by Glenda Larke
Saker listened with a sinking heart.
Right then, all he wanted to do was go home. The trouble was, he had no idea of where home was, except that it wasn’t some remote isle in the Summer Seas.
38
The Falcon and the Mouse
Saker lounged at the edge of the square outside the only gate to Ustgrind Castle. Makeshift stalls of the morning market cluttered the space in front of the looming grimness of the castle walls. Everything looked oddly wrong.
Colour, he thought. There’s no colour. This was a society subscribing to the belief that a love of colour was intrinsically sacrilegious, a doctrine doubly absurd when it was obvious that so much of Va’s creation was multicoloured. Poor Mathilda, with her love of pretty clothes and baubles and music, inside that ugly pile of stone … He tried to dredge up a spark of lingering anger towards her, and found only pity and guilt. The love was gone, if ever it had been real, and even the scars were fading. He shrugged and tossed the memory away. He was here to observe, to find some way to enter the castle without being caught, not to dwell on the past.
The Castle Watch kept the area immediately in front of the gate clear. They were easily identifiable by their pikes and their black tunics trimmed in dull red, and no one entered the outer bailey without their scrutiny. Their comrades patrolling the battlements were called the Castle Wardens. They wore a different uniform and some carried an arquebus in place of the pike.
Ardhi and I might as well be a couple of suicidal dewberries planning to be eaten alive, he thought miserably. Fool-born idea to break into a royal castle. It looks as if we have to go over the wall in the dead of night … But then what? Wander around like a pair of purblind moles looking for worms?
He scanned the crowd one more time, preparing to leave, when something made him hesitate. A nondescript woman, poorly dressed and elderly, weaving in and out of the crowd. She was hunched, bent over a walking stick, although several times she moved surprisingly fast through the crowd. Something about her momentarily puzzled him. He could feel her.
Witchery. She had a witchery.
She was not buying or selling anything, so her movements appeared purposeless. Every now and then she faded into the crowd like mist dissipating into the air.
Interested, he approached her more closely, only to see a much younger woman than her disguise suggested. No, not a disguise, a glamour. She was dark-haired, with long dark lashes framing deep blue eyes. He’d seen her before, twice. On board Juster’s ship, and along the road to the Chervil shrine. Not the glamoured Celandine mouse, but the real woman, Sorrel Redwing. He watched as she sidled up unnoticed behind a wealthy merchant bargaining with a stallholder over some quills and ink. Taken by surprise, Saker could only gape as she deftly cut a gold button from the merchant’s sleeve with a small-bladed knife. Both knife and button then disappeared into her clothing, her action blurred by her old-woman glamour.
Va’s teeth, she’s using her glamour to steal!
As he dithered, wondering what to do, she turned her attention to a burgher’s wife, evidently tempted by a bulging pocket-purse hanging from her waist. He gaped, shocked, as her hand opened the drawstring.
He’d heard many tales of how witcheries vanished if someone tried to misuse them. Never had he heard of the successful use of a witchery to perpetrate a crime, and yet here he was, watching it happen.
Snapped out of his shocked immobility, he pushed his way through the crowd to her side. Seizing her by the elbow, he jerked her away from the burgher’s wife, bending to mutter into her ear, “I know what you’re doing. Stop it this instant or I’ll call the guard.”
Unaware until then that anyone had penetrated her glamour, she yelped, startled, wrenching her arm free even as she turned to look at him. Her walking stick fell to the ground unheeded. Her eyes widened in dawning recognition and disbelief. In her alarm, her glamour wavered.
He picked up the stick and hustled her away to the edge of the crowd, where they could have a more private conversation. By the time he had found a quiet spot, she had regained her composure.
“Hang me for a hedge-born flirt,” she said. “If it isn’t Saker Rampion.”
“How in all Va’s cherished world did Celandine Marten become a cutpurse in a street market? I thought you’d be living the pampered life in royal apartments!”
