—
But Keri found no inspiration in her apartment. She paced from room to room, but this didn’t help. She told all the girls to go away, and Nevia, too, when the wardrobe mistress tried cautiously to find out what had been happening. Nevia did probably need to know, but Keri didn’t feel equal to explaining and told her to ask Linnet.
When everyone else was gone at last, Keri stood at the widest window in the apartment, which was in the second and smaller sitting room, and stared out over the rooftops of the lower part of the House and, beyond that, the town. The little narrow-winged swifts sketched unreadable shapes through the air above the House. Keri watched the birds and tried to think. Eschalion, gaps in the boundary, Cort, the keys to all the locks in Nimmira, Lyem Aronn, her father, Wyvern sorcerers with long silvery hair and flat silvery eyes…Nothing fell into any useful pattern. She couldn’t think what she should do. She needed time to think.
Time.
Keri blinked, an idea half stirring in her mind. The boundary—redrawing it whole was impossible, except—
Then someone hit the door and flung it open and came in without waiting, and Keri turned, startled, losing the thought. She felt slow and heavy, as though she had been rushing along and now had suddenly been jerked to a halt. Her first thought was Tassel. But she knew at once, before she had quite turned, that Tassel was nowhere near. So then she thought it might be the Timekeeper; she even thought for just an instant that it might be Cort, escaped from Eschalion and back where he should be.
But it wasn’t, of course. It wasn’t any of the people she most wanted to see. It was Brann. The disappointment was so sharp that for a moment Keri was completely unable even to yell at him to get out.
She was sure no one, not even one of her half brothers, was supposed to be able to just walk in on her like that. But Callia, hovering behind him, had plainly been simply overawed enough to let him in. Dori was right there, too, but she only dithered, wringing her hands. She hadn’t tried to do anything to stop him, either.
Brann looked strange: no longer elegant and assured, but angry and distracted. He had changed his embroidered coat for a heavier one with lots of fancy buttons, but half the buttons were not done up and the stiff collar was not quite straight. His boots were meant for outdoor streets, not indoor hallways. They were plain, without a stitch of embroidery or a single bead or button, and their toes were scuffed. Keri would hardly have imagined Brann wearing boots like that, but after all, she didn’t really know her brother.
Though she knew he was terribly rude.
“What?” she demanded. “Well? You found another hole in the boundary? Or an entire company of Wyvern sorcerers has appeared? Or people are storming the House to find out what’s going on?”
She wished immediately she hadn’t thought of that last. It seemed all too possible. The worst part was, everyone from the town and the surrounding countryside had a perfect right to be upset and demand answers, only she just didn’t have anything to tell anybody yet.
“If you weren’t so stupid!” Brann snapped at her. “If you would just understand what you have to do! A little girl like you, and you’re the Lady of Nimmira? It should have come to me. It should have come to me! Lyem held the boundary; it never failed while he was Doorkeeper; he should have kept his post, never let some farmer’s son pick up those keys. If you’d had the sense of a turnip, you’d have gotten Lyem to keep his post! None of this needed to happen!”
Keri stared at him, too taken aback to even try to answer.
“This is your fault,” declared Brann. “It’s all your fault, and why should the rest of us pay for it?” He strode forward, grabbed Keri’s arm, and hauled her toward the door.
Keri tried to jerk herself free, but her brother’s grip was too tight. She tried to plant her feet to stop him pulling her along, but he was much stronger than she was and she couldn’t begin to resist. She was too astonished to shout for help, but even so, she noticed how the girls scattered out of Brann’s way, helpless and ineffectual. Dori was making little squeaking sounds like a mouse. Callia backed away, then turned and fled. Keri wondered if the girl had enough sense to go find—who? The Timekeeper, maybe. She would have been relieved to see that tall, ascetic figure stalking toward them. But he was nowhere to be seen.
Brann dragged her down the hallway, and no one did the least thing to stop him.
Keri tried again to pull away, but her brother was so much stronger that she didn’t think he even noticed. “Where—” she tried to ask, breathless. “What—”
Her brother hardly looked at her, but only said again, “It should have come to me!”
