“Ah.”
Sevryn cleared his throat roughly.
“Time passes differently for us than others,” the Vaelinar commented. “He may have forgotten that.”
Sevryn cleared his throat again and spat to one side, dismissing the father who’d left them.
“Well. This visit has surprised me in more ways than one.” The other leaned a shoulder against a charred beam and the whole lean-to creaked ominously. He made a fist and rapped his knuckles against the wood. He looked to Sevryn again.
Sevryn felt himself color. “I . . . hmmm . . . have it rigged for noise. Just in case. It’s lashed tightly, but it sways and moans.”
“Good idea. It does seem a good deal more unsafe than it is. All right. Here is the thing. You’ve Vaelinar blood. Most of my kin would just as soon see you dead as would the others of Kerith for that, but I feel that blood is blood. I’ve my own ideas about the purity of our line and what our get have to offer. I’ve business to handle, but I’ll be back for you.” He looked about the bolt-hole. “You stay here?”
“Only if there’s reason. I’ve lodging of a kind in town.”
“Stay here on nights when the moon is full. Can you manage that? I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I will.”
“But—”
“What? You have better prospects?”
Sevryn closed his mouth. He didn’t like the idea of another winter when the traders’ stables would be nearly shut down from the weather, and his life on the streets that much harder. Soon enough, the traders would notice that he did not age as they did, and he’d have to move on anyway. It had happened before and would again. “No.”
“My name is Gilgarran. Use it, and I will know, and you’ll be dead for your indiscretion.”
“That is hardly incentive for me to stay to meet you.”
The Vaelinar chuckled. “True, but it’s only fair of me to warn you.” He put his hand out. “Shake on an unlikely partnership.”
“Partnership?”
“I need an apprentice and you need to find out who the hell you are.” He waited, a touch of impatience dancing in his aquamarine eyes, lighter streaks accenting them with liveliness. The stud in his ear winked as though a star had been brought down from the skies.
Sevryn stirred. It was one of those moments when he knew the whole world, his part of it anyway, would change by what he did at that moment. Some people could move through life unaware of decisions that so affected them, but he could not. Something as minor as squashing a bug or as major as pledging a partnership could and would change his world. Of course, those moments were few and far between, but he recognized this one. He straightened, took his hand out from behind his back, wiped it on his trousers to clean it as best he could, before placing it in the other’s hold.
They shook. The strength of the fingers he knew from a still throbbing ear, but this was tempered strength, and a warmth, and . . . a promise. He could feel it leap between them.
Gilgarran opened his hand then and stepped back. He fished inside his cloak, and coins jingled as he opened a purse. “I can’t leave you with crowns or even half crowns, too many questions. Here are pieces of silver, and a few ten pieces. Use them wisely. The road for me may be long or short, and it may be a full turn of seasons before I’m back here. You’ll make it through?”
Sevryn nodded as Gilgarran dropped the coins into his palm. “Yes, sir, I will.”
And he did. Made it that long and longer before the elf returned, and took him as apprentice and showed him many things in the world he had never thought could be. There wasn’t a moment he regretted the handshake or how it had changed him, only the after moments when he mourned having lost Gilgarran before either was ready to let go. Foster father, big brother, teacher. And he never thought to ask just what it was Gilgarran had been doing when he’d leaped out of that third-story window to fall upon Sevryn.
Using all that he’d learned in his early years, sharpened and honed by what he’d been taught in his later years, Sevryn moved inconspicuously through the small trade road towns, earning a modest living doing little of anything and keeping out of the notice of whomever he could. A full twenty turns of all the seasons had gone by since that day at the forge—though he could only remember the last two—and he knew of no way to reclaim those lost years. In his life span, with the Vaelinar blood strong in him, two decades showed little except he had grown more toward maturity, but others who might have known him or Gilgarran were much older now if Kerith blooded. He did not seek to find that past or approach it. If he were being watched, he revealed nothing. If he were being trailed, he could not detect it, but if he were the hunter, he doubted he would be seen, so he took nothing for granted.
