‘I am bonded to serve the Draaka. I do not spy for her,’ Glynn said indignantly.
‘Many would say that it is no more than the duty of a good servitor to keep their eyes and ears open for what may be of use to their master or mistress.’
‘Some, but not me,’ Glynn said tersely.
‘I believe you,’ Kerd said. ‘Those with honour tend to take pride in it, even to their detriment.’ He smiled, and Glynn’s anger dissolved as she reflected what a smile could do to a face. To some faces. Some smiles. ‘It is strange and perhaps impertinent for me to say it, Glynn of Fomhika, but I find myself liking you,’ Kerd concluded softly, as to himself.
‘I find myself liking you, too, so perhaps we are both guilty of impertinence,’ Glynn said.
Kerd’s smile widened and then faded. ‘Do not be angered by my asking it, but why do you serve the Draaka, Glynn? That you admire this mural means you align with Darkfall.’
‘I don’t align myself with Darkfall, any more than I do with the Draaka cult.’
Kerd looked genuinely puzzled. ‘Then what do you align with? Do you claim, as Coralyn does, that there is no such thing as the Firstmade and therefore no need for Darkfall and the soulweavers?’
‘I align to my own needs and I will go my own way after the delegation has been presented to Tarsin.’
Kerd looked troubled. ‘There are many on Ramidan who believe that Tarsin will never allow your mistress to be presented. He is not …’ He stopped abruptly, comprehension flooding his face. ‘Can it be that you have bonded yourself to the Draaka in order to gain access to Tarsin? Is that it, Glynn? Do you wish to ask for a reversal of some judgement of Poverin’s?’
Glynn resisted the momentary impulse to agree. ‘I do not want to petition Tarsin, Kerd. You might say that my interest in the past has brought me to Ramidan.’
To her astonishment, he burst out laughing. ‘Do not tell me you came here with the Draaka to gain access to the Holder’s archive!’
Bayard’s reverent mention of the Holder’s archive floated up from her memory. The draakira had said that one could learn anything about anything in the Holder’s archive and if the soulweaver were unreachable, it occurred to her that she might be able to learn the whereabouts of the portal from scrolls. ‘I … I have no right to call myself a true scholar,’ she said at last, trying to avoid an outright lie.
‘Then let me name you a seeker after knowledge if the title of scholar embarrasses you,’ Kerd said. ‘But I am right in thinking that your employment with the Draaka came about because of your interest in scrolls, am I not? I know she employs many scholars.’
‘I served the head of the archival scholars who was killed in a storming on the way here,’ Glynn said carefully.
To her surprise, Kerd nodded. ‘You speak of Bayard. I heard of her death on the callstone bulletin this morning. She was once a great scholar and even the chits she scribed for the Draaka were worth reading, though they sought to rewrite history, which cannot be done.’
Glynn was not so certain that was true. Her studies in her own world suggested that historians were constantly in the process of rewriting history. And what passed for history upon Keltor was fact so tangled up with the fabulous that it was impossible to know where fact left off and myth-making began.
As if he read her thoughts, Kerd said, ‘The trouble is that the Legendsong is so ambiguous that it lends itself to many interpretations. Even among those who cleave to Darkfall, scholarly disagreements rage.’
‘Are you a scholar?’ Glynn asked curiously, for he did have a bookish air.
‘I have no right to name myself so,’ Kerd announced with gentle mockery.
She had to smile at that. ‘Well, anyway I would like very much to visit the scroll library here if it is possible.’
‘Theoretically anyone on Keltor has the right to enter the archive and seek the wisdom of the scrolls, but in practice no one outside the palace can come here. I am sure you know that, but what you might not know is that, even from within the palace, it can be a slow process to gain admission to the archives. The archivists jealously guard their sanctum, as if the eyes of anyone on their precious scrolls are a sort of violation! You would hardly imagine from their behavior that Lanalor set up the archive for public enlightenment.’
‘Then I will not be allowed to enter?’ Glynn was disappointed.
