“I not,” said Firekeeper, feeling a sinking sensation that this would not be the last time she made this statement, “understand.”
Citrine looked delighted rather than exasperated, soothing Firekeeper somewhat, and put on what even the wolf-raised woman had come to recognize as a lecturing tone.
“Each of the six Great Houses has two names,” Citrine said. “One is the original family name; the other is the emblem given by King Chalmer the First in the Year Twenty-seven of this Realm.”
Seeing that Firekeeper still looked confused, she clarified, “This is the Year One Hundred Five.”
“It is?”
“Yes. One hundred and five years ago, Queen Zorana the Great won her last battle with her enemies and founded the Kingdom of Hawk Haven. The losers settled for becoming the Kingdom of Bright Bay.”
Firekeeper had understood about a third of this, but the key words, combined with Derian's brief dissertations on the importance of kings and queens, were enough to give her the essential gist.
“So why is Kenre's father a merlin?”
Kenre answered, “My family's name is Trueheart—just like yours is Norwood.”
Firekeeper remembered being told something of the kind following a long session with Earl Kestrel and a woman he called Mother and everyone else called Duchess. She nodded encouragement.
“Speak on.”
“When King Chalmer—that's King Tedric's father—married Rose Rosewood, he gave titles to the Great Houses as a wedding gift,” Kenre said, foundering somewhat.
Citrine came to his aid. “The Great Houses back then weren't happy that the king didn't marry into one of their families.”
Firekeeper nodded, though she understood little of this, hoping they would get back to how a two-legs could also be, a bird of prey.
“To make them happier,” Citrine continued, “King Chalmer gave them a special family name, like nothing anyone else would have. So the Norwoods—that's your family—became the Kestrels.”
“Earl Kestrel?” Firekeeper asked. “He is not a bird!”
“A kestrel is a type of falcon, like the peregrine but smaller.”
From Firekeeper's fist, Elation shrilled laughter. “Smaller, stupider, milder.”
Firekeeper shook the bird slightly.
“So kestrel,” she asked carefully, “is name for a bird?”
She remembered now the representations she had seen on the earl's baggage, on his carriage, over the doorways of his manse. Her eyes still had trouble seeing the pictures in human art, a thing that had frustrated some of Derian's attempts to teach her written words.
“That's right,” Citrine said encouragingly. “Just like your falcon is a peregrine.”
“I know that,” Firekeeper answered. “Derian told me. He never told me kestrel was a bird.”
“Maybe he didn't want to confuse you with too much too fast,” Kenre said with the humble wisdom of someone who often found himself in that very situation.
“Just so,” Firekeeper agreed. “He confuses me without trying.”
All three of them laughed at this and looked at each other, suddenly relaxed and at ease. Firekeeper remembered some-thing of human manners then.
“We sit,” she offered, “over by brook, maybe? You tell me more about fathers who are birds?”
The children readily agreed. Elation soared again to a treetop from which she could keep watch and Blind Seer, quietly amused by all of this, vanished within the tall grass.
“I will run, scout, maybe hunt,” he said as he moved away. “Ox fetches much meat, but it is all dead cold”
“Go,” Firekeeper replied, “but stay from the town.”
“Gladly,” the wolf laughed. “It stinks.”
When the three humans were seated, bare feet trailing in the water, Citrine resumed her explanation.
“So Kenre's father isn't really a merlin. It's his father's family's symbol.”
“ ‘Symbol,’ “Firekeeper repeated carefully. “What is symbol?”
Citrine tapped at her headband, rubbing the stone as if it would help her to construct a definition.
“A symbol is something that stands for something else. My name is Citrine.”
“Yes?” Firekeeper said, confused at this sudden switch of subject.
“Citrine is also the name of this stone.” The girl indicated the translucent reddish-orange stone in her headband. “The word stands for both me and this stone. Do you understand?”
Firekeeper might have had more trouble if wolf names were not essentially symbolic, though more literally so. She nodded.
