by Sharon Shinn
“That’s a powerful message,” Tayse admitted. “Is that what Halchon Gisseltess has been spreading through the southern provinces?”
“Quietly, so far, so Ariane says,” Senneth said. “But first he—and his sister—have laid the foundation of faith and fear, by spreading hatred of the mystics and promoting the sanctity of the Pale Mother. If the people first convert to fanaticism, it will not be so hard to convince them to turn against their ensorceled king.”
“If he is ensorceled,” Aleatha murmured.
“That appears to be the question,” Tayse said, looking at Senneth and Kirra. “Both of you know the queen, I’m assuming.”
Kirra nodded. “I spend so much time at Ghosenhall that I’ve dined with her often enough. But I wouldn’t say I know her.”
“I’ve met her a few times when I was at the palace,” Senneth said.
“Is she a mystic?” Tayse asked.
The two women exchanged glances. Senneth answered. “I don’t have any idea.”
CHAPTER 17
THEY left Aleatha’s by midmorning of the following day, their packs heavy with loaves of fresh bread and packets of dried meat. Senneth found that her heart was heavy as well, and it was all she could do to manufacture a smile as she bade farewell to the white-haired old woman standing at the gate, waving good-bye. Part of her did not want to leave at all—she was tired already of a journey that she knew was not yet half over, and she wanted a day or more to rest. Part of her was troubled at leaving Aleatha behind, knowing how uncertain life was for any mystic in the territory these days. She would have insisted Aleatha travel with them till they had come to someplace safe to leave her. But she knew there was no such safe place. Nowhere in the southern provinces—possibly nowhere in Gillengaria.
Once they were on the road, she made no attempt at all to be sociable, and after a while even Cammon gave up trying to talk to her. She didn’t know why she was making this journey with so many in her party, anyway. Her first plan had been to travel absolutely alone, slipping in solitude and silence through the southern Houses, watching the unfolding activities like a troubled and diffident ghost. But one by one, companions had been added. Baryn had insisted she take two Riders for protection. Kirra had volunteered to accompany her—and, naturally, wherever Kirra went, Donnal must go. They had picked up Cammon in Dormas and the raelynx on the road. Now, riding northeast out of Rappengrass, Senneth found she had a new escort: Dread, riding beside her on a black horse, showing his face to no one but her.
Not that the others weren’t alarmed. Not that they weren’t thoughtful. But no one seemed to envision the future she imagined, filled with slaughter and despair. No one seemed to feel the same desperate sense of responsibility that she felt, as if an act of hers could avert disaster or invite it closer in. No one seemed to realize yet either the scale of the horrors to come—or the fact that there might yet be a chance to turn them aside.
So she rode in silence, but she was well aware that she did not ride alone.
She was surprised when Tayse called a halt for the noon meal. She was surprised, when she looked up from her cold rations, to find him watching her—though not at all surprised by the hard expression in his eyes.
“Now what have I done?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “I was just watching to make sure you remembered to eat. Since you don’t seem to be remembering to speak.”
She shrugged and returned her attention to her meal. Aleatha’s cooking was too good to consume in this casual way, but she did not have the heart to savor it as she should. She swallowed her meat, took a drink from her water bottle, and was ready to move on before the rest of them had finished their meals.
“How far today?” Tayse asked. “Where do you want to stop for the night?”
Senneth looked at Kirra, to find Kirra watching her, awaiting her decision. Senneth shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter. We won’t make Nocklyn tonight. If we find a town that has an inn, we may as well stay.”
“I’ll be on the lookout,” he said and swung himself into the saddle. They were on the move in three minutes.
Senneth lost herself in her thoughts again almost immediately. In her head, she kept hearing Ariane Rappengrass’s accusation. “Some say the new queen is a mystic who has tangled the king in her coils.”
Her first impulse had been to laugh. “And if she is a mystic?” she had wanted to say. “What is so terrible about that?”
