The two girls avoided the main entrance, moving around through ordered gardens to the back, where Hibern knocked on a secluded glass door.
Almost at once a weedy, lively-faced fair-haired girl of about fourteen opened it, her welcoming grin broad. “Fern,” she said softly. “And Princess Kyale! Welcome! We have waited all these weeks to thank you in person for rescuing Ndand.”
Kitty looked blank, for she’d almost forgotten Ndand’s existence—having only seen her for a very brief moment. Then she smiled. “Well, you know it was actually the Mearsieans who did that.”
“King Leander, and the Mearsieans,” Collet said, hands wide. “We know. You must convey our thanks personally to King Leander. For the rescue is proof that allying with you Lerorans was ever a good idea. Is she happy?”
“The Mearsieans sent a message to Leander. The horrible magic spells Tdanerend put on her are gone,” Kitty reported, remembering what Leander had told her a few days after their arrival back from the water world. At the time Kitty had not been the least interested in Ndand, but at least she remembered what he’d said. “She is perfectly happy, doing something with music, according to the Mearsieans.”
“We hope she can return home some day,” Collet said. “We couldn’t figure a way to get her free from her father’s terrible spells, and you will always have our gratitude. Now, what brings you?”
“I’ve got Senrid Montredaun-An in my room,” Fern said, and Collet’s eyes rounded. “And here’s what has happened…”
She told everything—except the encounters with the Norsundrian Detlev. Kitty half-listened to the familiar story, instead watching Collet’s reactions.
It surprised her that anyone would ever think about Ndand. Were families really so loyal? Kitty wished she had some relatives, someone besides a stepbrother who was so busy all the time, and whom she really didn’t understand. She remembered CJ and Faline talking together, laughing, even, on the water world, and sighed. If only she had a sister, or even a girl cousin!
“… it’s possible, but I would have to talk to my mother first,” Collet said, recalling Kitty’s attention. “This is way too important for me to decide. Stay here until I come back. I’ll send Micai in.” She grinned as she dashed out.
And soon a six-year-old boy raced in, bringing a set of toy boats that he simply had to show Hibern. He chattered happily, and Kitty found herself sitting on the floor with Micai, putting some carved wooden warriors through an adventure. The toys were spread all about them, and Kitty’s wild vocal variations for the imaginary characters made the boy laugh with delight. After a time Kitty was vaguely aware of the door opening, and a woman’s hand beckoning to Fern, but since they didn’t seem to need her, she turned her attention back to the story-game.
Collet slid in and crouched down, watching. Kitty adored having an audience; at first she felt a pang of discontent when Collet joined in, but her ideas were so much fun the three of them were soon engrossed, battling heroes against Norsundrians all round the room.
Kitty was disappointed when Fern returned and whispered, “We’d better go.” When she looked up, the strain in Fern’s eyes made the game vanish from her attention like her breath in the cold winter air.
Fern didn’t talk on the long walk back.
Nothing terrible happened, though Fern kept watching, and listening, and even sniffing, her strides long, so long poor small Kitty had to trot to keep up. Not that she complained. Kitty felt so apprehensive that they couldn’t get back fast enough, and the sight of Latvian’s castle came as an intense relief.
From the shelter of the evergreens once again Fern cast illusion around them, and they walked in just long enough to get well within Latvian’s wards. Then Hibern transferred them upstairs to her room.
Senrid woke up on their entrance. His cold was definitely in the soggy stage; he had a besorcelled handkerchief right beside him. But the fever was gone.
“Your nose is as red as a cherry,” Kitty pointed out.
“What a surprise.” Senrid looked up expectantly. “Hibern? Did you talk to your contact?”
“It will take a couple of days for everyone to meet and decide,” Fern said. “I suspect those are days you need as well.”
“And while you’re thinking,” Kitty put in, feeling that Senrid was having far too easy a time. “You can consider that business that we talked about—”
“Shut up,” he said, and off he went into a coughing fit.
