by Karen Nilsen
Father ignored him. "Emperor Tetwar has no interest in Marenna. It's an irritating fly on his borders, easily swatted. As long as he can get cheap gold from its mines without the bother of conquering and governing it--particularly the last--he'll leave it be for the most part. So why the sudden desire for Marennese slaves? They've been a free people for a thousand years, troublesome rebels who make terrible servants. If they escape before they reach the SerVerin deserts, they can find their way north back home unlike his other slaves, who come from Krytos far across the Gilgin Sea. The Marennese seem more trouble than they're worth. As slaves. As pawns, they're invaluable. These raids are an indirect challenge to Cormalen. Why do you think they started after our princess became the Marennese queen? Tetwar knows we don't tolerate slavery among our people, and he wants to see if we'll back our words with force. If we don't respond now, he'll grow more brazen, gather his strength, until we really will find ourselves in the midst of a war." He spoke smoothly, never fumbling his words, the mere sound of his voice commanding everyone’s attention--how did he do that? I shook my head, wondering if I could ever match him here.
"I say we're delaying the inevitable," Herrod grumbled after a long silence.
"Yes, we are delaying the inevitable," Cyril said. "We eventually will go to war with the SerVerin Empire, but not now."
"Why the hell not? We could win." Herrod pounded the table.
"We could win now, but at what cost? The SerVerin emperor is strong and flexing his muscles. We need to weaken him, make him doubt his strength, before we go to war with him and his tens of thousands."
"And how do we weaken him without fighting him?"
"We could do something we should have done years ago: cut off trade with the SerVerin Empire." Cyril settled back in his chair as if he had thrown everything out on the table and the council be damned if no one liked it.
Devons, a prominent merchant with a perpetually red face, cleared his throat. "Do you want a black market the size of the seven seas on your hands?"
I propped my elbows on the table. "What about threatening to raise the tariff on our grain?" I asked. Many heads swiveled in my direction, which I hadn't expected. I had expected they wouldn't hear me at all, which generally happened with younger, so-called "apprentice" councilors. "I mean," I faltered. "I mean, the desert lands need our grain. The SerVerin emperor knows that, but I think it's time we reminded him."
Devons shook his head. "You nobles never think in terms of trade. An increased tariff will create a black market almost as readily as cutting off trade completely would."
"I didn't say raise the tariff. I said threaten to raise the tariff. A threat like that, coupled with a few of the prince's well-placed arrows, should be enough to make Tetwar's slave traders retreat for now."
"What if he doesn't believe our threats, and we're forced to follow through on them? It could turn the gold in the king’s coffers to copper if the demand for our grain falters or shifts to a black market," Devons said. “And if His Majesty thinks he’ll make any coin for his coffers from a tariff, he’s sadly mistaken.”
I shrugged. "Threatening to put a tariff on our wheat is a risk, but hardly a reckless one. Tetwar's not stupid. He doesn't want hungry slaves and peasants revolting because they can't afford a loaf of bread. His reign is shaky enough after the assassination of his father without a massive slave revolt." Besides, I wanted to add, if all the merchants were as honest as Devons and willing to unite behind Prince Segar and the throne, we wouldn’t have to worry about a black market. It’s blackguards like Peregrine who would dishonor the title merchant with illegal smuggling.
I fell quiet and returned to my notes, thankful the ordeal was over. A straightforward fist fight was far preferable to the tortured labyrinth of court intrigue. The son of a high courtier, I had a better idea than most of the unspoken alliances, the constant jockeying for position, and the secret vendettas that seethed in the council chamber like invisible smoke. Still, my tongue stumbled and I found myself speaking in unnatural rhythms whenever I ventured to remark on the proceedings at hand, feeling a fool within the first few sentences.
At some point soon after, Prince Segar called for a vote. I raised my hand with the majority for sending a contingent of the king's guard to the Marennese border while at the same time threatening to impose a wheat tariff on the SerVerin Empire. There was no particular sense of triumph in me that my addition to the proposal had passed the table; that had more to do with being my father's son than anything else. Everyone stood up with a clatter of chairs after the vote and began shuffling out, Sullay and some minor noble loudly debating the finer points of hunting hounds. I remained in my seat, puzzling over the end of a verse I had begun a few weeks ago.
