The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  Linnet bowed her head, glancing upward at Keri through her eyelashes. She was smiling, very faintly.

  Somehow that smile bolstered Keri’s nerves. She thought hard about how she had longed to be Lady when she was a little girl. About how she had been so certain she could show everyone who had ever snubbed her mother or told their daughters not to play with Keri. About how she would do so much better than her father. She looked around at the complete lack of red furnishings in this room. The browns and golds bolstered her courage, too. She had done that. She had made that small change. She had ordered it, and Mem had been forced to accede whether she approved or not.

  She took a deep breath and turned to the older woman. “My Bookkeeper may come to me at any time,” she told her. She made her tone firm with only a small effort. “Anytime she requests to see me, you or Nevia or any of my staff should let her in at once. Also, I chose that dress. The birds are perfectly suited for this evening. Linnet found exactly what I wanted.”

  Mem’s eyebrows rose in eloquent commentary. “Lady,” she said stiffly, “I think you will find that a girl Linnet’s age may not be quite aware of the nuances that are so important to putting forward a proper appearance. I wish only to be certain you represent yourself and Nimmira with the utmost propriety and dignity.”

  Keri reviewed this. Had the woman meant that comment about girls Linnet’s age as a slap at Keri herself? Keri considered the older woman for a while in silence, until Mem blinked and began to look uneasy. Then she said, “Of course. When you have a moment, please inform the Bookkeeper she is welcome to come in now. Then you may go. I’m sure you have pressing duties.” In fact, she wasn’t at all sure what Mem’s duties might include. Linnet probably knew. Keri would have to ask her later. She ran a hand through her hair and shook her head. There was so much stacking up for later!

  Tassel had the book tucked under her arm, with ribbons between the pages to mark places. As Mem showed her in, she gave the older woman a distracted nod, glanced at Linnet, smiled in a perfectly natural way, and said cheerfully, “Oh, Keri, there you are!” exactly as though they had unexpectedly happened to bump into one another somewhere in town.

  Keri said to Mem, “Don’t let us keep you,” and waited until her head of staff pressed her lips together and withdrew. Linnet smiled, bobbed a tiny curtsy to Tassel, and murmured, “With your permission, Lady, I need to go find a suitable painting to replace the big one that used to be over your main fireplace.” She slipped out without waiting for an answer.

  Tassel raised her eyebrows in appreciation as soon as the other girl was gone. “She does have sense. Good for her. I like that dress. It’s perfect for your supper tonight. But, look, Keri. This isn’t perfect at all.” She laid the book open on a nearby table, flipping to a page marked with a tawny-gold ribbon.

  Four columns of numbers and letters filled the page, completely uninterpretable to Keri. The writing was small, thin, and spidery, and its faded ink was hard to read. Keri looked obediently at the mysterious columns and then inquiringly at Tassel.

  “I thought for the longest time I’d have to find the previous Bookkeeper,” Tassel told her. “Which would be hard, since the woman appears to have vanished. Her name is Nynn, by the way, and she’s originally from Woodridge. Very likely she’s gone back there, but no one seems to know her family name, though I suppose I could always go to Woodridge and ask for the Nynn who used to be the Bookkeeper and someone would point me toward her—”

  “You’re babbling.”

  “Well, a bit, perhaps,” Tassel allowed. She paused. Then she said, “I figured it out. If you don’t exactly try to read it, it all comes clear. And what this says…Keri, I think your father was doing an awful lot of trade with Tor Carron. An awful lot.” She touched one column of figures. “Grain and peaches going out.” Her finger moved, indicating the second column. “Copper and tin coming in, and some finished bronze. And garnets. Lots of garnets, and some carnelians. And opals—there are opals in the far east of Tor Carron. I looked it up.”

