by Dan Allen
As she hurried away, Reann’s logical side recovered control of her mind and she confronted the likely certainty that Verick could only ever see her as a servant with an aptitude for sorting papers.
She sank into agonized embarrassment.
If Verick spoke to the head butler about her moment of indiscretion—it wasn’t flirting—she would get a double spanking, with the head butler enjoying himself like a cat with a caught mouse.
Reann was in over her head. She had to orchestrate the event with Verick to present the award and find a way to get the time to investigate possible identities of the Furendali heir.
She had theories, of course. The heir could be a relative of the Arch Hunter. Or perhaps the child of a woman who had traveled with Toran’s armies as they ranged across the north while driving back the invading Nots clans. Perhaps a cook, a seamstress. Perhaps the mother had merely been a villager in a town through which he had passed between skirmishes, a passing fancy with a fateful consequence.
Reann had only to narrow the options until she had the answer.
Today was her best chance. The remote regions of the Furendal were the most vulnerable to attack from the Nots clans. That was where Toran had traveled, and that was precisely where this Furendali woman had traveled on her winter aid missions.
Reann would make it her business to help the Furendali woman get ready for the event, giving plenty of time for questions. For that, she needed the right sort of supplies—formal dresses, combs, flowers, fragrances—and she knew where to get them.
Reann felt for the skeleton keys in her apron pouch and then tiptoed up to the north stair toward the third floor. Midway, she noticed through an open window a camp of Furendali-style animal skin tents. They were pitched on the west side of the castle where Toran’s annual summer solstice games were held and castle players reenacted battles in pageant style.
Reann thought about Toran as she gazed out over the long morning shadows cast by the castle battlements that reached to the graveyard beyond the field and the small, barely noticeable gravestone of the ruler of five realms.
She had seen him; she had even met him. Somehow, she was drawn to the enigmatic leader. The pages she had found stuck in the folio with raspberry jam had only fueled her interest in the mystery.
There are heirs of Toran. Somewhere.
A tent flapped open and a woman emerged into the misty early morning light.
She was imposingly tall—like all Furendali—with stern features. Her lower legs were wrapped in white fox fur laced with leather straps and her feet shod in fur-lined boots. Her leather tunic with grizzled fur lining spilling out from the edges was buckled with a metal-studded leather waistband more than a handspan wide. The upper portion of her tunic was covered by a contoured breastplate. Reann was stymied as to whether it had been roughly beaten into shape, or roughly beaten out of shape by other frequent collisions with swinging hammers.
Her arms, uncovered to her shoulders, looked impressively strong.
This was the woman who would receive the award. Everything about her matched: her strength, her confidence, even her age—old enough to survive winter expeditions and young enough to have the reckless unfettered courage to undertake them in the first place.
On the field below, the woman inspected the grass near her animal skin tent.
Checking for footprints, Reann decided.
A dog emerged from her tent. Reann’s blood chilled as the feral features of the creature became more apparent—its long snout and rounded shoulders.
It was a wolf.
Did the woman know she had slept with a wolf in her tent?
Then Reann noticed its studded collar. She keeps a pet wolf?
It sniffed the air, and its toothy, salivating, long-snouted grin tilted up. The woman followed its gaze up to where Reann watched them both from three and a half stories up.
Reann beckoned urgently to the woman to join her in the castle.
The woman inclined her head, pondering the bizarre invitation from a servant girl to follow her.
Reann checked that no one was behind her and turned from the window, covering the remaining steps quickly and silently, hoping all the while that the woman didn’t bring the wolf into the castle.
Reann passed the head butler’s door. It was shut, although no dish tray was waiting outside his door. He was still eating his morning mush.
Another late night at the pub, she concluded. All the better.
After turning into the south corridor, Reann hurried to the third to last door. She managed to get the hooked tool into the key hole and press a spring-loaded pin.
No luck.
A second try with yet another tool also failed. Then, using both tools at once to mimic a double-toothed key, she finally managed to free the bolt.
She ducked inside the room, leaving it open a crack.
It was a guest bedroom on the fourth and top floor of the castle, one reserved for high nobles, usually women. The fact that it was rarely used had suggested to Reann that valuables were kept there.
She had cleaned the room enough times to know all its secrets.
Reann moved past a mirror that she didn’t dare look into yet, to a locked wardrobe. She borrowed a dressing stool, climbed on top, and was grabbing the hidden key from the top of the wardrobe when the door creaked.
Reann looked back, the stool tipped, and she fell hard.
The Furendali woman was quickly at her side helping her up. “Nothing broken?”
The woman’s voice was achingly familiar, high strung, hard-edged, and bold but ringing with a genuine tone.
Reann walked off the pain in her hip and inspected her elbow. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“What is so urgent that I should climb three flights of stairs before I’ve had my morning pee?”
Reann’s faced blanched. She hoped it was a more ladylike saying in the north than it was in Erdal.
“There’s a chamber pot here I’m sure,” Reann offered as she moved to the door, closed it, then drew the secure bolt.
