The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  “I know,” said the Timekeeper. He held Cort’s angry, confused gaze without effort. “How did you know, young man, that it was dangerous to leave the keys of Nimmira lying loose and abandoned?”

  “I—” Cort stared down at the great ring of keys he held. Tassel, with much the same expression, gazed wonderingly at the slim book she held, then gingerly slipped off the black ribbon that bound it so she could lay it open.

  Keri turned her back on all of them and carried the cake into the ice cellar. She wanted whatever slim moment of privacy she could steal. She thought she had better recover her temper, and anyway, whatever else might have happened, Merin and Nasric were still going to want that cake tomorrow. She put the platter on a shelf above the ice and then simply stood for a long time, gazing at it. Maybe she would look back on her days in the bakery, at least the days before her mother’s death, as a calm idyll. She thought maybe she already did. Those days were already locked away from her, gone into the past, untouchable. She was going to be Lady. She was starting to believe she really was.

  Keri had always known that her father was not a good Lord. So far as she had ever been able to tell, Dorric Ailenn had done little other than lounge about in opulence—her imagination produced only the vaguest images of what that opulence might have comprised—and seduce merchants’ wives and the daughters of wellborn families, not to mention serving girls such as her mother.

  The Lord was meant to do more than enjoy the gaudy trappings of his position. The Lord—or Lady—of Nimmira was meant to guard the whole of Nimmira and cherish its prosperity, make sure that it flourished, and never, ever let even its outermost villages and farms and woodlands become exposed to any dangers pressing in from Outside. Tor Carron’s aggressive Bear Lord to the south, the ancient, powerful sorcerer-king of Eschalion to the north, and little Nimmira caught between—yes, nothing was more important than maintaining the mist of misdirection and confusion that kept the Outside from noticing Nimmira. The Lord of Nimmira did that by his mere presence, acting as the cornerstone for all that old magic.

  Oh, every now and then a desperate slave from Eschalion stumbled, half dead and hallucinating with cold and starvation, across the border up by Ironforge. From time to time a village boy might follow a straying goat down from the mountains of Tor Carron and find his way through the mist into the lands around Glassforge. Goats were hard to fool, even with the magic of Nimmira’s boundary. Keri had heard of that happening just this past autumn. A player had taken the boy back to Tor Carron: players had their own magic and their own ways of coming and going. But the occasional starving peasant or stray boy or player, that was one thing, no one minded that. If the mist failed, that would be something else.

  Keri had never seen any sign that her father had cared for anyone’s prosperity or well-being other than his own. She had always been sure she could do much better. She’d dreamed of one day having the chance to prove it. Of looking even the most prosperous townsfolk and the most important farmers in the face and saying, implicitly, You see how much better I am than my father. You see what kind of daughter my mother raised. Aren’t you ashamed of the way you treated her now? She had dreamed of making everyone admit they had been wrong about Keri’s mother, wrong about Keri herself.

  Gauzy daydreams weren’t the same as the real succession…of course not…but she was still sure she could be better as Lady than her father ever had been as Lord. After all, her father hadn’t exactly set a high bar.

  And if she refused the succession and the mist failed…she didn’t dare think about that.

  Even though, now that it had happened, the succession pressed down on her like a physical weight. She would not know how to do things….She would do everything wrong….Well, but the Timekeeper, she reminded herself, would know all about everything. Though she couldn’t help being a little frightened of him. She shouldn’t be. But he was…he was…really, really old, she thought. That was why she felt like that. Because the Timekeeper knew everything and she knew only what anybody knew, and all of a sudden that seemed like nothing. And the only one who could tell her things was an old man with the eyes and the voice of an ancient serpent.

  The former Bookkeeper had obviously been frightened. Keri found she could easily imagine whom that timid woman had feared.

  She had asked the Timekeeper to remain at his post. She’d felt that she should, that it was right he count off her time and the time of Nimmira. But she knew, with uncomfortable certainty, that she, too, could easily become frightened of the Timekeeper.

