by Dan Allen
“How?”
Lilleth exchanged another anxious glance with her sister before speaking. “The night after you left, Father asked Enala to sing for Pert. She sang to free his spirit, as she does for honored guests—it’s Father’s tradition.”
“I didn’t want to,” Enala huffed.
“Enala can see the spirits she frees,” Lilleth said. “And she saw—”
“Don’t speak of it,” Enala pleaded. “I can’t bear to think of it right now.”
“I may as well say it,” Lilleth said evenly, “She saw the face of the person Pert killed and bound to darkness, and . . . he looked right at her.”
“That’s enough,” Enala said through gritted teeth.
Terith had never seen the lighthearted vixen so shaken.
“That’s how we know Pert has the dark awakening,” Lilleth whispered. “He has part of another soul bound to him.”
Considering what the sisters were saying about Pert’s power, Terith realized he had been lucky to escape his confrontation with Pert. The question was how Pert had got the dark awakening, and whether there was any way to unmake it.
“There’s a dragon involved, too,” Enala added. “I sensed that.”
“The velra,” Terith guessed.
“Yes,” said Lilleth. “The man and his velra had a strong bond. They shared his awakening. When Pert captured its master’s soul, the dragon was bound as well.”
“Pert can draw you in,” Enala said, “and siphon your life just as easily.”
That shook Terith. If he tried to use the awakening, he might end up just like the owner of the velra, trapped in Pert’s devil mind, dead but imprisoned.
There was such a thing as seventh hell and a half.
Terith gripped the sides of his head, trying to make sense of it. All his life, he had prepared for mortal enemies and fought with his hands. Now it was as if he were suddenly a child again, helpless. “I don’t know what to say. You want me to stand up to Pert, but if what you’re saying is true, there is no way I can fight him.”
Lilleth looked to Terith, her eyes pleading. “If anyone could do it, you could. We’ve all seen your awakening. It’s almost like Serbani magic. You are changing time. Perhaps if he attacks with the dark awakening you can hold out longer, find a weakness . . .”
The words were heartfelt, but not convincing.
Enala put her hand on his forearm and slid it up to his bicep, her blue eyes and crystal necklace gleaming. “You are Pert’s nemesis. You were meant for this. No one else can stop him. If he wins the challenge, he will marry Lilleth and take the rule of the Montas when my father dies.”
“Which will be as soon as Pert kills him,” Lilleth added solemnly.
Enala turned away and wrapped her arms tightly around her waist, her features panicked and pale, as if she were reliving that moment of vision when she had seen the stolen soul. Terith had seen that same look on Lilleth’s strong features after she saw his future. But on Enala’s porcelain face, it was terrifying.
“The Montas will fall into darkness,” Lilleth said, with a tremble in her voice.
A shiver passed over Terith. Subconsciously, he took a step backward.
“Pert told us about the dark awakening,” Enala said with a hint of regret. “He visited one summer, a long time ago. We were telling ghost stories. I think he was trying to impress us. I thought it was a lie, until—”
“If I know Pert,” Terith said, “The first thing he would do is kill the person who told him the secret. Then he alone would hold the knowledge.”
“Except for Enala and I,” Lilleth reminded.
Terith’s eyes shot open. “He wouldn’t dream of killing you—would he?”
Lilleth shook her head. “Who knows what the dark awakening does to his thoughts?”
Terith ran his hands through his hair to ward off the fog of sleep that kept creeping in around him. “I—I don’t know what to do.”
“Just don’t panic. I’ll take you to a safe place,” Enala offered. “You can rest in the loft above the looms. The weavers are on holiday for the challenge. Pert wouldn’t look for you there.”
Terith shared a fleeting glance with Lilleth, their eyes pleading each other to keep safe. Enala grabbed his hand and yanked him in the opposite direction.
Chapter 11
Erdali Realm. Citadel of Toran.