“Yes, I think I do. So Kenre's father is not merlin. He is just called Merlin.”
“Right!” Citrine beamed. “Kenre's family uses his father's name, rather than his mother's, because the Great Houses outrank those of lesser nobles and Zorana's father was a common archer before King Chalmer made him a noble one.”
Firekeeper decided to ignore this for now. It sounded rather too much like some of the lessons that Derian had tried to teach her and she had dismissed as irrelevant to her situation. Uncomfortably, she realized that she might have dismissed the matter of Great Houses and precedence too quickly.
“Easier to know,” she said, thinking aloud, “with wolves. Who is first is fastest and strongest.”
“Your dog,” Kenre said, glancing around nervously, noticing for the first time that Blind Seer was gone, “really is a wolf? You're not just saying so?”
“Really wolf,” Firekeeper said, having had similar discussions with Derian and Race along the road to Eagle's Nest. “Three years born in my family.”
“Your family?” the two children said together.
“Not Earl Kestrel's!” Citrine added.
“No. I am wolf-raised,” Firekeeper explained. “Human born. After big fire, my mother gives me to wolves.”
“What happened to her?” Kenre asked.
“She died,” Firekeeper said, callously blunt toward the memory of this woman she remembered only in dreams. “Wolves say of fire burns.”
“Were you very old then?” Citrine asked, pity and horror in her voice.
“Very small,” Firekeeper answered. “Smaller than you or Kenre. Little. Young.”
Vocabulary exhausted, she shrugged. “So I am wolf.”
“And your father?”
“Wolves not say.”
“Was he Prince Barden?”
“Earl Kestrel say so.” Firekeeper frowned thoughtfully. “I cannot remember.”
From the looks the children traded she wondered if she had said too much. Then she shrugged. Let Earl Kestrel deal with it, if the little bird-man could. She didn't want to be queen. At least she didn't think she did.
“Where did you get your knife?”
No one had bothered ask her that before, but Firekeeper knew that the knife was somehow important to the earl and his plans. Since the man had not been precisely unkind to her, she hedged:
“From the One Wolf when I was young, but I do not know where he get. Maybe Prince Barden give to him.”
Their elders might have scoffed at such fanciful tales, but Citrine and Kenre were young enough to live on the borders of fantasy. To them, a girl raised by wolves did not seem at all improbable, especially when they had seen for themselves the impossibly huge wolf who shadowed her and the equally large hawk who obeyed her commands though unhooded and unjessed. Moreover, Citrine's mother was reputed to be a sorceress, a thing both of them implicitly believed though the evidence for that belief was shared in whispers.
“That's why you talk funny,” Citrine said with the bluntness of the young, “and why you eat…”
She stopped herself just in time, but Kenre sniggered and they both fell into uncontrolled giggles before stopping, suddenly aware of the coolness of Firekeeper's dark gaze.
“Like a wolf?” the woman offered dryly.
Citrine nervously tugged a lock of red-gold hair and Kenre paled.
“Well…” the girl stam
mered.
“I do,” Firekeeper said, “but I learn human ways. Can you do this?”
In an instant she was on her feet and up into the upper boughs of a gnarled apple tree.
“Or this?”
She hung upside down from bent knees and, in one smooth motion, unsheathed her knife and threw it, burying the blade to the hilt in the soil between the two children.
“Or this?”
She was down again, knife back in her hand, dark eyes wild. In a single bound she was across the brook, crouched on the other bank. Wolves played such bragging games among their kind and she hadn't realized how much she missed showing off.
“I learn human ways,” Firekeeper repeated. “Can you learn wolf ways?”
The two children stared in amazement and admiring awe.
“We could try,” Kenre offered, eager and intense.
“If our mothers let us,” Citrine added, more dubious.
“Those birds of prey symbol humans!” Firekeeper said scornfully. Then she recalled the power they wielded and softened her tone. “Maybe they will let you.”
“We didn't realize that you really meant you were a wolf,” Citrine said, eager to apologize. “We thought you meant as a symbol. There is a Wolf Society, you know.”