But that was a child’s question, thoughtless and irresponsible. In her unstructured wanderings, Senneth had come across more than one mystic who was not as principled as he should have been. It stood to reason that there were evil mystics, just as there were plenty of ordinary men who were bad. If Queen Valri indeed had supernatural abilities—and if she had used them to convince the king to marry her—what would she then want to do with the temporal power she had acquired? How would she work her magic on the king?
If Queen Valri was a mystic, was she the one who had sent Senneth on this quest? Perhaps she had said to the king, “I fear for my brother and sister mystics, who are mistreated throughout the south. Send someone you trust to test the temper of the Twelve Houses, and see if we might be staring down a civil war.” If Queen Valri was a mystic, and her hold on King Baryn was not benign, would not the southern Houses be justified in rising up to fight her?
Senneth rubbed a hand across her forehead and wished it was possible to spend an hour without thinking. An hour without being. She remembered the game she had played with Cammon the other day—trying to make him think she was invisible—and how it had worked on everyone except Cammon. She wondered if there was a way to make herself invisible even to her own thoughts, to shut down, to go away—to cease, for a blessed moment, to exist.
A warm hand on her arm, a concerned voice in her ear. “Senneth.” She jerked her head up to find Kirra riding next to her, grabbing hold of her as if to tether her to the ground. Ah, but that was the problem, of course. Too many tethers already.
“What?” Senneth asked, hoping her voice sounded normal. “Trouble?”
Kirra looked worried. “No. You—did you do that on purpose? Cam said you’d been practicing your invisibility trick.”
Senneth felt irrationally pleased. “Oh, is that working? I can’t tell around Cammon, of course.”
Kirra dropped her hands. “You’re acting so strangely.”
Senneth thought about denying it, and then sighed. “I feel strange,” she admitted. “I feel—worried. I feel like terrible forces are gathering, and storms are about to be unleashed, and it’s somehow in my power to make the clouds part and blow away. But I don’t know how.”
Kirra gave her a serious look out of blue eyes that were rarely serious. Senneth had often thought, if she could choose to be anyone else, it would be Kirra. Who never had doubts, who never seemed unhappy, who was beautiful and golden and beloved. And who, even so, was nobody’s foolish pet. Trouble had so rarely come Kirra’s way; for that, Senneth envied her. But she had always thought that if trouble suddenly popped its ugly head directly in the middle of Kirra’s path, the golden Danalustrous girl would trample right over it without a second’s hesitation.
“If terrible things are coming, you probably cannot avert them,” Kirra said softly. “And if they come, it will not be up to you alone to stop them. Why do you always think that? Why do you always believe there is no one nearby to help you?”
Senneth sighed and then gave a little laugh. “I guess because for so long there was no one. I have been on my own almost as long as you have been alive.”
“Hardly,” Kirra drawled. “You are only nine years older than I am.”
This time her laugh was more genuine. “I feel a lifetime older. I have certainly lived more in my thirty-four years than most people I’ve met.”
Kirra shrugged. “So you’ll have better memories to review on your deathbed and fewer missed opportunities to regret.”
Senneth was far from sure. “More memorie
s,” she said. “Not better ones. And far too many regrets.”
Kirra, it seemed, was not about to let Senneth grow maudlin or slip back inside the dark boundaries of her own mind. “So tell me one of those memories now,” she said. “One of the good ones. Tell me about sailing with the woman sea captain. What you saw in Arberharst. I have never been beyond the borders of Gillengaria.”
Not too interested at first, Senneth dutifully began reciting the tale of her voyages on the Fair Luck, but she found herself warming to the tale before she was five minutes in. She had liked the adventuring—she had loved the ocean—she had even, from time to time, been relieved to lose her constant, inescapable sense of occult power. An ordinary woman, for once, just like the rest of them. No more capable, no more responsible, than anyone else on the ship. She had not had that sense of freedom and ordinariness since she—well, she had not ever had it. She had been born with the knowledge of fire curled in her hands.
