Mystic and Rider

by Sharon Shinn

  He woke a few hours later, as he had trained himself to do, and listened again for a few moments. Only a few night sounds—a wayfaring breeze shaking dry tree limbs together, the hoot and call of predators, the rustle of small creatures fleeing. Closer in, the sound of the fire snapping—someone else must have woken before he had and added more wood.

  He slipped quietly to his feet, pulled on his boots, and soundlessly left the camp. The minute he was beyond the pale circle of firelight, he was assaulted by cold so intense that he felt the hairs inside his nose freeze up. He made the circuit anyway, a complete journey around the camp from fifty yards away, pausing every few feet to listen to the sounds of the night. He seemed to be the only alien presence in the vicinity; there was no scent or feel of danger anywhere he turned.

  He returned to camp as quietly as he had left, by habit doing a visual check of the five sleeping bodies. His eyes came to rest on Senneth, to find she was awake and watching him. On impulse, he picked his way between the other motionless forms and came to a crouch beside her.

  “Why are you awake?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Why are you?” she replied.

  He jerked his head to indicate the land around them. “Walking the perimeter.”

  “Do you do that every night?”

  “Just about.”

  “I haven’t noticed.”

  “You’ve been sleeping. Why not tonight?”

  “I wanted to check on Donnal,” she said. “But he seems fine. I suppose you didn’t find any hazards in the woods beyond?”

  A slight smile for that. “Cold,” he said. “Much colder than it is right here. I wonder why that is.”

  “Well, there’s the fire,” she said.

  He nodded slowly. “And there’s you.”

  A real smile from her, dazzling by firelight. “It’s true,” she said with assumed modesty, “that I can create some heat that extends beyond the borders of my body.”

  “How did you do that?” he asked abruptly. “With Donnal? How can your touch cauterize a wound?”

  “You haven’t been paying attention,” she said. “I have the gift of fire. I can cause it, I can fan it, I can control it, I can give it away. I could burn a city to the ground.”

  He considered. “How big a city?”

  That smile again. “How big a city do you want to see burn?”

  “Have you ever?”

  The smile widened. “No.”

  “What would make you do it?”

  The smile faded. “What would make you go to war?”

  Now his eyes narrowed; he was as serious as she was. “That’s what you see? War ahead of us?”

  She moved her head restlessly on her flat blanket. “I see the possibility of it everywhere. I don’t know if it will come to that.”

  “And if it does? Who will you war with? Where will you make a stand?”

  “It depends on where the lines are drawn,” she said softly. “But I have always been loyal to my king.”

  “And he trusts you, or so it seems,” Tayse said. He could tell that his voice sounded hard, quietly though he spoke. “He would perhaps be glad to harness the energy that can set cities on fire.”

  “Or worse,” she said.

  He was silent a moment, still watching her, wondering what she meant by that or if it was just to goad him, wondering, as always, what her full story was. “Does it hurt?” he found himself asking.

  “Does what hurt?”

  “When you use that power. When you healed Donnal. When you”—he gestured—“keep the fire burning all night without adding another log to the flames.”

  She shook her head slowly against the blanket. “No. It is always there, that heat, pouring out of me.”

  “Is your skin hot to the touch?” he said curiously.

  She did not answer at first. With one hand, she pulled down the collar of her soft shirt; with the other, she picked up his own hand, resting on his folded knee. He was so surprised he did not resist as she pushed his palm down right where her neck joined her shoulder. For a moment, he was just conscious of the smoothness of her skin, tender as a child’s—then he was aware of the heat rising up from her body. He was enveloped in heat, drowning in heat, rich as scented bathwater and just as pleasurable. For a moment he caught himself wondering what it might feel like to lay his body the full length of hers and absorb that warmth with every inch of his own skin.

  Then he pulled his hand away and abruptly rose to his feet. She was smiling as she drew her blankets back up to her chin. “Good night, Tayse,” she said. “I don’t think you’ll be cold again.”