The day after the terrible night that ended with blood on her hands, Reann had avoided Verick. The second day she had returned to the library, fearful of what Verick might do if she did not. They had continued the research, but Reann could hardly focus. The images from that night were stuck fresh in her mind. For the rest of the week she looked in books and sorted through stacks of records whenever she didn’t have chores. Though routine dulled the horror of her harrowing night, aching fear never left her side. Alone in her bed in the silent darkness there was nothing to drown out its screaming. It followed her every footstep in the castle, an unseen shadow, the face of the thief, a bloody sword.
For once, Reann was glad to be awakened early, even if it was to do pointless chores. She dragged her mop across the floor of the seldom-used Galant Hall ringed by suits of armor and portraits of once-important dead people that not even Reann had the time or inclination to learn about.
With every swipe of the mop she wished somehow that she could just erase everything that had happened like the dirty, dusty footprints on the floor. She was trapped. If she refused Verick, he might think she had betrayed his trust. He would do the same to her as he had to the thief. But working with him was the best chance to find an heir. Her only salvation was doing exactly as he said.
She had only two weeks left.
The girls talked about it, asking Reann what she would do, where she would go, whether she would apply to stay on the staff.
She wasn’t popular with the head butler. She hated him and the feeling was mutual. Perhaps she didn’t even have that option.
Where would she go? How far could she walk in search of a farm or estate in desperate need of a librarian or a translator?
Unbidden, thoughts of her bloody footprints outside the aviary rose into her mind. Her breathing quickened in a panic at the thought that someone might have seen her footprints and recognized them. Reann put her hand to her chest and tried to suppress a surge of panic. Her chest heaved nervous breaths despite her every attempt to calm herself. She glanced at the other girls.
Nobody seemed to have noticed her panic attack.
Carena dropped her duster and looked at her reflection in a mirror while she twisted her hair up and posed.
“Stuff it under a handkerchief,” Katrice said. “You think you’re some kind of noble?” She dipped her mop in a bucket and splashed gray water over the flagstones.
“You know what I think,” Illa said, jostling Carena for a position in front of the mirror. “I think she’s all steamed up about that Serbani lord.”
“Am not!” Carena said, trying to stomp on her sister’s foot.
“Reann is the one all steamed up for Verick,” Katrice said. She dipped the mop and swung it at Reann’s feet. “Maybe you need some water to cool off.”
“You know nothing,” Reann said, feeling anger rising. She grabbed the bucket and heaved the wash water toward Katrice’s legs.
Katrice jumped out of the way and knocked Carena into Illa who screamed as she toppled into a nook and sent a lit candle stand crashing to the floor.
“Spilled wax,” Katrice moaned as she picked herself up. She glared at Reann. “That’s impossible to clean up. You did that on purpose.”
“I was just trying to help spread the mop water,” Reann said innocently. “Anyway, just let the wax cool. It’s easier to scrape up.”
“Did you read that tip in a book?” Katrice said. Her expression was crusted with early morning orneriness.
> “Yes,” Reann said. “At least I can read.”
“If you’re so smart, why don’t you clean up that candle wax yourself?” Katrice snapped back.
“Let her be,” Carena said as she turned to look in the mirror again. “She’s obviously got her feathers all ruffled because we touched on her secret love obsession.”
“What will Ret say?” Illa said, picking her twiggy self up. “You leaving him all alone for a sad-eyed southerner—”
“Maybe Ret will be so bored that he will actually pay attention to you,” Reann said quickly, feeling hot.
“As if I cared,” Illa said.
“Illa likes Trong, the butcher’s son,” Carena said. “He’s the only boy her age that isn’t shorter than her.”
“Ew, ew, double ew,” Illa said in her best impression of Ninat.
“Anyway, Reann,” continued Carena, “I don’t know what you see in that Serbani fellow—except his clothes. He dresses nice.”
“And he’s probably rich,” Illa added.
“Definitely,” Carena agreed, as if reconsidering the matter. She took a turn in front of the mirror, gazing at her flaming red hair.
