StarCrossed. Part 15

Lying in the chest atop my shoes and belts, where I always kept it, was Durrel Decath's pearl-handled dagger.

The one I'd lost in the woods with the Sarists.

I dropped to my knees on the floor, staring at the clothes trunk, those cold, clutching fingers grabbing at my chest again. I picked up the knife, but it swirled now with residual magic, like finger smears on the blade, and when I wiped it with my skirts, it only got all over me. I pulled my dress up, exposing my leg - but it didn't feel safe anymore. I dropped my skirts and left the knife where Meri had put it.

The red jewel in its hilt winked up at me from the pile of stockings and slippers. Be a friend to her, Celyn. Pox and b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.ls.

I started with the shoe chest, then the desk and cupboard and the prayer stand. Under the cus.h.i.+ons of the window seat. Inside my old hiding spot (I'd found another, in the hollow beneath a loose stair tread in the servants' stair). I even popped Phandre's door and took a peek around her spa.r.s.e belongings. Where would Merista Nemair store her girlish secrets?

I was lost. They were so much bigger than I'd ever suspected from her, but as I looked around the room, I forced myself to stop and think. Really think about this. About the dreamy smiles on Meri's face after her morning "rides." About the fair-haired local boy who'd walked me back so confidently to Bryn Shaer. In the dark. It was possible.

As I stood there, the window seat kept tugging at me. It was hollow for storage - we kept blankets there - but the compartment wasn't as deep as it should have been. I pulled the cus.h.i.+ons off and flipped the lid, tapping and pressing along all the seams in the boards of the bottom. Was I looking for a panel, a door, a spring? I dug my too-long fingernails into every gap, feeling for a latch. But there was nothing. On the outside, then. I worked my hands along the carvings at the base, the sculpted rosettes and swooping leaves, until my fingers found the place where one rose's center sat a little too deep. I gave it a gentle push, heard the click, and watched the panel spring back to reveal the hollow.

"Oh, Meri - very nice." What obliging parents the Nemair must be, to outfit their daughter's bedroom with a secret compartment. And to outfit their daughter with two heavy silver chains and a thick silver bracelet. And a protector like Cousin Durrel. And a secure mountain stronghold in which to pa.s.s into adulthood unthreatened.

I sat back on my heels. Life for a n.o.b with magic would come with peculiar challenges. Up until now she'd been able to lead a relatively sheltered life - her parents were overseas, and she was young enough not to be much in demand in society. But she was just about to come of age, get married, and be thrust into public life, with all the visibility and gossip and touching that came with that life. I knew how easily a n.o.b's secrets could be exposed. Was it possible that along with the training in housekeeping and the social graces, the Nemair had brought Meri to Bryn Shaer for her to learn to manage her magic?

n.o.bs' children with embarra.s.sing secrets - too many fingers, a susceptibility to fits - were normally offered up to the Celystra for a soft life as honored servants of the G.o.ddess. And the Celystra was only too eager to accept them, and the fat dowries they brought with them.

I could imagine all too well what the Celystra would do with a girl like Merista Nemair.

I reached my hand inside the hidden opening. The cavity was not large - you couldn't hide a whole Sarist rebel down there, or even his spare clothing.

But it was plenty big enough for a couple of missing books. I pulled out the first small volume: the gray primer on magic from Antoch's library. It left behind enough of its not-quite-light for me to see the object that had been sharing its quarters. I fetched it into daylight as well: a worn book of black leather, a mark embossed on the spine: a wide, curving cross inside a circle. The seal of the House of Daul.

First Daul, now Meri? What was in this book that made it so irresistible? My fingers practically itched as I cracked it open.

To - nothing. I flipped through a few pages in smooth black script, but it seemed to be nothing more than some kind of treatise on hunting. There were detailed chapters on dressing the horses, the best weather and terrain for various game, and endless advice on training the dogs. Definitely a n.o.b's book, but why was Daul so keen for it? And why did Meri have it?

Pox, this didn't make any d.a.m.n sense. And it wasn't my business. We never read the doc.u.ments we stole, not any more than necessary to be sure they were the right ones. What was I doing? Getting involved, that's what.

And that was the third rule.

Stay alive.

Don't get caught.

Don't get involved.

But I hadn't signed on for this job. I'd been recruited. I figured I had some right to know what I was being asked to do. And I didn't like being played.

I sat with the book on my lap and scowled at it. Well, why do people usually want doc.u.ments stolen? Because the doc.u.ments say something bad about them or contain secrets they don't want revealed. I turned to the end and made my search more carefully. Sections of pages through the book were blank, as if the author's thoughts had been interrupted and he'd started back up again at random, and as I flipped through the empty leaves, I found something. Someone had filled a page or two with childish, exuberant drawings - a sketch of a typical Gersin river house, a bounding deer whose head was too big, a black mountain menaced by a great dark cloud.

