She chuckled. “You might have. How convincing. The rumor is that there is a whole cave full of stones like these.”
There was. I had been to that cave. I’d been stuck in that cave, with Fiona, in the dark, for hours. Academic Reid had explored the cave as well. I wondered if he had been the source of the rumor. I doubted Fiona would have told anyone—she’d been determined to keep it a secret—or Dane, and I knew I hadn’t. Well, other than Taro. That didn’t count.
“There is also a rumor that you and Her Grace spent some time in that cave.”
Really, why did people talk about us so much? “Half the ridge collapsed. The cave might not even exist anymore.”
“If you look for it and can’t find it, then of course nothing more can be done.”
“And if I find this cave?”
Browne pulled another bag from the shelf, this one the size of a person’s head. “I want you to collect some more rocks for me.”
“I can’t do that,” I objected. “Everything in that cave belongs to Her Grace. I refuse to steal for you.”
“This is not a precious stone. If the others in the cave are like this, they’re of no value to Her Grace.”
“How do you know whether it’s a precious stone or not?” Fiona didn’t even know that.
“I just do.”
What an irritating response, but if I asked her again, she would probably just give the same answer. I disliked conversational circles. “Then what do you want them for?”
“Look.” She blew on the stone, and then she whistled at it, a long, low, single note.
To my utter shock, the stone began to glow. A moment later, an aura developed around it, white light slightly tinged with blue. Browne reached up and took a hair pin from her hair. She stopped whistling to draw breath, and the aura blinked out, but it appeared again as soon as she resumed whistling. She put the tip of the pin against the aura and pushed. The tips of her fingers whitened with the effort of pushing the pin, but it didn’t penetrate the aura.
I’d never seen anything quite like it. It amazed me, the different things casting could do. “How did you learn to do that?”
“I experimented. Casting isn’t just about doing what’s already been done. It’s about finding new ways of doing things.”
“But how did you even think of whistling at it?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes things react to vibration.”
Actually, I had seen that, humming at a bowl of water. Though that practitioner had said that wasn’t casting. Maybe this wasn’t casting, either. “Can I try?”
“Certainly.” She put the small stone in my hand.
I blew on it, and I needed her to whistle for me so I could imitate the right pitch. Once I reached it, I felt a tingle in my hand and the aura appeared around the stone. It was amazing. “What else can it do?”
“I don’t know. I only just received it.”
“From who?” I demanded.
“I’m not prepared to tell you that.”
“So why are you telling me this?”
“I want you to get more for me.”
I scowled at her.
Browne laughed. “You don’t need to be so tense, dear. I’m not your enemy or opponent. Nor am I Her Grace’s opponent. You might remember that I have good reason to be grateful to her. I swore an oath of loyalty to her. I take that oath seriously.”
Still, I hesitated. I was very sure Fiona would not want this.
Browne raised an eyebrow. “Do you not take your oaths seriously?”
She had a point, damn it. I would have been furious if someone had suggested I might give my word and then refuse to honor it. “I will go to Her Grace and ask to be able to take some of the stones for you. I will do my best to persuade her. That is as far as I will go. If she refuses, I will find some other way to repay you.” I would requisition some jewelry and give it to her. We weren’t supposed to do that, requisition items to give to other people, unless they were our children or partners, but it was less dangerous than other things Browne might require of me.
“I suppose I can accept that,” said Browne.
“Can I borrow this so I can demonstrate its properties?” Browne didn’t look thrilled with that. “I think it would go a long way in convincing her. I promise you you’ll get it back.”
Browne nodded. “All right.”
I left then, the stone in my purse. The sky had gone black and the night air was damp and cool. Sometimes, I liked the chronically brisk weather of Flown Raven. It was refreshing. Taro hated it. He often found it too cold.
Bailey met me in the foyer of the manor. “I’m afraid you missed the evening meal, ma’am.”
“That’s all right.” I could fix myself something simple in the kitchen. “Do you happen to know where Her Grace is?”
“I believe Her Grace has retired to her suite.”
“Thank you.” I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of disturbing Fiona in her private rooms, but it was the best way to ensure that we wouldn’t be overheard. I felt the properties of the stones should be kept quiet, at least for now. I went to her door and knocked loudly. I heard a faint voice telling me to come in. I entered and passed through the sitting room to the bedchamber.
Fiona was sitting on her bed, her back resting against the headboard, her sleeping son draped across her lap. She was looking down at him with a soft smile, stroking his blond hair. “He should be in his bed,” she said in a low voice. “But sometimes I like to keep him with me.”
He was a beautiful child, and delightful. I should be watching her with him, taking notes. While it was unlikely that I could conceive, the act of channeling tending to counteract the reproductive processes of both men and women, Shields and Sources, the less frequent occurrences of events in Flown Raven meant I had a chance.
“I come with a request from Healer Browne,” I said.
“Why could she not speak to me herself?”
