Starcrossed (12 page)

Late that night, we tucked ourselves beside the roaring fire in Meri’s bedroom. With the addition of a few more luxuries we’d nicked from adjoining bedchambers — a huge Kurkyat tuffet, a Tratuan glass serving set, a weird painting of a girl wearing a snail amulet on her forehead — we had put the final polish on a set of apartments definitely worthy of a noblewoman on the rise and her two loyal retainers. I stretched my feet out onto the tuffet and bent my head back to watch the shadows leap against the sculpted plaster ceiling. In the distance, the barking of dogs carried on the night wind.

Meri was curled on a cushioned bench, reading aloud from a book of history. “Oh, hear this,” she’d say, quoting us some long dry passage about strategy at Valdoth Bridge or the heroic deaths of Sarist soldiers at Aarn. Her silver off, I watched the sparkling dust motes swim about her face and hands. There was something fascinating about it, like the sparkle of a ring on a nob’s finger, moving through a crowded market — dangerous and forbidden and right here where I could touch it, if I just reached out. What did that feel like, to Meri? Was the silver restrictive, like a corset or too many hairpins? Did she feel a rush of power when she took those necklaces off?

Phandre pinched one of the Tratuan glasses in her fingers, admiring the way the lamplight played on its gold-dusted rim. “You know, it’s a shame to waste these,” she said. “We really ought to properly inaugurate our new home.”

“How?” Meri asked eagerly.

“I’ll bet this place has an impressive wine cellar.”

Meri nodded. “It does. They grow fine grapes in Breijardarl.”

“And that steward looked like he hadn’t missed many nightly libations.” That was me.

Phandre grinned. “Excellent. Why don’t we see what we can dig up, then?” Her eyes turned pointedly to me. I almost laughed. I was the obvious choice for such a mission, of course. To Phandre I was expendable, and she would be only too happy to get me in trouble, and Meri seemed to think I was bold and daring. I rose and bowed grandly — like a man, not the dainty curtsy of a lady’s maid — then ducked out the door.

As I trotted down the corridors, I built a map of Bryn Shaer in my head. Meri’s rooms were about two minutes from the main kitchens — down two flights of stairs and past the Round Court (a vast room ringed with carved banquet tables, its tapestry-draped walls soaring up to a buttressed wooden dome). I skipped past the vaulted entryway and its huge arched doors with the heavy iron bindings locking out the wilderness.

I found my way into the darkened ser vice passages, head bowed lest someone see me, but my eyes skirting the shadows, pulling out details. The main kitchens were right behind the central court, and I guessed the wine cellar could be reached fairly easily from somewhere nearby.

Kitchens were never empty, but at this hour they should be quiet; I went a few yards past the doorway first, to check for cellar entrances, but found none. I quickly concocted an excuse, if some overeager scullery wench discovered me here, and pushed my way in.

The great fire had died to embers, and a boy in a tunic that was almost too small lay curled up on the hearth, one sleeping hand on the rake. A single heavy candle burned in a lamp, a plump gray cat eyed me casually from the sideboard, but I saw no one else.

At last — there beyond the butcher block and the great carving table, a pretty painted door with a new, beautiful lock. I seemed to have found my prize; wine was expensive and servants untrustworthy. I slipped a lock pick from my corset and had the door open before the cat could finish yawning. The cellar stairs disappeared into inky blackness, so I borrowed the lamp and let myself down.

Bryn Shaer’s wine stores were not quite so impressive as Phandre might have hoped; a few well-stocked racks and behind them, several casks of ale and barrels of wine and mead, but beyond those, the cellars sank deeper into darkness. I cast my lamp into the shadows but caught up nothing but a startled mouse, staring at me with wide dark eyes that for a brief amusing moment made me think of Meri. I turned my attentions to the racks, turning over the dusty bottles to find something suitable — nothing
too
expensive, or someone would notice it was missing; but nothing too cheap either, or what was the point?

Tegen would have chosen a bottle of rare sparkling Grisel from Corlesanne, and nicked the special fluted glasses to go with it. We would have shared the bottle right here, getting recklessly drunk and leaving the bottle and glasses behind, “So they’d know we were here.”

Suddenly I didn’t want the wine anymore.

With a sigh, I tucked a bottle under my arm and went back upstairs. The door locked as easily as it had opened, and the fire boy slept on. The cat gave me a reproachful look, and I saluted him with the bottle.

That was when I heard the voices, and saw the crack of light beneath a door on the far side of the kitchen — the door to Lady Lyll’s stillroom.

If I’d been a smart little lady’s maid, I’d have scurried back upstairs to the roaring fire and cracked open the wine warming under my arm. But the smooth wood, and the hushed voices behind it, were just too tempting. I crept closer, and was rewarded by Lady Lyllace’s voice, but her normally low, soft tones had turned fierce and definite.

“You tell milord that we are very grateful to Reynart, but that he and his men must leave.”

If her companion made a response, I couldn’t hear it.

“I don’t care — pay them off if you have to. No, you have
my
permission. Now good night.”

Metal scraped on stone, and a heavy door creaked shut — the stillroom must have a door that led out to the kitchen gardens. A moment later, the splinter of light opened up, and Lady Lyllace stepped out. I sprang away from the door before it could crack me in the head, but that was the last of my advantage.

“Celyn! You startled me!” Lady Lyllace clapped a hand to her chest. I had never seen her so informally dressed: in just a dark kirtle, her smock sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She dumped a bundle of laundry by the fire, briskly crossed the darkened kitchen to the sink, where fresh water was pumped in from underground springs, and set about scrubbing her hands with the cake of soap. “What in the world are you doing, wandering about at this time of night?”

