by Sharon Shinn
“Which is exactly when danger would strike,” Tayse said. “Why don’t I take you back across the hall? Where I will be sure to ask Coeval and Hammond why they let you leave your niece’s room.”
She opened her mouth, but before she could reply, Cammon started laughing. That was enough for the rest of them; they knew instantly they’d been tricked. Justin shoved her on the arm so hard she staggered back a few steps.
“We ought to just let you go by yourself,” he said in disgust.
“I’m sorry,” Cammon said, still laughing. “But that was too good.”
Senneth and even Tayse were smiling. “I don’t think we need to worry about you not fooling the vassals,” Senneth said.
“Very good,” Tayse said. “Time to go.”
IT was about an hour by coach to the estate of Domenic Ayr, Ariane’s primary vassal. A boring hour for Kirra, since she rode alone inside while the other four accompanied her on horseback. On the trip back, someone was definitely going to be persuaded to sit in the coach with her and keep her company.
She let petty considerations drop away as she disembarked before Domenic’s house, an attractive but not particularly large manor graced by a profusion of roses along the front walk. She was late; the lord was not at the door to greet her. A footman showed her instantly to the dining area, and she took a quick look around before her name was announced.
About twenty men and a handful of women were gathered in the room, already seated around a highly polished table and consumed with debate. Kirra recognized many of them from her earlier visits at Shadow Balls. There was Kell Sersees from Kianlever, Bat Templeson of Coravann, both accompanied by their wives. There was even Coren Bauler, with whom Senneth had had a memorable one-sided flirtation in Fortunalt last winter. Kirra recognized faces from Storian, Merrenstow, and Tilt. None from Danalustrous, thank the great gods. There were a few other individuals who looked familiar, though she could not assign names to them. And that man, portly and self-satisfied, standing by the sideboard conversing with Domenic Ayr—he looked familiar.
He looked like the man who had led the attack against Romar at the bonfire in Nocklyn.
“Lord Romar Brendyn of Merrenstow, regent to the king,” the footman intoned, and all conversation in the room ceased. Chairs scraped on the stone floor as the diners pushed their seats back and rose, some of them bowing or curtseying, some merely giving her cool nods of acknowledgment. Kirra kept her expression grave, as Romar would have, and responded with a slight bow of her own.
Domenic hurried across the floor to greet her. “Regent! I am so pleased you were able to join us after all. Do you know everyone?”
“Some. Not all.”
“Let me introduce you around the table and then we will be seated. Dinner is ready even as we speak.”
She paid close attention as introductions were made. Yes, every House but Danalustrous was represented. The heavyset man was from Storian, though Domenic mangled the introduction and she couldn’t catch his name. Storian. That seemed wrong. Unlike Cammon, she couldn’t automatically tell when someone was lying, but something about this man rang false to her. His name or his affiliation or his face or—
His face. His body. That was it. Like her, he was in disguise. Like her, he had changed himself from his proper form. There was a mystic among the Thirteenth House lords, and he was allied with the rebellion.
He would be the man to watch during dinner.
The meal itself was excellent, a variety of well-cooked dishes chased down with copious amounts of wine. Kirra drank sparingly and did more listening than talking, as Romar would have. Conversation veered from earnest to envious to hilarious as it covered everything from new taxes to the privileges of the wealthy to recent personal disasters that became much funnier in the retelling. Those sitting closest to Kirra made a point of including her in their conversations, bombarding Romar with questions both political and social. From them she got the impression she had picked up on other nights at the Shadow Balls—even at that ill-fated bonfire in Nocklyn. These were people who were eager to better themselves, hopeful that a regime change might improve their fortunes. Most of them, or so she gathered, wanted peaceful change; they were willing to work for recognition and honor.
Then who were the rebels? Was this really a meeting of conspirators? Did anyone here truly want to kill Romar Brendyn?
When conversation became general, as it did every twenty minutes or so, it tended to revolve around universal preoccupations—land, the succession, and power.
“Els Nocklyn promised us,” one of the vassals’s wives was saying in a stubborn voice. “Before he got sick. He promised us another hundred acres. I know serra Mayva would honor the promise, but I can’t get in to see her, and her husband—” She made a fatalistic motion with her hand.
“Gisseltess lords keep their promises,” said a guest who was wearing a vest embroidered with the hawk and the rose. A Gisseltess man. “But sometimes you have to wait till it’s convenient for them to be fulfilled.”
“I’m tired of waiting on promises,” said the Storian man in disguise. He looked straight at Kirra. “Lord Romar, what can the king promise us that our own lords can’t? What can he grant us?”
That was blunt. But she had seen Romar field this same question before, and he hadn’t flinched. “I can promise nothing on behalf of the king except that I will tell him you want a conversation with him,” she said, her voice firm and ringing. “Make up a delegation. Come to Ghosenhall. I will guarantee you an audience. But more than that I cannot guarantee.”
