“You can’t be here,” he said, his voice guttural, the words violent. “They didn’t pull you out. I saw. I saw.”
She jerked her head from side to side. “No. I came out. You were gone.” There was pain in that last word.
Keros’s jaw knotted and he scowled. He looked as if he wanted to break something. “They threw me in and I swam. I was never going back.” He paused, his lip curling. “You serve them, don’t you?”
She nodded. “I had nothing else.”
Margaret interrupted. “Who are you? What’s going on? Keros?”
He flinched, glancing first at Margaret then at Nicholas. He leaned back, staring up at the roof of the hack, his mouth drawn tight.
“I was born in Azaire. I lived in a village on the edge of the Verge—as close to the sea as we could be without having to worry about the Chance storms. When I was thirteen seasons old, the Gerent sent soldiers. He had learned the nature of majicars and he intended to make some. He took the entire village—every last one of us—down to the sea. We waited for a sylveth tide. When it came, they threw us in one after another. Most of us turned to spawn—my mother, my sisters, my brothers, my cousins . . . No one was spared.”
He looked at Ellyn. “I had a friend—the daughter of a neighboring farmer. Her name was Sperray. We were inseparable. I meant to marry her one day. We had already—” He broke off. He reached out for Ellyn again and again pulled away. “I saw them throw her into the sylveth. She never came out—at least not in any shape I could recognize. There was spawn everywhere in the waves. They slaughtered them all as they came out.” Tears rolled down his face and dampened his beard. “I had lost everything. I had nothing to lose. I tore away from them and ran into the water. I dove under and swam. I felt my transformation and I kept going. Whatever I was to be, they could not have me.”
He looked at Margaret, jerking his thumb at Ellyn. “She wears Sperray’s face. But it is not possible. It is not.”
The agony in his voice was wrenching. Nicholas swallowed, thinking of Carston.
Margaret took Keros’s hand and looked at Ellyn, asking the question that her friend could not. “Are you Sperray?”
Silence. And then slowly, in a voice of iron, “I was once. Now I am only Ellyn.”
Keros twisted back around. “You can’t be.”
“Can’t I? Do you remember that day in the tall grass? It was only a month before. We’d finished our chores and we went to swim at the river. Remember our spot? The bank was hollowed out and the bottom was sandy. We stopped on the way to check your rabbit snares. Do you remember what happened next? Do you want me to tell you?”
Keros swallowed hard, holding up a hand as if to stop her words. “I remember,” he choked. “Why are you here?” he asked.
“For Azaire,” she replied. “That is all.”
For a moment he didn’t move. Then his expression closed, emotion flattening out into nothing. Nicholas watched the transformation with a deep sense of pity. It was a tragic moment, one that didn’t deserve to be witnessed by strangers. He looked down at his boots and then at Margaret. One hand was caught in a fist at her throat, the other was on Keros’s shoulder. Her eyes glittered with tears. She blinked them away and the chill, hard mask slipped over her face.
“Then perhaps it’s time we got to business,” she said to Ellyn. “We want to hire you to help us retrieve Nicholas’s son.”
“Hire me? Why?”
“Keros is unable and we need a majicar.”
“Unable?” Ellyn flicked a look at Keros.
“I will come with you. She is not required,” he said.
“No,” Margaret said. “It’s too risky for you.”
She meant the ghost spells and the risk of madness. Clearly the two of them were close and she was unwilling to endanger him further.
“I am fine.”
“You’re still as weak as a newborn lamb,” Nicholas said brusquely. “And we are going by horseback. Can you ride?”
Keros snarled. “No.”
“Can you?” he asked Ellyn.
She frowned at Keros a moment, then nodded. “Of course.”
“Then it is settled.”
“I am not sending Margaret off alone with an Azairian majicar,” Keros said emphatically. “I am coming.”
Nicholas looked at Margaret. It was her choice. “Very well,” she said. “But we’ll need another horse.”
