Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses)

by Sharon Shinn

  Maybe it was her imagination, but it seemed like Justin was visibly restraining himself from reaching out to touch the patterned black silk of her hair. “It’s so beautiful,” he said again.

  She laughed. “Hard to take care of, though! When I travel, it’s almost impossible to keep it clean.”

  “Do you travel much? How often do novices leave the convent?”

  Not often enough, she thought. “Actually, I think this is only the fifth or sixth time I’ve left the convent since I’ve been there. The girls who’ve been there longer leave more often— come in to Neft, sometimes, or go to some of the other nearby towns to proselytize.”

  “How long have you been at the convent?”

  “A little over a year.”

  His eyebrows rose, and she wondered what he was thinking. But what he said was, “And why did you want to join the Daughters?”

  It was hard to know how to answer that, so for the moment she concentrated on her hair. Finishing the braid, she looped it in a knot on the back of her head and fixed the pins in place. She gave him a quick sideways glance and saw him watching her. Waiting with some patience for her answer.

  Oh, what did it matter? She would never see him again, so she might as well be truthful. To a point. “My cousin wanted to join, but she didn’t want to come by herself,” she answered. “And I liked the idea of leaving home, at least for a little while.”

  “Getting away from those protective brothers,” he said.

  “You have no idea how protective! So I thought it might be—an adventure of a sort. Something different. Exciting, maybe.”

  “I don’t know that much about it,” he said, “but it would seem to me that if you were going to live at the Lumanen Convent, you’d have a bad time of it if you weren’t completely devoted to the Pale Mother.”

  She gave him a swift, unhappy smile. “Yes. You’re right. For some reason, I hadn’t thought it through like that.”

  He raised his eyebrows again. “And you’re finding that you don’t love the Silver Lady quite as much as you should?”

  “Oh, I rather like her,” Ellynor said, which made him laugh. “I do! She’s so beautiful and mysterious. And I like the rituals that honor her. But I find some of the—there’s a kind of—I’m not quite as devout as some of the other girls.”

  “They’re fanatics,” he said bluntly.

  “Yes. And while there are a lot of novices who are—oh, they’re silly girls who joined up on a lark, or to please their families, and who aren’t so passionate about the goddess—the Lestra and the senior Daughters are all very stern and dedicated. They’re a little—sometimes they frighten me a little.”

  “Do you have to stay?” he asked.

  She had never allowed herself to really face that question and it made her uneasy to contemplate it now. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I wouldn’t want to leave my cousin there all alone, of course, and she has become one of the fanatics.”

  “Would your family let you come home?”

  “Oh yes. I think they expect that I will be here another year or two at most and then return to them.”

  “So you think it’s the Lestra who might not allow you to leave.”

  How quickly he had put his finger on it, saying aloud the thing she did not like to think. “Since I have been there, I have not seen any girls go home,” Ellynor said carefully. “Perhaps none of them wanted to, but—” She shrugged. “It’s strange. I would have thought, in a group that large, someone would have gotten homesick, or been called to her family to nurse her ailing mother, or decided the convent life was not for her. But none of that has happened since I’ve been there.”

  “In a year.”

  “Right.”

  His face wore a look of heavy skepticism, but he did not make any of the comments that were obviously circling in his mind. Ellynor gave her head a little shake and practiced a smile.

  “But I don’t mean to sound so sinister! It would probably be a simple thing to leave if I decided I wanted to.”

  “Very simple,” he agreed. “You’re out now. No one knows where you are. Just don’t go back. I’d help you hide if anyone started a search.”

  She laughed uneasily. Just imagining what would happen if the Lestra came looking for her—if Torrin came looking for her and discovered she had disappeared with the aid of an unknown man—made her feel physically ill. “Thank you,” she said as lightly as she could. “I’ll keep that in mind if the need ever arises.”

  He nodded, as if he’d been serious. “I’m usually to be found right here in the stables. Or at least, I will be for a few more weeks.”

  Yes, indeed, let us talk about you for a while, Ellynor thought. “So tell me your story, Justin,” she invited. “Why are you in Neft?”

  She saw an odd expression cross his face—odd, because she was sure she had worn a similar look when she was trying to decide how much of the truth to tell him. Justin has secrets of his own, she thought, though the idea did not particularly displease her. Rather, it made her more curious. “More or less just drifted here by chance,” he said. “Had a job working for a noble—we got into a disagreement—and I left. Not sure what I want to do next, but I came to rest in Neft for the moment and took a job at the stable because it happened to be open. And I’m good with horses.”

