He nodded. “May we sleep here?” he asked Rikert. It might be somewhat untidy and none too clean, but the house was warm, and if there were strangers at the inn, this would be better.
“As long as you want.”
I put my wet cloak back on and trudged through the slush, across the square to the inn. And it was a good thing Nico wasn’t with me. All in all, five strangers were sitting at two of the inn’s tables, and even though none of them seemed to be Dragon men, there were probably an awful lot of common folk who had no aversion to earning a hundred gold marks.
At first, I could barely recognize Sasia. She looked all grown up now. Her hair was longer, she was taller… and she had breasts now. She looked really pretty. Lucky her. Not like me, who only grew more and more awkward and peculiar and looked like some kind of underground spirit that had been dragged from a bog.
“Good evening,” she said politely. “Just a moment and I’ll—” and then she recognized me. “Dina! Dina, is it really you?”
I nodded. There was suddenly a big lump in my throat. Sasia put her tray down and wiped her hands on her apron, looking shy.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Not really. But I only nodded. How could I explain everything that was wrong with me? No, I’m not all right, I’m on the run with the rightful heir of Dunark and his affianced wife whom I can’t stand, people are constantly trying to capture us or kill us, I’m not sure my mother likes me anymore because it looks like I’m turning into a Blackmaster, and oh, I really, really hate my hair. No, it was better not to start on all that.
Sasia put her arms around me and gave me an abrupt little hug.
“I’ve thought about you so much,” she said.
“So have I,” said another voice.
I spun. One of the guests had risen from his table and now stood between me and the door.
It was Azuan.
DINA
A Rare Pearl
“Who is that?” whispered Sasia.
“My… my uncle.” Would I be able to slip through the kitchens and make a dash for the back door?
“There is no need to run away,” said Azuan. “I merely wish to speak to you.”
Oh, sure. My elbow was still bruised from where he had held on to me the last time he wished to “speak to me.”
“What is there to talk about?” I said, taking a small step closer to the kitchen door.
“Your father. Your mother. And you.”
I stopped without meaning to. My father, my mother, and me. Well, yes, there might be a few things in that which were worth talking about. But not… not with someone who had tried to buy me like a horse or a dog. If only he wasn’t so like my father. It wasn’t fair. I felt a huge black hole inside every time I looked at him.
On the other hand, perhaps talking to him here, in the inn, with lots of people about, it might not be so dangerous. Here in Birches at least there were plenty of people who wouldn’t just stand by and watch if he tried to make off with me.
“How did you find me?” I asked, stalling for time while I worked things out in my head.
“There were quite a few people in Dunark who knew the name of the Shamer’s village. I thought you might return home if you had the chance, and here you are.”
Yes. Stupid old me.
“Please sit down, Dina. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Sasia was listening to this, and her eyes were getting bigger and bigger, which was no wonder. She had never heard that I had an uncle, or even a father. And up till now this had hardly been the sort of conversation normal uncles had with their nieces.
“Do you want me to call for Papa?” she quietly asked. The inn had no bouncer as such. Sasia’s papa was quite big enough to handle that job himself if the need arose, and the mere thought made me much calmer. No, Azuan wouldn’t hurt me. He couldn’t. Not here.
“Not yet,” I said, loudly enough for Azuan to hear. “But if he so much as lays a finger on me—”
Sasia nodded, her eyes bigger still. “Just say the word.”
Azuan was listening to this with the suggestion of a smile, a smile that reminded me so much of my father’s.
“Are you done marshaling your troops?” he asked.
“We can talk,” I said. “But don’t try to force me to do anything, and don’t think I’m going anywhere with you.”
He delivered a small bow, still with the same faint smile.
“As you please,” he said. “Would the Medamina like to sit?”
I sat.
“What is it you want with me?”
“First of all: where is he?”
My first thought was of Nico, and I sat there in a panic, wondering how much Azuan knew. But then I remembered that he had asked me the same question in Dunbara, and that the “he” was Sezuan.
“He is dead,” I said, feeling the tears prickle just because I had to say the words. “He… he was killed at the Sagisburg.”
Azuan sat unmoving and silent for quite a while.
“By whom?” he finally said.
“One of Prince Arthos’s Educators. Master Vardo. He died too.”
Azuan nodded, as if that was to be expected.
“Then I must return without him,” he said. “The Matriarcha will not be pleased.”
“Who?”
“Her Serenity the Matriarcha Ineze Sina. My aunt. Your grandmother’s sister.”
I did know that my grandmother was dead and that her sister had assumed her place. This was just the first time I had heard her name.
“I’m not pleased either,” I said. “But that is what happened.”
“When?”
“Just after midsummer.” Almost at the same time as Ellyn, I realized. How strange to think that a person who had meant so much to us had died without us knowing it. Melli still didn’t know, nor Davin. In their minds she was still alive.
“And before he died, he gave you his flute?”
I nodded.
“And taught you how to use it?”
“A little.”
“You must have been a most apt student. You almost had me slumbering in that small room back in Dunbara.”