“Sorrel. Sorrel Redwing. No glamour, no Celandine, just me. Sorrel.”
“Yes, I know. I’m an idiot. With a canker for a brain. And I owe you twenty thousand grovelling apologies for my idiocy about what was the glamour.” He stared at her, trying to sort out the best way to handle her presence, and all he knew about her.
Sorrel Redwing murdered her husband.
She smiled faintly. “Ah, so you made some enquiries about me, then. I’m flattered you cared enough to bother.”
He gritted his teeth. Damn her for a harpy, she always managed to rile him. “You murdered your husband.”
“Yes, and you went to bed with a princess. We are a fine pair, aren’t we? Although I had thought you might have given up hanging around Mathilda like a tomcat on the prowl.”
He flushed, half in annoyance that she should think Mathilda was the reason he was in Ustgrind, half in embarrassment. Around them the disinterested crowd flowed, and life went on; he heard and saw none of it. Va rot it, he had no idea what to say.
When the silence threatened to become ridiculous she said, “If you want me to take a message to the Princess, I won’t do it. I see no point in furthering your, er, idiocy.”
“You – you…” He waved a hand ineffectually at the castle. “What the sweet acorns are you doing stealing in the street? Did the Regala throw you out? How can you use a guardian-granted witchery to steal? A common cutpurse! Shame on you!”
“There are no depths to which I will not sink,” she agreed complacently. “Depraved, I am. But never common, surely.”
His mind seethed with questions, but none of those were foremost in his thoughts now. Instead, he was thinking that this meeting was all too much of a coincidence. Pickles ’n’ hay, was the damned Chenderawasi magic intervening to make things happen again? He needed to get into the palace, and lo and behold, here was someone who might be able to help. The Pontifect would say it was Va’s work and he should have more faith. But he’d seen too much to believe in that kind of simplicity any more.
He took a painful breath. For all the control he had over his own life, he might as well have been an oarless rowing boat in a rip tide. Va, Chenderawasi, the Way of the Oak, A’Va – or just bizarre coincidence … When someone gifted with a witchery could use the gift to commit a crime, he no longer knew which way was forward, and which the path to the oblivion of hell.
He was still reeling from the implications of his thoughts when she said with a deadly seriousness, “We need to talk.”
Unable to find the right words to say, he nodded.
“But not here,” she added. “Somewhere we can be private.”
“I know just the place. An abandoned shrine, not far from here.” He offered her his arm and she slipped her fingers into the crook of his elbow. Her touch was firm, but her body maintained its distance as he guided her out of the square towards the river path. He was glad of that; she was far too alluring for him to be oblivious to the curves of her figure, or the shine of the curls that had escaped her coif. Mostly, though, it was her eyes that haunted him. So dark a blue, so intelligent, so scathing in their mockery of him.
She killed her husband.
And then, as if he was arguing with himself: She must have had a reason.
Ustgrind had no city wall, and he headed straight through the back streets towards the river upstream of the castle. She walked at his side, serenely composed now, all her glamour vanished. No one would ever call her pretty, yet he found her strong features had an attractive beauty all their own.
“Will you hear my apology?” he asked.
“Which one?”
Rot her, she did
n’t make anything easy. He ploughed on. “I accused you of using a glamour to cover your Celandine appearance in order to entice my interest. That was uncouth, incorrect and clay-brained.”
“It was.”
“I apologise. When I saw you near the Chervil Moors shrine, I ought to have realised, but I was not … not myself right then. I was not thinking clearly.”
“When naked and blue with cold, doubtless it is hard to be rational.”
He was silenced, thrown. She was laughing at him? Angry? He couldn’t tell. He was off-kilter, trying to grasp the reality that the shadowy Celandine was no more than play-acting. She had never been real. This Sorrel Redwing, the woman he’d first met at the windswept moorland shrine, was the real person, and he didn’t understand her. She didn’t make sense. One thing he did know, she was no mouse, hiding in the corners because she was frightened. She was bold enough to disguise herself as a man and ride from Throssel to Chervil alone. Bold enough to steal on streets where the penalty was death.
