by Melanie Rawn
“I hope I’m still allowed to call you Cayden,” she went on. “Or it is Master Tregetour Silversun to everybody now?”
He turned, genuinely glad, and said, “Only to people I don’t like. How are you, Vrennerie?”
“Very well, much beholden to you.” Her smile was as delightful as ever, and the look in her eyes as she glanced at the tall, smartly dressed man beside her indicated that here was most definitely a happy marriage. “Have you met my husband? Kelinn Eastkeeping, this is my friend, Cayden Silversun.”
They bowed, and smiled, and Cade was favorably impressed not just by Lord Eastkeeping’s gracious, open manner but also by his own ease in meeting the man who husbanded a woman he had almost been in love with. No envy here, no heartbreak—which meant his heart couldn’t have been so very much involved.
“I would have come to greet you before,” Vrennerie was saying, “but in this crush there’d be no chance to be talking.”
And that put an end to whatever suspicion might be in his mind that she subscribed to his mother’s notions of propriety, and believed that titled ladies did not seek out the hired entertainers for conversation. The thought, however fleeting, was unworthy, and he covered the rush of shame with a smile. “We’ve been busy working.”
“Fascinating work, too,” Eastkeeping said. “We’re so remote at our holding that, if you can believe it, I didn’t see a play until I was twenty years old!”
“Shocking,” Vrennerie said. “Or would be, if the same wasn’t true of me.” Sweetly and demurely lying through her teeth, she added, “Or would be, if ever I’d actually seen a play.”
“Which she never, ever has done,” said His Lordship. “Of course.”
“Of course,” Cade echoed, repressing a grin. “I think—” But Rafe called impatiently from the bottom of the stairs, interrupting him.
“Ah, but we’re intruding on your work,” said His Lordship. Turning to Vrennerie, he said, “Weren’t you going to ask about travel plans?”
“We leave tomorrow’s dawning for home, Cayden, and our way is taking us on the road to Lilyleaf. Would Touchstone care to ride with us for a day?”
“Cade!” yelled Rafe.
“Keep your hair on!” Cade yelled back. To Vrennerie, he said, “Tomorrow at dawn—only be sure not to listen for the first hour or so, while Mieka lets everyone know his opinion of rising before noon.”
“Oh, I’m knowing all those words now,” she laughed.
“She made me teach her,” groaned Eastkeeping. “She heard most of them on board ship, then at the Keeps before the wedding, and then at the Palace. She threatened to use them in polite conversation if I didn’t give her definitions and rules for usage.” He shook his dark head, and to Cayden’s surprise, the shifting of thick curls revealed the tips of pointed ears. Elfen, probably—or, considering the location of his holdings, Piksey. “These modern young women—scandalous, simply scandalous.”
“I completely agree with Your Lordship. At a guess, she then gave instructions to the Princess?”
“Cade!”
“The name’s Kelinn, and quite frankly I’ve never gathered up courage enough to ask. Until tomorrow morning, then? I’m looking forward to the show tonight.” With an innocent smile and dancing dark eyes, he added virtuously, “And I’m sure Vren would, too, if she could.”
Cade nearly choked on a snort of laughter, and decided he liked Kelinn Eastkeeping. Then again, he couldn’t imagine Vrennerie marrying anyone who lacked a sense of humor.
As usual, Mieka’s protests (“Gods-damned fucking ass-crack of dawn you wake me up?”) lasted only as long as it took him to crawl into his hammock and go back to sleep. Cade and Jeska took advantage of Lord Eastkeeping’s offer of horses to ride, and a cheerful little procession left Coldkettle just after dawn. Shortly before noon, one of the outriders reported a fine stag not two miles off, and a brief debate was held over whose lands these were and whether a hunt would be legal. Vrennerie used the map on the side of Touchstone’s wagon to calculate where they might be, deciding that they were likely still within Lord Coldkettle’s domain.
“He won’t begrudge you some sport, I’m thinking,” she told her husband.
“Care to ride with us, Cayden? Jeska?”
Obedient to a sidelong look from Vrennerie, Cade said, “Beholden, but no. I’m not that good a rider.”
“And I’ve never been on a hunt,” said Jeska, but he looked tempted.
