StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  After that, whatever magic there was in Llyvraneth retreated even farther underground, until it was impossible to learn anything about it; that knowledge had crumbled to dust in the abandoned mages’ college at Breijardarl, burned in bonfires in city circles, and been locked tight away in convent libraries. I’d never understood this odd skill of mine — there was never anyone I could ask about it, of course. Or show it to. Or trust with it.

  Kind as Lady Lyllace Nemair seemed, she was not that person.

  Finally one evening, under the faint light of Mend-kaal and a waxing Sar, we crossed one last hump of crumbling rock and rumbled into Nemair lands. I was on the wrong side of the coach and could see nothing, but I felt the caravan stop suddenly, as if we’d all sucked in our breath at once. I leaned my head out the wagon and tried to see something, but there was only gray-dark sky above and gray-dark stone all around.

  “Are we here?” I pulled my head back in and looked at Phandre.

  “Looks like it.” Phandre climbed out of her seat and pushed past me to the door.

  Close to, that tiny miniature castle we’d seen across the valleys was huge. Not as big as Gerse’s royal palace, of course, but nearly the size of the Celystra. Mismatched buildings of stone and brick piled in on one another, watchtowers crowding into walls, all crisscrossed by narrow stone walkways and bridges, until the castle seemed even more a part of the ruined landscape than the mountains themselves. A tight, rocky path twined up the steep slope, the only approach from the treacherously narrow ridge below.

  We’d come to a stop on a level plain that spread out around the castle, surrounding it with a great ring of lands and grounds. Still, everyone dismounted and milled about in a tight cluster, as if afraid to stray too far from the safety of the crowd. The night and the cliffs and the utter impossible size of the place made it seem risky to take even one step in any direction but toward the castle.

  But I saw that tall white tower, with its sharp narrow fretwork, and suddenly wanted to see what Bryn Shaer looked like from up there, wondered what was behind all those tiny starlit windows and iron- barred doors. I pushed through the crowd, leaving Phandre and Meri behind. Lord Nemair fell in step beside me, his dark mare whickering uncertainly.

  “Celyn.” He nodded to me. “Long journey. How are you bearing up, then?”

  “Very well, milord. Thank you.”

  Even in the darkness I could see his broad cheeks part in a smile. “Celyn, my dear, you are a very good liar.” He gave me a clap on the shoulder that sent me stumbling, and led the way to the castle gates.

  The high wall, maybe three times the height of a man and begging to be climbed, parted in a wide double wooden-and-iron gate, large enough to drive the wagons through, three abreast. Liveried guards in Nemair black and silver ushered us through to an open courtyard where torches flickered over a mix of cobbles and lawn. I saw a paddock marked out at one end of the courtyard, while in the shadow of the white tower stood a great half-timbered lodge, still hugged by scaffolding, built around a curved center court.

  “Planning an attack?”

  Meri’s mother’s voice in my ear made me jump. “What?”

  Lady Nemair laughed. “You looked like you were scrutinizing the Lodge pretty severely, there, Celyn.”

  I bit back my reply — because that was exactly what I’d been doing: measuring up the walls of the new building for handholds and toeholds and counting windows, just as if cracking this building were one of Tegen’s jobs.

  “How far is the pass — the Breijarda Velde?”

  “Three miles,” Lady Nemair said cheerfully. “You can see it from the wall, just there.”

  She pointed, and under the last wisps of sunset, I could see the gap in the mountains. Three miles, but I could blot it all out with my thumb.

  “And that’s the nearest habitation?”

  “Yes, why? Were you wanting to visit somebody, then?” There was merriment in her voice. “I suppose we could all make a trip of it once we’re settled, if the weather holds. There’s not much to see, of course — just some farms and a lot of very temperamental goats. I’m not sure how the locals would feel about the neighboring lords descending upon them like an army, though.”