  He returned to his own bedroll, lying wakeful for a long while. But he was a soldier; he could summon sleep in the middle of a battlefield. He shut his eyes and forced himself to sleep, and he didn’t wake again till morning. By then the strange experience seemed surreal enough, unlikely enough, that he was almost able to convince himself that it had been a dream. Except he was not the sort of man who dreamed.

  CHAPTER 7

  IT was Kirra’s idea to ride into Forten City and throw a party. Senneth looked at her and said, “Why did I ever invite you on this journey?”

  Kirra laughed. “Because you needed entrée to all the great Houses of Gillengaria—and you wanted my irrepressible sense of adventure.”

  They were sitting around a campfire about a day’s ride from the main city of Fortunalt, and Senneth for one was looking forward to the idea of settling into a hotel and coming to rest for a few days. She was also intent on strolling the streets of the sea-port and overhearing whatever news was to be had. But she had not planned on being particularly visible during this visit.

  “Why do it?” Tayse asked, as always striking straight down toward the truth. “And why not do it?”

  Kirra turned to him. “We might hear gossip that we’d never hear skulking about with shop owners and blacksmiths. We wouldn’t deal with the Fortunalt family this time—it would be strictly Thirteenth House.”

  Justin looked up from across the fire. Anything that remotely involved class distinctions instantly caught his attention. “What?” he demanded.

  “Thirteenth House,” Kirra said, tilting her nose up to take an aristocratic pose. “Nobles and gentry who don’t quite have the pure bloodlines of the top families, but who possess wealth and some prestige nonetheless.”

  “Most of the lesser gentry are affiliated with one of the Twelve Houses,” Senneth explained. “They provide some fealty to the marlords, and in return they get—favors or protection or a chance to marry their daughters into society. Whatever coin is most precious at the time.”

  “And if we had a party,” Kirra said, “they would come and tell us everything Rayson Fortunalt is thinking and doing. We would probably learn more than if we rode onto his estates and asked him.”

  Tayse was considering Kirra. “But why would they tell you? Particularly if they’re hunting mystics in this part of the world.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t greet them as myself,” she said airily. “I’d go as—let’s see—one of my father’s more indiscreet allies—”

  “Erin Sohta,” Donnal suggested with a laugh. He was lounging close to the fire, looking tired, but he had managed to keep up with them the past two days. Senneth was pleased to note that his wound had healed as quickly as she had expected; he had even begun practicing with Justin again.

  Kirra smiled back at him. “Yes, Erin Sohta. She has quite an extensive property on the southeastern border of Danalustrous, and she considers herself one of my father’s closest advisors. He can’t stand her, of course,” Kirra added, “but she doesn’t know that.”

  “But what if Erin herself is in Fortunalt just now?” Senneth demanded. She still didn’t like this idea. “It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility.”

  “Well, it is, because my father is holding a traditional winter dinner party in about three days and none of his vassals would want to miss it,” Kirra said. “Particularly Erin.”

&nbs
p; “But if that’s so, what would make her come to Forten City and throw a party?” Senneth said.

  “I’ll think of something,” Kirra promised. “It’s a good idea. You’ll see.”

  But as it happened, the necessity did not arise. They rode into Forten City the next day and checked into a small but fashionable inn to find that a social event had already been planned there for the following evening. Two young nobles were getting married, and gentry from a hundred miles around were attending.

  “I wouldn’t even have a room for you, since we were all booked, except someone had to leave this morning on account of her mother falling sick,” the proprietor told them when Kirra and Senneth presented themselves at his desk. He looked doubtfully at the attractive Lady Erin and her less attractive but still quite genteel cousin. “Well, I’ve got the room for you two ladies. Your men’ll have to sleep in the stables, if that’s all right with you.”

  “They won’t mind at all,” Kirra said blithely, and Senneth had to hide a smile. “But what about my wolfhound? Can he stay in the room with us? I feel so much—safer—when he’s near.”

