The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Strong allies are important to the weak,” the sorcerer observed. “The strong, of course, have no need of allies.”

  Keri stared at him. She had no idea what to say to that.

  The Timekeeper said, from his chair, without moving, in his husky voice, “Yet it can be so difficult to know whether one is strong or weak. That can change so quickly, between one moment and the next.”

  Everyone stared at him. He had been so still for so long that Keri had…not exactly forgotten he was there, but forgotten that he might speak. But he met Eroniel Kaskarian’s narrowed gaze. The Timekeeper was not smiling. But his thin mouth had crooked upward in a humorless expression that, in another man, might have been a smile. His colorless eyes were opaque as water with light slanting across it, impossible to read. He said softly, “You young people may not have fully realized the unpredictability of life yet. But I believe Aranaon Mirtaelior has found that to be true. You might ask him, when you see him again. You might profit from his answer.”

  Keri held her breath. But she could see the Wyvern sorcerer swallow his first disdainful response. He said instead, after a moment, “Perhaps I will. Or perhaps you might, Lord Timekeeper.”

  “I am only the Timekeeper. Nothing more.”

  “You are a sorcerer.”

  “Indeed not. Though that is perhaps a natural mistake for one of your kind. Or one of your house.”

  There was a slight pause. Then Eroniel Kaskarian said, “You have known others of my kind? Or others of my house?”

  “Oh, yes,” said the Timekeeper. “Long ago.” He rose, unfolding himself by slow degrees from his chair. He opened one hand, revealing his pocket watch cradled in his long fingers. Its crystal face was as opaque, at the moment, as his eyes. Keri thought she could hear it ticking, though. Slicing seconds off the day, one after another, slivers of time vanishing into the past, unreachable as words already spoken or decisions already made. Gazing at Keri, he said, “You have eight minutes and fourteen seconds before you must meet your castellan regarding the order of your day tomorrow, Lady.” He turned his head slowly to take in their guests. “The early days of any succession are filled with urgent tasks, unfortunately. I am sure Lady Kerianna regrets how few moments she is able to spare either of you at this time.”

  “Yes, yes,” Keri agreed immediately. “Certainly. But for you, of course, I must make time. Lord Osman, I hope you will join my household for a late supper. Magister Eroniel, possibly we might discuss the role of allies and alliances over breakfast?” There. That would give each of them a chance to work on winning her; surely that was a good thing. She would make the Timekeeper give her time to talk to Tassel before supper.

  She added to the two foreigners, “I hope you will enjoy the hospitality of Nimmira for a few days before you allow your various duties to compel you to return to your own countries. I look forward to becoming better acquainted with both of you. Perhaps, um, perhaps especially well acquainted with one of you.” Was that right? Had that meant what she’d intended it to mean? She glanced sidelong at Tassel, who gave her a little Yes, perfect, keep going nod.

  “In the meantime,” she finished, a little desperately, “Lucas will find you anything you need. Lucas?”

  “Of course, dear sister!” Lucas exclaimed, smiling impartially upon the whole room and yet somehow avoiding looking directly at Magister Eroniel. “You may depend upon me!”

  “I’ll help, too,” Tassel said. But then she paused, looking faintly bewildered. On her, uncertainty was charming. She said slowly, “Except, you know, I think…I think possibly I need to…” She made a vague gesture with her hands, then turned and picked up a book from the nearest table.

  There hadn’t been a book there a minute ago. Keri was certain of that. Surely not a big, heavy ledger like that one, bound not in black or white or red, but in a rich brown leather embossed with gold. It could not have been more plain that the book had never belonged to this room.

  Tassel gazed down at it, her eyebrows drawing together in curiosity. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I need to…look something up.”

  “Ah, yes, you are the…Bookkeeper,” murmured Eroniel Kaskarian, lifting one silvery eyebrow. “Fascinating.”

  Osman Tor was now gazing at Tassel with a different kind of interest, his black eyes narrowed.

  “Walk with me,” Keri said quickly, laying her hand on Tassel’s arm and drawing the other girl toward the door. “Lucas, if you would see to, um, our guests—”

  “If our esteemed Timekeeper will accommodate any needs Magister Eroniel may have,” Lucas said, just a little too quickly. “I will of course be honored to entertain Lord Osman.”

