StarCrossed. Part 12

"The defeated Sarists. No, look - Daul. Nemair. Sposa. Cardom. Wellyth. Except for Lougre Sethe, they're all here. All the families that backed that last rebellion."

My eyes swung down across the room, to where the dance was breaking up and Eptin Cwalo was leading a tawny-haired beauty from the floor. "No," I said. "Sethe's here too."

A moment later, Phandre swept over and dropped down beside us. "Ah," she sighed dramatically, a hand to her dewy bosom. "I just can't decide. Do I like Lord Cardom for his estate and his allowance, or do I like Lord Sposa for his youth and his beauty?"

It was hardly likely she'd nab either one of them, but she and Marlytt fell easily into sober speculation of the potential faults and virtues of each man, as if they were examining goods at a market. I drew back, wondering how they'd like the corset Sposa wore to achieve that youthful figure, or the blocks in his shoes that added two inches to his height.

I sighed into my ale. My days kept getting wilder, and I wanted someone I could talk to - really talk to, not just this shallow court gossip Marlytt and Phandre excelled at. I wanted somebody who would laugh about Lord Cardom's ridiculous smock or my close call in his mother's rooms. Or help me figure out just what Daul was up to. Back home, there were people I could tell. Tegen would have laughed with me.

Marlytt was watching me now, her pale eyes glittering in the firelight. Together she and Phandre looked fat and pompous and ridiculous, in their crisp silk and heavy jewels, their bodices laced so tight their b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaved when they breathed. Phandre had picked up a collar of pearls and a garnet ring somewhere, and she fanned herself elaborately, showing them off.

"What were you two talking about?" she asked in her bored voice.

"Oddly enough, the very same thing you were," I said.

She perked back up. "Really? What were you saying? Have we made matches for everybody yet?" Then she remembered she wasn't supposed to like me. "Excluding poor Celyn, of course, since there isn't anyone here of her rank."

I didn't even need to respond to that, because the music died and Meri collapsed in a breathless heap next to me. Her hair curled in damp tendrils at her forehead, and she was grinning, her color high, her sil ver necklaces askew in her bodice. I reached to straighten them, but pulled my hand back at the last moment. Suddenly I didn't want to be there. My dress felt hot and stiff, my headpiece was making me sweaty, and the silver bracelet was starting to chafe. I tapped my fingers against the neckline of my dress, looking over the crowd, and wondered whose bedroom I hadn't had the plea sure of perusing yet.

Daul was in the back of the room with Lord Antoch, who was laughing his big, warmhearted laugh at something Daul had said. Heat crept up into my belly and my limbs as I felt the idea take shape. He wanted a thorough job, didn't he? Professional pride as a thief from Gerse's Seventh Circle demanded that I give this my most diligent effort.

"I'm a little tired," I said. "I think I'll get some air." I rose and stifled a yawn, for their benefit.

"She hasn't been sleeping well," Meri said in an exaggerated whisper. Poor Meri - alone with the grown-ups. She was trying so hard.

"I'll walk with you." Marlytt stood and hooked her arm into mine. Pox.

"Not me," Phandre said. "I'm going to give Lord Sposa another turn."

And thus we abandoned Meri to the circling wolves. I could almost feel the suitors pressing in, waiting for their chance to nick in for a sniff.

My blood was rus.h.i.+ng as I pulled Marlytt into the servants' stair, curving up the back of the Round Court.

"Where are you going? I thought we were getting air."

"We can breathe upstairs."

"Ow! Digger, you're hurting me! What are you doing?"

"My job - and you're going to help." Marlytt wasn't Tegen, but she'd do for the moment. I didn't know how much time we'd have; not much if the G.o.ds' perverse humor held out this evening. With my luck, Daul would suddenly appear, waiting for me to deliver my "report." We slipped out onto the third floor, and I glanced down the hallway. Empty. Everyone from these rooms was still downstairs at dinner. The leaping light from a single torch at the end of the hall cast crazy shadows on the paneled walls. Marlytt's bright face was taut, confused, but I had a good idea she'd keep her mouth shut.

Until we stopped before the door at the end of the hall.

"Are you crazy? These are Daul's rooms!" She pulled her arm out of my grip and rubbed at her shoulder.

"You're the one who said I should be curious."

"Curious, not stupid. What if he catches you - us?"

"I never get caught." The words tasted thin and hollow. They hadn't been a lie, once. "Stand there and watch. If he comes - do what you do."

