The Thirteenth House (Twelve Houses)

by Shinn, Sharon

  Amalie pulled something off her left hand and Kirra saw a ring sparkling in her palm. A diamond as big as a man’s thumbnail was clasped in a heavy circlet of gold. “Here,” the princess said. “It cannot buy back any of the people you love, but it will feed you for a while and pay for some rebuilding.”

  The woman seemed too stunned to even protest. She put her hand out and let Amalie close her fingers around the jewel. “Thank you, majesty,” she said, her voice even more dazed.

  Amalie looked up at Senneth. Her sweet face looked incredibly sad and incredibly determined. “Is there anything else we can do?” she asked.

  Senneth glanced back at Kirra and seemed unsure of how to phrase her next words. “Apparently two women have been injured in the fire. I don’t know if anyone in town is a healer.”

  The innkeeper’s sister-in-law spoke up. “No. We have a healer, but he left a few days ago to visit his mother. He’s a three-day ride away. I don’t believe they will live that long—” Her voice broke, and she stopped trying to talk, just rested her cheek against her husband’s head.

  Kirra was already sliding out of the saddle. No one in Loben would recognize her, and Amalie could not know how useless Casserah was in a sickroom.

  “My sister is a healer, and I know something about nursing,” she said. “If someone takes me to these injured women, I will do for them what I can.”

  Two other men had come up, impelled by curiosity and not seeming quite as grief stricken as the innkeeper’s relatives. “They’re over at Lawrence’s. By the tavern,” one of these new-comers volunteered. “Sukie’s watching them, but she doesn’t know any medicine.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Kirra repeated. “Take me there.”

  “We’ll both go,” Amalie said.

  So that was another strange interlude in a trip that had already been altogether too odd. Where Amalie went, of course, the queen must go, and so must Senneth and the four Riders; and Cammon clearly did not want to be left behind; and Donnal, appearing respectable enough to pad through town as a large black hound, came as well. Lawrence proved to be a wealthy-looking merchant with what was probably the biggest house in the district. It seemed to have been a philanthropic gesture for him to take in the two injured women, so Kirra had to suppose he was either a kind man or running for civil office. She didn’t have time to talk to him. She was following his housekeeper up a narrow flight of steps and down a dim hallway to the room at the back of the house where the infirmary was set up. Amalie and the entire retinue were hard on her heels, but only Amalie, Senneth, and Valri entered the room behind her.

  “Stay here by the door,” Kirra instructed the others, and Senneth nodded. She would make sure Amalie did not come close enough to watch Kirra work.

  The two employees from the inn were badly burned, and the two women tending them had both been weeping. Kirra nodded silently at the watching women and knelt beside the first bed, gently pulling back the covers. Yes, she could do something about this; this was a condition her hands and her magic had encountered before. Concentrating closely, she allowed the rest of the world to fall away from her while her fingers played down ruined flesh and smoothed it out, while her palms lifted lingering heat from the stressed body. She wound up skeins of white infection like so much poisoned yarn and drew them from the tortured skin, and she wiped the lungs clean of soot and inhaled toxins. The injured woman sighed and turned over, tucking her hands beneath her cheek.

  “She’ll mend,” Kirra said to herself, and moved to the second bed. This woman was older and more frail, so the ministrations took longer but were essentially the same. This patient, too, sighed with relief as the pain and poison left her body, but she did not slip into a sounder sleep. Instead, her eyes opened, and she gazed straight up at Kirra.

  “What have you done?” she asked in a wondering voice.

  “I have some skill with my hands,” Kirra answered.

  The woman lifted her own hands, turned them this way and that. Her skin was still reddened, but the blisters and lesions had healed; she might have some scars, but they would be slight. “I don’t hurt anymore,” the woman said in a low voice. “Am I dying?”

  “No. No, you will be well in a few days. You may not be as hale as you were before the fire, you might have some aches and imperfections, but you will mostly recover.”

  The woman watched her now with a close attention. “You’re a mystic,” she whispered.

  Kirra hesitated, but Amalie was over by the door, speaking in a low voice with Senneth and the queen. The only people listening were this woman and the two who had been caring for her. “Yes.”

  The patient closed her eyes, but Kirra waited. Clearly she was not done talking. “I have always hated mystics,” she said, still speaking in a low, strained voice. Kirra felt her stomach knot again. So deep in the southern territories, she should have been more careful before flaunting her magic. If either of the nurses went running from the room with such news, this situation could turn ugly fast.

  “I’m sorry,” Kirra said, rising to her feet. “I’ll go now.”

  “Wait.” The first word came swiftly; the others followed with an effort. “Thank you. I did not realize—I could not have expected—thank you for your kindness. I will never curse your people again.”

  How to answer that? “Mystics have never done anything to hurt anyone,” Kirra said quietly. “No one has any cause to fear us.”

  The woman opened her eyes. “I will do a kindness someday for a mystic if I can.”