Blister it, she was bold enough to have killed her husband. You need to be careful, Saker.
Lowmian shrines were always centred around water, not oak trees, but this one had the sad appearance of a place scarred by drought and neglect. The water that fed it and the shrine-keeper had died together, and now the charm and witchery of the shrine itself were fading.
Sorrel sat on a stone-carved seat and spread her skirts. He wondered if she was making certain he would not try to share her seat. He stood instead, although there was another seat opposite hers.
“Do you still serve the Princess?” he asked. “The Regala, I should say.”
“Yes.”
“Then why were you stealing?”
“I’m desperate for money, why else? No one has ever paid me coin for my service.” His shock must have been apparent, because she added, “The Regal sent all Mathilda’s ladies-in-waiting home. All her jewellery was taken from her. She has nothing more than a little pin money. Her access to the Ardronese Ambassador is limited. Her new Lowmian ladies spy for Vilmar and his courtier favourites. She couldn’t give me anything to sell without someone calling attention to it being missing, so I must seek money where I can.”
“That – that is inconceivable. To treat an Ardronese princess so?”
“Oh? And what about treating a servant so?”
He had no reply to that.
“To be fair to the Lowmians,” she said, “if she asks for anything they consider reasonable, it is given to her without question. Nor do I believe her treatment is any different to that meted out to other regalas in the past. It’s just the Lowmian way. What need has a regala for money when she has only to ask for what she wants? What need does someone as lowly as I have for coin?”
“Can she not seek an allowance from King Edwayn?”
“That would be insulting to the Regal, wouldn’t it? All her letters are read by others, you know.” She sighed. “Witan, the court here is not like the palace in Throssel. She is allowed no visitor except those chosen for her, and they would never dream of speaking to her without her ladies being present to overhear all that is said. Even her clerics are the Regal’s choice. That is what is normal. I can come and go because I use the glamour, but I have no money and no access to anything I can legitimately sell.”
“You should have lost your witchery after misusing it.”
She shrugged. “If Va wanted it so, doubtless I would now be without. I saw no way out other than theft. My decision was to leave it up to Va. Perhaps your arrival is the answer.” She looked him up and down. “Do you feel like the answer to a maiden’s prayer?”
She was making fun of him. He was about to give a scathing reply about her being no maiden, but bit back the words. By oak and acorn, how was it she could goad him so easily into losing his calm? “Why do you need money?” he asked, as politely as he could. “Are you planning to abandon the Regala?”
“Ah, you always think the worst of me, don’t you? I can trust you to do that.” She looked away, her expression one of irritation. “I don’t much like Mathilda, it’s true. She blackmailed me to stay with her in the first place, because she wanted the use of my glamour skills. I stayed because I didn’t know where else to go and I had no resources, no friends. Sorrel Redwing will always be wanted for a murder in Ardrone. My husband’s brother is never likely to give up the hunt for me; he’s not that kind of man. In the end I followed the Princess to Lowmeer partly because I pitied her, and because I’d made her a promise in exchange for—” She stopped. “Never mind about that. Yes, I am planning to leave her, but not for reasons you could ever imagine.”
“You have no idea what I’m imagining.”
“No? You always jump to the worst possible conclusion about my motives. Oddly enough, it’s surprisingly difficult to walk away from someone who is in such a miserable position. However, I do intend to do so. Soon, and with her blessing. There is a baby to consider, you see. And for a child, I will do much. Which might surprise you, I suppose, but it’s true, nonetheless.”
“What child?”
“Mathilda’s, of course. Unlike you, she trusted the guardian of the shrine who granted me my glamour, and now she’s trusting me with her child. She has always trusted me, and she’s always known I murdered my husband.”
“Have you no shame about that?” Trust Sorrel with her child? Trust her to do what?
