She felt the mad panic returning and stamped it back. Even so, it filled her voice as she challenged Derian.
“He turn us out,” she said sharply. “How he do that? Little man, big voice, no teeth.”
“There you are wrong, Lady Blysse.” Derian surged to his feet and crossed to where a new gown had been spread on the bed. “Earl Kestrel has many teeth. You just don't know how to see them. Do you think Ox is the only big man he commands or Race the only one who can use a bow?”
She snarled. Derian continued as if she had not.
“You are probably meaner than any one of them—maybe than any two. But in the end, they would win. You would be gone. Blind Seer would be dead.”
He shrugged. “Or you can put on this pretty gown, scrub the tears from your cheeks, and let me comb your hair. Then we'll have an audience with the king…”
He shook his head in wonder, still struggling with the idea that he was to meet the king. “And then come back here and tell Blind Seer all about it.”
She knew he was humoring her in this last. He didn't believe that she could speak with the wolf, understand all that he said to her in return. At Elation's prompting, she had agreed to stop trying to convince him.
“With me?” she asked, rising to her feet in turn. “Blind Seer come with me?”
Derian shook his head. “Not this time. You'll have to settle for me and Ox.”
“Blind Seer comes,” she insisted stubbornly. “Tell Earl Kestrel, Norvin Norwood, Uncle Norvin—whatever name. Blind Seer comes with me.”
Valet spoke from the doorway, his’ soft-footed arrival having been unnoticed even by the wolves. “Derian, I will advise my master to give Lady Blysse her will in this matter. There are advantages.”
Firekeeper spun to stare at the little brown man.
“Do,” she said, “and I will make ready.”
Valet bowed deeply, an acknowledgment of a deal made and sealed rather than in abasement, and vanished.
“Well done, Sister” Blind Seer said. “I look forward to meeting this One above Ones. Now, you must make ready. I, of course, am already perfect.”
“Braggart,” she replied in the human language.
The gown she was to wear tonight was made of some soft stuff the color of bone, decorated with thin Unes of scarlet and of blue. With it went a wreath of flowers and a string of small round pebbles Derian called pearls.
“A lovely ensemble,” Derian commented, Ufting the gown by its shoulders so she could inspect it. “I believe that Duchess Kestrel, the earl's mother, selected it at her son's request. It should look good on you—very delicate and virginal.”
He chuckled. “Of course the belt knife and the wolf will rather ruin that effect.”
Firekeeper cocked a brow at him. They had long settled that whether or not she was wearing formal attire a few accessories were non-negotiable. Her knife and fire-making tools stayed with her and she flatly refused to wear shoes. Even Earl Kestrel had given up in his efforts to convince her otherwise.
She pulled off her leather vest and dropped her breeches, enjoying the small victory of watching Derian's fair skin turn dark red. Then she gestured imperiously toward the fire.
“My bath, Derian,” she said. “Then we go see this king.”
AS DERIAN HANDED FIREKEEPER into the carriage—an assistance she permitted only because of her difficulties handling long skirts—he imagined many eyes watching them from behind the curtained and shuttered windows of the Kestrel Manse. No matter what the earl had ordered, some would disobey, would peek out. They would tell their fellows of the strange girl but partially glimpsed in the darkness and of the pale grey shadow whose very presence had terrified the horses in the instant before it had leapt into the carriage.
He shrugged. Secrecy wouldn't matter after tonight. After tonight, the entire city would be alive with tales. The only question was what those tales would tell. Would they be about the return of a long-lost granddaughter to her joyful grandfather, as Earl Kestrel hoped? Or would they be about an impertinent nobleman imprisoned—or perhaps executed—for his presumption in forcing upon the king one he had wished forgotten?
Derian wished that he had a touch of the gift of foresight. Then, as quickly, he withdrew that wish. Knowing—especially if the news was bad—wouldn't make tonight's ordeal any easier. He would like to know how King Tedric viewed henchmen, though, and devoutly hoped that they were not judged in the light of their master's ambitions.
