The Safe-Keeper's Secret

by Sharon Shinn

  “You’ll have to go someday,” he finished up. “It is so much more exhilarating than you can possibly imagine.”

  “Someday,” she said, with such uncertainty that neither of them believed it. “For now, I am happy here.”

  Isadora arrived a week later, signaling, in Fiona’s mind, the true start of the Wintermoon holiday. Time for Allison to move down to her grandmother’s, time for the other beds to be aired out, time to replenish the stores of flour and eggs and butter so that all the traditional baking could begin.

  But Fiona put only part of her attention to these tasks; with the rest of her energy, she was fretting about Isadora. “You look so thin!” she exclaimed when she first shepherded the Dream-Maker into the kitchen to warm up with a pot of tea. “Haven’t you been eating?”

  “Oh, I eat, but nothing tastes very good to me,” Isadora said with a little shrug. “I’ll grow fat again on your fine cooking, don’t you worry.”

  “Are you sleeping? I can give you a serum that will stop you from waking up in the middle of the night.”

  “Now, that I’d be happy to take because—well—sometimes there is so much on my mind that I cannot fall asleep, to be honest,” Isadora said. “I find—I wish—well, now. I’m an old lady.”

  Fiona set a piece of cake in front of her and sat next to her. “You wish what? We are alone. You can tell me any secrets.” And she smiled, for she did not expect Isadora to comply.

  But the Dream-Maker looked around the room, as if checking for eavesdroppers in the shadows, and she lowered her voice. “My dear, I am so tired of it,” she said at last. “I do not wish to carry this burden anymore. It is time to hand it off to someone younger and stronger.”

  Fiona was silent a moment. “And is there a way you can do that, a way you can let go?”

  Isadora shook her head. “I don’t know. And I’m—I’m afraid to. What if the power passes to my daughter, who has had so much misery in her life already? How could I do such a thing to her? Even now she is expecting another child—and you know that they have all been stillbirths, every one. I should be at her side, but she does not want me there—I drag woe in my wake, she says. How can I say, ‘Take this power from me,’ and foist it on her instead? Doesn’t she deserve some joy in her life?”

  Fiona put her hand over Isadora’s curled fist. “Let it go,” she said in a quiet voice. “Release it. It is somebody else’s time.”

  “I would, I would. Even knowing what might befall my daughter, I would,” Isadora said, her fingers turning to entwine with Fiona’s. “But there is so much left undone. So many dreams left unfulfilled. What if the burden passes from me, and doesn’t go to my daughter? Suppose no one else picks it up at all? What if there are no more instances of magical joy in the world, all because I am too weak to inspire them?”

  “Then the world will go on well enough. It is not your job to make everyone in it happy.”

  Isadora sighed. “No, but I would make you happy. And Reed. And Angeline. And Thomas. I would wave my hands and—like that!—each of you would be struck with a blinding joy. I would give each of you the dearest wishes of your heart, and then I would lie down and let this strangeness pass from my bones.”

  “We are all happy enough,” Fiona said firmly. “You need not hang on even one more day just for us.”

  “Well—well—we’ll see,” Isadora said. She sounded so tired that Fiona was seriously alarmed. “I may feel strong enough once the holiday is past. We shall see what happens after Wintermoon.”

  Fiona and Reed were out gathering the wreathing branches, so they didn’t see the fine coach pull up at the house and discharge its passengers. Nonetheless, Fiona was not entirely surprised, returning with her bundles in her arms, to find three more guests on hand for Wintermoon—Angeline and Thomas, who were expected, and Robert Bayliss, who was not.

  “I didn’t think you’d mind,” Angeline said to Fiona in an undervoice as Reed went over to greet the older man warmly. “With Victoria having died just two weeks ago, he is at such a loss. I didn’t think anyone should have to be alone at Wintermoon.”

  “No, I’m happy to have him here,” Fiona said. “I’ll give him the sofa and move Thomas upstairs and make Reed sleep on the floor in his room. We shall have quite the houseful.”

