by T. A. White
They paused in the doorway as dozens of eyes turned toward them. Shea raised her chin even higher, meeting stares. There were very few friendly faces out there. Most were inscrutable, but there were a few that were outright hostile, the owners glaring at her with enough heat to start a wild fire.
She straightened her shoulders, stepping down onto the main floor with Fallon at her side. She refused to be intimidated or cowed. These people were her past. Fallon was her future. Whatever they said or thought of her was unimportant. Their judgment and blame couldn’t hurt her anymore.
Fallon’s hand brushed against hers and she looked up. There was silent support in his eyes. She nodded and took a deep breath. She could do this. This time was different. She wasn’t alone anymore.
They paused in the wide space before the tables. The pathfinders’ dining hall was different than others she’d seen in the villages she’d visited and lived in. There wasn’t a head table where only a select few ever sat. Instead the tables were arranged so it wasn’t clear who carried the highest status in the Keep.
She’d always liked that way of doing things. It forced those in charge to mingle with a wide range of people, from the lowliest of apprentices to the loftiest of stations. It also meant the conversation was varied and you couldn’t help getting different views as long as your dinner companions rotated.
Today, however, it looked like the dining hall had been cut down the middle. Fallon’s people on one side and the bulk of the pathfinders on the other.
It left her questioning where they should sit. Did they stick to their own people and eat in peace with little concern for pathfinder politics? Or did they venture forth and risk indigestion?
She knew without asking, which Fallon would pursue. They hadn’t come all this way to stick to what was safe. If they were to make this trip worth it, they would have to brave the verbal barbs of their hosts.
Shea and Fallon headed for a table in the middle that had been left empty. They stood with backs to their people while they faced the pathfinders. Caden and Braden flanked them. The rest of the clan leaders met them at the table moments later.
Several pathfinders stepped up to join Shea’s group, taking their places opposite the Trateri. Their speed and the flawless way they settled into position suggested they’d simply been waiting to see what the Trateri did.
It was a test, pure and simple. One they had passed—she hoped.
The pathfinders dining with them were ones Shea recognized. Shea’s father was seated right across from her. The rest were all highly placed among the pathfinder ranks. Not the council. Not quite. Just one step below.
Good, they were taking Fallon and his people seriously.
“If everyone would be seated, we will begin serving,” a woman announced from where she stood at the end of the table, her hands held palm up as she gestured for them to take their seats.
Shea stiffened at the sight of the woman, her movements turned wooden and jerky as she rushed to join the others settling onto the benches.
Fallon glanced at her briefly and she shook her head, warning him against asking any questions. Shea put her hands in her lap and squeezed them together to quell the shaking. She took a deep breath and directed her attention back to the woman, her eyes lingering on the woman’s face, noting the tiredness, the lines that were slightly more set than they had been the last time Shea had seen her.
The woman was every inch the lady, wearing a long-sleeved dress that flowed over her figure to fall in a graceful line to her feet. There was a small, gracious smile on her face as she looked over the table with wise, knowing eyes. The patrician lines of her face had aged well, making her even more beautiful with age. Her hair was long and twisted into an elegant knot at the back of her head, a golden wheat color with lighter shades of blond running through it.
Shea fought the urge to touch her own hair. It had grown a lot in the months since she’d chopped it off to pose as a boy in the Trateri army. It finally just brushed her shoulders in a riotous mess of honey brown. Taming it into any semblance of order was usually a losing battle. Fallon had plaited some of it before they’d left the chamber, getting it out of her eyes, but pieces had already escaped to lie tangled around her face.
She couldn’t have been more different than the lady if she had tried.
Fallon dipped his head to the lady and said, “We’re honored to partake of this meal.”
She inclined her head with a soft smile before raising one hand. The signal sparked movement, men and women spilling from several doors, carrying heavy serving trays.
“I hope you don’t mind but we serve from the outside of the room in,” the woman said.
Shea looked down at her plate, becoming consumed with straightening her silverware until it was perfectly aligned.
Fallon shifted in his seat and gave the woman a calculating look, baring his teeth in a smile Shea would say was only for show. He’d noted his telroi’s odd reaction to the woman’s appearance, but for the life of him couldn’t figure out why. He couldn’t ask either. Not without showing his lack of knowledge.
“We are your guests,” he managed to say. “We will abide by your rules. For now.”
She inclined her chin, the warning in his words well received. Her eyes lingered on Shea’s bent head for a moment before she stepped back, clasping her hands in front of her as she monitored the progress of her servers.
Fallon noted with interest that the servers were garbed similarly to the rest of the diners. They were greeted with smiles and friendly conversation by their people—something rare in the Lowlands where the different classes were more sharply delineated.
He suspected the task of serving was a duty rotated among the people living here and not given to the same group of people every time. He made a mental note to ask Shea once they were alone again. It would come in handy to know how her pathfinders thought. Knowing one’s enemy—and friends—was the key to influencing any outcome in his favor.
“How are you finding our Highlands so far?” a man asked. He was seated across the table and two people down from where Fallon sat. With dark hair and a sharp gaze, this man seemed like a wily foe to Fallon.