Tonight, Valet served as footman. Derian would drive the coach, thus eliminating the need to bring anyone else into Earl Kestrel's secret. Ox and Race would provide their only escort.
Turning away as Valet closed the carriage door upon the earl and his niece, Derian spared a prayer to his ancestors that Norvin Norwood would remember to be patient with the young woman. Firekeeper had distinctly disliked the closed coach the times using one had been necessary. Then only her strong sense of personal dignity (surprising in one who still could not remember when modesty was appropriate) had kept her from bolting.
Up on the box, Derian shook the reins and felt the elegant team of matched rose-greys step out as smartly as if they were on parade, their momentary fear of wolf scent forgotten. The pre-planned route to the palace carefully avoided the market and the streets where the guild members kept their shops, so traffic was light. Ox and Race, riding infront,took care of obstacles as they occurred.
At the carriage's approach the palace gates swung open. Ariderin the smart uniform of the King's Own Guard trotted his Uver chestnut gelding out to intercept them.
“Follow me, please,” he said, his tone making the phrase an order.
Derian obeyed, amusing himself by pricing the man's elegant mount and deciding that it must belong to the guard's stables. If it was the man's personal mount, Derian figured he himself should consider going for a soldier. The pay was obviously quite good.
In a private walled courtyard, Derian brought the team to a halt and swung Uthely down from the box.
“Take care of these,” he said, tossing the reins to a dutifully bored-looking guard standing outside the towering stone archway. “Earl Kestrel will need me.”
A wide-eyed look of surprise and sudden anger shattered the man's trained indifference. Clearly, he had not expected to be so spoken to by a coachman.
Earl Kestrel's sharp bark of “Derian!” smothered whatever dressing-down the guard had been planning for the impertinent redhead. Drawing the mantle of the earl's favor around him, Derian crossed to where Valet held open the carriage door. Norvin Norwood stood to one side of the portable steps. Firekeeper crouched in the doorway, her traveling cloak pulled up around her face, her nose wrinkling as she took in all the unfamiliar scents. Blind Seer's head poked around her waist, his own nose busy.
“Derian, if you would explain to my ward,” Earl Kestrel said, his tones barely civil with suppressed tension, “that we have an appointruent and should not keep the king waiting.”
Derian nodded and extended a hand to the young woman.
“Come on, Firekeeper,” he coaxed. “There will be time enough for that later. Right now, we need to follow Race and Ox through that doorway.”
She looked at him, her dark eyes showing none of the confusion she must feel.
“And see this king?”
“And see the king,” he agreed with soft emphasis on the article. “Here there is only one.”
“Here,” she said, gathering up her skirts in massive, un-ladylike bunches. “I remember. Elsewhere, Blind Seer and I know it is different.”
Derian was quietly impressed with how the guards at the door maintained their wooden expressions when confronted with woman and wolf. They passed them through without comment, though the two who led the way down the corridor seemed unnaturally tense. Doubtless they feared being leapt upon from behind.
The castle at Eagle's Nest was an old building as such things were judged in the New World. It had been built some two hundred and twenty-five yea
rs before by the family Gildcrest. They had been granted land in this area by a ruler of some faraway nation in the Old World, an old woman who had never and would never see any more of the holdings she divvied up among her followers than their outlines on a map.
However, this Old World ruler firmly believed in rewarding well those who might otherwise become troublesome. If those rewards were located at a great distance and presented in such a fashion that refusing to relocate to them could be taken as a grievous insult, then all the better.
During the years when the Plague gave lie to all claims of power and dominion, the castle's builders had perished. The castle with its strong walls had been much fought over until Queen Zorana the First had won it and kept it. That possession, almost as much as the loyalty of her people to her, had made her queen then and made her grandson Tedric king today.
And will Blysse be queen thereafter? Derian mused as he escorted his charge down the wide stone corridors. That, I suppose, is precisely what we're here to learn.