  Wolfhound? Senneth wondered, but the innkeeper was already nodding. “Oh yes, many of our guests bring their pets in with them,” he said, beaming. “We’re quite partial to dogs here.”

  Kirra was busy signing her name on the register and counting out gold coins. “So who’s getting married?” she asked casually.

  “Katlin Dormer and Edwin Seiles,” the proprietor replied.

  Kirra looked up, pen slack in her hand. “No! But I know Katlin! She was visiting at my father’s—oh, five years ago, maybe—and we were quite friendly! Oh, this is wonderful! Is there any way I can go to her mother’s room and give them my congratulations? Sindra,” she added, turning to Senneth, “you’ll have to go out this afternoon and find a gift for me. Something very pretty—you’ll know just what’s right.”

  “Of course, Cousin,” Senneth murmured.

  “There!” Kirra said, signing her name with a flourish. Even her handwriting looked different, Senneth thought, while her sharp, pointed face and tangled black curls made her completely unrecognizable. “Let’s go up to our room, shall we?”

  Within a couple of hours, their luggage had been transferred into the small room, and both women had bathed and changed. Kirra went off to try to find Katlin Dormer’s mother, while Senneth tracked down the men, who were having a beer in the tavern adjoining the inn.

  “I think you’re supposed to be a wolfhound,” Senneth said, seating herself next to Donnal.

  He grinned. Tayse looked up, interested. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “Since they’re keeping us down in the stables.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” Senneth said. “But I think we’re safe enough inside the hotel. There are locks, and I’ve got weapons.”

  “And you’ll have me,” Donnal said.

  “What news so far?” she asked. She eyed their beer with some longing but asked the waiter for wine when he approached. Bad enough to be fraternizing with guardsmen, but she couldn’t be seen sucking down ale in the common taproom.

  “City’s as full as it can hold,” Tayse said. “Some wedding or something tomorrow night, and gentry spilling out of every inn in town.”

  Senneth nodded. “Unless I miss my guess, Kirra’s about to get us invited to it,” she said. “This answers better than her other ideas.”

  “So you’ll go, too, dressed as—what? Her lady in waiting?”

  Senneth made as much of a mock curtsey as she could while sitting in a bar booth, a wineglass in hand. “Her cousin Sindra, thank you very much. I’m poor but respectable, and I’m grateful for every gift and kind word my rich relations bestow upon me.”

  “I hate the gentry,” Justin remarked.

  “There’s a bit of news for us,” she retorted.

  “Do you have to change your face for these people?” Cammon asked.

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t think so. No one will be paying attention to me. I’ll just wear an expression of hopeful degradation, and they’ll all stare right past me.”

  Donnal snorted and then started laughing. “I’ve seen these people,” he said to the others. “That’s exactly the way they look.”

  “Existing without any pride,” Tayse said. “What a terrible way to live.”

  “There are worse ways,” she said quietly. She sipped at her wine and refused to let herself think of those ways.

  SHE spent most of the rest of the afternoon wandering through Forten City, shopping. To her surprise, Tayse insisted on accompanying her, though he let the other men go off on their own pursuits. She didn’t actually mind knowing he was two paces behind her as she walked through the crowded streets. Forten City was a curious mix of the aristocratic and the wretched, with rows of fashionable shops only two streets over from grim little shacks that housed alehouses, prostitute quarters, and families of the very poor. Sailors strutted up and down the streets, looking for love or trouble, and the whole parade of life went by in the central district: noblemen, merchants, farmers, soldiers, laundresses, cooks, whores. No young woman walked out unaccompanied.

  Though I am hardly a young woman, Senneth thought and tried not to smile.

  She had decided she would buy a length of handmade lace to give to the Dormer bride; Katlin could lay it across her table or hang it from a window or ball it up and put it in the back of her closet. Senneth didn’t care. But it was a reasonable gift, and it didn’t have to match anything in the bride’s trousseau.

