"Easily," he answered. "To the stranger, you look very much the same. But two people are never truly one. You think differently, feel differently… you want different things."
They stared. First at him, then at one another. Then once more at him. Cluna shook her head. "No one else thinks so."
Aidan shrugged. "Because no one else is truly twin-born, not as you are. Even your jehan is different—twin-born, aye, but he and my jehan are quite dissimiliar in appearance and temperament. No one expects them to be the same. But they do expect it of you, and so neither of you is given the leave to be individual."
"He knows!" Cluna gasped.
Jennet reassessed him. "Your lir is telling you that."
Aidan laughed. "No, my lir is at this moment perched outside in the sun."
Blue eyes narrowed as she absently tugged her tangled ribbon. "Then how can you know?"
He forbore to explain the gift. "I understand feelings," he said, thinking it enough. "Now, as for you—"
"Are you Aidan?" Cluna asked.
Jennet cut off his answer. "He cannot be Aidan," she declared, flipping violet ribbon behind a shoulder. "Aidan is very sickly. Everyone says. He is not expected to live."
It was a sobering summation. Aidan eyed both girls a moment, then sighed faintly. "There was a time I was sickly," he agreed. "There was even a time they feared I might die. But not anymore."
Jennet lifted pale, inquisitive brows. "Well, then," she began, "who are you going to marry?"
Cluna was horrified. "Jennet, you cannot ask him that!"
"Why not? It is a fair question, I think." Jennet twined a lock of fallen hair around one finger. "We are thirteen now and there has been talk of betrothing us into this kingdom or that. Even Homana has been mentioned."
"Oh, has it?" Aidan's tone was bland. "I'm thinking I might yet have something to say on that order."
Jennet was speculative. "I doubt they will let you. It makes them feel important to decide how we should live."
"Jennet!" Cluna wailed.
Her sister did not respond. "Have you come for a wife?"
Aidan smiled. "Perhaps."
Cluna's face was burning. "He will never have you," she asserted. "A queen must know her place—"
"I do know my place!" Jennet snapped. "As any fool can see, we are of marriageable age and excellent family."
A new voice intruded. "But not of excellent manners." A young woman advanced on them quickly, yellow skirts gathered in both hands. "I could hear you screeching all the way to my chambers. That is not how our lady mother desires you to behave… you are princesses, not street urchins—though you look more like the latter with your hair all pulled awry." She glanced briefly at Aidan, then back to the girls. "Jennet, have you no sense at all? You tax a stranger with inappropriate talk…" She cast a polite smile at Aidan, smoothing yellow skirts and the amber-studded girdle binding a narrow waist. "You will forgive them, I hope, if they spoke too plainly. Jennet has cost herself more than one friend by such bold talk."
"Not Tevis," Jennet declared. "He likes such talk."
Cluna disagreed. "Tevis is merely polite. He has no wish to offend our father."
"Enough," the woman chided. "Have you no sense of decorum? This man is a stranger!"
"Cousin," Janet supplied.
It stopped the other at once. For the first time she gave Aidan all her attention. She was as unlike her sisters as could be, but by color and age he knew her. The oldest of all Hart's brood: Blythe, only months younger than he himself.
She was, he thought, magnificent. The heavy velvet gown, dyed a rich, warm yellow, set off her dusky Cheysuli coloring, though the eyes were blue instead of yellow. Her face was much like the faces of the Cheysuli women in Clankeep, formed of arresting planes and angles. There was little Solindish in her; that was Cluna's and Jennet's province. Blythe's black hair had been twisted and looped against the back of her head, showing off an elegant neck.
She was worth coming for—Aidan cut it off. He had spent too much time with women of lower rank, who encouraged his attention. He had become adept at dealing with them, and at judging their worth very quickly. But this woman is not like them…
Blythe's gaze was level. "Are you truly Aidan?"
He gazed back at her. SHE could make me forget. All the dreams, the chain—Again he cut himself off. "Aye," he offered calmly. "I was not expected, so I hope you will forgive me for arriving without a warning. My jehan did not think Hart would turn me away."
"Of course not. You are well come to Lestra." Blythe's Homanan was accented with the nuances of Solinde. Aidan found it attractive. "But you must promise me you forgive these little magpies, croaking about private things."