  Just three miles — yet impossibly far away. Having spent four days twisting through the endless bleak press of stone and trees, I was beginning to have an idea of what a “wide pass” through these mountains might mean.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  We settled in to Bryn Shaer with as much efficiency as the rest of our journey. The brand-new Lodge had been readied for our arrival by a party of servants who’d been sent on ahead, led by Yselle, the Nemair’s handpicked Corles housekeeper. The family rooms were on the second floor, above the central public gathering spaces of the Round Court, Lesser Court, Armory, and a half dozen other large and nearly identical rooms an ordinary person would need a map to keep straight. Phandre and I followed Meri upstairs, through a long corridor of dark paneling, flickering torchlight, and impossibly soft rugs beneath our feet. Shadowy and silent — a thief’s dream.

  Meri led the way a little uncertainly, pausing in stairwells and looking down hallways with a little frown. Twisting her silver necklace in her fingers, she pushed open a door midway down the second floor, and halted in the threshold. Phandre shoved her way past, and let out a long, low whistle. Curious, I followed, leaving Meri lingering in the doorway.

  Inside, I wanted to laugh. I had been in nobs’ bedrooms before — but city rooms, and never with the lamps lit. And never to stay. Even the rooms at Favom couldn’t compare to this. The top floor of my entire Gerse rooming house would have nestled comfortably in Meri’s Bryn Shaer bedroom, with its high plaster ceilings, wall of leaded windows, and ornate carved fireplace, already burning with a merry glow. And the bed — that bed. It was all I could do not to fling myself atop it and roll on the velvet coverlet like a happy dog in a pile of muck.

  “Meri,” Phandre announced, “I do believe I love you.”

  Meri still hesitated, but Phandre grabbed her hands and yanked her inside.

  “At Charicaux, my window overlooked a garden,” Meri said faintly. “There was a pear tree right below, and a dove that would sit in its branches and sing to me.”

  “Charicaux?” I said, adding, “Milady?”

  “Durrel’s house.”

  She looked so lost and forlorn I couldn’t help myself. I swung an arm around her shoulders. “Well, my last rooms in Gerse looked out on a sewage canal, and my room at the convent didn’t have a window, so I think this is magnificent.”

  Meri gave me a weak smile, but leaned her dark head against my shoulder, her skin sparking faintly as her hair brushed my cheek.

  As part of the gathering-in before Meri’s kernja-velde, Bryn Shaer was preparing to host any number of visiting nobs (among them several prospective husbands for Meri), and apparently there weren’t enough servants for all that work. Which is how I found myself, obscenely early the next morning, in the chilly courtyard with Phandre, beating clouds of dust from feather mattresses we’d dragged out of the guest apartments and draped over the paddock fence. The morning was misty and gray; the air smelled of smoke and damp and age, as if with every violent strike of the staves, we were beating some forgotten Bryn Shaerin generation from the linen and down.

  “I could be in” — thwup — “Tratua right now” — thwup — “eating grapes from the fingers of Maharal serving boys.” Thwup. Phandre brushed an armful of hair from her smudged face and leaned on her staff. “But no! I’m stuck here, at the arse end of nowhere, with mousy Meri and General Lyllace, playing scullery maid with you!” She gave another savage thrust to the bed. It was a miracle she didn’t poke a hole in it. Hastily I rescued the mattress and moved it to the stack of clean beds waiting to be returned to the castle. I stayed well out of her range and kept the bed between us — Phandre didn’t know how to wield a staff as a weapon, but she had annoyance on her side and I wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t cra
ck me upside the skull.

  And then I’d have to rough her up a little, and nobody wanted that.

  We were both beginning to suspect the truth of it all, though. The grown-up Lady Merista would be expected to know all there was to managing a fine household, and if Phandre and I had any hope of landing husbands in our lady’s wake, so would we. There was no sense objecting to this plan; if it came down to it, I didn’t think the Nemair could make me marry somebody. And Phandre didn’t dare protest: She was almost nineteen and an orphan; it was past time she cultivated a few assets that would please a farsighted suitor, and everybody knew it.

