The Keeper of the Mist

by Rachel Neumeier

  Keri nodded. “I hope your mother is in Yllien.” She wondered for the first time what it would feel like if your mother chose to leave you. If your mother stepped out of your life and told you she didn’t mean to return, and you just got to visit her now and then, and only in secret. That was…It wasn’t as terrible as your mother actually dying, no. But it was more complicated. She thought she saw something of this in Lucas’s face, in a hardness underlying his usual good humor, which he didn’t often allow anyone to glimpse. She found she really didn’t know what to say. In the end, she said only, “I think we need to speak to Lord Osman again, now that he’s had time to consider. Or I’ll talk to him. You can gather the things you’ll need, and I’ll talk to Lord Osman and the Timekeeper….”

  “Indeed, that’s only fair. He doesn’t like me, I don’t like him, we get along perfectly as long as we’re at opposite ends of the House—”

  “Lucas,” Keri said, in her mother’s most patient tone. But she was glad to hear that mocking note in his voice. It made him seem like himself again. It made everything seem a little more ordinary, a little less frightening.

  Lucas grinned at her. “Never do any unpleasant task yourself when you can get someone else to do it—that’s my way. I told you I was a terrible coward. Listen, Keri, the Timekeeper will no doubt tell you something cryptic and spooky, after which you’ll do exactly what you meant to do all along. I, in the meantime, will indeed have a pleasant little chat with Osman, and see whether we can’t put together one or two items that might make a brave, daring rescue into Eschalion a little less madly imprudent.”

  Keri had to admit that madly imprudent did seem a good way to describe any trip to Eschalion—to the very foot of the Wyvern King’s citadel, no less, and probably inside it. She said, looking warily at Lucas’s face, “Now, Domeric. He’d be perfect for a brave, daring, madly imprudent raid into the citadel—don’t you think?”

  Lucas gave her a bright, mocking, conspiratorial glance. “Ah, but it’s unwise to ask for our intimidating brother’s help with any out-of-the-way endeavor, sister, because, as you have no doubt noticed, he always believes he should be in charge. And, I regret to say, he doesn’t have the twisty sort of brain suited to tricky little raids. Forceful straightforward assault, that’s our brother’s style. Besides, he doesn’t approve of me.”

  Forceful and straightforward. That was exactly right. Keri had to admit that was precisely the sort of attitude that might have led Domeric to think of buying Tor Carron’s help at any necessary price: it was something to do that could just be done. Straightforward, yes. She was a little less angry at Domeric when she thought of it that way. Not, after all, an attempt to undermine her. Rather, an attempt to buy Osman the Younger. And faith that the foreign lord could be trusted if he was bought with the right coin. That was the idea and the attitude of a straightforward man.

  Not that she intended to let Domeric sell either her or Nimmira. But it gave her an idea of how she might convince him to support her after all, and support her plan to get Cort back without recourse to Lord Osman. She said abruptly, “I’ll talk to Domeric. He’ll help, all right.”

  This earned her an alarmed glance. “Dear sister—”

  “He’s straightforward, as you say. Leave Domeric to me.” Or to Linnet, actually, but Keri didn’t say that.

  Lucas shrugged, as much as to say, If you care to waste your time.

  They were almost back to the House now. The narrow alleys of the players’ quarter were well behind them, and they walked together through wide cobbled streets where well-off merchants lived. The buildings were mostly neat little shops with homes above or in the rear, with tables set outside to display their goods for sale: ceramic baking dishes and copper pots, pyramids of ripe apricots and early plums, glassware of all kinds.

  The streets all along this part of Glassforge were lined with old elms and young apples. The latest apples were still in bloom, pink-and-white petals drifting down with every breeze. Toward the end of summer, those trees would bear fist-sized apples, green striped with red, crisp and tart. Anyone was free to pick the fruit from those trees, though mostly it was the younger children of poorer townsfolk who collected those apples. Keri had picked her share when she was younger. The scent of the blossoms brought back memories of climbing trees and dropping apples down to her mother, of helping her mother make applesauce for cakes and slice apples for pies. For a moment, Keri could hardly believe that any years stood between those memories and the present moment.

