Reader and Raelynx

by Sharon Shinn

  “So—what?—you want me to stand beside the princess when these serramar come calling? Won’t they think that’s strange?”

  “The logistics aren’t all worked out yet,” Senneth admitted. “But the king wants you to come to the palace tomorrow. There’s to be a luncheon for our guest from Karyndein.”

  Cammon raised his eyebrows. “I won’t be able to tell much about him.”

  She nodded. “I know. I told Baryn that. But since he’s here…” She shrugged. “Can you be at the palace tomorrow by ten in the morning?”

  “It will be nice to see Amalie again,” he remarked.

  Senneth just looked at him a moment, and this time she was more successful at hiding her thoughts. “I don’t know how much time you will actually spend with the princess,” she said at last. “And you know it was different last summer, when we all traveled together. She was quite open with you then, but now—Cammon, I know you think every person was put in this land just to be your friend, but Amalie’s different. You’re a nameless mystic and she’s going to be queen. You’ll have to show her a little reserve—if you’re actually capable of that.”

  Her expression was kind, if rueful, and he didn’t take offense. Indeed, he knew she was right. It was hard for him to understand distinctions of rank and class, especially when, as far as he could tell by the emotions that bubbled up from them, all people were pretty much the same. “All right. I won’t speak to her unless she speaks to me, and then I’ll just be civil and distant.”

  “That would be best. So we’ll see you tomorrow? Come find me, and I’ll take you to the king.”

  That ended their private conference, and they returned to the kitchen for dessert and more conversation. Senneth left shortly afterward, and Cammon informed Jerril he would not be available for lessons the following day—and perhaps for many days to come. He had been invited to the palace to serve the princess, to whom he would not speak.

  But later that night, as he lay awake thinking over the day’s events, Cammon found himself hoping that Amalie did remember him and did offer him at least a remote and formal friendship. He had been one of her favorites last summer, as her whole retinue crisscrossed Gillengaria making stops on the social circuit. It wasn’t like they had ever had a private conversation, for Queen Valri was always two steps away, and they were attended by the regent, four Riders, twenty royal soldiers, and a handful of other mystics. And yet Cammon had liked the princess. She was only a year younger than he was, pretty, with wide brown eyes and that shining hair, and a serious, thoughtful expression that could turn in a moment to an almost childlike delight.

  Her life, he knew, had been circumscribed and strange. Until last year, she had almost never been seen outside the palace, for the king feared attempts on her life and had kept her closely sheltered. It was hard, even for Cammon, to tell how she felt about that—she was oddly hard to read, almost as if she were a visitor from overseas and impenetrable to his particular magic. Like everyone else, he had to judge her interior emotions by the expressions she chose to show outwardly, and he had concluded that she was interested in everything, afraid of very little, pleased at small attentions, and wary about the world in general. And lonely.

  It was the loneliness that called to him most. More than once he had seen a look on her face that reminded him of one he had seen in his own mirror. She had enjoyed herself last summer, surrounded by attendants, fawned over by titled lords and ladies, moving from breakfast to formal dinner to dress ball to breakfast with no apparent weariness. She had seemed to love all the activity, all the commotion.

  She had seemed wistful anytime she thought the season might end.

  He had wondered, now and then, how she amused herself once she was back at the palace. He had not seen her since their return about six months ago. Senneth was wrong—he did realize he could not just presume on a casual acquaintance with royalty—he had made no effort to continue that careless friendship of the road. But he had thought about her. He had wondered if she was lonely again. He had wondered where she might have made friends within the palace, and with whom. He hated to think of her feeling lost and abandoned and solitary and sad.

  CHAPTER

  3

  IT took Cammon about an hour to walk from Jerril’s house to the palace. It was cold, of course, but sunny, for a wonder, and he enjoyed the brisk exercise.