  “Then I am repaid.”

  One of the nurses, older and heavyset, had been standing close enough to audit this whole conversation. Deliberately she lifted her hand to show Kirra the moonstone ring she wore, the gem not even half the size of the diamond Amalie had bestowed on the grieving brother. Deliberately she drew it from her finger and threw it across the room.

  “You have saved my sister’s life,” she said. “I will try to repay you as well.”

  “Then there has been much good accomplished this afternoon,” Kirra said.

  She gave them both an abbreviated curtsey and joined the others standing near the door. “We have lost a good portion of the day here,” she said. “I think it is time we moved on.”

  Senneth’s eyebrows rose slightly as if to ask a question. “The merchant Lawrence has invited us to stay for lunch and use his house to clean ourselves up,” Senneth said. “Do you think we should not?”

  “Does our host know you are a mystic?” Kirra replied. “My latest conversation leads me to believe such folk are not welcomed in this town.”

  Senneth glanced back at the four women, the two patients and the two nurses, and clearly understood the gist of it. “He need not know,” Senneth replied. “The princess would like to stay.”

  “Then by all means, show me to a room and allow me to wash my hands and face.”

  THE meal was tedious but endurable; they were all anxious to get back on the road by the time they were finally on their way again. Colton had allowed the soldiers to draw their own refreshment at the town’s three taverns, so they were all rested and fed by the time they were on the move. A whole day lost, though. If they squandered much more time on the road, they would not be in Nocklyn before the great ball.

  They were finally clear of Loben and settled into a steady pace before Kirra managed to maneuver her horse next to Senneth’s.

  “Does the princess realize how close she came to death last night?” she asked in a low voice. “For we should have been sleeping in that inn when it caught fire.”

  Senneth glanced back at Amalie’s carriage. “I’m not sure she put it together. Romar did, and he was quite concerned. Valri, of course, begged us to turn back for Ghosenhall. But I don’t think Amalie would agree to that even if she realized that the fire was probably set to catch her.”

  Kirra felt her face relax into a tiny smile, the first one since they’d ridden into Loben. “I can’t help wondering,” she said softly, “if the fire w
ould have been quite so devastating if you had been sleeping under that roof.”

  Senneth’s answering smile was also small. “Oh, I’d have been able to control it,” she said. “Assuming I woke in time—but I think I would have. Or Cammon would have roused me. I think we would have survived the trap. Which now makes me wonder if we might not have done better to press on last night. Stayed at the inn ourselves, and saved all those lives. I am not sorry Amalie was not endangered, but I regret the price that others paid.”

  “You think the fire was set on purpose?”

  Senneth nodded. “From the way it was described, yes.”

  “Someone knows our schedule and our route.”

  “Which means perhaps we should travel unconventional pathways when we leave Nocklyn.”

  “Valri might be right,” Kirra said. “It might be time to return to the royal city.”

  Senneth turned her head to give Kirra a serious look. “Do you think she will be safe even there?” she said softly.

  Kirra felt her shoulders sag; she was suddenly tired. “Then this is to be her whole life? Assassination attempts from hidden enemies? Do we dedicate our own lives to keeping her safe? How can she live like this? Afraid every minute that someone wants her dead?”

  Senneth glanced back over her shoulder at the carriage behind them. “She doesn’t seem to be afraid,” she observed. “And I can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t understand she’s in danger—or if it’s because she doesn’t care.”

  “Or if she just trusts us.”

  “Or if she really is not afraid.”

  “I’m starting to be afraid,” Kirra said. “And very little frightens me.”

  “A great deal frightens me,” Senneth retorted, “and I have been afraid from the beginning.”

  “But we continue on.”

  “We have to,” Senneth said. “I agree with Romar Brendyn. A few days ago, he said that she could not show fear or her enemies would destroy her. I think he’s right. If she is to be queen someday, she cannot run away now.”

  “Well, then,” Kirra said. “On to Nocklyn.”

  CHAPTER 25

  NOCKLYN Towers was a grand old mansion set on a sweeping expanse of yard just outside the bustling town that went by the same name. The city was nearly as large as Ghosenhall and about as sophisticated, and Kirra wished she could take a day or two to go browsing through its cosmopolitan shops and dining at its fancy restaurants. However, they had arrived only a day and a half before the ball that had been their whole reason for coming here; they would have little time for minor diversions.

  And yet, she was soon to find out, a few people in their party were able to snatch at the city’s treasures during their brief ride through. They had just cleared the back gate of the city and were on the long, steep rise toward the manor house when Romar brought his horse alongside hers.

  “Candy?” he said, offering her a small gold-lined box. She stared at him in wonderment and he laughed. “I bought some for Amalie as we were crossing the main road. She loves sweets. And I thought you might like a few pieces as well.”