But there in a corner, among a squiggle of random shapes and inky finger-smudges, was something else entirely. Someone had taken blue and red inks, and traced them over each other to make purple. And in that makes.h.i.+ft, forbidden violet ink, someone had drawn stars, a whole constellation of them. Purple stars, with seven points, the seventh longer than the rest. The symbol of Sar.

Was this what Daul was after? This page of scribbles in some old hunting guide was the compelling evidence he sought against the Nemair? Even as my fingers trembled, I scowled at the improbabil ity of it.

And then I turned the page, and any desire to hand the journal over to Daul shriveled up inside me. I knew that handwriting - I was get ting to know the handwriting of everybody at Bryn Shaer - and I felt those cold fingers scrabbling at my heart again as I read the words Meri had been copying out: The Seeing Dream. To Appear Without Form. The Sacred Circle. The Dreamless Sleep. It went on for pages - not just the words, but symbols and diagrams, all copied from the Sarist book we'd found in Antoch's rooms.

Meri was teaching herself magic. Word by word, through rote memorization, using the pages of a half-empty book she'd found in her father's study, she was working her way through the principles and lessons of the old mages.

I held the journal tightly in my hands, wondering. Did she do this alone? Was there anyone working with her, to show her how to shape the symbols, make the words more than words? Or must she do this in secret, late at night, under the guise of sewing by moonslight - her bedfellow and companion possibly even under the influence of this Dreamless Sleep? You sleep so soundly, you never notice.

I pressed my fingers to the pages Meri was using as a workbook, watching the mist bunch together on the paper. Somewhere she'd crossed from scribbles to spellcraft. Did she know? Was there some special ink required? What put the magic into the paper? All good questions, and I didn't want to know the answers.

The spring I turned eleven, temple guards captured a man with magic inside the cloistered gates. He was a harmless old gaffer who traded his skills as a tinker for fruit and honey grown inside the Celystra. There was no proof he'd been seditious, or even that he'd ever used his magic. By all accounts, he was a devout Celyst, and came to wors.h.i.+p every week at the chapel, laying prayer stones for his family. He liked the convent children, and once brought a small girl a sugar mouse.

When he was exposed, they stripped him naked, cut off his hands and burned them, then suspended him upside down from the Hanging Ash, so he'd bleed to death right there in the green courtyard.

He was killed because someone had seen the magic on his skin.

Because I'd told my brother what I'd seen.

I learned to keep quiet after that, that my touch was dangerous, and secrecy was the only way to ensure survival. There was no way of knowing who to trust, so it became safer not to talk about it at all, just pretend I was like everybody else, I didn't see anything. And as soon as I could, I'd done the thing Meri and Durrel had thought so brave. I'd run away from that place and tried not to look back. Tegen was the only one who knew my secret, and he'd found out by accident. We never spoke of it, and he'd never told another living soul, until yelling, Digger, run! with a knife to his throat.

Was it like that for Meri? A fight to always stay hidden, stay unnoticed, pretend she was like everybody else? My parents are heroes, you know. Sarist heroes, of a rebellion that would have decriminalized magic. What was it like to be their daughter - their magical daughter?

I looked up, past the window seat, out into the snowy world below. Had she found someplace where she didn't have to hide, even for an hour a day, weather permitting?

Without thinking, I reached for the magic book, flipped it open, and laid my hand palm down on the pages, until I had one hand on the journal, one on the primer. The air turned watery and thick, s.h.i.+mmering against my skin. I could only see it, and how I hated the hiding and the fear. Being able to wield it must be unbearable.

Carefully, I closed the journal and the book and replaced them inside the hidden compartment. I did my job, tidying up the linen chest and the window seat, making sure the room was perfect and undisturbed. I laid out Meri's clothes, and changed into a fresh dress for the day.

And then I strapped Durrel's dagger to my thigh, right where it belonged.

I'd found what Daul wanted, but there was no way in seven h.e.l.ls I would give it up to him, not now.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

I charged out of Meri's rooms with purpose but without direction. The hallways of Bryn Shaer were empty, and I scurried downstairs to where Lady Lyll would be waiting in the stillroom, but the little workroom was locked, and there was no answer when I tugged on the door. No Meri, no Lyll. I had Daul's journal, but couldn't give it to him. Full of energy and nowhere to fling it, I let myself back out into the courtyard, where wind and servants had swept most of the snow into the corners. It was a cold, clear day, and the rooks wheeled around the white tower, voicing their eerie cries into the thin air.

I stopped for a moment, watching them. Their movements were hypnotic, curving through the sky in smooth black arcs, like lines of ink on a blank page. Something tugged at my memory, but my thoughts were too scattered to draw it out.

One of the rooks dived toward the earth, a straight swift plummet - and my heart went with it. Daul.

I had told him about the Sarists in the woods.