  “Don’t dawdle on your way, now,” Lynnette had told him as she fixed his breakfast and fussed over him a little. He loved it when Lynnette fussed. Her fluttering attention could drive Areel mad, but Cammon couldn’t get enough of the quick pats on the arm, the additional offerings of food, the questions, the worrying. “Keep in mind that you have a destination, and don’t let yourself get sidetracked.”

  Cammon grinned. Lynnette had been with him often enough when a quick walk to the marketplace had resulted in five detours because Cammon sensed someone needing assistance. Once they had come upon a man brutalizing a girl in the alley, his hand across her mouth to keep her from screaming. Lynnette had screeched for help and hit the attacker in the head with a rock, and other passersby had taken him down when he tried to run. Another time, Cammon had insisted they go inside a tumbledown, uninhabited building, and they’d found a baby whimpering there, half dead from neglect.

  “Not even if it’s something important?” he teased.

  “I think the princess is even more important,” she said in a firm voice.

  So he’d bundled up some spare clothes and headed out for the palace, his mind half shielded to keep out the incessant rumble of other people’s thoughts. Mostly he managed to ignore the stray spikes of strong emotion that intruded anyway—a shrill scream that modulated into a laugh, a spasm of grief, a flare of anger—none of them seemed urgent or desperate. He did stop twice to give directions to individuals who stood on street corners looking confused and feeling helpless, but those moments of kindness took very little time, and anyone else would have done the same thing.

  The gate to the palace grounds was guarded by four Riders, all of them familiar to him. “Hey, coming by to visit for a day?” one of them greeted Cammon. “Tired of playing at being a mystic, so now you want to play at being a swordsman?”

  Cammon grinned. “I’ll never be as good at fighting as I will be at magic.”

  “Is Justin coming back?” asked another. Her name was Wen and she was one of only five or six women good enough to be a Rider. She wasn’t very tall, but she was stocky and strong; Cammon had practiced against her often enough to know she was an excellent swordswoman. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “He’s still in the Lirrens, from what I can tell,” Cammon replied.

  “First Tayse married, and now Justin,” said one of the other Riders. “Makes you think anything can happen. The whole world can turn upside down.”

  Wen laughed along with the others, but Cammon caught her buried pulse of regret. She had been half in love with Justin, not that Justin would ever have realized it. And now he’s gone and married himself some strange little creature from the Lirrens. Never even thought about me. Cammon hastily shut his mind, not wanting to eavesdrop on her thoughts, but he felt sorry for her all the same. He liked Wen a great deal, and he knew Justin considered her an excellent comrade. Clearly, that wasn’t enough for Wen.

  “I’m here to see Senneth,” he said.

  “At the palace,” Wen replied. “Go on in.”

  It was still another twenty minutes before he tracked down Senneth. First he had to traverse the wide lawn from the gates to the palace doors, pass another checkpoint there, and then be escorted through the large, sumptuous building. The footman took him to a sunny room decorated in yellow and blue, where Senneth was writing someone a letter. Her brother, Cammon guessed, since she didn’t seem to feel especially warm toward the recipient.

  She laid aside her pen with alacrity, and greeted him with a smile that turned quickly to a frown. “Is that the best you have to wear?” she asked. She was most unusually
dressed—for her—in a long-sleeved blue gown with bits of lace at the throat and cuffs. Her white-blond hair was almost styled, pinned in place with a clip that sported a row of Brassenthwaite sapphires.

  He glanced down at his clothes. “This is the sort of thing I always wear,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “You look like a street urchin, that’s what’s wrong.”

  “I always look like a street urchin, according to you and Kirra.”

  “And when’s the last time someone actually trimmed your hair?”

  “Maybe you should have cut it yourself last night.”

  She sighed. “Come on. Let’s see if I can find any clothes that make you look more respectable.”

  They both knew it was a hopeless task—no matter what he was wearing, Cammon always managed to look like he’d just come back from the ragpicker’s shop. He just didn’t care enough about things to figure out how to wear clothing. He was too focused on people.

