by Dawn Peers
She reached out again, hoping to find out what was going on around her. Everyone was so excited, that it was still quite difficult to channel through the burgeoning flashes to find the person she was looking for. Once she did, it was easy to grip on to him. He was…calm. Every other man around him was letting off emotion like a wildfire vomits out smoke. In the centre of it was a calm, white fire. He was still angry; Quinn could sense that like a current ripples under the calm surface of a river. But it was under control. There was more…this was a man she had touched in the past. In the courtyard, when she had passed out. And again, when she had been in the corridor. This was the man who had turned down Yvette, the one who she had declined to read on Sammah’s behalf. Quinn blinked in rapid succession. Why had he been out here? And why did he want to help her?
“I’m sorry my lord, I didn’t realise…”
“I’m not the lord, but you can guarantee he’ll be hearing about this.”
The lad…man, Quinn realised then, came to stand in front of her. He held his hand down to her. She stared at it for a few seconds before she foolishly realised he was waiting to help her up. She grabbed hold of the proffered palm. His hand was warm, his skin calloused. He was used to work, unlike some of the pampered nobility she often saw careering around the castle. Briar’s mean little face flashed quickly through her mind. She couldn’t see him properly, not in this light, but she could see enough. His face was open and pleasant, but it was incredibly familiar. She felt that she should know who he was, his name at the very least. He stood there in awkward silence, waiting for her to respond. Quinn realised again that she must be sounding so rude, and stammered to fill the silence.
“I’m sorry, my lord. I don’t know what’s getting in to me tonight. I must thank you that was… I can’t begin to say how I feel for….”
“No, accept my apologies please, my lady. I should have asked how you are. No woman should have to experience something like that. I’ll make sure that brute is dealt with to the strongest letter of our laws.”
Quinn bristled a little at the implication of his words. She knew plenty of women who would have dealt this man a swift clip around the ear for those words, Renner being one of them. They were meant in a good nature though, and Quinn didn’t need to reach out to this man to know that he meant her no harm. If it hadn’t been so dark, she would have sworn against every good spirit that he was starting to blush, too.
“Thank you, again. I need to…my friend…” Quinn turned to Maertn, and realised mortified guilt that he was already being tended by the men of the guard. A hand tugged at her arm.
“He’s in the best hands at the moment. They’ll take him to the best healer in the city, I’ll make sure of it.”
Quinn turned to this man, who was so certain of everything around him. She found her voice, just in time for her sarcasm to return. “He is the best healer in the city.”
“Oh…in that case… I have no idea where they’ll take him.”
Despite herself, Quinn found this response hilarious. As Maertn moaned behind them, she knew that he’d be okay, no matter what kind of bruises he’d taken when he’d gotten in the way of Elias's charge.
“He did a brave thing, taking that fall for you.”
“He did. I’ll make sure he knows it. You were brave, too. You didn’t have to.”
“I’m not going to stand by and watch a man murder anyone in cold blood. I might be from an ambitious bloodline, but ambivalence to violence is not in my nature.”
Quinn recoiled at his words. Bloodthirsty bloodline? The power to have Elias sent away to the cells. Then she recognised the jawline for the man who had been in Sammah’s quarters the night she had walked out. This man was related to Lord Shiver. He had to be one of the notorious lord’s sons. She had been saved by an heir to one of the kingdoms of Everfell. This was too much. Quinn felt suddenly dizzy again. A roaring rush, that was becoming all too familiar, fell across her ears. Quinn almost grumbled at herself before the blackness overcame her, and she tumbled back to the floor.
28
“Why do we have to keep doing this, Quinn?”
Quinn didn’t open her eyes, and she kept her abilities to herself. “Which bit? Me passing out, or you lying to me about the reasons for it?”
She opened her eyes then. Sammah’s toothy smile didn’t falter. His eyes betrayed enough for her to know that she was hitting the mark.
“Don’t think you’re getting clever, little girl. I have a lot of years of practice at what you’re trying to do. You’re going to fail. I might not be able to get rid of you in quite the way I’d planned, but that served a purpose all of its own. You’re not going to be able to leave Everfell anymore, so at least I can keep personally keep an eye on you. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to keep doing what I want. Because I’m the only one that can keep you safe now, Quinn.”
She leaned up on her elbows. Her blanket fell down, exposing her naked torso to the air. She ignored it. She kept eye contact with Sammah. He returned the gesture, their stare not faltering. “You’re the reason I’m in danger.”
“You’re the one putting yourself in danger. Cover yourself up before you embarrass us both.”
She hated it that he should be able to score such a cheap hit, but she did grab a shirt and pull it over her head. She didn’t want to feel any more vulnerable than was really necessary at this point.
“Forgive me if I’m mistaken, but aren’t you the one that sent Elias after me last night? It seems pretty clear to me in which direction the danger is being sent.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Alack and alas, Quinn, as in many areas of your life, you’re only seeing the small window that relates to you. For someone who claims to be so weak and vulnerable, you’re incredibly self-centred. No, Elias was never going to kill you last night. He’s going to be in a great deal of trouble for quite some time, though I always knew that was going to be the case. Elias knew it, too. Everything went exactly as I had hoped last night. Thanks to you being so predictable. You forget, Quinn. I’ve raised you. You’re my daughter. There’s not going to be a lot you can do without my predicting—and preventing it.