‘I spoke as I did not to discourage you, but to preface an offer to take you there myself and introduce you to the archivists. After that, you could go there whenever your duties allowed.’
‘You would do that, knowing I serve the Draaka?’
‘I believe you when you say you do not align yourself with the draakan cause, though I find it hard to believe you do not incline to Darkfall. Perhaps, on that matter, I will seek to change your mind. In any case, I think we will have some interesting discussions.’
‘I should like that,’ Glynn said truthfully. Somehow, she could not feel afraid of Kerd. Her feinna senses advised her that there was no malice in him and she experienced a strong impulse to ask for his help in reaching Alene. But the thought of Unys stopped her.
‘If you are free, I could take you there right now,’ Kerd offered.
Glynn shook her head. ‘I have errands.’
Kerd gave some thought to the matter. ‘Perhaps we could arrange a time to meet here tomorrow and I could take you then?’
Glynn sighed. ‘Bayard appreciated my interest in the scrolls, but since she died I have worked as a general servitor and I doubt I would be given permission to visit the archive.’
But Kerd smiled with a hint of mischief. ‘Very well. Then let us say that I shall come here to enjoy this garden over the next two or three days, at this time. It will be no hardship, believe me, for I love this place. Perhaps we will meet here again and if you have a little spare time between errands we will go to the archive.’
‘You are too kind …’ Glynn began, meaning it.
‘One cannot be too kind,’ Kerd said and again Glynn saw the sadness that seemed to be a constant in him. ‘Besides I am not kind to want your company. I am selfish. I am alone here, Glynn. If I am honest, I was alone even on Vespi. My father does not understand how a Vespian could have the same passion to sail the waves of his mind, as those of the great water. Nor am I much liked here … I do not sail the waters of diplomacy with much more skill than I once sailed the great water. It angers Unys that I am thought by most to be a blundering fool.’ He sighed, then smiled. ‘Yet you do not seem to be alarmed by my lack of polish and somehow it seems to me that we could be friends. That is a very odd thing to say, I suppose.’
‘It is, but I feel it, too,’ Glynn admitted.
His sweet smile grew warmer. ‘Then we are agreed that we will be odd friends.’ Kerd bowed with far more grace than he had before, perhaps because he was mocking himself a little with the gesture. He seemed that kind of person: the sort who would never really see their own worth. He offered her his palms again, and Glynn this time diffidently placed her hands under his, turning the palms up to cup his hands. She saw his brows lift in surprise, for this was a subtle variation on traditional greetings used by nobles, which she had learned from Hella, indicating trust and friendship. It might have been a mistake but she did not regret it.
Before leaving the garden, she could not resist a last glance at the mural, and imagined that she saw approval in the glorious face of the Firstmade.
Descending the crumbling steps to the kitchen level, she marvelled at what had just happened. She had never met anyone she had liked as simply and swiftly as the Vespian. What she felt for Kerd was not the tempest of longing and fear that characterised her relationship with Solen, nor the devotion and desire to protect that she felt for the feinna or Ember, but something more tranquil.
Back in the kitchen, she steeled herself to the reek of boiled meat. Opel, who had evidently been watching for her, came hurrying over, but the choleric over cook appeared in a doorway and she turned quickly
away.
‘You will have to return tomorrow,’ the over cook boomed impatiently. ‘I am too busy to deal with this trivial matter today.’
Glynn opened her mouth to protest, then almost bit her tongue off, because why on earth would she object to something that so suited her? Not only did it give her more time to figure out how to avoid bringing the pelflyt to the Prime, but it would give her the perfect excuse to leave the apartment again, and maybe she really would be able to meet with Kerd!
‘Very well’ she said meekly. The over cook gave her a suspicious look, but at that moment, one of the pots at a nearby stove boiled over with a loud hiss. He roared in anger and descended on the unfortunate boy who had been stirring it, leaving Glynn to make her escape, wondering what Opel would have said. Well, she would find out on the morrow.
