by Sharon Shinn
“I believe she’s covered that in one of her lectures,” I said demurely.
“Only old friends. Trusted old friends. Not already engaged to be married to one’s sister or one’s acquaintances.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said. “Now go.”
Still reluctant, he bowed again and left. I turned immediately back to the railing and leaned over it, looking for my sister, looking for the prince.
It was silly and pleasant and even a little breathtaking to dance with Kent, of course; and I had been surprised and a little electrified when he kissed my fingers—but it was nothing like being kissed by Bryan. In your life there will only be a few circumstances that overset you completely, and for me that had been one of them, and no other similar experience, however exhilarating, could ever successfully compare.
THE FOLLOWING DAYS were better because Dirkson and his tiresome daughter were gone, which meant my sister had more time for me. Two mornings, she joined me in her mother’s parlor, and her soft instructions were easier to obey than her mother’s curt ones. One afternoon, she and Kent and I played in the gardens that edged the northern wing of the castle. We took turns hiding behind the rich summer greenery of the shrubs and seeking each other out. More than once, gardeners and parties of court ladies were startled by our shrieking laughter and sudden eruptions into their midst. We nearly knocked down an old man I’d never seen before when we had a three-way race from the rosebeds to the lilac bushes. Kent won, and all three of us collapsed in a heap on the rich grass under a spreading oak.
Elisandra laid a hand to her chest and looked dramatic. “I shall grow faint,” she said. “My heart is pounding.”
Kent stretched out full-length on the grass, though Elisandra and I sat more modestly, our skirts spread around our ankles. He gazed at her critically, throwing an arm up to shield his eyes from the sun. Even the race had not disturbed her dark hair, pulled back in its usual coiled braid, or ruffled the habitual serenity of her face. “Your color’s healthy, though,” he observed. “I don’t think you’ll die. Anyway, it’s good for you.”
“Good for me to go yodeling through the gardens like the hoyden my sister is?” she asked. “I’m not so sure.”
“It’s good to hear you laugh,” he amended. “You don’t much, these days.”
She plucked a long blade of grass and split it slowly down the middle with one perfect nail. “There’s not much to laugh about,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
I was mystified. “There’s plenty to be happy about!” I exclaimed. “That horrid Megan is gone, and Greta says I can join the dinners again. And tomorrow we’re to go riding—”
Elisandra looked over at me with a sad smile. “But the summer is almost over and in a few short weeks you will be leaving again,” she said. “That I’m not so happy about.”
“But I’ll write,” I said. “I always do.”
She reached out a hand to brush the softest of caresses on my cheek. “It’s not the same,” she said. “I miss you so much when you go.”
“You could come visit me,” I said. “The cottage is small, but you could stay in my room. I’d sleep on the floor. My grandmother could teach you herbs, and then you could help Giselda when there’s fever in the castle—”
She smiled again, this time with a little more sparkle. “Actually, I think it would be fun,” she said. “I could tie my hair back in a scarf and wear a patched cotton skirt, and walk into the village on market day.”
“Well, it’s a lot of work, because Grandmother makes you memorize the names of all the plants, where you can find them, how to prepare them, what to put them in if you want to cover the taste, and what you should never mix them with. There’s so much to know, and sometimes she’s not very patient. But it’s more fun than learning about the heraldry of the eight provinces,” I added darkly.
“Maybe I’ll come,” Kent said. “You’ll have to leave a map.”
We sat there awhile longer, talking idly, till the golden quality of the air told us that the summer afternoon was reaching its final somnolent hour. When we finally returned to the castle, we found we didn’t have much time to clean up and change before dinner. Cressida rushed through Elisandra’s toilette so she could help me finish mine. I was wearing a new royal blue dress that Greta had promised me if I was good. It made my dark eyes seem huge and my dark hair rich.
“Aren’t you pretty,” the aliora said, patting a curl behind my ear. “Let me see you smile. Yes, you’ll be as lovely as your sister when you’re a year or two older.”