“Derian say something of that,” Firekeeper admitted. “But not understand. More symbols?”
“More,” Kenre said with another sigh. “My society is the Horse Society.”
“Mine is the Elk,” Citrine offered.
“But you are not horses or elks,” Firekeeper asked, wanting to be certain.
“I wish!” Kenre said wistfully. “When I was really small I thought that was what would happen when I got older, that I'd learn how to become a horse. I went to my first meeting last year and there was nothing like that, just people in fancy costumes.”
“Can,” Firekeeper asked, her heart pounding very fast at this new and wonderful thought, “can humans become animals for truth, not symbols?”
Her question was awkwardly worded, but neither Kenre nor Citrine had any doubt what she meant.
“Maybe,” Kenre said, his voice suddenly soft. “There are stories of sorcerers from the days before the Plague when the Old Country ruled here.”
“My nurse,” Citrine added, her tones equally hushed, “hints that such magics can be done.”
“Oh!” Firekeeper swallowed hard, unable to manage more words around the sudden lump in her throat. To be a wolf, for real and not just in heart!
“It may be,” Citrine said quickly, “just a fireside story. That's what my sister Ruby said.”
“Ruby,” Kenre retorted, speaking what he had heard his older sister Deste say, “is scared of her own shadow. Of course she wouldn't want to believe in magic. It would scare her. Especially with your mother being…”
They shuddered together, but didn't offer clarification and Firekeeper asked for none. There were too many new words here, too many new concepts. She held on to just one, one that filled her with delight and made her more determined than ever to learn the ways of humankind.
Somewhere out there might be one who would know how to give her wolf's heart a wolf's body. That was more than enough incentive to make her go on, even if she must win the throne of Hawk Haven to attain her goal!
IX
THE DAY FOLLOWING the grand banquet, Elise Archer sat at home reviewing correspondence and considering how to spend her day. Queen Elexa had requested that Lady Aurella wait upon her and Ivon t Archer was once again in conference with his mother and sister, so Elise was alone.
Secretly she was rather glad. Despite her father's ambitions, Elise suspected that either Aunt Zorana or Lord Rolfston Redbriar would be named King Tedric's heir. Further intrigue, on top of last night's session, seemed rather ridiculous.
She was folding a polite refusal of a dinner invitation when her maid came to the door of her solar.
“M'lady, you have a caller.”
“Who is it, Ninette?”
The maid, a poor relative several years her senior, meant to serve as her chaperon as much as her maid, frowned slightly before replying.
“A young man. Your cousin, Jet Shield.”
“Jet!” Elise considered not whether but where to receive him. “Take him to the summerhouse near the duck pond and have cool drinks and light refreshments brought to him. I will attend him as soon as I have changed into something more fitting.”
As soon as enough time had passed that she would seem neither eager nor rude, Elise walked down to the summerhouse. She had combed her hair and donned a pale yellow muslin gown perfect for informal entertaining on a summer morning that already promised to become quite hot. When she was a few steps from the summerhouse, she told her maid:
“Wait for me on that bench, Ninette. I promise not to stray from sight, but Cousin Jet may speak more freely to my ears alone.”
Ninette was neither silly nor stupid. She knew as much about the recent political maneuvering as could anyone who was not immediate family and, unlike Elise, still treasured dreams of herself residing within the castle, an intimate of King Ivon's family and, later, confidant to Queen Elise.
“Very good, Lady Elise.”
Elise greeted Jet with both hands outstretched, a relaxed informal gesture quite appropriate between cousins. She was slightly taken aback when he instead met her with a deep bow and lightly kissed the air above the hand he gracefully captured in one of his own.
The greeting wasn't precisely incorrect. Indeed, it would be perfectly correct in some settings. However, a summer-house in the midmorning hours was not one of these.
“Cousin,” Elise said, retrieving her fingers. “May I pour you something cool to drink?”