  And so we all three were to have instruction in housekeeping, tending the stillroom, cheese making, needlework, and the torture of innocent mattresses with technique that would do a Greenman proud. As I hefted the next bed onto the hurdle of twisted vines and twigs, Lady Lyllace sailed by, Meri hard at her heels. Lyllace was rattling off instructions even Yselle would have strained to take in, but Meri was practically beaming — like a puppy thrilled to be included in the games of its older fellows. She was settling in nicely; as her mother’s shadow, she’d shed her ner vous ness. Or maybe she just preferred housework to luxury.

  Lyllace paused a moment to inspect our work, nodding briskly. “Good. Stacking the beds like this will keep the moist air out. Be sure you get them back inside before too long, though. We don’t want them to mildew.”

  I thought I saw Phandre’s knuckles whiten. Meri gave us a little wave as she scurried after her mother.

  “That woman! You’d think she owned the whole mountain, the way she gives orders.”

  “I like her,” I said — not entirely to annoy Phandre.

  Phandre glared at me. “You would.”

  Late that night, we tucked ourselves beside the roaring fire in Meri’s bedroom. With the addition of a few more luxuries we’d nicked from adjoining bedchambers — a huge Kurkyat tuffet, a Tratuan glass serving set, a weird painting of a girl wearing a snail amulet on her forehead — we had put the final polish on a set of apartments definitely worthy of a noblewoman on the rise and her two loyal retainers. I stretched my feet out onto the tuffet and bent my head back to watch the shadows leap against the sculpted plaster ceiling. In the distance, the barking of dogs carried on the night wind.

  Meri was curled on a cushioned bench, reading aloud from a book of history. “Oh, hear this,” she’d say, quoting us some long dry passage about strategy at Valdoth Bridge or the heroic deaths of Sarist soldiers at Aarn. Her silver off, I watched the sparkling dust motes swim about her face and hands. There was something fascinating about it, like the sparkle of a ring on a nob’s finger, moving through a crowded market — dangerous and forbidden and right here where I could touch it, if I just reached out. What did that feel like, to Meri? Was the silver restrictive, like a corset or too many hairpins? Did she feel a rush of power when she took those necklaces off?

  Phandre pinched one of the Tratuan glasses in her fingers, admiring the way the lamplight played on its gold-dusted rim. “You know, it’s a shame to waste these,” she said. “We really ought to properly inaugurate our new home.”

  “How?” Meri asked eagerly.

  “I’ll bet this place has an impressive wine cellar.”

  Meri nodded. “It does. They grow fine grapes in Breijardarl.”

  “And that steward looked like he hadn’t missed many nightly libations.” That was me.

  Phandre grinned. “Excellent. Why don’t we see what we can dig up, then?” Her eyes turned pointedly to me. I almost laughed. I was the obvious choice for such a mission, of course. To Phandre I was expendable, and she would be only too happy to get me in trouble, and Meri seemed to think I was bold and daring. I rose and bowed grandly — like a man, not the dainty curtsy of a lady’s maid — then ducked out the door.

  As I trotted down the corridors, I built a map of Bryn Shaer in my head. Meri’s rooms were about two minutes from the main kitchens — down two flights of stairs and past the Round Court (a vast room ringed with carved banquet tables, its tapestry-draped walls soaring up to a buttressed wooden dome). I skipped past the vaulted entryway and its huge arched doors with the heavy iron bindings locking out the wilderness.

  I found my way into the darkened ser vice passages, head bowed lest someone see me, but my eyes skirting the shadows, pulling out details. The main kitchens were right behind the central court, and I guessed the wine cellar could be reached fairly easily from somewhere nearby.

  Kitchens were never empty, but at this hour they should be quiet; I went a few yards past the doorway first, to check for cellar entrances, but found none. I quickly concocted an excuse, if some overeager scullery wench discovered me here, and pushed my way in.

  The great fire had died to embers, and a boy in a tunic that was almost too small lay curled up on the hearth, one sleeping hand on the rake. A single heavy candle burned in a lamp, a plump gray cat eyed me casually from the sideboard, but I saw no one else.

  At last — there beyond the butcher block and the great carving table, a pretty painted door with a new, beautiful lock. I seemed to have found my prize; wine was expensive and servants untrustworthy. I slipped a lock pick from my corset and had the door open before the cat could finish yawning. The cellar stairs disappeared into inky blackness, so I borrowed the lamp and let myself down.

