Stone of Inheritance

by Melissa McShane

  But at night, alone in her room, she couldn’t help thinking about how it would feel to kiss him. Whether he would kiss her back. She’d become obsessed with his hands lately, watching him cut his food or wield his sword, how much bigger they were than hers, the nails cut short and blunt, the skin pale from winter. She’d imagine him putting his hands on her waist, pulling her close, and have to get up and go for a walk through the silent house to quell the images.

  It was easier when they were out on a job. Then, she would share a tent with Dianthe, whose snoring kept Sienne anchored to reality, and she and Alaric could treat each other with the bantering respect they’d fallen into over the past nine months. Sienne fell asleep hoping this woman, whoever she was, had a job for them.

  The rain stopped falling sometime before dawn, and the sun rose in a cloudless sky, the day warmer than it had been all week. It wasn’t warm enough to dispense with a cloak, but Sienne didn’t feel the need to huddle into hers as she had the previous day. She trudged along behind Alaric in her accustomed place. It was the pattern they’d fallen into when they were in the wilderness, marching across country or exploring ancient ruins, Sienne and Perrin in the center surrounded by the fighters. The habit persisted even when they were back in the city and presumably unworried about being attacked. Sienne found Alaric’s hulking presence comforting, particularly when it meant he broke the crowds so she didn’t have to.

  All of Fioretti seemed to be out enjoying the sunshine that morning. Their little party progressed slowly eastward through the city’s center, passing the famous Fiorettan market with its hundreds of semi-permanent stalls selling everything anyone might want, pausing briefly for Dianthe to throw a coin into the avatar Kitane’s fountain. The great warrior’s statue stood atop a pedestal rising from the center of the fountain, depicted in her moment of triumph over the Aldmerrow rebels, taking the young heir to the Ansorjan throne to safety. No statue would show her as she was only hours later, sacrificing herself for the prince’s freedom; her enemies had killed and dismembered her, and while her worshippers swore by the various parts of her body, no one wanted to see a statue of a pile of body parts.

  The address the young woman had given them took them to a neighborhood that, while not precisely run-down, had clearly seen better days. Palatial homes in need of fresh paint or repair to chipped marble stood far too close together, lacking the wide lawns and gardens popular among the wealthy of Fioretti. The one they’d been directed to looked as if a hundred stonemasons had worked a hundred days to produce a confection of carved arches and fluted pillars, all of which were cracked, some of which had fallen down. Cherubs with fat faces and chubby arms simpered over the front doors, which were heavy oak carved with grapes and grape leaves twining around gamboling lambs. Kalanath made a face when he saw it. “God’s creature should not be mocked.”

  “What, lambs?” Perrin said.

  “Sheep are sacred to God. We do not depict them in art. I know it is different here.” Kalanath still looked like he’d eaten something nasty.

  There was no bell pull. Alaric knocked on the door. “I’m beginning to wonder about this woman’s wealth. How could she afford a thousand lari for knives when this place looks like it’s about to come down around us?”

  Both halves of the door creaked open. An elderly man in very old-fashioned clothes, blousy short pants over black hose and a full-sleeved linen shirt constrained by a brocade jerkin, stood there. He seemed unsurprised to see them, even though Alaric, irritated by the woman’s behavior, had rousted everyone early for this meeting. “Please enter,” he said, his voice as creaky as the door.

  The dark hall beyond the entrance smelled of cheap tallow candles and the more biting scent of fresh polish. Sienne stopped to let her eyes adjust to the darkness, relieved only by sunlight coming through small round windows near the high ceiling. There were candles in tall wrought iron stands lining the hall, but they were unlit. Most of them had burned down to about an inch of dribbling yellow wax. Portraits of dour men and women in the style of a hundred years before glowered down at them. Something about the previous century had made everyone glum, at least as far as their portraits revealed.

