The Very Best of Kate Elliott by Kate Elliott
She had already taken in the baby into her heart. In her arms he bided restfully, his earnest infant gaze fixed on her mouth and eyes. She caught Tuvi’s gaze and held it. “Please tell me, Tuvi-lo. How is Atani? Is he taken care of? Is he healthy? Is he happy? Does he have companions?”
He sighed as though the words pained him. “He is cherished by all who know him, Mistress. He is a good boy, an obedient boy, perhaps a bit timid.”
“Has he any playmates, so he isn’t lonely?”
“He is just a year older than the eldest of his sisters. He adores her, and she has courage enough for both. He is gentle and kind with his other younger sisters, and they think he is the sun in their sky. He is intelligent, like his father. He studies hard to master all that he should at the palace school, where there are boys his own age who treat him with the respect he deserves. The Lady Zayrah treats him as her own. She loves him with true affection, if that is what concerns you.”
“Does Atani love her as a mother?” she asked, the words bitter on her lips as she closed her eyes against the knife of grief. She’d thought the wound healed, but it would never heal.
“He does, Mistress.”
She could not speak. The baby fussed a little, and she opened her eyes as she rocked him enough to distract him. Raggedly, she said,“That is well, then. That is well.”
“We must be gone long before the dawn, so none suspect where the child came from. We’ve been giving him sheep’s milk.”
“Miravia will give birth in a day or two. She can nurse him with his cousin.”
To her surprise, he touched her on one arm, an astonishing display from the tough old soldier.“Be well, Mistress. Do not think I have forgotten you.”
“I know where your duty lies.”
She wanted to ask if the women of the palace treated him well, if they had found a proper wife for him, to replace the one he had been forced to leave behind in the Qin homeland so many years ago because he had followed his duty, which was his captain. But she thought the question would be cruel, for what if they had not? What if no one but her cared anything for Chief Tuvi except as a weapon serving the commander?
He smiled, as if she had spoken with her expression.“I found a good woman, a widow, an older woman. We deal together very well, she and I. I thought you would want to know.” With tears on her cheeks she embraced him as a niece would embrace a beloved uncle. “I will deliver what you are owed,” he said, handing over a leather pouch with some small items for the baby.“Be well, Mistress.”
She let him go, as she must. He mounted, and the riders vanished into the darkness. The fall of hooves on stone faded. The distant shush of the incoming tide swallowing the tidal flats soon became the only sound in the sleeping town except for Arasit’s restful breathing. The bag included a leather bottle with a bit of fresh sheep’s milk still left. Mai fed the baby as ghosts slipped noiselessly past her on the dying winds of the old year and the birthing winds of the new.
Footsteps scuffed the silence. She looked up to see the young man stroll effortlessly out of the darkness. She was surprised and yet not surprised, at once sorting through possible responses and potential lines of attack. He halted at the base of the steps, unslung a bag from his shoulder, and swung it as if to loft it onto the porch with a flourish.
“Quietly. There’s a child sleeping.”
Catching it deftly on the backswing, he set it on the ground at his feet and grinned at her. Lamplight caught on the interesting planes of his face. He was a few years younger than she was, still a little raw and unformed except for the absolutely sure way he held himself, a man who could manage any sort of physical feat.
“You wear the wolf ’s head ring,” she said in a low voice.“It’s the badge of the king’s elite soldiers, the Black Wolves. They carry out his most dangerous missions, so it is said.”
His grin got cockier but didn’t lose its essential sweetness.
“Did you murder Marshal?” she added.
His smile vanished.“I stole the bag. But I would have killed him, had I been given that order instead.”
“How did you get on the island?”
“That was simple enough. We paddled out on one of those lovely canoes, and then swam the last part, and climbed the cliffs. Not nearly as difficult as it sounds.”
“An interesting statement considering everyone believes it can’t be done.” She studied him carefully and precisely: taut arms, strong calves, a lean waist, and slim hips. He was still wearing the kilt, although he had laced up the vest, thus concealing his attractive torso. His shoulders were beautiful.“But if anyone looks fit for the part, it would be you.”
His eyes widened at this unexpected compliment, and he gave her such a frankly sexual look-over, as if only now contemplating that they might actually find themselves tangling together on a bed, that she felt the heat of his thoughts pour right through her flesh. She had bested Anji once, hadn’t she? She had wrested her freedom from his possessive grasp. Anji’s weakness was that even though he knew she was as brilliant as he was, he could only see her as a woman who ought to belong to him. He knew only one way to fight.
“Aren’t you afraid of ghosts and Night Riders?” she asked, filling the silence.
With a flick of his fingers the man gestured to show he had no worries. “My life is not my own. It belongs to the king. Thus I walk without concern because I am already dead.”
“You don’t look dead,” she retorted, meaning the words in so many different possible ways. It had been years since she had so thoroughly enjoyed ogling a man.
The smile emerged again as he picked up on the energy surging between them.“May I ask your name, verea?”
“If you have to ask, then you’re not a very good spy.”