Both magpies glared at their sister, then turned their attention to Aidan. Summoning gallantry, he assured them he would.
Jennet banished contrition. "Have you come for a wife?"
Blythe's eyebrows rose. "What has possessed your tongue to be so heedless? Do you think Aidan came all the way from Homana simply to look for a wife?"
Aidan opened his mouth, shut it, scratched eloquently at his scalp.
"See?" Jennet challenged.
Blythe's eyes widened. "Have you, then?"
"See?" Jennet repeated. "You want to know as much as we do."
Aidan maintained a neutral tone. "There is some possibility—"
"Queen of Homana," Jennet considered.
Cluna glared at her. "Not for years and years. First there is Princess of Homana—"
Blythe's turn. "And that not for years," she declared. "There is one of those already: Aidan's mother, Aileen."
Cluna smiled shyly. "Jennet may be older, but I am nicer."
Jennet eyed her askance. "And Blythe the oldest of all. She comes first in everything."
"Enough!" Blythe cried, before full-scale war was begun. "All of you, come with me. Aidan must meet jehan."
Jennet twitched at skirts. "He is playing Bezat with Tevis. He sent us out when Cluna knocked over the bowl and scattered all the pieces."
"It was an accident!" Cluna cried. "And it was really your fault—if you had not left the bowl so close to the edge of the table—"
"And if you had kept your sticky fingers out of it—"
"Never mind," Blythe said ominously. "I know where Tevis is. I know where both of them are. And I know where you are going." Blythe locked a hand over Jennet's shoulder and steered her down the hall. "Cluna, you also. And Aidan—" Blythe's smile was both beautiful and beseeching. "Will you come with us?"
Aidan was a man who had grown up with no sisters. He liked women very much, but the ones he had spent most of his time with had been quite different. Looking at his kin, allied against refusal, he doubted he could do otherwise. Not in the face of so many females bent on a single thing that had nothing to do with bed.
Chapter Two
« ^ »
The round room was tiny but comfortable, lime-washed white for brightness, and tucked into a corner tower of the castle. A handful of casement slits let in the light of a fading day, painting the room in muted stripes. There were stools, chairs, tripod candle stands; one low table. At the table were two men: a Cheysuli in indigo leathers, gold gleaming on dark arms, and a younger, more elegant man dressed in russet velvet doublet over brown hunting leggings.
Aidan knew the elder, though they had never met. He was very like his own father.
Lost within their game, neither man looked up. Blythe sighed, exchanging an amused glance with her newly-arrived cousin, then silenced Cluna and Jennet with a raised finger. With eloquent, purposeful gravity, Blythe made the introduction.
A pair of heads lifted and turned, displaying startled expressions. Hart stared, then abruptly suspended movement in the midst of drawing a bone-colored stone from a rune-wrought silver bowl. Blue eyes at first were stunned; then disbelief entered. "No," he said only.
Aidan, amused, grinned. "Aye."
Hart frowned. His eyes were shrewdly attentive a
s he made a brief, alert assessment, marking hair, eyes, gold; the shape of facial bones. Then the frown faded. Doubt shaded his tone. "Aidan of Homana?"
"Not Aidan of Falia." Aidan's tone was dry. "Am I to spend the rest of my life reassuring my kinfolk I am well and truly alive?"
"Brennan's son," Hart murmured, the slow smile stretching his mouth. And then he was on his feet, dropping the forgotten Bezat stone. "By all the gods, Aidan!"
The fleeting thought was ironic. By all the gods indeed—But then Hart was hugging him, pulling him into a kinman's proud embrace, and Aidan had no more time for thought.
Hart said something in the Old Tongue, something to do with prayers answered for his rujholli, then released Aidan. Blue eyes were very bright. "You must forgive my doubt… all those years everyone feared for your welfare, and now you stride into my castle every inch the warrior!"
Aidan indicated his hair. "Except, I think, for this."
Hart waved a dismissive hand. "Aye, well… you have noted, I am sure, two of my own children lack the Cheysuli color." He grinned at his fair-haired daughters. "It comes from outmarriage. First Aileen, then Ilsa. If we are not careful, we will lose the coloring."
