by Hilari Bell
As the streets became more crowded, Arisa picked up her pace, narrowing the distance between her and her maid. On this cool night almost a third of the people on the street were wearing long cloaks, and she almost lost sight of Katrin several times. At least it wasn’t raining, and wasn’t likely to start, Arisa thought, although the moon winked in and out of the scudding clouds.
Soon the neighborhood grew rougher, and the streets even busier. Judging by the scent of brine, Arisa thought they must be nearing the docks. Fewer people wore cloaks here, and some of the men who swaggered past smelled of brandy or gin. Arisa pulled her knife to the front of her belt, and walked with her hand resting on the hilt. She wished she’d taken the time to grab a hat instead of just tying her hair back, but she wasn’t so pretty that a single glance on a darkish night would reveal her gender.
A rotund man who reeked of fish wandered into her path. Arisa whisked around him and found that Katrin had stopped, and was looking back over the street. Her heart thudded into her throat, but it was too late to do anything but keep walking. Still half a block back, she managed to drift back behind the fishmonger as she strolled, much more slowly now.
If Katrin had recognized her she gave no sign of it. If, of course, it was Katrin she followed. Arisa had yet to see her quarry’s face in the shadow of the hood—she’d feel pretty silly if she was following some other maid, off to a romantic tryst or a visit to her home.
The cloaked figure—whoever it was—turned and walked briskly onward, but Arisa maintained her slow pace, allowing the distance between them to increase. Now she kept one eye open for cover, as well as watching her quarry. When Katrin stopped again, Arisa leaped into a nearby doorway—where, she immediately realized, she had no way to see when Katrin stopped looking and started walking! The seconds dragged past. Surely it was too dark for Katrin to see much at this distance. Arisa peeked out, just in time to see Katrin turn down yet another side street. Arisa raced to the end of the block, ignoring the stares and startled curses. When she reached the street where Katrin had vanished, she stopped and peered carefully around the corner.
The maid was walking more quickly now. There were fewer people on this narrow lane, but it was darker as well and there was no help for it. Arisa followed, trying to keep behind a tipsy sailor and his lady friend. But they moved too slowly, and she was about to pass them when Katrin stopped in front of a busy tavern. Arisa darted behind a stack of barrels and crouched there, while her maid studied the dark street for several minutes.
Then she went up to the tavern door and knocked. Peering between the barrels, Arisa had a perfect view as the door opened. Light streamed out, along with a burst of conversation and laughter. Katrin stepped forward and hugged the large craggy-faced man who held the door.
At least it was Katrin. The cloak’s hood had fallen back, and Katrin smiled up at the man as he passed her inside. But that warm greeting looked more like a friend’s welcome than the prelude to a meeting with a sinister employer. Had Katrin just gone home to visit her family? The door closed, leaving the street dark and still. If she was just going home, why climb down from the balcony in the middle of the night? Even if it wasn’t her off day, surely she could have made up an errand to take her into the city while Arisa was at her lessons.
A pair of men came down the street and knocked on the door, greeting the doorman cheerfully, though without hugs. Arisa watched as they were admitted. In country villages most taverns left their doors open for customers to come and go, but she knew that in larger towns, especially in rough neighborhoods, they sometimes had a man who minded the door and kept out those who appeared too quarrelsome.
Which probably meant this was the kind of tavern her mother wouldn’t want her going into, but that wouldn’t have stopped her. The doorman was another matter, for in the tavern’s spill of light he’d certainly see that she was a girl. He would comment, and that would attract Katrin’s attention, and then… No, she couldn’t go in.
The cold cobbles dug into Arisa’s knees, so she worked her way in behind the barrels until she found a place she could sit and watch the tavern door. Perhaps Katrin was meeting her employer here, and if it was one of the courtiers, Arisa might recognize him. Or her. Or them.