  But it was Lucas beside her, not her mother. And Keri had tasks before her far more complicated and less pleasant than baking.

  She looked sidelong at Lucas, wondering what might be masked by the amused irony of his expression. And then they were back at the House, crossing the town square, and there was no more time for thinking about the past. She and Lucas both, as if by common consent, pretended not to notice the curious glances—sometimes outright stares—of the folk in the square. Keri, at least, would have really liked to know what tales had made their way into the town, but she was not quite curious enough to stop anyone and ask. If people didn’t yet know exactly how bad things were, she didn’t want to tell them. And she didn’t want to lie, either. So she walked straight through the square toward the House without once meeting anybody’s eyes, and whatever Lucas was thinking behind that mask of cheerful insouciance, he did the same.

  No one was in the great hall when they came in, which simplified at least the next little bit. Turning to Lucas, Keri told him, “I’m going to find Tassel, and then I’m going to talk to Domeric, and after that I’ll find the Timekeeper. And I want you, coward or not, to meet me at the player’s gap in one hour.”

  “Sister! Too precipitous by half!” he protested. “An hour? We should lay plans, put things in order, prepare—”

  “This is you telling me this?”

  He gave her an injured look. “I’m all about careful planning! It takes a lot of preparation to make sure everyone thinks you’re a wastrel fool, you know, sister.”

  “An hour.”

  “This is so unfair,” Lucas complained. “Save me from high-handed girls!” But he gave Keri a jaunty little salute over his shoulder as he strode away, so she was almost sure he would in fact do just as she had asked.

  The hallways were oddly quiet, even deserted, but Keri hardly noticed except to be relieved at the lack of people hurrying up with things needing her attention. She knew Cort had only been missing a few hours, but she felt she couldn’t bear another moment’s delay. Urgency filled her and rushed with her through the halls; her steps sounded like racing heartbeats, like time ticking away, seconds that she could never get back. She didn’t understand why. It felt as if it were more than just the Timekeeper’s deadline of a day, perhaps two—as if it were something she just knew, like knowing where the boundaries of Nimmira should lie, like knowing the age of each oak in the woodlands. She just knew that time was everything to Cort now. She was terribly afraid that Aranaon Mirtaelior might already be…doing things to him.

  She tried not to think about it. She had known she depended on Cort, but she had not known how much until he was snatched away. Now she couldn’t make herself think about anything else. Cort had trusted her to be Lady and protect Nimmira—at least, he had trusted her to do her very best—and she had failed him, and now she was going to fail Nimmira, because how could she protect the land without him?

  It seemed to take forever to hurry through the hallways and corridors and up the stairs to her apartment. She knew Tassel was already there, waiting, which was something and she was grateful for it, but it worried her, too, a little bit, because why would Tassel be waiting for Keri in the Lady’s apartment unless something else had gone wrong?

  One of the girls, Dori, was fidgeting anxiously in the hall when Keri finally reached her own door, but she didn’t speak to Keri, just dropped a nervous curtsy, whispered something inaudible, and rushed away on some errand. Keri spared her one curiou
s glance and then pushed the door open and stepped in with a feeling of relief.

  Tassel was indeed present. So was Linnet, which Keri was not nearly so pleased about. “Not now, Linnet,” she snapped when the other girl jumped up and started forward. She added, “Tassel, come with me,” and caught her startled friend’s hand, pulling her through the outer sitting room toward the greater privacy of the bedchamber.

  “Linnet’s been telling me—” Tassel began.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Keri told her sharply. “Lord Osman’s put this idea in Domeric’s head, and who knows, he might have persuaded Linnet it’s a good idea, but never mind that, listen! Lucas knows another way to Eschalion, a way that will let anybody step right across all the distance between us and the Wyvern King’s citadel, do you see? Lucas has friends there, or his mother does, he’s been visiting her all along. But the important thing is, Cort’s through there, too, I’m almost sure he must be, and Lucas’s friends can help us find him and get him back. I want to try again to get Lord Osman to help us if we can. I want at least one of his men, one who knows about breaking into prisons and breaking out again; he must have men who have done things like that, I’m sure of it—”

  “Keri!” Tassel said, eyes wide. “You’re going to send Lucas to Eschalion?”

