by Jenna Rhodes
Two small figures crouched in the shadow cast by the Farbranch cider barn, about the only coolness at that far end of the quarter. One figure was shorter and rounder than the other, and kept tugging at the curls bouncing about her face and neck, trying to pull the kerchief meant to bind them up into place. The second, taller and slender, and most emphatically the leader of this nap-time escape, drew in the dirt with a stick and then dropped his pottery figures into areas of importance. Merri gave up on her crouch, dropped her rump onto the ground, and smoothed her skirt about her dimpled knees.
“Where’s the princess?”
Evar grunted and tugged a small doll of rags out of his tunic. “Here.” And he dropped it behind enemy lines.
“Ohhh.” She pursed her lips in dismay at her princess having already been captured and behind the enemy camp before the game had even started and opened her mouth to protest when a door swung up and slammed shut behind them, on the farmhouse side of the barn. Evar grabbed his twin, and the two of them shrank back against the cider barn as pelting footsteps came near, and their Uncle Keldan could be seen at the street’s edge.
He did not, however, look at them when he plunged to a halt at a sharp whistle. Like a wild pony, he dashed his long dark hair from his face with a whip of his neck and torso, and looked back at the house.
“And where might you be going?” Lily’s voice, Grandmother, sounding stern.
“The ild Fallyn’s tashya horses just came into the stockyard. I’ve got to go pick out my bids for the auction. It’s the horses, Mom.” And his business, too, which he did not remind his mother of as he straightened his vest and tried to look professional.
“Tressandre did not come with the herd.”
“No. And even if she did, I’d not give her a look.” He shifted his weight uneasily. “I cannot help it if her horses are some of the best.”
“I know you can’t. All right, on with you, then, but you’d best not be slamming any more doors, hurry or not. Those two scamps are down for a nap and Auntie’s resting as well, and we could use the peace and quiet.”
He tipped his hand to his forehead. “I will.” He gave a broad grin. “Sure is quiet with them asleep.”
“And I want to keep it that way. Now go on with you.” The farmhouse door closed with a soft click. Keldan pivoted and took off at a run.
He did not see either of them pinioned to the shadows and holding their breaths as he ran past. Merri tugged her kerchief off completely with a “pfhuff” and spread it on the ground, then moved her doll onto it. Evar gazed off after his uncle as he disappeared down the winding street, clouds of dust in his wake.
“Uncle Kel loves horsies,” Merri declared.
“But Mama doesn’t like the Sandra.”
“No,” she answered agreeably and began to set a few of the clay men on her side.
The two heads bent over the battleground, voices soft and muted, even Merri’s objection when her princess promptly got captured all over again. They did not notice when the shadow covering them grew quite long, and cooler, or the stooped figure that halted at the edge of it to watch them.
“Look at you, sweeties. Playing so nicely.”
The two of them looked up at the withered woman, shawl spread over her head so that her face could scarcely be seen, wrinkled and covered with sunspots, like the backs of her hands, a crack of age in her voice. Dust covered her, everywhere, muting the faded black garments she wore into a kind of dun nothingness. She held her shawl tightly under her chin with one palsied hand. Evar stared with a kind of fascination, but Merri tilted her head and promptly said, “I’m older.”
Evar shot her a look. “Not supposed to tell!”
Merri shrugged. “She’s not anyone.”
The woman gave a crackling laugh. “Such pretties. Are you fighting?”
Merri pointed at the figures which had changed position yet again. “My princess.”
The woman came closer, with a hobbling, broken step. “Keeping her safe, are you?”
Evar’s nose wrinkled. “Big war,” he said. “Over the princess.” He bent over his figurines, marching them about in the dirt and clashing them together, bits of dirt flying as he did.
The woman’s bright eyes watched them avidly.
Merri glanced at her once. “Auntie,” she commented.
“Not ours.”
“No, indeed, dearies, not your auntie. And where is she?”
“Nap.” Evar drew some more lines in the ground at his feet.
“We mustn’t wake her, then. She must be tired.”
“The guards are napping, too,” Merri told her helpfully as she lifted her doll and tidied her up a bit.
“Are they, now?”
Merri nodded. She looked up at the old woman who’d hobbled so close that she now stood right next to them. Her eyes looked sharp with interest. “I sang to them,” she confided.
“You did.”
Her loosened curls bobbed about her little round face as she nodded confidently.
“I can make people sleep, too,” the old woman said. She struck, a dagger in each hand. As she pulled back, each little body curled over and fell silently into the dirt.
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
BRIGHTLY COLORED BOLTS OF FABRIC lined the wall of the tailoring shop, each in its wooden slip carefully crafted by Tolby and Keldan Farbranch from the finest of lumber, sanded and polished to a gleam so that nary a splinter could snag or harm the yardage they contained. Their textures varied as much as their rainbow of colors, from the soft cottony gauzes favored by the Galdarkans and Vaelinars of the Far East, to work with their bells and veils, to the heavy quilted fabrics of the northern lands and their own woolens such as the pattern she prepared to weave now. As she scanned the fabrics, her gaze lingering on one and then another, she found she could see the handiwork that went into each creation more closely. This one was done in a huge factory building by a young weaver tired and thin, worn and worried her work might not pass inspection. A sadness hung about it, cast by her travails. That one was made in a large room just off a warm kitchen, where the sisters, mothers, and cousins gathered to work. And that one—strangest of all, black silken material with silvery stars and streaks in it—made in the stone cellar of a faraway hold, the rock of the room old and steeped in religious ceremony, in a city far, far to the east by Kernans she knew little about. These were things the old Nutmeg could never have seen before.
