by Megan Hart
Dedication
For anyone who’s looked up at the stars and wondered how many there were.
Change was coming. Elspeth Valerin knew it. She’d seen it this morning in her daily calculations. The date, her name and birthday, the color of the sky and what she’d eaten for breakfast—all had been given a numerical value and figured in an equation along with a dozen other factors.
Everything counts, she thought as she followed Gabriana through the carved wooden door to The Slaughtered Lamb. For most people, Arithmancy was no more than a jumble of numbers. For Elspeth, it was her life.
“I’m so pleased you decided to come out with us tonight, Elspeth,” Gabriana said over her shoulder. “We’ve been asking you for ages. I thought you’d never say yes.”
“The stars must finally have aligned,” teased Dayla Mornit. Dayla taught Runes at Somnus Keep.
“No,” interjected Callis Dardin. She taught Astronomy. “The numbers finally added up. Am I right, Elspeth?”
Elspeth smiled a bit as she followed her colleagues to a table toward the back of the pub. “Something like that.”
The scent of sawdust, alcohol and food greeted her, and she paused to look around. Seventeen tables, each with three or four chairs. Six windows. A long, polished wood bar stretched along the left side of the room. Twenty-two stools lined up along it. Toward the back, a swinging door leading to the kitchen, and a hallway. A dartboard with eight darts stuck into the cork. Six musicians in the corner struck up a tune to cheers from the substantial crowd.
She was counting again and took a deep breath to force herself to focus on the quality of the pub rather than the quantity of the items within it.
“I admire anyone who can make sense of Arithmancy, much less teach it,” said Dayla. “I can’t add the contents of my pocket, much less turn everything I do into an equation.”
Elspeth gave a tentative smile. “It’s useful to know how to do it. But it’s just as useful to know someone who can make the calculations for you.”
Dayla stared at her for a moment. “Is it possible our quiet Elspeth has just put me in my place?”
“Oh, no, I—”
“Hush,” said Gabriana. “She’s teasing you.”
Callis laughed, looking at the serving lass headed their way. “Ignore her, Elspeth. She’s a sour old biddy because nobody likes Runes either. And good eve to you, Gretel Deloras!”
Elspeth couldn’t help staring at Gretel, whose smile was almost blinding in its brightness. Her lush curves threatened to burst the seams of her simple peasant shirt, worn so low off her shoulders the dusky hint of aureoles peeked out from the lace around the edge. A man’s hands would easily span her waist, while her hips swelled out below with the promise of sensual delights any man would be unable to resist.
“Who’s your friend?” Gretel’s voice oozed such blatant sensuality it turned the heads of the men at the next table. She leaned forward to smile directly at Elspeth. “Hello, honey. I’m Gretel.”
“Elspeth,” she stammered, overwhelmed by Gretel’s presence.
Gretel laughed, tossing back her mane of blond curls so they fell down her back. “Welcome to The Slaughtered Lamb, sweet thing. What can I get you? We have everything you could want and probably some things you don’t.”
Elspeth hated the heatroses that bloomed in her cheeks and hoped the pub’s dim lighting hid them. At the school she managed to maintain the near-constant cool and collected demeanor necessary to keep her students in line. Here she was out of her element, unused to the attention and uncertain how to react.
Gretel took their orders and glanced again at Elspeth, her bright blue gaze lingering. “Sure I can’t bring you something strong, sweetheart? You’re a mite pale. Maybe an ale would do your blood some good.”
“All right,” she answered, surprising herself. “Ale would be lovely, thank you.”
Gretel raised one perfect golden eyebrow, as though Elspeth’s politely phrased response had surprised her, but she smiled. “Grand, lass. I’ll bring your drinks right over, ladies.”
“Sweet Astria, if I looked like her, I’d never get out of bed.” Callis shifted in her chair, watching Gretel sashay away.
“You wouldn’t?” Elspeth turned to look at the Callis. “Why not? She’s beautiful.”