I shook my head vigorously. “No one is as beautiful as Elisandra.”
Cressida smiled at me in the mirror. “Her sister is.”
Greta, Elisandra, and I hurried down to the dining hall, arriving just as the royal family did. Bryan looked quite regal, his red hair clean and combed back, his formal black silk jacket giving him a dignified maturity. He nodded toward me and Elisandra and held out his arm to escort Greta into the room. Kent extended his hand to Elisandra, and the regent offered his arm to me.
“Good evening, Coriel,” the regent said in his watchful, speculative way, as if he noted every single reaction you might have to his words or his tone. He was shorter than his son, gray-haired, intense; his temper was legendary, though I had never seen him in an actual rage. He was said to be a fierce and canny negotiator, passionately devoted to the affairs of the realm, and impossible to deceive. He always made me incredibly nervous.
“Good evening, Lord Matthew,” I said, giving him a little curtsey, and laid my fingers very lightly on his sleeve.
“I am glad you will be joining us tonight,” he added. “We have missed you at our tables.”
Not likely. “Do you entertain guests tonight?” I asked, just to have something to say.
“No, tonight it is just us. A pleasant and relaxed family meal.”
Of course, it was anything but, which I knew before he deposited me at my chair. The dining hall seated three dozen people in its smallest configuration; it could be rearranged to comfortably hold six times that number. Tonight, there were just the thirty or so ranking nobles who lived at the castle either year-round or for part of the season. A small table set on a low dais held Bryan, Kent, the regent, Greta, and Elisandra; Damien sat at a small table directly behind Bryan. Jaxon, when he was present, also sat on the dais, as did any guests of honor. All of them were arrayed on the same side of the table, facing the other tables of the dining hall, which were set up in perpendicular lines to the head table. In effect, merely by turning our heads, all of us could watch our prince and his attendants eat, while they had no other view but of us.
I sat with the lesser nobles, Marian Grey and her cousin Angela, as well as both sets of their parents. Nearby were landholders from the various provinces who had some claim to royal favor. I did not know the visitors to speak to, but I liked Marian and Angela, so I was reasonably content.
The meal was delicious. I had, in two short weeks, almost forgotten the sumptuousness of even a simple “family meal” at Castle Auburn. At every plate were glasses for water and for wine, bowls for soup, plates for salad; plates for the main courses, plates for side dishes, and plates for desserts. Servants and aliora passed constantly among the diners, ladling out fresh portions, refilling glasses, taking whispered requests back to the kitchens. I ate until my stomach hurt, and then I started on dessert.
Angela, a lively young woman about Elisandra’s age, leaned across the table once a servant had filled my water glass for the third time. Her curly brown hair formed a pretty frame around her heart-shaped face, and her bright blue eyes gave everything she said an exclamatory air.
“Did you know,” Angela said in a low voice, “that Bryan won’t drink the water anymore?”
Marian and I leaned toward her across the table to hear her better, even though no one else appeared to be listening.
“Won’t drink the water?” Marian repeated in her mousy voice. She was paler and small
er than her cousin, not as outgoing but somewhat more restful. “Why not? It’s the best water in the eight provinces.”
This was true—Castle Auburn was famous for its well, which had been drilled three hundred feet through soil and bedrock to tap into a cold, pure, underground stream. Every day, servants rolled three huge casks down to the well to fill them with water; and every day these casks were brought back to the kitchen for cooking and serving with the evening meal. The well water was so much a part of the Castle Auburn heritage, in fact, that every toast and every bargain was traditionally made twice, “in water and in wine.”
Angela spoke in a still lower voice. “He says the well can’t be protected sufficiently. That it could be poisoned.”
“Poisoned!” Marian breathed.
“He says he saw somebody throw something down the well the other day. He says he won’t trust it ever again.”
“But if Damien tastes it first—” I said.
Angela nodded. “That’s what Lord Matthew said. But Bryan just shook his head. He says he’ll never drink the water again.”