Lariel had surprised her by noticing family secrets almost immediately. Why would she not? A Warrior Queen certainly held more abilities than that of leading a troop into a battle. She knew how to govern. How to ask for and receive commitment. And she knew how to observe, and even though she’d been asleep for quite a long while, nothing had escaped her attention when she’d come to see the children. Nutmeg knew that, but just now found herself accepting it. She felt as though she had passed inspection.
Not that Lariel had had much choice in the mother of her heirs, not like she might have wanted at one time, but Jeredon and war had taken many options from them. Nutmeg rubbed the end of her nose on the back of her hand as tiny fluffs of wool made her want to sneeze as she set up her work for the day. Too much thinking, as her mother would say, and not enough doing. She would do! And let the thinking fall where it may, often in the quiet of the evening when she needed to sleep.
She found it a relief, though hard work, to be back in the shop. The twins (the children, she amended in her mind, she had to stop thinking of them as twins because to the outside world they couldn’t be) hung on her every moment, full of questions she could not always answer, and filled with energy she couldn’t match. Having Corrie for an auntie gave her half days now that she could spend working with her mother again, and she appreciated the relative silence. Not that her family did not spell her when they could, but the children were still too young for Tolby to ta
ke into the vineyards and orchards themselves with him for the day, although they often played in the quiet, huge barns which held the storage vats and barrels, or the cider barn when the presses were not at work. And Dayne, well, he had unlimited patience for their bounce and play and questions and had even been known to help create small stages of games for them, lying on his stomach on the floor with them, marching about toy soldiers or critters carved from wood to their dictates. He did take them into the groves, though for only short periods of time. She could not see Jeredon indulging in play had he lived to be their father, although he would have taken both tracking and hunting when they got older. But he had never shown the well of patience or interest with the young. Dayne, though, never seemed to tire of the attention whenever the two scamps chose to shower him with it. He would even—
Nutmeg felt the blow to her chest, the thud as the hilt hit home against her flesh, the numbing yet fiery pain of it, and it drove her to her knees. The loom shuddered as her weight hit the frame and she hung there, fingers twisted in the threads, the machine bracing her slack body. She looked down in surprise for the killing blow and saw nothing. Nothing. Threw her gaze up to the door, the windows, and saw them empty. A cold twist went through her body, as cold as hell itself. What had she felt?
Nutmeg flailed about, patting a hand down and finding nothing, not a single thing which could have stabbed her so deeply and as she did, a second stab hit home, this in her thigh. Her leg began to cramp and convulse and she cried out in pain, her voice strangled and thin. Lily rushed to her. “What is it?” Fear ran through her tangled body, cold, hard fear.
Nutmeg caught at her mother. “Home. Find my babies! Hurry!” as her throes toppled her to the floor, her vision of her mother bending over shrank and shrank until everything went dark.
Lily turned and threw open the shop door, bell jangling in protest. “I’m leaving!” she called back. “Help Nutmeg!” and she raced into the dirt street, pinching her skirts high in her hands, feet flying. A tear streamed down her face even as she caught her breath, running as she had not run since her children were little and, more often than not, in danger of falling from an orchard tree. Her breath rasped in her throat. Had she left Nutmeg behind, dying for some reason? Or had her daughter sensed that something struck from without? They had guards—where were the Vaelinars? Her breath hot and gravelly in her chest, she could see the farmhouse and cider house, with the green slopes of the ripening vineyards beyond covering the horizon.
Lily skidded to a halt in the cider barn’s wide open doors, startling Verdayne who stood poring over the latest progress on the recovery process of the books pinned here and there about the great, wooden, lunch table. He looked up. “What is it?”
“The children! Where are they?”
“Napping. Or they should be. Lily—” But she did not stay to hear another word, throwing herself out the cider barn and toward the house. Little puffs of dust sprayed from her boot toes and she could hear Verdayne behind her as she slammed open the door to the farmhouse. Silence greeted her in a house where silence never reigned.
The two Vaelinar guards lay slumped against the kitchen wall, fallen over, their mouths slack in mild snoring. “Oh Gods,” Lily muttered. Verdayne passed her, kicking each in the bottom of their boot soles until they grunted awake, but she did not pause to see anything else. She went to the back room, the children’s room, with its adjoining bedroom that had been fashioned for the auntie. Toys scattered from her frantic steps as she dashed through the small room, throwing open the cupboards and closets and looking under the beds. Not a mischievous face met her. Verdayne joined her.
“Found them?”
“No! They’re nowhere!”
Verdayne shouldered open the door to Corrie’s room. It lay silent and sterile as if never occupied, and all trace of the woman gone. Lily joined him and they both stood in shock a moment. “It’s like she’d never been here at all.”
