“Not Terstans, my lady,” Peri said with a dip that begged forgiveness for what she knew would be unwelcome news. “Northmen. Very tall. One of them a great lord.”
Carissa laid the kerchief on the vanity and arose. “Lord Ethan?” He’d gone to Springerlan for the meeting of the Table of Lords and shouldn’t be back for weeks.
Peri bobbed again. “I don’t think so, my lady, but they all look the same to me.”
Even if Ethan’s back, Carissa thought, what would he be doing here now, in this storm? Surely he’d have sent someone over rather than come himself.
She strode to the clothes chest for her cloak, and Peri had just helped settle it over her shoulders when Hogart, Cooper’s second in charge, stuck his head in. “My lady,” he said quietly, “riders have come seeking succor from the storm.”
“I am coming to greet them now.”
“I took the liberty of telling them you weren’t well and had retired for the night.”
Carissa stopped midway to the door, frowning at him, and he answered her unvoiced question: “Lord Rennalf leads them, my lady.”
It was as if a horse had kicked her in the chest. She stared at him, unable to breathe, feeling the blood drain out of her face. Rennalf! How did he learn I was here? We have been so careful. And then, I’ve got to leave!
Her thoughts were apparently obvious to Hogart, who along with Cooper, understood the ramifications of Rennalf’s presence and now raised his hands reassuringly. “No, my lady, I don’t think he knows. It seems he is here only to escape the storm.”
“And did not go to the manor instead?”
Hogart kept the expression of his surprise subdued. “He would never go to the manor, my lady.”
Of course. She knew that very well. It was the reason she’d approached Laramor for succor in the first place. He and Rennalf had nearly come to blood feud in their antagonism. But with Ethan in Springerlan right now, Rennalf’s appearance at his manor for any reason would be construed by clan law as both insult and challenge. In fact, Rennalf’s being on Laramor lands at all in its clanlord’s absence was seriously suspect.
“Have you told Cooper?”
Again Hogart looked surprised. “No, my lady. Lord Rennalf said not to disturb you, that he and his men would be off at first light. I thought, seeing as it’s Master’s wedding night—” He stopped. “Should I tell him anyway?”
She thought for a moment, struggling for calm. If Rennalf truly meant to leave at first light, he would be gone before Cooper was even awake. And as Hogard had pointed out, it was Coop’s wedding night.
“No,” she said finally. “We’ll tell him in the morning. Keep an eye on them though. They’re not to be roaming about, and I’d very much like to know what they are doing so far afield of their own lands.”
“We’ll see to it, my lady.”
The night that followed was a long one. Carissa tossed restlessly in her big bed, weighed down by her elk-hide cover. Even with Peri back in her regular place before the bedchamber’s hearth, the lady could not find sleep. Every random boom and thump startled her from slumber, mistaken as the heavy footfalls of her husband coming to reclaim her. Once awakened, she listened intently to the wind, assuring herself it was diminishing as she waited hopefully for the barking of the dogs, the horses clattering in the yard, and the gate creaking open and booming shut. But all she heard was the wind and the snow ticking against the shutters until she dozed off and started the cycle again. When morning finally came and the storm had not diminished at all, she knew she had a long day ahead of her.
Resigned to the fact that she would have to greet her guests or rouse unwanted curiosity, she set about selecting an appropriate veil. “Lady Louise” often went veiled, a habit picked up in Esurh and now part of her reputation for eccentricity. It amused her that the garment she had most hated during all her time in the south had become so useful here in Kiriath. For this occasion she selected the heaviest house veil she owned, a dark blue silk laced with sprays of white vines. She was holding it before her face to see how well it hid her features when Cooper came stomping in, Hogart in his wake.
She’d always thought Felmen Cooper a handsome man, tall and strong and leanly muscled. Now in his late forties, his swarthy face was well weathered, but he remained in excellent physical condition, age and his experiences in Esurh having imparted a new sense of command to his presence. The last four years had seen his short-cropped hair turn completely to gray, only the spiked Thilosian-style goatee retaining any of its former dark.