“Then you must join us! Weren’t you just telling me that every experience adds to your skills onstage? Coming, Vren?”
“Not this time. Have fun, dearling.” She watched them gallop off into the forest with a few men-at-arms, her smile indulgent. “It doesn’t matter whose land it is. He never kills anything,” she confided, smoothing the material of her dark red linen skirt, split so she could comfortably ride astride. “It’s the chase he enjoys, and the wildness of the riding. And then, if they do corner the animal, he just sits there to be admiring of it.”
“I like your Lord Eastkeeping,” Cade said impulsively, and she laughed.
“So do I! Come, let’s ride on. They’ll find us later.” After a slight pause, she said, “My lady enjoyed the lunching at Seekhaven. She wrote to tell me so.”
“It was very kind of her to invite us.” He paused, adjusting the reins in his hand. His mount was a good, steady, serviceable brown mare, easy to ride and with no nonsense about her. The chase, he surmised, would not appeal to her any more than it did to him. “She seemed very happy. I assume there’s an announcement will be made soon.”
“How did you—?” She caught herself, then shook her head, the white ribbons of her plaited straw hat dancing around her cheeks. “No, don’t tell me. Yes, the proclaiming will be made within a fortnight. She wanted to make sure, and to send a letter to her father first.”
“Mieka was sure the instant he saw her.”
“Then he must not have a look at me,” she told him shyly. “If Kelinn knew, I’d not be riding in the fresh air but suffocating in one of the wagons on piles of pillows.”
“But that’s wonderful! Not the pillows or the suffocating, I mean, but—”
“Shush!” She grinned over at him. “It was my secret, and now it’s yours—and I know you are a man to hold secrets close. Now, tell me how your Royal Circuit has been treating you.”
“Very well indeed.” As he ran through their itinerary, it occurred to him that there were tales Vrennerie had heard in her country that might enlighten him. At which point he wondered if he was curious for Vered’s sake or for his own.
At noon they stopped to rest and water the horses, and to wait for the hunting party to return. Yazz put sprags around each wheel to keep the wagon from rolling, then set up their camp table while Rafe brought out chairs.
“Still snoring,” he told Cade when asked about Mieka. “We’ll give him an afternoon nosebag. May I offer you a glass of wine, my lady?”
“Beholden, and please call me Vrennerie. How do you sleep, though, with the bumping of the wagon wheels?”
“The Elf is useful for a few things—not many.” Rafe grimaced. “Good as the springs are on the wagon, we bounced about quite a bit to and from Trials. But his mother has a cushioning spell, and whereas she did the main working of it, she taught it to him and he renews it now and then. So now we float along serene as a barge on a canal.”
Cade watched the effect of this information about magic, so casually shared. Then he reminded himself she’d married a man with ears seen only on a Piksey or an Elf. Or a Fae.
Vrennerie squinted at the wagon wheels, as if the spell might be visible, then nodded. “My husband’s gifts are of a growing sort. Our land at Eastkeeping is rocky and the soil is poor, but somehow he can encourage the wheat to grow and ripen. I believe,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper, her brown eyes laughing, “that he sings to it!”
“Mieka has a sister who’s rather agricultural,” Cade said, tearing off a hunk of bread to dip in a sauce thick with chopped ve
getables. “I’m told it’s the Greenseed line of Elfen blood.”
“Kelinn’s grandmother—or was it great-grandmother?—was a Grassdew. Odd about names, isn’t it?” she went on, cutting into the round of cheese to serve all three of them. “The Human ones are all places, like Eastkeeping or Tawnymoor, or my lady’s new title of Downymede.”
“That’s only the nobility,” Cade said. “Mostly the Human lines are crafter names, like Goldbraider or Bowbender.”
“Then it’s the Wizard names that have hints of their Clans in them?”
“Sometimes. Rafe’s a Threadchaser, Spider Clan. Me, I’m Falcon, though how Silversun came out of it I’ve no idea. And one of my lines is Watersmith, which could almost be a Human crafter name. But actually it’s Elfen.”
