by Ellyn, Court
Rhoslyn put on her mothering face. “We’ll go and love it, so says the Black Falcon.”
~~~~
Lessons continued as usual the next morning. Carah groaned as she wrestled herself out of bed and trudged to the library wearing the same dress she wore yesterday. She didn’t bother brushing her hair or putting on her shoes. All she ordered up for breakfast was strong hot tea to help her stay awake and silverthorn for the inevitable headache. She hadn’t slept well. The same nightmare woke her three times before dawn.
Jaedren sat at the writing table, pressing at a dull headache as he copied Elaran letters onto a slate. On occasion, Thorn grabbed the chalk to correct a curlicue or add a dot. He seemed to have less patience with his prize pupil today. Maybe he hadn’t slept well either.
Carah grew weary of his snappishness and of watching the boy draw the same symbols over and over again. On scrap paper, she started her list of things she wanted to take to the Assembly. Convention, rather. ‘Royal convention’ sounded so much more important than ‘Assembly.’ And the king had demanded her presence! Butterflies flapped giddily in her stomach. Deciding which gowns to take provided relief from the lingering images of her nightmare. Bizarre, bloody shadows. Violent crumbling of bone. Cold, hate-filled eyes searching for her.
Shortly before the lunch hour, Rhian slipped into the library. He didn’t bother with a greeting, even a silent one, for Thorn didn’t know he’d come until he edged around the table and sat with them. His glance flicked across the table’s other occupants, then came to rest on the scarred tabletop. He looked contemplative, uneasy, but Carah didn’t dare ask him why. She might get slapped again, and she didn’t really care what troubled a pearl fisher. He slouched back in the chair, thumbs tapping together. The nervous jiggle of his foot shook the whole table.
Thorn’s toe darted out and cracked into Rhian’s shin. “Did you need something?”
“Ach, Goddess, if there weren’t children present,” Rhian said through clenched teeth as he massaged his shin. Carah decided he’d lumped her into the “children” category. “It’s almost lunchtime. That’s all. But after that low blow, I wouldn’t report trouble if it was about to fall on your head.”
Jaedren giggled.
“Can we resume our silence, please?” Thorn demanded.
Carah’s giddiness over the convention waned; she started crossing things off her list. The scratch of Jaedren’s chalk continued. The room seemed to close in around them, the air ready to crackle. It wasn’t the spitefulness between Thorn and the pearl fisher, Carah decided, but something that had been festering and growing all morning, like a rash.
Jaedren slapped down his chalk. “I’m sorry, Thorn. I didn’t hear the last thing you said. I had another nightmare last night, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Carah’s heart turned over. Rhian glanced at the boy, just as startled. Thorn calmly reached for the chalk and the slate and began drawing another sinuous Elaran letter. “What nightmare?”
“Well,” Jaedren began, hesitant, “there were these robed people.” Carah whimpered, seeing them again. “Their faces were hidden, but I knew they were real tall. The person in front was tallest, and in one hand he held one of the green men. It grunted like a pig and … and it had been eating bloody things. In the other hand, he held a normal-looking man. Maybe he was a farmer or a sentry or anybody. Then the robed person clapped his hands together and smashed the two little people. Blood squished through his fingers. I could even smell it.” Yes, Carah had smelled the blood, thick and coppery, so close she hadn’t wanted to open her eyes. Jaedren went on, “Then I thought the robed people were hunting for me. I was in a cave. I tried to run and hide, but there weren’t any cupboards or closets or anything. Outside the cave was a big castle. I knew that’s where the robed people were coming from, and if they saw me inside the cave they’d catch me and squish me, too. The whole time I was trying to hide there was this voice. It kept saying—”
“Unbalance,” said Carah and Rhian together. Frantic, Carah reached down the table, seized her uncle’s sleeve.
Thorn finished the last letter of the word he’d written on the slate. “Naválav. Unbalance.”
“What’s happening?” Carah sobbed.
Thorn clutched her fingers, absently caressed them with his thumb while he pondered, walking the dream again. “The castle was Bramoran Royal. Come with me.”