"Fine." Her eyes mimicked mine, taking in the hall on either side of us, and then she hiked her skirt up an inch or two above her stockinged ankle and leaned casually against the wall outside Daul's door. I knelt beside her, hidden behind her voluminous skirts. She also blocked most of the light, but this was work I could do by feel.

Of course, Daul hadn't been as trusting as the Cardom, or as Lord Antoch, for that matter. The doors on the third-story suites had latches and bolts, not set-in locks - but you can't bolt a door from the outside.

You can, however, padlock it.

Which normally shouldn't be an impediment, but Daul had something special picked out for me: a delicate, barrel-shaped lock clipped over the hasp, its bra.s.s case traced with scrollwork. A work of art, really - I had a mind to keep it, once I had it free. I slipped a pick from my bodice and went to insert it into the keyhole, but at my touch, the entire thing sparked up like a firebrand, and a thread of silvery mist seeped from the keyhole, circling the shackle. "b.a.l.l.s!" I swore through the pick in my teeth, and dropped its mate.

Marlytt looked down, a line creasing her forehead. "What's the matter?"

I still had one secret Marlytt didn't know. I scowled and shook my head, fumbling on the dark floor for my dropped pick. I tried a second time, sliding the pick into the lock, following behind with the second one from my mouth. And met with re sis tance. It was like pok ing two wrong ends of magnets together, as if the lock repelled my picks.

"Well, how about that," I said in a low voice. I had only encountered one other lock like this. It had been on the Master Confessor's door at the Celystra - and I'd been curious about what kinds of secrets he'd kept behind his too. Magical items were almost as rare as magical people, mostly old charmed objects that had been forgotten about. There was a black-market trade in spelled goods; things changed hands very quietly and for great sums of money. Most of the spells had worn off over the years, of course, but a perpetual charm like the one on this lock would have cost a fortune.

And why was it on this door? It was the sort of thing I'd have thought Daul wanted me to find for him, not the sort of thing he had already. It seemed a little strange that a man intent on uncovering Sarists would flaunt a magical item so openly.

Of course, I was the only person likely to discover it was magic, by sticking my fingers where they didn't belong. And it wasn't like I could do anything with that knowledge, except glare at Daul and seethe.

"Magic lock?" Marlytt said. "That's interesting. Can't imagine who Daul wants to keep out." There was a trace of wryness in her voice, which I ignored.

"Or in," I suggested, carefully lifting the lock to peer at its back side.

Marlytt shook her head. "It's only locked on the outside," she said. "You can leave the room, but n.o.body can get in without the spelled key." When I looked up at her sharply, she shrugged daintily. "Valros had one."

Well, Marlytt's "friends" were the type who could afford such a thing - but it seemed like overkill for a man like Daul, in a place like this, supposedly among friends. Maybe the Nemair weren't the only people at Bryn Shaer with secrets. "What's he hiding in there?" I sat back on my heels and frowned at the door, as if force of will could make the lock fall open on its own.

"Digger, I know that look. Whatever you're thinking, it's not worth it."

"Oh, it's worth it." I grabbed the lock and held it tight in my fist, letting the strains of magic seep out around my fingers like smoke. "I'll get in there."

I just had to figure out how.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

My conversation with Marlytt echoed in my thoughts the next morning as I ground poppy seeds in the stillroom. I sometimes spent mornings here while Meri and her father were out riding, helping as Lady Lyll set medicines to brewing, put up herbs to dry from the kitchen gardens, or recorded remedies in the great bound book she called an herbal.

The poppy seeds had a distinctive sweet smell, and Lady Lyll explained that the flowers grew wild on the sides of the mountain in the spring. She was working on a salve to fight poison in a wound, while a decoc tion of willow to reduce fever simmered in a crucible. Before this, we'd torn white linen into strips for bandages. I touched the scar on my arm, now a red weal, and thought Lady Lyll might have been a useful ally that night.

"Didn't we make that wound salve last week too?"

Lady Lyll adjusted the flame on the crucible by sliding a perforated lid across the firepot. "Very good. We did indeed. It's very perishable, though, so it's important to always have fresh on hand."

I looked at the little jar she was spreading the ointment into. "But what happened to the last batch?"

Lady Lyll gave me a strange look. "I gave it to the kennels. Some of the dogs have abrasions on their paws from digging in the snow. You're awfully curious this morning. Is there anything else you want to know?"

