It didn’t really occur to Dion until she was fifteen that there was a difference between Aerwn when she was with Dion and Aerwn when she was with their parents. It was just another facet of Aerwn’s slightly duplicitous nature, that need to play a part or make fun of whomever she was with. It wasn’t until the night that Aerwn climbed in through Dion’s bedroom window bleeding and bruised, with a look in her eyes that Dion didn’t understand, that she saw the difference. Aerwn had always sneaked out of the castle and into Harlech—it was one of her princessly rebellions—but she had never come home bleeding before. She wouldn’t let Dion call a Fae maid or do anything except heal the sluggishly bleeding wound. Her blood-soaked clothes and pale face suggested that she had already bled quite significantly, and by the time Dion had healed the wound with shaking fingers, Aerwn was half-fainting, half-sleeping on Dion’s bed. Confused, worried, and frightened, Dion had curled under the covers with her sister as if they were three again, and woke in the morning to find Aerwn already gone.
Aerwn was perfectly cheerful and inclined to be dismissive with Dion anxiously sought her out the next day, laughing away her sister’s fears and questions. When Dion went to her parents with the worried suspicion that Aerwn was getting into dangerous scrapes, she found that her parents were very well aware her sister still often slipped out of the castle.
“It’s nothing to worry about, dear one,” said her mother. “I was wild enough myself as a child. A second princess has nothing else to occupy her time but making mischief, and so long as she takes a Fae maid with her, she can’t be otherwise than safe.”
“She was bleeding, Mother.”
King Alawn ap Fane smiled at Dion indulgently. “She told us she’d frightened you with some prank or other, perilous child that she is! You know how she is, Dion: any mischief for a laugh. Don’t worry your mind about it. She’ll calm when she marries.”
Dion, who was absolutely certain that Aerwn had not been counterfeiting either injury or faint, tried to convince them otherwise, but her parents were not inclined to believe her. And the next time they sat together as a family she watched Aerwn more critically, not as a fond sister but as an impartial observer. Where Aerwn with Dion was laughing but sometimes sombre, Aerwn with her parents was always bright, always laughing; while with Dion she was clever and even sometimes thoughtful, when with her parents, Aerwn was always bubbling and never deep enough to have a real conversation. With Dion she talked frowningly of unrest in Illisr and skirmishes in Montalier. With her parents she mouthed frothy popular opinions and made fun of the staid old politicians of the old, pre-Fae days.
It occurred to Dion for the first time that Aerwn was playing a game, wearing a laughing, silly mask, and that if she was not being honest with her parents, neither was she being quite honest with Dion. It made her even more cautious about believing everything Aerwn said, and though she didn’t begin to love her sister any less, she did feel that some distance had been made between the two of them– and that the distance wasn’t of her own making.
The First Chill of Autumn
It was late afternoon, and an unusually bright piece of sunshine had filtered through the clouds to play on Dion’s bedspread. Summer in Llassar, as Aerwn said, simply meant that there was a little sunshine in the rain. That the sunshine had stretched out just a little longer each day over the last ten years or so was seen as a happy coincidence with the high population of Seelie Fae who had made Llassar their home.
Aerwn, like the sunshine, was at present stretched out on top of Dion’s bed. Unlike the sunshine, she was a lively, unsettling presence. Her tall, lissom figure was thrown out at ease and perfectly relaxed but her speech fluttered here and there with baffling logic. So like and yet unlike Dion, her hair was just as black and curling, but where Dion’s hair was kept long Aerwn had many years since rebelled by cutting hers short in a mop of curls. The biggest difference, thought Dion, as she changed out of morning dress between two court sessions, was the fiery, fierce, energetic life to Aerwn. Beside her, Dion was cold, stupid, and silent; too afraid of showing more feeling than she ought, to show as much as she should, and too careful of her expressions to touch anyone with real warmth of feeling. Aerwn may have her faults in too hasty speech and impatience, but she was more alive than Dion.