  “If you would follow me,” the old man creaked, gesturing down the hall. Once more in the middle of their group, Sienne followed him to an uncarpeted staircase with balusters as ornately carved as the front door. The treads were worn pale in the middle and groaned softly under Alaric’s weight. Sienne felt like tiptoeing along after him. A dread hush filled the whole place, as if it were a mausoleum and not someone’s ancestral home. Someone who might well already be interred here.

  3

  The stairs ended at another hall, this one more brightly lit, but only because there were more and larger windows lining it near the ceiling. Doors with brightly-painted fanciful carvings opened off the hall, giving it a festive appearance completely at odds with the ground floor. The old man led them to a door halfway down the hall and opened it. “My lady, your… guests,” he said, bowing.

  Sienne once again had to wait for her eyes to adjust, but this time it was because the room was blindingly bright, the walls painted stark white, the furnishings picked out with gilt, the cushions upholstered in pale gold brocade. It was also cold. A fire was laid in the white hearth but not lit, and two windows taller than Alaric stood open, letting in the brisk morning air of early first summer. She suppressed a shiver and turned her attention to the young woman standing near the fireplace, watching them.

  The day before, she’d been dressed casually in shirt and trousers. Today, she wore a morning dress with a long straight skirt and embroidered bodice, so modern she made her old-fashioned surroundings seem like the set of a historical drama. Her mouse-colored hair still fell loose to her waist, but was bound back from her face with a fillet of gold wire like the skeleton of a crown. Cold still reddened the tip of her thin nose. She regarded them dispassionately, as if they were all strangers meeting on foreign soil for unrelated reasons.

  No one spoke for a few moments. Sienne was sure Alaric was assessing the room and the woman, working out a plan of attack. Who would speak first, and give up the high ground?

  Finally, the young woman said, “I won’t thank you for coming. I know you resent the situation.”

  “What do you want?” Alaric said.

  Good, Sienne thought, no wasted pleasantries.

  “This is about what you want,” the young woman said. She walked to a table beneath one of the open windows. A breeze blew her hair into tangles, but she ignored it, opening a drawer in the table and removing a heavy leather bag. She brought it to one of the brocade sofas, opened it, and removed a knife in a tooled leather sheath. Sienne recognized it as one of the knives from the lot they’d bid on.

  “A knife,” Alaric said. “You think we want that?”

  “Don’t play the fool with me. I know you’re smarter than you let on.” The woman dropped the knife back into the bag. “I don’t know why these knives are important to you, and I don’t care. I’ll let you have them if you accomplish a task for me.” Her thin voice hardened. “If you don’t, I’ll throw them into the sea and they’ll be lost to you.”

  “We don’t respond to threats,” Alaric said.

  “That’s not a threat. That’s just how it’s going to be.”

  Alaric took a step toward her. “We could take those knives and leave. You and that old man couldn’t stop us.”

  “But you won’t. That’s not how you operate.” The woman seemed unmoved by his looming menace. “I did my research. Your team is known for its integrity. Even your thief isn’t a thief. So I know you won’t steal from me, just like you won’t hurt me.”

  After months of riding or walking directly behind him, Sienne could read the tension in Alaric’s back as clearly as she could his face. She knew the moment when he decided to take the bait. “Show us the lot. I want to be sure you’re not cheating us. We may have integrity, but we’re not stupid.”

  The y
oung woman shook the bag out. Five ritual knives lay scattered on the sofa. They looked like the right ones, though Sienne didn’t know which of the five was the one they wanted. Alaric nodded. “What task?”

  The young woman gathered up the knives and put the bag back in the drawer before she spoke. “My name is Tonia Figlari. My mother was Odela Figlari, and my grandfather was Stephanas Figlari. His father was Duke Marlen Figlari. Do you know the name?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “He was duke of a small holding north of Fioretti, nearly to the border. This was some eighty years ago. The Figlaris ruled for eighty years before that. It was, as I said, small, but successful. Until they had a few bad years in a row. Crops failed, the grape harvest was small and the wine bitter, and people began to starve. My great-grandfather had the resources to move everyone south, but at the cost of his dukedom. He settled with his household in Fioretti—in this house. It’s not our ancestral house, but we own it outright.”

