In all honesty, she admitted, the barony hardly mattered right now. Neither her grandmother Rosene nor her great-uncle Gadman had ever let anyone forget that they and their descendants were royal kin. Theirs had been a harmless enough pretention, one good for the best seats at public games and partners at dances until Crown Princess Lovella had been killed in battle. Then the entire succession affair had opened up, quietly at first, then with greater and greater intensity when King Tedric refused to name a new heir quickly.
Now a gathering of cousins was a little like a gathering of wolves, each knowing that there could be only one head of the pack. Even those like herself who weren't certain they wanted to be that head were even less certain that they wanted anyone else to be so.
“You can almost hear the growling,” she murmured to herself, taking a goblet of wine from a tray held by a polite servant and going to sit beside her cousin Purcel.
Named for their mutual grandfather, the war hero Purcel Archer, Purcel Trueheart was a powerfully built youth of fifteen, who had already distinguished himself in several skirmishes, earning himself the rank of lieutenant.
Courage was not Purcel's only asset. His budding tactical sense had also been tested several times. These days, when he was called to his commanders’ tents, it was not mere flattery that gave him a place at their councils. Many argued that Purcel was the single best reason for his mother, Lady Zorana, to be named crown princess, for at her death she would be succeeded by a proven battlefield commander.
Watching Purcel slurp down his beer and munch peanuts in ill-concealed boredom, Elise wondered. Warlord, yes, and welcome to it. King? As King Tedric had proven, a good king must be able to reign as well as to command. Both Aunt Zorana and Great-Aunt Rosene argued that Purcel would learn patience and discretion as he matured. Given the familial longevity—the descendants of Zorana the Great seemed to live long lives if they survived their childhoods—Zorana would reign for many years herself before joining the ancestors, and Purcel could learn the skills necessary to be a monarch from her.
Elise wondered, though, if a man who from his youngest years had been praised for quick, decisive action could learn to reflect and consider rather than charge ahead.
Purcel brightened visibly as she seated herself next to him. Two years apart in age, they had become close playmates once she had stopped dismissing him as a baby. Even when he was three and she a mature and thoughtful five, he had loved to trot about on a pony as chubby as he was, playacting the role of a soldier protecting his lady cousin.
“Elise,” Purcel said warmly by way of greeting, “want a peanut?”
She took one to please him, though the oily things tended to make her face break out. Purcel seemed immune to this bane of adolescence, though she still nursed hopes.
“Thank you, cousin.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek: “How was your ride into the capital?”
“Not bad, the roads were muddy, but we managed…”
What followed was a long dissertation on thrown horseshoes, partially washed-out bridges, troops needing to be kept from foraging in newly planted fields, and other minutiae of military life. Elise listened with one ear, nodding when appropriate, her gaze surveying the others gathered in the room.
They were a small enough group given that King Chalmer fathered five children and that each of those children had at least one child. However, Princess Marras's little ones had died as babies. King Tedric's three were gone now, all dying without issue except for Barden, whose name was still a curse to his father.
Princess Caryl, King Chalmer's third child, had been married away into the kingdom of Bright Bay, her father's pledge to a peace that lasted only a few years. Caryl's departure meant that just Grand Duke Gadman and Grand Duchess Rosene remained. Each of these had produced two children, but Grand Duke Gadman's Nydia had died long before Elise herself was born. In memory, Elise's aunt Zorana had named her first daughter Nydia, though the girl was more commonly called Dia.
Just ten of them, unless one counted Allister Seagleam's four children, far away in Bright Bay. Elise found it odd to think that those four—one older than her, the rest all younger—were as close kin to her as were Lord Rolfston's four: grandchildren of her grandmother's brother.
Banishing the faraway Seagleams from consideration, Elise concentrated on the ten gathered here. Any one could become crown prince or princess of the kingdom of Hawk Haven if luck was with them. The chief contenders for that honor were Purcel, as his mother's eldest, Sapphire, as Lord Rolfston's eldest, and herself. However, some courtiers whispered that if King Tedric was going to name an heir why did he need to follow the strict order of precedence? He should choose instead some young grandniece or grand-nephew, someone he could shape and teach during whatever years remained to him.