~~~~
Kelyn inspected the circle of unsettled faces. “You’re telling me that all four of you had the same dream? You’re sure it’s not some avedra mental confusion, what with all the training going on? An exchange of fears? A … a …” He gestured wildly, as if his hands could explain his doubts better than inept words.
He and Rhoslyn had been reviewing the ledgers with Madam Yris, trying to decide how to make up for the wasted expenses. The duchess’s study was a large, sunny room, luxuriant with thick rugs and a carved mahogany desk from Ixaka. Rhoslyn leaned away from the avedrin as if they stank of the contents of a stableboy’s wheelbarrow.
“If this was merely an exchange of ideas, you’d think this would have happened to me before,” argued Thorn. “I have never experienced anything like this.”
“No, it’s too incredible. There has to be—”
“Da, it’s true!” Carah stood behind Jaedren, her hands resting protectively on his shoulders. “Jaedren told me exactly what I saw, and I hadn’t mentioned having nightmares. We all know I can’t read minds. How could I have had Jaedren’s nightmare otherwise?”
Rhoslyn sank into her desk chair. “What does it mean?”
“It means you’re not going to the Assembly, Your Grace,” Thorn replied.
“How can I not—?”
“You will not.”
Rhoslyn’s mouth clacked shut. She exchanged a glance of astonishment with Kelyn.
“Look, brother, we can’t just—”
“No, you look. Danger is coming from Bramoran. Or will come. That day at Tor Roth, almost twenty years ago, the Mother-Father warned me something terrible was coming. This unbalance and everything that follows it … this is it.”
“What unbalance, damn it?” Kelyn never had patience for abstracts.
“In the three points of the Triangle.”
“Oh, Goddess…”
“Listen, curse you. There’s Divine, Flesh, and Magic, right?” He ticked the three off on his fingers. “One of the last two is trying to undermine the others, and the Mother is not pleased. Long ago, Flesh tried to eradicate Magic. Now it may be the other way around. Thus, the disappearance of the avedrin and the emergence of the naenion. She told me the avedrin exist to protect this balance. We’re of both Flesh and Magic, we are a balance of sorts, maybe even the fulcrum upon which the scales will tip. It makes sense.”
“If only.”
Thorn heaved a sigh. “Point is, I’m going to Bramoran with you. So is Rhian. He can act as your squire. No one need see me at all. I’ll poke around, find what I can find, while Rhian watches your back.”
Jaedren tugged Thorn’s sleeve. “But I’m his squire.”
“You’re staying here, son. That’s an order. You have Her Grace to look after.”
The boy’s shoulders sagged.
“You’re not thinking of forbidding me from going,” Carah said. “If Rhian gets to go, I get to go.”
“Certainly not!” cried Rhoslyn, out of her chair in an instant.
“It’s not a matter of who gets to go,” Thorn said. “And you’re no use to us, Carah, a burden even. You can neither see nor hear potential danger and so protect yourself.”
Carah’s fists knotted at her sides as she fought to hold back tears of shame. “Despite locked doors, barred windows, and armed guards, I will follow you to Bramoran. The Goddess sent me the dream as well. If you’re compelled to go, so am I.”
“This is not a competition, Carah! It’s about your safety.”
“If I learn Veil Sight and Silent Speech between now and then, I ha
ve earned my right to go. Take me as your apprentice, not as your niece. Or will you force me to defy you?”
Neither Kelyn nor Rhoslyn spoke up. Perhaps they expected Thorn to refuse her. Deep grief struggled across his face. “That you would defy me when I have fought all these years to keep you safe…. You’re a fool, Carah. Fools plunge ahead without listening to reason. Very well. If you learn, you can go.”
~~~~
Carah and Esmi dug inside the chests of fabric. An avedra who knew how to see and listen earned a robe. Carah had to get one started if she wanted it to be ready before the convention. “What about this nice, sturdy blue fustian?” Esmi shook out a length of fabric. “Lots of wear in it.”
Carah wrinkled her nose. “No, it looks too much like Uncle Thorn’s. And fustian is too plain. It might do for Jaedren. You know how hard boys are on clothes. But he said he’ll wait till he’s knighted before he has one made.” Carah almost grinned at the idea of little Jaedren wearing a rich avedra robe while shoveling out the lord’s stables.
