“My sons! Oh, they adore their father. They have had no interest in me since they were old enough to hold a toy sword. I wish I could tell you that I stayed on their account, but—no. It is fear that holds me in Gisseltess. No one there loves me enough to make me want to stay.”
There was another short silence and then Senneth said abruptly, “Take off your pendant.”
“What? My pendant? Why?”
“Give it to me.”
More rustling and the sound of Sabina’s bemused voice. “All right, but—I don’t know what you could—here.”
Kirra had to think to remember what sort of jewel the women of Gisseltess usually wore to cover their housemarks. The emblem of Gisseltess, of course, was a black hawk holding a small red flower. Kirra believed that the traditional stone was onyx, often set with a small garnet. Though Sabina could have been wearing something more colorful, just for the sake of fashion.
“What are you doing?” Sabina asked fearfully.
“I am—you know I have some mystical ability,” Senneth replied. “Sometimes I can bestow some of that power onto an inanimate object—store it there, so to speak. I am putting some of my magic into your pendant. When you need strength, when you need courage, take hold of this stone. You will feel some of my power seep into you. It will help you through.”
This was the second time Kirra had witnessed Senneth taking a common object and infusing it with magic—or pretending to. She had never tried such a thing herself, and she found it hard to believe it actually worked. Then again, this was Senneth, and she had abilities no other mystic had ever displayed. And even if she did nothing but create a faint fiery glow around her chosen object and solemnly promise the owner that it was now imbued with magical power, and the owner believed her and thus was heartened—well, where was the harm in that?
But Kirra rather thought there was a transfer of magic.
“I must go back to the ballroom now,” Sabina said nervously. Her voice was a little muffled, as if she had tilted her head down to refasten her pendant. “If my husband has missed me—”
“He will see you returning to the dance floor on the arm of a handsome Danalustrous man,” Senneth replied. “Will that be so bad?”
A despairing laugh from Sabina. “Almost as bad as the truth!”
“Then go now. And think about leaving Gisseltess. I believe I could find you sanctuary somewhere.”
“You are very kind,” Sabina whispered. “I knew you must be, for my husband to hate you so much.”
Senneth laughed. Kirra heard her footsteps cross the small space and hurriedly straightened up. The door opened and Senneth peered out. She gave Kirra one brief, expressive look and then glanced up and down the hall. “Any visitors?”
“Not even a servant has crept by.”
“Good.” She motioned Sabina out, and Kirra took the marlady’s arm. “You two go back to the ballroom. I will go out through the dining room and circle around to another entrance.”
“If Halchon has noticed that we were both gone—” Sabina began. The hand she had laid on Kirra’s arm was trembling.
Kirra had to fight to keep from dissolving into laughter. “I know,” she said to Senneth. “Come in by the main entrance. Make sure someone glimpses you in a passionate embrace with Tayse. Not even Halchon will suspect that you were off hearing confidences from his wife if you’re seen pursuing illicit romance instead.”
Senneth frowned at her. “I cannot think why serra Casserah wanted to bring you in her train,” she said. “You have a debauched mind.”
“Serra Casserah would make the same suggestion if she was standing here,” Kirra replied. “It is a good one and you know it.”
Sabina—who clearly should have more pressing matters on her mind—looked shocked. “Serra Senneth! No! Not even for my sake should you consider consorting with someone unsuitable!”
Kirra laughed. “The very thing you should not have said if you didn’t want her to do it.”
Senneth gave her another repressive look. “You two go back to the ballroom. I’ll give some thought to what I should do next.”
Sabina gripped the mystic’s hand. “Thank you.”
Senneth smiled. “You’re the one who risked herself to bring me news. Why are
you
thanking
me
?”
“For—just for existing, I think,” Sabina said. “For being someone I feel I can trust.”
Senneth nodded. “And you can. Always. Now go.”
Still Sabina hesitated. “Tell your brother—your
brothers
—that I asked about them. And tell them I am well.”
“I will certainly do that,” Senneth said gently. She would not look at Kirra. “Now you must return.”
Kirra stepped down the hallway and Sabina perforce followed, her hand still upon the young man’s arm. In a few moments, they were through the doorway, through the crowd clustered along the walls, and back on the dance floor. Kirra didn’t think they’d been gone more than fifteen minutes. No one seemed to have missed them. Romar was standing on the perimeter of the dance floor, smiling down at his niece and wholly ignoring the hovering Valri. Halchon was still engaged in what now appeared to be an argument with a group that had swelled by three men. Opinions seemed to be passionate, but no one appeared to be angry. If he had been looking for his wife, he gave no sign.
“I believe you are safely through this exercise, my lady,” Kirra said, smiling down at Sabina’s small, worried face. “Would you like a glass of wine? Shall I find you another partner? Or would you like to sit awhile and recover from your adventures?”
Sabina managed a shaky laugh. “I think I would like to sit quietly by myself,” she said. “
With
a glass of wine.”
Kirra guided her to an arrangement of stiff-backed chairs striped in the Nocklyn colors. “I’ll be back in a moment,” she promised.
In a few minutes, she had secured a drink for Sabina, bowed one last time, and crossed the dance floor with the aimless circumlocution of a man who wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself next. She finally made it to the servants’ hallway, but had to pass a few moments pretending there was a problem with her shoe as a small parade of footmen traipsed between the kitchen and the dance floor. Finally—a period of solitude—and she changed herself back to Casserah by increments. If anyone had noticed her disappearance down this hallway half an hour ago, and now saw her reemerging, they would think she had been stealing sweets from the cooks or creeping out to the gardens by the kitchen door. She reentered the ballroom, smiled at a young lord, and dipped back onto the dance floor as if nothing had transpired at all.