Callis looked perplexed for a moment before laughing. “Oh, Elspeth, you’re such a dear.”
Damn. She’d said the wrong thing. Again. ’Twas a talent, she supposed, to consistently come out with the wrong words.
Gabriana came to her rescue again. “Callis didn’t mean she’d stay abed out of grief, Elspeth. She meant that if she looked like Gretel, she’d have so many lovers, she’d never get out of bed.”
Again, Elspeth blushed. “Ah. Of course.”
In a world where lovemaking was as practiced a pastime as playing a sport or taking up a hobby, the subject of sex was not one that ought to have brought such heat to her cheeks. Yet of course it did, because though lovemaking was considered not only an enjoyable part of life but a necessary one, Elspeth did not partake.
Her colleagues wouldn’t have known that, of course. It wasn’t good manners to ask, and she doubted they’d assume she was celibate. She was a magicreator after all. An instructor at Somnus Keep. Arithmancy, the study of numerical values used to make predictions, meant she rarely had to harness the power of the thrall. Nobody had to know her control of it was flawed, that though she could sometimes form an orb of power, she could never sustain it or make it do anything more than look pretty sitting on her palm. She was a magicreator who could not control the high magic and therefore could not use it. She was a failure, and worse than that.
Elspeth Valerin was a fraud.
“Here we go, ladies.” Gretel returned bearing a tray of glasses she set down in front of all of them with the unerring memory of a good server. “Ale for you, my lovely.”
“Thank you.”
Gretel smiled and put her hand on her ample hip. “Anything else I can get for you, loves?”
“This will do for now.” Dayla sipped from her glass, the foam from the ale coating her upper lip.
Gretel moved away, and Elspeth watched her work the tables. She flirted with the men, and if her obvious pleasure at their attention was false, she did a fine job of making it believable. Envy, fierce and shocking, made Elspeth gulp her ale. A woman with control like that over her body could do anything.
“Two sevendays of freedom!” Gabriana crowed. “What will you do with it?”
“Sleep in!” Callis wriggled with a gleeful sound.
“Stay up late,” Dayla countered.
“What about you, Elspeth? Have you any grand plans for the holiday?”
Elspeth intended to do the same thing on her holiday she did all the rest of the time—study, read, knit. Perhaps continue to work toward advanced certification in her field.
She opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, Callis pointed discreetly and gave a whispered giggle. “There he is!”
“Who?” Elspeth asked, even as she followed Callis’s pointing finger with her gaze.
“The owner. Conn.” Dayla giggled too. “I forgot you’ve never come with us before. Isn’t he beautiful?”
Conn. The name was not uncommon. Hundreds of mothers must have named their sons the same. The man who owned this pub, the beautiful man who had all the ladies giggling and pointing, did not have to be the same Connell from her past.
But he was.
“Your admiration club is here,” said Gretel as Connell came from the storeroom, hefting a fresh keg to tap.
He settled the keg behind the bar and gave her a grin. “Yeah? Which ones?”
“You’re too convinced of your own charm.” Gretel rolled her eyes, but nodded toward the back of the room. “T
he ones from up the hill, from the Keep.”
Connell chuckled, bending to drive the spigot into the new keg and sliding an empty glass with practiced ease beneath to catch the spurt of ale. No sense in wasting it, so he swallowed the mouthful and set the empty glass in the bin to be taken back for washing. “The ones who’re so free with their coin? Sure and they’re always welcome.”
Gretel poured some shots and set them on her tray. “They brought a new little mouse along with them tonight.”
“Yeah?” He stood, wiping his brow on his sleeve, scarcely interested in whatever giggly miss they’d dragged along with them beyond what coin she might spend.
“Pretty thing with a mouth like sugar.”
He laughed. “Yeah?”
Gretel nodded. “Shy, though. I thought she was going to burst into flame when I asked her name.”