“Which of you is going to scrape up the spilled wax?” Katrice interrupted. “Because it’s not me. I don’t even know why we’re cleaning this hall. Nobody ever uses it.”
“It’s for a ceremony,” Carena said. “The Benevolent Fraternity of—”
“Traders!” Reann gasped. Her mind shot back to Tromwen’s parting request to find a replacement for him at the ceremony. “What day is it?” Her stomach clenched in a double knot.
“The fifth,” Illa said. “I thought you were the walking almanac.”
Blood drained out of Reann’s face. “It’s today,” she whispered. Her throat was suddenly dry, her palms instantly damp. “I completely forgot!”
Katrice screwed up her expression, “Oh, no you don’t. You’re not making up some crazy excuse just to get out of—”
Reann didn’t wait for the rest of Katrice’s complaint. She raced down the corridor.
“Reann! I’ll tell the head butler!”
She was well on her way to losing her only likely chance to get potential clues from a well-traveled Furendali woman about Toran’s first heir. Fear spurred her as she turned down a flight of spiral stairs, burst through the kitchen and out the door. She slammed straight into somebody trying to come in and fell forward in a tangle of arms.
“Oh,” she said, staring Ret in the eyes from an uncomfortably close distance. “There you are.”
“Just noticed me?” Ret said. He put a finger to his mouth and wiped some blood from a lip that was starting to swell. “Or is this a really desperate hug?”
Horrified at Ret’s casual reaction to a full-body horizontal embrace, Reann jerked away, trying to extricate herself from Ret. She stood up, still horrified at her predicament and now horrified at the idea that she was going to have to ask the boy whose face she had just bloodied with her head for yet another favor.
Recovering her composure, Reann smoothed her apron and held out her hand to help Ret to his feet.
He got up on his own.
“Ret,” she said hopefully, “I just remembered there’s a ceremony today and I really need . . .”
A sly grin showed on his face, turning to disbelief, then rapture. “You actually forgot?”
Reann was sure she was going to be sick. Her blanched face turned river clay red. “Please? Ret?”
“What do you want?” he said, touching his fat lip again. “Tell me it isn’t—”
“Your lock picks.”
Ret shoulders slumped. “I’m already late for breakfast. I’m not going to get any, am I?”
“Ret, I swear I’ll make it up to you,” Reann said.
“Fine,” he droned.
Reann leaned toward him to embrace him, but he flinched away, so she just grabbed his forearm and gave a squeeze of thanks.
“I want food. Lots. I mean it,” he said as he walked back to the boy servants’ bunkhouse.
He returned from the bunkhouse—which Reann avoided at all nasal cost—with his precious tools, which he claimed, when asked, were for stringing his mandolin. Perhaps they were originally for that, but Reann needed then for something else entirely.
She took a breath, wiped her sweating palms on her apron, and with a newly composed look of placid denial she took the keys and darted back into the kitchen. Her hip collided with a basket of eggs the old cook Denit had set on the corner of the low shelf, and the chicken eggs took their first flight prematurely.
“Sorry!” Reann hurried ahead to avoid the splatter of yolks.
“Reann!” Denit roared. “The head butler will hear about this. You’ll get the belt!”
Reann’s already flushed face turned even brighter as she imagined getting swatted across the butt by a head butler who enjoyed that sort of thing way too much the older she got.
Out of breath, she paused on the stairs. Then she dragged herself up to the second floor, hurried down the hall past the Montazi armor, a stuffed snow bear, several tapestries, and a sharp corner, another turn and came finally to Verick’s door.
Reann put her hand to her chest where her heart beat so fast she couldn’t even tell one beat from the next. She opened the door and her heart nearly stopped at what she saw on the other side.
Verick, shirtless, lunged toward her with his drawn saber.
Reann choked a scream as the blade came to a halt inches from her chest, grateful, for once, that she wasn’t as top-heavy as Carena.