“You and I will double up,” Nicholas said. She eyed him suspiciously. “Together we are lighter than you and Keros. I doubt he’ll permit you to ride with Ellyn. There is no time to go back to my manor, and we would have a difficult time sneaking out another mount without being seen. At any rate, we’ve wasted too much time. We must be on our way as soon as possible. My son cannot wait.”
Margaret gave a short nod. “We will need supplies.” She knocked on the roof of the hack. A moment later it slowed and stopped. “I’ll meet you all at the safe house.”
She opened the door and stepped out. Before she could close it, Nicholas slipped out behind her, shutting the door firmly, tossing the driver a coin and waving him on. The hack trundled away.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“We’ll need more than you can carry alone,” he said, taking her arm and pulling it through his as if they were out taking a leisurely stroll. He pulled her beneath the awning of a milliner’s. She drew away, turning to face him.
“You left them alone together? After that? They’ll kill each other.”
He shook his head, sobering. “No, they won’t. They need time together without any witnesses.” Her eyes widened and he gave her a wry smile. “I am not made out of stone. Contrary to your low opinion of me, I do have a heart.”
“Really? Where do you keep it? In a box in a vault somewhere all covered with dust and cobwebs?”
He put a hand on his chest. “You wound me.”
“Not possible. Come on. Let’s get back before one of them kills the other.”
She started to walk away. Once again he grabbed her hand and slid it through the crook of his arm. She tipped her head, giving him a distrustful look.
“Never let it be said that I was not a gentleman,” he said.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, then settled her hand more firmly on his arm. He smiled to himself. It was a beginning.
Chapter 7
Margaret and Weverton slipped out of the hack so abruptly that Keros had no time to call them back. The carriage wheels began rolling again and he was left sitting opposite Sperray—No, Ellyn. She was no more the girl she had been then than he was the boy.
As if reading his mind, she asked, “Keros? Is there some meaning to that name?”
He shrugged stiffly. “After my transformation, I washed up somewhere in Relsea—long before the Jutras conquered it. I had some trouble—I didn’t know to glamour my eyes to hide what I was. I had no money, no clothing, nothing. For a while I lived on the headland, snaring rabbits for food. I learned to make fire with my majick and eventually figured out that I had to disguise my eyes, but had to kill two men who thought I was spawn before I did.” The memory was an old hurt, savage still. He didn’t let the pain color his voice. He wasn’t going to give her that. He didn’t know who she was anymore; she was here on behalf of the Gerent, who’d done this to the both of them. She was not to be trusted.
“Eventually an old hermit found me. He gave me clothes and I helped him gather salt to sell in Berell. He took me there and I found work at an inn. In time I realized there was no one like me in Relsea. At least, if there was, they were disguising themselves so that no one would know. I needed to go to Crosspointe. I found passage on a tramper—I worked the season before they anchored in Blackwater Bay.”
“And the name?” she prompted when he didn’t speak again.
“It belonged to the hermit.” He chewed the inside of his lip. He didn’t want to ask. He knew the answer, but hearing it was a different thing. The words came anyway. “My fami
ly? Did any survive?”
She averted her face and shook her head. “No. Nor mine.”
“How many majicars did they harvest from Etelvayn?” he asked, bitterness sharpening every word to knives. Their village had been small, just under two hundred people.
“Six. Plus you.”
“Who?”
She raised her head, her lip curling. “Does it matter?”
“No. I suppose not.”
“And now you are one of Crosspointe’s majicars,” she said. “Lucky you weren’t in the Kalpestrine when it fell.”
“I was never a member of the Majicar Guild.”
Her eyes narrowed. “But you serve the Crown.”
“I do,” he said, more firmly than he expected. It was a harness that didn’t fit and he frequently struggled against it, but he didn’t want her knowing that. He didn’t know why. “Why are you here?”
“I told you—for Azaire. You lied to them. Why? You were never an ordinary villager.”
“I was that day.”
