Luckstones (4 page)

Taigna shrugged. “I don’t want to marry at all. If I must, I
suppose you’re—”

“
I
don’t wish to
marry
you
!” Ellais whispered
fiercely. “I want to have a regular sort of life, with a man and babies and
everything I ever expected. I know better than to expect romance, but at the
very least I want the possibility that I might—I might—” words failed her.

Taigna frowned, her sandy brows drawing together. “Well,
what are we to do?”

Neither had an answer for such a question. The two girls
sat, knee-to-knee and dark head to light, considering, until a servant came to
summon them back to the drawing room. When asked if they had agreed upon
flowers for their bridal posies Ellais suggested freesias at the same moment
that Taigna asked for daisies, and the two mothers shook their heads and
decreed roses and balm with ivy. Madame do Morbegon swept her daughter away
with every assurance of kind wishes, echoed by the Condiese. Ellais parted from
her betrothed with a look of despair.

~o0o~

Once the Writ of Exception had been granted and the
engagement made public, neither Ellais nor Taigna could escape whispers or
speculative nods when they went out. The girls paid formal calls, one upon the
other, but their parents seemed determined to keep them from any sort of
private conference, and neither girl wanted to commit to writing anything their
mothers might take into their heads to read. Matching marriage rings, fashioned
with the luckstones of both House Morbegon and House Caudon, were displayed in
the jewelers’ window, and a corps of dressmakers worked to prepare a
complementary wardrobe for each bride.

As the day of the wedding drew near, Ellais me Morbegon
spent hours making and rejecting plots to escape.

A fortnight before the wedding she was invited to a musical
evening with her father; Madame do Morbegon had no ear for music and pled a
sick headache to stay home. Master zo Morbegon settled his daughter on a
straight-backed chair next to Taigna me Caudon and vanished at once into the
smoking room with the Cindon. As the rest of the company seemed happy to give
both girls a wide berth and examine their relationship from afar, Ellais and
Taigna had, for the first time in almost a month, the opportunity to speak as
privately as one might against the din of a string quintet.

After courtesies had been exchanged, Ellais asked, “Have you
any money?”

Taigna took up her beaded purse. “I have a little, I think—a
few—”

“Not
with
you. At
home. Have you any money?”

“Oh.” Taigna pursed her lips and considered. “Just enough
for vails and pin money.”

“Have you any jewels you can sell?”

Taigna’s eyes opened wide. “Sell? But Mama would find out—”

Ellais shook her head. “Not if we run away.”

The cello hit a low, sustained note. “
Run away
?”

Ellais nodded. “I’ve already sent my maid out with some of
my jewelry—I told her I needed it to give presents to the servants before I
left home—and I have nearly five hundred
senesti
so far. That might last us, oh, a
six-month if we are careful. If you have as much, that’s a year we could live
before we needed to think of working.”

“Working? Where? And what? I don’t know how to—”

“You could tutor and I could—” she shrugged. “Sew, or wait
at table, or… something. Not in Meviel, though. We’ll have to go somewhere
else.”

“But how?”

“I know someone—”

Taigna raised an eyebrow. “A
friend
?”

“Not that sort of friend.” Ellais wrinkled her nose. “The
stableman’s son. He’ll hire us a carriage, and we’ll go to—Coustel, on the
coast. And thence to Hadsilon, if you like, so you can study.”

For the first time in the weeks of their betrothal, Taigna’s
brows went up instead of down. “
Study
?”

“It’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but… what will
you
do?”

“
Not
marry you.”

“As good as, if we’re traveling together,” Taigna said
practically.

“We can travel as sisters.”

After a few moments’ serious thought, Taigna nodded.
“There’s logic to it.
If
we can
travel fast enough to avoid my father’s men; he’s sure to send someone.”

Ellais agreed. “Travel like the wind, and let it bear us
across the sea to Hadsilon.”

When Master zo Morbegon returned to collect his daughter he
found the betrothed couple sitting quietly, attending to the music. He could be
pardoned for believing, looking at the girls’ faces, that they grew daily more
resigned to their marriage.

