So I've taken them with me. Now, no one will have reason to fear Bright Bay. If they choose to fear me, isolated on my Isles, well, the ocean is my moat.
How will anyone know what I have done? I shall tell them. On the day of your coronation, letters will be delivered by hand to the rulers of Stonehold, Waterland, New Kelvin, and Hawk Haven.
Enjoy your reign, Cousin, long as it may last.
The letter was signed, "Valora, Queen of the Isles."
Allister had made no effort to hide the scroll and so Shad finished reading moments after he did.
"She's angry, isn't she, Father?" The young man tried to smile, but the expression failed to reach his eyes.
"She is," Allister agreed. He let the scroll roll shut. "Fortunately, for us, enough of the nobles of Bright Bay have remained loyal that she is unlikely to try to retake her throne by force. Even if she makes an alliance…"
He rubbed his free hand over his eyes, feeling a headache coming on. There were so many possibilities. Valora could ally herself with one of Bright Bay's rivals—Waterland came immediately to mind. Of course, she put herself at risk, then, unless she could keep them from taking over in the guise of giving aid. The threat of Old Country magic might be enough. Then again…
Once more Allister rubbed his eyes.
"Bring the candles closer, Shad. I want to see if we can guess what was here."
Shad obeyed and the warm yellow glow illuminated three distinct depressions in the velvet. The first was roughly rectangular, about as long as Allister's hand from the heel of his palm to his longest fingertip, but only as wide as three fingers. The second depression was the largest: a face-sized oval set upon a long handle. The third was quite small: a perfect circle blurred at one edge, as if whatever had been there was irregular in shape.
Father and son studied these ghost images for a long moment; then Shad ventured:
"I'd say the smallest impression is of a ring. I've seen the like in Mother's jewel box."
"A ring," Allister agreed, "with some sort of setting. Yes, that seems likely. What do you think of the other two?"
Shad shook his head. "I'm less certain, but the large one could be several things: a fixed fan, a hand mirror, even a mask on a stick."
"Good guesses," Allister said. "You have a sharp eye. The last one could be too many things—even a small box holding something else entirely. We must ask, especially among the older courtiers, and see if anyone has ever seen these treasures. Unhappily, Gustin Sailor kept them a secret, so it is possible that no one currently alive but Valora herself may have seen them."
"That seems likely," Shad agreed with a sudden grin. "You saw the expression of horror on Lord Ivory's face when you said you were bringing me in here with you. Clearly, you violated some antique precedent."
Allister stared at the rows of crowns, giving in for a moment to the very human impulse not to think about something too horrible to contemplate. Then he turned to his son.
"Let us continue violating precedent, then." He handed Shad the key to the Royal Treasury door. "Bring your mother here when she has time and ask her to select crowns for both of us. She has a good eye. Tell her to feel free to choose jewels to wear as well, but to remember that we do not wish to appear like gaudy conquerors, only to express proper respect for the dignity of the occasion."
Shad nodded. "I can do that." He paused, toying with the key. "But, Father, what are we going to do about that?"
A toss of his head indicated the empty cabinet where three ensorcelled items should have rested.
Allister took the whale key and relocked the cabinet.
"We certainly cannot send a fleet to chase Valora down and reclaim them. We don't even know for certain what we seek, and she is right: The ocean is now her moat."
The king considered further as he helped his son shut and relock the polished maple doors, then handed him the gold and emerald key.
"I will write King Tedric of Hawk Haven. As he is our ally, he deserves to know of this development from us, even if our letter cannot reach him before Valora's does. Doubtless hers is already in Eagle's Nest, awaiting the appropriate date for delivery. Then, we shall go ahead with the coronation and then begin plans for your wedding to Crown Princess Sapphire."
"Shall I tell her," Shad asked hesitantly, "what has happened?"
"Do," Allister replied decisively. "Sapphire is present as her kingdom's representative to our coronation. Make certain that she knows that you are informing her officially, at my request. Sapphire is a proud girl, quick to feel a slight."