  “I know! But he can do this. He can do it, and I don’t think anybody else can. I can’t send you with him, or I would. But what do you think about sending Domeric? I don’t trust him to listen to Lucas, but I trust him more than Lord Osman, I know that!”

  “Osman’s just thinking of his own country, you can’t blame him for that—”

  “I know! I don’t! But nor do I trust him. Surely you don’t, either?” Keri ran her hands through her hair, frustrated and afraid now that she was so close to pushing everyone into motion. “We have to make him help us. This is all one maddening scramble, like that game where everyone jumps at once for the ball, you know how it gets lost and then suddenly it turns out someone had it all along. But this time the ball is Cort. He’s the prize in this game, Tassel, and it’s the Wyvern King who’s got him. He’s winning every point so far, and the goal’s right in front of him. Everything depends on our getting Cort back. Before the Wyvern King can do anything to him, or use him against us.”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “But what?” Keri demanded impatiently.

  “But Domeric’s declared that you’ve allied yourself with Lord Osman, and Nimmira with Tor Carron, and you’re going to marry Lord Osman right now, today—”

  “What?” said Keri, much more quietly.

  “He wants to force your hand. I tried to tell you,” said Tassel, and opened the door, beckoning.

  Linnet came in, gripping her hands together anxiously, looking more delicate and fragile than ever. But then, once she faced Keri, Linnet took a breath and straightened her shoulders and met her eyes.

  “I had no idea,” Linnet said rapidly, “no idea he meant to do anything like this, I swear I didn’t know. But he likes Lord Osman and he trusts people he likes, and he does truly believe we need Lord Osman’s help, that we really need it, that we can’t do anything on our own account. He thinks it’s for the best, he really does.” She took a step toward Keri, continuing earnestly, “Of course you’re the proper Lady. Of course you are. He knows that. But you’re so young, and you didn’t train to be Lady, and Domeric thinks he knows better. He always thought he had a chance, he thought he’d be better than Brann, and he would have, you must see that, but he thinks you’re making mistakes, and he thinks he has to force you to do what he knows is right—”

  “To me, at the moment, Brann and Domeric look remarkably similar,” Keri told her grimly. “They both want to use me as a coin to buy a foreign lord’s support for their usurpation.”

  Linnet flinched. “I’m sure I’d feel that way in your place, Lady, but he does want what’s best for Nimmira. And I know—I know—he’s wrong, but there are a lot of people who, who—”

  “—find it reassuring, in times of trouble, to have a man they know stand up and declare himself,” Tassel filled in when the other girl faltered. “Especially a big, strong man who looks like he can bend iron bars in his bare hands. So Dori ran off to tell him you’re back, the weak-witted little fool, since that’s what he told her to do. When this is over, Keri, you really need to let me bring in a whole different staff. Anyway, I expect he’ll be here any moment. He and Lord Osman, more than likely. And I did try to tell you, but it was too late, you know, because even if I’d dragged you out the minute I saw you, Lord Osman’s men are watching the doorways of the House. The windows, too, I imagine. By now they must have realized we don’t have any soldiers of our own. We have to make them want to help us—because we don’t dare let them decide to conquer us by simple force of arms.”

  There was a fraught little pause. Then Keri, recovering herself and starting to think again, pointed out, “Well, if we can restore Nimmira’s mist, we won’t need to fear Tor Carron—and if we can’t, we definitely won’t have to worry about Tor Carron! But it would be better if Lord Osman just agreed to help—better for him, too, since he can’t want the Wyvern King to swallow us whole and look across our border at his own land! Where’s the Timekeeper in all this?”

  “Oh, good question!” Tassel said, for all the world as though they were playing a riddle game for points. “No one has the least idea. Staying out of the way, I suppose, though I don’t imagine he’ll keep silent if Domeric goes on with this mad plan of his.”