"Merius."
Inwardly, I started like a guilty adolescent, but outwardly, I maintained my cool as I laid the plume of my feather pen over the verses. "Yes, Father?" The last councilor disappeared through the door at that moment, and chamber was empty but for us.
"You did well today, considering your attention was otherwise engaged for three-quarters of the discussion."
I scraped my chair back and stood, only then looking at him. Early afternoon light broke through the high windows, giving him a halo of glowing dust. Our eyes met, and his were pale, silvered by the sunlight. He had to be blinded, standing there, but he didn't blink, at least not that I noticed. He rarely blinked, rarely fidgeted, rarely smiled, rarely allowed himself the petty weaknesses of other men. It was at times like these that I wondered if I had been sired by something inhuman.
"Father, you said a few days ago appearance is everything. As long as I give the appearance of interest, why do you care where my attention is really engaged?"
"Because it’s sheer carelessness, being as distracted as you are. You’re bound to make a mistake.”
“I didn’t make a mistake today.”
“No, but it’s only a matter of time. Why can’t you pay attention? Is it so difficult for you to concentrate?"
"Yes," I flared. "Council's too damned dull. And shallow. The only ones who really believe in anything are Cyril and Devons and Herrod. All the rest do is fawn on the prince or plot against him."
"That's court, Merius. If you had any maturity, you would realize that's life as well. Ideals, causes, beliefs--these things are the province of intemperate youth. They'll get you nowhere in the long run."
"But Cyril--he's head of the council, and he holds strong beliefs about slavery and how we should deal with the SerVerin Empire . . ."
"Cyril doesn't argue against slavery because he believes it's wrong. He argues against it because the king believes it's wrong."
Something dropped inside, and I swallowed. "No. He's not like you."
"He's exactly like me."
"Is that why you hate him so much?"
Father gave me a wintry smile. I would have preferred one of the backhands he used to give me when I was twelve and being smart. "You're young, naive, and you have too much of your mother in you . . ."
He suddenly reached out and ripped away the top page of my notes. The quill fluttered to the floor as his eyes skimmed over my verses. "You take excellent notes, Merius. 'Out where the sea-hawks soar and cry . . .'" he read before he crushed the paper into a ball and tossed it in the corner. "If you ever do that again at council . . ."
My fingers fisted. "You had no right to take that."
He acted as if he didn't hear me. "If I had to gamble on the success of a young courtier, I'd pick Peregrine over you."
"Peregrine's a son of a bitch . . ."
"You shouldn't have any problem being a son of a bitch as well--your mother saw to that." He turned to leave.
I made a move toward him, but he was already around the table. The door closed silently behind him. The blood thudded in my ears. I went over to the corner and retrieved the crumpled paper. It shook in my hands as I smoothed it out. Mother--Mother would have liked this poem. It told the story of a king's funeral as his pe
ople sent him out to sea. Mother had liked story poems. She had recited many to me while she spun with the other women in the long, sunlit room under the eaves at Landers Hall. Her words had fallen around me like feathers, soft and shimmering. I folded the paper and put it in my pocket, my temples aching dully. Next time I was in the Landers graveyard, I would leave it by her stone.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I drew back the bowstring and anchored it under my chin, the flax fiber cutting into my fingers. The belly of the bow blurred as I focused on the blood red target, its yellow center. The breeze whistled by my ear, and I adjusted my aim before my muscles tightened. Then, release. A distant thwack as the arrow struck. Bull's eye. I took a deep breath and stepped back, my bow loose in my hand.
Peregrine came up beside me, gazing at the target. "Well over a hundred paces."
"A hundred and twenty," I said shortly, reaching for another arrow.
"May I?" He indicated my quiver, which I had set upright on the ground. I nodded, and he plucked out one of the arrows and ran his finger down the length of it. "Birch?" he asked, pointing it at the target. I nodded again and straddled the shooting line with my feet before I nocked the arrow. Then I brought the bow up and drew the string taut. This time it was off, hitting the edge of the second ring. I sighed.