That felt like a rebuke, and I could feel my face getting hot. "Lady Cardom's head aches seem better," I said instead.

She nodded. "She's suffered from them ever since I've known her. I think it's the tension of having to hold her head up so high all the time."

A high surprised laugh jerked out of me, but Lady Lyll's wide fair face was as smooth and expressionless as a full moon. I watched her a moment, thinking about what Marlytt had said last night. Why bring together all those once-allied families? Maybe Daul was right, and there was something suspicious going on.

Or maybe they were just all old friends, gathered innocently together to celebrate one family's milestone.

"Have you known all your guests a long time?"

"Oh, G.o.ddess, yes. Some of them, like Petr Wellyth, since I was a girl. And some of them came with Antoch, of course."

"Like Lord Daul?"

The bemused smile faltered just slightly. "Celyn, this is some of the most valuable information I have to teach you: Never get between your man and his friends. Theirs is an old, old relations.h.i.+p, and there's no breaking it."

"You don't like him?"

Lyll sighed and rummaged for a vial and funnel. "We've known him too long; it goes beyond liking or disliking. He is the closest thing Antoch has to a brother, and that is that. He has not been so fortunate in this life as we have, and we do what we can for him."

Pox, that told me nothing. "I heard he was in prison a long time."

Nodding, Lyll poured the fever medicine into her narrow-necked vial. "There are some things a king can't forgive, and I suppose one of those is being the son of the man who struck war against him. It took all of Antoch's doing just to get Remy decent food, let alone convince the king to spare his life and let him go. Part of that bargain, of course, was that we go to Corlesanne."

"I - what?" I paused in my grinding.

She was looking at the books stacked above the workbench, but her gaze was far away. "I can only a.s.sume His Majesty felt it was too dangerous to have both Daul and Nemair loose in the same country again."

"And it's not dangerous now?"

Lady Lyll's jaw tightened slightly, and she gave a mirthless laugh. "Oh, Celyn. You're so young. You won't remember what it was like, after the war. The betrayals, the exiles, the suspicion. You think it's bad now? Everyone was your enemy in those days." Suddenly she stopped and gave me an odd, appraising look. "Sixteen, and named Celyn. Maybe you do know something about it. The Anointed Children?"

I just kept grinding away with my pestle. "b.a.s.t.a.r.ds for Celys, you mean?" After crus.h.i.+ng the Sarist rebels, Bardolph had proclaimed that bearing an army of Celyst children to run over the land was a patriotic way for fertile young women to show their devotion to the G.o.ddess of Life. I was just one of thousands of children born those first few years - dozens in the Celystra alone were taken from our mothers and raised by the church. Meri was lucky; her parents had left her with people who loved her, a cousin to watch over her like a brother - and then they'd come back for her. I'd been told my mother was dead, but it had never made much difference to me. Now, inexplicably, I found myself hoping it was true.

Lyll reached out and lifted my chin with one strong finger. "I've always thought that was too great a burden to put on such young backs."

I pulled away. "I'm alive. That's enough for me."

That afternoon was bright and cold, and we were scheduled to take a turn about the castle walls, all the court together. Standing in the freezing courtyard, I clapped my gloved hands together and stomped my feet. Lord Antoch strode over, under a mound of furs, a steaming mug of something in his great bear's paw of a hand.

"Fine day, eh, Celyn?" he said cheerfully, and I nodded through chattering teeth. He laughed. "Don't get much snow where you're from, do you? You'll get used to it. Come have a look; the view from the walls should be spectacular today. We can watch the progress being made on the pa.s.s."

Or not being made, more accurately.

I followed dutifully; Antoch at least made a decent windbreak. Winding up toward the battlements, we squeezed past a pair of black-and-silver guards patrolling with pikes. Below us in the courtyard, Daul had Meri on his arm, her pale face looking up into his. I shoved my hands into my sleeves and pressed close to Lord Antoch, who had paused to point out some feature of the valley. Snow glittered in the sunlight, almost too bright to look at.

Eptin Cwalo sidled up beside me, neat and compact in a black felt doublet. "As always, the prospect from your towers is unparalleled, my lord."

Antoch slipped something from his coat, a tube of bra.s.s and wood, which he lifted to his eye, then handed to me.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A spygla.s.s. Look through it."

I obeyed, and the distant valley sprang closer, so suddenly it startled me. I yanked the device away, then looked through it again, this time ready for the surprise. "How does it work?" I said, watching the men and dogs, now disorientingly larger, moving vainly against the wall of white.

