To Dream of White & Gold (Death Dreamer Legacy Book 1)

by R. K. Hart

  ‘Hmm,’ Maya said, watching Lida closely, her lips pursed. Lida had never lied easily, or well. ‘I’ll look at it later. Will you introduce me?’

  Lida gestured. ‘Katrin Kalisdotter and Eleonora Katisdotter of the Snow Leopard tribe. Dylan Carasson of the Hunting Cats, and Alys Almasdotter of Yoss Lake. Lorcan Merchant, Dar-Oidre of the Kellith,’ she said formally, hoping she had the names right. ‘This is Maya d’Cathan, my elder sister.’

  Maya gave Katrin a short bow. ‘Welcome, lady. You are all welcome.’ She eyed Lorcan, her second bow not quite as low as the first. ‘You are Jakob’s brother?’

  ‘Yes, lady.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Maya said, with a smile Lida knew all too well, green eyes flashing through auburn lashes. Lida gave a silent sigh and tried not to roll her eyes. ‘My father charged your Priom-Oidre with Alida’s wellbeing.’

  Lorcan inclined his head. ‘My brother has entrusted that charge to me.’

  ‘It doesn’t look as if you’re doing a very good job.’

  His expression did not change, but a deep flush of pink rose up his neck, blossoming over his cheeks.

  Maya laughed. ‘Don’t feel too bad,’ she said warmly. ‘I’m sure you’ll get better at it with practice. She’s not easy to look after.’

  ‘I am right here,’ Lida snapped crossly. She turned as the scent of something delicious wafted from the house. ‘May, have you been cooking?’

  Mercifully for Lida, Maya’s attention turned to her efforts in the kitchen, and she helped Lida unsaddle Sacred and rub her down as the northerners quietly followed suit.

  ‘Where is Da?’ Lida said, when Maya had finally stopped talking about quiche.

  ‘At Marnie’s. Her grey pony got colicky. He’s been there most of the day.’ Maya gave a knowing smile. ‘She’s had a lot of sick animals lately.’

  Lida frowned at her. ‘Why say it like that?’

  ‘Gods, Lida, you’re slower than Cathan is.’

  Lida blinked. ‘Da and Marnie?’

  ‘I suppose it could be Antonius, but I don’t think he’s Da’s type. But it’s definitely someone - Cathan has barely been home for two weeks.’

  ‘Maybe it’s lucky I went away,’ Lida said without thinking, dislodging a rock from Sacred’s hoof.

  ‘You and Marius, you mean? Yes, I think that’s for the best.’

  Lida stared at her, flushing, then flicked a glance outside the stable, but it was impossible to tell whether anyone else had heard.

  Maya laughed. ‘Oh, come on, little owl, it’s not like you were subtle about it. I’ve known since … well, for sure since last summer solstice festival. Hard not to know, when one of the patriarchs bales you up and demands you get that Setiian boy off your sister or she’ll be just as ruined as you are.’ She snorted derisively, but there was real anger behind it. ‘Old lech. But I suspected before that.’

  Lida squirmed. ‘We weren’t … we didn’t …’

  ‘You’re not ruined, you mean?’

  ‘You know I don’t believe that.’

  ‘I know.’ Maya ran her hand over Sacred’s warm neck. ‘I figured you’d ask me for help, if you needed it.’

  Lida shook her head. ‘I didn’t even write to him. I didn’t even think of it.’

  Maya studied her sister. It was hard to tell, sometimes, what she should keep from Lida and what she should not, but she opted for the truth this time. ‘He came to the hospice. He was angry, and wanted an explanation.’ She didn’t say that he’d insisted he was owed one; Maya had just as angrily asserted that Lida had made him no promises and owed him nothing. ‘Cathan told me to tell anyone who asked that you’d apprenticed in Brinnica. Marius … he wasn’t exactly happy with that, but he accepted it.’ After she’d threatened to tell his mother that he’d barged into an infirmary and stomped through the wards, disturbing the handful of patients sleeping there. ‘I saw him walking with Nala just yesterday.’

  Maya watched her sister’s face. Crossness, with a hint of guilt; no sadness, no envy, even though Nala was her oldest friend. Her brown eyes flickered quickly back towards where the northerners were wiping down their tack. After a moment, Lida nodded.

