by Sharon Shinn
“Well, someone thought so,” Tayse said. Still squatting beside her, he surveyed the room. “So, let’s see, they lived here for a while—looks like the curtains are old, and the furniture’s comfortable, and probably no one bothered them for years. And then, someday, something happened, someone came to mistrust them, and a party got together to deal with them.” He glanced down at her. “Happening more these days, especially in the south, so I hear.”
“But we’re not in the south,” she said. She had drawn her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. The smell of blood and the reality of what had occurred were making her feel nauseated, but she would not get sick, not in front of Tayse. “We’re halfway between Storian and Helven lands! Those Houses have no grudge against mystics!”
“Today they might,” Tayse said and rose to his feet.
There was a noise outside, and Tayse whipped around, knife already in hand, but it was only Justin. He stopped short on the threshold. “By the Silver Lady’s hand,” he said blankly. “What happened here?”
“Massacre of mystics, we’re guessing,” Tayse said briefly. “See anything on the road?”
Justin shook his head. “I’ll go look out front.”
Donnal stepped through the door in man shape. “Don’t bother,” he said. “They left enough tracks for even Kirra to follow.”
Senneth put a palm to the floor to push upright and was surprised when Tayse reached out a hand to help her up. She took it and let him haul her to her feet before he released her. “What did you find?” she said, forcing herself to keep her voice steady.
“Shod horses, about twenty of them,” Donnal said. “Military unit.” She just looked at him. “Civil guard,” he expanded. “They rode in fanned out for stealth, rode out in formation.”
“Any idea who?” Tayse asked.
“Yes,” Donnal said, and threw something across the room at Senneth. “Personal guard for one of the Twelve Houses.”
She caught what he had tossed her and turned it over and over in her hands. It was a glove, finely made, soft leather lined with thin wool. On the back was embroidered a black hawk carrying a red flower in its talons. She knew that heraldry.
“Gisseltess,” she whispered. “But why would Halchon Gisseltess be murdering mystics hundreds of miles outside his borders?”
“Why would anyone be murdering mystics anywhere?” Donnal demanded.
Justin looked at him. “Nobody likes them. You must know that. Everyone’s afraid of them.”
“Not everyone,” Senneth said. Her mind felt wildly chaotic, as if too many thoughts and pictures were whirling inside her skull at once. She could not force herself to think this through, make herself understand it. “And even so—there is something different—between stoning a mystic in the marketplace and hunting one down in a quiet cottage miles from your home. What brought them here?”
Tayse looked around again. “There’s nothing else we can do,” he said. “Let’s burn the bodies. If there’s anything of value here for you,” he added, addressing Senneth, “take it now.”
She nodded dumbly, thinking that had been a kind gesture on his part. “Donnal,” she said, “fetch the others. We’ll be here a while.”
THEY traveled as far from the hut as they could before making camp for the night. Even so, Senneth assumed that the others carried images all that way with them, as she did. Images of broken bodies, burning pyres, coiled silver ropes of moonstones.
Camp was quick and efficient, everyone taking his or her accustomed task, and dinner was silent. After they’d cleaned up the meal, they all just sat there, by common consent unwilling to seek bedrolls and the nightmares that might come with sleep.
“Does anyone know, do you think?” Cammon asked, the first to break the silence. The youngest, the one who found silence most unbearable, Senneth thought. “Does anyone who loves them know that they’re dead?”
“Anyone who comes looking will find the blood in the house and the bonfire out back,” Tayse said quietly. “They’ll figure it out.”
Cammon shook his head. “People should have someone to mourn them,” he said. “When they die, someone should be sad.”
Who will mourn you? Senneth wanted to ask, but she thought that the answer to that question was probably what had prompted him to make the observation in the first place.
Kirra leaned closer to the fire, tugging on the necklace she always wore. By firelight, it took on a muted gorgeousness, for it was a perfect, multifaceted ruby that loved nothing so much as light. “If I die on the road,” she said, “take off my pendant and send it to my father in Danalustrous. You’ll have to cut it off with metal, though, ’cause it’s welded on.”