~o0o~

Four nights before the wedding Ellais pled exhaustion
brought on by the relentless demands of the dressmaker, and went early to bed. When
Lilsa had finished fussing over her and left for the night, Ellais left off her
die-away manner and hopped from the bed. She dressed in the plainest gown she
owned, pulled a satchel from under the bed, and wrapped herself in a woolen
cloak she had taken from a peg in the servants’ hall. Thus disguised, she went
down to the mews.

The stableman’s son, true to a promise extracted from him
earlier that day at the cost of five
senesti
,
had a carriage and pair awaiting her. It was an old carriage with sprung
upholstery and an unpleasant smell of cat piss, but it seemed sturdy, and the
driver appeared sober. Within the hour Taigna me Caudon had joined Ellais, and
the carriage was rattling west toward the coast.

Taigna spent the first several hours in the throes of motion
sickness made worse by the smell of the carriage, but finally fell asleep.
Ellais, too excited to doze, went over her plans. They had between them a
little more than fifteen hundred
senesti
,
and that would not last them forever. Taigna would be a scholar, and earn her
way teaching; but what could
she
do?
All Ellais’s skills were those of a nicely raised young woman: embroidery and
china painting and the recitation of epic poetry. As the carriage thumped along
she realized she didn’t even know how to make a bed properly. You tucked the
sheets in somehow, but how to make them smooth, as they were in her mother’s
house…

She fell asleep musing that elopements were easier in
novels, and woke to the sound of voices. The carriage had stopped; could they
be in Coustel already? A peek from behind the leathern curtain showed her that
it was still night. The driver had come down from his seat and was talking with
a man whose face was shadowed from the moonlight by a broad hat brim. A few
coins changed hands and the driver walked away. The other man began to unhitch
the horses from her carriage.

Ellais wanted to leap from the carriage and chase her
driver. She had paid him good money, and now someone else was bribing him! And
this other man, who was he? Caution kept her silent, which was good, for a
moment later another man joined the first and helped unhitch the second horse.

“Whozzit zis time?” the newcomer asked.

“Coupla wommin, Tadde says,” the first one answered. “Probly
got jewels and gold and—”

“And theys
wommin
,”
the first one agreed. “Tie ’em horses up and less see what we got.”

Ellais looked around her for a weapon but found none.
Taigna, asleep on the opposite seat, snored softly. The handle to the door
rattled and Ellais acted without plan. She pushed the door outward, knocking
the man off balance, and jumped out of the carriage, scolding as she came.

“Put our horses back immediately! What do you think you’re
doing? If my—my sister and I don’t reach Coustel by morning there will be
immense trouble!” The man stepped back a pace, evidently taken aback by
Ellais’s excellent impersonation of her mother in the servant’s hall. She hoped
that he might turn and run, but after a moment he grinned wide and grabbed her
wrist to pull her to him.

“’Is one got a temper,” he called to his mate.

“I certainly have, and if you don’t take your hands off me
immedi—” Ellais was silenced by a backhanded slap.

“I say ’is one got a temper,” he repeated. “Ai, Pol, I say—”

At the same moment that Ellais looked back at the carriage
two things happened: Taigna, awake at last, began to scream, and the second
highwayman lurched backward across the clearing. The first highwayman released
Ellais’s wrist. His mate rose unsteadily to his feet and pointed into the
shadows. A second later a third man—tall, wearing a hat which shadowed his face
in the moonlight—stepped forward, He had a staff in his hands.

Taigna kept screaming.

Ellais’s assailant grinned, drew a long knife, and stepped
forward to meet the new man. She knew too little about fighting to entirely
follow what she saw, but she could say afterward that the new man had blocked
the highwayman’s blow with one end of his staff before he swung the other end
into the man’s gut. The highwayman bent double with an “oof”. The second highwayman
had scarpered off with the carriage horses before his mate hit the ground.
Their rescuer paused to deal the first man a knock to the head, then stepped
forward to bow to Ellais.

“Good evening,” he said. His eyes were dark, his smile
polite. “I trust you are unharmed?”

Ellais was disconcerted by such manners here, now. Their
rescuer did not sound like a courtier of the Hub, but neither did he sound like
a ruffian from the Dedenor. Had she been asked, she would have said he was a
gentleman farmer or a prosperous physician.