  Keri, startled, paused.

  The Timekeeper said impassively, “I will join you, Lady, in two hours and four minutes.”

  “Yes,” Keri said, rather desperately. “Yes, of course.” She fled, but with careful, small steps, hoping it looked like a sweeping exit and not like actual flight.

  Once they were out and a distance down the hall, she said to Tassel under her breath, “Well?”

  “Keri, that was perfect! Supper with Lord Osman, good. I shouldn’t be there; it will be better if it’s just the two of you.”

  “Yes, I could see that,” Keri said with a certain irony.

  “Oh, men!” Tassel tossed her curls and grinned, a real grin. “He knows he’s handsome. And of course he’s a prince. He knows that, too. But, Keri, so charming!” She patted Keri’s arm. “It’s easy enough, just ask him a lot of questions about himself and Tor Carron. See if you can get him talking. I think he was lying about being unaware of Nimmira—”

  “Tassel!”

  “Well, I think so. I don’t understand it, either, but he’ll like talking about himself! So maybe you can find out, especially if you make him think you know he knew. Of course we can’t trust a word he says, but sometimes you can find out a lot even if a man is telling you pretty lies—I’m sure you know that, Keri.”

  Keri wasn’t certain she did. It all seemed so complicated.

  “Anyway, don’t tell him about yourself. Just a few words if he asks you something, and then you can ask another question. Are you listening to me, Keri?”

  “What is that book?”

  Tassel glanced down. “I’m not quite…I think I’ve been looking for this. I think you had to be invested before I could find it.” She held it in both hands, letting it fall open. “Numbers,” she said, gazing at the spidery black writing that filled it. “Accounts of some sort. Letters…I don’t quite know. This could be—well, I’ll look through it.”

  “Before supper, I hope!”

  “Yes, I’ll try.” Tassel absently pulled the pen out of her hair and tapped it on the book. She turned a crisp page. Then another. “Mist and fog, it’s all numbers! And a great many ridiculous abbreviations…It might as well be written in cipher. Who writes like this?”

  “You’re the Bookkeeper. I’m sure you can figure it out.”

  Tassel rolled her eyes. “It’ll take special magic to read this. Maybe I can ask your father’s Bookkeeper. She seemed…well, you know. Timid, and possibly just a bit silly. But she might know these abbreviations. I’m not sure where she’d have gone. Did you even know her name?”

  Keri had to admit she didn’t. “Tamman will know. Or Mem.”

  “Well, I’ll try to figure this out before supper, but I don’t know. Possibly before breakfast.”

  “I’ll ask for a late breakfast. You’re the one who should have breakfast with Eroniel Kaskarian, you know. He was fascinated by your magic. He wasn’t a bit fascinated by me. All that the strong don’t need allies. Breakfast is going to be a treat.” Keri contemplated this prospect. She wasn’t frightened to think of it. Not exactly frightened. But she felt very tired suddenly. Perhaps she was too tired to be frightened.

  Maybe she could find the kitchen and make individual little pudding cakes for breakfast. With almonds and dried peaches. Maybe that would make her feel better. Unless Brann fou
nd out. He would love an opportunity to sneer at her for picking up a spoon….

  Reading Keri’s sudden silence accurately, Tassel glanced up. “No, you can handle him, Keri. Tell him about your magic. Figure out something you can show him. Something small. Don’t answer any questions at all about it. I mean, just enough to make him curious. And wary. Oh, yes, every Lord or Lady of Nimmira can summon not just mist but poison fog. You know.”

  “Poison fog!” Keri muttered.

  “Does that sound stupid? Ask Cort about it. Cort can help you come up with the right kind of thing. I know these days he’s just impossible in a lot of ways, but he’ll be good at that.”

  “I expect so. Yes.” Keri sighed.

  “Poor Keri!” Tassel said sympathetically, but she was plainly distracted, sneaking peeks down at the book in her hands.

  “You’ll figure that out.”

  “It’s probably important,” Tassel said, her tone apologetic. She patted Keri’s shoulder and whisked away down a different hallway, heading for the far reaches of the House, which Keri hadn’t yet had a chance to explore. Probably the Bookkeeper’s apartment was down that way. Keri watched her friend until she was out of sight, sighed again, turned, and realized she had no idea where she was.