The Storian man leaned forward, his bulk displacing some of the plates before him on the table. “But will he listen? Will his daughter listen if her father is dead? Will you listen, once the king is gone?”
“The king is still very much alive,” she said in a pleasant voice. “I would not consider negotiating elsewhere, if I were you.”
“The king will not live much longer,” said the Gisseltess man. “We all wish him well, of course. But he is old. What happens when he is gone? We have the patience to wait—but not if waiting brings us nothing.”
“Send a delegation to Ghosenhall,” she repeated. “Ask to meet with his majesty and his daughter. I will join the negotiations.”
“Yes, but will you argue for us?” a pale woman demanded.
“I will if the proposals you put forth are reasonable.”
“Thirteenth House yourself, or very near to it,” purred the false Storian man. “You own fine properties and your blood is pure, but you’ll never inherit Merren Manor. How does that feel? Don’t you hate your marlord cousin—just a little bit?”
She was shocked at her own reaction, which was one of arrogance and outrage. I am Twelfth House, you ratty upstart pretender, she wanted to say, on Romar’s behalf as well as her own. Well. That was telling. She had always believed herself an egalitarian, open to every man’s virtues, and here she was poised to defend bloodlines at the slightest hint of insult.
Romar, she thought, would not have felt the same uncharitable emotions. Romar would have shrugged and said, “I honor my cousin. I respect him. I manage my own affairs and let him manage his.” Therefore she said the words anyway, in his voice, and thought it was a much better response than her own.
The heavy man still sneered, but Domenic Ayr toasted her with his wineglass. “A diplomat,” he said. “Just the kind of man we need sitting next to the king—or next to the princess.”
Conversation turned to less dangerous topics then, though Kirra caught other people at the table eyeing her speculatively for the next few minutes. She waited until no one was paying much attention to her, then signaled a servant.
“I need to speak with one of my guards. Can you fetch him? I will wait at the doorway.”
“Certainly, regent. One in particular?”
“Yes, the younger one. Cammon.”
She excused herself from the table and left the room, standing just outside the doorway in the outer hall. Sh
e could still watch the diners eating and arguing. None of them seemed alarmed by her brief absence.
Cammon came bounding up seconds later. He didn’t look alarmed, either; he knew she wasn’t in danger. “What?”
“There’s a man in there. I think he’s clad in magic. Can you tell me what he really looks like?”
Cammon peered inside the room. “Well—where is he?”
“Between the man in the maroon jacket and the man with the white beard. Right now he’s tearing apart a piece of bread with his hands.”
“He’s overweight but not huge. Almost bald, but not quite. What hair he has is blond, going a little gray. His cheeks are very red, as if he’s been drinking a lot, or shouting at someone.”
“That could describe a lot of people. Not wearing any House colors? Doesn’t have a huge scar across his face? Anything that would help identify him?”
“No.”
“I wish I could see him. I wonder if I’d recognize him.”
“Do you have your little lion with you? Give it to me.”
She fished it out. “You’re always surprising,” she commented, and dropped it in his hand. Instantly, she felt her veins quiver with fire; the muscles along her back strung with tension. “Now what?”
“Look at him,” Cammon directed. “I think, when I touch you, you’ll pick up some of my magic. Maybe enough to help you see him truly. I don’t know. I’m only guessing.”
She focused on the portly man, just now gesticulating with some energy at the lord across the table from him. Cammon moved behind her and laid his palm along her spine; she could feel the pressure of his hand even through the links of chain mail. For a moment, she was dizzy. The room before her danced as if she viewed it through waves of heat. Then her vision sharpened and her eyes felt hot and she was staring across the room at a man she knew.
Heavyset, ruddy, fair—that was how he had always appeared. Angry, purposeful, calculating—that was a side of him she had rarely seen. Berric Fann, her uncle. A man who hated her father and who was, or so it appeared, plotting against the king.
She said nothing for so long that Cammon prodded her with his free hand. “Kirra? I mean, my lord? Is something wrong? Do you know him?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Is that good?”
How could he have changed shapes, altering himself just enough so that she did not recognize his face? He used to have only the slightest magic in him, barely enough to erase the freckles on his skin, and even that he had lost with age. Or so he had told her, just a few weeks ago. Clearly, that had been a lie—clearly, he had lived a lie all these years. It turned out he was a mystic, with a significant amount of power, and he had always concealed his true strength. Kirra remembered all the summers she had spent at his house, chattering away about everything she had been taught, the spells she had learned from Senneth and her other tutors, the discipline, all the tricks she had developed to channel and heighten her ability. He had learned right along with her. He might have had very little magic, a scrap, a sparkle, but he had made the most of it, thanks to her tutelage.
“Kirra?”