  “Jillian went to Kate’s for Wintermoon,” Angeline added. “I made sure to find out, because I knew you would ask.”

  Fiona smiled. “My very next question.”

  Despite the fact that all of them respected Robert’s grief—and, indeed, their old friend seemed to be wearing a perpetual look of numb loss—they managed to have a very pleasant evening meal. Reed had bought a half-cask of wine in town, and they toasted each other and told amusing stories of their adventures in the weeks that they had been apart. Isadora related the tale of the princess’s visit and then some of the other unusual requests she had heard from her noble visitors.

  “One woman—not so old, I thought, perhaps forty-five—she came to me as heavily veiled as the princess. And I was thinking, ‘Don’t bother to disguise yourself to me, for I don’t know one of you court ladies from the other and I would forget your face in five minutes if you showed it to me now.’ She came to me and told me her whole life was bitter and sad, and that she wanted the chance to make it worthwhile. Do something heroic. Well, I ask you, what could I possibly have said to that? How could I snap my fingers and confer on her the ability to be meaningful? I suggested she involve herself with some of the city charities, for there are all sorts of societies to aid orphans and other unfortunates, but she said that would not be good enough to atone. Atone for what, I wonder? I was as kind to her as ever I could be, but I wouldn’t have known what to do for her even if I’d had the power.”

  Thomas was staring meditatively into his wine, apparently lost in some thought unconnected to Isadora’s story. “I’ve always thought,” he said at last, “that the most dangerous place for a Truth-Teller to live would be in Wodenderry. I’ve only been there a few times myself, and I didn’t stay. But I keep thinking of what you said about the princess.” He looked up, a sardonic smile on his face. “Now that I’m getting older, I begin to think about the things I’d like to do with my life before it ends. And one thing I’d like to do is tell a truth to the king. I don’t know what that truth might be, but just think of it! To stand before royalty and tell him something no one else dared to say. I think that would be a rare privilege—though it might lose me my head.”

  Angeline pointed at him across the table. “You remind me,” she said gaily. “Robert told me of a tradition he and his family used to observe at Wintermoon. They would stand in a circle around the bonfire, and each would whisper to the person on his left the dearest wish of his heart. And no one would repeat those wishes to anyone else—they all became Safe-Keepers for the year—but just the act of saying those wishes aloud would make them more likely to come true.”

  Robert smiled with an effort. “Well, we were children, and our dreams were very primitive,” he said. “‘I want a new pair of boots for Wintermoon.’ That was the sort of wish that very often came true.”

  “I’ll cut snippets of truelove for each of us,” Fiona said, “and we can throw them on the fire as we whisper our wishes.”

  “And we’ll all gather again next year and report to each other if our wishes have been granted,” said Angeline.

  Fiona glanced around the table, augmented by one to, in some small way, make up for the loss of one. “Yes,” she said, “all of us.”

  They spent the two days before Wintermoon braiding the wreaths and ropes of branches, baking sweet treats, and visiting with the neighbors. More snow fell, though the temperature was not so miserably cold as it sometimes was during the holiday season. Thomas and Reed and Robert spent the whole day of Wintermoon carefully laying the wood to construct the grandest bonfire Fiona had ever seen. After dinner, they lit the blaze and stood before it, admiring its reach and hunger. Its heat was so intense it drove t
hem all a few paces away, to stand with their feet in the untrampled margin of snow.

  Fiona passed out leaves of truelove and they arranged themselves around the fire. She wondered how deliberately some of them had taken their stances, though they appeared so casually to choose the confidant who would stand on their left. Fiona herself did not care which of this group heard the deepest wishes of her heart, though she was glad enough to have Angeline on her left and Reed on her right.

  “I will begin,” she said, and leaned over to whisper her own impossible desires in Angeline’s ear. “I wish I could meet my father and look again on my mother’s face.” Angeline kissed her on the cheek, and Fiona tossed her truelove into the fire. It instantly flared to yellow flame and burned away.