He eventually made his way to Calcort, the great hub of all the trader and craft guilds, the capital as it were of the far-flung cities of Kerith, where guildsmen reigned like kings of far far ancient times, and though he listened to the hubbub he learned little of what he truly wished to know. He kept his coin stocked by gambling at the taverns where luck did not seem to have abandoned him, although all else had. Even the alleyways seemed determined to keep their secrets from him.
Then one day he learned of a Vaelinarran entourage coming to Calcort and the lure, the need, of seeing and hearing those who had imprinted his blood and destiny hit him hard. He made plans.
Chapter Six
“I WOULD NEVER QUESTION your wisdom, but—” “Yet you do.” Lariel turned on her half brother, with a toss of her head that sent gold and silver highlights shimmering through her long platinum hair and her eyes of three colors, cobalt blue, sky blue, and silver lightning streaks, and watched him closely. Her face was all moon, sun, and sky, and its beauty gave him pause for a moment, bratty sister and bother that she had always been. The wall and door framed her, with the window at her shoulder, shuttered though it was, letting through glimmers of light to set motes dancing about her. She stood balanced, her lean and toned body, despite her formal gown, at the ready, her stance that of a swordswoman rather than a dancer.
Jeredon Eladar rocked back on one heel. No less formidable than his Warrior Queen sister, he deferred to her because she was what she was, ruler of Larandaril, and she had decided to make this trip to Calcort and meet with Thom Stonehand in spite of his own misgivings. Kernans and Galdarkans didn’t have the answers she sought. If the Vaelinars did not know, no one did. If she had misgivings, she did not show them. A ruler had to believe in her decisions, once made. Lariel Anderieon stood under the high-arched ceiling of the best room the modest inn had to offer, far from the rooms of their holdings in Larandaril, and far from the best those lands could provide, and her eyes flashed as she waited for him to counter her.
“Vaelinars are liked no better here than in most of Kerith,” he said mildly.
Her hand twitched in the silver-blue folds of her gown. Her mouth curved once or twice, then she answered, “What troubles us will trouble all of Kerith.”
“You’ll admit to them we are troubled, then? Vulnerable?” Jeredon pulled out a chair, turning it backward so he could sit leaning his arms on the ladder-back, and watched her as he straddled it.
Her mouth twitched, and she cleared her throat. “We have a concern about our fellows of Kerith. Our knowledge of the lands shows us that there are problems developing which can yet be turned away, but they need us to teach them how best to deal with it.” Words meant not for him but composed for the mayor.
“Ah, the diplomat emerges.” Jeredon flashed a grin.
She tossed her head again, angry, but not letting the emotion escape her lips as she marched a step closer to him. “You would do better?”
“If I were the younger instead of the elder, and king instead of half brother to the queen, I think I’d simply burn them out to protect our lands and let them fear us again instead of despising us as they do now. That might not solve our immediate problem, but it would give us the time and space to find out what is encroaching upon Larandaril.”
The queen sat down wearily on the edge of her bed, and his sister emerged. “Burning them out might be exactly what we need to do. They can’t even manage their own waste!”
“That is only part of the problem, and we know that.”
“They press in on us, Jeredon. They lean on us, they crush us.”
“They’re drawn to what we offer, even as much as they hate us,” he reminded her. “They need us, too. Some even still revere us. It’s why they settle on our borders. We raised them up from mud and sticks—well, not all of them, but many—and they want more. The wars of the Magi left them in rubble, where they once knew more, and we showed them what could be achieved again.”
“Well I know.” A finger traced the air in resignation.
“Then why must I tell you this?”
“We brought our own wars,” she reminded him.
“And we tithe to them, through the Accords. They all found a way to stick their hand out, aggrieved by us or not. And you think this Stonehand will welcome your proposal? That he will take the hundreds of families you wish to depose from our borders and ship them off here?”
Lariel brushed a hand through her silvery hair. Gold shimmered as she did so, gold in single strands, and gold rings on her fingers. “I don’t know. I wish I had the Talent for that. It isn’t mine to see tomorrow.”
“Talent doesn’t solve our lives for us, Sister. It merely enhances it.” He quoted their teachers, chapter and verse.
Lariel picked up a bed pillow and threw it at him, with dead aim, and even he, with his quickness, couldn’t dodge it. Laughing, he slipped sideways from his chair and feigned death as he hit the floorboards.