More than a dozen people went in or out of the tavern in the next hour or so, and Arisa didn’t recognize one of them. Judging by their clothes, they belonged to the neighborhood and were probably regular customers. She learned that the doorman’s name was Stu. She learned that about one in four of the people who entered or left looked around the street first, just as Katrin had. Which might mean they were fellow conspirators. Or that they were smart enough to be wary in a tough part of the city after dark. Or it might mean nothing whatsoever.
Her rump was numb from the cold stones, and her toes were freezing. Still, it seemed a shame to leave without learning anything. The fact that Katrin had sneaked out at night to visit a tavern wouldn’t impress her mother, or anyone else.
Footsteps rang on the stones, and Arisa leaned forward to observe yet another tavern customer. This one was a shortish man, his clothes rough and dark like everyone else’s, and he didn’t look around before he knocked. But Arisa gasped when the light from the opening door flooded his face. Master Darian?
“Hello, Stu. Quiet night?”
The tavern was far from quiet, for several men were belting out a drinking song, but Stu nodded as he drew the man inside and closed the door.
Arisa realized she was holding her breath and let it go. She no longer felt the cold.
Master Darian had been banished from Deorthas on pain of death! Banished for complicity in Regent Pettibone’s crimes, and spared only because he’d testified against his master, offering proof after proof that the old regent’s summary execution had been justified.
What was he doing here? Pettibone was dead. What kind of plot could he be involved in? A plot involving Arisa’s maid? It was ludicrous! Of course, he would have known all of the old regent’s allies and supporters. Most of whom were probably Holis’ and the Falcon’s enemies at court!
But what could be worth risking a death sentence? Whatever it was, it had to be bigger than embarrassing the Falcon by making Arisa look bad. So much bigger that Arisa began to doubt her eyes. After all, she’d only seen the man once, and he’d been cowering in the corner, begging for his life. Perhaps this was just someone who looked like him.
The next visitor to the tavern appeared to be a local, but the one after that wore tall polished boots under his cloak. When he was admitted, Arisa glimpsed the white britches of a naval officer.
It was possible for a naval officer to visit a rough tavern in all innocence, but Arisa was sure now. Something was going on here. Someone was working against her mother, against Justice Holis’ regency. Perhaps against Edoran himself.
She watched for another hour as people came and went—but more and more were leaving. Soon Katrin would come out, and Arisa knew she’d better be back in her own bed before her maid crossed the balcony. She’d been lucky that Katrin hadn’t spotted her on the way here—she shouldn’t push that luck any further.
But there was one more thing she had to do, and the moon was out now, the street quiet. Rising slowly from her hiding place, stiff with cold, Arisa crept to the tavern door and gazed up at the sign, struggling to read in the dim light.
She’d tried before, when the door had opened, but the sign hung too high for the light to reach it. She had to be certain she could find this place again, in the daylight.
Squinting upward, she brought the faded letters into focus: King’s Folly. What an odd—
Lightning flashed over the sky, blinding her, and thunder crashed like the gods’ own cannon.
Arisa jumped, and a handful of fat drops splattered down. So much for her ability to predict the weather. Lightning was rare in winter storms, but it flashed again, and the rain fell harder.
Arisa turned and hurried into the darkness.
CHAPTER 8
/> The Three of Stars: the trial.
Judgment of a person or situation—make it wisely.
The next morning Arisa slept right through Master Giles’ fencing lesson, and she might have slept through her embroidery lesson as well if Katrin hadn’t brought in her breakfast tray.
Arisa, watching surreptitiously, couldn’t see any difference in the maid’s behavior. But why should Katrin behave differently? It was Arisa whose knowledge had changed.
With Katrin’s cool assistance, Arisa reached Yallin’s quiet parlor on time, but she was so distracted she had to redo half her stitches.
She still had no evidence to present to her mother. She was certain she’d seen Master Darian meet with a naval officer. Or she was almost certain it was Master Darian, and she thought it was a naval officer. A fleeting glimpse in a tavern doorway, of a man she’d seen briefly several months ago. At a time when she’d been so preoccupied with her own survival that she’d paid scant attention to Master Darian.