"Proud, yes, but brave, too," Shad said, "to come here in advance of her people with just a small honor guard."
"I'm glad you appreciate her courage," Allister said, "since you will marry her before the moon turns full again."
Shad nodded. "I do. I only wish things were simpler."
King Allister squeezed his son's shoulder. "We've accepted—some would say usurped—a throne and a kingdom. Nothing will ever be simple for us again."
In the darkness of his bedchamber, King Allister tossed, unable to keep up the pretense of sleep any longer. Beside him, Pearl sighed and moved close to him.
"It will be all right, Allister," she said, with the same soft certainty that she had once used to banish their children's night fears.
"Will it?" he asked, and was surprised by the harshness in his own voice.
"It must be," she said. "We must make it so, whatever it takes."
"I feel a fool, trusting Valora." It wasn't the first time he'd said this, not even to her.
"We had no choice," Pearl said, accepting some of the guilt as her own, "as we saw it then. Maybe even Valora herself didn't know what she intended to do. Maybe the impulse to claim the treasures came to her only when the time came to relinquish her kingdom and her power."
But King Allister of the Pledge, remembering the angry fire in Valora's ocean-blue eyes when she finally agreed to surrender Bright Bay's throne and accept a lesser kingdom in its place, thought that Valora had known even then what she would do, and cursed himself once more for not anticipating her treachery.
Chapter II
Despite the strong, chill wind blowing in from the bay, the young woman remained perched upon the castle parapet, her dark brown eyes gazing out over the waters of Silver Whale Cove. Perhaps for warmth, perhaps for companionship, her right arm was flung around the neck of the enormous grey wolf seated beside her, his elegant head higher than her own.
"So much water," she said at last. "Derian told me it would be like this, and that the ocean beyond this bay makes the bay itself seem a cattle pond by comparison."
"And Queen Valora is fled over that ocean," the wolf added, "taking with her these magical treasures we have heard so much about."
He laughed, a dry sound that to most human ears would have sounded like nothing more than a faint snort. His blue eyes danced with amusement as he continued:
"And so this Valora steals a victory at a time when all expected her to flee tail-tucked, like a yearling too full of springtime strength who has been pounded by the One Male."
"I wish, Blind Seer," the young woman said a trace reproachfully, "that I was as certain that what Queen Valora has done is amusing. Both King Tedric and King Allister are very stern these days. Crown Princess Sapphire hides her rage but thinly. I have heard that the seamstresses who are fitting her for her wedding gown tremble when they must approach her."
"True, sweet Firekeeper," the wolf agreed. "Our friends are worried, but then there is nothing more humiliating than being bitten on the nose by prey you had thought dead. The kings are old Ones who think about the consequences, but Sapphire only feels the shame."
Firekeeper shared Blind Seer's laughter this time before returning her attention to the bay.
"There will be no running after Queen Valora to bring the treasures back. I understand that now. I had not thought there was a river so wide that it could not be forded or swum, a pond so broad that one could not r
un around its edges to the other side."
A raised voice from inside the castle interrupted their discussion.
"Lady Blysse! Lady Blysse!"
Firekeeper, who had accepted Blysse Norwood as a name to which she would answer, groaned.
Blind Seer commented slyly, "Crown Princess Sapphire is not the only one who snaps at the seamstresses, eh, Fire-keeper?"
In reply, the young woman punched the wolf in the shoulder. Swinging her long legs down from the stone wall, Firekeeper called to the woman inside:
"I am here. Wait and I will come in to you."
A kerchief-covered head popped out one of the narrow windows in the castle's stone wall. The woman's face beneath the covering was shriveled with age and lined from sour temper.
"Lady Blysse!" she shrieked. "What are you doing out there?"
Firekeeper answered, just a slight note of exasperation in her voice, "Looking at the water."
"Be careful! You'll fall!"