Dion twisted her mouth in dissatisfaction as she smoothed her skirts straight, and swept over to her dressing mirror.
“You know, you’re the only girl I know who doesn’t dress in front of her mirror,” said Aerwn. She was tossing grapes in the air and catching them with her mouth.
“Aren’t you supposed to be with your tutor?” countered Dion, a little flustered by the sudden attack. The twins had had their seventeenth birthday a few days ago, and although it made scant difference to Aerwn, it had meant a great deal more work for Dion. Her Court sessions were for the purpose of honorifically declaring her as the heir of Llassar, and tomorrow the coronal tour around Llassar would begin. She had been the Princess Heir since birth, but today her adult status and Heirship were to be ceremonially declared. There was a great deal to do and prepare for. “I’m sure you’re meant to be with your tutor.”
“We had a difference of opinion.”
“Oh, Aerwn, not again!”
“I don’t particularly like being lied to. He’s a silver-tongued little twerp who thinks he’s a lot more important than he is.”
Dion huffed a little sigh and tried not to let it ruin the line of her shoulders. She needed her shoulders loose for face #51—regal attentiveness—which would be her default expression for the next few days. “Mother is going to be annoyed that you’ve left early again.”
“I think it’s his sense of entitlement that irks me the most, though,” pursued Aerwn. “He positively reeks of it! I can see him looking down his beautifully narrow nose at me. Now, I’m no snob, Di, but if anyone should be looking down on anyone, it’s me!”
Dion noticed the furrowed brow of her reflection and hastily smoothed it. “Aerwn, you’re always saying people are lying to you. Mother is talking about having you seen to by Doctor Whishte. She’s worried.”
“Oh, they’ve already tried that,” said Aerwn, her face suddenly as white as her shirt-sleeves. “It didn’t take. And I’m always saying people are lying to me because they are. I should have been more careful at first. Now they lie to me just for fun, about stupid little things.”
Dion took in another silent sigh. “Why do you always think people are lying to you?”
“If it comes to that, why do you always think everyone is telling you the truth?” said Aerwn. “You’re so horribly honest, Di! I know it’s hard to believe, but people lie. Humans lie. The Fae lie. Even Mother and Father lie.”
“They don’t– why– who do you think they’re lying to?”
Aerwn’s mouth, so similar to Dion’s, quirked downwards. “Themselves, mostly. But to us, too.”
“I don’t have time to talk about this now,” said Dion.
“Of course you don’t,” said her sister. She flicked her feet over the end of the bed and stood in one quick, angry motion. “And you’re off around the country tomorrow, so there won’t be any time to talk about it later, either. I suppose I’d better leave you to it. I wouldn’t want to make you late.”
“Aerwn,” said Dion hopelessly.
From the door, her sister said: “While you’re bouncing about the countryside in a fat Crown coach, try to remember what it was like before the Fae. Also, I love you.”
Two weeks later, Dion was heartily cursing her fat Crown coach. It was big and warm, and far too wide for the narrow Llassarian country roads that it had to travel. The front axle, taking exception to one too many ditches in conjunction with one too many lumps in the road, had splintered and broken as they rounded the latest corner. The axles would once have been iron and far less likely to break, but now that the Fae were so prevalent in Llassar metallurgy was generally frowned upon and only barely legal. The Fae didn’t care for iron. They didn�
��t care much for any type of metal, as a matter of fact.
Dion, tossed forward into the lap of her personal maid, heard the shattering of one of the inner glass lanterns as the coach ground to a halt, and tried to pull herself back into her seat with as much dignity as she could muster. Oddly enough, none of the other four people in the coach attempted to help her. It wasn’t until Dion was once again perched perilously upon her tilting seat that she realised why. All of them were asleep or unconscious, their heads drooping against their chests and their limbs loose and lax.
Her guards were at the coach doors on either side in a moment. “Your highness, are you injured?”