The Prime was back standing by the window in the audience room, its transformation complete, when Glynn was ushered in. Her face remained coldly serene as she heard Glynn’s report, including the fact that she had told the over cook that her mistress wanted a pet, but Glynn’s feinna senses picked up anxiety and tension in the older woman that seemed to have nothing to do with their conversation. She wondered suddenly if the Prime was worried about the length of her mistress’s drugged sleep.
‘You will go to the kitchens tomorrow as the over cook bade you,’ she said at length. ‘I do not know why you fabricated such a ridiculous story but you had better go on with it. Probably the man will judge you a halfwit and that would be honouring you. What Bayard saw in you I do not know. Now, tell me in detail what you did and who you saw and spoke to since you left the apartment. Leave nothing out, no matter how trivial it seemed.’
Her serious tone made Glynn wonder if this, after all, had not been the true purpose of her errand. She began to recount her activities in a deliberate sing-song voice, beginning with her small confrontation with the legionnaires and continuing on through the events of the morning, ending her tale after Unys left the mural garden.
‘This Vespian noble spoke with you first and of his own choice?’
‘He said I was looking at his favourite … garden.’ Fortunately she had told the Prime that she had gone to wait for the appointed time on the garden level. ‘I think he was only being polite.’
‘No noble would trouble themselves to be polite to a servitor,’ the Prime said dismissively. ‘He must have been following you. The noble girl was probably some hired mask dancer. The legionnaires at the door might have been bribed to delay you.’
‘I think he really was Vespian,’ Glynn said, keeping her tone timid. ‘I told them that I was Fomhikan but bonded to the Draaka and I believe they assumed that I had been hired on Fomhika.’
‘Good. Now, this is important. Did either of them question you about cult practices?’
‘No. But the man told me that many people here think that the Holder will never agree to receive the Draaka delegation.’
‘He did, did he?’ The Prime looked pensive. ‘Did they ask you about the Draaka?’
Glynn nodded. ‘The girl asked if she was beautiful. Before I could answer, she said it was a pity that Alene soulweaver had left the palace and gone to the other side of the island because it would have been amusing to see how she would react to a meeting with the Draaka.’ Glynn was interested to see that the Prime did not react to the news that the soulweaver was absent from the palace. Either she did not care, or she already knew.
‘Clearly the girl was not a Vespian noble,’ the Prime was saying.
‘She wasn’t Vespian. The man said she was Iridomi,’ Glynn murmured. ‘She looked Iridomi.’
The Prime scowled. ‘Don’t be ludicrous. No Vespian would offer escort to an Iridomi. It would be like a silf wiving a flyt.’
‘I am only telling you what they said,’ Glynn protested.
‘What can have been the purpose of such a stupid lie? Did either of them speak their names? I will have Aluade find out the truth.’
‘The young man’s name was Kerd,’ Glynn said, ‘and he called the girl Unys.’
The Prime turned swiftly and gave her a slap that rocked her on her heels. ‘Are you such a dolt as not to know of whom you speak?’ Then she shook her head, obviously calming down. ‘Your memory! I forgot it had been damaged. Tell me again what was said by these two from the beginning. Leave nothing out.’
Disconcerted by the Prime’s reaction to the names, Glynn repeated faithfully all that had been said between the three of them, but only up until Unys’s departure. The Prime began to pace up and down distractedly, and when she was done, said, ‘From what I have heard of this Kerd of Vespi, he does not differentiate between nobles and others and so he might truly have started a conversation with a nevvish to no particular end. No wonder the girl was outraged, for the Iridomi set great store by rank and are rigid in how they deal with it.’ The Prime gave Glynn a probing look. ‘You said before that the girl spoke of a proper commitment?’
‘She said they would not be betrothed until he made a fitting commitment.’
The Prime began to pace again, muttering to herself. ‘Admittedly Kerd comes of a line of men who are fools at love, but surely even he can imagine how his father will react to the idea of a permanent bond, for what else can her words mean? And does Fulig know what is being considered, I wonder?’
Glynn could not imagine the chieftain of Vespi caring about the betrothal of two young nobles on Ramidan, unless marriage between the estranged septs was specifically forbidden. That would explain Kerd’s comments about political duties, but Unys’s attitude and behaviour did not fit a girl prepared to break laws to wed her beloved.