Meri's Sarists.

I gave my bodice a yank and set across the courtyard at a run. Now that I knew where Meri had gone, I might actually be able to track her, but instead I turned back to the Lodge. Berdal had told me Daul spent mornings with Lord Antoch, so I headed for the Armory, a long, wide room linking the Lodge with the older Bryn Shaer, where the men often a.s.sembled while the women gathered in the solar.

Inside, Daul was fencing with Antoch, while Lord Wellyth and Eptin Cwalo rearranged the markers on a map table. I hung just inside the door. Antoch and Daul were oddly matched, and it was like watching a bear dodge a whip. Antoch moved with an unexpected fluid grace, like Meri when she danced, though Daul slashed at him with a frenzied focus, driv ing him back and back. Daul struck a point, to a round of applause from their audience - Marlytt and Phandre hanging on the arms of Lord Sposa and Lord Cardom - and Antoch gave a bow, handing over his sword.

Daul stepped back, wiping an arm against his forehead. "Let's go again."

"Nay, Remy, you've beaten me enough!" Antoch laughed. "Come sit by the fire and warm up." He turned away, but Daul grabbed his arm.

"Again." He raised his sword and darted back.

But Antoch turned slowly, with a dark look I'd never seen before. He took three swift paces toward Daul and caught him by the shoulder. "Have done," he said very softly, but the room almost shook with the warning in his voice.

Daul went rigid, gripping his weapon. I saw Marlytt stiffen, pulling slightly away from Lord Sposa. Then Antoch's face broke into a grin. "Come, brother - enough fighting for one morning. Peace?" He held out his hand.

Daul shook him off, stuck the practice swords carelessly into their rack, and stalked off across the room. I pulled back, deciding this probably wasn't the best moment to talk to him, but he stopped at a long table and poured himself a drink. Across the room, Lord Antoch shook his head and turned back to the fire.

Very well. Daul and Meri both accounted for. Now what? I wandered more slowly down the hallway, until I found myself back in the courtyard once more. I looked up at the white tower, still occupied by its family of rooks, marching along the crenellated battlement, poking their beaks through the narrow slits. Why did that seem so strangely familiar - and significant? I watched them, tapping my fingers against my lips, until I finally tapped something loose.

I slipped back inside, straight for the stillroom, and nicked Lady Lyll's account ledger. I would have to bring it back immediately, of course - there was no way someone as efficient as Lady Lyll wouldn't notice it was missing. But tucked in the stairwell, I slowly flipped through the pages until I found the catalogue of the birds at Bryn Shaer: Pigeons: 125 Falcons: 15 Gyrfalcons: 12 and two very fine Drakes: 5 Crows: 24 by count "I found you," I whispered into the neatly inked pages. When is a pigeon not a bird? I knew Lyll kept precise records, but I had been to Bryn Shaer's mews, and though everyone here enjoyed poultry and falconry as much as the next n.o.b, they didn't have a hundred and twenty-five pigeons. I had seen one or two falcons, not a dozen or more. Lady Lyll had taken a careful account of something - something that would look innocent to prying eyes.

But it wasn't birds.

A fowling-piece called a pigeon, Cwalo had said. A gun.

I cornered Marlytt the next day. I had to drag her away from a tennis match between Daul and Lord Cardom (who was surprisingly good, for all his size). In the hall, she clutched at my arm, looking anxious.

"Digger, please be careful. Someone is bound to notice."

"Did you tell me Eptin Cwalo was an arms merchant?"

She just looked at me. "I suppose - why?"

I paced down the hall. Marlytt didn't need to be involved in this, but she was still my best source of information. "But you said he was from Yeris Volbann, didn't you? That's west of the Carskadons."

"Digger, you're talking nonsense."

"Am I? Cwalo came here with you and Daul - from Breijardarl. That's east. What was he doing over there?"

She gave her dainty shrug. "Exactly what he said he was doing - buying fruit and wine? I think you'd be glad of that too, that he and Lyll so thoughtfully stocked the larders before we were all snowed in here."

I let her go. The Nemair had been sending s.h.i.+pments over the mountains for months before we arrived, and big things too: furniture, cloth, casks of ale, tapestries, all the fine wood and stone used to build the Lodge. The disa.s.sembled crates were stacked in the older part of the castle, but it would hardly be a difficult matter for a man as shrewd as Eptin Cwalo to label something "pears," when what was really inside was - gyrfalcons. It made too much sense; what good were new artillery walls without new artillery? What if Cwalo wasn't just a wine merchant desperate for daughters-in-law? Cardom, s.h.i.+ps. Wellyth, timber. Sposa, grain. In his account of what the a.s.sembled families had to offer the Nemair, he'd left one out: Cwalo, guns.

