Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)

by Sharon Shinn

  Kirra half-turned to shoot her answer over her shoulder. “She is power, you stupid gutter boy. She can do anything. She can create heat, and light, and fire. She can heal someone better than I can. She can change shape if she wants to. She can cast darkness. She can—she can do anything.”

  Cammon’s eyes were wide. “Can you?”

  Senneth was laughing. “I can do a lot,” she said, not caring to be too specific. “I’m particularly good with fire. And it’s true I can heal you if you’re hurt, but you’d be in pretty desperate straits to submit to my ministrations, especially if Kirra were nearby. Now Kirra’s a talented healer.”

  Donnal had drifted back to join them, and he settled on the blanket next to Kirra. He was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and wore a close dark beard; a taciturn and restless man of peasant stock, he was never far from Kirra’s side. Cammon glanced at him.

  “Are you a healer, too?”

  Donnal grinned. “Not me. One skill and one skill only—changing.” He flickered into wolf form and back so quickly that it was almost possible to believe he hadn’t done it. “But it’s the skill I’d have picked if I’d been given a choice.”

  Cammon looked confused. “How do—where do your clothes go when you take animal form?”

  Donnal grinned. “I can change them as easily as I change my skin. What can you do?”

  “Cammon’s a sensitive,” Kirra said.

  Donnal shrugged. “Don’t know what that means.”

  Cammon laughed. “I don’t either, really.”

  “I’m guessing you’ll have to do some work to really develop your skills,” Senneth said. “Most of us have known from childhood that we had some—abilities—and we worked on them.”

  “Or we worked on hiding them from the people around us,” Kirra said. “So we wouldn’t be cast from our houses and left to die.”

  Senneth grinned faintly. “Your father never turned against you.”

  “No, but it happens often enough.”

  “It does,” Senneth agreed. She turned back to Cammon. “You may not know, if you left Gillengaria when you were young, how suspiciously most people view the mystics. Some parts of the country are very receptive to the idea of magic, and in the royal city, mystics live quite openly. And a few of the Twelve Houses tolerate them, even among their own heirs. But in many places—especially in the south—it can be worth your life to be discovered. So those of us with some power are often cautious about how we display it.”

  Cammon put his hand to his throat again. “This doesn’t surprise me. I saw a few things in Dormas—” He shook his head.

  “So, as you might guess, many of us had to train in secret—but train we did,” Senneth continued. “I’m wondering where you should go to get some experience.”

  “We could send him to Ghosenhall,” Donnal suggested.

  “The royal city,” Senneth explained. “We could, but he’d never make it there safely on his own.”

  “Too bad we’re not heading toward Kianlever,” Kirra said. “But if we’re going to Fortunalt or Rappengrass—” She shrugged.

  Senneth nodded. “Yes. There are people there I’d trust to take care of him.” She glanced at Cammon. “But those are some distance away, and we tend to travel at a hard pace. You might not enjoy the journey.”

  “I’d rather be with you than where I was,” he said instantly. “I’ll go anywhere you take me.”

  “He’ll slow us down,” Justin muttered from across the room.

  “He won’t,” Senneth said. “And even if he does, you’ll just have to get used to it.”

  Justin grunted again and turned back to his sword. Kirra leaned forward, inspecting Cammon’s face. “I want to try something,” she said. “Close your eyes. No, let me blindfold you, just to make sure.”

  He didn’t hesitate. Senneth wondered if his ability to read people made him realize that he could trust them. Kirra, at least, would never offer him harm. “All right,” he said, and closed his eyes. In a moment, she had fished out a pocket handkerchief and bound it around his head.

  “Every time someone snaps his fingers, I want you to tell me who’s standing in front of you,” she said. “Man or woman. Mystic or not. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll try,” he said.

  They all stood, and Kirra spun him around a few times, and the rest of them rearranged themselves so he wouldn’t be able to identify them by memory. Kirra motioned Justin over, and, reluctantly, he joined them.

  Tayse, of course, had not looked up once, or commented at all, or even seemed to notice that the rest of them were alive and in the same room.

