The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga)

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The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) Page 9

by Ashley Setzer


  A haggard looking Commander Larue appeared in the doorway. With a pang of guilt I realized I’d missed my meeting with him the previous night. He didn’t notice me. He was clearly distracted by something else.

  Lord Finbarr made a quiet exit and slipped out to meet the commander. I watched curiously as Commander Larue knelt down to whisper something in the shorter man’s ear. Lord Finbarr’s expression grew dark. He hurried over to Chloe and Othella.

  “We have a problem.”

  “Now?” Chloe said incredulously. “Can’t it wait?”

  “I’m afraid it must be dealt with sooner rather than later. We’ve just had a message from one of our supply ships. The captain sent word ahead that they’ve spotted the Duke of Briar’s fleet eastbound on a course for Ivywild.”

  Othella gasped. “That can’t be.”

  “He is disobeying my orders!” Chloe said loudly enough that a few of the mourners out in the hall looked up. “I told him that if he stepped a foot out of Larlaith, we’d consider it a provocation.”

  “He no longer recognizes your authority,” Lord Finbarr said. “Our position is vulnerable until you are formally crowned.”

  “This is preposterous!” Othella said. She looked sadly at her dead husband. “The grounds of Mag Mell have yet to close over him. What will our people think?”

  “The duke is forcing our hand,” Lord Finbarr said. “If we rush to make Chloe our sovereign, she will appear heartless. If we wait until after his burial, we will leave an opening for the duke to step in and claim the throne.”

  I spoke up for the first time. “How can he do that? He’s not royalty.”

  “It depends on how far you go back into the bloodlines,” Lord Finbarr said. “He’s kin to King Theobald’s maternal family. It’s why he still holds a title. He has made it known far and wide that he doesn’t want the rule of Faylinn to fall to a bunch of ‘womenfolk’—his words, not mine.”

  Chloe, Violet and Othella frowned in unison. The thread of defiance that they shared was clear to anyone standing nearby.

  “I am not going to be pushed to do anything,” Chloe said. “We will have the funeral and then the formal coronation. Afterwards you and the other emissaries will depart for the outlands like we planned. I can handle things here at home.”

  “What of the duke?” Violet asked.

  “Let him come,” Chloe said, lifting her chin. “I won’t be bullied.”

  I was proud of Chloe for showing such confidence, but I couldn’t help but feel nervous at the same time. She didn’t know how the commoners really felt about her. There was no telling how their opinions would sway with the king gone.

  It was a long, dark day. The hours melted into each other and yet they seemed endless. Everything was carried out as if in slow motion. The funeral had to be planned. The body had to be moved. The royal family stayed behind closed doors while all the delicate details were worked out. Meanwhile I tried to be helpful while staying out of the way. It was hard. I felt useless. I knew I should mourn the king, and I did shed a few tears but they were not for him. I kept thinking about Lev leaving. I caught myself looking for a glimpse of black among the white-clad mourners or listening for the flutter of wings, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  All the purple castle banners were switched out with white ones. The normal sounds of life at Ivywild were muffled. No children ran through the streets. No vendors were in the market. All the Dryads and the Pixies talked in low voices as they tended their business throughout the castle.

  “I had hoped I’d be much older when this happened,” Garland said over the meager lunch we shared Chloe’s empty dining parlor. “Father is wearing a brave face, but he is crushed. I’m sure he thinks this is his fault.”

  Lord Finbarr had not been out of the king’s chambers all day.

  “It’s not his fault,” I said. “He must understand that. The king knew what he was doing when he saved your dad’s life.”

  “Did he?” Garland said. He propped his chin on one hand and stared distantly through his foggy glasses. “A king’s life to save a noble? Any historian will tell you that’s rubbish.”

  “Anyone who’s ever had a true friend will tell you it makes perfect sense,” I said. “Your dad was the only one who stayed behind with the king when the poison rains came. That takes amazing loyalty. Isn’t that worth saving? Besides, your mother already gave up her life for Ivywild. King Theobald wouldn’t have been able to live with himself if we lost Lord Finbarr, too.”