He rolled his head on his shoulders, cracking his neck and shaking out the tension. “Not everyone can flirt with you, love.”
Gretel smiled. “That’s what you think, Conn-me-love.”
He laughed again as she swished her hips and headed back to serving. Gretel liked to give him a bit of a wink and a nudge, but she saved her real charms for men who didn’t pay her wages. He looked out over the room, eyes taking in everything. Connell Byrne prided himself on running the finest pub in town. The Slaughtered Lamb was a clean joint, with the best food and beverage he could provide, the fastest service, the liveliest entertainment. He didn’t allow dirty dealings in the Lamb either, and if that meant cracking a few skulls to keep out the riff raff…well, he wasn’t above it. Bar fights were part of the business, but as he examined the crowd, he saw no sign of belligerence waiting to erupt into violence.
The trill of feminine laughter from the back of the room caught his ear, and grinning, he turned to look. Gretel was right in saying he knew too well his own charm. The ladies came in to eat, drink and be merry, and if a little harmless flirting made them merry, Connell wasn’t above that either.
He recognized the group just as Gretel had said he would. They were all magicreators from up the hill. Instructors at the Keep, which meant they always had plenty of coin to spread around. That suited him fine. Magicreators didn’t cause trouble either, because even a group of unattended women wouldn’t be bothered by the most boisterous of his customers. No man would mess with a magicreator who could take off his nuts with little more than a flick of her fingers.
Connell walked around the edge of the bar and headed toward their table, intending to give them a smile and a laugh, and a round of free drinks in appreciation of their business. Maybe let them think they might have the chance to take him to bed. It never hurt to lead them on. Made them spendy, it did, even if it never led to anything but stories they took back with them.
“Good evening, ladies,” he said, hands on his hips, looking round at each of them. “A pleasure to see—”
The words caught in his throat at the sight of her. The same dark hair, worn tied up instead of loose, but still as smooth as silk. Time had sharpened her features and turned her from a girl into a woman, but the better-defined cheekbones and jaw only made her that much more beautiful. The lush lips he’d once kissed with such passion parted as he spoke, and the remembered taste of her set his mind reeling.
“Hello, Conn.” This came from the red-haired woman to his left. She eyed him without a speck of coyness. “Nice to see you again.”
“And you,” he answered, eyes locked on Ella’s familiar blue-gray gaze. The eyes he’d never thought to see again.
The other women didn’t seem to notice his lack of attention, for they giggled and flirted while his mouth made replies his mind did not bother to track.
She was terrified. He could see it in the way her eyes grew dark and her fingers tightened on her glass. Her entire body vibrated like she meant to run away, but was unable to move.
He scared her, ’twas no great feat to see it, and even after all this time, the fact she would fear him tightened his jaw with anger. He’d never done aught to harm her. All he’d ever done was love her. And even now, ten years after he’d told her he would never love another woman the way he loved her, she wanted to run away from him again.
“…on the house,” he heard himself say, and waved away the ladies’ half-hearted protests. “I insist. On me.”
“Ooh,” purred the woman with black hair. “Really? Drinks on you? That would be interesting.”
Where he’d have given her a grin and a wink before, now Connell only managed a faint smile. “Be careful, madam or I’ll think you fancy me.”
This made the women at the table erupt into giddy laughter. All but one. He stared hard into her eyes for one more moment before turning away.
Three ales. She’d kept careful count, as she did of everything, even now when the alcohol fuzzed her brain and made her unsteady.
The others had become raucous as the night wore on, setting up challenges with the table of men beside them. Drinking games. Wagers. Callis had settled herself upon the lap of a brawny man with a ginger-colored beard and a booming laugh. Dayla and Gabriana had agreed to a game of darts with two men, though their opponents had declared the match unfair because the women could use magic to their advantage.
Everything in pairs, Elspeth thought as she stared at the bottom of another empty glass. Two by two. Neat and tidy. No room for three. She was drunk, which surprised her into laughter. She put her hand over her mouth to stifle it, though nobody would have noticed with all the noise.