‘Why do you not answer me?’ the Prime demanded.
Glynn realised with horror that she had no idea what she had been asked. ‘I … I was thinking about the gardens. The … the flowers were lovely.’ She had said the first thing that came into her head, aware that she would sound a fool.
‘Get out of my sight, girl!’ snapped the Prime. ‘Return to the servitors’ quarters and make yourself useful until you are summoned.’
Obeying, Glynn ought to have felt elated to have got off so lightly, but she was still devastated by the news that she and the feinna were trapped within the very palace she had been so desperate to enter, while the soulweaver she had come to find was not only absent from the palace but very probably from the entire citadel! Why hadn’t she had the sense to leave the ship as soon as they docked and get another straight for Darkfall. If she was right about the soulweavers being able to return strangers, that was where she ought to be headed.
Glynn reined in her self-destructive reproaches. She had not had any choice about coming to Ramidan and, upon landing, she had taken what had seemed to be the best course of action. Coming to the palace might still prove wise if she could get to the archives, with Kerd’s help, and learn something useful about Lanalor’s portal. As long as she managed to escape the place with the feinna, preferably before the Draaka woke. But if she was to do that, she had better focus on practicalities. She must find out if there were any formalities to leaving the palace, else she might escape the Draaka only to find she had nowhere to go. Of course, she could ask Kerd to help her leave the palace. She had no doubt he would help her, though they had only just met. Then she could seek out Solen, tell him everything and get him to hide her until the Edict was lifted. Perhaps they could even take the feinna out into the wilderness to release it together, once the link allowed it.
Glynn’s heart began to pound as it occurred to her that the moment to act might be at hand. Having come back obediently from her errand the previous afternoon, no one would expect her to try to smuggle the feinna out and escape the very next time she left the apartment. She could drape it around her neck as Bayard had done with its dam, and wear her cloak to conceal it. If the door guards had not searched her before, they were unlikely to do so the next time she left the apartment. If she succeeded, she could take the little animal with her to the mural garden, and beg Ke
rd to help them leave the palace. Her heart leapt at the thought that she could be reunited with the windwalker by the afternoon.
Glynn felt a painful surge of inquiry from the feinna, who had sensed both her proximity and her thoughts. Her fraught contemplation of escaping Ramidan immediately dissolved into a powerful yearning to hold the youngling in her arms and pet it. She was aware that at least half the intensity of longing came from the feinna itself, but was powerless to resist it.
Comecomecome! it crooned in her mind, and Glynn had the odd sensation that the little animal was actually inside her head.
She crossed the foyer of the apartment struggling to maintain her bland expression, though the two door guards were in conversation with the senior draakira Gif and did not even look up as she passed them. Glynn’s feinna senses detected their excitement without knowing what it concerned, and she told herself it was nothing to do with her, which was all that mattered.
Closing the door to the foyer quietly behind her, Glynn made her way along the narrow halls leading to her sleeping chamber, the feinna’s siren call swelling in her mind. When she opened the door, the feinna launched itself at her legs, chittering and whimpering in a delirium of joy that was all emotion and no thought. Glynn bent to put down the lantern and she gathered the little creature into her arms. It was as if she had been suffering from their separation without realising it until now.
For a time there was nothing but the softness of its fur, the way its paws clung to her and its nose nuzzled at her neck. The feinna was purring loudly and Glynn realised that she was making a rumbling sound deep in her throat, too. Was I always capable of feeling so much? she wondered incredulously. For whether the She-feinna had changed her somehow in this way, or her own feelings were actually being stretched by encompassing what she felt for and with the feinna, it was clear to her that she had never felt so intensely or vividly before. Her love for Wind had been a shadow compared to what she felt for the feinna. And for Solen.
Her mind was closely entwined with the feinna’s, and her mental picture of Solen caused the little creature to croon and emanate its own longing. Then all at once Glynn saw Solen as clearly as if she were watching a movie.
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