  Garland sighed and gazed over my shoulder where feeble sunlight spilled through a window. The cathedral dome gleamed golden over the pointed roofs of the village. “I suppose you’re right. Some risks do not need to be justified by practical means.”

  I followed his gaze to the cathedral. “Anouk is pretty, isn’t she? It’s a shame she’s a priestess.”

  “If I could bottle her laughter and keep it with me…” Garland said. “Actually I could, but I would feel terribly awkward asking her.” He smiled. “I’ve been through every book in the library looking for errors. It’s going to be hard to leave.”

  “Oh yeah,” I remembered. “So you are going with your dad to the outlands?”

  “Of course. What purpose would I serve here?”

  My gut gave a twinge. Perhaps Lev wasn’t the only one who had been feeling useless lately.

  “Is something wrong?” Garland asked with raised eyebrows. “You look like someone just hit you.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “It’s just that there are too many goodbyes lately.”

  The parlor doors burst open and Chloe rushed in. She collapsed on a cushion next to me. “I can’t do this anymore! I need a break!”

  Garland and I both stared in mute surprise.

  Chloe lifted her head, spying a pile of sweet buns on the table. “Thank goodness,” she said, grabbing one. She took a huge bite and let out a sigh. When neither Garland nor I spoke up, she glared at us. “Come on, guys. It’s me! You don’t have to go being all delicate.”

  “Then join us for a bite,” Garland said.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Chloe said, snatching another bun off the table. “Yummm…blueberry sugarspice. That was Daddy’s favorite.”

  There was another awkward silence. Then I recalled how weird I’d felt when my mother died and everyone was so quiet and careful around me. It had driven me nuts.

  “I remember the first time I met your dad,” I said. “It was right before the three of us had dinner for the first time. Do you remember?”

  Chloe grinned. “I do! I threw a tantrum to make Daddy let you stay the night.”

  “And you wanted to name me like I was a pet,” I said.

  “Has it been so long ago?” Garland asked, scratching his green curls.

  “Just two years,” I said. I leaned back on the cushion and stared up at the fabric-covered ceiling. The first time I’d come to this room, I’d been scared to death. I hadn’t known what to make of the strange, scholarly Fay boy or the spoiled princess. Now they were two of my closest friends.

  “Two years,” Chloe echoed. “It feels like a lot longer.”

  “A lot has happened,” I said.

  “Would you still have stayed if you’d known how difficult things would get?” Garland asked.

  “Yes,” I answered without hesitation. “Nothing could make me regret finding home…and you guys.”

  “Emma,” Chloe said. “Stop it! You’re gonna make me cry again and I’ve done quite enough of that for one day!”

  “Some things never change,” I said. “You’re still as bossy as ever.”

  “Unquestionably,” Garland added.

  Chloe stood up and feigned a scowl. “Yeah? Well get used to it. Queen Chloe de Lolanthe gives the orders now!”

  We laughed. It felt good to share that moment in the midst of all the mourning. It stuck with me forever afterwards as strongly as the memory of my first meal with Chloe and Garland.

  When we parted ways, a strange sens
e of foreboding made me shiver. I felt as though it was the last time we’d be together that way. I dismissed it as superstition. Just because things were changing didn’t mean we couldn’t share meals filled with laughter.

  But the chill stayed with me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I scarcely saw Chloe again until the day of the funeral. Preparations had escalated into mayhem despite Chloe’s urging that her father’s memorial should be simple. The flood of pilgrims to the gate only increased as citizens flocked to bid their beloved ruler farewell. A tent city bigger than the one in Ivywild’s village sprang up around the graveyard of Mag Mell overnight.

  No message came from the Duke of Briar even though his ships had weighed anchor just up shore from the royal harbor. Commander Larue and his crew of Master Casters were on edge and security around Ivywild’s perimeter was doubled.

  Caught between preparations for the funeral and organizing their coming journey, Lord Finbarr and Garland were all but invisible. Nobody from the Cathedral called on me. Lev had not come to see me, either.