I looked at him. Even him? What did he mean?
“Are you a Blackmaster?” I asked.
“After a fashion,” he said. “But not the ordinary kind.”
I had met only one Blackmaster in my life before this, so I didn’t know what he meant by “the ordinary kind.” Was Sezuan ordinary?
“Why are you so afraid of me?” he asked.
“You wanted to buy me.”
“Yes. Ransom you from the clutches of Cador. Or the Crow, as he seems to be called. Were you happy to be with him?”
Hardly. I shook my head.
“So I did you a favor. Or would have done, if you had let me.”
“But if you had bought me, would you then have set me free?”
“You obviously wouldn’t believe me if I said yes.”
I thought about that for a while.
“No, probably not.”
“But why? Why do you expect such bad things of me?”
It was the greed. The hungry way he looked at me. And also my mother’s fear of his family. But then, she had been scared of Sezuan too, more than she had to be.
“How much did he want? The Crow.”
“Seventy silver marks.”
I nodded. That was exactly what the discarded cargo was worth, so that made a kind of sense.
“And you would have paid him so much?”
“I think you are well worth it. That and more.”
Was I supposed to feel flattered?
“And do you really expect me to believe that you would fork out that kind of money on my behalf and just let me walk away?”
He shook his head, but not in refusal. It looked more like a kind of wonder.
“I don’t understand you, Dina. Don’t you realize what we are offering you?”
No, not really. We had never got that far.<
br />
“The Palace of the Matriarcha is among the greatest in Colmonte. The Sinas possess enormous riches, huge tracts of land. You would be celebrated and admired for your ability. You… you are a rare pearl, Dina, a human being possessed of two such unusual gifts at once. Seventy silver marks! You are worth infinitely more than that, but people here do not see your worth. I heard how the sailors talked of you. Like you were some kind of witch or demon. Your life here is poverty and danger, scorn, fear, and persecution. Loneliness too, I should imagine. Why should you fear the life we want to offer you?”
I didn’t know what to say. He made it sound like I was some kind of princess who for mysterious reasons chose to roll in the gutter rather than sit on a throne dressed in velvets and silks. And what he said about the fear and the persecution, that was true. Even my mother… even my mother feared what my father had passed on to me. That which was in me, whether I wanted it or not.
“If you buy something,” I slowly said, “then it is because you think you can own it.”
He looked at me politely and expectantly, like he was still waiting for the point. When he realized that for me this was the point, he gave me another of his disbelieving headshakes.
“But we are all owned by somebody,” he said. “We all belong to someone or something. The Crow thought you were his to sell, but you tricked him, for which I applaud you. A low person such as he should not own a… a pearl like you. But I think the one you really belong to is your mother. Am I right?”
“I—” I broke off. I was about to say that I didn’t belong to anybody. But I found I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be true. “She doesn’t own me,” I said. “It makes a difference.”
“Strong people may sometimes decide for themselves who they want to belong to,” he said. “You might be strong enough for that, I think. That was why the Crow couldn’t hold you. And why your mother will not be able to hold you either. When I look at you now, I can see that you are no longer fully hers. Some day you will be entirely free of her. But be careful. Those who belong to nothing and no one, they are not human beings anymore.”
That scared me to the bone. It was as if huge cracks in the earth were suddenly opening beneath my feet. What if he was right? I wanted so to be my mother’s daughter, but if she could love only the part of me that was hers and not the part that was my father’s gift to me… I thought of the words of the Spinner: The thread has twained, but you cannot be two. Choose—before both threads are severed. Did I have to be either my mother’s or my father’s? Couldn’t I be both? And be myself?
“Who do you belong to?” I asked.
He answered without hesitation. “The House of Sina. My family.”
“And you can live with that?”
“I am proud of it. Dina, we would treasure you. You have no idea how highly we would value you. We would teach you to perfect your gifts—both your mother’s and your father’s. And we would honor you for your perfection.”
“And keep me in a cage? Like a rare bird?” Valdracu had certainly treasured me and taken pride in me. His rare bird, his witch and his weapon, obedient to his will.
Azuan actually looked horrified. “A cage! What must you think of us? Of course not. You would be entirely free to come and go as you pleased.”
“And if I wanted to leave you completely?”
He bowed his head. “It would pain us. But it is not a choice I think you would make, Dina. Not once you knew us.” He stirred. I think he meant to take my hand and then thought better of it, remembering how I had threatened him with Sasia’s father if he touched me. “Dina, how can you reject us so without even knowing us? It is bad enough that I must return home to say we have lost Sezuan. He, too, was a rare gem, and much treasured. But if instead I could show you to them and say, ‘This is his daughter, and she is everything he was, and more,’ Dina, they would sing and dance and celebrate. They would rejoice. And they would honor you.”
I had to blink away fresh tears. He meant it. I could feel the truth in him. And the mere thought that someone would rejoice and… and celebrate me… she is everything he is, and more. Here, people tended to cringe and run away from me. Or cross to the other side of the street, at least.