Then he turned a corner, stepped through a towering door, and royalty was before him. Derian had never seen either King Tedric or Queen Elexa from any closer than a seat in the crowd during some public festival. Up close, he found them both more and less impressive than he had imagined.
Distance had erased lines from both of the monarchs’ faces. When Derian raised his head from making his homage on the dense New Kelvinese carpet at the foot of the steps leading to the thrones, he was shocked to see how ancient they both looked.
Intellectually, he knew that King Tedric was seventy-five years old, old for even his long-lived family. Queen Elexa was somewhat younger at sixty-nine, but the illness that years before had robbed her of her ability to bear children had given her frailty beyond her age in poor return. Beneath her tissue-paper-fine, skin, the blood could be seen running faintly blue. The crocheted lace gloves on her hands could not completely hide the dark splotches of age spots.
Her gaze, though, was kind and compassionate. The gracious dip of her head acknowledged commoners as well as their master.
King Tedric was less kind, more shrewd than his queen. His faded brown eyesflickeredover each of them swiftly, leaving Derian with the inescapable impression that the monarch would remember each individual. There was a taut alertness to the aged ruler that Derian had never noticed when he had gazed upon him from the crowds and something of the eagle in the tight grasp of his bony hands on the arms of his throne.
“So, Norwood,” the king snapped, “this girl is the one you claim as Barden's daughter?”
He said the disowned prince's name without any hesitation—a good omen for the earl's cause.
Earl Kestrel nodded. “And these four men can bear witness to her finding, as can my cousin Sir Jared Surcliffe.”
“So you said when you came before us with your fanciful tale. Well, I see little of my son in this young woman and less of your sister. Must she bring her dog with her? I am willing to credit your tale of survival in the wilds without such props.”
Norwood stiffened slightly. “My ward has her own will, Your Majesty. She did not wish to be parted from the wolf.”
King Tedric's Ups moved slightly in something not quite a smile.
“Wolf? Never have I seen one so large. Rather, I think, an enormous hybrid.”
Derian glanced at Firekeeper, worried that she would react to the insult to her beloved “brother,” but the king's diction and use of the unfamiliar term “hybrid” had only confused her. She waited, still patient for now.
Earl Kestrel also chose not to challenge the king and so Tedric continued:
“Now, I have seen the lass. Let me see this other proof you mentioned.”
This was the moment that Derian had dreaded over all others. Firekeeper had refused to let the knife—her Fang, she called it—leave her person. Not even when she had slept or bathed had she put it by. No offer of a substitute, longer, sharper, or more ornately made—Earl Kestrel had brought many such, some worth small fortunes in themselves—had moved her.
At the earl's request, Derian had coached Firekeeper long and carefully for this moment. He found he was holding his breath when Earl Kestrel turned to the young woman.
“Lady Blysse,” the earl said steadily, “show the king your knife.”
The guards to either side of the dais tensed at these ominous-sounding words, but King Tedric, briefed to expect them, only waved his hand imperiously when they would interpose themselves between his royal self and perceived danger.
“Back,” he said. “There should be no harm here.”
Firekeeper stood where she had risen from her homage to the throne. A slim, even slight figure in her long gown of maiden's white embroidered at throat and hem with ribbons, her cobalt-blue traveling cloak tossed back from her shoulders, the young woman didn't look a threat. Her dark-brown hair was an unruly mass of curls, worn rather shorter than was the fashion. Her only adornments were a simple wreath of flowers and a short necklace of pearls.
Among those gathered in the lofty stone audience hall only Derian and Race suspected that Firekeeper was far more deadly than any of the armed and armored guards, despite their swords and ceremonial halberds. However, Derian and Race could do nothing with their knowledge but wait, tense and ready.
At Earl Kestrel's command, Firekeeper dropped her hand to her waist. There, rather than the more usual girdle of flowers andribbons,she wore a brown leather belt, much stained from the weather.
“My knife,” she said, drawing the weapon and holding it so that Prince Barden's crest and the smooth garnet in the hilt were clearly visible. “Mine!”