  Keri looked with her inward eye. She found the Timekeeper almost at once. He was sitting perfectly still in a heavy chair in the empty room with the high ceiling and thick draperies, facing the massive grandfather clock. Keri had never yet seen that room or that clock with her own eyes, but the great echoing empty space, all shadowed lavender and gray and pearl, with the massive clock standing against one high wall…it was all somehow disturbing. Three of the clock’s five ambiguous hands were near the vertical position, as though soon it would strike…not just the hour, perhaps, but something greater. Its sharp-edged crystal pendulum ticked steadily back and forth. The clock made Keri uneasy. Its blank, unmarked face wasn’t meant for anyone but the Timekeeper to read. Keri wondered if she had the nerve to ask him what it said.

  She shook her head and said to Tassel, “I think he’s…busy. But I can’t rely on the Timekeeper to fight all my battles for me. I didn’t need him to stop Brann kidnapping me, and I don’t need him to stop Domeric marrying me off. In fact, I think—”

  Before she could finish, there was a thump on the outer door of the apartment, loud enough to be startling even here in the bedchamber. Keri jumped, and would have been embarrassed, but the other two girls both jumped as well. Keri swallowed, her brave declaration of a moment before seeming more like bravado now that Domeric was here.

  Her brother did not wait for an invitation. They all heard his heavy tread through the reception chamber and the sitting room. Two or three men, maybe more, but there was no mistaking Domeric among them.

  Keri didn’t wait for her brother to find her hiding in the bedchamber. She walked straight past Linnet and into the sitting room to meet Domeric, who had just stepped through from the reception chamber.

  He did not look self-satisfied or arrogant. He looked angry, but it was hard for a man with such harshly carved features to look anything but angry. Keri thought he was actually embarrassed and maybe even ashamed. She could see that Linnet had been right: Domeric was not like Brann. It made her a little less furious. Though she had every right and reason to be furious, she reminded herself, and drew herself up to look her half brother in the face. He didn’t flinch—she doubted he could—but a dark flush crept up his throat.

  Lord Osman was with him, and beyond the foreign lord a couple of his men, but Domeric was definitely in the lead. On the whole, that seemed like a good thing. Keri said, not waiting for her brother to speak first, “You only want what’s best for Nimmira, Linnet says. It
’s nice to think so, though I can’t exactly see how it’s best for Nimmira to surrender to foreign rule and also allow ourselves to be bound to Tor Carron, so that the Wyvern King not only knows we’re here, but knows for sure we’re his enemy.” She looked past Domeric to give Osman the Younger a little nod of apology. “Meaning no offense, Lord Osman.”

  “Indeed not,” the foreign lord said politely, nodding back to indicate that he could hardly be so crass as to take such statements personally.

  Domeric had looked past Keri at Linnet, a swift, seemingly involuntary glance. But when he spoke, he spoke to Keri, grimly: “The Wyvern King knows that very well already. You think we have enough magic in the whole of Nimmira to make him forget it? Especially now he has our Doorkeeper in his hands?”

  “I think it’s plain we need to recover our Doorkeeper as soon as possible. After that we’ll have to see what we can do. And,” she added, not to lock fast any doors she might want to open later, “what alliances can be made that serve both our countries. But I won’t be rushed into any handfasting alliance, Domeric, and you ought to know you can’t force the issue just by issuing a public announcement. Honestly, Domeric! What were you thinking?”

  “You’re a child!” growled Domeric. “Well-intentioned and determined, and you’ve got grit, I’ll give you that. You’re a better choice than Brann, I guess we all agree. But you’re a girl, and you’ve got these romantic notions about daring midnight raids and heroics—”

  “Notions! Heroics!” said Keri. But even without Tassel’s firm tap on her back, she knew she shouldn’t let herself get distracted. She said instead, not screaming, “Domeric, you aren’t a child, and you know the succession came to me. You may not like it, but I am Lady, and that isn’t something you grown men can get together and just declare false or wrong or whatever. I’ll listen—briefly—to your legitimate concerns—” There, that sounded nicely official; she thought she might have heard someone say that in a puppet play once, who would have guessed plays would be so useful? She went on, as forcefully as she could, “But I am the Lady of Nimmira, and you don’t get to make decisions like that for me!”