Deeming this last not worthy of reply, Firekeeper paused in her descent only long enough to make certain that Blind Seer had leapt safely down from their shared perch. The wolf, however, experienced no more difficulty with the descent than she had, despite the fact that he was easily the size of a small pony. Nature had blessed him with dexterity, flexibility, and a singular lack of imagination regarding risk—traits Firekeeper shared.
Thus, when Firekeeper and Blind Seer slipped through the window into their room, it was the waiting tirewoman who was pale and shaking.
"I really must protest!" she began, her voice shrill.
"I wouldn't, Goody Sewer," came a male voice from the doorway. "She doesn't understand."
Firekeeper, who indeed had been growing frustrated, brightened at the familiar voice.
"Derian!" she cried in relief. "The meeting then is over?"
Without standing on ceremony—a trait Goody Sewer clearly disliked—Derian Carter strolled into Lady Blysse's room. He was a tall youth, possessed of dark red hair tied back by a black ribbon into a fashionable queue, and fair skin dusted with freckles. Hazel-green eyes that could be as changeable as the sea twinkled now with laughter.
"We are in recess," he replied. "When did you arrive?"
"Early this morning," Firekeeper said, "in a wagon with Doc. Blind Seer permitted himself to be covered with blankets, but still the horses shied when they caught his scent. I had to snarl at them most fiercely."
Derian Carter, more inclined than most to take Firekeeper literally, grinned.
"We asked for you," Firekeeper continued "but we were told you were in a meeting. A note was left for Doc and he told us what it said."
"The meeting was King Tedric's business," Derian said in a tone of voice that warned her not to pursue the matter further. Then he turned his attention to the tirewoman, who had been listening, curiosity warring with impatience.
"I beg you, Goody," Derian said, "to refrain from scolding Lady Blysse even when she acts in what must seem to you a foolish manner."
"But if she falls!" the woman began.
"No one will blame you," Derian soothed. "I assure you. No one who knows her well maintains for long the illusion that anyone but Lady Blysse is responsible for her actions."
Goody Sewer frowned, her critical gaze fixed on the young woman with clear dissatisfaction.
Lady Blysse Norwood did not fit the usual image of a young noblewoman. Lean and slim, almost to boyishness, Blysse wore scuffed brown leather pants cut below the knee and a matching leather vest. Her bare feet were dirty and callused. Her only adornment—if such a practical item could be classified thus—was a sheathed hunting knife in whose pommel gleamed a large, deep red, cabochon cut garnet.
"I came here," the tirewoman explained, "to fit the young lady for her gowns and found her perched out on the parapet!"
"Did she come inside when you called?" Derian asked.
"Yes," the woman admitted grudgingly.
"Then all is well," Derian concluded. "Please, go ahead with your fitting. I won't get in the way. I have a few minutes before I need to return to my meeting."
Firekeeper hid a grin, but Blind Seer, cheerfully aware that no one but Firekeeper would understand what he said, commented,
"Fox Hair is determined to pull the woman's tail. What has she done to him?"
"If," Firekeeper replied in the same language, "she has been acting toward him as this castle's staff did to Doc when we arrived, she has been treating him as if he is as untrained and untried as I was when first I came forth from the forests."
"Well," Blind Seer said philosophically, "when the moon was last full this seamstress served another mistress, and her pack and Derian's were vowed enemies. Not everyone has taken well to the changes."
Firekeeper nodded and, to the evident shock of Goody Sewer, began undoing the carved toggles that held her vest closed over her small but definite breasts.
"Lady Blysse!" the woman shrilled.
"Derian has seen me without clothes before," Firekeeper said with a patience she didn't feel and continued to undress.
Derian, however, perhaps feeling he had teased the woman enough, politely turned his back.
"I have been Lady Blysse's personal attendant these last six or so moonspans," he explained, "but my starveling waif has become a young lady. I shall remember her modesty even though she does not."