“I think she felt you would be more likely to grant the request if it came from me.” And maybe I should have asked as though I were the one making the request.
“That’s nonsense. I have great respect for Healer Browne.”
Feeling awkward, I said, “She’s heard about the crystal cave. She wants some of the crystals.”
Fiona frowned. “I imagine everyone would want some of the crystals, if they learned about the cave. I can’t give them to one without giving some to everyone, and I’m not prepared to do that.”
“A titleholder can’t favor people?”
“Not if she doesn’t want to sow discord.”
“Browne doesn’t want them for whatever monetary value they might have.”
“Why else could she want them?”
I took the stone out of my purse, held it up, and whistled. When its aura appeared, I pushed against it with my finger. The aura was a cool, solid surface.
Fiona gasped. “Let me try.” She held out her hand. I gave the stone to her. She whistled at various pitches, including the correct one, and nothing happened. She sighed with disappointment. “Why can’t I do any of this? I’m the titleholder. My connection to the land should give me the ability to do this.”
I had nothing to say to that.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll take you there. Assuming the cave survived the ridge collapsing.”
“Thank you.”
“How much is she expecting?”
“She gave me a bag to fill.”
“Hm.”
“It’s not large.”
“I’ll take you in, in a couple of days. Will that satisfy her?”
“I believe so. Thank you.”
She merely smiled and looked down at her son.
I had disturbed her long enough. “Have a good evening.”
I went down to the kitchen for some bread and cheese and then went back up to the suite I shared with Taro.
Taro was in our sitting room, playing a card game for one, looking bored out of his mind. “Where did you take off t
o?” he asked.
“Browne wants some of the crystals from the cave. I asked Fiona if she would allow it, and she agreed.”
“What does Nab want with them?”
“Apparently they might be useful for casting.” I sat on the table beside Taro’s web of cards. “So who do you think Linder is for? You or me?”
“Whoever would have him, I think.” He grinned. “And it looks like your brother will. I adore Mika, by the way.”
“Why does your mother want us separated so badly? She wasn’t anything like this when we first bonded. I mean, she didn’t like me, but she didn’t try to interfere with the bond.”
“She thinks I’m too much under your influence.”
“But she sees how we work. She knows that’s not true.”
He snickered.
I slapped his shoulder. “Even if it were true, why would she care?”
“She thinks if you leave, I’ll be open to trying to get the title back.”
“If I leave, then, I would just take you with me.”
“Not if you have a handsome, smiling young man to take with you.”
“I already have a handsome, smiling young man.”
He rolled his eyes.
“I wish there were something we could do about her.” I sighed.
“Let’s kill her,” Taro suggested.
“That’s in very poor taste.”
“Yet appealing, all the same.”
It kind of was. Any permanent removal would be alluring. “Maybe we could pretend to have a rift.”
“What would that accomplish?”
“She might take a step back?”
“We couldn’t keep it up indefinitely, and then she’d take a step forward.”
“Do you know of any friends of hers that you could invite out here, someone who would distract her?”
“Zaire, she’s filled my ears with so many names of friends and connections that I couldn’t fish out just one.”
“Maybe we could convince Fiona to send her away.”
“Aye, but then she might go to Erstwhile. There’s something going on between her and the Emperor. I don’t want to encourage whatever scheme they’re planning. I want to keep an eye on her.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. Us? Keep an eye on her?
“I know, I know.” He sighed. “She’s just so annoying. And she never quits. I told her she couldn’t do anything to convince me to fall into her plans. She brings in Linder anyway. When he doesn’t accomplish what she wants, she’ll try something else.”
“We just have to wait it out. We’ll be transferred in a couple of years.”
“The council said they thought it was to their advantage to keep us here. Whatever that means.”
“I don’t think it means we’ll be stuck here forever.”
“We have no way of knowing.”
“I can ask.”
“You think they’ll tell you the truth?”
Here was the thing. The Triple S had raised us, taken care of us, taught us, to the best of their ability, what we needed to know. But Taro had been leery of the Triple S since before we’d met. According to him, the council called Pairs back to Shidonee’s Gap at times, and then those Pairs were never seen again. It was why Taro didn’t want the Triple S council to know about his special talents. He could cause events, not just stop them. His touch could ease pain. I felt he could actually heal to some extent, though he denied that.
The Triple S council was suspicious. They had questioned us about strange occurrences they had heard about, occurrences that were related to Taro’s use of his skills. And we’d had to lie in response.
Still . . . “It can’t hurt to ask.”
“They’ll want to know why you’re asking.”
“We could tell them your mother was trying to drag us into local politics.”
“Which we would be expected to ignore. We are adults, Lee.”
“You know, I’ve seen a whole lot of adults do a lot of childish things. Why can’t we do that occasionally?”
“Because we’re better than them.”
I just looked at him.
He grinned back. “Still think we shouldn’t kill her?”
“Stop tempting me.”