She snorted. “You were the middle son of the thane of Etelvayn.”
“And it meant nothing,” he said.
“If your father had been there . . .” She trailed away.
“He would have shoved us in himself. Even his family was not more important than serving the Gerent.” The words were bitter and hot. He’d seen his father little in those thirteen seasons before being sacrificed to the sylveth tide. The burly thane of Etelvayn was always needed, whether to push back raids from Kalibri, Glacerie, and Ayvreshar, or to subdue ambitious thanes who thought to overthrow the Gerent. Ryerdal mi Etelvayn had been one of the Gerent’s most trusted thanes. He was both loyal and ruthless. Enough to allow his family and villagers to be thrown into the sylveth. “He married again, didn’t he? He has new heirs. He lost nothing that day.”
Her eyes widened. “You believe that?”
“I know it.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. I’ve seen him. It hurt him dreadfully. I don’t think he’s forgiven the Gerent.”
Keros’s face hardened. “I doubt that. He still jumps when the fat bastard crooks his finger.”
“How would you know? You ran away,” she said disdainfully.
He smiled, tight and thin. “I am not unaware of what happens in Azaire. I will make the Gerent pay one day.”
She shook her head. “Better hurry, then, if you want to get there before the Jutras do. They are already pushing into the Gwatney Mountains. It will not be long before they reach the Saithe. The river will not hold them, and we don’t have enough majicars to hold them back.” The last was accusing.
For a moment his face went slack. “You think I should have stayed and helped Azaire?”
She flushed, but didn’t look away. “It’s your home,” she said. “Even if you hate the Gerent, you love the people and they needed you. They still do.”
He laughed, a harsh sound. That didn’t even bear answering. “Why are you here? What do you want in Crosspointe?”
“I’ve come to gather information.”
“You want more compasses,” Keros said shrewdly.
Her mouth fell open. “You know of the compasses?”
He knew far more than that. Unintentionally and wholly against his will, he’d been dragged into the center of Crosspointe politics. “There are no more,” he said quietly.
She recoiled. “You’re lying.”
“Am I?”
“Azaire needs compasses. We know what Pilots are. But without compasses, we cannot put our ships to sea. King William wanted this alliance. Surely Prince Vaughn and Prelate Ryland will as well.”
It was widely assumed that Vaughn would be elected to the throne, if there was ever an election. “Perhaps you should be talking to the regent,” he said.
She scoffed. “He will not survive long. This business with Weverton will get him killed all the more quickly. It is better to go to the Ramplings, especially now it appears Weverton is no longer against them.”
Keros smiled with real humor. “Margaret is breaking with her family to help Weverton. Her brothers will likely drown her when they discover what she’s done.”
She shrugged. “It costs me little to help him and I do not mind making trouble for the regent. He and his wife are gutterscum.”
“On that, at least, you and I agree,” Keros said.
Prickly silence fell between them. He was spinning from seeing her alive, and here. His mind drifted unwillingly to that brilliant day when they went off to swim at the river. The insects had been buzzing, and her hand had been warm in his. They were young, and so ready for each other. They had kissed and he had run his fingers over her skin, so hot it was almost feverish. They made love for the first time, there in the grass—swift and desperate at first; the second time slower and more gentle. He still remembered the soft sweep of her tongue on his, the sweet and salty taste of her skin, and the soft, urgent cries they’d both made.
The memory was a knife in his chest. He savagely thrust it from his mind. And not just that one, but all the memories of his life in Etelvayn, from the sound of his mother’s voice to the laughter around the dinner table. He wanted none of it.
He intended to stay awake, but found himself dozing despite himself. His battle in the Riddles had taken far more out of him than he liked. He felt the presence in his mind. It was coiled and quiet now, but he felt it watching, waiting. For what? For him to use his majick? That would be soon enough.