  “You’re good with a sword, too,” she observed. “Couldn’t you sign on as a soldier somewhere?”

  Something amused him, though he tried to hide his smile. “I could, I suppose. That’s not what I want at the moment, though.”

  She spoke with some excitement, as if she’d just thought of a grand plan. “The Lestra’s always hiring men. You could come be a guard at the convent.”

  He gave her a sharp look as if to be sure she was joking, and then his smile widened. “I think I’d find the life a little too confining,” he drawled. “Though I suppose there would be some advantages. You and I could become better friends, for instance.”

  “Probably not,” she said regretfully. “The Lestra doesn’t like the novices to spend much time with the soldiers. We have to speak to them sometimes, of course, but we’re closely watched. We’d never have a real conversation.”

  Justin looked cynical. “I’d lay money that somewhere at the convent, right this minute, there’s a guard and a girl meeting in secret,” he said. “That’s just the way of men and women. Particularly when they’ve been forbidden to see each other.”

  She laughed. “Well, you may be right! The women, at least, are always watching the men, trying to judge who might be nice and who might be—exciting.”

  “And I’ll wager they like the exciting ones more than the nice ones.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said seriously. “I’ve spent a lifetime around men who were—who are—hotheaded and sometimes dangerous. Arrogant and strong and quick to fight. Those are the kind of men most of the girls at the convent seem to be drawn to. But I say, let me meet a kind man instead. Let me meet someone who knows how to be softer. I am so tired of violence and bluster. I’d like to meet a thoughtful man.”

  The cynical expression was back on Justin’s face, or maybe he was thinking that she had just described him when she had meant to be describing her brothers. Justin, too, looked to be dangerous, hotheaded, and capable of violence. Well, as for the last part, she’d witnessed that for herself. “I have a friend you might like, then, if you’re looking for a different sort of man,” he said. “Not a bit of brutality in him.”

  She smiled. “I didn’t say I was looking. Not right now,” she said.

  “And I’ll keep my eyes open, but I don’t know that you’ll find too many men like that in Neft,” he added. “More of them seem to be like the fellow you encountered earlier.”

  “The one you knocked down for me,” she said. “Was that why you had to leave the last place you worked? Because you got in a brawl with someone?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What was the disagreement about?”
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  He hesitated, and again she knew he was considering how much of a lie to tell. She was more and more intrigued. “The story you’ll hear is that I was a little forward with a nobleman’s daughter,” he said. “It’s just the tale I told because it’s the sort of thing people believe and I didn’t want them to ask more questions. But I wouldn’t want you to hear it and think it was true.”

  “Well, I would believe it,” she said with a smile. “I can see why a nobleman’s daughter might like to flirt with you.”

  He laughed, as if that was genuinely funny. “I’ve only ever met one serramarra to talk to, and she’d rather claw my eyes out than have a conversation,” he said. He clearly remembered something and said, “Well, two serramarra. But I wasn’t flirting with her, either. Not much of one for flirting in general.”

  “So why did you have to leave?” she asked.

  She didn’t care about what he’d done so much as how he would answer—whether he would tell another falsehood or whether he would give her the truth. He considered his answer for a full minute, and then he offered a twisted smile. “I guess I was looking for a reason to walk out,” he said. “I guess I wanted to be somewhere else.”

  She was oddly relieved. He hadn’t told her anything, but he hadn’t lied, either. He didn’t want to lie to her, that was what mattered. “I guess you have a reason for being in Neft that you don’t want to talk about,” she said softly. “And maybe this time it is because of a girl.”

  “No,” he said swiftly—and then he grinned. “Well, it wasn’t before I met you.”

  That made her laugh out loud, Justin joining in, both of them giggling and shaking their heads like schoolchildren telling stupid jokes. “See, you can flirt if you try,” she said. “Though maybe you were just trying to change the subject.”

  “Maybe I was,” he said, still smiling.

  She stood up, shaking out her skirts. Great Mother’s glory, her robe was filthy! Not only street scum clinging to the hem, but streaks of mud and dirt in strategic spots, and a drop or two of blood. She looked down in dismay. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to get this clean. I may just have to burn it. I have no idea what Darris and Astira will say when they see me.”