  “Grain,” Keri said slowly. “A lot of grain. For garnets and copper.” She looked at Tassel. “Wheat was very expensive for a while, do you remember? But the drought wasn’t so bad, and I couldn’t understand why the price of flour had gone up so much. I had to raise my prices. For a while, I thought I might lose everything. The shop. Everything.” She hadn’t admitted that at the time, not to anyone. She had been too frightened and too angry. She said, “Mistress Renn bought a lot of cakes from me that year, and her friends started to buy from me, and that saved me. I always wondered if she did it on purpose. Then the price of flour came down again…though never to what it had been before the drought, not even when the harvest ought to have been excellent. I didn’t understand how that could be.”

  Tassel listened to this with a serious expression. “I didn’t know,” she said. “My mother never said anything. Our cook might not have bothered mentioning anything like that to her.”

  “A lot of people might not have bothered mentioning it. A lot of people might not have noticed when the poorer families suddenly couldn’t afford cakes. Or bread. Or grain for porridge, even.” Keri found herself growing angry. Really angry. She said deliberately, “My father might not have noticed. Why should he care about the cost of wheat? That wouldn’t touch him. What was he doing with the copper and tin and bronze? Selling it to Ironforge?”

  “I can’t quite tell. Yet. I could figure it out—I will figure it out—but that would make sense.”

  “And the garnets and opals and things?”

  Tassel took a deep breath and pointed to the third column of figures. This one was sparse, with far fewer entries and much bigger numbers. “I think he was selling them. Not just within Nimmira. I think he was selling some of them to Eschalion. Sorcerers do use jewels in their magic—”

  “Isn’t that mostly in Tor Carron?”

  “Well, maybe the people of Eschalion just think garnets are pretty, even if their sorcerers pull magic out of sunlight or whatever. Either way, garnets might sell for a good price in Eschalion. You know how Tor Carron refuses to trade with Eschalion, and you can hardly blame them, but I think your father was taking advantage of that. This, these listings here, I don’t think it was just plain garnets, but finished jewelry as well.” She ran her finger down the fourth and last column of figures. There were only half a dozen entries in this column. “This is gold. Gold coming into Nimmira, not going out. I mean, I doubt we have that much gold anywhere in Nimmira; there’s just that one seam up above Ironforge, and if that gold disappeared, I expect people would notice. But this gold came in, and I have no idea where it went.”

  “Gold,” Keri said quietly. “My father sold our grain right out of the mouths of our own people, and traded jewels to sorcerers in Eschalion, just to get gold for himself.” She had despised her father. But she could hardly believe this was even possible. She said, blank and astonished, “But how could he?”

  “I’m sorry, Keri. I don’t know. I mean, everyone’s aware he got, well, more profligate, I suppose, over the past years, but…I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought…surely nobody would have thought he might be doing something like this. But it really looks like that to me.” Tassel turned the page, and then the next, and the next. They all looked the same. Four columns of figures, with many entries in the first column and few in the last. “Grain for gold, with lots of metal and jewels in between.”

  “How? How? I mean, jewels are small. Anyone could carry a handful of jewels to Eschalion and a bag of gold back. Well, not anyone, but you know what I mean! Like the players do it, like a mouse through a crack in the wall. But grain and bronze? Tons of grain and bronze? How could he even do this?” She paused. “I think we know now what Osman Tor the Younger was lying about. He knew all about Nimmira. Didn’t he? He was trading with my father….”

  “I think so. But if I were him, I’d have been a lot more interested in the magic of Nimmira than in wheat and peaches. A lot more
. I think that’s what he was looking for when he crossed the boundary. I think he believes this is his chance to find out how we’ve concealed ourselves from our enemies for so long.”

  The two girls exchanged a look.

  Keri took a deep breath and let it trickle out between her teeth. “We’d better tell all this to Cort.”

  But Domeric, summoned by Callia, arrived first. Keri had almost forgotten she’d sent for him, but here he was, and now she mostly just wanted to get rid of him again. Complicated, everything had to be so complicated. But she smiled. If it looked stiff, well, she had any number of reasons to feel uncomfortable talking to her brother.

  “Domeric,” she said, nodding to him, “I’m to have a private supper with Lord Osman, you may have heard. I hoped you might be able to tell me a little about him.”