“Not really. He wasn’t a pleasant man and he was about to kill me. As a witan, I’m sure you’ve heard similar stories. Have you no shame about sleeping with someone you were supposed to spiritually mentor?”
He felt his face turn scarlet.
“Oh, pah,” she said. “We have to stop our dancing around one another, each trying to stamp on the other’s feet. Let’s put aside our antipathies and discuss the real problem here.”
“Which is?”
“What are we going to do about the fact that Mathilda is going to have twins, and Lowmeer is going to slaughter them at birth?”
His knees were suddenly incapable of holding him upright. Slowly he lowered himself on to the stone seat opposite her, so confounded he could scarcely think.
“Is this some sort of cruel joke?” he asked at last.
“Of course, you would think that. You appear to imagine my whole life is devoted to telling you lies. I gather that you know the truth about one thing: what the Lowmians do to twins at birth.”
“Yes,” he whispered. Oh no. Va could not be that cruel … “I know all too well.”
“Then listen carefully. Mathilda’s Ardronese maid, Aureen, assisted her mother, who was the Throssel Palace midwife. Aureen told us that Mathilda is going to have twins, any time within this coming moon. We can’t be sure when, because twins often come early. The Regal has no inkling she is having a double birth, of course, but he has made it quite clear there are never exceptions to the Lowmian policy on the matter. Her babies will die – both of them – if anyone from the court knows there are two.”
He stared at her, appalled, trying to take it all in. “Are you – are you certain she will have twins?”
The look she gave him was exasperated. “There is much to be uncertain about. But not that. I have heard two heartbeats, and so has Aureen. We are making plans for me to take the firstborn one, no matter whether girl or boy, and escape from the castle before anyone knows it is born.”
His horror at the possibilities spilled over into his words. Kidnapping? Stealing a royal child, possibly the heir to the Basalt Throne? The implications were so horrendous, so fraught with danger, he couldn’t even think straight. “But – but what if the second one dies? Or if the first is a boy and the second a girl?”
“Under Lowmian law, a royal child’s birth must be observed by at least three court officials. Obviously we can only let them observe the second birth.”
While he absorbed the implications, she continued, “Mathilda and I agree that I must take the baby to the Pontifect. Only Va-Faith can handle the complications o
f this. But I’ll need money. I’ll need to hire a wet nurse. I’ll need two berths on the flat-boat to Vavala. Saker Rampion, I don’t care what you think of me, and I’m sure your affection for the Princess is not what it used to be, but this is a baby born of an Ardronese princess. Help us.”
“Surely Mathilda must be returned to Ardrone, where she belongs! Where she will be loved and her twins will live.”
She gave him a pitying look. “For a start, she is already huge with child, and in no condition to travel. Secondly, do you really think the Regal would permit that?”
His mouth went dry. Juster had intimated that Vilmar wasn’t past murdering an unwanted wife. Dear Va.
“Thirdly,” she continued, implacable, “King Edwayn sold her to Lowmeer in exchange for something he coveted. He doesn’t care about her. He would care, though, deeply, if Regal Vilmar reneged on their treaty.”
She meant the words to cut him, and they did. Was she right? Probably. The ramifications were beyond measure. “Forgive me if I sound inane. This is a – a shock.” And you’ve no idea how much of a shock. A devil-kin! And there is no way we can know which one of the twins it will be. Va above, what if a devil-kin ultimately sets his backside on the Basalt Throne?
He took a deep breath as he made a decision. “Well, for a start, you can forget about stealing for a living.” He dug into his hidden pocket and pulled out one of Juster’s rubies. “This is a good-quality gem. I can change it for coins, sufficient for all your needs. You must not jeopardise yourself by stealing. If you are caught, you will hang … and the twins will die.”
Which might be better for the fate of the world.
No, don’t think like that, never think like that.
She gave a faint smile he could not interpret. “I will accept whatever you give with thanks – and relief that you believe me for a change.”
“The moment I discovered that Va granted you a glamour witchery, I ought to have trusted you completely. Even today, I was far too quick to blame.”