“Thank you, Elise. Whatever you are having,” Jet replied. “You look lovely this morning. Cool, peaceful, and tranquil—everything that my father's house is not.”
Elise smiled, acknowledging both the compliment and the neat transition into current problems.
“I would be lying,” she said, knowing that the same in-formation could be learned from the servants, “if I said that my parents were particularly tranquil this morning.”
“Great-Uncle Tedric,” Jet said with a small laugh, “pulled a nice one last night. Introducing that girl in such a fashion that we could not question her origin without insulting House Kestrel was brilliant. He is a master of his craft.”
“Tedric is,” Elise agreed, “a great king.”
“Would that I could be as certain,” Jet said, his black eyes shining, “that his successor would be as well prepared for the throne. Tedric was King Chalmer's second born, but Crown Princess Marras died a year before her father. King Chalmer had time to prepare his new heir for his role.”
“My father said,” Elise added, eager to draw Jet out, “that Princess Marras was so distracted from the deaths first of her baby, Alben, then of her husband, Lorimer Stanbrook, that Tedric was his father's right hand for the two years before King Chalmer's death.”
“Indeed,” Jet said, “just as my sister Sapphire is taken up with the minutiae of learning how to run our family estates. Therefore, I have become my father's confidant in the larger matters of kingdom politics.”
That old song again, Elise thought, amused. She murmured understandingly and Jet continued:
“My concern is that whomever King Tedric selects, there will be hurt feelings all around. Rivals passed over may not so quickly forget their own claims and be reluctant to bend knee to one they see as an equal.”
The forceful manner in which he tossed a bit of roll to one of the ducks suggested that he might be one of these.
“So you favor Lady Blysse Norwood?” Elise asked, keeping her mien quite serious though she was laughing inside. “If she is the king's granddaughter, her claim supersedes all others. No rival would be passed over for one with an equal claim, for no other claim could be equal.”
Jet looked shocked for one quick moment before he re-gained control of his features
.
“If Lady Blysse is Prince Barden's daughter,” he began, a slight stress on the “if,” “then, of course, I favor her. How-ever, there is doubt that she is indeed Barden's daughter.”
“Yes?” Elise prompted.
“Certainly! My mother recalls that there were other children included in Barden's expedition. Lady Blysse could be one of these.”
Elise nodded. She was certain that some thought other than those raised by Blysse Norwood's addition to the game was burning behind Jet's eyes and she was nearly as eager for him to tell as he was to speak.
“There is a way,” Jet said slowly, “to make King Tedric's choice easier for him.”
“Oh?” For a fleeting moment, Elise wondered if Jet was hinting that Blysse should be assassinated.
“Yes. Give King Tedric a choice that permits him to unite two of the rival parties for the throne—all three, even, if those involved are properly cultivated.”
Elise shook her head. “I don't understand.”
“If you and I married, Elise,” Jet said, leaning forward and capturing her hand between his own, “then by selecting one of us, King Tedric would really be selecting both of our houses.”
Only her mother's careful training kept Elise's mouth from dropping open in shock at this cool proposal. At that moment, a child she hadn't even known still lived within her—a child who had daydreamed of fervent entreaties, of romantic ballads sung outside her window by moonlight, of elegant tokens—died forever.
She gasped something inarticulate which Jet, fortunately, interpreted as encouragement rather than dismay.
“I couldn't believe no one had thought of this solution before,” he said, squeezing her fingers tightly. “You are the sole scion of your house. I am the senior male in mine. Surely King Tedric would see the wisdom in selecting us over any of our siblings. He might even forgo the intermediary step of first choosing one of our parents as his heir and name one of us directly.”
You, so you believe, Elise thought indignantly, or you wouldn't be so excited by the prospect.
“We two are the only ones who could play this game,” Jet continued, “and that is to our great advantage. There are no males in your household who could marry one of my sisters. Purcel Trueheart is eight years younger than my sister Sapphire—too great a gap for even Zorana to consider, especially when Purcel is four years shy of his majority.”
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