Verick finished his maneuver with a swish and a flourish and dropped the sword into its scabbard.
Reann kept staring at his broad shoulders and the muscles on his torso and stomach, unable, or unwilling, to meet his eyes. The white scar on his neck ran down a few inches toward his shoulder, the only flaw is his toned figure.
Verick turned his back and took a hand towel from a hook on the wall near his washbasin.
“I . . . have . . . something,” Reann said.
“About my land claim?” Verick said evenly.
Slowly Reann found her mind refocusing. “Yes—no, well it’s a chance. There is a ceremony this evening. It’s for a good cause. The Fraternal Order—I mean the Benevolent Traders Socie—no, I mean—” The name Tromwen had used suddenly escaped her in a way that was so uncharacteristic that the embarrassment sent her cheeks into even a deeper shade of burgundy, now rivaling the crimson drapes. “Yes, er, the Benevolent Order—er, Fraternity—of Traders.”
Verick’s lip twitched only slightly with the beginnings of possibly the first smile she had ever seen on his face.
“Don’t laugh at me,” Reann said suddenly. “I didn’t ask to be sent here to . . . interrupt you like this.” Again she involuntarily eyed the defined muscles of his stomach and then abruptly turned aside, deciding it to be indecent, despite the fact that Ret and half the castle boys went without shirts outside for most of the summer.
“You didn’t?” Verick said. He paced a step behind her and out of view, something that pained Reann for more reason than one.
“There will be Furendali there,” Reann added, inclining her head slightly to keep Verick’s body in her peripheral view. “We don’t know anything about their . . . land claims,” she said, avoiding the word heir.
“I didn’t come here for goodwill ceremonies,” Verick said, recovering his usual sober mood.
“But you’ve been invited to preside,” Reann explained. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to prepare you. The invitation was just passed from Lord Tromwen, who is . . . indisposed . . . to the senior noble at the castle. And that’s you.”
“Me?” Verick said. “What do you mean? I’m not even Erdali.”
Reann clasped her hands together and squeezed them to keep from shaking. “Well, the
other guests at the castle are merchants and there’s a physician and his wife, and a land speculator who pays well for his room . . . when he can. There’s a mistress of one of the—well, you get the idea. You won’t get this chance again,” Reann said, giving up restraint and turning full around to face Verick.
“What sort of ceremony is this?” Verick said.
“I . . . I don’t know . . . much,” Reann said, realizing how odd it sounded. “Just that it is for a Furendali lady.”
“Curious. And you’ve made all the preparations?”
“This very morning we cleaned the Galant Hall.”
“And that’s why you’re so out of breath?”
She blushed again and turned her eyes down, ashamed at herself for using Ret and Verick to cover for her mistake. But it was partially Verick’s fault. He had occupied all her time searching for the heirs and cleaning up murders.
“I don’t like to be lied to—misled, whatever you call it,” Verick said.
“No, sir.” Suddenly she had a mind to leave, to run away from him and forget Tromwen and her promise to cover for his absence and kill her chance at a position in his court and possibly a suitor and a comfortable life.
At least she would have her life.
But no library. No heirs. No position.
Nothing.
Her heart sunk into her feet where they gripped the floor with icy resolution. Her fingers closed on the skeleton keys, and the beginnings of an idea took shape.
“If you’ll excuse me, I should like to finish dressing for breakfast.” Verick lifted his shirt from where it lay folded on a top of a chest of drawers.
Reann turned out of the room and closed the door quickly behind her, catching it just before it latched as a strange compulsion overtook her. Her stomach whizzed with butterflies. With the door open just a crack, she said in an uncharacteristically playful voice, “If you must.”
She closed the door very slowly, let the latch click and dissolved into a wreck of embarrassment, shame, and excitement.
She had never done anything saucy like that in her life. She loved and hated herself equally for the moment of inexplicable flirtation with a man older than her and a lord on top of it.