And if he got rid of her, he thought he would succeed her. Keri understood that suddenly and all at once. He thought he could get rid of her. He knew another way into and out of Nimmira. His good friend Lyem had probably shown him another hidden doorway inside a closet or broom cupboard or something.
He was going to take her out of Nimmira. He was, she thought coldly, going to hand her right over to Aranaon Mirtaelior. Because, possibly, he had reason to believe the Wyvern King would ensure the succession did indeed come to him and did not go to anyone else.
It was intolerable. Keri was not going to tolerate it.
Brann had dragged her right past a dozen people, staff who hurried out of his way and turned to stare, but didn’t move to interfere. Probably they weren’t actually on his side. Probably they had no idea what he was trying to do, or that he was forcing Keri to come with him. She wasn’t exactly screaming for help. She hadn’t even tried to scream for help. First she had been too shocked, and now she was too angry.
But as Brann dragged her out of the House and into the town square, Keri planted her feet and rooted herself into the cobbles, and the stones and earth beneath.
Brann jerked to a stop as suddenly as though he had found himself trying to drag along a great oak, or the solid foundation stone of the House, or a wrought-iron gatepost. Keri felt like any of those things, like all of those things. She was not even surprised at what she had done; it felt too normal for surprise. It felt to her very much as though she had always known how to turn herself into a tree and a foundation stone and an iron gatepost.
Brann dragged at her again, sharp and impatient, evidently unable to believe that he couldn’t move her, that he no longer had the strength to force her to take even one step. He shook at her, hissing between his teeth in furious disbelief. His grip didn’t hurt her; his shaking didn’t move her. It was as though he had tried to grab and shake the House itself.
“Let go,” Keri said. Not loudly. She didn’t have to shout. She was unmoved by anything he tried to do. It was surprisingly easy to sound calm. It was as though her brother’s incredulous fury naturally drew an answering steadiness from Keri herself, even though she was still angry. She understood suddenly a little of how her mother had managed to meet her neighbors’ scorn with such composure, and the understanding was like a knife, but one that was in her hand rather than one that cut. Keri was solid and rooted as a tree, and nothing her brother did could shift her one inch. She lifted her chin, met his eyes, and said again, making her voice deliberately calm, “Let go, Brann. Or I will root you to these stones and leave you standing right here in this courtyard.” Maybe she should. She wasn’t quite sure how to do it, but she was tempted to try.
“You can’t do this!” her brother hissed at her. “Everything’s arranged, everything’s set, we have an understanding.”
“We do, do we? Who is we? You and Magister Eroniel, is it? About who ought to be Lord of Nimmira, and how convenient it would be for Nimmira to become part of Eschalion? That kind of understanding? What do you suppose Magister Eroniel—or is it the Wyvern King himself?—will say when you have to face him and admit you couldn’t touch me after all?”
But at this, Brann seemed at last to realize what he had been saying. He let her go and took a step backward, staring at her as though seeing her for the first time.
“I thin
k you had better tell me everything. Exactly what was this agreement you made, and with whom?”
But her oldest half brother only took another step backward, turned, and walked rapidly away.
Keri tried to root him to the stones, but she was not actually sure how to do this; she did not completely understand how she had done it to herself, and she could not at once make it work. But she might have figured it out, except that Domeric suddenly strode up, Linnet and Callia running after him, and she lost the thread of what she was trying to do.
It didn’t matter anyway. She knew just about exactly where Brann was, though he had already turned a corner and was out of sight. She was almost sure she could reach out and root him to the ground no matter where he was, once she had just a minute to think about it. Then Domeric could go get him and bring him back, and he could tell them all about what kind of deal he had made, and with whom, and for what.
Keri turned to Domeric. He did look positively thunderous. She was glad to see him, but she found her hands were shaking, which was infuriating. She tucked them into her skirt to hide this and tried to look confident and like she knew what she was doing, instead of shaken and scared and like she had no idea in the world what any of them ought to do.