All three of us looked doubtfully at our own water glasses, filled with seemingly fresh and innocent liquid. “But I love the water at Castle Auburn,” Marian said at last.
It was a dilemma, for all of us adored Bryan and wanted to believe any action or decree of his was both sensible and incontrovertible. But to give up the water . . . “Well, nobody’s trying to poison me,” I decided, and took a long swallow.
Marian’s expression cleared. “Or me,” she said, following suit. Angela drained her glass, and then we three sat and watched each other expectantly. When none of us fell over gasping and choking, we all started giggling, which had much the same effect anyway. Marian’s mother gave us a reproving look, so we sobered up, but wine could not have made us sillier. I was enjoying my first meal back in company far more than I had expected, and I was actually sorry when the evening finally came to an end.
4
Two days later there was a different kind of excitement at the castle. Angela and Marian returned from a morning ride reporting that they had seen a crazed wolf along the trail, foam feathering its mouth and wildness in its dark eyes. Wolves were rare this close to the civilized environs of the castle, though not unheard of. A sick one was rarer still, and more to be feared. The regent sent out a party of hunters, but though they found the animal’s tracks, they could not locate him.
“That means you girls will have to stay on the grounds until the animal’s been killed,” Greta told us firmly. Elisandra nodded, but I protested vehemently.
“Stay on the grounds! But there’s nothing to do here!”
“There’s plenty to do! You can practice your dance steps, rehearse your heraldry, help Cressida with the fine mending—because, I declare, I can’t imagine that you have a single undergarment that isn’t in complete tatters—”
“I meant, nothing fun to do,” I said impatiently. “And we’ve been cooped up for weeks!”
“Days, maybe,” Elisandra murmured, for I had exaggerated; but the last two days had been wet and dreary, and we had been kept mostly indoors.
I flounced to one of the lace-edged chairs liberally scattered throughout Greta’s quarters. “I’m not afraid of any stupid old wolf.”
Elisandra appealed to her mother. “Maybe if we could get Kent to ride with us—”
“He and his father and Bryan are spending the day with the steward, going over tithing levels. He won’t be free the rest of the week.”
I bounced in the chair. “But someone? If we got someone? One of the guards, maybe?”
Greta cast me a glance of infinite weariness. She wanted nothing so much as to get me out of her way for an hour; I knew she would eventually agree if I could come up with a reasonable offer.
“They all have their duties to attend to, I’m sure.”
“But if I asked Kritlin? If one of them agreed?”
She threw her hands up, at her limit. “Very well! Then go! But only if you have an escort, and do not go far.”
“I’ll be back in just a few moments,” I said to Elisandra, and ran out of the room.
That was how we managed, late that afternoon, to go riding on a southern route away from the castle, my sister, Roderick, and me. The day was unbelievably fine, for the last two days of rain had left the air fresh and cool, and the breezes playful. I was so eager to get away from the castle that I set my own horse at a good gallop at the outset of the ride, forcing Elisandra and the guard to keep my pace or risk losing me to the rabid wolf. There was no time or breath left for conversation until we had ridden several miles from the castle and I was finally beginning to feel freed from confinement.
“Isn’t this a glorious day!” I shouted, pulling up my horse and tossing both hands in the air. Elisandra and Roderick came up on either side of me, Elisandra looking a little windblown, though still serene. Roderick wore his usual half-smiling expression.
“It’ll be even more glorious once you fall from the saddle and break your silly neck,” he said agreeably. “It’s the perfect day for leading a lame horse back to the castle with an injured girl on its back.”
“You don’t have to protect me from falls,” I reminded him. “Just from wolves.”
“Yes, and I’ll enjoy explaining the difference to the regent when I haul your broken body back to court.”
Unexpectedly, Elisandra laughed out loud. “I see you have learned already how to speak to my sister,” she said. “Most people never get the trick of it.”
