Starcrossed (19 page)

A moment later, Phandre swept over and dropped down beside us. “Ah,” she sighed dramatically, a hand to her dewy bosom. “I just can’t decide. Do I like Lord Cardom for his estate and his allowance, or do I like Lord Sposa for his youth and his beauty?”

It was hardly likely she’d nab either one of them, but she and Marlytt fell easily into sober speculation of the potential faults and virtues of each man, as if they were examining goods at a market. I drew back, wondering how they’d like the corset Sposa wore to achieve that youthful figure, or the blocks in his shoes that added two inches to his height.

I sighed into my ale. My days kept getting wilder, and I wanted someone I could talk to — really talk to, not just this shallow court gossip Marlytt and Phandre excelled at. I wanted somebody who would laugh about Lord Cardom’s ridiculous smock or my close call in his mother’s rooms. Or help me figure out just what Daul was up to. Back home, there were people I could tell. Tegen would have laughed with me.

Marlytt was watching me now, her pale eyes glittering in the firelight. Together she and Phandre looked fat and pompous and ridiculous, in their crisp silk and heavy jewels, their bodices laced so tight their breasts heaved when they breathed. Phandre had picked up a collar of pearls and a garnet ring somewhere, and she fanned herself elaborately, showing them off.

“What were you two talking about?” she asked in her bored voice.

“Oddly enough, the very same thing you were,” I said.

She perked back up. “Really? What were you saying? Have we made matches for everybody yet?” Then she remembered she wasn’t supposed to like me. “Excluding poor Celyn, of course, since there isn’t anyone here of her rank.”

I didn’t even need to respond to that, because the music died and Meri collapsed in a breathless heap next to me. Her hair curled in damp tendrils at her forehead, and she was grinning, her color high, her sil ver necklaces askew in her bodice. I reached to straighten them, but pulled my hand back at the last moment. Suddenly I didn’t want to be there. My dress felt hot and stiff, my headpiece was making me sweaty, and the silver bracelet was starting to chafe. I tapped my fingers against the neckline of my dress, looking over the crowd, and wondered whose bedroom I hadn’t had the plea sure of perusing yet.

Daul was in the back of the room with Lord Antoch, who was laughing his big, warmhearted laugh at something Daul had said. Heat crept up into my belly and my limbs as I felt the idea take shape. He wanted a thorough job, didn’t he? Professional pride as a thief from Gerse’s Seventh Circle demanded that I give this my most diligent effort.

“I’m a little tired,” I said. “I think I’ll get some air.” I rose and stifled a yawn, for their benefit.

“She hasn’t been sleeping well,” Meri said in an exaggerated whisper. Poor Meri — alone with the grown-ups. She was trying so hard.

“I’ll walk with you.” Marlytt stood and hooked her arm into mine. Pox.

“Not me,” Phandre said. “I’m going to give Lord Sposa another turn.”

And thus we abandoned Meri to the circling wolves. I could almost feel the suitors pressing in, waiting for their chance to nick in for a sniff.

My blood was rushing as I pulled Marlytt into the servants’ stair, curving up the back of the Round Court.

“Where are you going? I thought we were getting air.”

“We can breathe upstairs.”

“Ow! Digger, you’re hurting me! What are you doing?”

“My job — and you’re going to help.” Marlytt wasn’t Tegen, but she’d do for the moment. I didn’t know how much time we’d have; not much if the gods’ perverse humor held out this evening. With my luck, Daul would suddenly appear, waiting for me to deliver my “report.” We slipped out onto the third floor, and I glanced down the hallway. Empty. Everyone from these rooms was still downstairs at dinner. The leaping light from a single torch at the end of the hall cast crazy shadows on the paneled walls. Marlytt’s bright face was taut, confused, but I had a good idea she’d keep her mouth shut.

Until we stopped before the door at the end of the hall.

“Are you crazy? These are Daul’s rooms!” She pulled her arm out of my grip and rubbed at her shoulder.

“You’re the one who said I should be curious.”

“Curious, not stupid. What if he catches you — us?”

“I never get caught.” The words tasted thin and hollow. They hadn’t been a lie, once. “Stand there and watch. If he comes — do what you do.”

“Fine.” Her eyes mimicked mine, taking in the hall on either side of us, and then she hiked her skirt up an inch or two above her stockinged ankle and leaned casually against the wall outside Daul’s door. I knelt beside her, hidden behind her voluminous skirts. She also blocked most of the light, but this was work I could do by feel.

Of course, Daul hadn’t been as trusting as the Cardom, or as Lord Antoch, for that matter. The doors on the third-story suites had latches and bolts, not set-in locks — but you can’t bolt a door from the outside.

You can, however, padlock it.

Which normally shouldn’t be an impediment, but Daul had something special picked out for me: a delicate, barrel-shaped lock clipped over the hasp, its brass case traced with scrollwork. A work of art, really — I had a mind to keep it, once I had it free. I slipped a pick from my bodice and went to insert it into the keyhole, but at my touch, the entire thing sparked up like a firebrand, and a thread of silvery mist seeped from the keyhole, circling the shackle. “Balls!” I swore through the pick in my teeth, and dropped its mate.

Marlytt looked down, a line creasing her forehead. “What’s the matter?”

I still had one secret Marlytt didn’t know. I scowled and shook my head, fumbling on the dark floor for my dropped pick. I tried a second time, sliding the pick into the lock, following behind with the second one from my mouth. And met with re sis tance. It was like pok ing two wrong ends of magnets together, as if the lock repelled my picks.