Justin looked over at her, ready to express scorn for the nobility once he had the full story. “You wear a necklace that’s been soldered on?”
She nodded, staring into the flames. “Many of the women of the Twelve Houses do. Cut to just such a length, so they fall here”—she touched a point just above her breasts—“to cover up their housemarks.”
Now both Riders were staring at her. “Their what?” Justin said. “Housemarks?”
She nodded again. “Every time a legitimate child is born to one of the Twelve Houses, he or she is marked at birth with the insignia of the estate. Danalustrous is a small D. Very elegant. Gisseltess is a tiny flower. Merrenstow is a circle with a line through it, signifying—oh, something. I forget all the complicated symbols of heritage.”
“Marked at birth—how, exactly?” Tayse asked.
Kirra glanced over at him. “Branded. Burned into the skin.”
“And you think I’m barbaric,” Justin said.
She smiled a little. “I know. Isn’t it the strangest custom? I grew up with it, so it didn’t occur to me how horrifying the ritual was, till I saw a small girl undergo it. I cried for three days.”
“So you’re branded at birth with the crest of your house,” Tayse said. “How come I’ve never seen any of the aristocracy with such a mark?”
“Because we wear these pendants to cover them, of course. At least, the women do. It is considered the height of poor manners to move or dance in such a way that your necklet slips and your housemark is revealed in grand society.”
“I’ll never understand rich folks,” Justin remarked.
Now she looked at him through the flames. “No,” she said haughtily, “you probably never will.”
Senneth was smiling till she caught Tayse’s eyes on her. “And you,” Tayse said. “If you die on the mission. How will we identify your body and to whom should we send the evidence?”
She laughed. “Oh, I don’t wear anything so fancy,” she said, reaching a finger under her collar to pull out a golden chain. It was hung with a worn golden disk decorated with a thin circlet of filigree. “But I haven’t taken this off since it was given to me by my grandmother seventeen years ago.” She kept her voice light. “Upon the occasion of my father banishing me from his house because he didn’t care for witches. She said I should carry something with me that would always remind me someone loved me still. She’s dead now.” Leaving unsaid the corollary thought that there was no one alive who still loved her. “I suppose, if I’m slaughtered on the road, you should send this on to Malcolm Danalustrous as well. I’ve done some work for him, and he’s always been kind to me.”
Donnal was grinning. “Well, then, send word of my death on to Danalustrous, too,” he said. “I suppose news of a chattel’s death might mean more to the marlord than it would to the chattel’s family.”
“You’re not a chattel. You never were,” Kirra said sharply.
Donnal leaned back on his arms. “Near enough as makes no difference when you grow up on Danalustrous land and Danalustrous charity,” he said, but he didn’t sound aggrieved. “But your father’s a grand old man. I’d work for him and fight for him even if I wasn’t born to it.”
This was an old argument; none of them really needed to hear it again. “How about you
?” Senneth asked Justin. “Who shall we notify of your demise?”
He put a fist to his shoulder and bowed low over the fire. “Tell King Baryn, of course, that one of his Riders has been gathered to the Pale Mother’s arms. And send my weapons to be divided among the Riders so that they can carry some part of me into their next skirmish.”
She looked at Tayse. “Your wish as well, I suppose?”
“Tell the king, tell the Riders. My father is a Rider still,” he said. “One message will inform everyone I wish to know.”
Involuntarily, they all looked at Cammon, though no one was rude enough to ask the question. But he was a sensitive, and, anyway, he had started this line of questioning. “I assume I’ll be with all of you if I go in the next few weeks,” he said cheerfully enough. “No one else to tell.”
Kirra stirred. “This is gloomy talk,” she said. “Can’t we discuss something else?”
“Name the topic,” Tayse said.