A voice, loud and piercing, cut into Elise's revery.
“Elise! Elise! Darling cousin, you look wonderful!”
Quickly Elise set down her wine goblet, knowing that this gushing greeting would be followed by an equally enthusiastic embrace, and not really wanting to spill wine on her new pale pink, rosebud-embroidered gown.
Sapphire Shield was the eldest of their generation, a buxom young woman of twenty-three with dark, blue-black hair, a pointed chin, and eyes the color of her namesake gem. She had been engaged several times, always into very advantageous matches, but had never taken her vows.
Elise knew perfectly well that politics, not romance, had ruled each of these arrangements, but Sapphire enjoyed mooning about after each broken engagement, acting as if her heart were truly broken. Such behavior might make those who didn't know her dismiss her as flighty and shallow, but Elise was not fooled.
Sapphire Shield was heir to the comfortable holdings accumulated through both her Redbriar and Shield family connections. Riki Redbriar, a scion of House Goshawk, had brought a considerable dowry into her marriage to Grand Duke Gadman, a good thing since members of the House of the Eagle were all essentially landless—merely comfortable fife tenants on crown-held lands.
Their son Rolfston Redbriar had made a good marriage to Melina Shield. Melina's dowry had included several nice holdings adjoining lands Riki Redbriar would eventually pass on to her son. Although claiming no title higher than Lady, Melina also brought with her the prestige of the Shield name and membership within the House of the Gyrfalcon for her children.
Queen Zorana the First had been a Shield and the Gyrfalcons were still considered first among the Great Houses. Therefore, as Lady Melina never wearied of telling anyone who would Usten, her children were kin to the first queen of Hawk Haven both through their father, who was her great-grandson, and through their mother, who was some sort of cousin.
No, thought Elise, Sapphire never forgets who she is, no matter how fiightily she behaves at functions like this.
As of this moment, that behavior included a crushing hug, compliments on Elise's dress (including insincere wishes that she could wear pink), and other such prattle.
Elise politely prattled back, though she rather wished she could snort, as Purcel did, and stalk off on the thin excuse of needing another tankard of beer.
“So tell me, Castle Flower,” Sapphire said, bending her head close to Elise's, “why do you think Uncle Tedric has summoned us all here?”
King Tedric, was, of course, Sapphire's great-uncle, as he was Elise's, but Sapphire often chose to minimize the degree of their relation. Among her peers, she had made no secret that she considered herself practically crown princess al-ready. After all, her father was Grand Duke Gadman's only surviving child and Grand Duke Gadman should have been named King Tedric's heir immediately following Crown Princess Lovella's death two years before.
Elise thought Sapphire overconfident, but there was no gain in telling her so, especially since Sapphire was more likely to become crown princess than Elise herself was, no matter that their relationship to the king was the same. Simply speaking, Sapphire had better connections.
Instead of making e
xcuses to escape after Purcel, Elise considered the best way of answering Sapphire's question. As the nickname “Castle Flower” suggested, Sapphire was among those who assumed that Elise's familiarity with the structure had made her privy to all its occupants’ secrets.
“Well,” Elise said, looking into her goblet as if the dark red wine held mysteries, “I think it must have something to do with Earl Kestrel, don't you?”
Sapphire, torn between a desire to probe further and a desire to seem to know more than her younger cousin, gave in to the latter impulse.
“I do think so.” She leaned so she was nearly whispering into Elise's ear. “The senior porter at the Kestrels’ city manse fancies my maid. He told her that a week ago a closed carriage came to the manse. The courtyard was cleared and Earl Kestrel ordered everyone away from the windows. Then someone or something was brought into the manse, cloistered in one ground-floor wing. No one but four servants and Earl Kestrel's cousin, Sir Jared Surcliffe, have been allowed in there since.”
