“What danger?” I said.
He ignored this question. “You will have to give your messages to me, and I will deliver them to the High King.”
“I may not,” I said. “But I told you truly when I said they are urgent.”
He frowned. “You bring more trouble to us.”
Hal started to speak, but I waved him off. “Trouble was already coming. But I bring forewarning of it.”
The Steward smiled grimly. “Perhaps your message is late. Perhaps it pertains to the danger already here.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “A great deal.”
He tapped his fingertips together. “What—”
He was interrupted by a brisk rap on the door, followed by its opening. A higher-status person might enter the chamber of someone lesser, but it was polite to knock first. Pedagno Poll had been incensed by his Steward’s behavior precisely because it implied he outranked his lord.
“Gustor, I—” a voice said. Then: “Maudlin?”
Chapter III
I knew that voice. “Utor!”
He crossed the room in long-legged strides. I jumped up as he approached. He’d obviously just arrived. His clothes were even more travel stained than ours.
His arms swept around me, pulling me to him. “Maudlin,” he repeated, his breath in my hair. “Six years, Maudlin.”
I found my eyes stinging. My arms went around him as I blinked hastily. “I am sorry, Utor.”
He let me go. Surely he could not have grown taller. But his shoulders had broadened, ready to receive the burden of the High Kingship when he was needed.
“Why has the princess been kept from the High King?” He turned to the Steward. “He will want to see her.”
“Your pardon, my lord.” The Steward inclined his head to his Prince. “She arrived within the hour, and no one could immediately be found who had known Princess Maudlin well enough to confirm her identity.” He hesitated. “I admit I was...concerned. In our present circumstances.” His eyes met Utor’s. “The princess arrived unannounced, unexpected, and unaccompanied except for this man,” he gestured to Hal. Utor gave him a narrow-eyed look that showed more of an older brother’s concern than political interest.
“This is Master Hal Carlson,” I said. “A servant of the King of Ragonne. He was sent to help with a task that the Roth gave me.”
This statement clearly handed Utor more questions than answers. I watched as he swallowed them. For now, I knew.
“She says she brings messages for the High King, but will not say who they are from,” the Steward continued.
Utor’s face stiffened. “You are not, I take it, simply come home.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. Nothing excused my stubborn absence, or that my return was compelled. Once compelled, I had been surprised to find that I was not entirely unwilling, that perhaps I was even grateful for the chance to mend bridges, if it might be; I had, after all, diligently tried to burn those connections to cinders. That did not change my uneasy knowledge that without the discovery of the Saradenian letter in Vere, I would not have come. It was too easy to let things go on as they had become. I let my eyes drop, evading the brittle disappointment in Utor’s. “We bring news to the High King, too delicate to tell even his Steward.”
“Maudlin,” Utor said skeptically, “surely...”
I hesitated for an instant. Then, stooping, I brought out the Saradenian letter. “Read. The High King will inform his Prince before anyone.”
His eyes widened as they scanned the page. All the High King’s children had been taught to read as youngsters, and he did not struggle like the Roth or Lady Elsbeth, who had learned as adults and only recently. He glanced up, then shook his head disbelievingly, and returned his attention to the page, to read the letter once more.
At length he looked up again, thoughts veiled by a noble’s impassive countenance. “You are right. The High King will want to see this immediately.” He handed the letter back. I rolled it and put it into my belt pouch, ready to deliver to the High King.
Utor glanced at the Steward. “Thank you, Gustor. I will see to the princess now.”
He bowed. If he desired to know more about the message that had come with Bruster’s prodigal princess, and he assuredly did, he kept any hint from his face. Everyone had mastered that skill except me. “My lord.”
“Wait.” I drew out a second parchment roll. “Would you see this letter safely sent?”
Gustor took it. “Of course, lady.”
“Who...?” Utor shook his head. “Later. Come.” His hand touched my back, directing me towards the door. Turning to Hal, he asked in Valenian, “Will you join us, Master Carlson?”
“Thank you, my lord.”
Utor caught my hand, tucking it against his arm, as if the hall was full and feasting, and he was escorting me to my place. One of his hands covered mine and squeezed gently. Again my eyes prickled. My fingers tightened on his arm, returning the small embrace, knowing what he meant as well as if he had spoken.
He led us across the hall to the spiral staircase. Bowing, he gestured for me to take the stairs first. I swung my bag around before me so it wouldn’t bump against the walls.
Like the rest of the castle, the stairs were defense minded. They twisted tightly, curving left, providing a right-handed defender a wide space but impeding a right-handed attacker. The stairs themselves were uneven widths and heights, causing someone unfamiliar with them to stumble. But my feet had not forgotten these stones, and I moved steadily upward. I remembered tumbling down them more than once, though, skirt and braid cartwheeling, when haste overpowered judgment.
I passed the opening that led to the second floor and continued upward. The lowest two levels, the ground floor and one below, housed the kitchen, storerooms, the well, and the servants’ quarters. The household’s most important retainers, among them the Steward, occupied the second floor. The third floor was for the High King and his family. It had been a crowded, noisy, happy place before the deaths of our mother and newborn sister, both birth-mangled. The King’s rooms, and the High King himself, had been quieter thereafter. But not wholly so. Four sons and a daughter remained to him. Few men, even among kings, could say as much.