A blink acknowledged this hit. His gaze cast around the spacious porch, pausing briefly on Arasit before returning to her.“Are these your children?”
The baby had fallen asleep in her arms, the feel of his little body like balm healing the old pain in her heart. With perfect contentment and an almost blistering sense of triumph, she said, “They are, ver. My daughter and my son.”
He caught in a breath, as if realizing he had made a mistake, and took a step back. The night drew its shadows over him so he was half obscured, almost a ghost himself.“My apologies if I have rudely intruded upon you, verea. I will bid you and your family a quiet festival and an auspicious new year.”
But she caught him with a look before he could walk away. She hooked him with her market smile.“I have fewer encumbrances than it may seem. Will I not see you again, ver?”
Almost he reeled under this onslaught, but he was well trained and well honed, prepared for the most strenuous challenges. “If that is an invitation, then someday you will, verea. When you least expect me.”
She allowed him the last word and thus said nothing as he touched a kiss to his fingers and flew it to her, then padded away into the night. This new armistice between her and Anji was not peace but merely a prelude to a more complicated struggle that she would wage with patience and flexibility in place of swords and spears. She laughed to herself as she went down the steps to the street to fetch the courier bag. Surely a man who could paddle, swim, and climb to reach a reeve hall famous for its inaccessibility could easily penetrate the guard of her red-cap sentries and find a way into her house.
If he did not, her life would not change from what it already was. The expectations, pleasures, and goals she held now were perfectly satisfying.
If he did, then anything might happen. The sex might be tedious, or it might be gratifying . . .
“Mai?”
Startled, she turned.
Peddonon emerged from the interior, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “In my dreams I thought I heard the sound of hooves. It woke me, so I came to take my share of the watch . . . Mai! Come up off the street! Don’t you know the Night Riders steal beauty when they can catch such people out of doors on Ghost Nights?”
He steppe
“The hells! Where did you get that?” Then he saw the bundle in her arms and gave a confounded second look as he shook himself into full alertness.“What are you holding?”
“A baby,” she said. “The Night Riders brought me a perilous and beautiful gift. Just like in the tales.”
THE GATES OF JORIUN
THE MAGICIANS SAY THE sun rises every morning, and so far I have found that to be true. I depend on the sun; it is how I mark time, by that and by the food the woman brings me twice daily and by the unending cycle of the moon. I have discovered also that the stars move in the sky each night—when they are not obscured by clouds—and that I can trace pictures in them and see those pictures again and again if only I am patient enough at night and through the seasons. I try to sleep during the day, except for the food. During the day it is worst, for then there are people about and all of them eager to abuse me.
The magicians taught about the stars also, but I did not listen to them about those matters. I was a younger woman—how much younger I no longer know—and newly married. My nights did not involve gazing at stars. Now some of what they said has come back to me and I hoard it. I must hoard what scraps I can because as the days run one into the next, I lose more and more of my past; like the moon my memory waxes and wanes.
But I must remember. If I do not remember, then I become nothing, a mindless animal in a cage hung before the gates of Joriun, and then the king wins and my brother loses.
I remember the magicians.
Duncan was gone, ridden out to raise the Alarn clan behind the standard of war. Anyone would have noticed their entrance, but that day, distracted and feeling sorry for myself because my husband of but one month had been sent away on my brother’s errand, I was overwhelmed by it.
They entered like moonlight and sunlight and the twilight between.
The first wore a robe of silver fabric so pale that at first I thought I could see through it. Only later did I realize I could see into it, like staring into the heavens at night. Small of stature, no bigger than a woman, he had neat hands, eyes the bleached color of the noonday sky washed in clouds, and a nose too big for his face. But he had power. It rode on him like a second garment.
The woman towered above the others. As big as a warrior and thicker through the middle, she had skin the color of charcoal, burned black, and robes so voluminous and of such a startlingly piercing gold that she seemed like the billowing sun fallen down to Earth, scorching and bright. I almost could not look at her straight on.
But the third entered in their shadow, like a shadow, and this one’s gaze sought and found me in my own shadowed corner where I spun wool to thread and waited for my husband to return. Is that not the lot of women: to wait?
The third waited until I stared, and then beckoned to me while my brother and his advisers were busy with the first two magicians, swarming round them as moths swarm round any bright light—and these lights brighter than most. King in name only, half his countrymen in league with the usurper and the other half too poor to do more than scrabble at the dirt of their farms to save themselves and their kin from starvation, my brother needed help wheresoever he could find it. Even from magicians.
I set down my spindle to rise and cross the long hall. Closer now, I shook off my distraction and studied the visitors: the small moon man, the big sun woman, and the other, the third, the twilight between.
Not tall, not short, this one wore robes that were neither striped yet not of a solid color either, a dusky gray that held night in it and also the coming of morning. Long-fingered hands cupped a deck of cards as another might cup a fistful of gold rings or a child’s hand. But it was her face I returned to again and again. Or perhaps I should say his face. Beardless, I might have guessed at once that this was a woman, but upon a second look, despite the lack of beard, I would have said it was a man. His—her—complexion was like to that of a lover seen in half-light as day fades or night lightens.