“It’s a beautiful country,” Fallon said. It was, too. Shea’s homeland possessed a sharp, fierce beauty that was every inch as wondrous as it was deadly. It was an interesting juxtaposition of two such opposite extremes.
A lean, wolfish looking woman on the end of the table snorted. “What a diplomatic answer from a barbarian conqueror.”
Fallon raised one eyebrow, his lips tilting up slightly, even as his eyes remained hard and watchful. “Even barbarians find diplomacy has its moments. Otherwise, we would have no doubt killed each other long ago.”
Unfortunately for everyone else, the Trateri form of diplomacy often defaulted to that which could be obtained at the end of a blade. Something these pathfinders might have cause to find out before too much longer.
“And you, little bird? How do you find your former homeland?” the woman asked Shea, the question as pointed as a spear. There was an anticipatory expression on the woman’s face, as if she fully understood the pain the question might cause and relished it.
She should have been much more delicate in her jab. Anyone could see what she’d hoped to accomplish. For all the woman’s talk of diplomacy, she wasn’t very good at it, Fallon decided.
Shea turned cold eyes on the woman. “I found it much the same as when I left. Still beautiful, still dangerous, still full of idiots. Not much has changed it seems, Eliza.”
The answer caused the woman’s face to darken and her eyes to narrow. The rest of the group’s expressions remained bland, as if this was a conversation about the weather and not one designed to put Shea and Fallon off balance.
Fallon had just filled his goblet when someone on the end murmured, “If one doesn’t count the uptick in beast activity.”
“And the fact that the mythologicals have reappeared,” the first m
an said.
Fallon moved to fill Shea’s goblet, letting her take the lead for now. He was interested to see how far they’d push this.
Shea picked up the goblet, flashing him her eyes in thanks before she shrugged, affecting a nonchalance that he knew she didn’t feel. She often told him he was hard to read, but she could be just as enigmatic when she wanted to be. This was one of those moments. Her expression was cold and remote. Whatever was going on behind those eyes was hidden from all but those who knew her very well.
“This isn’t the first time there have been problems with beasts, Gerald,” Shea said with a tight smile. “I sincerely doubt it will be the last.”
“So, you deny that your incursion to the Badlands has anything to do with what is happening now,” Eliza said, her voice sharp.
Fallon read the barely visible flinch in Shea’s eyes.
“I was not aware this dinner was to be a trial,” she said, recovering swiftly.
“You don’t deny it, then.” Eliza leaned back, satisfaction on her face.
Shea was stiff next to him. Her back was so straight and her body so tense that she seemed almost brittle. He set one hand on her knee and squeezed, letting her know without words he was still here—that if she gave him the sign, he would be happy to step in and slaughter them all. She only had to ask.
“I am given to understand that the mythologicals are a more recent occurrence,” Shea said, her voice steady. “My journey was years ago. It is a stretch to assume that whatever is happening now is because of what happened then.”
These people were scared, Fallon was interested to note. It was why they had dragged their prodigal daughter home, and why they required an army at her back. They wanted someone to blame for what was happening. Someone who could fix it. His telroi just made a convenient scapegoat.
Fallon’s scoff was faint. In that, they were disturbingly similar to many Lowlanders he had encountered, something he had never thought he’d say.
There was a faint movement from the matron who stood at the head of the table, directing the room with barely seen movements. Fallon’s eyes sharpened on her before he focused back on the quarry at hand.
“I had not expected such useless conversation from your people, Shea,” Van said, his voice laced with irritation. “An endless round of casting blame. They show little more backbone than a grub. We would have been better off eating on our own for the sake of our digestion.”
The Lion clan leader tilted his head, looking down his nose at those across from him. Half a head taller than Fallon and built like a mountain range, Van was the type who intimidated simply by looking at you. He was the man Fallon sent in when he was having trouble with a village and didn’t have the time or patience for a more diplomatic solution.
More of a blunt instrument than a sleek blade, he got the job done, usually by obliterating everything in his path. Subtlety wasn’t his strong suit, but then it didn’t need to be. Most times he could handle anything that came his way, using his large size and skills honed from a lifetime of battle to achieve the outcome he desired.
Of all Fallon’s advisers, he was usually the one who most often advocated for bloodshed. Not because he was a particularly vicious man, but because he genuinely enjoyed battle.
It had led many to underestimate him, overlooking the keen intellect hidden inside until it was too late. They saw the big size and striking face and made assumptions, only finding out later what a skilled foe Van was.
Whether he meant it to or not, Van’s question broke the tension around the table, the pathfinders across from them relaxing and settling back.
Shea’s father smirked. “Indeed, you are correct. There is time for such arguments. This is not it. Our guests have not had a proper meal in weeks.”
The lady’s lips tilted up, humor glinting in her eyes as she stepped forward. “Of course, here is your food now.”
As she spoke, servers appeared over their shoulders. Platters of food were set on the table, some heaped high with vegetables and slices of meat on others. The scents were tantalizing after weeks on the trail where the closest they’d gotten to a hot meal was in their dreams.