“Meri — Lady Merista wanted some wine,” I said. Not one of my better cover stories, but how else would I explain the bottle in my hand? Why should I, a mere maid-in-waiting, presume to think my lady was
not
entitled to a bottle of wine in her own home?

Lady Lyllace glanced toward the cellar door as she dried her hands on her apron. “The wine cellar is supposed to be locked,” she said, a note of mild reproach in her voice. But she sounded distracted.

“It was on the counter,” I said hastily.

She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me, but girls with lock picks clearly didn’t figure into her household accounting. “Hmm.” She held out her hand, and I found myself handing the bottle over. She glanced at the label and pursed her lips briefly. “I’ll have to have a word with Yselle about leaving valuable supplies lying about. Water it well, Celyn. Merista is younger than you, and it’s late.” To my surprise, she handed the bottle back to me.

I quickly bowed my head. “Yes, milady.”

Together we turned back toward the wing where the family was staying. As we walked, Lyllace gave me a bemused smile. “Celyn, why do I think you were probably one of those girls who gave the Holy Daughters fits trying to keep up with your mischief?”

Surprised, I had to laugh.

Late morning sun streamed through Meri’s windows, making golden puddles on the polished wood floor. I stretched and gazed up at the embroidered canopy with its frolicking deer and fat rabbits. On the table beside the bed — close enough for me to put out my hand and touch it — was a pitcher of fresh cream, a plate of pears and honey, and half a loaf of steaming oat bread. Draped across my feet was a mantle of soft white fur, edged in gold; at the foot of the carved wood bedstead, an inlaid trunk, stuffed with linen smocks so fine I could see my hand through them.

And tucked into a hollow between the herb-scented mattress and the wall, three gold crowns, a dozen silver marks, and a jet ring somebody wasn’t using anymore. I was going to have to find a better hiding place for those. Another time. I turned over in the bed, breathing deeply the scent of crisp white linen sheets nobody had ever slept in before.

I heard the sound of the curtain rings being shoved apart, and more sunlight flooded the rooms. Meri stood before me, fully dressed, her hands on her hips and cheeks pink from her early morning ride with her parents.

“Get up!” she cried gaily. “I am to inform you that my lady mother says it’s deplorable how lazy you and Phandre have gotten. We have guests arriving today, and you are both to report immediately to the courtyard to greet them.” She flung my kirtle at my head.

“Lazy!” Phandre stepped out of the little maid’s room adjacent to Meri’s bedroom. “You have no idea how much work it is, trying to make a good impression on the household staff.” She yawned elaborately. “I was up all hours last night explaining the problem with my door latch to Ludo.”

“We heard you,” I said, although it was untrue, and Meri shrieked with laughter and turned scarlet.

Phandre just looked haughtily at me, then marched over and carried away the entire tray of food.

“Beast,” I said.

“Guttersnipe,” she called back as she kicked her door shut. Meri’s chambers had a bedroom with an adjacent dressing room, a sitting room, and a small, spare bedroom for her ladies-in-waiting, which Phandre had appropriated on sight. I couldn’t mind that much; there were only two beds, and if I had to share with somebody, at least Meri gave off some body heat.

The thing was, I
had
gotten lazy, and it
was
deplorable. Lady Nemair’s workload notwithstanding, after two weeks at Bryn Shaer, all my instincts were dulling. Having every thing provided for me was making me soft, and I loved it. I added to my little squirrel hoard out of habit, without the thrill it should have brought me. I refused to think about what I was going to do when winter was over. That was an entire lifetime from now, and I was determined to enjoy this one as long as I could.

I unrolled the blue dress Meri had thrown at me and climbed out of bed. Even the floors at Bryn Shaer were warm; you could pad around barefoot, but why? The leather slippers they’d given me had
pearls
sewn around the collar. Tucked alongside my shoes in
my very own
clothes chest was the Decath dagger Durrel had given me. I’d been wearing it strapped to my leg, a curiosity Meri had noticed but never commented upon, but this morning I just held it up to the sunlight and looked at the bowing dog on the pommel.

“I miss him,” Meri said quietly. She’d sat on the edge of the bed; her feet almost reached the floor.

“I know,” I said, but I was thinking not of her cousin, but of another man with a knife.

“You must miss your — young man too.” When I looked sharply at her, she smiled. “I hear you dreaming, sometimes.”

Marau’s balls. I didn’t remember those dreams, I just woke sweating and disoriented and sick with fear.

“It must have been very romantic,” Meri pressed. “I gather your brother didn’t approve.”

For a moment I was confused, then had to choke back my laugh, imagining what my brother — Celyn’s
invented
brother — would have made of Tegen. I put the dagger back in the trunk and dropped the lid. “That was a different lifetime,” I said.

Out in the courtyard, we clustered together among the bustle of wagons and bodies pouring in. It was probably one of the last warm afternoons we would see for a while. Golden trees I had seen in the distance just days earlier had given up their leaves, and the black hills seemed to loom even closer. Lord Antoch had warned us that weather in the Carskadons can change suddenly, and although he still took hunting parties out daily to catch the last of the hillside game, we girls were cautioned never to go beyond the outer bailey alone, lest we run afoul of bandits or fall off the mountain. For now, the plea sures inside Bryn Shaer were enough for that warning not to chafe. With nothing but thin air above and endless black rolling forest below, Gerse felt as far away as the moons.

Meri stood flanked by Phandre and me, in a bronze damask coat, her black hair caught up in a gold caul. Her curtsies had become less rigid, the hand she offered to her arriving suitors trembled less. Mountain air was good for her, I thought.