CHAPTER
30
I
T hardly seemed fair to expect the evening to hold any more drama. The clock had just struck two, and a few guests had already begun to trickle out, when a crash at the main entrance caught everyone’s attention. Kirra whirled around to first look for Senneth, and found her across the wide room with a hand on Amalie’s shoulder. Next she tried to determine the source of the commotion. She expected to see Tayse and Justin engaged in some kind of confrontation at the main entrance, but it wasn’t Riders who poured into the ballroom in a dark phalanx. It was a regiment of royal soldiers in black and gold, at least fifty of them, all sober, heavily armed, and primed to fight. At the head of the troop was Romar Brendyn.
He strode heedlessly through the couples on the dance floor, who cried out and tumbled back from him, and a wedge of soldiers followed. More soldiers streamed in and split to either side of the doorway till there was a line of them completely enclosing the room. They made a heavy dark circle of containment around the gaudy colors of ball dresses and fashionable waistcoats.
Romar came to a halt in front of Halchon and Sabina Gisseltess. “Marlord,” Romar said in a ringing voice. “Your escort has arrived to take you back to Gissel Plain.”
Kirra put a hand to her mouth to push back her delighted laugh. Across the room, she saw Senneth manage to maintain her stony expression, but Valri looked maliciously pleased. Halchon’s body clenched in fury, but he kept his face smooth and his voice relaxed.
“I am not yet ready to return to my home.”
“Servants are even now packing your bags. Your carriage is at the door. I cannot imagine what holds you here.”
“I come and go as I please,” Halchon snarled, losing some of his restraint. “If you think your impudence has carried the day—”
“I think a hundred of the king’s men carry the day,” Romar replied, his voice contemptuous. “You are in violation of his majesty’s direct orders to confine yourself to your property. You will be returned to that property. Now. You will not set foot off of your own land again until the king has lifted his interdiction.”
“I. Am. Not. Ready. To leave,” Halchon spat out. He lifted a hand as if to signal men of his own. Romar caught him around the wrist and twisted his arm sharply.
“Do you really want bloodshed? Now? Tonight? Do you really have the manpower on hand to win a skirmish like this?” Romar demanded, scorn still dripping from his voice. He flung Halchon’s hand away. “Do you want to see swords rip through ballgowns? Do you want to humiliate your Nocklyn friends? Then call for your men. But most of them are already under guard and could not respond to you if they would. You are well and truly taken, marlord. Accept it with grace or accept it with violence. But you are going back to Gisseltess.”
A smoldering moment while the two men stared each other down, then Halchon jerked himself to one side. “Sabina,” he said to his wife in a tightly controlled voice, “you might want to fetch a cloak. We’re returning home tonight.”
“Someone else will fetch her anything she needs,” Romar said. “I myself will take both of you directly to your coach.”
Halchon’s eyes brightened with hatred but he did not lose composure again. He merely gave Romar one swift nod, then took Sabina’s arm in a hard and painful grip. “My dear,” he grated out. “We must be going.”
Sabina herself looked as small and frightened as a child dreading a terrible punishment. Her face was so pale her lips looked bloodless, and even across the width of the ballroom, she appeared to be shaking. Kirra could imagine how cold her small hand was, locked inside Halchon’s. The marlady did not say a word, merely hurried alongside Halchon as he stalked out of the ballroom behind Romar, taking two steps for every one long stride of her husband’s. Soldiers folded around them until even Sabina’s blond hair was lost in their insistent darkness.
Everyone in the room stayed exactly where they had been standing when the soldiers swept in, and they stared toward the door until all the soldiers were gone. And still they stood there, and still they stared, and still no one said a word. They could hear, rumbling down the hallway from the main door, the muffled sounds of organization and departure—the shouts of men, the creak of leather, the strike of hooves against the ground. It seemed to take very little time for Halchon and Sabina Gisseltess to be on the road, though it took forever for the sound of the soldiers’ horses to finally die away.
Not until then did anyone on the dance floor move. Not until then, it seemed, did anyone breathe. Then suddenly there was a collective sigh of breath and a shocked, excited babble of voices. Kirra looked again for the faces she knew. Senneth and Valri had closed ranks around Amalie, and now Senneth was leading their small group toward the door, through the knots of people gathered together in intense conversation. Mayva had collapsed onto one of the striped chairs and was sobbing into a handkerchief while five well-dressed women hovered around her, offering what sympathy they could scrape up over their shock and glee. Lowell was nowhere to be found. Romar had not returned to the dance floor. If there were still Riders at the main entrance, they were not visible from Kirra’s vantage point, though she imagined they had followed Senneth up the stairs to Amalie’s room.
Start to finish, this was a night Kirra could not imagine living through twice.
There wasn’t much Kirra could do for Mayva; other hands would urge her to bed and try to calm her down. So she slipped out the door, up the stairs, and into Amalie’s room, where her friends had already gathered. Tayse and Justin were leaning against the walls, Cammon and Donnal were sitting on the floor, and Senneth, Valri, and Amalie had disposed themselves in the formal chairs.
“What happened?” Kirra demanded, sinking down onto Amalie’s bed. “How did—I thought we didn’t have time to call soldiers in from Ghosenhall!”