  Still, she went first to sweet shops and shoe shops and dress shops, just to see if she could overhear any useful conversation. For most of the day, no. Everyone seemed concerned with the weather, which was frigid, the new taxes, which were unreasonable, and the wedding, which was apparently going to be the highlight of the social season.

  “Though she’s not a very pretty girl, you know,” one matron observed to another as they picked through silks in the fabric shop. “I’m surprised she’s done as well as Edwin Seiles.”

  “I’m surprised anyone would take her at all!” the second woman exclaimed. “After those things that were being said about her last year—”

  “No, you’re confused, that was her sister,” the first woman interrupted. “This one isn’t a mystic. She’s perfectly normal.”

  Senneth pulled out another bolt of lace and examined its pattern against the sample she already had in her hand.

  “Oh! Well, then! Because I kept wondering—I mean, how could they marry off a girl like that? But if this one’s not tainted, it’s just fine then. Oh, I like that blue.”

  “But it’s too thin, don’t you think? For this cold weather?”

  “Keep it for spring, that’s my advice. What happened to her? That other girl?”

  “The mystic? I don’t know. I haven’t heard a word about her in—I guess it’s six or seven months now. Probably shipped off to relatives in Helven or Kianlever. You know how these things go.”

  “I know how they should go,” the second woman said with emphasis. “People are too soft, that’s what I say.”

  “Their own daughter,” the first woman said gently. “You can’t expect them to—I wouldn’t, I know. I’d find a way to keep her safe.”

  The second woman leaned closer as if to whisper, though the pitch of her voice scarcely changed. “Mystics are born to those who consort with mystics,” she said. “Those who have a magical child—well, they’d best look to their own bloodlines, that’s what I say. If my daughter-in-law produced a child like that, I’d know she played my son false. And I would have no hesitation in turning both her and her child out of the house.”

  Senneth laid down both pieces of lace and headed straight for the shop door. Tayse was leaning against the wall, hands hooked in his belt, eyes ceaselessly watching the restless crowd.

  “All done?” he asked, and then noticed her hands were empty. “I thought you were going to buy some lace.”

  “I’ve deci
ded to get her a clock instead,” Senneth said, and turned down the street to a watchmaker’s shop that she had passed before.

  THE wedding was an exercise in humiliation, or would have been if Senneth had been even remotely interested in the goodwill of the lesser gentry gathered to attend. The ceremony itself was brief and dull, but the reception that followed was ostentatiously lavish. She estimated that two hundred people had been crowded into a room meant to comfortably hold about half that number. The heat was intense—Senneth herself never minded the heat, but she saw more than one young woman stagger and almost faint—and the odors of perfume and sweat did not blend well with the scents of food and wine.

  There was what seemed to Senneth a desperate air of gaiety, as if all these second-tier noblemen and their scheming wives were pretending to be at an elegant ball at one of the Twelve Houses. The women had dressed in remarkably fine gowns; the men wore velvet and exquisitely tanned leather. What interested Senneth was that very few of them wore diamonds or rubies or traditional jewels. Nearly everyone—from the women with their bracelets and earrings to the men with their rings and cravat pins—wore moonstones as the accessories of choice. This was particularly true for the young women whose plunging necklines and oversized pendants were meant to mimic the ball gowns of Twelfth House serramarra. The dowdy Sindra, with no pretensions to wealth or status, wore a comfortably high-necked gown and no ornament but her gold necklace, but Erin Sohta had sashayed out in a dress with daring décolletage.

  “Mind your housemark,” Senneth had noted as they were dressing for the event.

  Kirra had lifted her pendant, which she had not bothered to alter in her own transformation. Erin Sohta would undoubtedly wear rubies in her role as Danalustrous vassal, and who in this crowd would recognize this exact piece of jewelry? Where it had lain against her skin there was only unblemished flesh. “Erin Sohta doesn’t have a housemark,” she retorted. “I wanted one less thing to worry about.”