  “Oh, I would love some,” she said, helping herself to a handful of round, sugary treats. She popped one in her mouth and savored it. “Especially divine after squirrel stew,” she added.

  “But it was very good squirrel stew.”

  Kirra ate another candy before speaking again. “So have you been invited to the Shadow Ball at Nocklyn? Or is there to be such an event here?”

  He nodded. “I was invited, but we missed it. It was last night. I am sorry for it but—” He shrugged. “I will find some other way to show myself accessible to the Thirteenth House lords.”

  “I think we must work first to show ourselves agreeable to the Twelve Houses.”

  He nodded toward Nocklyn Towers, looming above them with flags flying at all turrets. “This House, at least, seems agreeable,” he said with a smile. “I’ve always thought it one of the prettiest of the twelve.”

  “Not to compare with Danan Hall, but appealing in its own way,” Kirra said.

  He laughed. “I was going to add that I was not sure the interior would be as friendly as the exterior.”

  “It used to be, when Els Nocklyn was well,” Kirra said. “But he’s been sick, and his daughter, Mayva, and her husband run the House now. Or—well—Mayva’s a silly and useless sort of person. Lowell is really in charge these days—and he’s not a man who inspires great trust.”

  “I don’t know him. Who is he?”

  “Halchon Gisseltess’s cousin.”

  “Ah. Then we need not ask where Nocklyn’s loyalties lie.”

  The grand gate leading to the mansion was already opened for them; soldiers saluted and waved them through. Kirra realized she should have been back in the carriage by now so that she could emerge in a stately fashion, as Casserah would have. But perhaps Mayva would not notice. She didn’t seem to notice much.

  Indeed, the flighty, dark-haired serramarra waiting at the front door gave all her attention to the princess and the queen as they disembarked from their own coach. “Majesty! We have been so worried about you!” Mayva exclaimed, running forward with her dainty hands outstretched. “We expected you a day ago. Was there trouble along the road? Are you unharmed?”

  Amalie permitted Mayva to take her hands and flutter around her. “Everyone is fine,” she replied in her quiet voice. “One of the carriages broke down, so we lost some time repairing it. And then we ended up stopping in Loben for nearly a day. Everything took longer than we thought. I’m sorry you were concerned.”

  “Are you tired? You must be tired. Let me take you to your room.” Mayva glanced over at the rest of them, wearily pulling their personal items from carriages or saddles. “All your rooms.”

  Senneth had glided up soundlessly beside Amalie. Her white-blond hair was ruffled from travel but her gray eyes were calm. She tilted her head in acknowledgment of the mistress of the house. “Serra Mayva,” she said. “You remember we talked in Kianlever? I trust you have arranged the chambers as I requested.”

  “Yes, yes, and after what happened there—! I want you to keep the princess absolutely safe. There is a suite across from hers that will accommodate your Riders.”

  “Thank you, serra.”

  They made their way through the airy, light-filled hallways of the Towers to a collection of charming and well-furnished rooms. In the chamber assigned to Kirra, Melly investigated armoires and vanities and proclaimed herself pleased. “She seems like a nice one,” the maid observed.

  Kirra was amused. “Mayva Nocklyn suits your notions of a proper marlady?” she said. “Well, she certainly typifies the breed. Friendly, frivolous, and not too bright.”

  Melly shrugged and began unpacking. “But nice,” she repeated.

  Kirra let it go. She supposed that counted for something. Though in the coming days of conflict and opposition, she expected niceness to be trampled by ambition and greed. Mayva seemed too flimsy and fragile to survive.

  There was no time to go exploring the house or the grounds; there was barely enough time to take a real bath and dress for dinner. Tonight’s gown had been chosen to showcase Casserah’s eyes, not her heritage, so she wore a velvet gown of deep blue that gave her face a whole different set of shadows and contours than the usual red.

  “I like this,” Kirra said, turning her head back and forth and watching her cheekbones in the mirror. “Casserah should wear blue more often.”

  “She prefers red. That’s what you’ll wear tomorrow night, of course, for the ball.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve made a little pocket for you,” were Melly’s next unexpected words. “I’ve been working on putting one in all your dresses. I can’t match the fabric perfectly, but the seam is so fine I don’t think anyone will notice.”

  Kirra stared at her in the mirror. “A pocket?”

  Melly nodded. “So you can carry that little carving. The one you like to have with you. The pocke
t’s deep enough that it won’t fall out.”

  Kirra bit her lip and turned away from the mirror. She had never appreciated how much information a servant could gather about an individual, how much of the maid’s life had to be utterly dedicated to the whims and desires of the mistress. It would never have occurred to her that Melly would care about such a thing.

  “Thank you,” she said at last. “I am most grateful. You’re right. I don’t like to be without it.”

  At that, Melly handed her the little lioness figurine, having no doubt scooped it up from the drawer where Kirra had laid it. “It’s pretty,” the maid said. “But strange. Does it have something to do with magic?”