I ducked as I stepped through the passage leading from the top of the staircase to the room beyond. A guard approached, drawing his sword.
“Easy, Ulf,” Utor said as he came through, moving aside for Hal. “This is the princess Maudlin, and Master Hal Carlson of Ragonne.”
Ulf dipped his head and moved back to his post.
We followed Utor into the first of the four rooms that had belonged to the royal children. It was the smallest, and my youngest brother Birnan had lived here. It looked as if he still did. At least, someone did. A tidy someone, like Birnan.
We walked through into the next room, which stood in a corner of the keep. This had been mine. It was unoccupied. And unchanged. The coverlet our mother had woven for me was on the bed. The raggedy, uneven tapestry I had embroidered when I still had my milk teeth hung on the wall. But Utor did not give me a moment to consider the strangeness of that, my room sitting unused in the crowded chaos of the Black Keep. He continued through the next passage, into the largest of the children’s rooms.
It was also the warmest, containing the only hearth for the children’s half of the third floor. Cedrick and Murrow had shared it. On cold nights, all of us ended up there, wrapped in our blankets before the fire. Here too, it seemed, my brothers resided where they had before I left.
Directly across from the hearth, two doors led into the next-largest room in the children’s quarters. We had spent much of our waking time there when we were small, playing, eating, talking, and being taught around the large table. With the doors open, the hearth heated the inner room as well, and activities could spill over into the sleeping room. But the doors were closed now, and Utor led us past.
“The King asked Murrow and Cedrick if either of them would like to move...” Utor je
rked his head towards the room that had been mine. “But they said this was a big room, they were used to sharing, and were just as happy to stay.” He let his gaze slide to the hearth. “Personally I think neither of them wants to leave the warmth. Birnan must have ice in his guts. In January his room is so cold, water freezes in the basin.”
“I remember,” I said.
We followed him through the door on the far side, into a short passage that curved right then split. The leftward branch led to the second spiral staircase. Locating the stairwells in opposite corners was another strategy to make an attack difficult. The rightward passage led to what had been Utor’s chamber, and, it seemed likely, still was. He went right, and we followed.
It was not a comfortable room. Warmth from the hearth barely wafted in. When we were old enough, Utor, Birnan, and I each had a brazier to burn peat, the smoke directed as much as might be out the small windows. In winter Utor’s room was warmer than Birnan’s, but only marginally.
One corner was taken up by the privy. In its own little room, of course, but it was the only privy in the children’s quarters. To use it, we all had to traipse through Utor’s room. If it were too cold to shiver down to Utor’s room, or if one did not dare disturb him again, there was a chamberpot under each bed. More than water froze on January mornings in Birnan’s room.
The cold, rather malodorous room might seem an odd choice to house the Prince but I knew better. It was the safest place in the children’s quarters. It also shared a wall with the King’s bedchamber. There was no apparent door between them but I would have been very much surprised if a hidden one did not exist. The privy within the King’s rooms used the same soil shaft, and I strongly suspected the castle’s builders had designed the jakes to provide an escape route for the King and his heir in the last extreme.
“You can stow your bags here while we see the King,” Utor said.
I shook my head. “I’d rather keep mine. There are items I should not allow out of my hands.”
He looked hard at me, then at the bulging bag. “What else have you brought?”
“Precious, not dangerous,” I said. “Books. Most are ones I borrowed from Vere to copy for the Roth’s library.”
“Very well. You, Master Carlson?”
Hal set his scrip beside a chair. “I have nothing irreplaceable.”
“Anything you leave here will be safe,” Utor said. “Would you like to wash before we see the King? There’s fresh water in the bowl.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Maudlin...” He rubbed at his nose, his gaze dodging mine eloquently.
“Fine.” Setting my bag well aside, I crossed to the basin. I washed my face and hands, and turned back to my brother. “Can we go?”
“But...” He touched my hair.
I stared at him for a long moment. Then I understood. The braid. I could not go before my father without our family’s braid.
Utor’s brown hair, a shade lighter than my own, hung halfway down his back, gathered in our distinctive braid, a mark of the High King and his family. That I’d forgotten, even among the worry and fluster I’d both found and brought, was a measure of how long I’d been away. I wrenched the leather tie from the end of my braid. What sort of Brusterian forgot her family mark? No one can erase your blood, Mistress Baynor had said. Except, perhaps, yourself. Reject, leave, deny—and you might, eventually, succeed. I pulled a deep breath, trying to calm my temper. Self-directed, but even so, it would not be wise to let it rage.
I found my comb and loosened my hair from the simple braid I normally wore. While I combed it through, Hal went to the basin. I separated my hair into nine strands along my forehead and temples, and began weaving them.
But the braid was intricate, and I fumbled the strands. I had not worn my family braid since leaving Bruster, and my fingers had forgotten the skill. I combed my hair and made the nine strands once more, but again it tangled in my hands.