“I can’t,” I whispered, torn by a strange sense of loss. “I can’t come with you.”
He looked at me with a piercing intent. “You still belong to your mother,” he said.
“No. Or yes, but not in that way. But there are people here I can’t just turn my back on.” Don’t tell him about Nico, I told myself firmly. He doesn’t need to know.
“It grieves me,” he said. “But you must do as you please.”
I frowned. “You mean, that’s it, and now you go home?” I felt curiously insulted that he should give in so easily, what with all his talk of rare pearls and treasuring.
“No,” he said with the half-smile that reminded me so much of Papa. “But if you will not come with me, I must come with you. Until the day comes when you are ready to make a different choice.”
My mouth fell open. “You mean—Do you mean that you will…” follow me around like a dog was what I nearly said, but that would have been pretty rude. “Are you going to follow me?”
“Yes. If we might walk beside each other, I would prefer it so. But if I must walk behind, then so be it. Someone will have to look after you in these barbaric lands where a gift is regarded as a curse and they burn people for having a gift not given to everyone.”
I was utterly stunned. “But I don’t want you with me.”
“No. That is your choice. But you cannot prevent me from being your shadow.”
That was the very last thing he should have said. Master and Shadow. My father’s brother Nazim. Azuan’s brother too, come to think of it, a mad creature, barely human, and yet a man whose life had been ruined and broken because he had convinced himself that my father had stolen his soul and his name so that only Shadow was left. I did not want a Shadow like that. I did not.
I rose abruptly.
“Stay away from me,” I said, and heard the tremor in my own voice. “Far away. I don’t want you.”
He regarded me calmly.
“You make your choices, and I make mine,” he said. “It is not within your powers to prevent me.”
“Dina, should I call Papa?” asked Sasia, who must have been eavesdropping. “Do you want us to show him out?”
“Show him out” in the parlance of the inn meant toss him out on his ear. But I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “Let him stay. I’m leaving anyway.”
And I staggered out of the inn on legs that felt like they didn’t belong to me, out into the darkness and the snow, with no thought for the dinner I had promised to get us.
A Shadow of my very own?
Not if I had anything to do with it.
Nico looked up as I came in and had no trouble spotting my misery.
“What’s wrong?”
I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell him about Azuan, because that might mean talking about the serpent gift, and there were still a few people left in the world who didn’t know I had it. Rikert, for instance, and probably Carmian too. But if Azuan really was intent on his Shadow game, it couldn’t be kept a secret for long.
“Azuan is in Birches,” I said. “Sitting in the inn, having a beer.”
“Azuan?” Nico raised a questioning eyebrow. And only then did I realize that I had never told him the full story about what had happened to me the night the Crow tried to sell me.
“He is Sezuan’s brother,” I said. “Half brother, anyway.” Nico knew how terrified my mother was of Sezuan’s family. “Did he… did he hurt you, Dina?”
I shook my head. “No. It wasn’t like that. But he said he would follow me. He said he wanted to look after me. And I don’t want him to.”
Carmian snorted. “That seems to be the effect you have on men, little darling. They all want to look after you.”
Nico gave her a sharp glance. “Can’t you just
call her Dina?” he said. “Instead of all those nicknames.”
“Little darling is not a nickname.”
“It’s not her name either.”
“Oh, I do beg your pardon. So perhaps I should call you His Highness Prince Nicodemus Ravens? Because that’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Carmian, stop it.”
“Why? Lessons in etiquette are obviously sorely needed here. We don’t want your future wife to embarrass you in public, now do we?”
“Carmian, I said stop—”
“Anything else you’d like me not to do? Burp at the table? Lick my fingers? Just say the word. I’m a very quick student.”
She had finally succeeded in making Nico angry.
“First of all,” he said in the sharpest and most cutting tone I had ever heard him use, “first of all, you might take note of the fact that not everything in this world revolves around you. And secondly, a little common courtesy would not go amiss.”
Carmian was on her feet now. Her eyes were very bright, and you could almost see the fury in her, like a shimmer of heat from an oven.
“My Lord Prince must excuse me,” she said. “In the future, I shall try to know my place.”
“Where are you going?” asked Nico.
“Out. To get My Lord’s dinner. Isn’t that what the little wife should do?”
And with that, she stormed out of the house.
Rikert had followed the row with growing interest.
“Is that true?” he said. “Are you really going to marry her?”
“If I ever succeed in killing Drakan,” said Nico, looking as if letting Drakan live seemed quite tempting right now.
“She is… something else,” murmured Rikert. “Not quite your ordinary woman.”
“No,” said Nico. “Ordinary, she is not.”
Carmian took her own sweet time in getting back. But when she did return, she brought the finest dinner the inn had to offer: roast goose with apples and a honey glaze, and prune pie for dessert.
“You made them roast a goose?” I said reproachfully. “We could have eaten lamb stew like the rest of them.”
“Save your outrage,” she said drily. “They were paid handsomely for everything.”
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