  But they hunted up Milo, the king’s steward, who took them to a huge and starchy-smelling room filled with hundreds of uniforms hanging from two levels of rods. Cammon wandered between the rows of jackets and trousers, fingering the woven cloth and elegant braid, and wondered what Areel would make of all these discards from previous fashions for royal servants. Between them, Milo and Senneth quickly culled out a half dozen outfits that they thought would be suitable, and then insisted that Cammon try them all on, one right after the other. He didn’t mind the part about getting half naked, but he was just a little annoyed about all the bother over outward appearances. As if that were what mattered.

  They picked one, black with gold trim, and handed it back to Cammon. “We’ve set aside a room for Cammon’s use,” Milo said in his stately fashion. He was a staid and portly man who behaved with far more formality than King Baryn himself usually displayed. “Perhaps he would like to get himself cleaned and dressed.”

  Now Cammon was surprised. “I’m to live here? I didn’t realize that.”

  “No, but you might need to stay overnight when there are visitors for several days,” Senneth said. “We’re still working out some of the details.”

  “If you’d come with me,” the steward said, and Cammon and Senneth followed him down the halls and up to a room on the third floor. It proved to be somewhat smaller than the ones reserved for Senneth and Kirra and other visiting serramara, but spotless.

  “Quickly, now,” Senneth said as Milo departed. “We want you stationed in the dining hall before all the guests come in.”

  So he changed into the black uniform, submitted to Senneth’s ruthless combing of his hair, washed his face again although he didn’t really think it was necessary, saw her roll her eyes and shrug at the scuff marks on his shoes, and finally she was willing to call him ready. Back down the stairs and through the hallways, past marble archways and rooms decorated with both gold and silver leaf, past statuary, past guards, past every variant of opulence.

  She led him to the grand dining hall, very formal, the walls covered with murals interspersed with gilt-edged mirrors. Servants were busy laying the table, lighting candles, and checking the silver for invisible spots of tarnish.

  “The king will sit here—Amalie here—the Karyndein envoy here,” Senneth said, pointing. “You could stand either there or there. What would work best for you?”

  “It doesn’t really matter. If I could read him, I’d be able to read him from anywhere in the room, but Senneth—”

  “I know. Just do what you can. I’ll be sitting on the other side of him, if that helps you any.”

  He grinned. “Probably the opposite. You’re so clear in my head that you’ll probably just cover up anything he might be thinking.”

  She looked annoyed, then she laughed. “I’ll try to keep my mind quiet. You try to stand there and do nothing to draw attention to yourself.”

  “Just wait and see how invisible I can be.”

  She disappeared, and there was a long, boring wait before anything happened. Cammon perched on the edge of one of the chairs and talked idly to the footmen who would be stationed at other posts around the room. When they heard a rumble of conversation in the adjoining room, they all took their places and assumed solemn expressions, folding their hands behind their backs.

  Finally, finally, the door swung back and King Baryn entered, followed by about twenty guests. The king was tall and thin, with wispy gray hair and a mischievous expression. Queen Valri, who entered at his side, could not have looked more different. She was small-boned and delicate, with a porcelain-white face set off by very short, very lustrous black hair and eyes of an incredible shade of green. She was also at least forty years younger than her husband—twenty-five or so to his sixty-five. In no way did they appear to be well suited. Yet, as always, Cammon picked up from Baryn a strong sense of affection and trust for his young queen, underlying all the complicated intellectual exercises that the king was engaged in as he prepared to entertain a foreign dignitary over a meal.

  From Valri herself, Cammon received no impressions whatsoever. So it had been last summer, no matter how much time they spent together. It was as if she had built herself that walled stone structure that Jerril had described, and set herself within it, and refused to let anyone else inside. If she loved her husband, if she hated him, Cammon could not tell from magic. But she stationed herself at the foot of the table, facing him; she watched him closely; she seemed to pick up his unspoken signals with the ease of long companionship. Cammon’s guess was that she was devoted to him, but he had nothing he would consider to be proof.

