Reader and Raelynx

by Sharon Shinn

  “Good afternoon, serras,” his companion said. The younger man might have been fifty, a little plump, a little weary, but his round face held a look of peace that Senneth instantly liked. “My uncle wanted to meet you. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Senneth said. “Is he a mystic? Would he like to offer us help in protecting the kingdom?”

  Both men laughed, the younger one looking rueful and the older one delighted. “I’m afraid my uncle Virdon isn’t in good enough shape to travel so far as Ghosenhall,” he said. “But he does have power and you would surely find it useful.”

  Senneth slipped around the table to join Kirra and gestured at the other side of the booth. “Sit. Tell us about your uncle.”

  It took a certain amount of shuffling and guidance, but eventually Virdon and his nephew were situated. “I’m Chake, by the way,” the nephew said. “My uncle was most impressed with how you flung fire about last night. I’m not sure he would have come to see you otherwise, but the elemental magic appeals to him.”

  “Can he call fire?” she asked.

  Old man Virdon spoke up for the first time in a gruff and thready voice. “Water,” he said. “It speaks to me.”

  “Really?” Senneth said politely.

  Chake nodded. “It doesn’t just speak to him, it obeys him. When he was younger, he could call rain down on the sunniest day. I’ve seen him put his palm to dry ground and draw water up from some deep underground source. There was a boy once who almost drowned in a river. And my uncle waded into the water and put his hands down in the current and just pushed that water back. It stopped flowing, serra, long enough for the boy’s mother to rush out through the muddy riverbed and snatch up her child. There are other stories that my mother told, but those I saw for myself.”

  “Those are quite impressive,” Senneth said. “You make me sorry that he is too weak to travel. Did you inherit any power?”

  “None to speak of,” Chake said. He cupped his hand over Senneth’s glass and a drop of water broke free of the greater mass and leapt upward into his palm. He turned his hand over and back, over and back, and the droplet rolled like a pearl across the upturned surface of his skin. Then he wove it between his fingers like a coin that he had pulled out to do tricks for children. “This is about the extent of my skill. But my uncle is truly gifted.”

  Virdon leaned forward, his blind eyes turned toward Senneth. “Ocean talks to me,” he wheezed. “Tells me a strange story.”

  “And what story might that be?” she asked.

  He waved his hands as if to indicate the sea not so far from the tavern door. “Boats,” he said. “Hundreds of boats. Lined up in the waters outside of Forten City.”

  Senneth stared at him and felt every vein in her body turn icy. Beside her, Kirra grew rigid. “What else can you tell me about these boats?” she said in a soft voice. “How big are they? What’s their cargo?”

  “Big,” he said. “Heavy in the water. Don’t know what they carry, but every day they’re fouling the currents with excrement and piss.”

  “Troop ships,” Kirra breathed.

  Senneth nodded slightly. “Do you know—can you tell where they’re from?”

  Virdon shook his head, and his voice was a little petulant. “Usually the ocean tells me everything, talks about the wood in the hulls and the cargo in the holds. Tells me about the fish in the water, how many there are, where they’re swimming. But it’s keeping secrets from me, the ocean is. It only tells me that those boats are there and they’re waiting.”

  “Foreign ships,” Kirra whispered in Senneth’s ear. “That’s why he can’t pick up much detail about them.”

  She nodded and whispered back, “So, how can he know anything about them at all?”

  The faintest smile crossed Kirra’s lips. “The water tells him. And the water isn’t happy.”

  Senneth addressed Virdon again. “Do you know how long they’ve been there?”

  “Some started arriving about a month ago. More come every day.”

  “Are more on the way?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. Too far away—the water won’t let me know.”

  “Well, the water has given you plenty of valuable information, and I thank you with the utmost sincerity,” Senneth said. She glanced at Chake, trying to assess his economic status. Would he be pleased or offended if she offered him money for Virdon’s information? “Is there some way I can show appreciation to your uncle for sharing this news with me?”

