Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)

by Sharon Shinn

  He seemed to be joking, but Senneth wondered if perhaps he was telling the truth. “She seems most devoted to you,” was all she could think to say.

  “I could not manage without her,” he replied, and now there was no trace of laughter left in his voice.

  “Then I am glad she is here,” Senneth said.

  He nodded and tapped a finger against his desk. His mood had quickly changed; now he appeared to be thinking over some serious proposition. “So! Since you are relieved of responsibility for returning the raelynx to the Lirrens, you are now free to carry out some other commission for me, are you not?”

  Senneth laughed. “I stand ready to serve, sire.”

  He peered at her through his spectacles. “I am not so sure you will be interested in this next task I have to propose.”

  “But you are the king,” she said, gently teasing. “You have only to command and I will obey.”

  “You are the least obedient of my subjects, and if you do not like my proposition, you will burn down my palace!” he exclaimed. “I am well aware that you do only what you want—and what your conscience bids you. I do not flatter myself that I can bend you to my will.”

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Chaperone Amalie as I introduce her to society.”

  Senneth felt a thrill of horror along every nerve. “What? You want me to—oh, sire, I am the wrong person for such a job.”

  “But you are the one who told me I must make Amalie more visible! I thought if I sent her to a few of the more important functions at the Twelve Houses this spring and summer—”

  “Yes, and I think it is an excellent idea! But I am not the right one to sponsor her. I haven’t been at a society function for seventeen years! I don’t know how to dress or what to say—or even who most of the people are! And I don’t like them! You would be better off with—well, with Kirra. She would be an ideal escort for the princess.”

  “Kirra can’t set a man on fire if he attempts to harm my daughter,” the king said.

  Senneth stared at him a moment. “Ah,” she said slowly. “So you would not want me to pretend to be anything other than what I am. You want a respectable companion—who has the ferocity of a Rider. And you want everyone to know that your daughter is protected.”

  “By the most gifted mystic of our time,” the king completed. “The more tales there are about you, the happier I am to see you standing at my daughter’s side. No one who knows you would attempt to harm Amalie while she was under your protection.”

  “This is a heavy burden, sire,” Senneth said in a low voice. “This is a commission more difficult than I had imagined.”

  “Well, you can think about it for a few weeks,” he said cheerfully, “and let me know your decision when you get back.”

  Now she felt an even deeper sense of foreboding. “Back from where?”

  “Where do you think I would want you to go next?”

  She closed her eyes and wondered how her life had brought her, so inescapably, back to the very point she had abandoned so long ago. “Brassenthwaite,” she said on a sigh.

  “Yes. Will you go?”

  She opened her eyes. “Are my brothers expecting me?”

  He made a gesture of equivocation. “Let us say, rather, they know you are alive and well and engaged in delicate operations on my behalf. And they know it would please me for a rapprochement to be achieved between the quarreling members of their family.”

  “I can’t stand them,” she said flatly.

  “Kiernan is not your father, Senneth,” the king said in a quiet voice. “He is more thoughtful than you remember. He has told me more than once how deeply he regrets your father’s cruel and hasty actions. He searched for you, you know.”

  “He did not.”

  “He did. Even while your father was alive, and with more urgency once he was dead. It was Ariane Rappengrass who first told Kiernan you were still alive. Malcolm knew,” the king said, with a little smile, “but he wouldn’t tell anyone. That’s Malcolm for you.”

  Senneth leaned back in her chair because her bones felt like they needed some support. “And Nate’s an idiot.”

  “Again, not as true as it might have been seventeen years ago. They are not easy, delightful men with witty conversation and elegant manners. But I trust them, Senneth. They are good men. They deserve that you give them another chance.”

  “I’m sorry I ever came back to the palace,” she remarked. “I should have sent Tayse back with Kirra to make our report and headed straight on into the Lirrens with my raelynx.”

  The king grinned. “Will you go to Brassenthwaite?”

  She sighed again. “Yes. I will go. When do you want me back at the palace? Because I will not need to linger with my brothers.”