  That made her angry. At least, it made her want to be angry, because the warmth of anger was better than the cold of fear. And too many difficult things remained for her to just stop because she was afraid. Especially because she couldn’t stop at all, whether she was frightened or not. Keri covered the cake with a high dome to protect the frosting and went up to face the Timekeeper, whom she did not know at all; and the Doorkeeper, whom she did not actually like very well; and the Bookkeeper, who, at least, was her friend.

  “—that’s one thing,” Cort was saying to the Timekeeper as Keri came back up the stairs to the main kitchen. “But this is a heavy burden to hand off to anyone, and you don’t know Keri! She’ll wear herself to thin bone trying, but—” He stopped when he saw Keri, but not, she could see, because he was embarrassed at being overheard. She glared at him, but he took an urgent step toward her, seized her arm in a firm grip, glowered down at her with his most impatient manner, and said in a hard, tense voice, “Keri, it’s all very well, but I came to tell Tassel that the mist has thinned so far you can look right out of Nimmira into Tor Carron. There’s a road running hardly a long stone’s throw from our back pasture, and you can see travelers clear as clear. Worse, from the way they crane their necks looking over their shoulders, I’d swear the whole lot of them can see in, too.”

  Keri found her own anger turning to alarm. Aware from past experience that it was impossible to pull away from Cort’s hold until he decided to let go, she did not try to free herself. Instead, she tipped her head back so she could meet his eyes and asked, “How many travelers? What sort of travelers?”

  Cort released her without ever, so far as she could tell, realizing that he had touched her at all. He brushed his thumb across the ring of keys he had slung at his belt, an absent gesture that already looked habitual. Then he rubbed his hand across his eyes. “I don’t know. Merchants of some sort, I suppose. I saw wagons, some covered with canvas and some loaded with barrels. But what do I know about the folk of Tor Carron?”

  “This may not be the proper time to discuss the matter,” suggested the Timekeeper, in that dust-dry voice that somehow compelled attention. “The problem with the mist has very likely resolved itself along with the problem of the succession.” Turning to Keri, he touched his fingertips to the embossed gold of his watch. “You are shortly due, Lady, to make an appearance in your own House. You must assume proper dress and style for your new position; you must acquaint yourself with your staff and consider whom you wish to keep and whom to dismiss; you must review your schedule for the coming days and consider your new duties. Also, you have an appointment in precisely one and one-half hours, to which you must not be late.”

  “An hour and a half,” repeated Keri. An appointment, for which she had to dress appropriately. An appointment with whom? Her father’s advisors and counselors, she guessed. Verens and Bern and the rest. Fat townsmen who had flattered her father to get special privileges for their businesses, and licentious sycophants who had done the same for less reason. She hated them all. They would despise her, too, she knew, not only because she was a girl younger than any of their daughters, but because they would have wanted the succession to go instead to Brann, who dabbled in trade. Or at least to Domeric, who kept their sons out of trouble when they went drinking. None of them would want her to be Lady. They would look at her and see the fatherless child they hadn’t wanted their own daughters to play with, the girl they hadn’t wanted their s
ons to speak to. This was going to be horrible.

  Then a belated realization struck her. She lifted a hand, touching her lips in dismay. “You don’t mean my father’s counselors. You mean my…you mean the other…my father’s sons. Brann and…” Of course that was what the Timekeeper had meant: her father’s sons. They would be worse than her father’s advisors. They would hate her. Every one of them would think the succession should have come to him. Or at least to one of their number. She couldn’t even blame them, exactly.

  “Your father’s sons. Yes.” The Timekeeper’s gaze contained neither sympathy nor surprise, Keri thought, but a kind of dispassionate judgment. It was not a comfortable look. But then he added, almost gently, “It is the custom. A necessary custom. You must see your father’s other possible heirs, with whom you must make what accommodation you find appropriate. Later you must meet with your father’s counselors also. But those men you may either accept as your own advisors or dismiss, as you please. Your, ah, brothers are not…dismissible. You must offer each of them an opportunity to declare his support for you.”