He woke again when the hack stopped. He blinked groggily. Ellyn was watching him, her face expressionless. He sat up and reached for the handle and stumbled down the steps. The rain was falling heavily. A stream ran down the middle of the street and puddles abounded. Keros didn’t bother to offer Ellyn his hand. He turned to pay the driver and then wordlessly started away. He wound a circuitous route to the safe house. They were followed a short way by two women with sagging, withered bodies sporting bruises on their faces. Keros turned and glared at them and then walked on. They didn’t follow farther.
The two majicars slipped inside the safe house without any more adventures. As he keyed the wards, Keros half expected that the thing in his mind would rouse, but it remained quiescent. The entrance opened sluggishly and closed more so. He shook his head. What was happening to the majick?
He circled the horses, who nickered and scraped their hooves on the courtyard pavement. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to ride. In fact he’d started riding when he was but three seasons old, sitting in front of his father, brother, or mother; later he had his own pony, followed by a spirited horse. But horses belonged to his old life and the boy he used to be. Now he wanted nothing to do with them.
“You told them you couldn’t ride,” Ellyn observed as she followed him inside.
“I haven’t since—” He resisted the urge to spit. “I don’t anymore. I doubt I remember.”
“It isn’t something you forget.”
“I can try,” he said and stirred the fire before putting more tea on. He rifled through the shelves for something to eat. He wasn’t that hungry, but he needed to be busy. He put on some rice and stirred in dried apricots, raisins, cinnamon, salt, pepper, and a pinch of shifta grown in Beynto dal Corus for a little heat. He stirred it as it began to boil, aware of Ellyn wandering aimlessly about.
“How strong are you?” she asked suddenly. “Are you a master?”
“How can I be? I’m not in the guild,” he said. “Only the Majicar Guild can name you a master in Crosspointe.”
She snorted at his prevarication. “If you were?”
He blew out a breath. What did it matter? “Then I’d be a master.” He looked at her, brows raised “You?”
She shook her head, chin raised, eyes snapping. “I’m a journeyman. There are few master majicars in Azaire.” It was an accusation.
“That’s because you are too far from the sea,” he said. “Sylveth is what gave you your majick and it’s what feeds it. Why do you think the Kalpest
rine was outside the Pale?”
“I am no stronger here than I was in Azaire.”
“Then maybe you were a meant to be a journeyman.”
“You should come home. Azaire needs you.”
He gave a sharp shake of his head. “No. It is not my home. I never lived there. I was born in the sylveth and Azaire means nothing to me.”
When the rice was done, he spooned it into two bowls. Ellyn took hers and sat as far as she could get from him.
“This is good.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” he said dryly.
“I never thought I would ever see you cook anything,” she said.
“I enjoy it and I don’t have servants. Either I feed myself or I starve. It seemed wise to learn to cook something edible.” He smiled, happy enough to talk about something harmless. “It has come in handy. For many seasons I served aboard ship. I healed those who needed it and in return, they kept my secret. During the second season, the ship’s cook went overboard in a storm. I volunteered to man the galley and they were pleasantly surprised to find me capable. I remained their cook until—”
“Until?” she prompted.
“Until recently. When I got involved with the Ramplings.”
“How did that happen?”
He shook his head. “Not a story for Azaire, I think. But you may ask Margaret if you like.”
His words shut the door on any more conversation. They each finished eating and drank their tea. Margaret and Weverton had still not returned and Keros went to lie on one of the bunks in the other room. He had a feeling there would be little enough opportunity to sleep in the next few days and felt heavy with exhaustion.
A hand on his shoulder woke him. He sat up groggily.
“Time to go,” Margaret said. Her voice dropped and she sat beside him. Her hair was wet and her cheeks were flushed. She reached up and brushed his unruly hair away from his eyes. “Are you all right?”
He wanted to dismiss the question with a casual affirmative, but it was pointless. As little time as they’d known each other, she understood him. They were very much alike. “I’ll survive,” he said finally.
The Hollow Crown: A Novel of Crosspointe Page 10