In the prosaic light of morning—and a dreary, drizzly morning it was—she wasn’t sure. If Justice Holis sent out investigators, and they found nothing but an innocent tavern and a man who looked like Master Darian (who was a very ordinary man, curse him), Arisa would look like a total fool. Without any help from Katrin at all. But if she didn’t tell her mother and something horrible happened, it would be her fault.
Arisa glared down at the uneven stitches straggling over the pillow slip, swore, and slipped her needle free of the thread to pull them out.
“At this rate, that pillow slip will end up more hole than cloth,” Yallin commented.
“I’m sorry,” said Arisa. “I can’t seem to concentrate today.”
“Having trouble making a decision?”
“What are you, some kind of witch?” Arisa demanded. “How do you keep reading my mind?”
Yallin laughed. “You’ve got one of the most open faces I’ve ever seen, girl. I hope you find yourself some position beyond courtier; you’d make a terrible liar, and being a courtier is all about lies.”
“I don’t want to be a courtier at all,” Arisa told her. “And I can lie just fine, if I have to.”
Yallin smiled. “Maybe. When you’re thinking about it. But if you’re having trouble making a decision, don’t just spin on it— get yourself some help.”
“You mean ask someone about it?” Arisa frowned. She couldn’t talk to her mother, because whether or not to tell her mother was the problem. And while Sammel was fine for most things, he would never keep a secret from the Falcon.
Weasel would listen, and keep her confidence too, but… He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen Master Darian, silhouetted in the lamplight. He wouldn’t believe that Regent Pettibone’s terrified clerk would ever return to Deorthas. Arisa wasn’t certain she believed it.
“There’s no one I can tell,” she said slowly. “No one would believe me.”
She expected that Yallin would promise to believe her, but that was like someone promising not to laugh. They always laughed, and belief wasn’t something you could guarantee in advance.
“Then seek the gods’ guidance,” Yallin told her. “They’d not have to believe you because they already know the truth.”
“You mean lay out the cards?” Arisa asked.
“I’ll even lend you my deck,” said Yallin, “since it’s plain I won’t get any work out of you till this is settled.”
She dug into her sewing kit and pulled out a deck that looked even older than Arisa’s.
“I didn’t know you had those,” Arisa said. “Edoran won’t like it. You could be fired for it.”
“He won’t know, unless you tell him.” Yallin held out the deck, and suddenly the need to lay them out, to get some guidance she could rely on, was irresistible.
Arisa swept her sewing off the table and began to shuffle, thinking about her dilemma as she did. Then she cut the deck and leaned forward to lay the top card.
“The storm,” Yallin murmured. “Is that often your significator?”
“Almost always,” said Arisa. Her withe was working, she could feel it. Today the cards would tell her true. “This supports me. Oh, not again!”
The traitor lay beneath the storm.
“I’d not think that would support anyone,” Yallin said.
“Last time he was inspiring me,” Arisa told her. “But… this makes some sense.”
Darian hadn’t betrayed his master till after the old regent was dead, but he was traitor enough for Arisa. She didn’t exactly rely on him, but her current dilemma did.
“This inspires me,” she went on, and laid the four of waters above the storm. “Choice. That’s perfectly clear, because I have to make one.”
“Hmm.” Yallin’s lips pressed together, deepening the wrinkles around her mouth.
“This misleads me,” said Arisa, laying a card to the storm’s far left. “Solitude?”
“Solitude can mislead you,” Yallin told her. “Few people are as alone as they think they are.”
“Well, this will guide me true. Jealousy?”
Arisa stared at the card, where a dark-haired girl peered out of a cottage window at her fairer sister, who sat in a garden surrounded by laughing suitors.
“That’s… unexpected,” said Yallin.