  Then she did. The moment she realized she was lost, an awareness of the House unfurled itself around her, as though she’d opened a map in her mind. Only it wasn’t actually like a map. It was…bigger, and more complete, and…she knew where Tassel was. Not far away, walking east, heading for a stairway that would take her up to the third floor.

  Lucas was still in the Grand Salon. No doubt with Lord Osman. That was good. And the Timekeeper was…he had gone…there, yes, he was standing in a great shadowed room draped in gray and lavender and pearl white, completely unfurnished but for the heavy draperies and a massive grandfather clock with five hands and a crystal pendulum. She thought Magister Eroniel was with him, but she couldn’t quite tell for certain. But the crystal pendulum was sharp as a knife, cutting time into neat little slices. The clock’s face was blank. The hands moved across a stark white face with no marks for minutes or hours or days, no delicate little inlaid signs for the years. Nothing. But the sharp pendulum swung anyway, counting down…something. The Timekeeper and perhaps the Wyvern sorcerer watched the pendulum slice back and forth.

  Keri drew a breath, feeling as though it were the first in some time. She wished she knew what the sorcerer might think about the clock. She hoped the Timekeeper was right to let him see it. Lord Osman didn’t worry her nearly so much, but she would have liked to know why Lucas, at first so interested in the Wyvern sorcerer, had so assiduously avoided being alone with him, going to some trouble to make sure the sorcerer was left to the Timekeeper.

  She blinked and shook her head, touched her hair to make sure all the braids were still in place, looked around to make sure she was still here, right here, in this half-familiar hallway, with the Grand Salon behind her, that way. Yes. She knew where she was. She knew where her own apartment lay: in the other direction entirely, up a flight of stairs and west around a curving hallway.

  It wouldn’t be home. But it was a place to go.

  She wondered where Cort was now and immediately knew that he was with the Bear soldiers, in their expansive suite in the inn. Good. He would tell her what he thought of them, and she would have a better idea how to…flirt, with Osman the Younger. She wasn’t so sure she would be able to flirt with Eroniel Kaskarian. That was going to be impossible, whatever Tassel thought. Though that might not matter; all she really needed to do was make him think she might be willing to give Nimmira to Eschalion. Maybe she could make him think she might do so merely out of fear or uncertainty or simple stupidity.

  Keri’s own apartment was just along here. Yes. Her apartment, with her new mismatched furniture and its infinite supply of other women’s dresses. And its staff. Keri paused, took a deep breath, and pushed open the door. “Linnet!” she said to the nearest girl. “What should I wear to a late supper with Lord Osman? The kind of thing that will make me look as young as possible.”

  With unerring taste, Linnet brought out a simple dress the color of fallen oak leaves, ornamented only with rows of round buttons and a wide belt with copper disks set into the leather. She laid the dress out on Keri’s bed, along with coppery ribbons and a selection of pins and combs.

  “For a young woman,” she murmured. “For a woman who wishes, as you say, to seem young and innocent.”

  “This is perfect. It’s just right,” Keri told her. She felt nervous. She had never been the girl who made the puppets dance—she’d only ever been in the audience for puppet shows. She didn’t know how to do this. She didn’t know if she could do this. She suspected Linnet would be good at it, if they could change places. And Linnet was so pretty. But shy. Unless that was all pretense. She seemed to know just how to pretend, after all. She certainly hadn’t blinked at Keri’s request.

  “I need Domeric,” Keri told one of the other girls. Callia. She knew the girl’s name when she thought about it. This was Callia. Yes.

  Callia left off fussing about with the clutter of things on Keri’s dressing table and said breathlessly, “Yes, Lady, Domeric?”

  Keri nodded. “Can you find him, Callia, and tell him I’m asking for him? I think he’s at the White Boar. Thank you.” She even did want to talk to Domeric, though in another way she wanted to avoid him. But she only said to the other girl, Dori, who had just come in, “Would you find Nevia and ask her to please choose something gray or silver or slate-colored for me to wear to breakfast tomorrow?”

  “Yes, Lady,” Dori said doubtfully. “Gray isn’t really your color, you know, Lady.”