“Their names,” Rafe said, “connect to the Elements. Earth, Water, Fire, Air. Windthistle is obvious, of course, and Greenseed. But one of our best friends is a Cindercliff, which is a place name—only she’s mostly Goblin with a few streaks of Wizard in her and a bit of Piksey and even some Elf.” He shrugged and smiled. “So names don’t mean much, taking all into account.”
“You are all so casual about everything,” Vrennerie said. “Different peoples and such. It’s such a nice change from where I was born.”
“Has it taken you long to get used to it?” Cade asked.
“Not so long as it might, if I hadn’t fallen in love with a certain set of ears!”
If Mieka had been with them, he would have smirked and said something about the multitudinous irresistible qualities of Elves, beginning with but by no means limited to the elegancy of their ears. Cade was just as glad Mieka was still asleep.
After the simple meal, Rafe went for a walk. Vrennerie wondered if it might be possible for her to look inside the wagon.
“I can give you a tour, if you like,” Cade said, swinging the door open for her. “Don’t worry, we won’t wake the Elf. When he sleeps, he sleeps.”
Still, she kept her voice low as she commented on the tidy arrangements, the charming conveniences. Mieka was curled in his hammock, oblivious. Cade invited Vrennerie to sit down, and poured more wine. With all the windows and the back door open, there was breeze enough through the wagon to stay cool—and to provide ample evidence to anyone outside who cared to look in that Lady Eastkeeping and Master Silversun were doing nothing but sharing a glass of wine in the company of a snoring Elf.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you,” Cade began, “about something I heard a friend talk about. Have you ever heard of the Knights of the Balaur Tsepesh?”
She widened her eyes. “Good Lord and Lady, where did you ever hear of such awfulness?”
“The invasion from the East, you mean?”
“That, yes, of course. But what the Knights did to gain themselves power to defeat them—” She set her wineglass on a shelf and folded her hands in her lap. “What was your friend saying?”
“That Wizards and other magical folk gave the Knights spells and suchlike for the battle.” Although it seemed odd to him, suddenly, that if people with magic had been so essential in defeating the invaders, why had they been persecuted and expelled in later years?
“No, no, that wasn’t it at all! It wasn’t the people with magic who were giving them their powers. They bargained with demons, the very ones who came with the invaders.”
This was a new angle. “These demons thought to turn them to their side?”
“No one knows. It could have been the balaurin thought they might switch sides themselves. But the Knights took such power as was being offered, and even though their aims were noble, to drive out the invading evil, their souls were forever forfeit.”
“Times were desperate, though,” he suggested.
“Very much. The only strength that could defeat the balaurin was strength like their own. And when the Knights had this strength—”
“I was told that all of them died soon after the final battle.”
“Not all of them,” she said grimly. “Some lived on, despised and feared.”
Ah! So that was the reason for banishing the magical folk, who had given spells and such to the Knights. He did believe Chat’s version and he believed Vrennerie’s as well, easily seeing how it could work into the tale. The Knights becoming greedy for more power, making a bargain with the demons…
“So nobody ever goes to their tomb and shrine?” Cade swirled wine in his glass. “Shrine to what? A God? The Lord and Lady?”
“To the victory they won. To themselves, I suppose. There were offers—offerings? Yes—I have learned much but sometimes I get confused. I still don’t quite think in Albeyni!”
He didn’t take her up on the change of subject. “What sort of offerings?” Thinking of the flowers that were a standard gift at roadside shrines.
“Dead animals.” She shivered in the afternoon warmth. “Just barely dead, and the blood still warm and flowing.”
Oh, what Vered would make of that onstage.
Vrennerie wore a worried frown. “Why are you wanting to know about this? Surely you won’t make theater about it!”
“No, of course I won’t,” he said honestly. “It was just such a strange tale, and one I’d never heard before. Since it comes from nearer your part of the world than mine—”
“This country, Albeyn—this is my part of the world now.”
He accepted the rebuke with a small bow of apology. “Forgive me. My curiosity leads me a lot of places, and sometimes into rudeness.”