  Bryn Shaer’s wine stores were not quite so impressive as Phandre might have hoped; a few well-stocked racks and behind them, several casks of ale and barrels of wine and mead, but beyond those, the cellars sank deeper into darkness. I cast my lamp into the shadows but caught up nothing but a startled mouse, staring at me with wide dark eyes that for a brief amusing moment made me think of Meri. I turned my attentions to the racks, turning over the dusty bottles to find something suitable — nothing too expensive, or someone would notice it was missing; but nothing too cheap either, or what was the point?

  Tegen would have chosen a bottle of rare sparkling Grisel from Corlesanne, and nicked the special fluted glasses to go with it. We would have shared the bottle right here, getting recklessly drunk and leaving the bottle and glasses behind, “So they’d know we were here.”

  Suddenly I didn’t want the wine anymore.

  With a sigh, I tucked a bottle under my arm and went back upstairs. The door locked as easily as it had opened, and the fire boy slept on. The cat gave me a reproachful look, and I saluted him with the bottle.

  That was when I heard the voices, and saw the crack of light beneath a door on the far side of the kitchen — the door to Lady Lyll’s stillroom.

  If I’d been a smart little lady’s maid, I’d have scurried back upstairs to the roaring fire and cracked open the wine warming under my arm. But the smooth wood, and the hushed voices behind it, were just too tempting. I crept closer, and was rewarded by Lady Lyllace’s voice, but her normally low, soft tones had turned fierce and definite.

  “You tell milord that we are very grateful to Reynart, but that he and his men must leave.”

  If her companion made a response, I couldn’t hear it.

  “I don’t care — pay them off if you have to. No, you have my permission. Now good night.”

  Metal scraped on stone, and a heavy door creaked shut — the stillroom must have a door that led out to the kitchen gardens. A moment later, the splinter of light opened up, and Lady Lyllace stepped out. I sprang away from the door before it could crack me in the head, but that was the last of my advantage.

  “Celyn! You startled me!” Lady Lyllace clapped a hand to her chest. I had never seen her so informally dressed: in just a dark kirtle, her smock sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She dumped a bundle of laundry by the fire, briskly crossed the darkened kitchen to the sink, where fresh water was pumped in from underground springs, and set about scrubbing her hands with the cake of soap. “What in the world are you doing, wandering about at this time of night?”

  “Meri — Lady Merista wanted some wine,” I said. Not one of my better cover sto
ries, but how else would I explain the bottle in my hand? Why should I, a mere maid-in-waiting, presume to think my lady was not entitled to a bottle of wine in her own home?

  Lady Lyllace glanced toward the cellar door as she dried her hands on her apron. “The wine cellar is supposed to be locked,” she said, a note of mild reproach in her voice. But she sounded distracted.

  “It was on the counter,” I said hastily.

  She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me, but girls with lock picks clearly didn’t figure into her household accounting. “Hmm.” She held out her hand, and I found myself handing the bottle over. She glanced at the label and pursed her lips briefly. “I’ll have to have a word with Yselle about leaving valuable supplies lying about. Water it well, Celyn. Merista is younger than you, and it’s late.” To my surprise, she handed the bottle back to me.

  I quickly bowed my head. “Yes, milady.”

  Together we turned back toward the wing where the family was staying. As we walked, Lyllace gave me a bemused smile. “Celyn, why do I think you were probably one of those girls who gave the Holy Daughters fits trying to keep up with your mischief?”

  Surprised, I had to laugh.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Late morning sun streamed through Meri’s windows, making golden puddles on the polished wood floor. I stretched and gazed up at the embroidered canopy with its frolicking deer and fat rabbits. On the table beside the bed — close enough for me to put out my hand and touch it — was a pitcher of fresh cream, a plate of pears and honey, and half a loaf of steaming oat bread. Draped across my feet was a mantle of soft white fur, edged in gold; at the foot of the carved wood bedstead, an inlaid trunk, stuffed with linen smocks so fine I could see my hand through them.