  “Two months, maybe three,” he said. “We will open the season with a ball. I want you beside Amalie as she makes her debut.”

  Senneth nodded. “Very well. I’ll go to Brassenthwaite and return directly here.”

  “But Senneth,” the king said, and his face was so serious that she was sure he was about to say something outrageous, “do not travel to Brassenthwaite alone. You need an escort to ensure your safety on the road—and to offer you a little consequence when you arrive at Kiernan’s doorstep.”

  Her eyes narrowed now. Who had been gossiping with the king? It could only have been Kirra. “Take an escort?” she said in a mild voice. “Anyone you would suggest?”

  He was unable to keep the sober look; he was laughing out loud. “Oh—I thought—perhaps one of my Riders? You have met one or two of them—perhaps you could select one for yourself. Or, if you like, I could make a recommendation—”

  She jumped to her feet, not willing to endure such teasing even from her king. “I am well able to care for myself, you know,” she reminded him. “You’d better hope so, if you think to entrust your daughter to me.”

  He was still smiling as he rose more sedately. “Yes, but all of us fare better if we have someone nearby watching over us,” he said. “It is simply the way the world works, Senneth. But you have been solitary so long—you don’t seem to remember what it’s like to have a friend at your back.”

  “No, but I have a king who is ordering me to remember,” she said in some exasperation.

  He gave her that kindly toy maker’s smile. “Then I command you,” he said solemnly. “Go find one of my Riders and tell him I have decreed he must accompany you to Brassenthwaite. So the king proclaims.”

  CHAPTER 37

  TAYSE leaned against the fence surrounding the training compound and watched the other Riders battle. He had spent the morning in a hard workout against Coeval and Hammond, who had not lost any of their sharpness while Tayse was on the road. He had acquitted himself well, both on foot and on horseback, and Coeval had murmured approval when Tayse parried a particularly ferocious assault.

  “You must have seen some real fighting on the road, not just pretend battles,” Coeval said, wiping sweat from his face.

  “A little,” Tayse said. “More often we just showed a willingness to fight, and that was enough to stave off an encounter.”

  “Yes, but the day one Rider isn’t as good as the lion on his sash, that’s the day every half-trained soldier in the kingdom thinks he’ll try his hand at fighting one,” Hammond grumbled.

  Tayse laughed and scrubbed a towel over his own dripping face. “But that day will never come,” he predicted.

  It was good to be back among the Riders. The night before, he and Justin had been greeted by the whole pack of them, the rest of the fifty. The Riders had clustered around them in the great open room of the main barracks, asking questions, tossing out insults, clapping one or both of them on the back if they were close enough. They had all stayed up past midnight, drinking beer—but not too much, since Riders never overindulged—and swapping stories. Before the night was through, Tayse had spoken to each one individually, the many men, the few women, had renewed the deep and silent cove
nant that was the bond between elite fighters. I am your friend. I will not fail you at your darkest hour. For this, more than the prestige, he had always wanted to be a Rider—for this utter, bone-deep sense of commitment to a unit and an ideal. Back in the barracks, back among these people who were so like him, he was where he belonged; he was reminded of who he was.

  But he knew he was no longer that man.

  His father had joined the group of revelers very late in the evening, as a few of them had started to drift off to their beds. Tayse had looked for his father right away, of course, but Coeval had told him Tir was off delivering a message for the king. “He’ll be back tonight, though,” Coeval said, and he was.

  Tayse hadn’t seen him enter the room. Tir was a big man, but adept at stealth; he just materialized beside Tayse as Tayse sat on one of the stools and laughed over his mug of beer. “You’re back,” Tir observed, and toasted his son with his own glass of beer.

  “This afternoon,” Tayse replied.

  “Good trip?”

  “Successful. Everyone home safe. But the news we brought back wasn’t good.”

  Tir nodded. “The news isn’t your responsibility.”

  “Any trouble here?”

  Tir shook his head. “Not yet. But there will be.”

  “So we’ve learned.”