  To make matters worse, I still couldn’t find the red dagger. I had searched Lev’s room high and low for it all to no use. Either I’d dropped it somewhere between there and my room, or he had it. I couldn’t think why he’d take it, though.

  So it was with a very black mood that I joined the procession of nobles on the trek to Mag Mell. Over sixty carriages made the journey. Chloe, Othella and Violet rode in the very front. The Seelie Court was in the second carriage. I was four carriages back with the king’s cousin, Marisol, the Baroness of Ipswimmy Island. The lady had a deep tan and a cold, apparently, since she kept blowing her nose loudly into a floral print handkerchief.

  “Dreadfully cool for this time of year, isn’t it?” the baroness asked as she tugged a shawl more tightly around her shoulders.

  I gave a half-hearted nod as I stared out the window. My mind was elsewhere.

  “Would you look at that?” the baroness said, remarking on the lines of Fay along the road. They stood at attention as the carriages rolled by. “I’ve never seen so many people! Of course, my cousin Theo was a great man.”

  “Yeah,” I said listlessly.

  “It’s funny now to think how everyone was scared of him at first,” the baroness said in a near whisper. “When Theo was crowned, everyone thought he would be the end of Ivywild.”

  I thought of Chloe’s situation. The similarities piqued my interest and I looked the baroness in the face for the first time. “Why was everyone scared of him?”

  The baroness gave me a quizzical look. “You mean you don’t know? I suppose you are rather young. Well, the fact of the matter is that Theo didn’t like the clergy.”

  “Why not?”

  The baroness glanced from side to side to see if anyone was listening even though she and I were the only ones in the carriage. Then she leaned forward and whispered, “He never liked the idea of an elite class of scholars. He wanted to make all knowledge available to everybody by creating schools all over the mainland. He used to talk about it when he spent summers with us on Ipswimmy.”

  “Why didn’t he follow through with it?” I asked.

  The baroness leaned back in her seat and knitted her eyebrows. “I don’t know. I had some letters from him around the time of his coronation. Something made him change his mind rather suddenly on that point. I don’t think he was worried about his popularity, so it must have been something else.”

  Intrigued, I pressed further. “Do you remember was his letters said?”

  “I don’t recall exactly. That was back when he wrote often, so all the letters run together. At any rate I know he was very brief about his reasons. The clergy was more important than he realized so he decided to devote his energies to other causes.”

  “More important than he realized?” I repeated.

  “He never got more specific than that,” the baroness quickly assured me. “Whether he intended it or not, his popularity skyrocketed afterwards. Then he married that stuck-up Othella and we seldom heard from him again. I do hope little Chloe takes after Theo more than she does Othella.”

  “She’s a fair amount of both,” I said.

  The buggy lurched to a stop. A porter opened the door. The baroness blew her nose one more time and stepped put. I mulled over what she had said while I waited my turn to get out.

  Mag Mell was bursting at the seams with commoners and nobles alike. My place was reserved near the royal family. I followed the baroness through the mass of people. The place was filled with the sounds of mourners who wept unabashedly.

  “Oh heavens!” the baroness said. “They’re going to get me all worked up. It’s a good thing I brought a spare hankie. You remembered yours, didn’t you?”

  I felt around in the pocket of my robe to see if my butler had provided me with a handkerchief. Fritz was really handy at supplying all the little things I never thought about. Sure enough, I found a silk handkerchief folded in my pocket. To my surprise, I also felt a crinkly sheet of paper.

  I recognized the paper and my face went warm. It was the torn page that I had gone into with Lev. Around the edges of the page he had written a message:

  “Today is the day. I’m sorry I couldn’t see you before I left and I’m sorry I’ll have to miss the funeral. I hope that by the time we meet again, Faylinn is at peace and we will have both fulfilled the goals we set for ourselves. I will never forget you, Emma Wren. You are a better friend than I ever deserved. Liebet Ivern —Lev.”