It sounded worse than ever, but Kitty’s disgust turned to surprise when Fern stepped up and smacked him a couple times on the back.
Senrid looked surprised as well, then relieved. “Why did that work?”
“I don’t know. I wish we could get a healer up here, but we can’t risk it. All I know is, when coughs get soggy—and I’ve caught a few—that smack kills the tickle.”
Senrid waved a hand in a circle, and blew his nose.
“Yeccch,” Kitty said. “That is so disgusting—”
Fern touched her arm, and did the sign, and they both appeared in the upper room.
“No fair picking on invalids,” Hibern said, smiling.
“If you knew what he’s managed to do to my life,” Kitty grumped. “Oh well. I think I’ll read some more records. Which ones have girls having adventures? Preferably girls who are princesses?”
Senrid woke up and found himself in darkness. He snapped up a zaplight, and in its weak blue glow lit a waiting candle. He saw the evening tray on the floor. The steeped leaf was no longer steaming, but he didn’t care. He got up, relieved that he no longer felt as heavy as a horse.
Another day, and he’d be well enough to move.
He touched his waiting clothes on the chair, and then decided why not? A trip through the frame, and then he got dressed. He felt immeasurably better to be in his own clothes again, with his knives in place. He passed the nightgown through and hung it neatly on its hook, then prowled the circumference of the room, wondering if it would be considered a breach of hospitality to pull down one of Hibern’s books to read. Their truce was friendly on the surface, but it remained that, a truce.
He thought of going up to the invisible room, remembered Kyale there, and decided his own company was much preferable.
But then the whoosh of displaced air made him step to the bed, and Hibern appeared.
“Ah, I hoped you’d be awake,” she said, the candle flame long and golden in her black eyes. “Kitty is asleep. There is much we need to talk about.”
She dropped into her wingchair, and he sat on the bed, wrinkling his nose at the whiff of stale sick-sweat that met his nose. He made a mental note to pull the bed apart and put the sheets and quilt through the frame before he slept next.
“What I said was true, but I didn’t go into why, because these are Marloven concerns,” she said, surprising him. “Kitty has no interest in the details anyway. So. I spoke with a key person—not Collet—who is going to contact some other key people. Their structure is a lot like the military hierarchies, with a person in charge of each region, to whom others report. What I was told was this. If the first person is willing to see you, then Kitty will be provided with that name. And likewise the second, and so on, each contact providing her with the name of the next. They will contact one another ahead of you. And then you will meet them, and answer their questions.”
Senrid sighed. “I don’t want her along.”
“It sounds as if you already made that choice.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Only what I’ve guessed: that Kitty won’t go home until you provide her with something she wants.”
Senrid blew his nose, then said, “It doesn’t take much thinking to put together your contact. I already know that the regional assistant’s wife is kin to your family, and also to my mother. I would guess she’s the main link, through her daughter.”
Hibern said, “And what do you think will happen if you try to force her knowledge from her?”
Senrid said
impatiently, “I’m not forcing anything from anyone. I’ve known Collet’s name since I investigated this place last summer, but I kept that to myself. I didn’t really care about Faline, a foreigner, when I first heard about her, but I figured offering my uncle Faline would distract him from going after Marloven civilians—” He stopped, and shrugged. “Well, do you know what they were intending to do with this secret organization?”
“Oh, yes,” Hibern said. “Though I just found it out. They were all waiting on the future, in default of a better plan. They expected you and me to marry, as Latvian and Tdanerend had pledged. And they were going to back me in a power play, when the time came. First against Tdanerend, and then…who knows?”
Senrid whistled soundlessly. “Power play? I take it that means, after they got rid of Tdanerend they’d help you get rid of me?”
Hibern opened her hand. “Not my plan, I repeat. Believe me, my pose of insanity was always to avoid marriage. I don’t want to be married to any king.”
Senrid felt anger and appreciation seesaw inside him, and humor tipped the balance into appreciation. “Typical Marloven plotting, eh?”