She took a deep breath, and let it out, and began to say something, she hardly knew what, because what did you say when your oldest brother tried to kidnap you and sell you to your enemy? Even a half brother whom you didn’t like and didn’t really know? But she was spared the need to say anything about it after all, because at just that moment something struck her a reverberating blow all over and she reeled and fell.
It was not a real blow. She was not actually hurt. But she was stunned, for a moment incapable of thought or speech. It was like being inside a great bronze bell when it was picked up and struck; it was like the earth beneath her disappeared and immediately came back at a slant from what it had been; it was like she was inside a glass suncatcher that had shattered around her, spilling broken shards of light sharp enough to cut. It was like all those things, and like none of them. She discovered she was on her hands and knees on the cobblestones, her hair falling into her eyes and the echoes of some soundless, roaring noise all around her.
It was Linnet who brushed her hair back from her face and took her hands and steadied her when she swayed. “Lady?” she said. “Keri? What is it? Was this something—did Brann do something?”
“Of course he did,” Domeric growled. He reached past Linnet, took Keri’s arm, and lifted her effortlessly to her feet. “What did that bastard do?”
“It wasn’t him,” Keri whispered. But he had done something, or he had— “He’s gone,” she said, realizing it for the first time. “He’s gone. He’s no longer in Nimmira. He did have some other door waiting somewhere. Or, no, Magister Eroniel reached through a door and took him. It was Magister Eroniel, he did it, I know that. He tried to break Nimmira open like a—like a man smashing a nut with a hammer.” She caught Domeric’s wrist, balancing with some difficulty, her eyes widening with dismay as she realized exactly what the Wyvern sorcerer had tried to do. She breathed, “He tried to use Cort to break us open. To fling wide every door in the whole of Nimmira.”
Domeric braced her, frowning. “That silver-tongued bastard! Him, was it, and not Aranaon Mirtaelior himself? Huh.”
Keri found herself nodding, though she didn’t know how she could be sure it had been Magister Eroniel and not the Wyvern King. But she was certain.
“But he couldn’t do it,” said Linnet, patting Keri’s hands. “You stopped him. Or, the Doorkeeper stopped him?”
Keri nodded again and then made herself stop. She swallowed. That was exactly right. Magister Eroniel had tried to break open Nimmira, and Cort had stopped him. That was what she had felt. But she had no idea what that adamant resistance might have cost Cort. She was desperately afraid it might have cost him everything.
Except he was still alive. She knew that. Because that part of the magic of Nimmira was still rooted in Cort, and because Magister Eroniel was not here.
“We have to get him back,” she whispered. “We have to do that first. After that we can figure out what to do next.” She didn’t want to think about what the Wyvern sorcerer might have done to Cort, or might do to him now. She wouldn’t consider the possibility that maybe she and Tassel would have to figure out what to do without him.
No. They would get him back. After all, Cort was still alive, she was sure of that. Even if he was somewhere in Eschalion and they didn’t know where.
Then she realized, of course, that Brann had gone, too, almost certainly to Eschalion, but maybe even to the exact same place Cort was trapped. That might offer a direction. It was the first real hope she had thought of in all this terrible day.
Although he might tell Magister Eroniel that in as little as a day, Cort would lose the magic that made him Doorkeeper. She didn’t know whether that might be something to hope for or not. Would the sorcerer act at once before the magic could free itself from Cort? Or would he delay, expecting the magic to be easier for him to grasp once Cort no longer held it?
She didn’t know. Couldn’t know. But maybe she should hope for the latter. Maybe she should be glad Brann had fled to Eschalion. Maybe they would have a little more time to get Cort back now.
Or maybe not. She rubbed her eyes and tried to think. Tried to find within herself a knowledge of where and how Brann had stepped through some other unknown gap into Eschalion. A gap that had not only let him pass through the thinned boundary, but also somehow folded distance across all the miles between Glassforge and Eschalion. She couldn’t find it, though she knew it had to be somewhere nearby.
But she would find it. She would find it. And then she would use that gap or door or bridge to go after Brann and find Cort and get him back.
She took a deep breath, and stood up straight, and rubbed her face. “I think…I think we need to speak with Lord Osman. As soon as possible. Right now.”