"I've always thought the arrows as important as the bow, maybe more important," Peregrine said. "Who makes these?"
"One of our tenants. Jared Rivers. He does everything, from finding the wood to fletching them."
"Can I try this one?" He held up the arrow.
"Go ahead."
"If I like it, maybe you could talk to him for me."
"He only makes arrows for Father and me and his sons, but if you pay him nicely, I'm certain he'd spare you a few." I smiled. Then I noticed something at the edge of the field. Not something. Someone. A flash fire of copper hair, a swaying, light-footed gait that delighted me in deep and unspeakable ways. She carried a large, leather bag of some sort--from this distance, it was difficult to see what it was exactly. I stared after her as she struggled with opening one of the side gates that went out to the city. Why was she going out that way? It led down to the docks and the market, not a place for unescorted young ladies. Of course, by her own admission, she wasn't a lady.
Peregrine followed my stare. "I didn't know you knew Safire, Merius."
I shrugged and deliberately looked back at the target. "I danced with her last night. Last time, too. Beautiful, but Selwyn's right about her having a hellish tongue. I prefer the quiet ones myself."
He chuckled as he began to string his bow. "I intend to marry her before the snow flies."
I flicked my eyes in his direction. "Does she know that?"
"She has a pretty good idea," he grunted as he bent the bow and slipped the string upwards on to the nock. I absorbed this without comment as I picked up my quiver and slung it over my shoulder.
"Where are you off to?" Peregrine straightened, shading his eyes from the sun.
"I have to help Father draft a letter to the Marennese ambassador." The lie dropped off my tongue as easily as quicksilver. "There's a wicked breeze from the northeast, by the way." With that, I headed for the target to retrieve my arrows and then go to my chambers. I had to prepare for a witch hunt.
Chapter Five--Safire
The Corcin market jostled around me, alive with the shouts of hucksters and children and the savory smell of the taverns and bakeries and spice shops. Along the cobbled streets I wandered in a daze, my portfolio forgotten by my side as I gaped at all the wares. Under the bright tents, there were vegetables, perfumes, pots, fruits, fish, bolts of wool and silk and linen, jewelry, books, talking parrots, fruit from the Sud Islands . . . the Sud Islands? I’d never even heard of such a place. This market put the Calcors market to shame, and I felt very small in this great crowd and humble in my carefully mended frock. At that moment, a white-haired priest ran into me carrying an armful of parchments. The parchments and my portfolio went flying.
My self-consciousness vanished under a dark wave of fear. A priest . . . many priests preached my talents were evil, incited witch burnings with their fiery condemnations. I always fidgeted in chapel, worried I would somehow reveal myself, so quiet there most of the nuns and priests thought me mute. I forced myself to breathe and glanced at the priest’s aura. Light blue and soft-edged, with no hint of malice--just a kindly old man who happened to wear the black frock, an old man who likely fed pigeons and snuck sweets to children when their mothers‘ backs were turned. Certainly not a man who could send anyone to the stake. The tension left me, and I bent to retrieve the scattered papers.
"My lady, I'm sorry," the priest said, kneeling beside me as I gathered up the parchments. "Really, don't soil your hands with that."
"It's all right. I was on the verge of buying one of those horrid parrots, and you knocked me out of my madness. I should be thanking you."
"I advise you not to buy a parrot," he said crisply. "They have pretty feathers, but they curse scandalously. They learn it from the sailors. Not at all something an innocent maid should have about." He picked up my portfolio.
I smiled at him. "My sister would agree with you."
One of the drawings had slipped out of the portfolio. The priest glanced at it, pausing to examine it more closely. He held it out to me then. It was one I had done a few weeks ago of the Calcors harbor. "This is wonderful," he said. "If you'll forgive me prying, who did this?"
"My brother." The lie should have come easier with time, but I found myself biting my tongue.
"He's a lucky young man, to have such a talent." He sighed and gave me my portfolio, the drawing still in his hand. "I grew up in Calcors. The ships didn't have so many masts then, but otherwise this is just as I remember it."
