”

  “For what?” Kirra said waspishly. “Spending too much time flirting with the princess?”

  Senneth lifted her eyebrows at that. “Not exactly, but perhaps indirectly. He said Donnal had left you too much to your own devices. Or words to that effect. He implied that Donnal was overlooking his primary responsibility. You can imagine how well Donnal took such an accusation.”

  Kirra laughed shortly. She could. “This is almost impossible to believe. Why would he care? Justin has no use for Donnal and he can’t stand me.”

  “Actually, I think you’re wrong there,” Senneth said thoughtfully. “More than any of us, I think, Justin considers the rest of us to be his family. You’d expect Cammon to be the one who turned us into kin, and to some extent he has, but I don’t think Cammon would be quite as lost as Justin would if the rest of us were suddenly to disappear. You know, Cam finds people to love him everywhere he goes. People are drawn
to him, they want to protect him or be his friend. Justin—it’s harder for him. Basically, we’re all he’s got.”

  “There’s the Riders,” Kirra pointed out. “All fifty of them.”

  Senneth nodded. “Yes. Those are his peers, the people he wants to think well of him. The people he’s comfortable around. But we’re the people he loves. We’re the people he would fight for till the death.” She turned her head and smiled at Kirra. “Even you. He would defend you with his life.”

  “No,” Kirra said in a very disgruntled voice, “he’s more likely to strangle me and leave my body for the dogs.”

  “You know that isn’t true,” Senneth said. “And you’d fight for Justin. You would. If he was in trouble and it was in your power to save him, you’d do it.”