“Rennalf is here,” he said quietly.
“Yes.” She handed the veil to Peri.
“Why didn’t you tell me last night?” he demanded.
“It was your wedding night, Coop,” Carissa said as Peri swirled the veil over her head. “We figured he’d be gone by morning, and what could you do anyway? He’ll recognize you the moment he sees you.” She turned back to the mirror and lowered the veil over her face, Peri pulling and twitching at its folds.
His frown deepened. “What are you doing with that?”
“I am the lady of the manor. I’m going down to greet him.”
“And you think he won’t recognize your voice?Won’t demand to see your face?” Cooper had braced his hands on his hips. “He’ll take you, lass. You know he will. If for no other reason than to prove that he can.”
“What would you have me do, then?” she demanded, her voice highpitched with tension. “Go down unveiled and remove all doubt? Or stay up here and arouse his curiosity further than it must already be aroused?”
He gestured at her maid. “Let Peri go.”
The girl blanched and turned a terrified look toward Carissa, who was already seriously considering the idea. Peri’s accent would add weight to the deception. She’d have only to give greeting before pleading illness. . . . If only she wasn’t so obviously a servant. Her posture, her mien, and especially her terror would give her away.
“I’ll do it” came a voice from the now-open door. Cooper’s new wife, Elayne, stepped into the room. “I’ve watched you, mistress. I know how it’s done.”
Since Elayne was already head of the household staff and accustomed to greeting the lords who occasionally came through, she was an eminently appropriate choice. Hogart would take over Cooper’s position, while Cooper himself retired to the background as a kitchen drudge, chopping wood and hauling water.
Thus it was decided, leaving Carissa to stew in isolated ignorance. Too restless for needlework and too distracted to read, she spent the morning pacing before the hearth, battling impatience and curiosity. It had been six years since she’d left her husband. Had time changed him as much as it had her? As much as it had Cooper? When she had married Rennalf he was a strong and handsome borderman, mysterious, powerful, and immensely attractive. Perhaps some of that remained. Perhaps his own trials—she’d heard he’d lost his beloved bastard son two years ago—had softened him. It was an absurd hope, one she knew was nothing more than wishful thinking. Everything she’d heard of him told her he’d only grown more hardened and bitter. He blamed Raynen for Carissa’s disappearance and later had insulted Gillard and been insulted in turn. He had no love for the House of Kalladorne, his former wife least of all.
She’d be a fool to risk discovery simply to satisfy idle curiosity.
There was the other matter, as well, though—the question of what he was doing here. Would the servants know what to listen for? Would they recognize the crucial words of revelation when they came? Would they miss what Carissa might not?
She fought temptation for most of the day—aided by Cooper’s adamant rejection of the slightest suggestion she go down. But at last she could stand it no longer. “I’m only taking a little walk,” she told Peri late that afternoon as she donned a servant girl’s undertunic, cotte, and baggy wool leggings. “Just to get out of the room for a while.” She stripped off her rings, tied a kerchief around her braided hair and slipped a misshapen woolen sweater over the
lot, then went down the back way to the stables. There she checked on the horses and dogs, looked in on the goats that were being milked, and offered to take one of the filled pails back to the kitchen.
The milkmaid waved permission, pleasing Carissa by the fact that she had no idea who had come in to ask. Cooper, of course, recognized her the moment she walked through the door, scowling at her furiously as he dumped an armload of wood beside the kitchen hearth. Maya, the cook, struggled to hide a smile and suggested Carissa wipe up the spills near the Great Room doorway lest anyone coming through slip and fall. Despite Cooper’s glares, Carissa picked up a rag and dropped to hands and knees just inside the doorway. She did an extremely thorough job, which was remarkable considering she paid no attention to what she was doing.
“Lady Louisa” sat knitting in one of the four large tree-limb chairs arranged before the hearth, shrouded in her blue veil. Her six visitors ignored her entirely, conversing quietly around the big table. Big, tall men, typical of their lineage, they wore leather and wool, with shaggy beards and long blond hair caught up in various modes.