It was like having an itch under my corset - it was going to niggle away at me until I scratched it. Daul was going to niggle at me. With a whistle and a wave to the rooks who'd given me the idea, I set off to find Bryn Shaer's missing birds.

My search took me back to the old part of the castle and its raised battlements. I wanted another look at the walls - not that I'd know what I was looking at. Maybe I could persuade Eptin Cwalo to give me another tour. Marau's b.a.l.l.s. A stair inside the white tower wound up to a wide walkway overlooking the whole castle. Arrow loops spiraled up alongside it, making a series of tiny windows in all directions. I remembered Antoch miming a firearm on the battlement. Would these tiny slits be useful for the new artillery, or were we too far away from anything to get good range?

And then I banged my head softly against the wall for even having such a thought.

I pushed my way through a short arched door onto a raised walkway ringing the tower. Wind whipped at my head. I could see all of Bryn Shaer's lands, down to the dip of the Breijarda Velde. Men and dogs were still working at clearing the snow, and from up here, they looked tiny and ineffectual. They probably looked tiny and ineffectual down there too. Something in the snowy distance closer to the castle caught my eye - a lone figure on a white horse, bundled in a red coat, streaming across the white fields toward the trees. Oh, Meri, I thought. We need to teach you a thing or two about stealth.

And then I remembered she had eluded me already, and kept her lone morning jaunts a secret to everyone except perhaps the groom. Maybe she wasn't doing too badly on her own after all.

I pulled my coat closer and tried to recall what Cwalo and Antoch had told me about defending Bryn Shaer. The way they had talked about artillery and artillery walls, it had sounded more hypothetical than real, but there were five main towers - each corner of the outer bailey, the white tower I stood upon, and a square gatehouse perched right above the sheer drop Cwalo had so enthusiastically pointed out to me. Five towers, five drakes. Even I knew you'd need a big gun to defend a tower. Like a cannon.

So where were they?

Behind me, I heard the door being shoved open. Startled, I spun, and Daul stepped out onto the ledge with me.

"What are you doing here?" I glanced past him; the curve of the tower partially blocked his view of Meri, moving with excruciating delay toward the fringe of trees. I made a mad decision and headed toward him.

"Looking for Sarists?" he said, a note of amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice.

"Of course I am," I snapped. "Don't you know they've added snow and crow droppings to the Inquisition's Catalogue of Transgression?" I made to push past him, but his arm came up and blocked my path.

"Not so fast. Any more entertaining lies to sell me this morning?"

"What?"

"Sarists in the woods," he said, his voice a low, dangerous slip of sound. "Very diverting. You truly are Tiboran's own child. To think I very nearly believed you."

"I wasn't -" I stopped myself just in time. "You didn't find them."

" 'You didn't find them,' " he echoed. "You're fortunate I enjoy riding out into the wilderness chasing the fantasies of little girls, but I would advise you to adhere more closely to the truth than you're probably accustomed to, if you don't want me to dissolve our little partners.h.i.+p."

"Good! I wish you would."

Daul leaned in close enough that I could smell his clove-scented breath. "I think you misunderstand me. If you stop working for me, little mouse, you'll never work for anyone again." The icy wind shrieked around the tower. "Just remember how many sheer drops there are in these mountains, and how very much snow."

I pulled back. "I'm tired of your threats," I said, but I sounded unconvincing.

He held my arm and squeezed. "Show me some good work, then, and perhaps I won't feel so compelled to make them."

Below us, Meri had finally reached the woods. Smoothly she dismounted and tethered her horse to a tree. And then just stood there, stroking its nose.

"Why are you doing this? Going after the Nemair?"

His gaze went straight over my head, out into some shadowy distance. "Because someone has to. You know that too - I've seen the way you look at them. What is it you called them - n.o.bs? Men like Antoch Nemair think they can get away with anything, and it has to stop. He'll find out soon enough that lands and a t.i.tle won't protect him from the G.o.ddess's justice."

"I don't understand."

His gaze fell on me, clear and sharp as ever. "You don't need to understand. You need only to obey. Go along now; I believe you have a report due."

I wasn't budging, not until Meri disappeared into those dark trees. "Report of what?" I asked wildly. "I haven't found anything else!" Just the hints from Cwalo and Lady Lyll's weird notations, which, without evidence, added up to exactly nothing. Oh, yes, and the little matter of magical Merista Nemair and the wizards in the woods.

A figure in violet, with a fair pale head, stepped out of the trees and opened his arms to Meri. Stagne. I had to keep Daul occupied until they turned back into the forest.

"What's in that journal you want so badly? Don't you have enough evidence yet to send your Greenmen friends?"

Daul's expression darkened. "No. The journal is . . . a personal interest."

"A personal interest?" I repeated. Mainly because Meri and Stagne were still lingering by Meri's horse, stroking and patting it. Sweet Tiboran - was I going to have to kiss the man? "I charge extra for personal interest."