So accept it. You’re not just my daughter. You’re the Satori. I have made you, and you are under my control. The sooner we get past this awkward phase you’re going through, the sooner we can move on with our lives.”
Quinn decided to change tack, so she had time to think of a different answer than what she had in her head, which was at this point a loud and continuous scream. “How is Maertn?”
Sammah shrugged. “He’ll be fine. Certainly well enough to stand in the trial tomorrow. As will you.”
“Trial? Elias is going to be on trial?”
Sammah grinned again, this time looking more like a weasel than a man, his slick hair giving him a sickening shine. “No. Elias has already taken his lashes as punishment. He’s back in my rooms, waiting for Maertn to heal him so he can receive some decent treatment for them. No, the trial is to confirm that Elias didn’t murder anyone.”
“But he tried to!”
“But Elias didn’t murder you, did he? And someone was murdered last night, Quinn. So whilst Elias might have tried to kill you, there is even a noble son able to bear witness that Elias didn’t kill a single soul last night.”
Quinn felt sick as she thought of the kind man of Sevenspells, though she couldn’t help that she had managed to faint in the courtyard, yet again. Why was it important to Sammah that Elias had been seen elsewhere, even if it was committing another crime? There was more to this than met the eye.
“Who was murdered?”
“Think about it and tell me yourself. I want you to be able to think for yourself Quinn. I don’t want you to be a puppet. You’re absolutely no use to me that way. No matter what you think of me right now, I need that opinion to change. This is why I’m being open with you now. So think about the comings and goings in Everfell over the last couple of days. Who could possibly b
e dead, to cause enough of a stir for there to be a trial?”
Quinn’s mind flew around haphazardly until she straightened her thoughts in the way she frustratingly knew Sammah wanted them to be. She went chronologically, as if making the ghost of her soul revisit the rooms, go into the past, and re-hear all the conversations. She gave a physical grunt of pain when she realised who the only feasible candidate was at the centre of Sammah’s machinations.
“Alec. Alec has been murdered.”
“Very good. See, we can work together. Now, Quinn. Tell me who murdered the heir to Broadwater?”
Quinn’s eyes started watering as she saw the corner Sammah had backed her to. Her voice croaked as the forced the answer out. “The Satori.”
Sammah’s vicious smile nearly split his face. “That’s right. The Satori.”
* * *
“Enough! I will have silence! Silence!”
King Vance, tall though he was, and strong with his voice, struggled to make himself heard over the din in the courtroom. This was unprecedented. He stood at the head of a long wide table. He was flanked by the lords of the other provinces, in attendance as they were for the Spring Meet. Erran and Calvin looked stone-faced compared to the crestfallen hunchback that the old Lord Broc had managed to become over the death of his son. Lord Shiver was next, seated auspiciously at the right hand of the king. He looked restrained, as if there was a certain amount of glee to be had, and under no circumstances should he reveal this to the rest of the court. Augyr, Obren, and Venn all seemed distant, staring out into nothing and wanting to be anywhere right then but in that courtroom.
Sammah stood some way behind the king, refusing as always to take a seat. The meetings of the Sha’sek council, he had said, were always taken standing, and it was a tradition that he wished to uphold in his role as ambassador. When the king sat down, Sammah would be the tallest man on display to those amassed in the huge room, and this detail appeared to escape the majority of Everfell’s ruling contingent.
Maertn sat unhappily in front of the lords. His shoulders were hunched, though Quinn was sure that was mostly because of his dislocated shoulder rather than any personal desire to be elsewhere. The healer’s face was black and blue, too. Elias stood next to Maertn, separated by guards but too close for anyone’s comfort. As this was a trial to identify the murderer of the Lord Broc, Quinn had been surprised to find out that he was there. Sirah, who had been unmoveable from Quinn’s side since the incident in the courtyard, had pointed out he was there so that Sammah could irrevocably prove, with testimony from one of Shiver’s sons, that Elias was in no way complicit with the murder of Broc. This had been engineered because everyone knew of Elias's role at the head of Sammah’s fratriarchal household and anything implicating the Satori would inevitably lead back to Sammah himself, if the right people were made to confess. That was a matter Sammah would deal with separately. Right now, he was going to make sure that prime suspect, being Elias himself, would be inextricably innocent.
Quinn hated that she was now effectively under armed guard. Sirah was a spiteful woman. Even when Quinn kept herself fully to herself, the woman was a grey cloud of insipid looks and tartish remarks. Even Grainne had looked in on her sorrowfully. She had asked under the pretence of finding out where Yvette was, however the true meaning to her visit was clear enough with a quick flick of Quinn’s mind.