  “No payment required,” Chake said. “But my uncle is never so delighted as when he gets a chance to see someone else’s magic at work.”

  Senneth glanced at Kirra, for a shape-shifter’s effects could be far more long-lasting than those of a fire mystic. “Hand me that knife,” Kirra said, and the old man passed over an unused bread knife from their afternoon meal. She balanced it between her palms and concentrated fiercely for a moment. Suddenly it fell to the table with a jangle and revealed itself to be a silver bracelet made of heavy, interconnected links. Kirra picked it up and passed it over to the old man, whose hand was already outstretched.

  “Perhaps you might like to wear this as a remembrance of the afternoon you talked magic with Senneth Brassenthwaite and Kirra Danalustrous,” Kirra said grandly. “And it will remind you of how grateful we were to learn your news.”

  Chake smiled. “Thank you. We won’t take up any more of your time. Thank you again.”

  They left just as Tayse and Donnal were returning. Darryn was a few steps behind and instantly joined them when Kirra waved him over. Senneth slumped on the bench next to Kirra while the men slipped into the booth across from them. Donnal settled under the table at Kirra’s feet.

  “What’s wrong?” Tayse said. “What did you learn?”

  “That old man who just left. A mystic who apparently communicates with the ocean. I never heard of such a thing, but I believed him,” Senneth said.

  “I believed him, too,” Kirra added.

  “He says there’s a fleet of ships right outside of Forten City, just sitting in the water, waiting. Big ships. Sounded like they were crammed with men. He couldn’t say how many, but more are coming every day.”

  Tayse instantly analyzed the information. “Soldiers from outside Gillengaria being imported to fight this war?” he said.

  Darryn looked stricken. “Has to be.”

  “Makes sense,” Tayse said. “Explains the gold.”

  “What gold?” Darryn demanded.

  “We heard rumors last year,” Tayse replied. “That Coralinda Gisseltess had a fortune in gold piled up in the convent. Probably gathering it to help her brother and Rayson Fortunalt pay for an army of foreign mercenaries.”

  “I feel sick,” Kirra said.

  “Also explains why they’ve waited so long to launch their attack,” Tayse continued. “It takes a while to recruit soldiers from overseas.”

  “I thought they were just waiting for spring,” Senneth said.

  “Now they are. But we’ve heard rumors of war for a year. Why didn’t they attack last spring? It didn’t make sense—until you realize they were raising foreign troops.”

  Senneth appealed to Darryn. “Why didn’t your mother alert us? Surely she’s got trade ships sailing out toward Arberharst and Sovenfeld. Surely one of her merchant captains would have seen something?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe not. My mother’s been so worried about war these past few months that she’s practically closed the borders. All the sea captains that normally engage in trade have been pressed into service to guard the coasts. Rappengrass has always had good land soldiers, but we’ve never had much of a military force on the water. She’s doing what she can to make us less vulnerable there.”

  “Then you need to get to Rappen Manor right away,” Kirra said. “And tell her there’s a navy piling up not too far from her ports.”

  He nodded. “I was planning on leaving tomorrow.”

  “This is horrifying,” Senne
th said. “We were already worried that we wouldn’t have the numbers—that more Houses would rise up in rebellion than would stay loyal to the crown. But if they’ve hired outsiders as well—”

  Tayse nodded. “It tilts the odds against us significantly.”

  “Senneth,” Kirra said. “It’s worse than that! If Rayson and Halchon bring in foreign troops, we’ll be helpless! You and I and all the mystics—our magic won’t work against anyone not born in Gillengaria!”

  “Bright Mother burn me in ashes to the ground,” Senneth swore. But Tayse offered her a small, calm smile.

  “You can still battle the native-born traitors,” he said softly. “But Riders don’t need magic to defend the king. We will fight as we have always fought, with sword and spear and bow and bare hands. This changes nothing for us.”

  “Except that you will face more enemies!” Senneth exclaimed. “Except that you are more likely to be defeated!”

  Now he laughed outright. “We might face more foes,” he said, “but we will not be overcome.”