The man turned toward the carriage where Taigna, blinking,
pale, and no longer screaming, peered into the moonlight.

“And down you come.” He lifted Taigna down from the carriage
and set her beside Ellais. “I do wonder at your parents letting you travel
through the countryside at night, all unprotected.”

Ellais opened her mouth to spin a story about a family
emergency, but at the same moment Taigna vomited.

Their rescuer, looking down at the flow which had spattered
his boots, grimaced. “An effective weapon in the short term, perhaps, but
ultimately not compelling.”

He picked Taigna up, stepped over the mess she had made, and
sat her on the side of the road.

“It appears your horses are gone and you are several hours
ride from the city—I assume you are come from there? There’s a town some five
miles that way—” the man gestured ahead on the road, “but perhaps you’d prefer
to go back—”

“
No
.” Ellais and
Taigna spoke with one voice. Ellais continued, “If we can only reach somewhere
where we can hire an
honest
carriage.”

“Ah. That might be another ten or twelve miles ahead.”

Ellais raised her chin with resolve. “There is a moon. We
shall walk.”

The man shook his head. “Ten miles in the dark, in city
shoes?”

“If we must.” Ellais reached her hand to Taigna to help her
to her feet. “Come, we’ll start walking.”

Taigna stopped. “Our boxes!”

Ellais shook her head. “We shall have to send back for
them.”

“But my books! At least let me bring the most important.”

“Books?” their rescuer said. He sounded amused.

“Books!” Ellais was not amused in the least. “Taigna, do you
want to carry a bag full of books ten or twelve miles?” But Taigna had already
clambered onto the carriage and was unstrapping her satchel.

“Take this!” She tossed a thick tome down to Ellais. And
this one. And—”

The man caught the third book. “
Philosophical Reflections Upon the Virtue of Familial Gems, with
Particular Investigation into the History of Luck
,” he read. “Well thumbed,
too. It goes against the grain to permit two scholars to walk alone in the
middle of the night. Permit me to escort you until you find a place that will
hire you a carriage.”

“Thank you, sir,” Taigna said. “I am Taigna me Caudon, and
this is—”

“I am her sister,” Ellais said quickly. She glared at
Taigna.

The man bowed. “Vaun ha Tesne, honored to make your
acquaintance.”

The three, each carrying one of Taigna me Caudon’s books,
started down the road.

~o0o~

Ellais had been too optimistic about her shoes. In less
than a mile the soles of her “walking boots” had developed holes, and there was
a growing blister on the inside of her left heel. Taigna began to limp sometime
in the second mile. Vaun ha Tesne said nothing. Finally, when they had been
walking for over an hour, Ellais sat by the side of the road and unlaced her boots.
“Better I walk barefoot.”

“There’s a shepherd’s cot a little way up that path,” Vaun
ha Tesne said. “You might sleep in the darkest part of the night—see, the moon
is setting—and start fresh in the morning.”

“We can’t,” Ellais murmured.

“We
must
,” Taigna
returned. “Beside, who would think to look for us in a shepherd’s cottage?
Ellais, my feet
hurt
.”

Ellais turned back to their companion. “How is it you know
so much about this road and shepherd’s cots on it?”

“My family’s property is a few miles in that direction.
Another thirty or forty feet ahead, past that shrub—aha, there is the cot.”
Vaun ha Tesne held the lower branches of the shrub to permit the women to pass.
“My horse came up lame a mile or two before I found you, so I was already
resigned to walking.”

The cot was a small, square stone structure, mossy on the
north side, with no sign of recent habitation by shepherd or sheep. Inside it
was unfurnished and chilly, but the reed roof appeared sturdy and there was
room to lie on the packed earth and sleep. Taigna sat down at once, stretched
out on the floor with her books piled at her head, and fell asleep.

“I’ll stay out here,” Vaun ha Tesne said. “Watch for badgers
and highwaymen and such.”

Ellais nodded. She had not been sleepy until the possibility
of sleep presented itself; now she was exhausted. “Thank you. I’m sorry I have
been so suspicious. It’s only—”