“What’s with your friend?” she heard the brawny man ask Callis. “She don’t like comp’ny?”
Callis murmured something Elspeth couldn’t hear and she stared at the table. Men had been speaking to her all night, but she’d put them all off. The only man for whom she had eyes had not looked at her again, a fact for which she was intensely grateful as his studied lack of attention allowed her to watch him, unnoticed.
Connell. Ten years had been kind to him. They’d broadened his shoulders, lengthened his hair and touched the corners of his eyes with lines that showed he, at least, had spent his time smiling. He wasn’t a lad any longer, but a man. Then again she supposed she could no longer consider herself a girl.
She was no fool. She was an Arithmanticist. Elspeth knew better than anyone how small choices influence greater ones, and how one seemingly unimportant decision can affect an entire outcome. Everything counts.
If she was here and Connell too, it meant that somehow along the way both of them had done something, made some choice, taken some branching path that led them both to this spot. It would not have happened otherwise. She would have refused the invitation to join her colleagues, or they’d have taken her to another pub. Or going further back, he’d not have opened his place in this town where she’d chosen to live.
She was here, and he was here, and there was a purpose to it. A fate she could not comprehend. An equation she did not know how to calculate.
All at once the drinks, the smoke and the laughter made her blink against an onslaught of dizziness. She stood, touching one hand to the table to steady herself.
“I’m going to get some fresh air,” she told Callis.
“Are you well?” Callis looked concerned, as though she meant to get up from her companion’s lap.
“I’m fine,” Elspeth answered quickly, adding a smile to be more convincing. “Just need a bit of a breeze. That’s all.”
Callis nodded, but sank back onto her seat. “If you’re sure…”
“Yes. I’m sure.” Elspeth smiled again and moved around the table, avoiding the leer and lewd greeting of one of the men sitting there.
Darkness shrouded the hallway leading to the washrooms, but Elspeth had never feared darkness. She went past two doors marked with symbols—one for male and one for female. Again, a pair. The door at the hall’s end bore no marking, but she knew it led outside, and so she pushed through it and ventured into the chill winter air.
The fenced courtyard beh
ind the Lamb contained no pretty garden or bubbling fountain, only a path of fitted slates leading to a leaning, decrepit shed and scrubby grass interspersed with patches of bare earth. Large refuse bins lined one side. Some benches lined another, and ’twas there she sought to rest her legs and catch the breath which had left her with such sudden ferocity inside.
Above her, the stars gleamed pure white against a black, clear sky. The moon hung like a coin amongst them. She smelled snow despite the lack of clouds. She tipped her head to stare up, and her eyes followed the lines and curves of the constellations as she began to count the points of light.
She’d never counted them all. She never could. It brought her peace, though, to try. Stars were just about the only limitless thing in the world, the only things she could not reach the end of, and the numbers rose higher and higher in her mind, wiping out everything else for the moment.
When she lifted her palm, fingers slightly curled, not even the numbers in her head could push aside the sight of the glimmering silver orb that formed there. She could count forever and still remain unable to wipe from her mind how the orb shimmered and shattered before she could push it into anything else. She closed her fingers tight on the remaining shards of what should’ve been great power and were instead nothing but broken pieces of what she could never have.
A star has fallen to earth.
Not a star, and not a piece of her broken orb either. An ember. A cheroot, the tip flaring as its owner drew in the smoke, then arcing through the air as he tossed it to the ground and left it without bothering to crush it with his boot. A smaller piece of blackness separated from the larger shadows, and she stood, stepping back against the fence.
“How many are there?”
She’d known it was him the moment she stood. “You know I can’t know that.”
“Not even you? Not the Countess?”
“Don’t call me that.” The retort came out sharper than she’d intended. The fence pressed against her back. A splinter gouged her arm. She’d come out without a cloak.