  THERE was no need to stay longer in Carrebos, and the next day, anxious and unsettled, Senneth packed for home. A group of twenty mystics from Carrebos had agreed to come with her to the royal city, a selection of shape-shifters, healers, readers, fire-callers, and a few with powers she couldn’t quite name but nonetheless respected.

  “What in the world are you going to do with them when you get back?” Kirra asked. She wasn’t bothering to pack. She was going to change herself to a hawk and fly for Danan Hall alongside Donnal, and she planned to leave behind all the clothes she had manufactured for herself during their brief stay.

  “I’m going to find a makeshift barracks for them somewhere in the city and make Jerril responsible for training them all,” she said. “Except for the shape-shifters, whom I plan to bring to the palace grounds so they can roam around sniffing for trouble. It will be very strange. I have no idea how we’ll control them all. I just know that I want them nearby and feeling friendly toward me.”

  “Well, don’t forget that you have to be at Danan Hall in something under three weeks,” Kirra said. “Make your trip to Ghosenhall quickly, then head out as soon as you can. If you’re not there for Casserah’s wedding to Will—”

  “Kiernan will be there, surely, and Nate and Harris,” Senneth said. “If Will has all his brothers there, he won’t mind if I miss the event.”

  “But I’ll mind,” Kirra said. “How will I endure if I am there by myself?”

  “Don’t go,” Senneth advised. “Then there will be nothing to endure.”

  But that was not an option for Kirra—not an option for Senneth, either, if she wanted to maintain the fragile good relations she had established with her brothers this past year.

  “I just had a thought!” Kirra exclaimed. “Will Nate bring Sabina Gisseltess along? How odd that will be! And yet you know my father would not turn her away.”

  Sabina Gisseltess had run away from her husband, Halchon, last year and had been offered sanctuary at Brassen Court. It had quickly become clear to Senneth that Sabina and the insufferable Nate had been in love with each other all this time—Imagine! Someone pining for Nate for fifteen years!—which made her wish even more passionately that something would happen to strike Halchon Gisseltess dead. Not that Senneth could blame Sabina for wanting to escape her husband, for Halchon had made it very clear his frail wife had become an encumbrance he was prepared to shed. He wanted to be free to make an alliance with a powerful serramarra who might join him in Ghosenhall to rule Gillengaria, once he had wrested the throne from Baryn.

  He wanted to marry Senneth. And Senneth would rather die herself than come close enough to touch the fingers of his hand.

  “That’s certainly a reason for me to be there,” Senneth agreed. “To watch Sabina explain her presence in Kiernan’s household. I will try to come.”

  Kirra and Donnal were gone within the hour. It took rather more time for Senneth to round up her recruits, make sure they all had horses and provisions, and urge them to keep in a close formation on the road once they set out. They didn’t get as far as she would have liked before nightfall, and the second day was just about as disorganized as the first.

  “It looks like our return trip will be far less efficient than our outbound journey,” she said to Tayse as they made camp that second night.

  “At least we’re well guarded at night,” he said. “Hard to surprise a party of readers and shape-shifters.”

  “I feel the need to hurry, though,” she said. “I have the feeling that Cammon is distressed about something.”

  Tayse instantly looked solemn. “How distressed? Does he want us back immediately? We could force the pace harder tomorrow.”

  She shook her head. “No—I don’t get the sense that there’s terrible trouble. Just that he’s out of his depth.”

  Tayse relaxed a little. “Guarding a princess and arguing with a queen,” he said. “Yes, I imagine he is.”

  The third day was a little smoother, as they got into the rhythm of the trip. All the mystics continued to be somewhat in fear of Tayse; their primary interaction with soldiers in the past had usually been violent as civil guards and Coralinda Gisseltess’s men had hunted them down. So they gave him a wide berth and scrambled to do his bidding whenever he made the mildest suggestion. Senneth sighed to watch them. She hadn’t gathered much of an army if her recruits were afraid of one lone Rider.

