There, as clear as the sunlight on water, was Firekeeper's declaration of what side she would join. A potential enemyùall the more deadly for the knowledge she had gained over the past yearùshe sat there upon the king's floor, waiting for him to offer her an answer.
"If I promise to send troops to make Ewen Brooks and his colonists leave," the king said. "If I promise to declare that venturing beyond the Iron Mountains is forbidden on pain of death. If I dig into my treasuries to build a keep on the eastern side of the gap through the mountains, will that be enough to free you to go to New Kelvin?"
Firekeeper visibly relaxed, but her dark eyes remained watchful. Obviously, she suspected a trick, making Derian, at least, think that her upbringing among the wolves must not have been as straightforward as she claimed.
"For me, yes."
She frowned, freeing her legs from the circle of her arms and rolling onto her belly on the floor, rather like Blind Seerùuntil, that is, she propped her elbows on the floor and her chin in her hands.
"Maybe it not enough for the Beasts, though, those who are most angry and most afraid. They may still wish to prey on humankind."
Sapphire drew in her breath rather sharply. Derian had the impression she was annoyed by Firekeeper's informality, even in this most informal of councils.
"Why should they?" Sapphire said. "Wouldn't we be keeping to our side of the mountains?"
Firekeeper looked at her, somber and sad.
"They not see it that way, Princess. To them there is no human side. Our tales tell when all sides were for Beasts and humans lived in humans lands."
Sapphire snorted, quite unladylike.
"That was long ago. My people don't remember a time when we didn't live here. Where would we go? Back to the Old Country? We don't even know where it is or if anyone is alive there."
Firekeeper shrugged, pivoting around to sit upright again.
"I not know. I not even know if the Beasts know."
"I wonder," Shad said softly, "if they do. Birds can fly, can't they? I wonder if the bigger ones fly across the oceans and know what is on the other side?"
Firekeeper looked surprised.
"I not know. No one ever telled me."
"Told," Derian murmured under his breath.
Firekeeper glowered at him.
King Tedric cleared his throat.
"Speculation must wait until later," he said. "Unfortunately, there is a formal banquet tonight, and soon we will need to go and prepare."
"Not me!" Firekeeper exclaimed.
"No, not you," the king said. "That would be showing you rather too much favor, I fear. Firekeeper, the truth of the matter is, I don't want you to get hurt."
"At dinner?"
"No." King Tedric smiled. "No, if matters between humans and Beasts become as ugly as you think they might, I don't want you hurt by humans who will see you as an instigator."
"A what?"
"A troublemaker," the king clarified, "a problem, a starter of bad things. They won't see you as a friend of humanityùwhich I think you are, or you wouldn't bother to give me this warning. They would see you as an enemy. I would like to send you somewhere far away, yet somewhere where there will be no doubt of your presence for others will be able to swear to it.
"Then, if indeed there are those among the Beasts who will not accept Ewen Brooks's departure as our acknowledgment of the Beasts' sovereignty to the west, then you at least will not be blamed."
Firekeeper nodded.
"I see and I am happy that you protect me. Is kind."
"Kind, but self-serving, too," Tedric said bluntly. "Not only will you serve me by putting your singular talents at Lady Archer's disposal, but you will serve me by staying alive. Someday we may need you to help us treat with the Beasts."
"Treat?"
"To talk to them for us, for Hawk Haven and Bright Bay, maybe for all humankind."
A strange look passed over Firekeeper's face. For a moment she looked so distant and so disoriented that Derian thought she was about to be sick.
"Need me to talk…" she muttered almost inaudibly.
The wolf-woman shook her head.
"I have heared that thought before," she said, "but I not remember where. No matter. It is wise. I will go to New Kelvin."
She directed her dark gaze to Sapphire.
"I promise to help your sister, Princess," she said, "but I not promise to help your mother."
Sapphire straightened and not all the flush in her cheeks was from the heat.
"My mother is Queen Elexa," she said proudly. "This other woman only gave me birth."