Kirra glanced at Senneth. “Don’t you find yourself wondering,” she asked, “what Halchon Gisseltess thinks he’s doing slaughtering innocents so near to Helven land? Don’t you find yourself wondering what Martin Helven might think of such an act?”
“Yes,” Senneth said. “We might find out a great deal if we were to make a visit to Martin Helven.”
“How would you do that?” Tayse asked, his voice sounding interested. “Just ride up to his estates and ask him?”
“His primary residence is in Helvenhall, only a few days away,” Kirra said. “Fairly large city, as cities go here in the inland properties. We could take a room at the most expensive inn in town, and I could send a message to his estate. I am, though none of you seems to appreciate it, the oldest daughter of a very wealthy man, and I can move in the most elite circles. I think he would come visit me one afternoon. And maybe he would tell me some of the things we wish to know.”
Senneth sighed. “I like that part of it. The rest doesn’t sound like so much fun.”
Tayse turned his attention back to Senneth. “Why?”
Kirra was smiling. “She knows I’ll want her to pose as my maid, since obviously a serramarra of Danalustrous would not be traveling unaccompanied.” She glanced around the fire. “There are just enough of you to appear to be a respectable guard. We would have to do something about your clothes, though. You would need to be wearing proper livery.”
“That’ll be easy to come by hundreds of miles from your father’s house,” Justin sneered.
She was still smiling. “You forget,” she said. “I’m a shiftling. I can change anything to look like anything else. I can make myself a ball gown out of these travel trousers, and I can dress you in the colors of Danalustrous.”
“Can you make Senneth look submissive?” Tayse asked. “Because I would think that would take some pretty strong magic.”
There was muffled laughter around the fire. Senneth felt her face twitching into a childish scowl.
“Senneth has enough of the shape-shifter’s skills to disguise both her strength of body and strength of will,” Kirra said. “I am sure she can make herself look quite dull.”
“I’m willing to dress up as a nobleman’s guard,” Tayse said. “I think it would be interesting to see what we might learn.”
Everyone else murmured an agreement. Senneth sighed again, for she knew the plan had merit. It wouldn’t work in Rappengrass or Gisseltess, but Martin Helven had always been a reasonable—and not particularly observant—man. “Very well,” she said. “On to Helvenhall.”
CHAPTER 5
TWO days later they rode into a tidy little city that rose with a self-important grandeur in the middle of the flatlands. Tayse looked around with interest, for he’d never been there. With him, it was an automatic thing to begin assessing and cataloging. Here was where the city was vulnerable to attack, here was where the back alleys lay if someone needed a quick exit. There were no gates to pass through, though there were guards lounging along the main road that led into the city. They were dressed in Helven green and gold, and they looked suitably well-trained, but they also looked as if they’d never seen a day’s real combat in their lives. Tayse shared a look with Justin, knowing that they had the same thought: We could take any five of them and win.
The local guards didn’t seem to read their expressions. Indeed, many of them gave friendly waves to fellow soldiers, since Tayse and the other men of the party were wearing sashes colored with Danalustrous gold and red. It was interesting to be greeted with such casual respect. Riders, of course, wore black embroidered with the king’s gold lion when they wished to be recognized, and this generally evoked a reaction of awe bordering on fear. When they traveled incognito, they were more often mistaken for mercenaries or outlaws, and therefore treated with suspicion and caution. Rarely were they viewed as compatriots who might be good for a drink or two once the shift was ended.
Kirra swept ahead of them all like a disdainful queen. Even in travel clothes, going four days without a bath, she was a beautiful woman, but dressed like the noblewoman she was, she was literally breathtaking. She and Senneth had spent an hour braiding jewels and gold ribbon into her hair before dressing her in a red and gold gown.
“You produced that from oak leaves and meadowgrass, I suppose,” Tayse had said.
Kirra had grinned over at him. Even her face looked finer, as if she had let herself gain some coarseness and weariness while they rode and now cast off those unnecessary disguises. “From buckskin and dirty linen,” she said. “Do you like it? Would it make you want to confide in me?”