  “Oh, Keri,” Tassel said with sympathy.

  “What if they won’t?” Cort demanded, glowering again, this time on Keri’s behalf.

  Keri was surprised and flattered by his grim, aggressive tone. But then, if Keri’s half brothers questioned the succession, they’d be questioning Cort’s new authority as well. Maybe that explained the glower.

  And he had certainly asked a good question. “They won’t accept it,” she said. “Of course they won’t!”

  “They must,” stated the Timekeeper. “They will make what accommodation with you they must, Lady, or leave Nimmira. That, they will not do.”

  Keri looked at him narrowly. She knew this was true. But she also knew that whatever else they said or did, her half brothers would never accept her taking the succession. At least, Brann wouldn’t. This realization was freeing, in a way. If nothing Keri did or said could placate her older half brothers, she didn’t need to try to placate them. She could try something else instead.

  Just what she might try was another question. She should have thought about that, in her daydreams. About how she might truly handle her brothers, if she really did take the succession. How stupid that she had only thought wistfully of exiling them on the very day she was elevated, of being rid of the lot of them just that easily. Of course she couldn’t do anything of the kind, however simple and direct the idea seemed in wishful dreams. That wasn’t how a new Lady handled her own household. Of course it wasn’t. Of course she had to offer them a chance to declare their support for her, even though she would know, all of them would know, that none of them meant it for a moment.

  But it was true none of them would want to do anything that might merit exile. Only, that meant mostly that whatever they did, they would not do it openly.

  The Timekeeper might have followed the line of her thoughts, but he said merely, “The succession has been made; the succession of the Lady and all her household has been made and recognized by Nimmira. I fear, Lady, that you cannot turn back even the smallest hand of Time. Not only you yourself but also your brothers will have to accept the succession as it stands.”

  His dry, uninflected voice made everything sound like a statement of natural law rather than an opinion. Keri looked at him, wondering what he might do if her brothers tried to turn back the hands of Time. Probably it would be something effective. It was hard to imagine even Brann defying the Timekeeper. That was one ally, at least. Probably. Maybe. She wished she knew him better. She wished he weren’t so old and frightening.

  She asked, “What signs? You said the signs were clear, but they weren’t clear to me! So what signs, and can anybody see them but you?” She imagined nobody could. She said out loud, “It’s going to be hard for people to accept me. Everyone will think Brann would be a better choice—or Domeric. Or even Lucas. Everyone would accept any of them much more easily! Everyone will be furious it’s me—” And she was going to have to come up with ways to make everybody accept her. She already knew she should have thought more about that, in her daydreams.

  But Tassel was looking at Keri oddly. She said with unaccustomed seriousness, “They’d have been easier choices, no argument there. They’d have been more obvious choices, yes, that’s true. But, Keri, I’m not sure just everybody will think any of your brothers would have been a better choice.”

  “Brann—”

  “I know. Brann was always so sure it would be him, and he made everybody else think so, too. But, Keri, not everyone has been happy about that. And Domeric, well, some people are scared of him, and maybe they might have reason to be. I know nobody ever talked about it with you, not really, but there was always more than one reason I preferred Lucas.”

  Keri stared at her friend.

  “Really,” said Tassel. “I mean—”

  “But Keri’s so young—” Cort said at the same time.

  “Only a year younger than I am—” Tassel began to protest.

  “You’re too young, too!”

  Tassel glared at her cousin. “Oh, and I suppose you’re tripping over your long white beard! Don’t be ridiculous, Cort! You’re hardly a year older than me! You needn’t sound as though we’re still wearing our hair down and skipping about in short skirts!”

  Cort looked exasperated. “That’s not what—”

  “You are all indeed very young. However, this is beside the point. None of this argument signifies,” said the Timekeeper, interrupting them both. “The succession has been made.” He turned, with a stiff rustle of rich cloth, and formally opened the door for Keri, extending his hand to invite her forward.