  They were a little afraid of her as well, though that didn’t bother her as much; she was used to others eyeing her askance. It wasn’t her magic that impressed this group, she thought, but her self-confidence, her refusal to offer any kind of apology for her ability. They had spent so long hiding their skills and suffering because of their magic. They couldn’t understand Senneth’s calm acceptance of her gift.

  The thought made her want to offer a bitter smile. The Bright Mother alone knew how much magic had cost her. She was damned if she would repudiate it now.

  Of course, there was another reason this motley troop of mystics looked at her with wide and uncertain eyes. She wore a moonstone bracelet on her wrist and seemed not to feel it burn her—or care if it did. More than once as she was talking with some of her new companions, she saw their eyes drift down toward her left hand. Their attention would fasten on the softly glowing stones that encircled her wrist and they would completely lose the thread of the conversation. None of them could touch a moonstone, of course. Even Kirra would yelp in pain if one of those gems came in contact with her skin. A mystic bound with moonstones was helpless, stripped of power.

  Coralinda Gisseltess and her followers all draped themselves in moonstones. The Pale Mother had taken the jewel as her own—and the Pale Mother hated mystics.

  Long ago Senneth had determined that nothing, nothing, would be denied to her simply because of the magic in her veins. She was stronger than hatred, than intolerance, than fear; she could survive punishment, banishment, despair. She would not be afraid of a few pretty rocks, malicious though they might be. She would wear moonstones, and the slight, constant tingle of fire at her wrist would simply remind her that the outside world was as full of heat and turmoil as her soul.

  “You’re not afraid of anything, are you?” one of the recruits asked her that night after they had made an untidy camp. The speaker was a young man, maybe Cammon’s age, a fluid shape-shifter with a sad, hunted face. He had asked the question because she had showed no alarm at a quick scuffle between two of the other mystics, though the threat of conflict had sent this young man cowering to the other side of the fire.

  Senneth glanced at him. “I’m afraid of more things than I could name in an hour just sitting here counting them off,” she said.

  “You don’t act like it,” he said, half admiring and half resentful.

  She smiled and fed another branch into the flames. “Because what I’m most afraid of is having fear control me,” she said. “And so I will not give in to it, no matter what that cos
ts me.”

  He was still mulling her words over that night when they all took to their bedrolls and slept.

  Senneth’s magic made the warmth of the fire extend all around the camp, but as they set out in the morning, they instantly encountered deep chill and ground frozen so hard that the horses’ hooves rang against it. Tayse picked up the pace just to keep them all warm. Even so, they were barely halfway through the return journey when they made camp that night. Senneth wished, not for the first time, she had a shape-shifter’s skills and could fly the remaining distance to Ghosenhall in a day.

  It was still cold the following day, and they continued their faster rate of travel. They were an hour or two past their noontime break when a sudden, sharp cry had Senneth reining back hard. She looked around swiftly, but no one in her party seemed disturbed—seemed even to have heard anything. Tayse, riding some distance in the lead, hadn’t even turned around, and there was no chance Tayse would have failed to react to such a call of distress.

  Heart pounding, she slowed her horse still more, then closed her eyes and opened her mind. There it was again, just as urgent, but a little more clear. Cammon’s voice, Cammon’s words.

  Senneth! I need you!

  CHAPTER

  21

  AFTER what Justin liked to call “the raelynx incident,” they had two days of relative calm at the palace. Cammon found himself in Amalie’s presence most of that time, though they were never for a minute unchaperoned, and he was fairly careful not to communicate with her silently, either by accident or by design.

  But there had been a subtle shift of power, and he and Valri, at least, were aware of it. Amalie was more sure of herself, a little less willing to be guided by the queen. It was hard to pinpoint the change, exactly, because in those two days Amalie did not engage in any overt act of mutiny and never showed Valri the slightest impoliteness. But there was a certain set to her jaw, a speculative expression in her eyes. She looked like a cat that was considering a jump to a high wall, not sure if she could make the leap but almost determined to try.