The emphasis was clear, even without the growl that trailed the announcement. One of King Tedric's shaggy eye-brows flew upward in astonishment. The queen gasped. Earl Kestrel colored a fiery red.
Embarrassment or anger? Derian wondered.
King Tedric recovered first. “Yours, then. I only wish to see it more closely.”
The words barely were past his lips before Firekeeper, despite the encumbering skirts, had flown up the steps to stand at his side. The knife she held inches from his face could have as easily vanished between his ribs, but the king neither started nor paled. Waiting below, BUnd Seer thumped his tail briefly in what Derian could swear was muted applause.
The king examined the knife with all due consideration.
“It could be Barden's,” he said at last. “It bears his crest and I seem to recall some such blade.”
Queen Elexa recovered from her shock and now she, too, examined the knife. “I have seen this before. It was given to Barden by Lovella on his wedding day. She showed it to me beforehand, pleased by its craftsmanship. This one is just its like.”
“A knife can be imitated,” the king said cautiously.
“Perhaps,” Elexa agreed, a faint smile on her lips, “but the knife Lovella showed me possessed a secret. I doubt that any who sought to imitate the weapon merely from its external appearance could have known of it.”
“Can you show us what this secret is?” the king asked, interested yet impatient.
“If the girl will let me touch the knife,” the queen said, moving a fragile hand slightly.
Firekeeper had been Ustening, her head cocked to one side, struggling with words and language patterns unfamiliar to her. From the expression on her face, Derian knew that she was growing confused—and when she was confused, her temper grew unpredictable.
“Lady Blysse,” he called, without waiting for permission, “the queen doesn't want your knife. She simply wants to touch it. Let her.”
“Touch?” Firekeeper said, the hoarseness of an almost growl in her throat.
“Touch,” Derian assured her. Shrugging sightly, for he had already committed one social misstep, he addressed the queen directly. “Your Majesty, if you would move slowly, so as not to alarm her.”
Accustomed to always being accorded social graces, the queen was less offended by their violation in a good cause than someone of
lesser standing might be. Giving Blysse a reassuring smile, she reached out delicately with thumb and forefinger and grasped the garnet set into the pommel.
“Firekeeper,” Derian said warningly when his charge stiffened, “hold still.”
She did, to his infinite relief. When the queen had difficulty, she even steadied the hilt of the knife so that the queen could twist more strongly.
“There!” the queen said, pleased. Then, directly to the young woman standing before her, “Dear, my hands are not as strong as they once were. If you would grab the stone as I did and twist hard.”
Derian doubted that Firekeeper understood all the words, but the queen's gestures were eloquent. Firekeeper obeyed. A firm turn or so and the garnet began to loosen.
Derian had shown the girl how to pull out corks, but a threaded cap was something new andfrustratedher momentarily. However, at the queen's urging Firekeeper continued to twist. At last, with a small grating of sand caught in in-frequently used grooves, the stone came free, revealing a small compartruent in the hilt.
“Not so very large,” the queen said complacently, examining the hollow spot, “but large enough to bear a message or some small item. Lovella was quite delighted with it.”
“Then without a doubt, this is Barden's knife,” King Tedric's gaze was shrewd. “And there is less a doubt that this is Barden's daughter.”
Fascinated, Derian watched the king's eyes narrow in an expression far too like Earl Kestrel's for him to doubt the type of thoughts the ruler was entertaining. Norvin Norwood had been right. King Tedric had not at all liked being subject to the manipulations of his siblings and their young kin.
The possible existence of a granddaughter gave the king an upper hand once again. The king smiled, but it was not precisely a kind smile.
“Norvin, bring your ward…”
Not “my granddaughter,” Derian noted to himself. He's not ready to grant quite that much, not yet. He wants Earl Kestrel to remember who is in charge.
“And join my family at table tonight. They have all heard rumors of your travels. It is time that they learn just what you have brought home.”
Wolf's Eyes Page 14