“Yes,” growled Domeric, nodding heavily.
Keri could see he was glad she wanted to do what he thought she ought to do. That was fine, it would make things easier, but then a different thought struck her, and she said quickly, “Except, wait—no— Listen, Domeric, I do want to talk to Lord Osman, but give me an hour first, all right? Then I’ll see Osman in, uh—”
“The Little Salon?” Linnet suggested diffidently. “That would be an appropriate place, Lady—too formal for any hint of impropriety.”
“The Little Salon,” Keri agreed. “In an hour. Go find Tassel, please, Linnet. Tell her to talk to Lord Osman. Tell her I need her to soften his heart and get him on our side. Tell Tassel I know if anybody can do it, she can! She should try to get him to tell her whether he has magic or not, and what kind, and whether it might be something we could use to protect our people who go to Eschalion to find Cort. But she has to be careful what she tells him, and she’s not to promise anything!” She gave Linnet a look, too, meaning, Do you have all that? Do you understand?
The other girl nodded and said with reassuring earnestness, “Yes, Lady, I understand!”
“Good,” Keri said, and then looked at Domeric, wondering if she could trust him. He was scowling, but she was fairly certain it was because he thought she should talk to Lord Osman right away, or maybe because she hadn’t explained what she wanted to do first. She doubted his glower meant he would follow Brann’s example and actually try to betray her and Nimmira. Domeric just seemed too straightforward and direct to be planning treachery, and she was positive he disliked Magister Eroniel.
She rubbed her face again, hoping she was right. But she didn’t explain to Domeric or Linnet or anybody what she had in mind, in case she was wrong.
Then she went to find her third brother. She was almost sure Lucas was the one she needed now.
Keri found Lucas in a narrow room that angled back under a slanted ceiling. It was clearly a player’s library, its walls lined with scripts bound into their oversiz
ed books, puppets hanging by their strings, dragons with jointed necks and silken wings, theatrical costumes in bright colors, all the accoutrements a troupe of players could want. That seemed immediately like a good sign, a sign that she must have been right when she guessed he might know some of the special secrets players shared with one another and not with anybody else. He was a player himself after all. She thought so anyway. He played the wild young man, the mischief-maker, the wastrel. She wasn’t sure any of those roles were real. At least, not as real as he made them seem.
Lucas was alone. He was perched on the edge of a tall, narrow chair, with a wide leather-bound book open on the low table before him and a sheaf of loose papers stacked up to one side, together with a bottle of ink and two long quill pens. Before him lay a single sheet of paper half covered with thin, elegant script. He looked up with a quick, faintly defensive smile as Keri rapped on the door and came in, and his hand jerked, leaving a long streak of ink across half the page.
“Sorry,” Keri apologized. It was silly to even think about anything so trivial, but she knew just how she would feel if someone startled her and she accidentally piped frosting all across a cake she was trying to decorate with little flowers and beads.
But her brother’s smile warmed and became more real when he saw who it was. “Sister!” he exclaimed. “Don’t concern yourself, I beg you. I shall just write it over when it’s finished, so it doesn’t matter a bit. What brings you here? Looking for a play, perhaps? Surely you weren’t looking for me?”
“For you, naturally,” she told him, though of course, his wide-eyed act notwithstanding, he already knew that. She looked around, curious despite her urgency. The room was high up under the eaves of the House, with windows on three sides. At the moment, all the shutters were open wide. The clean air of the morning wandered in through the windows, ruffling the clothing of the puppets and the silk wings of the dragons and the loose pages on the table. Charcoal-colored swifts flicked past, their flight sharply unpredictable as they pursued invisible insects. It was a peaceful space, separate from the rest of the House and open to the free air. Keri could feel the muscles unknotting in her neck and back, and the headache that had been pounding in her temples began to lift. She sighed and rubbed her face, thinking about how to approach Lucas. She already knew her youngest half brother was cleverer and more subtle than their older brothers. She hoped he had more of a sense of responsibility than he pretended. She thought he did, but it was hard to be sure.
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