Kirra’s little trick worked, though; Senneth found herself growing more cheerful as she talked, as they continued down the road. She was even able to bear without much disappointment the knowledge that they were going to have to camp out that night. The past few days had spoiled her, spoiled them all. They were used to a roof over their heads and good cooking on the hearth. None of them would look forward to a cold camp on ground half made of mud and half covered in snow.
But the Bright Lady smiled on them again even as she began her elaborate preparations for night. Just as the sky began to streak with violet and pink, they rounded a curve in the road and came across a small town. It was tucked away in an overhang of trees, and it looked as though not more than fifty souls lived there all told, but there was a rickety-looking tavern with a barn out back, so there was a good chance they could find a place to stay. Even Senneth was smiling as they rode up.
“I’ll ask about accommodations,” Tayse said and slid from the saddle. Justin took his reins and then sat there, critically surveying the scene. There was little to consider, Senneth thought: There was only the main road running through the town, with maybe ten buildings on one side of it and half a dozen on the other. The Riders looked for danger everywhere they rode, but Senneth thought they would be disappointed here.
Her own worry was for the raelynx, who even now stalked through the undergrowth a few hundred yards from the town, snarling at the nearness of humans. She had fed him well before they left Aleatha’s, and he had seemed perfectly content to pace beside them all day, not attempting to run off, even though he must have sensed her own concentration slipping. That would have been dreadful indeed—if her black mood had given the raelynx a quick chance for freedom, and he had taken it and disappeared somewhere into the woods of northern Rappengrass to carry on years of depredations. Ariane might not have been so happy then to welcome Senneth back to her house once her roving days were over.
Then again, Senneth did not anticipate the day all her wandering would be done.
Tayse emerged from the tavern looking philosophical. “No beds, but we can sleep in the barn, and stable our horses there, too,” he said. “It’s empty except for the tavern keeper’s cow and the broken bits of furniture he stores there.”
He was looking at Senneth as he spoke, awaiting her confirmation or rejection, so she nodded. “I’m not proud,” she said. “I’ll sleep in a barn. Serra Kirra?”
“I’ve slept in worse,” Kirra said sunnily. “If there’s a roof and a floor, I’m happy.”
They actually rather liked the barn, which looked more like someone’s old attic. It was crammed with splintered tables, chairs that were missing one leg, a bed that appeared to have given way to a man who weighed more than the joints could sustain. The smells inside were rich and varied, of stale hay, green wood, warm manure, and fresh milk. There wasn’t much extra room—it appeared as though the innkeeper kept one aisle clear from the door to the stall where the cow was shut up. Furniture and kitchen clutterings took up most of the rest of the space.
“This will be a challenge,” Tayse said. “I’m not sure there’s even room for the horses.”
“Well, let’s start rearranging,” Justin said.
The men began moving furniture while the women investigated. Kirra petted the cow, who did not seem particularly alarmed at the sudden onslaught of guests. No doubt she often shared her quarters with travelers, Senneth thought. The presence of the raelynx made her a little nervous, though, and she shifted under Kirra’s hand as the cat padded in and greeted his new quarters with a whistling hiss.
“You are the real problem,” Senneth told him. He was close enough to her that she could touch him, if he would let her. She willed him to hold still while she knelt beside him, but she did not quite have the nerve to put her fingers to his fur. He regarded her from malevolent eyes and seemed to wait to see what she might do next.
She could tame him, she thought. If she had the time, and no distractions, and if it had been a good idea, she could bring him to heel and even make him love her. But she could meet none of those conditions. She sighed and came to her feet.
“Senneth,” Justin called—startling her a little, since he rarely addressed her directly and never by name. “There’s a cage or something over here. Looks like the innkeeper may have had a dog run at some point. You might be able to keep your creature here tonight.”
She went over to look, and sure enough, barricaded behind an armoire with two missing drawers was a sturdy pen about six feet by seven. It had a slatted roof and a thick door held shut by a leather belt.