  Dianthe coughed and concealed it with her hand. Sienne couldn’t see her face, but Tonia smiled wryly. “We are not impoverished, however it may look from the outside,” she said. “My family never thought of this place as anything but temporary. It was always my great-grandfather’s intent to return to the Figlari dukedom when the drought was over. But he was ill, and my grandfather cared more for pleasurable living than his responsibilities. It was my mother who kept alive the dream of regaining our title and lands. She died two winters ago. And now it’s down to me.

  “But we had—have—enemies. A family intent on seeing us reduced to hangers-on at court, landless and nameless. My great-grandfather failed to bring with him proofs of our possession, and this family, the Marchenas, have blocked our application to the king to see our title restored. They say I am lying about being a Figlari, even though everyone knows who I am. The king, whose friend Lusio Marchena is, continues to put off a final decision on the matter. He does not quite dare to deny me, but he will not restore my title.”

  “And you’re going to tell us where we fit into your plan,” Alaric said.

  “The first Figlari duke commissioned an artifact,” Tonia said, “a stone carving of a falcon, which is the emblem of our family. According to my mother, who was told the story by her grandfather, it was made to respond in some way to anyone of the Figlari blood. Great-grandfather was coy with the details, sometimes saying it cried out in a falcon’s voice when a Figlari touched it, other times that it would speak the name of the Figlari aloud. But he was adamant that it was proof of our title.”

  “That’s not possible,” Sienne said. “The knowledge of the making of artifacts was lost in the wars four hundred years ago. Your ancestors took possession of the land less than two hundred years ago. There’s no way an artifact could be made for them.”

  “It wasn’t made for them. The artifact was… repurposed, I suppose you could call it. Great-grandfather told my mother the family legend was that it originally said something else, in response to some other stimulus. He didn’t know how the Figlaris attuned it to themselves, but he did know they took the falcon as their emblem because of the stone, not the other way around. At any rate, the stone falcon belongs to the Figlaris now, and there are records of it in the official annals of the court. If I could bring it before the king and have it declare my identity, the king would have no choice but to recognize me as the duchess of Figlari.”

  “That is rather a stretch, my lady,” Perrin said. “I can think of more than one way in which your enemies might yet scotch your plan.”

  Two pink spots appeared high on Tonia’s thin cheeks. “I’ve spent the last year building support for myself among the nobles of the king’s court. Their support, added to the witness of the artifact, will be enough. But I need the artifact.”

  “And you want us to get it,” Alaric said. “Why us? This is a straightforward retrieval, not an exploration of an ancient ruin.”

  “No one who isn’t a scrapper is willing to go that far north. It’s not dangerous, but it is almost in the Empty Lands and people are superstitious. And the scrapper teams I’ve approached won’t touch it because it isn’t an ancient ruin, and there’s no chance of salvage. Which leaves you.”

  “And you’re not above a spot of blackmail,” Dianthe said.

  “It’s not blackmail,” Tonia said. “It’s an exchange of favors. I’ll even pay your expenses. You just have to bring the stone back, and you get your knives.”

  “I do not know the word that is when someone makes you do something you do not want, but I dislike it no matter the word,” Kalanath said, gripping his staff tightly.

  “Manipulation,” Perrin said, “and I dislike it just as much.”

  Sienne watched Tonia closely. Her lips were set in a mulish line, but her gaze flicked from one of them to another, restlessly, and she had her fingers wound into the fabric of her skirt, twisting it tightly. Sienne knew desperation when she saw it. Despite herself, she felt the beginnings of pity for the young woman. Sienne had once been desperate, and if Dianthe hadn’t shown up at just the right time, her life would be very different right now.

  “How big is the stone?” she asked, overriding Alaric, who was about to speak.

  “It’s a circle roughly four feet across,” Tonia said. “It’s not a statue of a falcon, it’s more of a plaque with the bird carved into it, like a bas-relief.”