  Naturally, Fiona could not hear what Angeline murmured to Isadora, but she had a guess; she had, for a long time, suspected what Angeline might wish for were she to open her heart. Again, she did not wonder what Isadora whispered to Robert, for she was pretty sure how the words would go: I want to lay this burden down. Robert, she thought, said to Thomas: It is not too late. Perhaps I can still sire a son. Thomas probably repeated to Reed the observation he had made over dinner: I would like to tell a single truth to the king.

  She was smiling as she leaned toward Reed, who stooped down to put his lips against her ear. He would tell her that he wanted to travel to Merendon or Marring Cross or Cranfield, someplace far away and exotic. He was the sort of man whose wish altered every year.

  He said in a voice that only she could hear: “I wish you were not my sister.”

  She pulled back and stared up at him. He smiled, his face just faintly touched with sadness, and tossed his true-love into the fire.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They stayed up till dawn and slept past noon, and then they all ate meat pies and cakes and pastries till they were sick. Elminstra and half a dozen of her relatives arrived as they were finishing up the meal, and they exchanged small remembrances and many fond wishes.

  “We’re walking down to the village to see Lacey and all the others,” Elminstra said. “Would any of you like to come with us?”

  “Oh, I haven’t seen Lacey in ages,” Angeline said, getting to her feet. “Wait till I put my cloak on.”

  The rest of them declared themselves too lazy. “And I have to clean up the kitchen,” said Fiona. “I’m going to set Robert and Reed to sweeping up the remains of the bonfire, though they don’t know it yet.”

  Robert affected to be offended. “What? You put your guests to work? Angeline didn’t mention that to me when she invited me to come for the holiday.”

  “But once we’re done, I’ll take you hiking,” Reed promised. “I’ll show you the creek! It’s too cold to wade, of course, but we might catch something for dinner.”

  Once the others left and Isadora retired to her bed to sleep away the afternoon, Thomas and Fiona were left to clean the kitchen. “No, you chop some more wood for the stove,” she told him, once she’d stumbled across his feet for the third time. “And then I’ll make you some tea and you can just sit there quietly out of my way.”

  He grinned and complied, and she joined him at the table once the last dish was put away. “So how long will you be staying?” she asked, sipping from her own cup.

  He shrugged. “It depends on Robert and Angeline, since I rode in with them. It must be nice to be a rich man, because that was the most comfortable coach I have ever been in.”

  Fiona smiled. “I like to have him here, and I know Reed enjoys his company. I cannot bring myself to be sorry that his wife is dead, though I know that is unkind of me.”

  He grinned. “Angeline seemed genuinely attached to her,” he said, “but I find myself wondering if Victoria’s death will do Angeline some good. It is not a truth I know, merely a suspicion I have.”

  Fiona tilted her head to one side. “Now, what do you mean by that?”

  He countered with a question of his own. “Why do you think your aunt never married?”

  “I always thought it was because the man she loved was already taken.”

  “Exactly. And now he’s free.”

  Fiona laughed. “Oh, not Robert. He’s much too neat and fussy for Angeline. She speaks of him with great fondness, but she’s more likely to matchmake for him, find him a pretty young girl from the village.”

  Thomas shrugged and sifted more sugar into his tea. “Perhaps we’re wrong, then,” he said. “Maybe she just never wanted to marry. Your mother never wanted to.”

  “She had you,” Fiona said.

  “She had me,” he confirmed.

  “Which perhaps is why Angeline never married.”

  Thomas just looked at her for the longest time, the expression on his face absolutely inscrutable. Then slowly, a faint wash of color reddened his cheeks, produced by some wild and random generation of new ideas. “I thought,” he said, in a voice he tried to keep casual, “you were in the business of keeping other people’s secrets.”

  Fiona smiled. “This was no confession whispered to me under the kirrenberry tree. This is merely something I have pieced together on my own.”

  “So it is not something you know positively.”