“You would not be who and what you are if you were not filled with questions about everything. So to answer—yes, offerings of fresh blood were made, and some say it was to satisfy the doomed souls of the Knights so that they would not leave their tombs and—”
Outside the open windows shouts were heard, and galloping hooves. Mieka suddenly jerked upright in his hammock, flailing in alarm, and somehow managed to twist himself around into a cocoon. “What?” he exclaimed, struggling to get free. “What’s all the racket?”
“Just His Lordship returning from the hunt,” Cade said, for the shouts were of greeting and there was no urgency to the hoofbeats.
“Whose Lordship?”
“Lady Vrennerie’s.”
“Vrennerie?” Mieka asked, peering through the mesh. “She’s—what are you doing here—damn it!” He had rolled himself over, hammock and all, so that he was staring at the floor. “Get me out of this!”
“No, leave him be,” Cade told Vrennerie. “It’s a good place for him.”
“Cayden!” he wailed.
Laughing, they managed to extricate him. Cade was grateful for Mishia Windthistle’s strictures on sleeping in nightshirts; otherwise, Vrennerie’s modesty might have been affronted. Mieka, of course, had none to affront. He made it to his feet, gathered the knee-length garment and his dignity about him and bowed to Vrennerie.
“Gladdest greetings, my lady. I am beholden to you for your help.” Glaring at Cade: “You, I’ll deal with later.”
Lord Eastkeeping was calling for his wife. Mieka handed her gallantly to the door. She paused to whisper something to him that Cade didn’t catch. Mieka looked startled, then guilty, then began to laugh. So did she. Before Cade’s curiosity could trounce his manners again with a demand to know what had been said, she had descended the steps and was striding to meet her husband.
Mieka was rummaging in piles of discarded clothing. “Where’s me trousers, eh? Oh, here—no, those are Rafe’s—”
“What did she say?”
Yanking his own pants free, he smirked. “I’m not telling.”
“Come on, Mieka!”
“No.” He tried stuffing all those folds of bleached linen into the waistband, then cursed and hauled the thing off, looking around for a shirt. When he found one, he shouldered into it. “But one thing I’ll say, Cayden Silversun, and it’s that those stories you two were talking about, they crept into my dreams and it’s a marvel and a wonder I didn’t wake up shrieking!” He bounded down t
he steps, begging for something to drink.
The hunting party returned, as Vrennerie had predicted, without the stag. Jeska returned with a torn shirt and scratches all over his face and arms and a vow, once he was in the wagon applying salve to his cuts, never to participate in such folly ever again.
“All this anguishing yourself,” Cade scoffed, “over a few scrapes?”
“It’s not just that,” he replied, and gingerly rubbed his backside. “I’ll be sore for a week!”
“You can visit the baths in Lilyleaf,” Mieka suggested. “That ought to help.” When Jeska continued to grumble, he went on, “Only think on it—all that lovely hot water, all those lovely bath girls to rub your back—”
“It’s not me back that hurts!” But the masquer began to look interested.
“I’m sure they’ll rub whatever needs rubbing,” Mieka soothed. “And very capably, too.” He stretched and scrubbed his fingers through his hair, saying, “I’m for a ride up top with Yazz. And I really ought to meet Lord Eastkeeping afore their road splits off from ours.”
The introductions were performed just as everyone was mounting up to continue the journey. Mieka was all charm and smiles, but as Cade watched the usual process, he discerned a subtle shift in the Elf’s demeanor from This is someone who must be won over to This man is someone I like; from master manipulator to real person.
Cade walked with him over to the wagon, intending to give him a leg up to the coachman’s bench. Mieka hesitated, gave Cade an oblique glance, and said softly, “He seems nice.”
“Yes.”
“She looks happy.”
“Yes. Are there any other trite social niceties you’d like to trot out for inspection?”
“I just meant—” He gripped the handhold on the side of the wagon. “You’re not bothered. Them, I mean. It doesn’t bother you.”
“Not at all.”
“Well… good, then.” Without another word, and without looking directly at Cade, he climbed up to sit beside Yazz.
With a wry smile and a shake of his head, Cade went to check his horse’s girth. For all that Mieka’s antics could render him speechless with fury at times, there was yet a kindness about him, a gentleness unexpected in one so madly brash. But Cade still wanted to know what Vrennerie had told him. Not that he’d ever find out, of course.