  Kirra pushed Justin in front of Cammon first and snapped her fingers together. It was clear, even through his blindfold, that Cammon was struggling to read the person before him.

  “Man,” he said at last. “Not mystic. Justin, I think.”

  Justin snorted and stalked away. Donnal took his place.

  “Man. Mystic,” Cammon said, speaking with a little more confidence this time.

  Senneth stood before him next. He actually swayed backward a little after trying to sense her. “Senneth,” he said quietly.

  “Why did you do that?” Kirra demanded. “Pull away like that?”

  “I can—it’s like heat is pouring off her body,” he said. “I didn’t notice it before, and I was sitting right next to her. But now that I’m trying—it’s such a strong sensation—”

  Senneth laughed and stepped aside. “I’ll have to learn how to disguise that.”

  Kirra had shifted her features while Cammon was talking and now, styled like a man, she stood in front of the sensitive and snapped her fingers. “Woman,” he said without hesitation.

  Kirra laughed, concentrated, and made herself into an exact replica of Tayse. Then she snapped her fingers again.

  “Still Kirra,” Cammon said.

  “Does she seem at all different to you?” Senneth asked curiously.

  “Different in what way?” he asked. “It’s just—I know it’s a woman, and I know it’s not you. So it must be Kirra.”

  Senneth nodded at Donnal, who melted into the shape of a bear, features drawn back in a snarl. He lumbered over to face Cammon.

  “Donnal,” Cammon said.

  “Are you sure?” Kirra asked. “You know it’s Donnal and not just a male with power?”

  Cammon thought about that. “Someone who’s slipped in here when we weren’t paying attention?” he asked with gentle irony. “No. I can tell it’s Donnal, him specifically.”

  “Take a look,” Kirra said, and pulled off the blindfold. Cammon started back at the sight of Donnal’s feral visage, but recovered quickly.

  “That’s what he looked like when I tried to read him?” he asked.

  Kirra nodded. “Seems like you have the ability to identify the essence of things even when they’re in disguise,” she said. “I don’t know exactly how they’ll train you, but it certainly seems like a useful ability to have.”

  “There are things you can work on, maybe, while you’re traveling with us,” Senneth suggested. “Differentiating a lie from truth. Trying to read passing strangers and telling us what you know about them. Paying attention to everything around you, animate and inanimate, to gauge what speaks to you and what does not. Who knows, you might be the kind of man who can look at the ground and tell if a diamond field lies below it. That could make you a rich man very quickly.”

  Cammon looked intrigued. “I don’t think I have much ability with rocks and stones,” he said, “but I’ll try.”

  Across the room, Tayse stood up. As always, Senneth found herself noticing just how big the man was—tall, yes, but broad in the shoulders, massive in the thighs. He had shaved during the two days they were in Dormas, and his face looked big, too, broad cheekbones and stiff chin. Something about the darkness of his coloring added to the impression of size and menace—black hair, black eyes, weathered skin. A man you would not lightly cross.

  “It’s late,” Tayse sa
id, strolling closer to the fire. “If we’re moving on in the morning, we’d better turn in now.”

  Justin turned to him for orders, as he always did, even though Senneth was nominal head of this expedition. “Post a watch?”

  Tayse looked briefly undecided. Here so close to the Storian lands, Senneth knew, they’d felt safe enough to sleep unguarded. But there had been that altercation in Dormas—

  Tayse nodded. “We’d better, this night. Though I don’t think anyone will come looking for us in the rain.”

  “I’ll stay awake first,” Senneth volunteered.

  The others claimed their hours, and then they took their places beside the fire. Within minutes, having learned by hard necessity to rest when an opportunity presented itself, they were all asleep. Even Cammon, who was probably too tired to stay awake and brood, even if that had been his nature.