“Here.” Utor reached for the comb, hooking his toe around the leg of a stool. “Let me.”
I sat. He began to draw the comb through my hair. For the third time that day I swallowed sudden tears. For I was seven again, and on the other side the wall, our mother was dying. No one had told me so. But then, like now, it was clear something was terribly wrong.
***
The screaming had finally stopped. I eased my hands away from my ears.
The shrieks were gone, but it was not quiet. Keening wails, interwoven with low sobs, swept through the castle like a rising wind.
I pushed myself further under the bed, the last few inches into the far corner, until I could not hear the sobbing and the wails were muffled. I clamped my hands over my ears again.
It still was not quiet. Only the most piercing howls made it through, but I heard my blood drumming and a rasp echoing between my ears and hands no matter how hard I pushed them together.
For two days, unceasing clamor—head-shattering screams, scurrying feet, deep-voiced bellows—had roiled the castle like a hurican. Even under the bed, palms flattened against my ears, I could hear it. Something was wrong. I didn’t know what. But I hadn’t seen our mother since the tumult began.
I must have fallen asleep at last. I stirred, and, finding my arms pillowing my head, I clapped them back over my ears, not yet noticing the silence. The room had darkened; night had come. The shadows under the bed were full black now, but I stayed where I was. I was not afraid of their darkness. I did fear what I would find beyond it.
Sometime later, the darkness beyond the bed lessened. I saw feet, and a few inches of leg, in a pool of quivering light. After a moment, the light stopped flickering. Whoever it was must have set the candle down.
A knee appeared, then my oldest brother’s face, right at the edge of the bed. Utor’s braid spilled down and pooled on the floor beneath his ear. “There you are.”
I heard, even through my cupped hands, the relief in his voice.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
I tried to wriggle further back, but there was nowhere to go.
“It’s okay—” He paused. “No. It’s not okay. But it’s over. Will you come out?”
I shook my head, arms waggling as my hands stayed over my ears, loosened just enough to hear his soft-spoken words.
The face left, but only for a moment as he shifted to lie on the floor, looking at me directly rather than sideways. “All right.” He bit his lip. “Do you know what has happened?”
I shook my head again.
He sighed. “She is dead. And the babe.”
I gave a jerky nod, blinking. The disaster I had dreaded, had heard howling like a hurican in the cries and chaos, and tried to hide from in the safest place I could find—under Utor’s bed—it had come to me.
You are the High King’s children. No one should read your thoughts from your face. Did the self-mastery they taught us—for me, with limited results—bind us even now? I looked closely at Utor. His face seemed calm. I saw no tears hanging in his eyelashes. But he was a big boy. Thirteen, and Prince. Surely more was expected of him.
I blinked faster, trying to keep the surging damp in my eyes. I had not thought I cried before, listening to the awful bustle, but my cheeks felt sticky and a little raw. I pressed my lips together, looking up to keep the tears from spilling, but without success. Drops teemed and ran down, spotting the stone floor.
“I’m sorry.” He slid a hand under the bed to touch my arm but I twitched it away. His hand went up in a placating gesture and drew back.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, but his tone had changed, and I knew he meant something else. “I shouldn’t have left you alone. I should have thought about you. You’re too little.”
My chin came up.
He gave a small smile. “Yes, I know. You’re a big girl. Only seven, and you can already write your letters, when Doctore Mustorn did not want to even begin teaching you until you were ten.”
I watched as he blinked. “I was with Father..
.before, when we thought we were waiting for the babe...and then later, when we knew...” He sniffed. “Then...we were...waiting again.” He paused. “But it wasn’t...as long.” He pulled a long breath. “The others are with Doctore Mustorn. I thought you were too.”
I let my hands drop away from my ears but put them before me, fingers slightly bent, as if to ward him off should he reach for me again. But Utor remained on his belly on the floor, his forehead against the bedstead, and his hands stayed away.
I was surprised to see his sorrow twist suddenly into anger. “Mother should have agreed to have a nurse for you little ones. Father always says she can’t watch you all the time. Remember when you fell down the stairs last year? We thought you’d cracked your head open. We thought you were dead.”
He flinched as he heard his own words. His face turned away. I heard him sniff again.
I inched closer, stretching to touch the top of his head, my fingertips light in his hair.
His voice was wet. “Our mama is dead.”
I scooted sideways and slid from under the bed. Utor sat up cross legged, flinging out his arms. I crawled into his lap, as I hadn’t for years. He rocked us both. “I forgot you. I’m sorry. I won’t again.” His cheek was warm against my forehead. “Not ever.”
After a while he moved me out of his lap and stood us both on our feet, still holding my hand. “Father wants us. He sent for all of us. That’s how we realized you were missing.”
I turned towards the door, but his hand stopped me.
“You can’t go to Father like that. Your face is filthy, and your braid’s loose.”
I shrugged. I probably was a mess, but he couldn’t look much better. A wispy cloud of hair, escaped from his braid, surrounded his head, but I was pretty sure that some of the gray mist hanging on one side was a cobweb, collected when he’d lain on the floor.
Homegoing (The Tall Ships of Saradena Book 1) Page 36