  That was it—that was the extent of his conversation with his father that night as the Riders welcomed back two of their wandering members. That was the type of exchange that had always been enough for Tayse, covering the essential points, wasting neither time nor words. Back from my job safe, my skills equal to the demands upon them. What else was there to say?

  Father, I’ve met a woman, and she’s changed my life. She’s changed me. This is not enough for me anymore. I do not know how to forget her—I do not know how to go back to being the man I was before. I feel the way I felt when I was a small boy and I picked up my first practice sword, and it was too heavy for me to wield. “I cannot do this,” I thought. That is how I feel when I am away from Senneth. “I cannot do this.”

  But he could not say that to Tir. He could not say that to any of the Riders.

  So instead he drank his beer, and slept in his small, spare room, and woke in the morning and worked out against the two best Riders on the force. And felt his muscles respond in familiar, conditioned ways, having lost none of their strength or agility, and thought optimistically, Perhaps my heart, too, will remember its old routines. But he knew it was not true.

  Senneth would leave this place in a day or two, and though she had promised she would say good-bye, he thought it possible she would forget. He thought it possible he would never see her again.

  Though that, at least, seemed impossible.

  A weight beside him on the fence, and he turned to see that Justin had come to join him. Tayse smiled a little. That was one thing, at least, that had not altered. Justin had always sought him out, made no secret of the fact that he wanted to emulate Tayse in every particular. Even the long journey to Gisseltess and back had not made Justin lose his faith in Tayse. That was a balm, of sorts.

  “Where’s Cammon?” Tayse said. “I haven’t seen him today.”

  “I checked with the gate guards. He left with Senneth this morning.”

  Ah. “Well, she said she wanted to see him settled,” Tayse said. “She probably knows some mystics in Ghosenhall she wants to introduce him to.”

  “Better for him there than with us,” Justin said. “I suppose.”

  “Cammon has some growing to do before he decides where he wants to be,” Tayse said gently. “He’ll be back.”

  Justin turned so his spine was against the fence, and he rested his elbows on the top railing. “We’ve only been back a day and already I feel restless,” he said. “I don’t know how I’ll sit still for the next few weeks—or few months—just training in the yard and waiting for something to happen.”

  “Something will happen,” Tayse said. “That’s why you must keep training.”

  “When is Senneth leaving?” Justin said abruptly.

  “I don’t know.”

  “She promised to say good-bye.”

  “She did.”

  “I wish she wouldn’t go, though.”

  Tayse knew the feeling. “She has her own appointed tasks. Different from ours, but just as important.”

  Justin made a quarter turn and stared straight at Tayse. “She shouldn’t leave you,” he said.

  Tayse was left absolutely speechless.

  “Or you shouldn’t leave her,” Justin added. “I haven’t worked it out yet. But you shouldn’t be apart.”

  And he had thought there was no one with whom he could discuss this. It astonished him that Justin had noticed so much during their journey to Gisseltess, because Justin hadn’t seemed to be paying attention to anyone’s emotions but his own. He gave Justin the answer he’d given himself already more than a hundred times. “I’m a Rider. She’s from the House of Brassenthwaite. We don’t belong together.”

  “You’re the two strongest people I know,” Justin said. “It feels right when you’re side by side. It doesn’t feel right otherwise. I don’t know how to say it.” He waved a hand. “Cammon could say it. But Cammon’s not here, and Senneth is leaving, and none of it makes any sense to me.”

  “It always feels like this, a little, when you come back from a hard mission,” Tayse said. “You’re at loose ends. You can’t get back to the order your life had before. Give it a week and you’ll feel more normal.”

  Justin stared at him. “By then, she’ll be gone.”

  “I know.”

  Justin shook his head. “Tayse, you never make mistakes. Never. Any Rider would follow you on any desperate mission. I would do what you told me even if I thought it would mean my death. But you’re wrong about Senneth. Don’t let her leave.”

  Tayse turned away from him to stare blindly out into the training yard. His heart was slamming against his rib cage, and his head thrummed with tension. If he had expected a lecture from anyone—which he had not—he never would have believed it would come from Justin. “I have nothing to offer to a serramarra of Brassenthwaite.”