  He had come fluidly to his feet, rising when she did. They had been sitting for so long that she had almost forgotten how big he was. Well, she was slender and not very tall—it was his muscle mass as much as his height that made him seem so large, she thought. “Didn’t you say you planned to tell what happened?”

  “Most of it,” she replied. “I might change your part a little.”

  He lifted his eyebrows. “How so?”

  “I think I’ll make you a sweet old woman who invited me into her house and helped me clean up. I think that’s a tale my listeners will find more to their liking.”

  He looked amused. “They might not believe it if they’ve noticed me walking you home.”

  “Oh, but you don’t have to do that!”

  “Maybe not, but I’m going to.”

  “Truly. Just give me directions—do you know where the Gisseltess place is?”

  “No.”

  “And then you can—what? You don’t know where it is? The footman told me everyone knew it.”

  “I haven’t been in Neft all that long. Describe it to me. Maybe I just don’t know it by name.”

  “It’s a three-story house in a very pretty part of town. No ruffians on the street smelling of wine. There’s a wrought-iron fence all around the property. Oh, and a flag on the roof. It’s got a clan device, I think—a black bird holding a red flower.”

  Now the expression on his face was sardonic. “Oh, that house,” he said. “Flying the Gisseltess colors. Yes, I know it.”

  “Excellent! So can you tell me how to get there?”

  He held a hand out, as if ushering her toward the door. “I told you, I’ll walk with you.”

  Uncertainly, she stepped outside, Justin right behind her. “But I told you, the Lestra doesn’t like us to socialize with men.”

  “I thought it was your brothers who didn’t like it.”

  They had started strolling together down the street at a rather leisurely pace. Ellynor had no idea where she was, so she had to assume Justin was, in fact, leading her in the proper direction. “Well, the Lestra is the one who’s more likely to see me today,” she replied tartly.

  He grinned. “I’ll only walk beside you till we’re close. Then I’ll let you go ahead, and I’ll come a few paces behind you. No one will know we’re together.”

  “If you’d just tell me the way to go—”

  “When I held my last position,” he said, interrupting her, “I rode with the noble’s house guard. It was my job to see that he was safe. If I rode with his daughter, it was my job to keep her safe. Anyone who was assigned to me, that’s what I did. I guarded them till they were at their destination.” He glanced down at her, his brown eyes cool. “That’s the only way I know how to go on. Finishing the task that’s given to me. Taking care of whoever falls under my protection. Today that’s you.”

  She was silent a moment. She had the sense that this was the truest thing he’d said to her all afternoon, and the confidence she would most have to honor. She understood what it meant to be compelled to do something, because it was integral to the soul. She understood people who could not compromise.

  “Then I appreciate it,” she said quietly. “I was lucky today that you were the one who found me.”

  “Luckier maybe if I’d found you first,” he commented.

  Now she smiled again. “Oh no! Because then you would have just pointed me in the proper direction and I would have been on my way. We would have exchanged maybe twenty words. We wouldn’t have gotten to know each other at all.”

  He was the one to be quiet for a few paces. “So I suppose there’s no chance we’ll ever have a chance to talk like this again,” he said.

  “See?” she said merrily. “Flirting again! You’re so much better at it than you pretend to be.”

  “I was only asking.”

  She stifled a sigh. “I don’t think so. I don’t even know if I’ll be in Neft again for months. And you’d be gone by then.”

  “I might not be. You never know. I might settle in.”

  That was a lie, though she wasn’t sure how she knew. “Anyway, if I did come back, I’d probably be with a whole cadre of novices, all here to hand out moonstones and give blessings to travelers. I wouldn’t even have a chance to talk to you.”

  “But if you did,” he said stubbornly. “If you were here and you were alone for some reason—”

  “Then I’d come by the stables and look you up,” she finished softly. “Yes, Justin, I believe I would.”

  More quickly than she’d expected, they were in a respectable part of town and she started to recognize landmarks. “I think I know where I am now,” she told him.

  “Left here and then up the hill.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “I’ll let you walk on ahead then,” he said. “Don’t worry, though. I’m right behind you. If anyone stops you, I’ll be at your side in a matter of seconds.”

  “Thank you,” she said, but he had already dropped back, and within a few paces they were entirely separated. Ellynor moved more quickly now, realizing just how much time had elapsed since she’d left, wondering if her companions were worried about her or furious, thinking she had idled away the day. One look at her robes would tell them most of the story; she did not think she would be in trouble for long.