  Behind them came Amalie on the arm of the Karyndein ambassador. Cammon allowed himself a moment to be pleased at the picture she made—gold hair, gold dress, gold jewelry, smiling face—before turning his attention to the man at her side. The Karyndein man was not particularly tall but solidly built, with thick dark hair, swarthy skin, and a pronounced mustache. A certain coarseness to his look was counteracted by his smile, which was wide and seemed genuine. Cammon guessed him to be in his midthirties. Young, for an ambassador. Maybe he was the same age as the prince they wanted to force poor Amalie to marry. Even so, thought Cammon somewhat darkly, thirty-five made a bad match for nineteen.

  Cammon couldn’t get a true read of either Amalie or the ambassador, and he was starting to feel aggrieved. From Amalie, he picked up a froth of excitement and happiness—she loved being in company, she loved all the attention and the scripted flattery—but the information was faint, little more than he could have gleaned from merely watching her face. Someone, sometime, had taught her how to shield. He had not expected to be able to scan the ambassador’s thoughts, but he tried anyway, circling the other man’s mind like a hawk quartering a meadow, seeking elusive prey. But the quarry was all burrowed in, safe underground, not to be flushed out.

  Senneth was right behind Amalie, escorted by the regent, and both of them were so easy to read that Cammon relaxed again. Senneth’s mind, as always, was full of glancing observations, quick assessments, and equal parts worry, humor, and readiness. Romar Brendyn, on the other hand, was all business. He was here to support his king, protect his niece, make alliances with foreign nations, and stop trouble from coming to the realm. Very little pretense or subterfuge about Romar Brendyn.

  The others filed in and Cammon scanned them all, but everyone seemed to be just as they presented: aristocrats eager to serve their liege, thinking of little more than prestige, honor, and reputation. No one posing a danger.

  “Thank you all for coming,” Baryn said, and nodded at his wife. “My dear, shall we be seated?”

  The meal seemed to go on forever, and Cammon was soon wishing he’d eaten something before taking up his position, because it was torture to stand so close to such delicious food and know he couldn’t even snatch a morsel. He couldn’t resist, just once, sending Senneth a quick, pitiful wail of I’m hungry!—not as plain as that, of course, because she wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up actual words, but clear enou
gh for her to get the idea. She started, gave him one narrowed, reproving look, and then turned her attention back to the ambassador. She tried to keep her face serious, but he could tell she was having trouble holding back a smile.

  Cammon had been so intent on listening to the interior monologues that he hadn’t paid much attention to the audible conversation, but that changed when the Karyndein ambassador abruptly came to his feet.

  “Esteemed king, gracious queen, noble guests, most beautiful princess,” he said, bowing in the appropriate directions as he spoke. His voice was heavily accented, but his pronunciation was perfect. “I have so much enjoyed my brief stay here and am looking forward to another week in your excellent company. I would like to express my appreciation—indeed, the appreciation of all Karyndein—with a humble gift. May I have my servants bring it in now?”

  Cammon doubted there was anything humble about the offering. It was no doubt the item that Areel had sensed “glowing” in the foreigner’s carriage when it arrived at the gates of the city. He straightened a little (it seemed he had started to slump), but so did everyone else in the room. What might a man from Karyndein consider rich enough to serve as a gift to a king? It would have to be quite special.

  “Most certainly you may send for it,” Baryn said, and one of the footmen disappeared out the door. “But my dear Khoshku, how unexpected! You did not have to buy our favor with lavish attentions.” This was a lie, as Cammon could plainly tell. Everyone expected an exchange of expensive gifts. Baryn had a pile of them ready to give Khoshku before he sailed for home.

  “Just a trifle, a small sample, something that is very common in Karyndein and we thought perhaps would be unusual and welcome in Gillengaria.”

  Talk continued in the same vein while they awaited the arrival of Khoshku’s servants. Footmen circled the table, refilling glasses and removing plates. Some of the guests whispered to each other, speculating about the nature of the gift.