“You are the sister,” he said, her voice so soft I could barely hear it above the ring of voices in the hall, my brother and his captains, lords and fighting men whose loyalty to the rightful heir was greater than their prudence, for certainly our uncle the king had usurped my brother’s throne because he had the strength and the riches of the southern lords to back him up. Our uncle the king was not a foolish man, nor did he let ambition rule over common sense. But I was only a girl and my brother an infant in swaddling clothes when first our father died and our mother soon after, poisoned by our uncle so the rumor ran. Made regent, he found it easy enough to take over the duties and privileges of the crown outright and send the poor children—myself and my brother—away to the benighted northcountry; easy enough to put them in the care of a certain ambitious duke who would not be above seeing the two children die of a winter chill or an untimely accident.
But we were stronger than that.
“It is said,” remarked the twilight mage,“that you raised your brother. That you led him through dark night and cruel winds to this castle, your safe haven protected through the years by your father’s most loyal retainers. Is that true?”
“When he was old enough to walk, we escaped our keepers together,” I said, and then added tartly, “though it wasn’t in a winter’s storm, as some say. Even as a girl I wasn’t so foolish as to try such a thing. There was an old woman in the house who pitied us and it was through her offices that we survived as long as we did in the hall of the Duke of Joriun. I waited until a clear warm summer’s night, and she gave us bread and cheese and water. She had arranged for a cousin to meet us at a fishing village at the coast, not more than an hour’s walk away. The cousin took us north and eventually by one means and another got us to Islamay Castle. I needed only to lead us out of Joriun and out to the village. It was no great journey.”
“Nevertheless,” said the mage.“Your brother would never have grown to manhood without you.”
“Perhaps,” I said evasively. I did not like this kind of praise, though I had heard it more than once. My brother was a strong, clean, good man, if rather too fond of pretty young women, and he had to be respected for his strength, not for mine. That was the only way he could regain the throne stolen from him.
The mage opened his hands to display the cards. With a deft movement he flipped one over and laid it on the table between two burning candles. The card had a picture on it whose like I had never seen before: a woman, crowned and robed in a simple manner, holding a strong wooden staff in one hand.
“Queen of Staves,” the mage said. “She is strong and independent and will gladly fight for that which is rightfully hers.”
I snorted, having heard this kind of thing also—before Duncan laid claim to my heart, and my brother, with my approval, granted him my hand in marriage. However desperate my brother’s plight, however unlikely his prospects might seem with only a handful of dirt-poor lords as his allies and for his soldiers only common-bred captains and farmers who had but one season in which to march on campaign before they had to return to their farms, there were always a few men who thought to gain my brother’s ear through my—well, how shall we say it?—through my favors. I gave them short shrift and had shouted more than one out of Islamay Castle.
“And she is known sometimes to be short-tempered,” the mage added with a quicksilver smile that charmed me utterly.
“It’s a pretty picture,” I said, reaching out to touch the card. But I hesitated before laying my finger on the thin painted card. I felt as strongly as if a voice had shouted in my ear that this was not mine to touch, not without permission.
“You may,” the mage said softly.“It is you, after all.”
So I did touch her. I felt the film of paint under my finger, touched her stern face and her stout stave that had a single leafing green branch growing from the upraised end.
“We call this card the Significator,” the mage continued. “It sign
I laughed.“Are you going to tell my fortune?”
“Do you have a question you want answered?”
I smiled, thinking of Duncan and of long summer nights. Thinking of our greatest wish, when we whispered together and held each other tight. Was it shameful that, this time, my first thought was not for my brother and our struggle? I don’t know. But I was newly wed, and Duncan was, for this summer at least, my world.
“Where will I be next year?” I asked, dreaming of Duncan holding a baby—our baby—while I sat sewing beside him, sewing, perhaps, the child’s naming gown or my brother’s coronation robes.
The mage’s expression turned dour, like a lowering storm.“Very well.” I thought the tone disapproving.
I was suddenly apprehensive.“I can ask something else.”
“You have already asked,” the mage said. And it is true enough, as with my brother, that some enterprises, once begun, must be played out to the bitter end.“If you will, shuffle the deck.” He placed the cards in my hands and showed me how to divide them and combine them again, like lords in a dance of evasion and persuasion: Whose side will I come down on this year? When I had finished shuffling them to her satisfaction, he took them from me again and began to lay out the cards into a strange pattern on the table.
I could not help but watch. There was a hall behind us and people milling there, but they might as well have vanished for all the attention I paid them. All my attention was on the cards placed so carefully, so precisely, between the two burning candles.
The first card he laid directly on top of the Queen of Staves.“Placed atop the Significator, it represents the current situation. The Four of Staves,” he smiled slightly as he spoke the words,“represents marriage. It is crossed by—”
“Crossed by?”
“Crossed by,” he repeated placing a card athwart it, “the King of Swords.”