  She could not help it; she loosed a peal of laughter. “Oh, it never ceases to amaze me,” she said, “what truths the Truth-Teller does not know.”

  “I am not the kind of man,” he said, “that women pine away for.”

  “Indeed, no,” Fiona said, still suffused with merriment. “So if I were you, I would be grabbing such chances at happiness as came my way.”

  He studied her a long time. “You wouldn’t tell me this,” he said, “if you didn’t believe it to be true. And if you didn’t believe it would benefit the one you loved most.”

  Fiona sobered a little. “There is nothing I would not do for Angeline,” she said. “I believe her happiness is tied to you, and I believe her loyalty to my mother will not allow her to say so. I would guess she whispered your name to Isadora last night as we all stood around the fire. You were right about me, of course—there are some silences I have always thought it was better to break. But I will say nothing to her about this if you do not.” She smiled a little. “It will be a secret between the two of us. You will see how silent I can be.”

  He was still watching her, his shadowed eyes narrowed and full of speculation. “And what secret was whispered to you last night?” he asked, in his old familiar quarrelsome way. “I think I would be less surprised to hear it than you were.”

  Now she was the one to flush, but she lifted her chin and looked defiant. “A secret I will keep for a while yet,” she said.

  He leaned forward. “Here’s a truth for you,” he said. “Time always goes by faster than you expect.”

  They did not have a chance to discuss it any longer—somewhat to Fiona’s relief—because just then the front door flew open and Reed burst through, Robert at his heels.

  “Fiona, Thomas—have you heard?” Reed exclaimed. “There is a royal procession arriving in the village!”

  “A royal procession—you mean, the king?” she demanded.

  “Yes, yes—at least, that is what everyone is saying! There must be fifty riders and two coaches blazoned with the king’s coat of arms—”

  “How did you see this?” she asked. “I thought you were out by the creek.”

  He waved that aside. “We decided to go to town instead. I wanted Robert to meet Dirk at the tavern—but then we saw the coaches coming. Ned spotted them from two miles away with his new field glasses. I ran back to get you because I knew you would want to come see the king.”

  She came to her feet. “Indeed, yes! Let me get my boots on. But is he really coming here? Or is he just passing through town on his way somewhere else?”

  Thomas had not moved, but now he looked up, straight at Fiona. “He is coming here,” he said quietly, in that voice of certainty that meant some truth had been revealed to him and could not be doubted. “And he has come to look for
… something that belongs to him.”

  Fiona put a hand to her heart, feeling faint for a moment, but neither Robert nor Reed appeared to catch the significance of that remark. “Here—your cloak—and you’ll need some warm socks inside your boots,” Reed said. “Hurry, Fiona! You don’t want to miss him.”

  Thomas too was on his feet. “No,” he said, heading to the main room and the box of muddy boots. “None of us wants to miss this.”

  They woke Isadora and insisted she come with them, though she said she had had enough of royalty during her weeks in Wodenderry. Nonetheless, to please them, she pulled on her boots and wrapped herself in her cloak and followed them out the door. Then, moving as fast as such an odd party could, the whole group headed directly toward the village, and they were not the only ones. In that mysterious way that news spreads over country towns, the word seemed to have gotten out to everyone that the king had come to Tambleham. The three or four houses they passed on the way stood empty; Fiona never doubted that all the residents were on their way to the town square. Their own group of five overtook several other parties, bigger and smaller, all of them heading for the main street of the village. “Did you hear?” they called to each other as they tramped through the mud and snow. “Did you hear? The king has come to town!”

  They arrived to find the town thronged with people, everyone who lived within ten miles having somehow thought to gather here at this exact moment. The crowd was awestruck and well behaved, though, milling about at the fringes of the town square, no one willing to get too close to the cortege that had pulled up right by the village green. Reed had been right: The procession consisted of two carriages and what looked to be dozens of riders, both men and coaches decorated with the king’s colors of scarlet and gold. Fiona had never seen horses so fine as those that pulled the elegant black carriages or those that carried the king’s silent, watchful men.