Rennalf of Balmark presided at the table’s head, his back to the fire, face to the kitchen. Tallest and broadest of the lot, his rugged countenance was more weathered than she recalled, his crow’s feet deeper, the squint of his eyes more pronounced. He wore his frizzy blond hair long and loose, brushed back from his forehead at the crown but caught at the temples into thick, dangling braids that framed his bearded face. It was the beard that betrayed his age, white now at the sides where once it had been all golden brown.
What startled her most, though, were not the signs of age but the hardness in his manner, an intensification of the aura of superiority he’d always carried—and something more. Some indefinable sense of power that raised the hairs on her nape and made her think of men she had seen in Esurh.
Though perhaps that was only because of the green-stoned amulet he wore at his throat. Nested in a silver setting, half hidden by his beard and hair and high-collared tunic, it was not readily noticeable, yet her eyes flew to it as to light on a dark night. It was not a piece she recognized. The men’s voices were deep and heavily accented with the northerner dialect, so it was hard to discern their words above the racket Cooper was making with the kitchen fire and Maya’s pounding of the bread. They spoke of seasons and fordings, of meetings and agreements, of others unnamed who were important to them, but through it all her conviction mounted that they were up to nothing good.
Maya called her from the doorway then, pressing a rolling pin into her hands and gesturing at the dough on the counter. About that time young Rolf came bursting through the front door into the Great Room. “News from Springerlan,” he cried, waving one of the small canisters worn by homing pigeons. “Whitewing’s brought back news from Springerlan! And it’s got the royal seal on it!” He stopped, taken aback by the realization that they had guests and he shouldn’t have been shouting the news. He scanned the room, spied Carissa standing in the kitchen doorway and, in his discombobulation, started toward her.
Elayne called him sharply from her chair: “Rolf, I’m over here.”
He whirled and hurried to her, the kitchen help now crowding around Carissa at the doorway. Elayne pried open the canister, then extracted the tiny tube of paper inside. Unrolling it, she stepped closer to the fire to read the tiny missive and seemed to turn to stone.
“Well, woman!” Rennalf cried at length. “Do na keep us in suspense. What news?”
She looked up, her gaze going not to Rennalf, but to Cooper standing just inside the door. “Prince Abramm’s come home,” she said faintly. “He’s in Springerlan now. He’s killed the kraggin and means to take the throne.”
A loud crack exploded in the ensuing silence as the rolling pin hit the wooden floor, dropped from Carissa’s suddenly nerveless fingers. Every face in the room whipped round to look at her and she cringed. Luckily Rennalf only glanced her way long enough to confirm the source of the sound as a servant’s clumsiness before returning his attention to Elayne.
“Abramm,” he said. “He who took religious vows and vanished six years past?”
“Yes, my lord. Some say he was kidnapped and sold into slavery.”
“And now he’s back.” Rennalf arched his brows at his companions and settled back in his chair. “T’ take the Crown, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is that all it says, lady? Let me see.”
Elayne frowned her disapproval but relinquished the message without argument.
“I wonder how he killed it,” said one of the northmen.
“B’sure he’s only taking the credit,” Rennalf replied. “So he can get the Crown. Our friend Gillard will na like this.”
They exchanged sly, unpleasant looks.
“The gods smile on us today, m’friends,” Rennalf said. He looked around, skewering the gaggle of servants eavesdropping from the kitchen doorway. His men did likewise a half breath later, their combined glares sending the fortress menials scurrying back to their work. All except Carissa, held immobile by a state of shock so profound her mind had washed blank.
Elayne, grasping her mistress’s condition at once, intruded upon the men’s conversation to ask in what way their gods had smiled, and by that impertinence drew their startled eyes off Carissa. Rennalf told her to mind her own business, whereupon she begged his forgiveness and left, even as Maya tugged Carissa back into the kitchen.