  Senneth listened to them breathe and watched the flames. She loved nothing so much as fire, variegated as autumn and leaping with an uncontainable vitality. To her it was the source of all beauty, all power, all creativity, all destruction. She could build a city with fire; she could bring it down. She stretched her hand out to the flames and felt the heat lick along her skin, still no hotter than her own blood. She held it there a long time, till her flesh seemed to become a wick, till the fire danced around her fingernails, red and gold and jagged. If she lifted her hand up, her skin would still be on fire.

  She curled her fingers into a ball, and the flames went out.

  Two more hours she sat there, unmoving, cross-legged before the blaze. She added no more fuel, and the flames never sank lower. The heat radiating from the central fire never dimmed; the whole dairy house was comfortably warm. A little before midnight, she heard a change outside—the sound of silence after the long thrum of rain—and knew the storm had broken. It would be cold in the morning, with white frost overlaying the hard ground, but once they got moving, the ride south would be refreshing in the newly washed air.

  When her hours were up, she finally stirred, stretching a little and turning to look at Tayse’s sleeping form. He was not asleep, of course; he always woke, unaided, a moment or two before his watch began. He lay there a few feet away from her, watching her, no expression at all to be read on his face. She could see the gleam of the fire reflected in his dark eyes and wondered, not for the first time, if he loved or hated it.

  It was dark and late, and the whole world seemed to be sleeping. She spoke the thought in her head, something she rarely did. “Tayse,” she said, low enough to keep from waking the others, “why do you distrust me so much?”

  He rolled to a sitting position with a single easy motion. “You’re a mystic,” he said, as if that explained it all.

  “Donnal and Kirra are mystics, and you don’t distrust them,” she said. “You just despise them.”

  She saw a smile almost make it to his face. “You’re different,” he said.

  “Why?”

  He shook his head. “Go to sleep. Dawn will come soon enough.”

  She pushed herself away from the flames and made herself comfortable in her blanket. But when she glanced back at him, he was still watching her. He was always watching her.

  “Why?” she said again.

  He didn’t look away. “You have too many secrets.”

  CHAPTER 3

  IN the cold, clear morning, they resumed their trip south. Kirra was in a festive mood, and she rode beside Donnal, teasing him. She had bound her golden hair into a braid and pinned it to her head, but there was still no disguising either her femininity or her gentility. Senneth smiled a little to see Cammon glance her way again and again. Kirra had that effect on most men.

  Soon enough, though, Cammon fell back to ride beside Senneth. He really had little enough choice of companions. As was his habit, Tayse had ranged some distance ahead, scouting for trouble; Justin had lagged behind to watch the road just traveled. Donnal and Kirra were absorbed in each other.

  “I realized in the night that I still know very little about you,” Cammon said. “Any of you. You said you were on a mission for the king?”

  Senneth nodded. “Yes. Tayse and Justin are Riders, and I am—well, I’m not a Rider, but King Baryn trusts me. I have done some work for him before.”

  “What’s a Rider?”

  “A hand-picked group of soldiers who are exceptionally devoted to the king,” she said. “They train at a special facility in Ghosenhall, and they learn skills in weaponry that I am constantly amazed by. No one can be named a Rider unless another Rider recommends him and the king personally accepts him, and even then he must undergo extremely rigorous training. He swears a fealty to the king that is fanatical—that supersedes any other vow he might make to lord or wife or self. No Rider has ever deserted or betrayed his king, not for five centuries—even bad kings who should have been betrayed commanded loyal Riders. And everyone in Gillengaria who might wish to harm the king is afraid of them.”

  Cammon was assimilating this. “So King Baryn has asked you to do a favor for him, and he has sent some of his men with you to protect you,” he said. “What is the favor? Or can you not tell me? I don’t wish to be rude,” he ended in a rush.

  Senneth smiled. “I don’t think you’re rude. I’ll tell you what I can. The king is growing old, and he has only one heir, his daughter Amalie. She is only eighteen. He remarried a few years ago, but his second bride has not produced another heir. Some of the Twelve Houses of Gillengaria think now might be a time to test the strength of the monarchy. I am riding through the countryside to see if I can discover signs of discontent.”