The tirewoman, who—no matter what she pretended—could not have failed to hear the stories of how Lady Blysse had been discovered in the wilds west of the Iron Mountains early the past spring, sniffed but did not pursue the subject. Indeed, Goody Sewer's easy acceptance of Blind Seer—as terrifyingly huge a wolf as any storyteller could dream—gave lie to her pretended ignorance and naughty indignation. That she trusted Blind Seer not to make dinner of her meant she had heard something of Lady Blysse's peculiar history.
"Try this gown on first" was all the tirewoman said. She held up a long-sleeved gown in dark blue fabric, banded at wrist and throat by ribbons in the Kestrel sky-blue and scarlet.
"I had the pattern cut along the measurements the post-rider brought, but there will certainly need to be alterations."
Firekeeper, now naked except for her underclothing, stepped into the gown and let the woman fasten it As she stood, trembling slightly at the proximity of a near stranger, she asked Derian:
"How is Elation? We have not seen her since we arrived."
Derian's tone grew worried as he replied, "She was with me until shortly before I arrived at the city," he said. "Then she took off. Last I saw her, she was flying west."
Firekeeper was also concerned. The peregrine falcon had taken quite a liking to Derian and wouldn't have left him without good reason. Still, she decided there was no need to worry the young man further.
"The hunting birds," she offered, "migrate like most other wingéd folk. It could be that her blood called her."
She grinned suddenly, remembering how once Derian had not believed her when she said she could understand what animals said to her.
"It's not as if Elation could tell you where she was going," she added.
Derian chuckled. "That's true. How are you feeling these days? You look well."
"Doc says that my wounds are healed," Firekeeper replied, "though I will have some new scars."
A sniff from the tirewoman indicated that she had noticed the liberal patterning of scars across Firekeeper's skin. Not a one of the young woman's limbs was free from the silver and white lines: some mere gossamer tracery, a few heavily seamed with scar tissue. Two comparatively fresh scars—one on Firekeeper's back, the other along her thigh—remained livid red, fading along the edges into dull pink.
With his back turned, Derian's expression couldn't be seen, but his voice expressed his satisfaction at the news.
"Well, you can't expect to get away without any marks. You were nearly dead from your injuries and even Doc's healing talent can't free you from all the consequences of your impulsiveness."
Firek
eeper recognized the teasing note in Derian's voice and let the apparent insult stand, though, coming from another, the accusation that she had acted without thought would have been a fighting matter.
At a prod from the tirewoman, Firekeeper raised her right arm so that Goody Sewer could adjust the pins in that sleeve.
"Doc has gone to learn what is expected of him for the wedding," Firekeeper said to distract herself. And to see if he can "accidentally" meet with a certain young lady, she thought, but she said nothing, respecting Sir Jared Surcliffe's dignity.
"Doubtless," Derian said, "he will take the time to familiarize himself with the public areas of this fine castle."
Again, something in Derian's tone—this time a warm undercurrent of laughter—made Firekeeper suspect that he had understood her unspoken thoughts as well as what she said aloud.
"I hear that we were among the last of the Hawk Haven wedding guests to arrive," Firekeeper continued, realizing to her astonishment that she was making conversation—a concept she would not have understood five moonspans before.
"Only the mother of the bride," Derian said, a note of tension entering his voice, "has failed to arrive. Some say that she will not attend, recently widowed as she is."
"Furious at her daughter," Blind Seer commented, "if the truth would be known."
Derian, of course, didn't hear the wolf's comment, and went on:
"Lord Rolfston's death is less than two moonspans past," he said, "but still many consider Lady Melina's absence a bad omen for the marriage."
Goody Sewer spoke around the pins held in her pursed lips. "How can it be a good omen if the mother of the bride—the proximate ancestress—refuses to attend? I say that Duke… King Allister should postpone the wedding until appropriate mourning for the bride's father is ended and her mother is willing to attend."
"You aren't the only one who thinks that," Derian said easily, "but King Allister is of another mind—as is his son. If Shad is willing to risk bad omens on his wedding day, I say we should support him. It's important to seal the truce between Bright Bay and Hawk Haven."
Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart Page 2