“Not to worry,” the woman said as her eyes moved over the deep cherry lacquer of the furniture in the room. “There was a fountain in the courtyard.”
Reann’s jaw dropped.
The woman smiled. “A jest—you Erdali and your obsession with cleanliness.”
“Hygiene,” Reann corrected.
“I’ll just be a moment.” She stomped—that was the only way to describe how a woman like that moved—to the recessed corner of the room, divided by a dressing partition formed of tall, hinged wood panels.
“There’s a basin of water there,” Reann added. “It fills from the water collected on the roof.”
“Your roof leaks?” the woman said from behind the partition.
“Not . . . exactly,” Reann said. She put the key into the wardrobe and opened it with a loud squeak to reveal a collection of very expensive looking dresses.
“Now,” said the woman as she rounded the partition and rebuckled her enormously wide belt. “What is this about—oh, no you don’t!”
Reann rolled her eyes. “This is Erdal. And you are here for a ceremony, so you should look your best. Now, I’m prepared to help you get ready—”
“In exchange for . . .?” the woman asked warily.
“A few words—some questions. I’m terribly curious about everything and it doesn’t do to be a know-it-all if there are things I don’t know anything about.”
“Such as?” said the woman.
“You, the Furendali—just anything.”
“So you’ll stuff me into one of those horrible dresses and interrogate me while you’re at it—that’s your deal?” She glared at the hanging dresses: pink, chartreuse, and lavender, velvet, lacey and buttressed, like so many foes waiting to be slain.
“It’s just for the ceremon
y. You’ll look ever so elegant. And there is a nobleman here to present the award. Look, I’ll put one on, just to show you that they aren’t dangerous,” Reann said. She lifted a light blue silk dress. It was simple, but finer than anything she had ever worn. Reann slipped off her apron and dress and traded her under-slip for pantaloons from a drawer behind the left door of the wardrobe, then did a reasonable job of tying on a corset.
“How do you pronounce your Furendali name?” Reann asked, attempting to find out her name without looking like an idiot—she hadn’t even seen the invitation and Tromwen hadn’t mentioned it.
“It’s Trinah. And it’s pronounced the same in Erdali.”
“Of course,” Reann said as she pulled the blue dress over her head.
Trinah reluctantly cinched ties. “Like tying freight to my dogsled.”
“You have your own dogsled?” Reann said.
“How do you think I rescue people, send Everhart into the woods with a map?”
“Who is Everhart?” Reann asked distractedly. She slid hangers perusing for a dress she could fit Trinah into.
Trinah laughed. “Everhart is my sled dog, the one guarding my tent.”
“That wolf protects you?”
“He’s only part wolf, and yes, he does protect me. He can hear my voice calling beyond four miles and be by my side before the hour turns a quarter. He has killed many wolves defending me, and I likewise defending him.”
“All right, your turn,” Reann said. She pulled a long gray dress from the wardrobe.
“Not on your life.”
Reann paused, considering the situation. “Do you want breakfast, or not?”
Trinah’s eyes widened at the threat.
Furs removed and dress installed behind the partition, the woman took a seat grudgingly on the dressing stool. Even seated, Trinah was imposing.
The comb in Reann’s hand was ready for the battle of its life. Reann tugged the wide-tined comb down through her thick brown hair. “So this award ceremony is because you rescued some stranded traders from winter storms,” Reann said conversationally.
“Well, dozens of folks, and not all of them traders,” Trinah replied. “Some I wish I’d left behind.” She seemed more open to conversation than other Furendali she had met. Reann intended to make the most of it.
“I’ve heard the traders talk about someone called the ‘Lady of the North,’” Reann said. “Was she a friend of Toran? Is that why they call her a lady?”
“No. That’s me,” the woman said. “My clan folk call me the Lady of the North because they think I’m made of ice and snow, and that’s why I’m not afraid to go out in the storms. The truth is, I’m afraid, just like them, but I go anyway. Lady of the North isn’t a bad nickname, considering the alternative is my prissy birth name.”
Reann sensed a reason deeper than mere courage, something reckless. “I prefer Trinah,” Reann said, in her own and equally opinionated tone.
Without her metal-studded belt and fur, the Lady of the North exuded an entirely different impression. It was beauty, but not the frail look of a thin young maid like Reann. She exuded resilience and a distant, lonely elegance.
Trinah had squeezed into a wide-necked gray dress designed to droop folds of fabric elegantly in the front, but the fabric stretched tight to admit her broad shoulders. Her skin was snowy, but not as pale as most Furendali.
Reann noted the lack of hair on her chest. There were all sorts of epithets the Furendali hurled at each other having to do with lack of hair.
Trinah’s lack likely meant she was only half Furendali. There was more to her past than she was giving out.
“You are very beautiful,” Reann said, tugging down again with the comb to break through a snag.
“Am I?” Trinah said. “I thought Erdali didn’t like the look of hairy northerners?”
Reann decided to press her luck. “Well you aren’t full-blood Furendali, are you? You’d have more hair if you were.”