“Oh, get up, you oaf.”
“No. I am dead. You’ll have to send for the after-healers.”
“After-healers!” She scoffed at him. “A myth even to us. If such a Talent existed, we would never die.” She threw another pillow at him.
“Aderro,” he pleaded. “Save me!”
Lariel broke into laughter. She got up from the bed, kneeled down beside him, her mouth arched as she bent down, preparing to give him the fabled kiss of life. Jeredon tried not to grin as her face neared his forehead. Instead, she doubled up her hand and punched him in the stomach, making him gasp for air. He rolled on the floor, flailing to breathe like a fish reeled in on a hook to land, and she sat down next to him, still laughing. His fault, he’d taught her how to fight like that. He rubbed his stomach’s seized muscles and sucked for air.
At least he’d made her laugh. When he finally caught his breath, he jumped to his feet and gave her a hand up. They dusted each other off, waiting for the carriage to take them to the grand rooms of the mayor’s office and the conference they had requested. “I suggest you refrain from that particular form of diplomacy until we gain what we want, Sister,” he advised, as he straightened his tunic. She threw a wicked grin at him.
“At least, I vow I’m ready for anything.” She put her shoulders back. Both dressed in Vaelinarran finery, including the weapons belts about her waist and his shoulder, and the gleaming blades sheathed in them. The citizens of Calcort might not wish to defer to their Vaelinar visitors, but they would most certainly respect them, if they had to swallow a sword blade to do so.
Sevryn leaned back against the building, a clay jug that smelled of beer between his feet. The jug was filled mostly with cider, with just enough beer in it to give off a faint odor, if anyone were to stumble over him as he sat waiting. Anticipation shivered through his veins as he counseled patience to himself. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen Vaelinars in the last seasons; he’d been brushed by several times, kicked once, and cursed at as well, but he’d never stood toe to toe in good graces with one, and he missed the kinship. He wondered if they would recognize in him that which Gilgarran had so patiently nurtured. He could wait. He knew what he had to offer, and the day would come when the elves would stop, and look at him with consideration in their gaze instead of dismissal. Once he had counted himself as worthless; he knew far better now, even though Gilgarran’s mission had failed. He would find himself a position from which he would eventually avenge his friend’s death, but he could only do it one step at a time.
From his spot, he could see the mayor’s courtyard and steps, opposite the columned building that was the traders’ guild. Without seeming to notice it, sipping from his jug and singing a very soft drunken medley to himself about the winsome features of a barmaid, he sat, and the single guard who patrolled the alley passed by, saying to him, “When you’re finished with that, move along,” and he nodded back amiably, sprawled, apparently harmless.
Unless the guard were to pat him down and discover the five blades he had positioned about his body. Underarmed that day, Sevryn had decided not to weigh himself down too heavily in case he needed to sprint for it. As he pondered his options, he could hear the clopping of a high-stepping pair of carriage horses. The carriage pulled into the courtyard, and he could hear the scuffle of attendants running to meet it. Good horses had come with the Vaelinars. Before that, Kerith stock was mostly small and scrubby if sturdy ponies, but Vaelinarran steeds were horses out of ballads and poetry. Through the centuries, they’d been interbred selectively until all the horse stock greatly improved, even the stocky ponies. These had the looks of the tashya about them, the hot bloods. Footmen came out to hold the pair still. Without appearing to do so, Sevryn looked up under the brim of the old hat he wore, and watched the carriage rock as a man stepped down, then handed a woman out.
If her looks were not enough to identify her, her movement was. She moved with a contained grace, certifying that he watched the queen of the valley holding of Larandaril. Her older half brother Jeredon would be the man escorting her, and he was all the guard she had with her despite a small crowd of people, shifting and unhappy, staring and grumbling at the visit. He wondered why she’d come to Calcort and its Mayor Stonehand, but word would filter down to him soon enough. The walls to such meetings always had ears, sometimes too many, and the information would be garbled until sorted through for the nuggets of truth that mattered. He’d already had some word that the queen was unhappy with the settlements upon her borders, but he could not count that as anything more than gossip.