He turned to her with his easy grin. “Well, I listened to her uncle Jaxon talk to her for four days, and I copied his speeches.”
Elisandra regarded Roderick with fresh interest. “Ah! You’re the guard who rode to Faelyn River on the hunt for aliora. Corie came back with stories of your kindness and prowess.”
“No, I didn’t,” I interjected. “At least, maybe I did, but I take them back now if you’re not going to be kind.”
“I’ll be kind,” he said mildly. “Until you fall off your horse. Then I’ll not be so happy.”
“Come, now,” Elisandra said, urging her own horse forward next to mine. “Ride like a lady. I know you can.”
We rode at a much more sedate pace for another hour, we women in the lead. Roderick followed a few yards behind us. Elisandra and I talked idly, gossiping about court nobles, wondering when Jaxon would return, counting the few days I had left before I would return to my grandmother’s. I missed my grandmother and my life in the village; but the thought of leaving Elisandra, as always, tore my heart.
“Maybe you could come back for a winter visit this year,” she said. “Then the time won’t seem so long.”
“Maybe,” I said hopelessly. I remembered the long wrangling Jaxon and my grandmother had engaged in when they first struck this bargain, and I didn’t see any alterations being successful now. “Or maybe you’ll come visit me, like you said.”
She laughed softly, and I knew that was just as unlikely. But we both pretended. “I’ve got the map,” she said, for I had produced one for her and one for Kent after our last conversation on this topic. “It’s very detailed. Maybe one clear, frosty day, I’ll get on my horse and follow the road, all the way from Castle Auburn to Southey Village in Cotteswold.”
“Well, dress warmly,” I said. “It will take you three days.”
We both laughed, and our talk turned to other things. She was to have her portrait painted by a renowned artist who would be at the castle for weeks, rendering the faces of all the nobility. “And I asked Lord Matthew,” she said, “and he said I could ask the man to paint me a quick miniature of you. So think of what dress you’d like to wear, because he’ll be here in three days.”
I was a little skeptical. “Will I have to sit still? Without moving or talking?”
She smiled. “I suppose so.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. An hour or two.”
“It’s hard to imagine
,” I said.
Her laugh pealed out. “That’s why I want the portrait! To prove that you can be quiet!” She sobered quickly and turned to coaxing. “But you will, won’t you? For me?”
“Of course I will,” I said. “Well, I’ll try.”
I wanted to ask if I could have a miniature of her in return, but I knew there was some cost involved in hiring a painter, and I had no money. Anyway, such luxuries were only for the wealthy and the royal. I would trust my memory to keep a picture of Elisandra in my heart.
We had ridden for an hour and turned back toward the castle, and still come across no sign of a menacing beast. “I think Angela was imagining monsters,” I remarked. “We haven’t seen anything.”
“Well, she only saw one, and it was on the north side of the castle,” Elisandra said. “And it may have gone back toward the woods.”
“I don’t think we’ll need an escort if we ride tomorrow.”
“I think we will,” she said, gently certain. “Until they kill the wolf—or find it dead.”
I glanced back at Roderick who, all this time, had followed us silently, far enough back that he couldn’t hear a word of our conversation. He caught my look and smiled, but came no closer. “We won’t need this escort, though,” I said loudly over my shoulder. “We’ll want someone who’s more fun.”
“Fine by me,” he called back. “Let somebody else watch over you.”
I snorted and kicked my horse forward, just to prove that I wasn’t tired at the end of the long ride. I heard Elisandra call my name in a gently reproving voice, but I urged my mount faster, wanting one last gallop before the outing ended. We were on level ground and there was no reason to expect trouble, but my poor horse caught its foot in a gopher hole and pitched forward. I went careening over its head in a whirl of skirts and elbows.
Pain was the next thing I was aware of, pain and distant voices. My head, my leg, my back, my left ribs, all on fire and slivered with protest. Someone was straightening my arms, slowly, carefully; I felt fingers prod through the delicate layer of skin to the hard core of bone.