“The rose-colored crepe then?” Esmi draped the crinkled silk across her shoulder, looking hopeful.
“That was Mum’s ball gown last year.” Carah stopped rifling among the ribbon, beads, and gewgaws and sat back on her heels. “Do you think I’m a fool, Esmi?”
Her handmaid went as still as the mannequins standing the corner. “Beg your pardon?”
“You know, the kind who plunges headlong without thinking, the kind that heeds no advice?”
“Isn’t for me to say, m’ lady.” Her evasive eyes said plenty.
Who else thought her a fool? Did Da? Eliad? What about the ladies of the riding society? Did they whisper about her foolishness as soon as she left the stables? Was she as useless to them? As great a burden? How cruel to learn of her faults from Uncle Thorn’s mouth. She slammed the lid of the trimmings box. “This is a mistake. Why am I bothering? No one wants to me to go. Maybe I should do as Uncle Thorn says and hide with everyone else. But I know I’m supposed to be there.”
“What difference will your presence make?” Esmi spoke with tenderness, even if her common sense stung.
“I don’t know.” Carah made a study of her powerless, fireless hands while her handmaid moved on to the next chest. “How much is left up to us, and how much isn’t?”
“That’s a big question, isn’t it?” Esmi tried to make light of it, and Carah could tell she was desperate to change the subject. “Ah, here it is. How about this?” She lifted the remnants of the silver velvet that Thorn gave her years ago. Her silver gown remained Carah’s favorite, even if she never wore it anymore; ladies of means didn’t wear the same gown more than two seasons in a row.
She pressed her lips together in a poor excuse for a smile. “Of course. Is there enough left?”
“Well, a robe isn’t a ball gown. We’ll let your seamstress decide.”
Carah usually went to the tailor’s shop in town for her fittings, but given Thorn’s warnings that she wasn’t to leave the fortress without an escort, the seamstress came to her. The woman sighed, caressing the fabric as if it were a memory of lost love. “I remember this. Has to be the finest silk ever to come from Vonmora looms. I’ll not be sorry to work with it again.”
Smiling and nodding politely, Carah kept the truth to herself. There would be no end to the questions if she let it slip that the silk was Elaran. “But is there enough?” She showed the seamstress the sketch of the robe she had in mind, and the woman studied it and measured out the fabric between her nose and fingertips.
“Not quite enough. But if we alternate the velvet with a few panels of the crepe, oh, it will shimmer like falling water.”
And so it did. Two weeks later, the seamstress returned with Carah’s avedra robe, a stunning creation with bright silver embroidery, wide sleeves, even a hood that would protect a lady’s hair from the rain. Uncle Thorn’s robes never had a hood. The seamstress boasted that she employed two girls for the sash alone. It glistened with clear glass beads and white seed pearls.
The ensemble shined and rippled with light—on the mannequin in the corner of Carah’s dressing room. She stared at it longingly. That evening when her mother asked if the robe was finished, Carah invited her parents to come see it.
Kelyn inspected it hood to hem, his mouth slightly ajar. “I’m penniless now, aren’t I?”
Rhoslyn jabbed him with her elbow. “It’s lovely, dearheart. Far lovelier than I had imagined.”
“Why aren’t you wearing it?”
Carah ducked her eyes. “I haven’t earned it.” Every morning and every afternoon, she sat at the table in the library, no closer to hearing Uncle Thorn’s thoughts than were the stones of the walls and the books on the shelves. And her uncle had grown cool toward her, obviously disinclined to aid her progress.
Da cupped her face and kissed her forehead. “You’ll earn it. Don’t get discouraged. If you fall off a horse, you climb back on, right?”
“I haven’t even made it into the saddle yet, Da. The horse is this big--,” she spread her arms wide, then pinched her thumb and forefinger together, “—and I’m this small, and no one will provide me a stepping stool.”
Kelyn’s strategic mind went to work. “Climb up the back. Grab onto the tail and haul yourself up. You’re like to get shat on, but you’ll make it.”