"It's for sale," I prompted.
A covetous gleam lit his dark eyes. "How much?"
"How much would you pay for it?"
"Well, aren't you a shameless girl?" He chuckled and looked at the sketch again. "Two silvers."
"I won’t rob a priest. One silver and a copper."
"No, I said two silvers, and I meant two. Here, before I regret it." He dug in the folds of his robes and handed me the glinting coins. Tucking his parchments under his arm with the sketch, he tipped his head. "Bless you and your brother," he said over his shoulder.
"Thank you, Father." I pocketed the money and walked to the end of the market, where I found a tiered fountain resting on a granite slab. I set out some of my drawings on the slab, anchoring them with rocks. Many people passed this way to go down to the docks, sailors and brightly-clothed foreigners speaking in jagged tongues and housewives with their market baskets and bustling clerks. Few nobles, though, which suited me just fine. I sold several more drawings over the next half hour, inwardly exalting.
I sat cross-legged, gazing at the entrance to the market and wishing I had my charcoals and a blank sheet of foolscap. Of course, I could hardly sit here and draw while trying to pass my work off as someone else's . . .
"I thought my tutor was the only one who knew the story of the old ones and their path down to the sea," a quiet familiar voice said beside me. It was Merius, and he was holding one of my drawings. I almost fell in the fountain.
"You don't make a lot of noise, do you?" I said.
"I apologize--I seem to keep startling you." Merius stepped back as I hastily got to my feet and faced him.
"Where did you come from?" I demanded.
"I often come to market in the afternoons." His lingering eyes told me that I was a welcome sight. My face grew hot. Finally, he glanced back at the drawing in his hand. It was, as he had correctly identified it, a nighttime rendering of the old one's path down to the sea, the track they had used to bring their firstborn sons to the caves as a sacrifice. In one of my more morbid moods, I had placed several figures in dark robes descending the path, one carrying a baby while the others held torches. I had debated showing others this particular picture. It hard
ly went with the pastoral country scenes that sold the best, but it wasn't quite as strange as the picture of the faces in the bottle, which I never put out. And now Merius was holding it, his gaze thoughtful. Sad, even.
"It's well done, but eerie," he said then. "Who's the artist?"
"My bro-" I stopped, my heart leaping in my chest, my head light. This wasn't some peasant or sailor or priest. This was someone who was far more familiar with the noble family trees and heraldry than I was, and I had just betrayed myself to him.
He looked at me again, expressionless. "Your brother, you were going to say?" I swallowed and didn't answer. "What's his name again?”
“How dare you?” I snatched the drawing from him, shaking inside as I set it with the others.
He stepped forward, his hand out. “Please, don’t be upset. I shouldn’t have said it like that--I knew you were the artist the moment I saw the drawings. I was just anxious to talk to you again and stepped on my own tongue in my haste. Forgive my clumsiness.”
My shock and anger buckled in the face of his honesty, and I sank down on the slab, my arms clasped tight around my knees. "Father will have apoplexy," I said, hardly aware that I spoke aloud as my eyes darted over the cobblestones, searching out the cracks in them. "It's not just an expression in this case--he really will. He wants me to be good, a lady, and I've disappointed him so many times, and well, this will be the last straw. He hates my drawing,“ I paused over this, half hearing the flutter of pigeon wings as several landed near my feet. “If he knew I was selling my pictures like a common wench with her wares and enjoying it, enjoying the charcoals and the paper and the coins clinking in my pocket . . . he'd die from yelling, and I'll have killed him, all to do something wicked I should never have thought to do in the first place. If I was good like Dagmar, I'd rip all this up and burn all my paper and give all my coin for alms. But I can't. I just can't-" I choked then, my breath coming in little hitches.
"Listen. Here. Here, don't," Merius said, awkward as he sat down beside me and stretched out his long legs. Then his hand was on my shoulder, and I felt that same odd, tingling heat from the night before, like the sun on my skin after a long dip in a cold river. "Listen, I'm not going to tell anyone. Not your sister, not your father, not anyone."