"And I," Firekeeper replied thoughtfully, "think I give her death."
Derian didn't know what unsettled him more: Firekeeper's statement or the fact that none of the other three so much as raised an eyebrow in reproof.
Chapter XI
ELISE BALANCED THE PAINTBRUSH in the join between thumb and forefinger and leaned back on her heels to inspect her work. Satisfied, she held up a hand mirror so Citrine could see the stylized drawing now adorning one cheekùtwo slanting eyes, a hint of whiskers, and an outline of pricked ears. "That's the mark of the Sodality of Beast Lorists," Elise explained. "Grateful Peace says that they study many animals. They also raise some exotics kept from the days before the Plague and brought here from other lands."
"Neat!" Citrine said, raising her hand to touch the design then lowering it, clearly remembering just in time that this one gesture was the most to be avoided if an outlander wished to pass as New Kelvinese. They never touched their faces if it could be avoided lest they smear the elaborate designs almost everyone wore.
"Now if you were raised to the highest rank, like Peace was in the Illuminators," Elise went on, "then you could have the design tattooed on. Until then, you'd need to paint it on every day." "Every day?" Citrine asked.
"I think so," Elise said, "at least if you were going out of your house. Peace says that a New Kelvinese would no more go out without at least some basic designs in place than we would go out without clothes."
Citrine giggled and Elise gave her an impulsive hug.
The little girl was doing much better since their arrival in the North Woods. Her sense of humor had returned and she hadn't had a screaming fit for days. Elise wondered if the very delicacy with which Citrine had been handled since her rescue had contributed to her moodiness. Maybe if she had been thrown in with a bunch of children her own age and left to fend for herself she would have done better.
Maybe not, though. Children could be quite cruel, especially to someone who was different, and Citrine with her maimed left hand and her exiled mother was different indeed.
"What's a sodality?" Citrine asked.
Elise ran her hand through her hair trying to find the best way to answer.
"It's sort of a very important guild," she said. "The sodalities do what our guilds doùmonitor quality of work, set rules for educating apprentices, punish bad work. That sort of stuff."
Citrine nodded. She seemed genuinely interested and for the first time Elise wondered how much Citrine knew about things like guilds. Elise herself had learned about them quite young, since a grant holder often had to work with the local guild representatives. Citrine, however, had neither that reason to learn, nor the reason most common folk wouldùthe fact that future employment and education lay within the guilds.
How many are there like Citrine? Elise thought. Too related to the noble class to bother with education and employment, too unconnected to the responsibilities of running a grant or House to need to bother with much at all. I wonder if this is precisely what Queen Zorana the Great was trying to avoid when she refused to allow a proliferation of titles?
Elise made a mental note to share her insight with Sapphire and Shadùpreferably by letter in case she accidently offended one of them. She knew that many of the Hawk Haven nobles had started gently agitating for more titles so they could compete with their Bright Bay neighbors. If those titles came with re
sponsibilitiesùreal ones, not createdùthen maybe they would be a good idea. If they did not, however, they would just add to the proliferation of useless semi-nobility.
Shifting to a low chair, Elise motioned Citrine over and went back to work on her facial ornamentation, continuing her explanation at the same time.
"But the sodalities don't match our guilds. There are sodalities for things we don't have at all, like sericulture, which is the art of growing silk. And there are sodalities for things that we deal with much more informally, like these Beast lore people.
"And the sodalities have a lot more power than our guilds do because even though the guilds are very important to trade, they have no say in how the kingdom is governed. That is left to our monarch in consultation with the royal advisors, many of whom are nobles."
Citrine piped up, "But not all! Derian isn't a noble. Neither is Firekeeper."
"Firekeeper isn't a royal advisor," Elise corrected, but even as she spoke she wondered if that was true.
Certainly the wolf-woman had a great deal more access to the Crown than many of the lower-ranked nobility. She was allowed a lot more leniency in matters of decorum and etiquette, too. Was this another of Citrine's oddly incisive insights?