  Domeric made the room look smaller just by stepping through the door. He didn’t actually have to duck to pass through doorways, but he did give that impression. He also didn’t actually glower at Keri, but he gave the impression that he was glowering. Keri wondered what it was like to be the sort of man who looked dangerous all the time. Maybe he liked looking that way. It was probably useful for a man who owned three taverns.

  “A private supper,” Domeric repeated. He shook his head. “You should have asked me this first. I think he’ll make too much of it, that’s what I think. And I think, if you’re going to honor these guests with private suppers, you should have asked that sorcerer first. Osman’s an arrogant bastard, but he knows no small country dares offend the Wyvern King.”

  “You could be right,” said Keri, which had been her mother’s way of turning aside criticism, whether overt or implied. Why, yes, you could be right, and then you just went ahead with whatever you were doing. It was amazing how people often hadn’t even noticed her mother hadn’t taken their advice. Her mother had known exactly how to handle people, and Keri never had learned how to do that. From Domeric’s narrowing eyes, she was sure she hadn’t gotten the earnest tone quite right this time, either. She went on, quickly, “So he’s arrogant, is he? You can see why. I mean, he’s his father’s heir, isn’t he, and he’s known it all his life, isn’t that right? Is that why he brought twenty men with him? To show he can? I thought he might be nervous about crossing the boundary. Though I don’t suppose twenty men are enough to make you…not be nervous. If you’re stepping into an unknown country, I mean.”

  Domeric gave her a look. “He could do a lot with twenty men, if he realized Nimmira has no soldiers at all. You be careful not to give that away, chatting over supper.”

  “I won’t,” Keri assured him, trying for a bit more earnest sincerity this time.

  “Those men are the best, it seems. A personal bodyguard. One gathers it’s an honor and a privilege for a man to join that company. But whether those men are really his or whether they’re his father’s—” Domeric shrugged, a big, rolling gesture. “I wondered if maybe Osman the Younger crossed the border without asking his father. I get the impression the captain of his guard isn’t happy with him. Since you ask me—” And he paused here to give Keri a hard look. “Since you ask, I think Lord Osman needs to bring his father something solid.”

  That was good to know. That might be very important. Keri was suddenly glad she’d asked Domeric’s opinion after all.

  Her brother went on, coming down hard on every word, “I think you had better take care, little sister, what ideas Lord Osman gets in his head about what that might be. He’s the kind of man who gets ideas, I think. I’d have told you that before you arranged your intimate little supper, if you’d asked earlier, when it might have made a difference. You be careful what you promise that man, you hear me? Even a stupid man might get ideas if you go on like that, and Lord Osman isn’t stupid.”

  “Even the clever ones hear just what they want to,” Tassel said sharply. “Especially the clever ones.”

  “But I’ll be careful,” Keri said. She didn’t ask Domeric whether he thought she was stupid.

  “You can’t think she’d be so foolish,” Cort said sharply from the doorway. He turned his shoulder to Domeric and said to Keri, with pointed courtesy, “You wanted to see me, Lady?”

  “Oh, yes,” Keri said, trying to recover from the surprise of Cort’s unexpected support. “Yes, I think we have business we had better discuss.” She stopped and waited, looking at Domeric.

  “The moment you’re free,” agreed Cort. He raised his eyebrows pointedly at Domeric.

  “Huh,” muttered Domeric. “If you—”

  Keri said, “If you could find out for sure what Lord Osman’s men think, about whether their captain is truly at odds with Lord Osman, anything like that would be so helpful.”

  Domeric eyed Keri for a moment, nodded abruptly, and said, “But next time, if you would talk to me before planning your actions, sister.” But Keri only smiled and nodded, and he finally let out an exasperated breath, turned, and strode away.

  “He doesn’t respect you,” Cort said grimly, staring after him.

  “Well, I, I mean, no one ever expected—”

  “I know! But you aren’t a fool, Keri, and you always do the best you can, and generally make a good job of it, too. The sooner your brothers get that through their heads, the better!”

  “Oh, well.” Keri, taken by surprise, didn’t know quite how to answer this. She stammered, “Well, I hope— Never mind. Tassel, tell Cort what you’ve found out.”