  ‘What else have I missed?’

  Maya laughed as they closed the stable door. The northerners followed them silently to the house; Alys and Dylan looked rather wistfully towards the city, though Maya thought the Kalisdotter looked as if she might like a nap. She frowned as she took in the woman’s pale face, the shadows under her eyes, the careless way she’d pulled back her hair.

  ‘You’ve not missed much,’ Maya said as she led them all inside, considering and discarding a handful of reasons for Katrin’s tiredness. ‘Cathan almost came to blows with Jakin at the palace stables again, this time over the training of some foal.’ Maya rolled her eyes again; she didn’t have her father and sister’s love for animals. ‘There was an outbreak of mumps in the banking district; Jula and I were very busy with that. No one died, thank Eianna, though it was touch and go for one of the southside milliner’s little ones - do you remember Breena? She was two years above me at school. She has three bairns now, the littlest one not two summers. Not one of her daughters got her curls - it’s almost a crime - but they all fought like hunting cats and pulled through. The new resident artist at Court has started to repaint the frescoes on the northern face of the forum, the ones of Fiou and Lir. King Triste must like her; I’ve never seen so much gold leaf.’ Maya gestured to the formal sitting room, giving Katrin and Lorcan another small bow; she’d spent the morning dusting and sweeping, and had even found flowers for the normally-forgotten vases - daffodils for new beginnings, and tiny sprigs of forget-me-nots as a cheeky reminder for Lida. They’d both been obsessed with the language of flowers as girls, and though Maya thought Lida had forgotten most of it, she herself still chose carefully when she walked through the flower market. The flowers added a cheeriness to the rarely-used room: Cathan preferred sitting in the kitchen or eating outside. Lida found a bottle of Kingstown whiskey and poured the northerners generous glasses before following Maya into the kitchen.

  Maya steeled herself, running her fingers idly over the bench. ‘Oh - and Malik asked me to handfast,’ she finished, with deliberate casualness.

  ‘What?’ Lida cried. ‘Oh, Maya! What did you say?’

  Maya handed her a basket of tomatoes and a knife. ‘I said I’d think about it.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  Maya started, and began shredding green leaves and herbs for a salad to cover the movement. As usual, Lida had cut right to the heart of things and asked the only question that really mattered, and it was the one to which Maya didn’t have an answer. The big silversmith was handsome, with striking cobalt eyes deep enough to drown in, and his hands and lips were always gentle, but he was also pushy and self-righteous and Maya knew that Lida hated the way he called her girl. Maya didn’t much like it, either. ‘I don’t know. He’s generous and smart, and I like being with him. Is that enough? Is that love?’

  ‘I’m not sure I’m the person to ask, May,’ Lida said, reaching for a tomato. The knife cut easily through the ripe flesh, and she almost nicked her finger with the blade, muttering a Brinnican curse as she inspected her skin.

  Maya grinned, grabbing an onion and slicing it deftly. ‘Well, I’m not asking Cathan. Marnie thinks I should handfast. Jula thinks I should not. I don’t know, though,’ she went on, and she could not keep the sadness from her voice as she wondered what advice their mother might have given. ‘I don’t know if I’m ready, even for handfasting.’

  ‘Is that not an answer in itself?’ her sister said, hesitantly.

  Maya blinked and smiled. ‘Little owl,’ she said. ‘I’ve missed you.’ She sighed. ‘But it bears some thinking about, nonetheless. Now, tell me about the Illarum.’

  Lida told her. Maya knew her well enough to know that there were parts left out, and things not wholly explained; there were too many pauses, too many abrupt changes of topic. She spoke of
the things she thought Maya would be interested in, dwelling on the healing quarter and the gardens, and on a woman named Ava and a man named Mikal. Maya didn’t pry, knowing from past experience that everything else would come out in the fullness of time, asking instead about the healing of Lida’s shoulder, which her sister was unable to give many details about.

  ‘And is Jakob Merchant well?’

  Lida coughed. ‘He was a little tired when I left.’

  Maya smiled, tilting her chin so she looked through her lashes. She knew Lida hated that smile. ‘His brother is handsome, no?’

  Lida rolled her eyes, spared the need to answer by their father’s familiar stomp down the hall; his huge frame filled the doorway.