But he did not sound particularly concerned by the dilution of true Cheysuli characteristics. Aidan, looking at Hart's face, saw the same bones his father had, and hair equally black—or once equally black; now equally threaded with silver—but Hart's eyes were blue. Blythe looked very like him.
Blythe. Aidan glanced at her. Upon making the introduction, she had crossed the room to stand beside the young man in russet velvet. He waited in polite silence, displaying only a profile, and idly stirred the stones. Blythe reached down and took the wine cup by his elbow, murmuring in a low tone.
Aidan felt a flicker of unexpected apprehension. He was very accustomed to seeing approval or invitation in the eyes of attractive women. Blythe was different, but he found he wanted the same reaction. Yet her thoughts, clearly, were with another man. And Aidan, for all his experience, knew the rules were different. He had come looking for a wife, not a bedpartner of brief duration.
Apprehension mounted. Am I too late for Blythe?
Hart's ebullient voice overruled thinking. "How is my royal rujho? And jehan? Is Mujhara the same, or has it grown? Has Deirdre—"
But Jennet and Cluna, freed now of requested silence, began chattering at their father.
"Not now," he said above the high-pitched din that was, to Aidan, indecipherable. "There are too many things I have to ask of Aidan—" Then, in affectionate exasperation, "Not now; I have said. You will have Aidan thinking I spoil you."
Aidan, who had already seen he did, smiled privately. Across the room Blythe glanced up, caught his expression and smiled back. They shared the tiny moment of acknowledgment, then Blythe set down the cup and came away from the table.
"Jennet," she said, "enough. And you, Cluna. There will be time for your chatter later… for now we must host our kinsman and treat him with Solindish honor." She flicked eloquent fingers. "You know where the kitchens are. Send for food and wine."
Jennet's mouth pursed mutinously. "If he has come to find a wife, it concerns me. I should be allowed to stay."
At the low table, the young man stopped stirring stones.
"A wife?" Hart echoed.
"Not now," Blythe told Jennet. "Settling a marriage is something done by adults, and you have yet to prove you are anything more than a child. Go, and take your sister."
Brief rebellion from quieter Cluna. "But he might choose me."
Blythe pointedly opened the door. "He might even choose Dulcie."
Two mouths dropped open. Two voices chorused, "But Dulcie is only a baby."
"All the better," Blythe told them briskly. "Babies are easier to train." She smiled at Aidan, then motioned her sisters out. Eventually, they went.
"A wife?" Hart repeated. "But Brennan has said nothing of that in any of his letters."
His father and Hart corresponded often, Aidan knew, trying to compensate for the separation. Too distant even for the lir-link, the twin-born princes took what solace they could from parchment.
Aidan shook his head. "It came up of a sudden. They discovered, jehan and jehana, that I was twenty-three… apparently there is some significance attached to the age." He smiled at Blythe, not so much younger than he. "It must be a family custom than no man or woman be allowed to reach twenty-four without having married."
Blythe's color darkened. She turned jerkily to her father. "Perhaps I should go… perhaps I should accompany Cluna and Jennet—"
"Cluna and Jennet will do very well without you." Hart waved her back, then glanced across at the table. "No, Tevis—sit down. There is no need for you to go."
"But—my lord—" The young man was standing. He was tall, dark-haired, handsome, filling out leather and velvet with an elegance edged with power. Aidan recalled Cluna and Jennet were quite enamored of him. "If you truly intend to discuss a royal marriage—"
"Not now," Hart declared. "By the gods, not now. I am a man with four daughters… there will be time aplenty for that. And time aplenty to speak of family matters." He kicked another stool over toward the table, looking expectantly at Aidan. "Do you play?"
"Not that. I have heard of Bezat; I thought it best to avoid it. It carries—consequences."
"All games carry consequences." Hart reseated himself. "If you mean my missing hand, that had little to do with Bezat. It had to do with being a great fool… since then, I have learned better." He motioned impatiently. "Sit down, Aidan. Talk of marriages can wait… there is a game to learn!"
Aidan hesitated. "I was warned about you."
"All true," Hart agreed cheerfully. "Shall we add to the stories?"