Sapphire looked at Elise, but Elise refused to show the least sign that she, too, had heard some version of this tale. Let Sapphire think she knew more than the Castle Flower. She might give away something Elise didn't know.
“They do say,” Sapphire continued with relish, “that strange sounds are heard from the closed wing and that Earl Kestrel's bodyguard has been seen in the public markets pur-chasing great quantities of raw meat.”
Elise raised her eyebrows. This last was indeed news.
“Truly?” she asked, playing the sycophant gladly.
“Truly,” Sapphire confirmed. “My maid's sister is married to the cook for a large tavern in the city and he has seen the bodyguard with his own eyes.”
Elise swallowed aflippantimpulse to ask with who else's eyes might the cook be expected to see.
“So, what surprise do you think Earl Kestrel has brought?” But Sapphire had given away as much as she would without getting something in return. She shrugged her pretty white shoulders.
“I have no idea.”
Elise was about to suggest something in the line of a bear for the king to hunt when Jet, Sapphire's younger brother, sauntered over to join them.
At twenty, Jet Shield looked five years older, his features rugged under heavy black brows, his hair so thick that it resisted being tied back in a fashionable queue. His eyes were so dark that pupil could hardly be distinguished from iris. When his blood was up, they glittered like the stone for which he was named.
Each of Melina Shield's children was named for a precious gem, an affectation most believed. Some whispered, how-ever, that Melina practiced sorcerous arts thought lost when the Plague caused the Old World nations to abandon their colonies. Certainly the physical appearance of each of Melina's children bore out the latter rumors.
Elise didn't know which tale to believe. Her own mother, Aurella Wellward, had known Melina Shield since they were both children. Aurella said that she thought that Melina chose names for her children only after they were born and some moon-spans grown. Certainly, her confinements at private estates permitted this luxury. However, Lady Melina's old maidservant claimed loudly and frequently that her mistress chose each infant's name as soon as she was certain that she was carrying.
Whatever Rolfston Redbriar thought on the matter, he was not saying. Personally, Elise believed he was too canny to meddle with anything that brought his branch of the family such respect and awe.
“May I join you ladies?” Jet asked, sliding into a seat next to Elise without waiting for an answer. This close she was aware of his scent, something musky and masculine, just touched with a faint hint of pipe smoke.
A year past his majority, Jet had joined his sister in the matrimonial battles. Unlike her, he would doubtless have less time to peruse the selection open to him. Sapphire was a good six years older than Elise, her next equivalent competitor for matches. Although Jet was five years older than Purcel, Zorana was far more aggressive than Elise's father and had already been hinting about making a betrothal for her son. Such hints narrowed the field before the race had really begun.
So Jet turned what was already becoming a practiced smile on his second cousin.
“You look beautiful tonight, Elise,” he said. “Your complexion is so well suited to the paler shades. Pinks just make my sister look sallow.”
Elise ignored the dig, though she could see Sapphire fuming. It was true, though, that Sapphire was best suited to stronger colors: blues, reds, purples. It was also true that there was no love lost between these siblings.
Long resenting Sapphire's place as heir, Jet now treasured the dream that if his father became King Tedric's successor, he, not Sapphire, would be named crown prince: “Sapphire has trained long and hard,” Jet had told Elise, after pledging her to silence, “to manage the estates our family has inherited from both Shields and Redbriars. Why should that training be wasted? Rather, let her continue as heir to our family holdings. I am free to prepare, with no previous bias and no distractions, to follow our father, after his own long reign, onto the throne.”
Doubtless Sapphire knew her brother's feelings on the matter. As she glowered at him, too well trained to pull his hair as she would have when they were in the nursery, Elise wished that someone, something, would break this uncomfortable moment.
Her wish was granted. A footman came to the door of the parlor where the grandnieces and grandnephews had been sequestered to await the end of their elders’ counsels.