  Obviously taken by surprise, Cort jerked to a stop. He glared at the Timekeeper, said, too abruptly, “If you please,” and stalked forward to take the Timekeeper’s place at the door. At first Keri thought Cort was angry because of the argument, but then she saw that she had been mistaken: he was angry because he thought the Timekeeper was intruding on his own duty.

  And he was right. Keri understood that as soon as she saw the way the Timekeeper inclined his head to Cort, more deeply than he had to her, and the way he stepped back to yield his place at the door.

  But Cort had his proper place now, and Keri had to decide right now, at this moment, whether she would walk out of her shop into the open streets, or whether she would run and hide in the cold room.

  And, to her own astonishment and shame, after all her dreams, what she really wanted, now that it had come to this moment, was to run and hide. She wanted suddenly to declare, Oh, Domeric or Lucas or whoever, I don’t care, anybody but me. She’d dreamed of someday taking the succession, but she’d known all the time it would never happen. And now it had. What if she’d been wrong all the time, what if it was harder than she’d thought and she couldn’t do it, couldn’t do it right—

  But everyone watched her expectantly, variously sympathetic or annoyed or just neutral, but all with that unmistakable expectation. And so she let Cort hold the door for her, and she walked through it. When she stepped out of the bakery kitchen, she tipped her face up to the sky, letting the sunlight pour over her. It prickled oddly at her skin. It was as though she had never before stood in the sun, as though she had never before really noticed light or heat or the subtle movement of a spring breeze.

  It was, to her surprise, still early in the afternoon. She felt that hours had passed since the Timekeeper and the others had entered her kitchen. Days. But it was still barely past noon.

  Tassel came out into the sunlight after Keri and put a hand on her arm, looking at her with concern, as though she guessed what Keri was feeling. Maybe she did.

  The Timekeeper strode past them and waited in the cobbled lane, rather like an angular black crow, only far more elegant. He looked over his shoulder, not precisely impatient. But he was patient in a way that had much the same effect as impatience.

  Cort came out last and shut the door gently behind him. It swung to and sett
led neatly into place in its frame. The bell chimed once, and again, and then the sound died away into the warm afternoon and was gone.

  Keri blinked and opened her mouth, but then she found she had no idea what she’d meant to say. She closed her mouth again without saying anything at all.

  “Anyone with a reasonable need to go into the bakery will be able to enter,” Cort assured her, mistaking her look.

  Keri nodded, still wordless; the abundance of questions she wanted to ask was so great that it choked her to silence. She shook her head instead, and gestured at the Timekeeper to lead them all through Glassforge toward the House at its center.

  —

  Keri’s small bakery stood at the east end of the southern lane that wrapped along the edge of the neat little town, the second largest in Nimmira. Farms stretched out to the west; Cort’s farm—actually, his brother Gannon’s farm—was one of the nearest. It was the third-largest farm near Glassforge. Gannon raised wheat and rye and tended chestnut and peach trees, and he also bred the heavy horses farmers needed for their plowing.

  The glassworks were mostly to the south and west, on the other side of the river; Keri’s mother had taken her to see them once, when she was a child, because she said everyone should know how Glassforge had earned its name. She had let Keri choose a little glass ornament that had no purpose at all but to look pretty; you hung it in a window and let it catch all the colors of fire from the sunlight. Keri had not understood at the time that her mother had spent two weeks’ profit on that one little bauble. She had not understood that until she had started running the bakery herself, during that awful time when her mother was sick but before she died, when she had first started counting the cost of everything in terms of how much flour or white sugar it could buy.

  She had hung that fiery bauble in her mother’s window when she’d become so weak she was unable to rise from her bed. Her mother could not even sit up, so Keri had brought her flowers. She had picked them herself; it would have been far too expensive to buy flowers. She had brought her mother flowers, and the first peaches, and hung the bauble in her window so she would have sunlight.