He had lied to her, lied to everybody, sat out on that lovely, peaceful farm and devised strategies for bringing down the king. No doubt he was plotting against Danalustrous as well, trying to foment rebellion among the lesser lords, pretending it was for his dead sister’s sake but really because he was power-hungry himself. He was not the man she had thought he was, the one who showered her with gifts and called her his favorite niece and taught her the dance steps she was too stubborn to learn from Jannis but that she had to know, every serra did. He was not the man who had saved a kitten from the barn litter so that she could name it, who had taken her riding through his own estates and explained crop rotation and good husbandry. He was not the man she had thought loved her. Not the man she had thought she loved.
Now Cammon pinched her so hard on the forearm that she almost yelped. “Kirra? What’s wrong? You know him?”
“He’s my uncle.”
“And he shouldn’t be here?”
“He shouldn’t be here in disguise. He’s the same one who wanted to kill Romar around the bonfire back in Nocklyn.”
“I thought a lot of people wanted to kill Romar that night.”
“Yes, but he’s the one who really tried. And he was—I’m not sure—I think it’s possible he was in Tilt. One of the men who was responsible for kidnapping the regent. He didn’t look exactly like this, but he—I don’t think he has a lot of power. Just enough to shift his features and alter his shape a little. There was a fair, heavyset man in Tilt. I think it might have been him.”
“I suppose it’s good that we know this,” Cammon said cautiously.
“I suppose it is.”
“Do you want me to get Tayse?”
“No. But if something happens—if there’s trouble—look for this man. I think he’ll be in the middle of it.”
A small silence from Cammon. “I will, but—what does he look like? To everybody else?”
She closed her eyes briefly. Really, sometimes it was almost more trouble than it was worth to get Cam’s help on anything. “Sort of like you see him now, but his hair is darker and he’s wearing a black jacket with gold braid. He’s pretending he’s from Storian.”
“Maybe we don’t have to wait for trouble,” Cammon said. “Now that you know. Maybe you can leave.”
“I don’t want to leave. I want to see if he talks to me.”
“I’m getting Tayse,” Cammon said. “We’ll stand right outside the door. Right here.”
He dropped his hand and her vision blurred. She had to put her palm out to the wall to keep her balance. When she looked inside the room again, her uncle was gone, and in his place was a stout, sneering, swaggering stranger. “Give me back my lioness,” she said, and Cam restored it. It made a very small but infinitely comforting weight in her pocket. “This trip just keeps getting stranger by the day,” she said.
Cammon grinned at her. “That describes every trip I’ve ever taken.”
She strolled back into the dining hall and reseated herself just in time to accept a plate of cobbler from a servant. “More wine, my lord?”
“No, thank you. I’d appreciate some water.”
“Very good.”
She ate the cobbler without tasting it, audited the conversation without hearing it, answered questions without having any idea if her replies made sense. Her father had always hated Berric, never bothering to explain why. She had supposed it was because Berric so obviously despised Malcolm, and Malcolm never felt the need to accept criticism graciously. But now she guessed that her father had some inkling of the depths of Berric’s animosity—that her father distrusted her uncle, probably purely on instinct. But Malcolm’s instincts were generally good.
Kirra felt like such a fool.
It was worse than that. She felt like a child suddenly abandoned. For so many years, the Fanns had been her refuge, her place of safety. They had been the people who loved her no matter what she did. Was Beatrice aware of Berric and his deceptions? Did she, too, possess hidden magic and aspirations to higher status? Had all their protestations of affection been false? Had they welcomed her and made a fuss over her and treated her like a favored daughter not because they loved her, but because they thought they could use her in a bid for more land and power?
First Donnal had left her. Now the very memories of her aunt and uncle had been blackened and destroyed. Everything she had believed defined her, everything that had ever secured her, had frayed apart and left her drifting in a hostile wind. It was very hard to sit at this table, feel the chair against her back, the glass in her hand, and keep herself from disintegrating. She felt her own magic flicker through her fingers. Without much effort, without even conscious volition, she could undergo a disastrous change right here, dissolving into component parts of muscle, hair, and bone.
Someone looked at her oddly, and she wondered if she had made a n
oise or, more probably, failed to answer a pointed question. Concentrate. She was not Kirra Danalustrous, lost and left behind. She was Romar Brendyn, regent of Gillengaria, proud man and property owner, and some of the people in this room were not her friends.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve received startling news.”
“Nothing too bad, I hope,” one of her dinner companions said.
“I don’t have all the details yet. But please forgive my rudeness! What were we talking about?”
Gradually she eased herself back into the conversation, even managed to laugh once or twice. She offered her opinion on the merits of the wine, agreed that last winter had been a bad one, and hoped that the harvest was good. Like the rest of her companions, she rose to her feet when her host did and followed the whole group into a sparsely furnished room down the hall.