That won a laugh from her.
“But if it doesn’t happen before the convention, you won’t hear us crying about it.”
“I know, Da. But I can’t shake this certainty that there’s something important I have to do there. I don’t even want to go now. Not if that nightmare is going to come true.” Lifting a sleeve of her robe, she forced a gracious smile. “It will probably turn out to be nothing.”
“Aye,” Rhoslyn said, heading out the door. “Just three spoiled kings coming to blows over trade agreements.”
Kelyn reminded them, “Wars have started over less.”
~~~~
18
Arryk was dressed and finished with breakfast before the sun broke through the palace windows. A long journey with an uncertain end awaited him, and he hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours. A chandelier burned brightly over the table, and the first glow of a clear dawn dispelled the darkness, but the light failed to ease the White Falcon’s concerns.
King Valryk’s letter laid near his plate, and he read it for the hundredth time, trying to eek some deeper meaning from the astonishing invitation. The costly silver ink glistened like the tears of stars in the growing light. The Black Falcon had signed it himself, a large bold signature. There was much to be gleaned about a man’s temperament from his signature. A black silk ribbon trailed from a glob of blue wax as wide as Arryk’s hand. The crowned, spread-winged falcon was pressed into it. He read, “… discuss trade relations and consider paths of mutual prosperity….” Over and over again. The letter gave him nothing more.
It boded ill. All his advisers said so, and Arryk’s instinct told him they were right. The Black Falcon may be as idealistic as his father had been, but the fierce pride of the three northwestern realms were like to blunt the effectiveness of the talks he proposed. And then there was the age-old enmity to consider. Idealism may allow a young man to forget the bloodshed between his forefathers, but the reality was that many a veteran scarred by war would be in attendance, and old foes were unlikely to sit amiably across a table from one another. If this Convention did not result in war, Arryk would eat his boots.
“Raudry!” he called, rising from the table. A footman pulled his chair away. Three full-grown mastiffs rose with him. “No, stay,” he ordered them. Daisy, Rose, and Woodbine lay down again, panting and complacent. From Fang’s last litter, the three mastiffs followed Arryk everywhere, even laid at the foot of the throne where they intimidated lying courtiers. He longed to take them north, his faithful guardians, but seeing to the comforts of three massive dogs was a concern he didn’t need.
His squire rushed into the breakfast room.
“My cloak and gloves.”
Raudry acknowledged the order and bowed out again. Cousin Rance’s only son among a passel of daughters, the boy was named after his father’s twin brother who had died during the war. Arryk loved him dearly, but sometimes those black eyes in that fair face reminded him too keenly of Nathryk. He was just as determined as Nathryk to become a great swordsman, too, but at least Raudry knew how to laugh and to love and to serve.
He ran back with the mink-lined cloak on his arm and handed off the fine eel skin gloves. They were too delicate to use when riding, but Arryk was to take a carriage most of the way; the weather had been too unpredictable to risk his horse slipping in the mud.
“My things have been carried out?”
“Yes, sire. And Grandfather is waiting to have a word with you.”
Had he forgotten anything? Arryk patted himself down. In his breast pocket was his kerchief and the letter he’d promised to give to Laral’s daughter. What else? “Ah, my knives.”
Raudry gasped and ran for the lacquered case. The boy was supposed to anticipate such needs, but he’d only been a squire for three months and still had much to learn. He managed an expression of calm dignity as he opened the case and poised it high for Arryk’s convenience. Raptor and Talon winked a cold greeting. His father’s twin fighting knives were plain and sensible, but for the chunks of white onyx, carved into claws curled for the kill, adorning the pommels.
Upon Arryk’s enthronement, he’d received all the things his father left behind. The knives had been among the chests his chamberlains brought him. How bittersweet, looking through rings and brooches that his father had worn. Arryk remembered some of them and where Father had worn them. The finest jewels Shadryk had sent with his sister and his sons, to help them buy safety from their enemies, but those things that remained were the things Shadryk had worn the most. Each scar in a ring’s band, each nick in the blade of a throwing knife brought him close again.