His eyes gleamed with humor. “Never.” He pulled my leg closer to him and peeled off my boot. “Think we can convince someone to lug up the big bath?”
“Feeling the need for cleansing, do you?”
“Not at all.”
I smiled.
Chapter Six
As usual, Taro was gone when I woke the next morning. I took advantage of his absence in order to stretch out fully on the bed, on my stomach, each hand and foot directed to a corner of the mattress. I dozed for a while, and every time I opened my eyes the air got a little lighter.
In time, though, hunger and a need for coffee prompted me to rise. As did the two obnoxious birds screaming at each other right outside my window. I would have thrown a nice heavy book at them if I hadn’t thought books were too important to endure such handling.
Dias was the only one in the sitting room, sipping on coffee and tearing a croissant apart. “Morning, darling,” he greeted me.
“Good morning.” I filled my own cup with the dark blood of life and intelligence. “Did you sleep well?”
“Wonderfully. This house is very quiet.” He popped a piece of pastry into his mouth. “I didn’t see much of you yesterday,” he said.
“I was busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Nothing that I want to talk about in front of so many people.” Maids were constantly coming in and going out, topping up dishes and making sure the beverages were still hot.
He waved a hand in dismissal. “It is part of a servant’s job to keep his master’s secrets.”
Oh, that was right, he was used to servants. At the Academy, we had been careful about what we said in front of the people who cooked and cleaned for us. We believed they would report everything we did to the professors or the headmistress. I understood wealthy people treated their own servants differently, as though they weren’t there at all. That didn’t mean I was going to talk about anything in front of these servants. I had seen that they were prepared to gossip about me, and I didn’t like it. “Maybe later.”
He shrugged. “Fine. We’ll talk about something else.”
“Excellent.” I sat at the table across from him.
He snagged one of my croissants from my plate. “You weren’t deliberately avoiding us because of how Mother was acting yesterday at breakfast?”
Actually, I’d forgotten all about that. “No.”
“You seemed upset.”
I didn’t know if upset was quite the right word. “I was annoyed. She treated me like a child.”
“Well, of course, she did. You are her child.”
“But not a child. I’m an adult. I haven’t lived under her roof for nearly twenty years. And she never criticized what I wore or told me what to do when she visited me at the Academy.”
“You wore a uniform,” he pointed out.
That was true.
“You just have to remember that Mother wants what’s best for you.”
“I’m able to decide what’s best for me. And even if I weren’t, I’m an adult. No one tells me what to wear. I don’t understand why you let her tell you when to go to bed. That’s ridiculous.”
“I’m used to it.”
“But you are too old to be letting her manage the minutiae of your life.”
“Every time I’ve gone against her, it’s turned out to be disastrous.”
Disastrous? Really? “In what way?”
He thought about it for a few moments. “I knew this man, Del Finit, who was the son of one of our competitors. Mother told me not to socialize with him, but I didn’t like being told who my friends could be, so I spent a great deal of time with him. It turned out that Finit was using me to get information about a supply of dark weave that Father was trying to buy. Finit�
��s father was able to underbid Father. We’d been relying on having that weave and we had a couple bad years after that.”
Hm. That would cause a bit of paranoia about social connections, I supposed, but... “Nothing I do can endanger them in that way.”
“Father mentioned something about a Trader Fines.”
I froze. “What about him?”
“Apparently he feels that he did you a great service in High Scape. Among other things, that it was through him that you found a healer who could treat you when you were poisoned.”
“I see.” I had been hoping that being transferred away from High Scape would be the end of any contact with Trader Fines and his crazy group of ash users. They’d tricked us into rubbing paste made from human ashes into our hands, the motive being that such an activity, illegal as it was, would prevent Taro and me from reporting Fines and his associates to the authorities for their criminal behavior. The thought of it still had the power to nauseate me.
“He contacted Father to share transport connections. Father had him investigated and didn’t like what he saw.”
“What did he see?”
“There are rumors that Fines is willing to go to lengths that, while not actually illegal, may be seen as unethical.” Dias frowned. “I’m not sure. He won’t tell us exactly what that entails. Which is aggravating. Anyway, Fines has been telling people throughout the merchant community that Father lacks honor and is ungrateful to those who assist him.”
“And that’s enough to do damage?”
“Reciprocation is a vital part of doing business.”
Damn it. “I had no idea that could be used against the family.”
“If Mother had been around, she would have been able to tell you what the implications of accepting help from a trader might be.”
“I suppose she might have.” And to be honest, I would have appreciated her insight. I’d had no idea how to handle Trader Fines and his cohorts. “But the family is still doing well, right? Despite this difficulty?” I didn’t know what I’d do with myself if I had done real damage to my family’s fortunes.
“Well enough.”
Not the most reassuring of responses, but better than it could have been.
The others drifted in, Taro and Tarce and Fiona, my mother and Mika. I enjoyed their chatter, all of them—except Tarce—expert conversationalists who could make each other laugh. It was like watching a play.
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