She turned both palms up. “Here’s where it gets nasty. You had better know this: Faline Sherwood is an Yxubarec.” She paused expectantly.
Senrid was about to exclaim “A what?” The words were shaped on his lips, but then he remembered reading about them.
He remembered what they could do.
And from there, it was a fast leap to Tdanerend’s true intent: not just to get Latvian to develop loyalty spells on a convenient foreigner, but to wrench Faline’s will to their command—after which she’d be ordered to take Senrid’s shape, and then his place.
He drew a late breath, though for a long moment everything hurt: his heart, his ribs, even breathing.
Hibern had been watching, her mouth a line. “Yes,” she said. “That, by the way, is the real reason my father and your uncle had their falling out. My father has his problems, most of which stem from him not quite seeing anyone but himself as real. The world is a potential magical experiment to him. But even he thought that going too far, and it woke him up to some of the worst things he’s done in the name of experiments and learning. All at the Regent’s behest.”
Senrid whooshed out his breath. “Thank you for telling me.”
“It was decided you ought to know. Though Faline, poor thing, hates people finding out her true nature. Now, to the next piece of bad news.” She sat back, her expression wry. “That Detlev confronted Kitty and me today, and he made a verbal jab at me about those very plans. At the time I thought he meant I was supposed to be plotting against my father, but now I know what he really meant.”
And she repeated the conversation, plus what had nearly happened.
Senrid heard her out, and grimaced. “This looks bad, though I believe the fellow has to be an idiot, or none of us would be here, right? I mean, why not just act?”
“All I know is that I take his implied threats very seriously,” Hibern said, her voice betraying her tension. She looked up at her own walls, as if spies lurked behind the stones. Senrid knew that sensation, that there was no actual privacy—that even one’s thoughts could be betrayed. “He knew about their plans. He knew my plans! I’ve never told anyone in this entire country. I really thought that if I was careful here, what I did when I visited distant mages would be perfectly safe, that I was anonymous. So maybe the reason why we’re here is just what he said: he doesn’t think we’re worth his time. Yet.”
Senrid mentally dismissed the Norsundrian’s threat as so much hot air. Far more important to him were the problems right here at home. He said, “I’ve been debating whether I might use magic, after that Detlev so conveniently removed Tdanerend’s wards off me.”
“I wouldn’t,” she advised. “Not until you can get rid of whatever he might have warded you with.” She sighed. “Well. I’m going away, soon’s I get Collet’s answer, to consult—” She hesitated, then said, in an even voice, “Tsauderei of Sarendan and Erai-Yanya of Roth Drael.”
Senrid said sardonically, “What do you think I’m going to do to them? I don’t even know who they are.”
“The ones who trained me, though there are others There has to be a reason why Detlev of Norsunder, who can command armies whenever he wants them, found it worthwhile to sit around in an abandoned woodcutter’s shack waiting for me today.”
Back to him again? With an inward shrug Senrid said “Testing? Like me the other day.”
“For what? Why here? Why us? Is it because elsewhere in the world the dyra are on the move again, and world events might be drawing us in?”
“No one is drawing me anywhere,” he said promptly, then frowned. “The what are on the move?”
She shook her head. “Never mind. As you say, you’ve enough to do here.” She got to her feet.
The interview was over. The truce seemed to be intact.
He said, “Is there something I can read?”
She gave him a strange smile. “Feel free to read anything in this room.” She hesitated, then got up, her fingers poised to make the sign that would take her up to the hidden chamber. “I started out learning black magic until I performed my first transfer, and found myself on the border of Sartor, and in danger of walking into the time-binding that held them for over a century. I soon learned that even the mage with the best intentions can’t stay neutral, and continue with black magic.”
Senrid had survived thus far by outthinking ambitious adults around him. And as for Norsunder, he believed most of the stories about them were only scare-stories. After all, if they were half as omniscient and all-powerful as the whispers had ‘em, why weren’t they more successful?