“That’s good,” she said. “We can even leave him here while we go in for dinner.
“If you can get him in there,” Justin observed.
She grinned. “I think I can.”
The raelynx resisted, of course, snarling and spitting, but her will was still stronger than his, and he was eventually settled inside the pen. Senneth looped the belt through a couple times, set the buckle, and then breathed a spell of stability over it. The raelynx yowled once, just to prove he was not happy, and then stretched out on the old straw and shut his eyes.
Tayse came up behind her. “He secure?”
She nodded. “Let’s go eat.”
The tavern was dark and smelled of onions. Maybe a dozen men were seated inside, hunched over their meals and arguing over local politics or the best way to break a horse. The newcomers received a fairly thorough inspection as they entered, though their arrival could hardly have been a surprise; the tavern keeper had no doubt repeated to his clientele every word Tayse had said when he walked in asking for accommodations. Still, they were strangers, and they deserved a looking over. Not even Justin and Tayse seemed to be offended.
They found an open table at the back, and all six sat around it, choosing seats as they so often did: Senneth between Kirra and Cammon, Donnal beside Kirra, Tayse across from Senneth, and Justin between Cammon and Tayse. Everyone choosing to sit beside the ones they liked and to watch the ones they distrusted.
They were approached by a yellow-haired tavern girl wearing a low-cut dress that showed off her considerable charms. Even had they been likely to miss the full swell of her breasts, the necklace she wore pointed attention to those features. It was a silver chain hung with an obelisk of a moonstone that nestled just inside her cleavage. Senneth glanced at Kirra, to see her grinning, and at Justin, to see his eyes focused directly on the glower of the sulky gem. Tayse did not appear to have registered either the girl’s jewelry or her attractions, but Senneth was sure he had noticed both. Tayse noticed everything.
“We’ve got beef pie and venison pie,” the girl said in a bored voice, though she managed to smile at Cammon and Justin. Both were smiling at her. “Oh, and some potatoes. The greens are all gone, though. And there’s beer. Also, some leftover chicken from yesterday if you want that.”
“Beef pie, potatoes, and beer,” Tayse said without seeming to consider at all. Justin echoed him. Cammon and Donnal opted for venison, and the women chose chicken.<
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The server was barely out of earshot before Cammon exclaimed, “Did you see it? Her moonstone? I wonder if the whole town’s gone over to the Pale Lady.”
Kirra turned marveling eyes toward Senneth. “She was wearing a moonstone necklace? I didn’t notice such a thing, did you?”
“Tavern keeper had on a moonstone bracelet,” Tayse said, ignoring her. “Two of the men up at the bar were wearing pendants. I’d say it’s not the place to be practicing magic.”
“And I was going to jump on the table, turn myself into a wolf, and go baying to the moon,” Donnal said.
“Don’t bother trying to impress us,” Justin said. “We’re impressed enough already.”
“We’re just here overnight,” Senneth said peaceably. “No need to draw attention.”
Tayse gave her a rather darkling look. “A good plan. We don’t seem to live up to it all that often.”
The food, when it arrived, was fair. The beer was excellent. Senneth imagined there wasn’t much to do in this part of the country except drink, which meant the locals probably spent a lot of time perfecting their brews.
They had just finished their meals and were considering ordering a second round of drinks when the tavern door blew open, and a young girl burst in. Even Cammon seemed caught off guard by her sudden eruption into the room, and Tayse and Justin whirled around so quickly that they were almost on their feet before they realized there was probably no danger.
To them, anyway. The girl seemed hysterical. “Please, Markle, can you send your wife? My sister’s having the baby, but it won’t come, and she keeps screaming. I don’t know what to do—and my brothers won’t help—and old Hadda, who said she’d come, doesn’t answer her door.”
The tavern keeper shook his head regretfully. “Sorry, Sosie, but my wife’s over to her sister’s. Left this morning. You can take Liza, if you think she’ll do you any good, but she’s afraid of blood and never helped at any birthing that I know of.”