“D-don’t open the doors!” Dion cried, her tongue tripping over the words in her haste; but she was too late. The doors opened together; and together, her two outer guards slumped forward until they were half in and half out of the coach.
Dion tumbled out of the coach over the prone bodies of her guards, quick and breathless, and ran for the first cover she could find with her skirts bunched around her knees. That first cover was a shallow ditch covered by the fine, drooping foliage of a feather-willow. She rolled into it, her heart beating hard in her ears, and waited for the ambush to descend upon her coach.
It never came. Crouched in a trembling heap with roots digging into her knees and palms, Dion quietly threw up on the grass. Then, when she was feeling well enough to force back her anxiety, she began to gather herself into some semblance of capable thinking. Something in the coach had set her retinue to sleep: the broken lantern, she guessed. It wasn’t magical in origin, or both she and the Fae would have noticed. It had seemed logical that an attack would occur once they were all asleep. The question was, thought Dion, mechanically rubbing her palms up and down her forearms to try and rid herself of the trembling, why hadn’t it happened? And why hadn’t she fallen asleep as well? She set a quick trace of magic rippling over her body, but found nothing amiss that she could recognise.
Dion left her shelter and approached the coach again cautiously, trailing grass and dirt. Her travel wrap was wafting on the cool breeze, one corner of it caught in the hinge of the door. It must have wedged there when she leapt from the coach. It was threaded through with a rather carefully designed spell of her own making: when wrapped around her face during travel, it filtered out dust, unpleasant odours, and most chemicals that could be used to overcome an unwary human. Fae, who were largely unaffected by chemicals that rendered humans unconscious, had hitherto refused her offers of spelled equipment. After this trip, Dion was rather certain that she wouldn’t have to insist.
She reached out to catch the end of her wrap. Had it been up when the accident happened? She thought it had been. Now that she wasn’t feeling too ill to concentrate, she detected a certain soreness to her neck. She must have half-strangled herself when she left the coach.
Dion examined the thin weave a little more closely, and found that the filtering spell had been completely burned out. Not only that, the weave itself had bubbled in tiny, melted patches of fabric. Whatever had set her retinue to sleep, it was certainly airborne: it had completely burned out the spell.
More carefully now, Dion went on to examine her retinue. Medicinal magic wasn’t a branch of magic that she had much studied: it required a knowledge of the human body, inside and out, that she simply hadn’t had time to gain. More worryingly, her magic was coming up against something distinctly metallic in each member of her retinue’s chests. Still, they didn’t seem to be in danger of dying, merely sleeping for rather a long time. If she were to go for help, it was unlikely that they would worsen in the mean-time.
Dion took some time to shift the coach from the road to the cover of the willows. It took more than a little magical effort, but a royal coach would likely attract some attention, and not all of it pleasant. Someone, and for some reason, had already attacked. Until she could return with help, it seemed sensible to keep it out of sight. The horses, she took further from the road, following the line of willows until she found water. She left them with a slight suggestion of magic that would disincline them to wander from the stream, and went to the coach.
Her retinue and the horses taken care of, the first order of the day was to make herself look less princessly. Dion shut the Heir’s Circlet of State in the carriage’s lockbox, hoping the magics that protected it would be enough; but there was still the matter of her ridiculously long black curls and rather ostentatious overdress with its royal insignia. Her height she could do nothing about, but the rest could be hidden. Dion had a wild, almost exited urge to cut off her hair, but she thought better of it very quickly. Mother and Father would be appalled; besides, it was the easiest thing in the world to plait it in one great rope down her back. She could cover the whole with her plainest scarf by passing it over her head and wrapping it around the plait at the back. She’d seen some of the girls in Bithywis—the last town they had visited—doing the same. Her overdress would have to come off, of course: she had a neat, warm jerkin and underskirt beneath, and even if her full sleeves where white muslin, it was unlikely they’d remain white for long in the dusty road. By the time she was done, Dion thought rather hopefully that she might pass muster as one of the town girls. She would have to be careful not to speak too much. Bithywis was close enough to Harlech to have much the same speech patterns, but there was still something of the countrified air to the local speech that she would have trouble emulating.