  “To match Magister Eroniel,” Keri told her. “Get Nevia to find me something nice, with pearls or lapis or whatever. Thank you.”

  Then, having made sure no one else would interrupt them for a few minutes at least, she told Linnet, “It should be—I think that one should be something that will make me look older and, you know, more…” She gestured.

  Linnet looked at her thoughtfully. “More confident? More like a proper Lady?”

  “More expensive,” said Keri. Encouraged by the other girl’s apparent willingness, she added, “By now, Domeric ought to know a bit about those Bear soldiers, about Osman Tor the Younger. But will he help me? Or would he like to see me embarrass myself? I think Brann would like that, but Domeric, I can’t tell. What do you think of my brothers, Linnet?”

  There was a little pause. Then Linnet straightened up, looked Keri in the eye, and said, “Domeric is a great deal like your father. Only more patient, and not as…thoughtless. He wouldn’t want the Lady of Nimmira to look foolish in front of a foreigner. But he doesn’t always think a girl knows what she wants unless a man tells her. He doesn’t like to hear a girl tell him no. Though he won’t actually…He’s good to his girls. Generous, and kind, and faithful to any girl while he’s with her. He hates how ready folk are to see him as a brute. You can imagine.”

  Keri was still with surprise. She had hoped for sense, but she hadn’t expected such a direct answer as this. She said, “You pretend to be shy?”

  “That’s what Mem likes in a girl. But I don’t think it’s what you like, Lady.”

  Keri turned toward the mirror and adjusted a copper-and-amber pin in her hair to give herself time to think. The pin was in the shape of a delicate bird. A swift, or a swallow. Something quick and light in the air.

  She said, meeting the other girl’s eyes in the mirror, “You didn’t like my father, did you?”

  “No one liked your father,” Linnet said plainly. “None of us, I mean. Dori wanted to have his child, because—well, because. But she didn’t like him.” She began to gather up discarded ribbons and put extra bracelets and baubles away in various cabinets and tables.

  Keri nodded slowly, still watching Linnet in the mirror. “Brann?”

  Linnet hesitated. But then she gave a resolute little nod and
said, “He is thoughtless. Or rather, he thinks only of himself. He always expected he would be Lord after your father. I would have left the House. So would Callia. Even Dori would have left, ambitious as she is.”

  Keri nodded again. “You’re very…I didn’t think you would answer me.”

  “We’re not supposed to speak to you about anything important,” Linnet said seriously. “Mem says it’s impudent, and besides, it might unsettle you, as you plainly don’t want to hear anything about Lord Dorric. Mem is dangerous to offend if you’re staff. She holds a grudge forever, and if she doesn’t like a girl, she’ll fire her for anything. Tamman does what Mem says. They don’t like that you’re the Lady. But,” she added, the corners of her mouth crooking up, “you are the Lady, and that’s not going to change, whatever Mem might prefer.”

  Or whatever anybody else might wish. That, at least, was probably true enough. Keri nodded. She thought she might like Linnet. “Telling me the truth is a good start.”

  “Yes,” said the other girl. “That’s what I supposed.”

  Keri considered asking Linnet about Lord Dorric. About whether he had ever—well, no, there was no polite way to ask that kind of question. She decided she really did not want to know.

  Sighing, she glanced around, wondering where Tassel was, already half accustomed to the way she could look with her inner eye, expecting to find her friend in her own apartment, scowling down at the book open before her, turning the bone pen over and over in her graceful fingers.

  Instead, Tassel was…Keri turned sharply toward the door just as Mem came in, frowning severely. Mem looked at the dress laid out on the bed and said sharply, “That gown is not suitable to your station, Lady, and certainly not for a supper engagement with a foreign guest of rank! And your hair, that is quite the wrong style, and I hope you will permit me to mention, Lady, that birds are not at all an appropriate symbol. You should wear dragonflies tonight, or owls. Or oak leaves in copper and bronze, which would suit your coloring well. Linnet, what were you thinking? You know swallows are for young girls! And your Bookkeeper is here, Lady, insisting that she must see you immediately.” There was the faintest edge of scorn to the title. Mem finished with chilly satisfaction, “I have informed her that whatever post she may hold, she may not barge in upon you, Lady.”