Her last image was of Rennalf’s second, Ulgar, red haired and coarse featured, swiveling his head around for another look at her, his small eyes bright and shrewd with blooming suspicion. Regaining her wits by the kneading counter, she had almost convinced herself she had imagined that look of dawning recognition when Cooper seized her arm and steered her toward the back door. “Go back to your room at once, my lady,” he said, stopping to swath her in cloak and scarf and shove a basket in her hand. “Go round to the henhouse as if to check the eggs, then come up by the north stair.”
The screech of a chair stuttering across the wooden floor in the Great Room stilled the protest on her lips and spurred her outside into the winddriven snow. She’d just reached the outbuilding that served as stable, sty, and henhouse, when the kitchen door squealed open in her wake. Hurriedly she ducked into the stable, ran past the rows of stalls, then down a side aisle and out the rear door. Praying Ulgar would not immediately guess she was fleeing, she dashed up the open stair, then slogged and slid through the foot of snow that had already accumulated on the wallwalk. Afraid to look back—her tracks would be clear in the snow—she hurried around the walkway, alongside the cliff against which the compound was built, to a door in the keep’s top floor. Cringing at the shriek of its hinges, she pulled it shut after her and barred it.
Cooper waited in her room, white-faced and grim. “I think he’s only suspicious, my lady,” he said as she rushed past him and threw open her clothes chest. “I didn’t dare try to stop him.”
“You did right.” She pulled out a heavy woolen skirt and draped it over the edge of the chest, then shrugged out of the servant’s tunic she wore.
“Here, my lady!” Cooper protested. “What are you doing?”
“Give these clothes to one of the girls,” she said, pulling the skirt up under her cotte as he turned his back to shield his eyes. “Tell her to say she was meeting a boy or something. I’m sure Elayne can figure something out.” She stripped out of cotte and tunic, replacing them with a woolen undertunic.
“What do you mean to do, lass?”
“I’m going up the pass to the old watchtower the Mataians converted.” She layered an oversized leather jerkin atop the woolen tunic. “It’s windtight, fairly clean, the chimney’s working. I think there’s even wood there.”
“You can’t go up there, my lady. The place is haunted!”
“Nervous superstition, nothing more. I’ll only be there a few days, but you’ll need to send someone with food.”
“It’s an evil place
. I’ve seen the ghost myself. You can’t go there.”
She pulled a heavy overcloak from the chest, then stood to face him, regarding him bemusedly. “Ghost, Cooper?”
He stiffened his spine. “It wasn’t a man, my lady, I can tell you that.”
“Well, whatever it was, it’s better than Rennalf right now, and I’ll be staying only until he’s gone.” When he would have protested further, she said, “What are you going to do? You’ve already admitted we can’t stop him.”
Someone started pounding on the wallwalk door. “I’ve got to go,” she said.
“There is another place you could hide. A better place.”
Carissa flipped the cowl of her cloak over her head. “With your Terstan friends?”
“It’s warm, dry, and well stocked. And you wouldn’t have to be alone.”
She closed her eyes and sighed. A perfect haven, she had no doubt. Except for the company. But then, both Cooper and Elayne wore shields. She’d known it for a long time, just didn’t like admitting it. Half her servants wore them, too.
The pounding intensified and Elayne rushed into the room, eyes wide. “They’re trying to break down the door, Felmen!”
Felmen Cooper stared evenly at his longtime ward.
“Very well,” Carissa said. “Take me where you will.”
CHAPTER
10
In the late afternoon of his first full day as the new king of Kiriath, Abramm Kalladorne went riding in his royal preserve. A passionate horseman since youth, he’d spent much of the last seven weeks at sea longing for a good hard ride in open country. Now, as king, he not only had his pick of a stable full of fine horseflesh but a hundred acres of forest and field through which to ride.
Riding helped him relax and think, and after his triumph at the Table last night, and the uncertain results of his first official day as king—plus the celebratory burning of the kraggin’s corpse slated for this evening—he had much to think about. He’d won the Crown, yes. But could he keep it? Things had changed so radically and so fast, and he’d met so many people in such a short time, that already last night seemed like it had happened months ago. He needed to get away for a while, gain some perspective on what had been accomplished and what still lay before him. An afternoon ride, with only his armsmen for escort, was just the thing to clear his head.
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