"Maybe you're right," Elise said. "Maybe Firekeeper just doesn't have the ring."
"She'd lose it anyhow." Citrine giggled, then became more serious. "So are the sodalities more important than the king of New Kelvin?"
Elise licked her lips, aware that she was treading close to sensitive matters.
"I'm not sure," she hedged. "However, they are very important to the running of the government. The Primes are elected from the most important members of the sodalities, and they in turn elect the Dragon Speaker, who takes care of all the day-to-day business of government."
"Does that mean the king doesn't have to go to meetings?" Citrine asked. "I know that Sapphire hates going to meetings. She told me that if she knew that she'd need to go to so many meetings and receptions and things she wouldn't have wanted to be queen nearly so much."
Elise smiled. "I don't know if the kingùthe New Kelvinese call him the Healed Oneùhas to go to meetings, Citrine. I know he has duties dating back to the days before the Plague. Maybe those keep him quite busy."
"And his wife?" Citrine asked, a guarded glitter in her eyes. "What does she do?"
Elise tried to be casual, but feared that she failed completely.
"I don't know, cousin. I guess that's one of the things we'll be going to New Kelvin to find out."
FIREKEEPER SLEPT OUT on the castle grounds that night, in a broad meadow beyond the first wall.
Ever since the wolf-woman's meeting with the king and his heirs, the castle walls had seemed to close in on her. Firekeeper was smart enough to know that the walls were not the problem. The press she felt was that of obligation and dutyùnot to one group, but to many.
Sensing her moodùor perhaps responding to a similar sense of pressure on his own behalfùBlind Seer took himself off to hunt. Maybe his sense of bondage was even worse, for he, unlike her, could not pass in human society.
Alone, Firekeeper lay on the grass staring up at the sky. For the first time the comet didn't seem like an ominous intrusion against the star field. Its glowing white head and streaming tail seemed friendly, familiarùand very free.
Firekeeper remembered her recent dream and wished that she were indeed riding on the comet's shoulders. They would be rounded, she thought, deliberately building up a picture in her mind, and very warm, for anything that gave so much light must give heat as well. They might even be furry.
The comet was becoming a wolf again when she drifted off to sleep.
Again, she dreamed.
Small. Looking up at everything, even into the faces of the Royal Wolves. Sometimes the One Male crouches and lets her ride on his back. She grips hard onto his neck ruff and crouches low to keep her balance.
They are running, running hard and fast. Their goal is not a hunting ground, not a broad river meadow where the elk graze or a grove where the deer browse on the young foliage. They are running through the night, leaping from bright star to bright star, sometimes wading through the blackness as they might through a stream or a summer shallow river.
Firekeeper feels the blackness snowmelt frosty against her toes. She pulls them up, tucks them under the One Male's belly. His heartbeat is rapid and strong, counterpoint to a faint singing that seems to come from all around.
Do stars sing?
Firekeeper wants to ask, but her throat is full of smoke. She can't speak for the choking, she can't see for the burning in her eyes. The fire roars. Its sound drowns out the singing that might have been the voices of the stars. Sometimes the wind adds its howling voice to the fire's roar and the two together are terrible.
Distantly, she seems to hear warning cries. Without understanding a single syllable, she understands that there is fear that the fire will leap onto the wind's shoulders, that the wind will carry the fire into the trees, that the trees will be reduced to ash and ash to earth.
Something must be done to still the wind. The girlùnot yet Firekeeper, someone else whose name she almost knowsùhuddles near the ground, listening. The stars are singing again. The wind's howling is growing quieter, though it mutters unhappily as it stills. The fire continues to roar defiantly. It will burn the earth if that is the only way it can reach the trees.
The girl has never heard anything so angry, so hungry. It frightens her and she feels her own tears wet against her cheeks. They are warm, warm as the fire, warm as wolf-breath. Suddenly, they become like ice and the girl is frightened. How can her tears be cold? Life is warm, not cold. If her tears are cold, is she then dead?