“His Majesty,” the man boomed, looking at the carved paneling on the far wall rather than at any one of the ten eager faces now turned toward him, “requests that you attend him in the Eagle's Hall.”
Suddenly meek and obedient, the cousins set down goblets and tankards, smoothed hair, surreptitiously checked reflections in mirrors and polished glass. Then, falling into order as they had so many times before, in so many gatherings like, but unlike, this one, the cousins filed from the parlor. Only one voice broke the silence.
Kenre Trueheart, at the age of seven the youngest of the cousins, whispered to his older sister, “Now, Deste, now we'll find out what it's all about.”
Smiling softly to herself, Elise could not help but think that little Kenre was uttering the words imprinted on each of their hearts.
SOMETIMES, FIREKEEPER THOUGHT she would go insane. It was the noise. Or perhaps it was the smells. Maybe it was some undefined sense of too many people—just the people, just the humans—forget their dogs and cats, horses and mules, cows, goats, sheep, chickens…
She would go mad.
Each day when she bathed in the metal tub that Derian filled for her in the great stone-walled chamber that was her haven in Earl Kestrel's mansion, she checked herself for bite marks. Surely she must have been bitten by some rabid fox or possum. Surely, it was that, something in her blood, running through her mind, setting it afire.
There could not be so many people in all the world.
But the falcon Elation told her with sardonic calm that there were—that this city of Eagle's Nest was large, but not the only such swarming of humans, not the largest even.
But Firekeeper had long been the only human in all the world. She never realized that this was what she had believed. Now she must acknowledge that she had believed herself unique.
Even the evidence of the artifacts—the knife and the tinderbox—these had not convinced her that there were other humans in the world. Now she must face humans in their varied colors, shapes, sizes, and smells.
She would go mad.
Derian entered the room to find her sitting on the floor, her head buried against Blind Seer's flank. She ignored the man. Hoped that he would go away. Knew from the gusting exhalation of the breath beneath her brother's ribs that he would not.
“Firekeeper?”
A finger poked her gently in the side. She growled.
“C'mon, kid.”
Hands on her shoulders.
“Today is the day. You don't dare disappoi
nt Earl Kestrel.”
Why not? she thought. She had disappointed herself. Why shouldn't she disappoint that small, hawk-nosed male with his arrogant, proprietary attitude?
“Please?”
Derian sounded more unhappy than annoyed. Reluctantly, Firekeeper permitted the smallest tendril of sympathy for him and his predicament to finger through her own misery. Earl Kestrel was always patient with her, even kind in a stiff, wooden fashion that owed more than a little to his fear of Blind Seer. He was not always so with Derian. More than once Firekeeper had heard him yelling at the younger man, berating him for failures incomprehensible to her.
She raised her head from the comforting fur. Derian was kneeling on the floor beside her. To his credit, he was ignoring Blind Seer's baleful blue gaze, having learned that the wolf could be trusted on his terms. As long as Derian did not make what the wolf interpreted as a threatening gesture toward the woman, he was safe.
“Firekeeper,” Derian said, catching her gaze and holding it when she would look away, “today you meet the king. Tonight you dine in his halls. It is for this that Earl Kestrel brought you from the wilds. You can't back out now.”
“I can,” she threatened.
“You can,” he agreed, “but I wouldn't like to be you if you do. Earl Kestrel has always had his own uses for you, no matter what pretty speeches he makes for other ears. If you fail him…”
She said nothing.
Derian shrugged. “The best you can hope for is being turned out into the streets. You might be fine. So would the falcon, but I wouldn't give Blind Seer a chance, not even at night.”
Firekeeper knew too well what he meant. She had seen the city streets, had been taken out into them cloaked and after dark under Derian and Ox's escort. (Fleetingly she wondered why the big man permitted his own to call him after a castrated bull.)
Using curtains of heavy fabric, Derian had made her a concealed place from which she could watch the city traffic without being seen by either the inmates of the manse or the passersby.
So many people!
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