Starcrossed (24 page)

When he was exposed, they stripped him naked, cut off his hands and burned them, then suspended him upside down from the Hanging Ash, so he’d bleed to death right there in the green courtyard.

He was killed because someone had seen the magic on his skin.

Because I’d told my brother what I’d seen.

I learned to keep quiet after that, that my touch was dangerous, and secrecy was the only way to ensure survival. There was no way of knowing who to trust, so it became safer not to talk about it at all, just pretend I was like everybody else, I didn’t see anything. And as soon as I could, I’d done the thing Meri and Durrel had thought so brave. I’d run away from that place and tried not to look back. Tegen was the only one who knew my secret, and he’d found out by accident. We never spoke of it, and he’d never told another living soul, until yelling,
Digger, run!
with a knife to his throat.

Was it like that for Meri? A fight to always stay hidden, stay unnoticed, pretend she was like everybody else?
My parents are heroes, you know.
Sarist heroes, of a rebellion that would have decriminalized magic. What was it like to be their daughter — their
magical
daughter?

I looked up, past the window seat, out into the snowy world below. Had she found someplace where she didn’t have to hide, even for an hour a day, weather permitting?

Without thinking, I reached for the magic book, flipped it open, and laid my hand palm down on the pages, until I had one hand on the journal, one on the primer. The air turned watery and thick, shimmering against my skin. I could only
see
it, and how I hated the hiding and the fear. Being able to wield it must be unbearable.

Carefully, I closed the journal and the book and replaced them inside the hidden compartment. I did my job, tidying up the linen chest and the window seat, making sure the room was perfect and undisturbed. I laid out Meri’s clothes, and changed into a fresh dress for the day.

And then I strapped Durrel’s dagger to my thigh, right where it belonged.

I’d found what Daul wanted, but there was no way in seven hells I would give it up to him, not now.

I charged out of Meri’s rooms with purpose but without direction. The hallways of Bryn Shaer were empty, and I scurried downstairs to where Lady Lyll would be waiting in the stillroom, but the little workroom was locked, and there was no answer when I tugged on the door. No Meri, no Lyll. I had Daul’s journal, but couldn’t give it to him. Full of energy and nowhere to fling it, I let myself back out into the courtyard, where wind and servants had swept most of the snow into the corners. It was a cold, clear day, and the rooks wheeled around the white tower, voicing their eerie cries into the thin air.

I stopped for a moment, watching them. Their movements were hypnotic, curving through the sky in smooth black arcs, like lines of ink on a blank page. Something tugged at my memory, but my thoughts were too scattered to draw it out.

One of the rooks dived toward the earth, a straight swift plummet — and my heart went with it. Daul.

I had
told
him about the Sarists in the woods.

Meri’s Sarists.

I gave my bodice a yank and set across the courtyard at a run. Now that I knew where Meri had gone, I might actually be able to track her, but instead I turned back to the Lodge. Berdal had told me Daul spent mornings with Lord Antoch, so I headed for the Armory, a long, wide room linking the Lodge with the older Bryn Shaer, where the men often assembled while the women gathered in the solar.

Inside, Daul was fencing with Antoch, while Lord Wellyth and Eptin Cwalo rearranged the markers on a map table. I hung just inside the door. Antoch and Daul were oddly matched, and it was like watching a bear dodge a whip. Antoch moved with an unexpected fluid grace, like Meri when she danced, though Daul slashed at him with a frenzied focus, driv ing him back and back. Daul struck a point, to a round of applause from their audience — Marlytt and Phandre hanging on the arms of Lord Sposa and Lord Cardom — and Antoch gave a bow, handing over his sword.

Daul stepped back, wiping an arm against his forehead. “Let’s go again.”

“Nay, Remy, you’ve beaten me enough!” Antoch laughed. “Come sit by the fire and warm up.” He turned away, but Daul grabbed his arm.

“Again.” He raised his sword and darted back.

But Antoch turned slowly, with a dark look I’d never seen before. He took three swift paces toward Daul and caught him by the shoulder. “Have
done
,” he said very softly, but the room almost shook with the warning in his voice.

Daul went rigid, gripping his weapon. I saw Marlytt stiffen, pulling slightly away from Lord Sposa. Then Antoch’s face broke into a grin. “Come, brother — enough fighting for one morning. Peace?” He held out his hand.

Daul shook him off, stuck the practice swords carelessly into their rack, and stalked off across the room. I pulled back, deciding this probably wasn’t the best moment to talk to him, but he stopped at a long table and poured himself a drink. Across the room, Lord Antoch shook his head and turned back to the fire.

Very well. Daul and Meri both accounted for. Now what? I wandered more slowly down the hallway, until I found myself back in the courtyard once more. I looked up at the white tower, still occupied by its family of rooks, marching along the crenellated battlement, poking their beaks through the narrow slits. Why did that seem so strangely familiar — and significant? I watched them, tapping my fingers against my lips, until I finally tapped something loose.

I slipped back inside, straight for the stillroom, and nicked Lady Lyll’s account ledger. I would have to bring it back
immediately,
of course — there was no way someone as efficient as Lady Lyll wouldn’t notice it was missing. But tucked in the stairwell, I slowly flipped through the pages until I found the catalogue of the birds at Bryn Shaer:

Pigeons: 125

Falcons: 15

Gyrfalcons: 12 and two very fine

Drakes: 5

Crows: 24 by count

“I found you,” I whispered into the neatly inked pages.
When is a pigeon not a bird?
I knew Lyll kept precise records, but I had been to Bryn Shaer’s mews, and though everyone here enjoyed poultry and falconry as much as the next nob, they didn’t have a hundred and twenty-five pigeons. I had seen one or two falcons, not a dozen or more. Lady Lyll had taken a careful account of something — something that would look innocent to prying eyes.