He had grinned back. “I don’t think fine clothes would move me as much as you’d like,” he replied. “But this Helven lord might be a different matter.”
Senneth’s transformation had been more subtle but, to Tayse, more shocking. She had stepped out from Kirra’s shadow, and he had just stared at her. Her fine white-blond hair had darkened to a muddy brown, and her alert gray eyes looked washed out and tired. Even her skin, so smooth for someone who had led such an adventurous life, looked matted and ill used. Worst of all was her expression: docile, bland, and distant. “I am sure marlord Martin will respond to serra Kirra just as he should,” she said in a repressive voice.
Kirra had burst out laughing, but Tayse had not been able to shake off his disbelief. “What did you do to her?” he demanded. “She doesn’t look anything like—I don’t know that I would recognize her.”
“I didn’t touch her. I told you she had enough shiftling magic in her to change her appearance.”
“Does it hurt?” he found himself asking.
Senneth didn’t even smile at him for the question, as he supposed serving maids never got a chance to smile. “Does what hurt? To make a transformation like this? No, but it’s a little tedious and requires more of my concentration than I’d like.”
“I mean—does it hurt to hold it all back? To swallow all the energy and intelligence that’s usually on your face?”
For a moment she looked truly surprised, so he must have said something he did not intend. “No,” she said again. “But I’m starting to think I must look even worse than I meant to.”
Tayse shook his head. “I’d have sworn on any Rider’s life that you had never been a servant, but right now I’d have to be rethinking that. You look the part completely.”
“You’re right,” she said dryly. “I’ve never been a maid, though I’ve played a lot of different roles in my life.”
“More roles than I can keep track of,” he said.
A small smile for that. “And you don’t know half of them.”
“That’s the trouble,” he said and turned away.
He knew a few of them, though, and he reviewed them as he followed her and Kirra into the city. She had the guildmarks of half a dozen professions tattooed on her left wrist, partially covered by the moonstone bracelet. She’d worked in the gold mines, spent a summer laboring on an inland farm, been a horse trader, a fisherwoman, a blade for hire. He was
still not clear on how she had hooked up with Malcolm Danalustrous, though he had finally worked out that she was one of the tutors who’d been brought in to school Kirra when she was discovered to be a mystic. And perhaps it had been Malcolm Danalustrous who had introduced her to the king, but he was not certain of that either; it could so easily have been the king who brought her to Danalustrous.
Tayse loved his king, and he would die for the man, but he was far from sure royalty had made a wise decision in trusting so much to this footloose and unpredictable woman. Her only true allegiances seemed to be to herself and to her magic, and though he knew no ill of her, he also had seen nothing to make him believe in her.
Then again, he believed wholly in no one but the king and his fellow Riders, so perhaps that was not surprising.
They rode down the broad main avenue of Helvenhall, Tayse still mentally cataloging the sights around them. A handful of taverns, all of them doing a brisk business; a number of shops that catered to a wealthy clientele; few beggars on the street. A well-run and prosperous little town, this city in the middle of Helven.
Kirra headed without hesitation down the street as if she knew exactly where she was going, and in a few moments they had turned into the courtyard of a very fancy inn indeed. It was three stories high, built of quarried stone, and looked more like a private estate than any inn Tayse had ever stayed at. Ostlers ran out of the stables to catch the reins of their horses; footmen hurried through the double doors to take charge of their woefully small pile of luggage. A thin, obsequious man—the owner himself, unless Tayse missed his guess—came straight up to Kirra and handed her down from the saddle.
“How delightful to see you, serra Kirra!” he exclaimed. “I did not know you were traveling! How may I help you? How long will you be staying? Whatever you need, we’ll be happy to accommodate you—”
“Thank you,” Kirra said in a languid and supercilious tone. “I would like a suite for my girl and me. And an adjoining room for my men. Unusual, I know—I’m sure you have perfectly adequate rooms closer to the stables—but I feel much safer with my own guard within call. You understand. My father is so protective of my safety.”