“No,” said Arisa. “Not entirely.” She had felt alone in the palace, and been jealous of Katrin’s close ties, her friendships with so many of the servants. The cards were telling Arisa that she wasn’t as alone as she’d been feeling, and that her mistrust of Katrin was justified.
“This threatens me.” Arisa held her breath as the wheel of fortune fell to the storm’s far right. “Which does make sense, since acts of random chance can always threaten you.”
Yallin frowned at the card. “The wheel is major arcana. It’s warning you about a specific act of chance, something you need to watch out for.”
“But if it’s an act of chance,” said Arisa, “then all I can do is try to be ready when it happens. And this”—she laid the final card between the wheel and the storm—“will protect me. Growth will protect me?”
“It’s not just growth,” said Yallin. “It’s the increase of anything through work. That’s why it shows a farmer in his field, instead of plants growing wild.”
“So to protect myself I need to work. To get more information before I take action.”
Yallin eyed her thoughtfully. “That helps with your decision? It looks a little ambiguous to me.”
“That settles it,” said Arisa. “It’s just the answer I was looking for. I need real evi—information, before I can act. The cards almost always tell me true. I have a bit of withe.”
“So it seems,” Yallin said. “I always wondered if Edoran didn’t have some withe. If that’s why the cards frightened him so.”
Arisa remembered the prince sensing the pirate raid, and his accurate weather predictions. “I think you’re right. But if that’s true, he should be glad of it! He should use it, instead of fighting it.”
“That depends,” said Yallin, “on what it’s made of him, as well as what he makes of it.”
Yallin took the deck from Arisa, shuffled once, and cut the cards.
“Astray,” Arisa murmured. “The true path lost, the wrong decision.” She stared at the image of a road vanishing into inky darkness, and shivered.
The storm that had started when she’d stood looking at the tavern sign was still drizzling down that afternoon, when Arisa went out to join Weasel and the prince for their “horseback ride.”
“I suppose it’s going to rain like this all day?” Arisa asked Edoran as she swung into the saddle.
“I have no idea!” Edoran snapped.
“You don’t have to be so touchy about it.” She wondered if he really didn’t know, or if he did and didn’t want to admit it. Part of her despised his refusal to face up to his gift, but another part remembered how she’d felt at the prospect of telling her mother that she thought there was a desp
erate plot going on, but she didn’t know what it was, or who it was aimed at, or have any solid evidence that it even existed. No, she couldn’t despise Edoran.
Her coat was wet by the time they reached the old stable and led their horses into the stalls.
“Working will warm us up,” Arisa told them firmly, and Weasel grimaced.
They hung their clammy coats on an old harness rack and began their exercises, though today Arisa fenced with Weasel and Edoran in turn. It gave them a chance to watch someone who was doing it wrong, and someone who was doing it… if not right, at least better.
Then they went through the forms together and she corrected them.
“You’re doing better today,” she told Edoran, and his whole face brightened—as if he’d never been praised before.
“What about me?” Weasel protested.
Arisa pursed her lips. “You’re not trying as hard. That’s why you’re not improving as fast. If you’d focus more…”
Edoran looked even more pleased, and Weasel groaned.
Arisa worked both boys till they were sweating, then decreed a rest. “Though not long. I don’t want you to cool down too much.”
“You’d think she was talking about horses,” Edoran told Weasel. His voice was mournful, but Arisa saw the laughter in his eyes.
“That’s a compliment,” Weasel told him. “She likes horses more than either rich nobles or city-bred scum.”
“Horses,” Arisa told them primly, “are useful, friendly, and courageous.” She left the rest of the comparison unsaid, but Weasel laughed and Edoran actually grinned.
Maybe now, when he was relaxed. “I’d like to ask you a few questions,” Arisa told the prince. “About the pirate raid.”
Edoran’s expression closed. “I don’t know any more than you do.”
“You may not know more,” Arisa persisted. “But you sensed it when it happened. It was obvious—”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Edoran said firmly.