Trinah didn’t answer.
“Anyway, I wish I had long, thick hair like yours. Mine just curls and knots if I try to grow it out, so I tie it back. And it’s dingy even when I wash it. Yours is so shiny—is it from eating fish from the North Sea?”
“My hair was my mother’s gift,” Trinah said. “But I haven’t much use for it in the Furendal. I keep it under a fur hat most of the year.”
“Is your mother still alive, then?” Reann asked. Trinah was in her mid-thirties as near as she could tell.
“Yes,” she said. Trepidation weighed her voice uncharacteristically.
“And your father too?” Reann couldn’t stop herself asking.
Trinah said nothing.
“Any siblings?”
No answer.
“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to pry. It’s none of my business.”
“Make it one or the other,” Trinah spouted finally. “I’d rather have prying about my business than all this prying on my head with that brush.”
Reann still knew very little about the woman or any of her clan who might also be part-Erdali. She wanted to ask Trinah if there were others, but the time was not right. She needed Trinah to trust her—to have a connection. She decided, uncharacteristically, to open the topic of her own past.
She took a breath to gather the courage. “I haven’t seen my mother for so long that I can hardly even remember what she looks like. She left the year Toran died. Nobody knows where she went. Some of them say she ran away. I just don’t know. It’s rather a terrible situation.”
“Was she married?” Trinah asked.
It was Reann’s turn to feel the uncomfortable heat of a prying question. She decided she would handle it like every other fact.
“Not that I know of.”
“Any inheritance?” Trinah asked.
Reann considered the question. She had a small plot of land in Fordal, or so she had heard. But any homestead there would have long since decayed or been turned into a stable. There was nothing for her in that place—no help, no food, no employment, no future.
“I’m a ward of the castle because Toran was my grandfather’s commanding officer. My place is here, until I come of age,” Reann said, feeling uncomfortable that Trinah seemed to know something of her heritage, rather than the other way around. “I suppose we’re similar in a way,” she said, feeling now much more contemplative rather than adventurous. “We both lack fathers.”
“That is rather impossible,” Trinah said in her terse voice that sounded perpetually peeved. “I can explain if you like. It’s the same for birds and the bears. You see, when it’s mating season—”
“No,” Reann said shortly, blushing slightly. “I only meant—”
“I know what you meant. What I don’t know is why my personal affairs are so important to you. I’ve been asked questions before—all the same. ‘Who is your father?’ ‘Are you part Erdali?’”
“Well everybody has their own interests,” Reann said, sidestepping the issue of her personal obsession with the heirs of Toran.
“And what are yours?” Trinah said. “Speak boldly, or don’t speak at all.”
Reann boiled. Her words came out in a burst of anger and emotion and hope and exasperation. “I want to find the heirs of Toran—is that so terrible?”
Trinah stood abruptly and turned about, becoming so instantly terrible that Reann shrank back.
Tall, regal, and defiant, Trinah stared at her with a piercing look that Reann had never experienced, not from any angry butler or lord.
It was imperial, and in that instant, she knew.
All her life she had imagined a moment like this and she was utterly unprepared.
Trinah spoke with an air of absolute authority. “And what if you found an heir? What would you do about it?”
Reann shook her head. “I—I didn’t know. I .
. .”
“Would you expose her? Would you open her to slander and intrigue? Would you force her to leave her country and sit on a throne—a throne she never wanted, never asked for? What would you do?” Trinah demanded.
Reann reached back to a short chest of drawers to steady herself. She bowed low and the words crossed her lips with a reverence that surprised her. “You are the unknown heir of the five kingdoms,” Reann clasped her hands and drew them back to her chest, hands that had touched the rightful queen. She brought her fingertips to her forehead, the Erdali reverence she had once given to the great king himself.
“Enough of this. I want some food.” Trinah huffed and stomped to the door, threw it open, and vanished down the corridor.
Reann fell to the floor, on her knees. She began to cry.
Through everything came the realization that in a few short hours, Verick would be handing a medallion of honor to the first heir of Toran.
All the searching, all the work, for nothing.
As Trinah had said, there was nothing Reann could do.
Verick, on the other hand, was a lord. He could summon the council of lords. He could present her to them as Toran’s heir. Then, Reann would have a queen to serve and a place to belong forever. The realms would be united once more, the bickering lords put down, the traitors and fractious rebels dealt with, the armies restored to their border patrols. The five realms would stand as one, united in their strength. It would be a grand era of peace and cooperation. It would all be as it was meant to, as Toran intended it.
Wasn’t that what he had wanted?
But what evidence could Verick give of her claim? Her own word? Some clue or couplet from his notebook?
Even if they did expose her, would Trinah just run away, or deny it? Would Verick try to force her to take throne as she feared?
Or, Reann wilted at the thought, what if Verick wanted to make Toran’s princess his queen? Would he try to gain her trust, to get the crown for himself?
Trinah was too old for him, in her mid-thirties already.
Still, the very possibility unnerved her. Her decision was quick and final, even if it killed her.