She is trying to. move her hand to find her heartbeat, when she hears the fire's angry hissing. In its profanities, the girl knows the truth. Her tears have not transformed to ice, rain is falling, rain that will swallow the fire as the fire swallowed…
Everything… The scream rising in her throat is clamped off by teeth at her throat. A growl vibrates against her skin and warns, "Make no noise or it will be your last noise."
Heart pounding, Firekeeper forced herself out of her nightmare, emerging to find waking life as horrible.
She was no longer trapped in that faintly remembered girl child. The air no longer stank of burning and of smoke. She was lying on her back in the soft summer grass of the castle grounds.
But there were fangs at her throat and a furred head hovering over her own, its shape blocking out all the stars as the comet glow haloed it from behind.
Firekeeper's sense of smell, doubly precious after its loss in her dream, knew this wolf was not Blind Seer. Memory identified her enemy a moment later. Northwest, the outlier wolf, called Sharp Fang by his own pack. Even in her fear, Firekeeper felt a flash of humor when she realized that the name was apt indeed.
Blood warm against her skin trickled from where Northwest's fangs had pierced her throat. Firekeeper was very afraid, and in fear, rather than in thought, she acted.
Two arms came up, one on either side of the looming wolf's head. Two hands clapped down upon its ears, thudding hard against the skull. Fingers slid and pinched, twisting the soft-furred, outward-flaring ears, biting them harder than would any summer fly.
Yelping in astonishment and pain, Northwest released her throat. Firekeeper rolled from his reach, bounding to her feet and pulling her Fang from its sheath. She snarled, glowering down at the wolf, her dark, dark eyes grabbing his amber gaze and holding it fast.
Her own blood was flowing down her front now, trickling between her small round breasts and pooling in her navel. Northwest's bite had not been deep, would not have done more than dent a wolf's hide, but Firekeeper's skin was human: soft and easily broken.
Northwest crouched, vulnerable belly and throat low to the ground, but Firekeeper held the Fang in front of her, lightly circling the point. It was not for nothing that she had learned to fight from wolves, with wolve
s.
She knew that Northwest could not leap at her without exposing himself to her blade. He might bring her down, might even kill her, but he himself would find her Fang slashing deep into his belly and mixing up the soft parts there. From such a wound none ever recovered.
Yes, Firekeeper knew this. The question was, did Northwest? He had not grown from pup to wolf in her company as had Blind Seer. He might not realize just how deadly that slim metal blade could be. He might yet risk the leap.
So the wolf-woman stood, poised on the balls of her feet, feeling the warm blood cool as it trickled down her front, unable, unwilling to go off her guard to check the severity of her wound, trusting that it was slight.
Northwest held his crouch, but he did not spring. Instead he accused her:
"You have betrayed us! How can you hold your head so proud and defy me? If I were such as you, I would welcome the killing bite."
"Betrayed you?" asked Firekeeper, though in truth she thought she knew what Northwest meant.
"Aye! Betrayed us to your human kin, run fast on two legs to tell them of our presence and so rob us of the night-swift secrecy that is one of our powers."
Firekeeper could not deny Northwest's accusation, for she had told King Tedric of the Royal Beasts' anger, but she could rob it of its bitter bite.
"I spoke, yes," she said, never lowering the knife tip nor flagging in her watchfulness, "but I no more betrayed my people than does a mother who knocks a pup from its feet lest it walk off a ledge and tumble to its death."
"So you, pup," Northwest sneered, "still so weak you lick your parents' jaws for food, so you are suddenly wise mother to us all?"
Firekeeper felt very tired and her throat was beginning to ache as if terribly bruised. Every sound she made caused the wound to throb and she knew she could not howl, even if she were sure Blind Seer would hear. Worse, yet, if her cries brought humans, for she did not think Northwest would show them any mercy.
"I know that the course you would have the Beasts follow would be bloody disaster for many," she replied, concealing her pain as best she could, "and who made you judge of my actions?"
The Dragon of Despair Page 21