But it wasn’t birds.

A fowling-piece called a pigeon
, Cwalo had said. A gun.

I cornered Marlytt the next day. I had to drag her away from a tennis match between Daul and Lord Cardom (who was surprisingly good, for all his size). In the hall, she clutched at my arm, looking anxious.

“Digger, please be careful. Someone is bound to notice.”

“Did you tell me Eptin Cwalo was an arms merchant?”

She just looked at me. “I suppose — why?”

I paced down the hall. Marlytt didn’t need to be involved in this, but she was still my best source of information. “But you said he was from Yeris Volbann, didn’t you? That’s west of the Carskadons.”

“Digger, you’re talking nonsense.”

“Am I? Cwalo came here with you and Daul — from Breijardarl. That’s east. What was he doing over there?”

She gave her dainty shrug. “Exactly what he said he was doing — buying fruit and wine? I think you’d be glad of that too, that he and Lyll so thoughtfully stocked the larders before we were all snowed in here.”

I let her go. The Nemair had been sending shipments over the mountains for months before we arrived, and big things too: furniture, cloth, casks of ale, tapestries, all the fine wood and stone used to build the Lodge. The disassembled crates were stacked in the older part of the castle, but it would hardly be a difficult matter for a man as shrewd as Eptin Cwalo to label something “pears,” when what was really inside was — gyrfalcons. It made too much sense; what good were new artillery walls without new artillery? What if Cwalo wasn’t just a wine merchant desperate for daughters-in-law? Cardom, ships. Wellyth, timber. Sposa, grain. In his account of what the assembled families had to offer the Nemair, he’d left one out:
Cwalo, guns.

It was like having an itch under my corset — it was going to niggle away at me until I scratched it.
Daul
was going to niggle at me. With a whistle and a wave to the rooks who’d given me the idea, I set off to find Bryn Shaer’s missing birds.

My search took me back to the old part of the castle and its raised battlements. I wanted another look at the walls — not that I’d know what I was looking at. Maybe I could persuade Eptin Cwalo to give me another tour. Marau’s balls. A stair inside the white tower wound up to a wide walkway overlooking the whole castle. Arrow loops spiraled up alongside it, making a series of tiny windows in all directions. I remembered Antoch miming a firearm on the battlement. Would these tiny slits be useful for the new artillery, or were we too far away from anything to get good range?

And then I banged my head softly against the wall for even having such a thought.

I pushed my way through a short arched door onto a raised walkway ringing the tower. Wind whipped at my head. I could see all of Bryn Shaer’s lands, down to the dip of the Breijarda Velde. Men and dogs were still working at clearing the snow, and from up here, they looked tiny and ineffectual. They probably looked tiny and ineffectual down there too. Something in the snowy distance closer to the castle caught my eye — a lone figure on a white horse, bundled in a red coat, streaming across the white fields toward the trees.
Oh, Meri,
I thought.
We need to teach you a thing or two about stealth.

And then I remembered she had eluded me already, and kept her lone morning jaunts a secret to everyone except perhaps the groom. Maybe she wasn’t doing too badly on her own after all.

I pulled my coat closer and tried to recall what Cwalo and Antoch had told me about defending Bryn Shaer. The way they had talked about artillery and artillery walls, it had sounded more hypothetical than real, but there were five main towers — each corner of the outer bailey, the white tower I stood upon, and a square gatehouse perched right above the sheer drop Cwalo had so enthusiastically pointed out to me. Five towers, five drakes. Even I knew you’d need a
big
gun to defend a tower. Like a cannon.

So where were they?

Behind me, I heard the door being shoved open. Startled, I spun, and Daul stepped out onto the ledge with me.

“What are you doing here?” I glanced past him; the curve of the tower partially blocked his view of Meri, moving with excruciating delay toward the fringe of trees. I made a mad decision and headed
toward
him.

“Looking for Sarists?” he said, a note of amusement in his voice.

“Of course I am,” I snapped. “Don’t you know they’ve added snow and crow droppings to the Inquisition’s Catalogue of Transgression?” I made to push past him, but his arm came up and blocked my path.

“Not so fast. Any more entertaining lies to sell me this morning?”

“What?”

“Sarists in the woods,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous slip of sound. “Very diverting. You truly are Tiboran’s own child. To think I very nearly believed you.”

“I wasn’t —” I stopped myself just in time. “You didn’t find them.”

“ ‘You didn’t find them,’ ” he echoed. “You’re fortunate I enjoy riding out into the wilderness chasing the fantasies of little girls, but I would advise you to adhere more closely to the truth than you’re probably accustomed to, if you don’t want me to dissolve our little partnership.”

“Good! I wish you would.”

Daul leaned in close enough that I could smell his clove-scented breath. “I think you misunderstand me. If you stop working for me, little mouse, you’ll never work for anyone again.” The icy wind shrieked around the tower. “Just remember how many sheer drops there are in these mountains, and how very much snow.”

I pulled back. “I’m tired of your threats,” I said, but I sounded unconvincing.

He held my arm and squeezed. “Show me some good work, then, and perhaps I won’t feel so compelled to make them.”

Below us, Meri had finally reached the woods. Smoothly she dismounted and tethered her horse to a tree. And then
just stood there
, stroking its nose.