  Even his cold voice and stony face did not deter Justin from making one last comment. “But you have everything to give Senneth.”

  AFTER dinner in the barracks, Tayse slipped outside and did a slow walk around the perimeter of the palace compound. It was a habit he had picked up years ago, shortly after coming back from one of his first missions for the king. On the road, of course, Tayse was accustomed to circling the campsite at least once during the night, checking to make sure all was well, that no unexpected danger threatened. Here in Ghosenhall, there were plenty of other guards appointed to watch the grounds, but it gave Tayse a sense of rightness to make that nighttime circuit even in this place. It was also an exercise that helped to calm his mind and weary his body whenever he was having trouble sleeping.

  Walking at a good clip, he took more than an hour to follow the fence all the way around. He spoke idle words to the guards he encountered along the way, none of whom were surprised to see him. The moon rode high overhead, a small and stingy sliver. The slight breeze was cold enough to make him glad he’d worn his coat, but it carried a faint green scent of spring. Or so he imagined. It seemed he had been hoping for spring ever since the onset of winter.

  Done with the outer circuit, he made the inner one, walking the uneven ground all around the palace. Lights flooded from the kitchens, the bedrooms, the dining hall. The formal dinner must still be under way, all the king’s guests making merry downstairs while their servants yawned in the bedrooms upstairs. Tayse wondered who sat at the table tonight besides the king and the queen, and Kirra and Senneth, and the handful of nobles who were always attendant at the palace.

  Not that he cared about any of them except Senneth.

  For a moment he let himself imagine what would happen if he climbed up the wide stairs, nodded to the soldiers at the front doo
r, and stepped inside the palace. He could follow the sound of laughter to the dining hall or the music salon or the ballroom where the guests were gathered. He was a Rider; he had entrée into every corridor and chamber of the palace. He would bow to his king, make a slightly less sincere bow to his queen, and then locate Senneth in whatever gorgeous and bejeweled crowd had gathered. He would make his way past the beautifully gowned women, the sumptuously clothed men; he would not pause to inhale the rich perfumes or marvel at the glitter of housemark gems. He would find Senneth, and he would bow so low before her that Valri would be jealous and the king would be outraged. He would take her hand in front of all of them, the marlords and the marladies and the royals, and he would tell her, “I love you.”

  But though he stood there for five minutes, ten minutes, watching the guarded doors, he could not make himself start forward and climb the steps. He could not bridge the distance; he could not make the leap. He could not change himself so far as to ask her to change for him.

  When he turned to go back to the barracks, she was standing a few feet away on the lawn, watching him.

  For a moment, he thought it was illusion—hallucination—a flickering manifestation of his own hopeless desire. But then she moved, took a few steps nearer, and he was swept with that wash of physical heat that always warmed the air around Senneth. By that alone he knew she was real.

  She was dressed in a slim column of antique white, a lace-colored dress that matched the hue and texture of her hair. Even on this cool night, her arms were bare; the deep neckline of the gown showed the contours of her body more than her riding clothes ever had. She was as bright and unattainable as starlight.

  “Senneth,” he said, because she seemed to be waiting for him to speak. “What are you doing out here this night?”

  “I grew bored with the king’s party,” she said. “So I came to look for you.”

  “For me?” he said, and strangled his sense of pleasure. “Did you need something?”

  She shrugged a little. She seemed unhappy or unsure of herself, troubled by events. “I miss all my companions of the road. I’ve taken Cammon to the house of some mystics, and he’s been gone all day, though he promised to come back and tell me what he’s learned. Donnal has disappeared, disgruntled because Kirra has become—oh, you should see her! Even grander than she was in Helven and Nocklyn. It’s fun to watch her, because she is enjoying herself so much, but it’s not very easy to sit and confide in her. And you and Justin are off with your friends, and even the raelynx is walled up in a garden and it’s—I’m lonely, I suppose. I didn’t think such a thing would happen to me. I’ve been on my own so much that I’d forgotten what it was like to come to depend on others.”