“She took them!”
“Or turned them over. Not a drop of blood spilled.” He pushed Lily gently out of his way. “Let me check the grounds.”
Lily put a hand to her throat where she could feel the wild pulse of her racing heart throb. There had to be more, didn’t there? For Nutmeg to have been stricken as she was? But no blood found yet. That ought to be good, even if Evar and Merri were missing. Her head swam for a moment, thoughts chasing each other in frenzy. Where could they be? What should she do? Outside, she could hear Verdayne calling their names, but she couldn’t hear an answer. Not that they’d answer if they were hiding, the scamps, but it couldn’t be that easy, could it? Not with the heirs to Larandaril and with the ild Fallyn in play. Lily’s fist crumpled her skirt. Nutmeg had felt it and been struck down by it.
So where were their small, fallen bodies? What had the auntie done with them—and why? Did it suit Tressandre ild Fallyn’s purposes to have the fate of Lara’s heirs go unknown? She heard a soft, keening cry and turned about in the children’s room. A wooden soldier went skidding out from under her shoe as she realized that it was she who made the cry. Verdayne returned to her and put a bracing shoulder under her arm.
“Come to the kitchen and sit down.” His voice, low and firm, pierced her whirling thoughts.
“Nutmeg?”
“Waiting in the kitchen. Pale and scared, so you need to gather yourself. She needs you. And . . . I have a question or two.”
She hadn’t realized how much taller than even Tolby he was until he guided her across the farmhouse to a waiting chair. Nutmeg sat, so pale even her freckles seemed to have disappeared, one hand wrapped about a cold cider.
“Auntie Corrie?”
“If she was taken by force, it appears she anticipated and packed for it.” A grim expression roughened Verdayne’s statement.
“She’s in on it,” Nutmeg said. “How could she? We trusted her. They were like her own babies.”
Verdayne poured another cider and pushed it into Lily’s hands. “I found a trace of them outside. First, Merri had that dolly made of yarn, didn’t she? That one with the incredible mop of hair.”
“She has one. I don’t know where it is, but—”
He put his palm up. “Thought I remembered it, but couldn’t be sure. They have a fair number of toys.”
That brought a bit of color back into Nutmeg’s face. “A child needs toys.”
“I did not mean criticism.” He held up a bit of twisted yarn between his fingers. “I found it by the side of the farmhouse, along with a bit of a mess in the dirt, some marks and tracks.” Nutmeg reached for it as the two Vaelinar guards stumbled in.
Amett rubbed his face. “They’re gone?”
“It appears that they were taken, yes.”
“Bloody trees. Bistane will have my hide for this. When I was sent to replace Gryton, I had the book read at me. Protect the children, at all costs.” Amett slumped into a chair.
“You’re lucky you were both asleep. If not, you’d be dead.”
Brista met his gaze. “You’re certain.”
“Fairly. The children had sneaked outside. I found a bit of a dirt fort and a few soldiers and marks as if they’d decided to roll about in the dust. Those body prints had one or two drops of blood each, but—” And he held up his head to forestall gasps from both Nutmeg and Lily. “Not enough to show great harm.”
“I’d say we were charmed to sleep. It’s happened before.” Two high spots of chagrin colored Brista’s face. “I never mentioned it because I didn’t think the little squirts could manage it, being on our guards against it and all. But for them to be dropped, sudden and deadly like means it has to be kedant. Likely on a dagger blade, as a Kobrir would do.”
Nutmeg sucked in a shaky breath. “That venom kills.”
“If enough is used. We Vaelinars are particularly vulnerable to it.”
“Who knows what a child’s body can tolerate?�
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“None but the Vaelinars are so affected. And the children are only half-Vaelinar, are they not? So the taker took a risk that their dose would be effective at all. Still, administered by a stabbing—not a merciful way to dose someone. Takes a cold calculation, that does.”
“Tressandre ild Fallyn would not think twice.”
“And her tashya herd is in town for sales.”
“We were told she didn’t come with the herd.”
“We were not told what disguise she might be wearing.”
“Disguised?” Nutmeg turned the bit of yarn about in her fingers. “You think she took them alive?”
“Yes. Which means they will stay that way until she either has what she wants, or decides that the children are no longer worth anything to her.”
Nutmeg stared at the kitchen table and her mug, which she had not yet touched, for a long moment. “Her plans will have wheels within wheels. That works to our advantage. She will keep them longer.”
“And I intend to find them.” Verdayne smiled briefly. “Just beyond the farmhouse grounds, I found that, as if dropped. And by the vineyard border, another twist. And yet a third headed toward the back alley toward the town gates. So pray, Nutmeg, that Merri’s dolly has a prodigious amount of yarn on it, because someone is leaving us a trail.”
• • •
The farmhouse which had seemed so very deadly quiet in the early afternoon now filled with noise. Bins being opened and closed. Packs being filled. Voices quarreling over details small and large. Bodies moved to and fro, like gears in a great mechanism bypassing and mingling with one another without a single clash until a firm and loud voice rang out.