  “So it’s set into a wall?”

  “Somewhere in the castle overlooking the village. I don’t know more than that.”

  Sienne turned to Alaric. “I can’t cast fit on magical things. It will be difficult to carry out, something that size.”

  Alaric glared. She guessed he was going to have some irritated things to say to her once they got home, starting with I’m supposed to do the negotiating. “I’m sure we can figure something out,” he said instead. “This won’t be a cheap expedition.”

  “I have plenty of money,” Tonia said. “I take it we have a deal.”

  Alaric cast one more annoyed look at Sienne. “We do,” he said. “Do you have a map? Directions? Once we know how long it will take, I can tell you how much it will cost. But we’ll need pack animals, horses, supplies… as I said, it won’t be cheap.”

  “Haritt will see to it,” Tonia said. She pulled a bell rope dangling by the fire. “I know you’re not interested, but you have my thanks.”

  “You’re right. We’re not interested,” Alaric said.

  The old man pushed open the door. “Haritt, provide these people with my great-grandfather’s map,” Tonia said. “Bring your requests to him, and he’ll see to payment.”

  Haritt bowed to the room in general, and gestured for Alaric to precede him out the door. The meeting was over. Sienne risked a glance over her shoulder at Tonia, but the young woman had turned away and was standing beside the window, the cold wind blowing her hair about her face.

  Instead of descending the stairs, Haritt led them to a room across the hall. It was equally bright, but warmer due to the windows being firmly shut. Sienne, who ended up next to one, felt a chilly draft blowing through a gap in the frame and shivered. If Tonia had so much money, why didn’t she sell this place, which she’d implied had no sentimental meaning, and buy something newer and warmer? She thought of her parents’ ducal home in Beneddo, how the chimneys smoked no matter how many times they were repaired. Some things could only be explained by inertia.

  Haritt opened a wide, shallow drawer in a cabinet next to the door and withdrew a large sheet of paper. “You may look at this and any other maps you choose, but do not remove them from this room. They are very old and very fragile.”

  “I’ll try not to crush them,” Alaric said, rolling his eyes. Sienne watched him accept the map from Haritt and carry it to a table near the center of the room. His hands, so large and yet so agile—Sienne made herself stop looking at his hands. She moved with the others to join Alaric at the table.

  The map was sepia with age, its lines faded, but still legi
ble. It depicted an area bounded on the east by mountains and on the north by forest, dotted with villages but not showing any dukedoms or large cities. Sienne didn’t recognize any of the names.

  “The northern end of the Bramantus Mountains,” Dianthe said, pointing but not touching the ancient map. “This isn’t to scale, if that’s meant to be the Cloud-tops Forest.”

  “It’s close enough,” Alaric said. “With a modern map, we should be able to determine Figlari’s actual location. Or close enough that a blessing will get us there.”

  “We should not rely too heavily on blessings,” Perrin said. “Remember that Averran considers the search a path to holiness.”

  “I was thinking we should rely on Averran’s desire for us not to be hopelessly lost,” Alaric said. “We don’t have to be led straight there. A couple of nudges will be sufficient.”

  “So how far is it?” Kalanath said.

  “We’ll be at least eight days on the road, with some of that cross-country,” Dianthe said, measuring with her fingers. “This map doesn’t show Fioretti, so I can’t be more specific than that. Eight days, probably more like ten.”

  Alaric had stepped away and was counting off something on his fingers, his lips moving soundlessly. Sienne didn’t interrupt. He was probably still annoyed with her, and better she didn’t remind him of her presence and distract him from planning. “Two hundred lari,” he told Haritt. “For expenses. We’ll return what we don’t use.”

  “Unnecessary,” Haritt said.

  “Not to us,” Alaric said.

  Haritt raised an eyebrow. “One moment,” he said, and left the room.

  Alaric turned on Sienne. “I’m supposed to do the negotiating,” he said.