"Lenses and mirrors," Cwalo explained. "It was invented by a clever astronomer in Corlesanne, and promptly outlawed in Llyvraneth."

"Outlawed? Why?"

"For tempting men to gaze too closely upon the faces of the moons," Antoch said. "But s.h.i.+ps' captains and generals find them too useful to give up. If you turn this way, you can see the Gerse road behind us too."

What would be the point of that? I handed back the spygla.s.s.

"And if you look here, Lady Celyn," Cwalo said, "You can see one of the more unconventional approaches to the castle." He pointed straight down, to where the earth fell away at the base of the wall, a sheer drop to nothingness. I liked heights, and I leaned far over the edge, letting the cold crisp air freeze every thought from my head. The path from the ridge looked impa.s.sable, little more than a twisting staircase of crumbling rocks, barely one person wide. I couldn't imagine an entire army clinging to that narrow ledge, storming those sheer walls. Along the edge, the floor of the battlement opened up in oblong holes, slanting down like chutes into the sky.

Lord Antoch saw me looking. "For discharging missiles," he said, miming musket fire.

"I've been telling Lady Lyll for years that you need to modernize," Cwalo said. "Build a new artillery wall, sh.o.r.e up the gates. These defenses were fine in the days of magical attacks and siege engines, but with the new cannon, and especially these long-range arms they're coming out with from Varenzia, we also need new approaches in defense."

"Well, you've finally talked us into it, old friend. We've been dis cussing plans to replace the western and southern bailey walls in the spring."

My brain was frozen, and it took a moment for their words to penetrate. I pulled my head back from the edge and looked at both men. Had Lord Antoch just said they were rebuilding Bryn Shaer's defenses? That might mean nothing; they were remodeling the entire castle, after all. Along with modern roofing and modern windows and modern fireplaces, modern battlements and artillery walls made perfect sense.

But the Nemair had told me that Bryn Shaer was so remote that its military properties were obsolete. No reason to defend the Breijarda Velde, when there was peace in Llyvraneth.

I looked down over the valley, springing away in a bright dip of white so dazzling the sky had turned it blue. Smoke lifted from the Broad Valley, snug behind its blockade of snow. Did the Nemair expect that soon there wouldn't be peace in Llyvraneth?

Oh, I was very good. Playing the innocent maid with a sudden interest in military architecture, I drew out every thing Cwalo and Lord Antoch would tell me about the castle's defenses, and what they didn't show me, I checked on myself later that afternoon. It took me into the older part of the castle, where they were storing supplies for the renovations, and when I was supposed to be helping Meri practice her lines for the kernja-velde, I was instead climbing over dusty ladders and frame-horses and peeking under draped canvas. I didn't know what I was looking at, of course, but I recalled it all faithfully.

By the time I emerged, gray with dust, the sun had dropped behind the mountain, and Zet's moon winked at me from a twilit sky. I crossed back toward the Lodge, pausing to rub a handful of snow over a stubborn mark on my skirt. Berdal, the guard so eager to share his avalanche knowledge on the way up here, was in the paddock yard, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the hooves of a white, spotted horse.

I made to curve around back toward the Lodge, but he saw me and gave a wave. I changed directions. "Lady Merista's horse?"

"Sweet little la.s.s, like her mistress," he said. "She does like to ride, that one. I'm surprised their lords.h.i.+ps let her ride out alone, though. It's pretty rough terrain in these parts, particularly with the trails obscured by snow."

I stopped. "What - alone? No, she rides with her father." I put those riding clothes on her every morning and brushed them clean an hour later. I knew she'd told me tales of Lord Antoch - Berdal shook his head. "Not since that Lord Daul's been around and taking up all of his lords.h.i.+p's time. Most mornings Lady Merista goes out alone, though I'd feel better if one of you maids went with her." He gave an easy laugh and dropped the pony's hoof. "I suppose it'll have to be that Phandre, since you haven't learned to ride yet, have you?"

I smiled back absently, turning toward the Lodge. If Meri wasn't riding with her father, then where was she going?

Stepping out of the wind, at first I didn't see Daul lurking just inside the pentice, the covered walkway that connected the older Bryn Shaer with the Lodge.

"Learning anything interesting?" he said, his voice a purr as he fell into step beside me. He was clad today in dark blue, a color that made him look sallow and irritated. Maybe it wasn't just the color.