"Jehan," Blythe said warningly. "You know what jehana will say if you stay up all night again."
"Your jehana, at the moment, has more to concern herself with than what time I come to bed. She would more likely prefer me out of it…" Hart's eyes were bright as he grinned at Aidan. "Sit you down, harani. How best do we meet one another save over wine and a game?"
The gaming continued until dawn. Tevis, yawning, gave up at last and excused himself, pushing all of his coin across the table to Hart. His bloodshot eyes were red-rimmed.
"No more," he murmured sleepily. "You have all my wits and now my coin… I am for bed, my lord. You promised me one last night."
Hart leaned back on his stool, rolling a stiffened neck. Black hair touched his shoulders; the silver was in his forelock. "There is always a bed for you… if I refused, all four of my daughters would ply my name with curses." He grinned, working shoulders. "Even Dulcie adores you."
"She has excellent taste." Tevis rose, rubbing absently at thick hair. It was so brown as to verge on black, cut closely to his head. Equally dark brows arched smoothly over ale-brown eyes, defining the bone of the forehead. "Of course, at all of two, her allegiance is easily won." He yawned, stretched briefly, looked down at Aidan. "My lord. If you yet have the wits to think, you might consider ending this travesty. He will have all of your coin, too."
Aidan grunted and reached for wine, then thought better of it. "I am a careful man."
"So was I, once." Tevis bowed briefly in Hart's direction, then headed for the door.
Hart waited until it was closed. "He is here to marry Blythe."
Wandering wits snapped back at once. Aidan blinked. "Ah."
"Of course, nothing has yet been settled—nothing has been said… but it is why he came." Hart rose and walked stiffly to the nearest casement and shoved the shutter open to let in pale pink dawn. "He is of one of the oldest and finest families of Solinde… a jehan, prince or no, could ask for no better match."
Aidan recalled Blythe's subtle intimacies, the expression in Tevis' eyes when the subject of marriage had come up. He had suspected as much, though he wished it were otherwise. "You must do what is best, su'fali."
"No." Hart strode to another casement, pushed open anoth
er shutter. "No, I must do as my daughter desires." Aidan watched in startled silence as Hart opened shutters at two more casements, then swung to face his audience of one. "You should understand the need."
"I?"
"Of course." Hart's nostalgic smile was lopsided. "Aileen and Brennan married out of duty, and out of honor for a betrothal made without their consent. Before they were born."
"Ah," Aidan said.
"I was the middle son, the son whose disposition was not so important as Brennan's… no one linked me to anyone, Ilsa and I married for the sake of Solinde, but by then the point was moot. We were already bound." Hart leaned against the sill, folding arms across his chest. Lir-bands gleamed. "Given the choice, Aileen never would have married Brennan. She wanted Corin. But he left for Atvia, so Brennan got his cheysula." Hart's expression was blank, his tone carefully bland. "I will give my daughter the choice."
Aidan sighed, staring blankly at the bowl of bone-colored stones. "A man come to sell his horse would list its obvious assets. I am to be Mujhar, one day…" Aidan lifted his head. "But that makes no difference, does it? Not to you. The stories I have heard say you were always the least impressed by titles and rank."
Hart shrugged. "The only thing that impressed me was a man's willingness to wager." But he said it without smiling. Wearily, he threaded the fingers of his remaining hand through fallen hair and scooped it back from his brow. The gesture displayed a dual circlet of lines graven deeply into the flesh. Age sat lightly on him, as lightly as on Aidan's father, but nonetheless it encroached. "You have my permission to ask her, if you choose—that much I can give you… but it will be Blythe's decision."
Aidan lifted one shoulder in self-conscious concession; they both knew what she would say.
Hart's voice was neutral. "If it is kin you want, to keep the bloodlines whole—I have three other daughters."
Aidan shrugged again. "By now, the blood is everything we need to fulfill the prophecy, except…" He let it trail off; the ending was implicit.
Hart said it anyway. "Except Ihlini." He sighed and rubbed absently at the flesh of his left forearm where the leather cuff bound the stump. "Aye, there is that… but who of us will take on the distasteful task?" Black brows arched curiously. "You are the likeliest one."
Cheysuli 7 - Flight of the Raven Page 12