Quinn roamed freely around the courtroom in her head. The lords themselves were a never-ending source of fascination as she played over each of them. Small wonder Sammah wanted to keep her under his control. The more she experimented with direct targeting of her power, the stronger it seemed to get. She had a sudden urge to run, to get out of the castle and to somehow get to Sha’sek. Sammah wasn’t going to tell her about herself, and there were things that he certainly wasn’t telling her. Things were changing quickly, and far from making them be beyond her control, they were making her feel more powerful and confident than she ever had in her short and miserable life.
Quinn was not a suspect, and had not been called to the stand. She had been declared overcome by the occasion, based on her blackout, coupled with her history of keeling over in stressful occasions. When Sammah had tried to call her to the stand it had been denied by every collected healer present. When asked why, the spiteful healer from Sevenspells pointed out that her record in remaining conscious through stressful occasions was poor, and she was running out of chivalrous gentlemen to save the day for her. Quinn had blushed as the entire court had chuckled at this. She had looked for, and found, the eyes of the young lord at this point. She had found out since that this was Eden, the third of Shiver’s sons and as such unlikely to inherit any of his father’s lands. It had been a source of surprise that he had been brought to court, and this was not his first time. Quinn wondered why she hadn’t noticed him before. The way Yvette and Grainne had fawned over him, he was a known quantity. Quinn found herself briefly jealous, that those women had the confidence to approach such a man when she did not.
Eden had blushed, too, when the talk of saving Quinn from her falls had come around. He had been that saviour on two of those occasions. Quinn had found his eye then, and held it. Eden had thought such an action bold, and unlike most of the women, who simpered around him trying to coquettishly grab his occasion, before shying away and tittering inanely. This maid, this girl called Quinn, who apparently could not keep herself together during a racket, was sat in the centre of a packed courtroom and was virtually staring him down. With a sudden shudder, she Quinn realised she was staring at him. Blushing, she looked away. Eden hid a smile. He liked this girl who had the temerity to face him down, whether she was embarrassed or not. That didn’t suit the personality of the woman he had been told about over breakfast.
Shiver’s runners had found all they could, about the two that Eden had saved in the courtyard in the early hours of that morning. They were both orphans, in the castle under the guardianship of the Baron Sammah. They were the same age; not much younger than Eden, in fact. Maertn was a healer, and more than being promising, he was being touted to replace Torran as soon as the old man couple be quietly and politely replaced. This was an unheard of progression; most of the skilled healers Eden knew of were old and decrepit, though it was true that many were lost in the last war. All cities were still admittedly rebuilding their talent, but there wasn’t really a wealth of talent to choose from. Everfell, the sovereign city, appeared to be putting all of its healing faith in this boy. Eden had already pondered seeking him out to find out what he could learn from this lad, this boy younger than him that was already going to rise to master rank in his profession. How could he not learn something? Anything?
Quinn was a different matter altogether. Every single person asked, from the lowest page to the highest dignitary that had actually heard of her—which appeared to be Ross, the Chamberlain—had the same general opinion of Quinn. Whilst Ross attested to the fact that she was a hard worker, the girl was solitary to the point of isolation, with Maertn and Sammah being her only real sources of contact within the entire city. That made sense then, that the lad would be so upset if she were choosing to leave. Eden was already painting pictures in his mind of what had happened between the two. Perhaps they had made a pact to try and find traces of their families, but Maertn’s rise in his profession meant that Quinn had decided to go out alone. Perhaps she harboured a love for him, and felt shunned in favour of his healing work. Both seemed feasible, if she had been a hot-headed dolt like the majority of women that flopped to the floor at the sign of so much as a dormouse. The stories continued, though. Quinn had always been quiet and isolated. Her friendship with Maertn had been a slow and gradual thing, and the consensus was that Quinn could probably drop the lad like a stone if she so chose, being solely dependent on the relationship she had with her father. She was fearful of crowds, and wholly unreliable to keep composed in any kind of din. As a child she had been barred from market days for going hysterical, running away and staying m
issing altogether for days on end. Her odd ways had seen her end up as one of Ross's night maids. If she hadn’t been under the care of Sammah, she would have been expelled from castle service altogether for being such a nuisance. And it was a shame, everyone said, because she was such a beauty. Any normal girl would have found herself as a playmate of the princess by now, or perhaps even bordering on one of the queen’s own maids. But Quinn’s paranoias were aging her beyond her years, most said, and she looked both old and severe whilst still managing to look naïve and chaotic. Eden needed to get her on her own, to speak to her. This Quinn, she was everything so far that people had said she was. Her actions in the courtyard, on both occasions, proved this. But there was something in that stare, something in the strength and the conviction of her words in the confrontation with Maertn that night, which put those assumptions to the sword. Eden was finding the rumours about the orphan Quinn quite wanting. And when Eden found himself lacking in knowledge, he always set about finding the answers to his questions.
He and Quinn both snapped back to attention to the room. The room wasn’t silent, but the chattering had reduced to a few hushed tentative whispers. After much bawling, King Vance had gained control of the courtroom. In the tense silence, his composure returned. Instead of howling from the back of his throat his words came deep, from the controlling part of his chest and the sorrowful part of his heart.