I’ll just have to mumble, she thought, with a tiny smile. Tutor Iceflame had spent many harsh hours with Dion, trying to break her of that very habit. Perhaps it would come in handy here in Bithywis. At any rate, it would be much wiser to pretend as far as possible until she could find someone official enough to present with her Royal Seal. Help would come swiftly enough after that.
She followed the road back for some way—further, in fact, than she thought they had come—and it was getting on for evening by the time she saw the wall of Bithywis again. It was a welcome sight: she felt imperilled and exposed on the road where anyone could see her. Aerwn wouldn’t have been afraid, Dion thought uncomfortably; but she couldn’t help the skittering feeling that would run up and down her neck every time she heard horse-hooves or footsteps turn onto the King’s highway behind her. None of the other travellers seemed similarly troubled; they walked quickly and overtook Dion easily, their eyes on the road before them. At first she smiled shyly at them, but when none of them acknowledged her by so much as the flicker of an eyelash she began to feel that she was making herself noticeable, and turned her own eyes to the road. She did notice, however, that no matter how dissimilar the travellers were, each of them had a length of decorative chain about their necks, from which hung one of two types of disc: silver or copper. The only travellers who didn’t have such discs, in fact, were Fae travellers. Was it some sort of fad? wondered Dion. If so, it was not a particularly fetching one.
Dion approached the main gates of Bithywis at much the same time as a wagon and a few other travellers. Her fellow travellers showed their discs and were allowed through, which prompted a slight panic of knowledge within Dion: they were identification chips, no doubt. Whatever the reason Bithywis’ officials had thought it necessary to demand identification upon entry, it didn’t matter: Dion had none.
She had stopped just outside the gate, lurking behind the wagon and conveniently out of sight of the two guards to think it through—should she push on, or try to brazen it out?—when a musical but masculine voice said: “You’re perturbed, sweeting.”
Fae, Dion knew, even before turning. He was a froth of sable and diamond Faery magic behind her. What she didn’t expect was for him to be wearing a guard’s uniform akin to that of the Fae ahead. She pushed down her dismay: there was nothing for it, she would have to try and bluff it out.
“I uh, forgot my...” she gestured vaguely at her neck, “...you know.”
The Fae gave her a curious smile that made her think he didn’t believe her in the slightest, but he said
: “With me, then, sweeting: I’ll get you through safe.”
“Thank you,” said Dion, with real gratitude. She was somewhat taken aback when the Fae swept her beneath his cloak and wrapped his arm around her waist, thus drawing her forward and through the gate. Dion was left with her head out of the cloak, very close to the Fae’s own, and when the guards’ eyes lingered on her, smirking, she flushed hot and red. One of the wagoneers gave her a sympathetic look, but firmly grasped the arm of his young companion, who had started to rise from the seat beside him. Fortunately, they were soon beyond the leers of the guards, but just as Dion was beginning to expect the Fae to release her into the wide, main street of Bithywis, he irresistibly bore her down one small, winding road– and then another that twisted even more worrisomely.
“Thank you!” she said, with something of a gasp. “But this is far enough. I can manage from here.”
“We can’t have you out on the main streets with no marker,” said the Fae chidingly. “This way, sweeting!”
Dion, who had begun to resist in good earnest, was borne around the next corner in hands that seemed to have assumed the consistency of steel. She was thrown against a brick wall with a teeth-shaking jar, and the Fae stood back to observe her with amused eyes. They were in a suffocatingly pokey dead end, and the only way out was filled entirely by the Fae.
“Now, sweeting,” he said. “I’ve been nice to you. It’s your turn to be nice to me.”
Shards of a Broken Sword Page 28