There were even bowls filled with sauces in which to dip the oven-baked flatbread and platters of fruit intermixed with everything.
More than one of Fallon’s people looked at the spread in surprise. There was a variety here that seemed unlikely given how isolated these people were, including fruits Fallon knew didn’t grow this far north.
It left him to wonder if this meal was another political maneuver. A way to say they weren’t backward mountain people. That they knew what was outside their narrow world even if they didn’t often take part in it.
None of the pathfinders made a move toward the food.
“Please, help yourself,” Patrick said, gesturing to the dishes.
Fallon couldn’t help feeling like this was another test, though he couldn’t see how or why. He sat for a long moment studying Shea’s father and thinking. Sometimes in battle, you had to be patient, wait for that perfect opportune moment to strike. It was the same in diplomacy. There were hidden currents to be considered before you made any move, outcomes to be decided before a single blow had been struck.
He narrowed his eyes and glanced back at the lady who watched the gathering with a placid face. This woman had unsettled Shea for some reason. His telroi was not easily ruffled. She might get mad, lose her temper, and say things that while true would be best put in a different way, but she didn’t shut down. She didn’t avoid.
There was only one person he could think of to make her act in such a way.
He peered closer at the lady. Ah, so that was it.
“Wouldn’t you care to join us, lady?” Fallon asked, his smile pointed. “I feel it is only proper that I break bread with the mother of my telroi.”
There was a brief silence in the hall. Patrick’s face went blank and he stared at Fallon with an intent expression. Fallon met his eyes with a mocking calm, before flicking a glance back at the lady who stared at him while seeming mildly amused.
None denied it. Fallon had taken a gamble. There was a definite resemblance between her and her daughter. It was there in the eyes, mostly. The distinct feeling that his telroi’s eyes were looking back at him, slightly older and more faded, but still hers. It was there in the lines of the face, a slightly softer version of Shea’s who had her father’s strong jaw and nose, but everything else was the same. The coloring was different, but for the most part this was what Shea might look like in a few decades.
“Very good, Warlord,” Shea’s mother said. “You’re incredibly astute.”
Caden shifted next to him, obviously preferring to be on his feet. Fallon wasn’t the only one tiring of the games. Several of the men seated with them radiated impatience.
The corner of Shea’s mom’s lips quirked up, a familiar expression he’d seen countless times on his telroi’s face. Usually when she was teasing him.
“I am Lainey Halloran, the pathfinders’ Guildmaster.” She ignored the stir her words caused, remaining focused on Fallon. “You are correct; Shea is my daughter. I believe you’re already acquainted with my husband, Patrick O’Shassey.”
Now, that was an interesting development. Fallon set his elbows on the table and folded his hands, watching the woman and Shea’s father out of the corner of his eye. What did they hope to gain by concealing Shea’s mother in such a way?
Zeph, the clan leader of Ember, turned his focus to where Shea sat, unmoving.
Shea took a deep breath and turned to the woman, her expression remote. “Hello, mother, it’s been a while. I hope you’re well.”
Lainey arched one eyebrow, her expression dissatisfied. “Yes, it has, hasn’t it? One must wonder why you never sent word to let us know that you still drew breath.”
Shea lifted an eyebrow right back, un-cowed by this woman. “And how should I have done that? I was hundreds of miles awa
y. I couldn’t exactly drop a note to a carrier pigeon and send it winging your way.”
Lainey’s lips pursed, the reply obviously not finding favor with her.
“Ladies, this is perhaps a discussion for another time,” Shea’s father rumbled, giving both women a pointed look.
There was the slightest evidence of chagrin on Lainey’s face before she said, “Of course. Please, enjoy. I am ceremony master tonight so I’m afraid I won’t be able to join you.”
She dipped her head in a regal nod and swept away, leaving them to their dinner.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Shea stomped along the hallway cursing all pathfinders and their stubbornness, Trenton beside her.
She’d gone to the Keep’s gatherers, pathfinders tasked with finding and recording information about beasts and the world around them. They should have been the perfect people to hand over her notes from the last few months to. She’d thought her experience with the bashe and other mythologicals might help. At the very least it would give them a place to start as they updated the Keep’s logs.
Instead, she’d been given a placating smile and told her notes, while appreciated, would not be of much use given the rigorous methods they used to review such information. Then, the pathfinder had placed them in a drawer—one Shea knew for a fact was where they put things that never saw the light of day.
Wouldn’t hold up to their standards, her ass. She’d gone through the same training as them. Completed the same tests. They were just being idiots—stupid, elitist idiots intent on cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
That was fine. It really was. When one of theirs died because they didn’t have valuable intelligence, they would only have themselves to blame. Shea had done all she could to keep them informed. Swallowed her own pride in the name of working together.
Anger and hurt fueled her as she stalked along the halls, finding a staircase and heading up. She had no destination in mind, her only thought to keep moving so she didn’t return to the archives and strangle a few of the pathfinders there, especially the ones that had stared at her when she’d tried to turn in her notes and snickered when she’d been told politely that they weren’t needed.