  Cort listened to Tassel’s explanation, which was smoother this time, and with clearer clarifications of the letter codes, with a baffled expression. “This is impossible,” he said. He swung around to glower at Keri as though this were her fault. “This is impossible. Even granting the Lord of Nimmira would do something like this. I know Dorric was venal and selfish, but this! Even if he’d wanted to steal grain out of his own people’s mouths, moving tons of grain across the border? Tassel, you say this was going on for years? You don’t carry tons of grain out on your back; you’d need wagons and mules, and wagons can’t go cross-country. There’s not a single road that runs right up to the border—” He paused.

  “So there is a road,” Keri said. She didn’t need his slight, startled nod to know she was right. “Where is it?”

  “Just over…” Cort turned toward the south. “A wagon trail. Rough, but…it comes directly off the south road, runs straight east, right into the border.” He shook his head incredulously. “That track runs right into Tor Carron.” He paused, and swallowed, and turned back to face Keri. “I didn’t see it,” he admitted. “I don’t understand how I could have missed it.”

  “You didn’t have reason to look,” Keri told him. “It ought to be impossible to run a road through the border, right? Or even a wagon trail.”

  “Yes. Unless the Doorkeeper colluded in this.” Cort paused again. A flush had risen up his face, ruddy beneath his tanned skin. “That mud-crawling leech-eating misbegotten bastard son of a swamp snake. That slimy dog’s puke—”

  “The Bookkeeper colluded, too,” Tassel told him, though whether she meant this as a kind of we’re-all-in-the-same-place sympathy or just to interrupt Cort’s fury was not clear to Keri. Tassel turned the bone pen over in her fingers and touched the brown leather book. “It makes me feel, well, dirty just to read this,” she told her cousin. “She was helping them. They couldn’t possibly have hidden this from her.”

  Cort hissed through his teeth and turned his back, plainly struggling for control.

  “The question is,” Keri said, pointing out the obvious, “who else knew? Mem and Tamman? I think they both must have known at least something, don’t you?”

  “That Mem, I bet she did,” Tassel agreed, nodding. “She must have; your father couldn’t have kept that big a secret from his head of staff. Tamman, I don’t know. He would do what he was told, I think.”

  Even with her brief experience of the man, Keri thought so, too. “Who else? My brothers? Do you think Domeric is the kind of man to be aware of so
mething like this and keep quiet about it?”

  “I think Brann might,” said Tassel. “But Domeric?” She exchanged a glance with Cort and they both shrugged.

  “That’s what I thought,” Keri agreed. She took a deep breath. “What of the Timekeeper? Do you suppose he’s laughing at us right now?”

  “I assure you, Lady, I am not laughing,” said a grim, weary voice.

  The Timekeeper stood in the doorway. His tall, elegant form was just the same, but his bony features now looked to Keri less like natural asceticism and more as though he had been slowly worn down by many burdened years of anxiety. He said, his tone as uninflected as ever, “You are right that a certain number of people knew. But I assure you, no one is amused. No one understood how much of his own personal magic Lord Dorric was substituting for the proper border defenses of Nimmira. No one suspected that on his death, the border mist would fail.” He looked slowly from one of them to the next, meeting Keri’s eyes last. He bowed his head. “I did not precisely collude in this. But I failed to prevent it. Now the border is open. I did not anticipate that at all.”

  Keri stared at him. She asked after a moment, “You say a lot of people knew. My brothers?”

  The Timekeeper opened a hand in a gesture of uncertainty. “I think not. Your father did not wish his possible heirs to know.”

  “But—” began Tassel, and then said, “Because they’d have objected, you mean. Lord Dorric was weakening Nimmira. Any one of them would have objected. They wouldn’t have been put off. Not even Lucas. Not even Brann. Brann assumed he’d get the succession, so he wouldn’t care about gold if he thought there’d be any risk to Nimmira. Domeric—if he found out, who knows what he’d have done? Whatever else, they wouldn’t have been little mice like that fool Nynn. A woman like that had no business being Bookkeeper.”