  ‘Da!’ She threw her knife down to weave her arms around his neck. He gathered her up and she was a child again, tiny in his arms. ‘How is the pony?’

  Cathan laughed and Lida’s chest swelled. The sound was warm and gravelly and familiar. ‘All good, my love,’ he said, kissing her forehead and placing her carefully back on her feet. ‘Sore, but she’s in the sand yard, so she can’t eat any more.’ He frowned at her arm and Lida gave him the same story she’d given Maya, her cheeks heating even further when his brow raised in disapproval at her apparent inept riding.

  Much to Lida’s relief, Maya began piling Cathan’s huge arms with plates and cutlery, ordering him to take it to the sitting room and the waiting northerners. Lida helped Maya wrestle the sizeable pie from the oven with her good hand, cutting it into thick slices, then following suit with the vegetable quiche and the fried fish, carefully slicing along the spine to remove the bones. It was something she and Maya had done many times before, and they moved around one another in a kind of dance as they prepared the food; Lida felt as if she’d never left.

  Cathan did not return from his errand, so Maya and Lida ferried everything to the table; Dylan leapt to help when he saw Lida balancing a bowl of salad one-handed. Cathan had settled himself comfortably next to Katrin and had refilled everyone’s glasses, nursing a full glass for himself as he asked the Brinnican woman after old friends and acquaintances. Lida realised with an odd skip of her heart that if Katrin remembered Siva, it was possible she remembered Cathan, too; she wondered how well her father had known the Kali.

  She slipped into the seat between Cathan and Alys, curbing the urge to lay her head on his arm, as she’d done when she was younger. There was not much conversation, other than that between her father and Katrin; everyone was hungry, and the loudest sound was the chink of cutlery. Dylan and Alys chimed in occasionally, when Cathan asked after a member of their tribes. Maya refilled glasses, though Lida noticed not her own; she wondered whether her sister had been asked to work a night shift at the hospice.

  Maya had taken a seat between Lorcan and Dylan, and once they were all on their second plate of food, she chatted easily to both, laughing often. The afternoon sun suited Maya, turning her auburn hair to fire and warming the honey-brown of her skin. There was a fresco on one side of the Kingstown Justice Hall that showed the goddess Amivere and the sky god Curan laying the table of plenty for the righteous, and Lida always thought of it when she saw Maya in the sun, for her sister was just as lovely as the goddess in the painting. Lorcan did not resemble Curan, though; with his gold skin and black curls, he was closer to Lir, the sea god, or to black-eyed Fiou, the trickster. Dylan was out of place: though his features were even, he was not beautiful like Maya and Lorcan. Lida thought Dylan had a solid realness about him that denied comparison to a god, though when his eyes caught the light they were just as emerald as Maya’s. She imagined him as one of the star people instead, glowing with illae as they stepped onto Eilin soil for the first time after their journey through the sky, bringing stories and languages and plants and animals from their far-away home. Lida didn’t know much about them - no one did, their voices lost to history - but in her mind, they were slightly more than human, taller and stronger, and they all had glowing green eyes like Eianna.

  ‘Lida?’ Alys gently touched her shoulder, eyebrows raised in question.

  Lida shook her head in apology and lifted her whiskey to her lips. ‘Sorry, Aly, I was miles away.’

  Alys repeated her question about King Triste’s wife Rosalind, who had died many years before. Lida told Alys as much as she could, though she had been quite young when the Queen had died. She knew Rosalind had been beloved, at least in the city, and that she had commissioned many of the works in the public gallery. Lida had seen her once, at the spring equinox. She vaguely remembered a lovely Eilin woman with short, light-brown hair and wide, full lips that smiled often. The Queen had given Maya a flower; Maya had kept the pink carnation for years, pressed between the pages of a book. Lida wondered if she still had it.

  ‘She sounds a bit like the Kali,’ Alys murmured under her breath, flicking a glance at Katrin. ‘I’ve only met her once, and she was kind, but very stern. It’s no wonder there’s been no warring between the tribes for her entire term - I don’t think anyone would dare. The Blue Eagles wanted to march against Wex when I was very young, and the rumours were that the Kali just laughed at their request.’ Her ice-blue eyes were very wide. ‘The Blue Eagles are terrifying.’