  “What are the Twelve Houses?” Cammon asked. “I’m sorry, I know I seem stupid, it’s just that—”

  “You’re a stranger here. Which is odd, because you don’t feel like a stranger,” Senneth said.

  “No,” he admitted. “I feel like I belong. It’s clear to me that this is the place I’m supposed to be. And today, this morning, waking up for the first time without the moonstone around my neck—I feel so strong. I feel like a new man woke up inside an old body.”

  Now Senneth laughed. “An old man,” she repeated. “You can’t be more than twenty.”

  “Nineteen.”

  “I am more than twice your age.”

  He gave her one long, slow glance of appraisal. His gold-flecked eyes were a dark brown, though his ragged hair was fair; the contrast gave him a serious look. “You’re not,” he said. “You might be a few years past thirty, but no older.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Good,” she said. “Spotted the lie and pried out the truth. In fact, I just turned thirty-four.” She was silent a moment. “Though, to tell the truth, I feel older than that. Lifetimes older.”

  He was quiet, too, and then he sighed. “I can’t do it yet,” he said.

  “Do what?”

  “Read you. Be able to say, ‘You, the mystic Senneth, were born to a gardener and his wife and studied painting when you were young.’ I should be able to do that, don’t you think?”

  She was amused. “And I think someday you might be able to. But perhaps you should start on a more transparent subject. I am not, as anyone will tell you, so easy to read.”

  “Too many secrets,” he agreed.

  She felt a slight chill at the words, the same ones Tayse had used the night before. Too many secrets, she thought, and too many tragedies. She pointed before her. “Try Kirra,” she suggested. “She shouldn’t be so hard.”

  So Cammon gazed at the swaying back and bright gold hair, his smooth face drawn into a frown of concentration. “Rich,” he said at last. “Privileged. Very much loved by—somebody. Her father, maybe. And sparkling with magic.” He smiled a little. “Happy. But I didn’t need to try to scan her to tell you that.”

  “No, and a look at her clothes and complexion could probably tell you the part about wealth and privilege,” Senneth agreed. “Very good, all the same. She’s the oldest daughter of Malcolm Danalustrous, one of the most powerfu
l nobles in the country—and you’re right, he loves her very much. When it was discovered that she was a mystic, he didn’t expel her from the estate, as many a nobleman has upon discovering he’s spawned something demonic. Instead, he imported tutors and had her taught at Danalustrous. He forced the other nobles to treat her with respect and accept her into their very rarified social circle. No other fathers from any of the Twelve Houses have been so fond, even when they didn’t disown their magical children.”

  “You keep saying that—Twelve Houses. What does that mean?”

  Kirra, who might have been pretending not to hear when they were discussing her, caught those words, at least. She reined back a little so she could fall in on the other side of Cammon, leaving Donnal to ride on ahead alone.

  “Time for a history lesson,” she said merrily. “But without a map and a piece of paper to write it all down on, you won’t be able to keep it straight. Only those of us who have grown up studying the alliances can possibly follow who’s related to whom and why it’s so shocking when a boy from Merrenstow marries a girl from Gisseltess.”

  Senneth ignored her. “There are twelve noble Houses of Gillengaria—bloodlines and property divisions that have existed for centuries. Between them, they own virtually all the valuable land of the country, though some own acres of fertile farms, and some command the coastlines, and others own access to the mountains where gold and silver are mined. The marlords—”

  “The what?” Cammon interrupted.

  “Marlords,” Senneth repeated. “The head of each of the Twelve Houses is called a marlord. His son would be known as a serramar and his daughter as a serramarra. His brothers and sisters also bear those titles because they’re also considered direct heirs to the marlordship. So, if you wanted to be very proper about it, you would address Kirra as serra Kirra, or even serramarra Kirra, which I have always thought particularly lovely.”

  “Kirra will do,” said the serramarra, grinning.

  “Anyway, the marlords consider themselves the most elegant, sophisticated, and important men and women of the kingdom. They pretend to owe allegiance to the king, and generally they are loyal, but all of them believe that they are superior to royalty and could rule much better if the chance fell to them.”