  The flow of bodies pressed in around me, urging me forward. I stood motionless, holding the note. It was real. He was leaving.

  “Move it!” said a man behind me. I stumbled out of the line into a crowd of gawkers who had come to watch the nobles. The page trembled in my hand.

  Seeing Lev’s goodbye on paper drove home the thing I’d been denying ever since he told me he was leaving. I was crushed.

  Somehow I thought he’d have a change of heart and stay. It was terrible and selfish, but I admitted to myself that’s what I’d been hoping. That vain hope had kept me from saying some important things to him and now I’d lost my chance.

  Or had I? The graveyard was overflowing. What good would one more mourner be to a dead man? I pushed my way to the back of the crowd where the carriages and cusith hounds had been tied. None of the porters were paying attention, so I untied one of the shaggy green hounds from his post and led him away slowly. When I was on the other side of a row of parked carriages, I climbed onto the hound’s back and flicked the rein.

  The beast charged forward down the dusty road. I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going, but I knew the road that led past Mag Mell eventually veered off to the shore south of Ivywild. There were only a couple of sizable harbors nearby. Most of the coastline was too steep and craggy to make for good ports.

  A horn blared the commencement of the funeral. One or two latecomers gave me strange looks as I rode past. Dust flew up from the cusith hound’s paws, staining my white clothes. I didn’t care. I was hell-bent on one thing only and that was reaching the port before Lev left. If I arrived looking like a filthy beggar, so be it.

  The countryside flew by in a blur. With every mile I felt lighter. Until I’d held the torn page in my hand I had never confessed, even to myself, how much Lev really meant to me. The thought of him leaving was like a hammer blow to a thin sheet of ice. The wall had cracked, and all the feelings I’d been holding in check rushed out all at once. I didn’t want to live a day without him, and I had to let him know it. Life was too short not to.

  I was being reckless. I knew better than to let my heart lead my brain, but I felt like I would burst if I didn’t get to see him one last time. Even if I couldn’t stop him, I had to tell him how I felt.

  The cusith hound’s tongue was hanging out. His ears perked up at the sound of gulls circling overhead. I breathed in the salty aroma of the ocean and my heart did a flip.

  This was love. It was wonderful and overwhelming, li
ke standing at the bottom of a waterfall. I was alive and I was ridiculously in love with Lev Hartwig. Cursing myself and laughing at the same time, I steered the hound to a side road that curved through the grassy hills to the seashore on the other side.

  How could I have been so stupid? Lev was the most important person in my life and I was about to let him sail away. I leaned over the hound’s neck and urged him to go faster.

  The sound of surf crashing nearby sent me into a fit of near lunacy. The road grew softer, giving way to beach sand. Then a glorious sight met my eyes. Ship masts peeked above the top of the next hill. I practically dragged the cusith hound with me over the crest of the grassy dune.

  The blustery sea breeze fought me as I climbed. When I reached the top of the hill, I saw a small port on the other side. The water was shallow with docks reaching far out into the slate colored waves. Only one ship was moored there. The crew was unfurling the sails but the planks were still attached to the dock and it looked as though people were loading last-minute items aboard.

  I left the hound and sprinted down the hill. Now more than ever I longed for wings. I ran so hard that my lungs burned, not stopping until my feet pounded on the wooden boards of the dock. Only then did I shield my eyes from the sun to look for Lev.

  I spotted him almost instantly. He was giving instructions to the dockhands about where some crates needed to go. He looked like he’d been working out in the sun for a while. His hair was sweaty and his face was flushed with a grayish tinge. I watched him covetously for a moment before running down the dock to him. I was about to shout his name when I witnessed something that made my blood run cold.

  A tall, tattooed Slaugh girl flew down from the ship and landed beside Lev. “You’d better come aboard,” the girl said. “They’re hauling up the anchor.”

  Lev nodded and consulted a slip of parchment. “I’ll be along soon enough, Katriel. Make sure the others are settled in.”

  Katriel gave a short nod. “Yes, Your Highness.”

 

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