  Lida pondered this as Alys was drawn into an argument with Ella about the ending of a Brinnican children’s story. It seemed that the tribes often had similar stories with slightly different endings, though they taught the same lesson. Ella insisted that this particular story ended with a child being eaten by a wolf; Alys was equally certain that the child in question fell into a river and drowned. Lida finished her whiskey and wondered idly about the suitability of the story for young children, and what the Kali would be like; every time she tried to imagine her, her mind skittered away from the Brinnican leader and turned instead to what this woman might say about Siva. Lida had so many questions about her mother that they were all but bursting from her chest.

  Cathan refilled Lida’s glass. She was already comfortably lightheaded, her face warm. ‘You look lovely with your hair like that,’ he murmured as he sat the bottle back on the table.

  ‘Alys did it for me.’ Lida pulled the plait around to examine the skilfully laced strands before pushing it back over her shoulder. ‘Tell me about your day, Da,’ she begged, just as she had every afternoon for many years.

  Cathan obliged; before he’d gone to Marnie’s, he’d been on a farm on the northern outskirts of the city, splinting the leg of a cow. Though he was happy to talk about Marnie and her elder son, Antonius, he didn’t mention Marius; Lida wondered if it was deliberate. He told her in a low voice that Jula had come to see him, letting him know that Maya would soon finish her apprenticeship and be able to physic on her own. The stern Brinnican woman had asked him not to tell Maya, as she was hoping Maya would sit the physician’s exams without even realising she was taking them; Maya hated tests. He told her of the palace stablemaster’s dog, Molly, giving birth to a litter of five puppies, one of which had a pair of mismatched eyes, one blue and one brown. He told her of the spirited new foal at the palace stables, and that the King was negotiating the purchase of yet another northern mare.

  Lida sipped her whiskey determinedly as she listened, feeling hollow. There was a hole in his recount, something missing; with a slight start, she realised it was her. It was odd, to feel as if she was somehow absent from her own life, and to know that the characters in her story continued on even when she wasn’t there. She almost resented it. Taking a larger mouthful, she told herself resolutely that she had made the right choice. She could not think otherwise; she would drive herself mad.

  Her father asked about the Illarum, and she reciprocated the storytelling with even more care than she had taken with Maya. She told him of the stables and the gardens, of the workshops and the orchard. She told him of the huge lightwell and the libraries and Tiernan’s teaching room. She told him - in a small voice - of what they’d found in some very old books, and how they thought she might be a dreamer.

/>   Because she was so close to him, she noticed what he instantly tried to hide by picking up his glass: he had moved away from her. It was less than an inch, but it went straight to her chest in a shock that was almost physical. Her stomach twisted as she wondered what he was thinking: is she reading my mind? Will she come into my dreams?

  She tried to shake her hair across her face to recover, forgetting it was braided back and there was nowhere to hide. She swallowed hard as her eyes burned.

  She felt an odd brush over her shield, as if a cat had rubbed its cheek against her mind.

  It is instinctive, a deep voice echoed. He cannot help it.

  Lida looked up; Lorcan took a mouthful of whiskey, his eyes on her face.

  Take a drink or eat something. Leave if you must. Remember that he loves you.

  Lida coughed and brought her own glass to her lips; she realised that she had felt him eavesdrop. His lips curved slightly and he inclined his head, turning back to his conversation with Maya as if nothing had happened.

  The exchange had only taken a few moments, so Lida took a deep breath and went on to tell Cathan in great detail of what she could not do, which was almost everything, clearing her throat occasionally to keep her voice from breaking. She talked about how frustrating it was to be so far behind the other apprentices, and to have so little control over her own gift; it was so useless, she said pointedly, that she might as well not have it at all. She swiftly moved onto safer details: Sacred’s daily routine, her bedroom, the food they ate. She spoke of Ava and her gentleness, and of Jakob and Mikal and the latter’s strict kindness; she spoke of Marlyn and Tomas and Jed and Kieran. Cathan listened attentively, breaking in occasionally to ask a question, or qualify a detail.

  Lida spoke for so long that her head began to spin from the whiskey, and almost everyone at the table was onto their third plate of food. Lida had not finished her first, too busy talking. She tried to finish her bread in an effort to soak up the strong spirit that was making the room pleasantly fuzzy, while listening to her father argue with Dylan.