“Well, how about that,” I said in a low voice. I had only encountered one other lock like this. It had been on the Master Confessor’s door at the Celystra — and I’d been curious about what kinds of secrets he’d kept behind his too. Magical items were almost as rare as magical people, mostly old charmed objects that had been forgotten about. There was a black-market trade in spelled goods; things changed hands very quietly and for great sums of money. Most of the spells had worn off over the years, of course, but a perpetual charm like the one on this lock would have cost a fortune.

And why was it on
this
door? It was the sort of thing I’d have thought Daul wanted me to find for him, not the sort of thing he had already. It seemed a little strange that a man intent on uncovering Sarists would flaunt a magical item so openly.

Of course, I was the only person likely to discover it was magic, by sticking my fingers where they didn’t belong. And it wasn’t like I could
do
anything with that knowledge, except glare at Daul and seethe.

“Magic lock?” Marlytt said. “That’s interesting. Can’t imagine who Daul wants to keep out.” There was a trace of wryness in her voice, which I ignored.

“Or in,” I suggested, carefully lifting the lock to peer at its back side.

Marlytt shook her head. “It’s only locked on the outside,” she said. “You can leave the room, but nobody can get in without the spelled key.” When I looked up at her sharply, she shrugged daintily. “Valros had one.”

Well, Marlytt’s “friends” were the type who could afford such a thing — but it seemed like overkill for a man like Daul, in a place like this, supposedly among friends. Maybe the Nemair weren’t the only people at Bryn Shaer with secrets. “What’s he hiding in there?” I sat back on my heels and frowned at the door, as if force of will could make the lock fall open on its own.

“Digger, I
know
that look. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not worth it.”

“Oh, it’s worth it.” I grabbed the lock and held it tight in my fist, letting the strains of magic seep out around my fingers like smoke. “I’ll get in there.”

I just had to figure out how.

My conversation with Marlytt echoed in my thoughts the next morning as I ground poppy seeds in the stillroom. I sometimes spent mornings here while Meri and her father were out riding, helping as Lady Lyll set medicines to brewing, put up herbs to dry from the kitchen gardens, or recorded remedies in the great bound book she called an herbal.

The poppy seeds had a distinctive sweet smell, and Lady Lyll explained that the flowers grew wild on the sides of the mountain in the spring. She was working on a salve to fight poison in a wound, while a decoc tion of willow to reduce fever simmered in a crucible. Before this, we’d torn white linen into strips for bandages. I touched the scar on my arm, now a red weal, and thought Lady Lyll might have been a useful ally that night.

“Didn’t we make that wound salve last week too?”

Lady Lyll adjusted the flame on the crucible by sliding a perforated lid across the firepot. “Very good. We did indeed. It’s very perishable, though, so it’s important to always have fresh on hand.”

I looked at the little jar she was spreading the ointment into. “But what happened to the last batch?”

Lady Lyll gave me a strange look. “I gave it to the kennels. Some of the dogs have abrasions on their paws from digging in the snow. You’re awfully curious this morning. Is there anything else you want to know?”

That felt like a rebuke, and I could feel my face getting hot. “Lady Cardom’s head aches seem better,” I said instead.

She nodded. “She’s suffered from them ever since I’ve known her. I think it’s the tension of having to hold her head up so high all the time.”

A high surprised laugh jerked out of me, but Lady Lyll’s wide fair face was as smooth and expressionless as a full moon. I watched her a moment, thinking about what Marlytt had said last night. Why bring together all those once-allied families? Maybe Daul was right, and there was something suspicious going on.

Or maybe they were just all old friends, gathered innocently together to celebrate one family’s milestone.

“Have you known all your guests a long time?”

“Oh, Goddess, yes. Some of them, like Petr Wellyth, since I was a girl. And some of them came with Antoch, of course.”

“Like Lord Daul?”

The bemused smile faltered just slightly. “Celyn, this is some of the most valuable information I have to teach you: Never get between your man and his friends. Theirs is an old, old relationship, and there’s no breaking it.”

“You don’t like him?”

Lyll sighed and rummaged for a vial and funnel. “We’ve known him too long; it goes beyond liking or disliking. He is the closest thing Antoch has to a brother, and that is that. He has not been so fortunate in this life as we have, and we do what we can for him.”

Pox, that told me
nothing.
“I heard he was in prison a long time.”

Nodding, Lyll poured the fever medicine into her narrow-necked vial. “There are some things a king can’t forgive, and I suppose one of those is being the son of the man who struck war against him. It took all of Antoch’s doing just to get Remy decent food, let alone convince the king to spare his life and let him go. Part of that bargain, of course, was that we go to Corlesanne.”

“I — what?” I paused in my grinding.

She was looking at the books stacked above the workbench, but her gaze was far away. “I can only assume His Majesty felt it was too dangerous to have both Daul and Nemair loose in the same country again.”

“And it’s not dangerous now?”

Lady Lyll’s jaw tightened slightly, and she gave a mirthless laugh. “Oh, Celyn. You’re so young. You won’t remember what it was like, after the war. The betrayals, the exiles, the suspicion. You think it’s bad now? Everyone was your enemy in those days.” Suddenly she stopped and gave me an odd, appraising look. “Sixteen, and named Celyn. Maybe you do know something about it. The Anointed Children?”

I just kept grinding away with my pestle. “Bastards for Celys, you mean?” After crushing the Sarist rebels, Bardolph had proclaimed that bearing an army of Celyst children to run over the land was a patriotic way for fertile young women to show their devotion to the Goddess of Life. I was just one of thousands of children born those first few years — dozens in the Celystra alone were taken from our mothers and raised by the church. Meri was lucky; her parents had left her with people who loved her, a cousin to watch over her like a brother — and then they’d come back for her. I’d been told my mother was dead, but it had never made much difference to me. Now, inexplicably, I found myself hoping it was true.