“Watch me,” he said.
PART FIVE
ONE
Kitty enjoyed being in charge of the spies’ names for two days.
She’d pledged to Hibern, before she and Senrid left, that she would not attempt again to force him into a trade of her promise for information.
It was an easy agreement to make. She had already privately resolved on the same thing, which meant that she felt obligated to remind him how annoying he was, otherwise she was Giving In. She’d also bolstered herself against any threats he might make against her by finding and hiding in her bodice what she thought of as her secret weapon, though she hadn’t mentioned it to Hibern, because, well, just because, it was only borrowed, not stolen. Hibern was too friendly to Senrid—didn’t seem to understand how rotten he was, so a princess has to look out for herself, doesn’t she?
That was Kitty’s reasoning, but her emotions veered between guilt and satisfaction that she had a secret weapon as they said their farewells to Hibern and she transferred them down to the snow outside the tower. They got away with the aid of Hibern’s illusion spells, and found two waiting mounts where they’d been told they would. Collet’s family had arranged for the horses, one of them with a training saddle. This was like saddle-pads used anywhere else, but with a strong canvas piece stitched in for a beginner to grab hold of.
Kitty mumbled in disgust to herself as she fumbled her way onto the mount, but after her long trip from Tannantaun to Crestel, she’d discovered that she could actually manage to stay on one of those dreadful creatures. If she had to do it again, it would be nice to have something to hang onto besides the animal’s hair.
“All right,” Senrid said, “where to?”
Kitty eyed him. He had a red nose, and the nasty cough but otherwise he looked pretty much as usual—especially with his skinny frame covered in the overlong black cloak that he’d brought from Crestel. Time for a try that wouldn’t be a trade-threat, it wouldn’t.
“Wish you were well?”
“Yes.” He looked impatient.
“Want to get rid of Tdanerend?”
“Yes.”
“Wish I was dead and gone?”
A quick, reluctant grin. “Yes.”
“Will-you-take-it-back?”
; Senrid sighed. “Where. To.”
“Are you asking or demanding?”
Senrid’s horse plunged. It didn’t throw him, and he didn’t seem to mind the movement. When the animal was quiet again, except for the strange head-tossings, he said with that narrow-eyed stare she loathed so passionately, “I didn’t ask you to be here. It was your choice to come along.”
“If you hadn’t ruined things at home—”
Senrid turned away, his whole body expressive of intense anger. He didn’t speak—but he was coughing again, coughing hard, gasping for air, and Kitty got scared, and maneuvered her own horse to edge closer so she could lean over and sock him, hard, on the back.
Senrid whooped, coughed, and he held his breath. They both held their breath.
When it seemed to be over, he leaned an arm on the horse’s neck, damp strands of loose hair hanging down on his sweat-beaded forehead. Kitty felt all her anger turn into apprehension. She cast a nervous glance around, but saw only white fields stretching away to the evergreen-dotted hillsides, blue with subtle shadows under the light gray sky.
Finally Senrid looked up, pale except for the red in his cheeks. “Where to?”
“Berdua.”
“Long ride. “ He wheezed.
She wanted to ask, Will you make it? but didn’t want to seem to care.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He proved that he could make it. By the end of the first day, she was wondering if she would make it. As well the weather then turned bad, or (she was convinced) they would have ridden all night.
Their guise was as regional governor’s messengers, and as such they had changes of fresh horses waiting at designated posting-houses. Kitty never did figure out the system. She didn’t care. What concerned her was the cold, and her sore legs, and staying on during the long gallops.
They slept in a kind of military inn called a ‘posting house’, only for messengers and the like, not for warriors. It was scary enough, but Kitty didn’t talk to anyone, and the other kids—boys and girls both, housed in a big, long attic dorm over the stable—didn’t talk to her. They all retired early to bed, and everyone was up before dawn. Senrid before anyone of them, she noted sourly, struggling to wakefulness as the other kids bustled cheerfully about her.
Senrid Page 37