“That’s Hawk!”
She wasn’t aware that she’d spoken until he raised a gloved hand and the entire cavalcade came to a spectacularly dashing halt, horses shuddering and tossing heads, hooves striking sparks on the cobblestones, outriders with their banners snapping in the breeze.
Hawk slung his cloak back over one shoulder, revealing a splendid riding tunic of gold-embroidered black, and narrow black trousers instead of the loose ones she was used to seeing on the fellows around her. His riding boots were black and glossy.
He leaned back against the saddle cantle, looking down at Wren with lazy eyes and a mocking smile. “Ah, it’s the stripe-haired magic prentice. With a trail of goslings.” He flicked his fingers dismissively at the students.
“These geese can bite,” Wren stated. “If you don’t believe me, climb down and watch.”
Hawk’s mocking smile deepened at the corners, his followers laughed, and Tam flushed, but he looked too afraid to speak. The girl’s lips were moving. Practicing spells, Wren thought in approval.
Hawk ignored them. “From what I hear, Cantirmoor’s been boring this past year,” he went on. “Aren’t you glad to see me? You know things are never dull when I show up.”
Wren scowled. “If you’re here to make trouble for Tess, you’ll wish things were dull,” she stated.
Hawk laughed. “Still hot at hand, I see.” Surprisingly, his tone was not at all cruel, it was more teasing. His slanted brows quirked even more at the ends, and he said, now laying his gauntleted hand over his heart, “But I am not here to make trouble. Far from it! I am here on a mission of peace, good will, and maybe even romance.”
Wren pruned her mouth. “Romance? Euw! What do you mean—” Then she realized, and gasped. “You can’t! You
wouldn’t
!”
Hawk’s laughter was as mocking as his smile. “But yes, my unromantic young mage. I am here in my legitimate position as heir to the Rhiscarlan coronet, to court your Queen Teressa.”
Hawk raised his fist. He and his honor guard galloped through the gate, leaving Wren to wave uselessly at their choking dust. She sent a glare after them, then thrust her books at Tam. “Would you take these to the archive for me? I’ve got to warn the queen.”
“Sure, but—” Tam began.
“Thanks!”
She bustled through the gates, cutting sideways through the garden to a secret entrance.
Wren knew that Teressa would be waiting in her private parlor. The girls had long ago explored the many passages in the palace. So even though Hawk was on horseback, he had several layers of servants to get through whereas Wren could go straight in, and take a shortcut to the parlor.
She burst out of the secret passage, dashed down the hallway in the royal residence wing, and flung open the door to Teressa’s private sitting room, which overlooked a garden full of blue and white and yellow spring blossoms.
“Phew!” Wren exclaimed. “You’re here!”
“Wren.” Teressa smiled a welcome. “I just arrived.” Teressa came forward, the light from the window accentuating her strong features dominated by a cleft chin, her elbow-length brown hair gleaming with red and gold highlights. “You did not have to hurry. The bells haven’t even rung yet.”
“Oh yes I did,” Wren stated grimly, flinging herself into the old-fashioned cushioned chair nearest Teressa. “You’re about to get hit with a real stinker of a visitor—unless, of course, you’d like me to send him right home again. I’d be glad to do it, too.”
“I take it I have a visitor you don’t approve of?” Teressa sank down, and smoothed her yellow polished-cotton skirts. Her gown was bare of embellishments except for bodice laces made of green silk.
“It’s not one of your annoying relatives.” Wren pinched her nose. “Well, on the other hand, I guess he is, if you go far enough back. Anyway it’s that disgusting pickle-nose Hawk Rhiscarlan.”
To Wren’s surprise, Teressa just laughed. “Pickle-nose! Did he really turn that ugly?”
“He was always ugly,” Wren retorted, even if it wasn’t exactly true. “And as far as I’m concerned, he can go on being ugly somewhere else.”
“But if I send him away without finding out what he wants, won’t it just make him into an angry pickle-nose?” Teressa responded, pulling the long silken cord hanging by the door. Downstairs the servants would know Wren had arrived, and soon there’d be good, creamy hot chocolate to drink. “Angry pickle-noses prowling my southern border might not be good for the kingdom.”
“I can tell you what he wants.” Wren made a sick face. “Now, get ready to laugh! Either that, or a nasty stomach ache. That is, if he wasn’t just lying. He says he’s here to court you.”
Wren paused, expecting laughter—at least disbelief.
Teressa just smiled and shook her head.
Wren gasped. “Teressa. You
knew
.”
“He wrote me just after New Year’s. A letter full of impertinence, of course, in his usual style, and at first I was quite ready to pitch it in the fire,” Teressa admitted, as a servant opened the door and carried in a fine-carved tray with all the chocolate things on it. “Thanks, Mira.”
When she and Wren were alone again, Teressa poured out two cups of gently steaming chocolate. “But I got to thinking. What would happen if I could make friends with him? Maybe even win him to an alliance? Surely that would be far better than having him angry and possibly scheming behind my back.”
“He’ll be doing that anyway, whether he’s here or somewhere else,” Wren stated. “You
know
you can’t trust him. He even hinted as much himself, at the end of the war, there. He’ll do what he wants when he wants, and too bad for the rest of us.”
Teressa lifted her cup but did not sip. Instead, she gazed out the window at the fluffy clouds drifting across the sky. Presently she said, “I’m not so sure about that.”
Wren gave a big gusty sigh. “Tess. This is
Hawk
. Who tried to
kill
Connor and me. Who nearly killed Tyron. Who tried to capture
you
, and hold you for ransom against the highest bidder—which could have been Angleworm Andreus, for all he cared!”
“But that was before he really met any of us,” Teressa said. “You have to admit he could have done any or all of those things during the war, and didn’t.”
“That’s because he’d squabbled with his former pal Andreus, and it wouldn’t have gained him anything.” Wren crossed her arms. “Tess, he’s nasty, mean, untrustworthy, and the thought of you even pretending to let him court you makes my stomach feel like a thousand snails are rumbling around in there.”
Teressa shuddered, then drank some her chocolate, as if to get rid of Wren’s too-vivid image. Then she bent toward Wren, smiling a little. “Don’t tell me you can’t look at him and admit he’s quite attractive.”
Wren snapped upright, nearly spilling her still full cup. She crashed it down onto its saucer. “Ugh! You can’t mean to say you find that nasty toadwart
handsome
?”
Teressa put her cup down. “But he is.”
Wren got up and stomped around the room, trying to find words to express her disgust. “Handsome!” She waved her arms. “And so’s the scarlet snake whose bite is so poisonous you’re dead before you drop to the ground, or those dragons of old, who were supposed to be very handsome indeed, and I’ll bet everyone admired their pretty scales ever so much before they got blasted into ash.” She wiggled her fingers to pantomime ash falling to the ground.
“Wren,” Teressa said in a quiet voice. “Do you really believe that just because I like someone’s looks I’d lose my brains over him?”
“Why not?” Wren exclaimed, thumping a hand on the back of her chair. “You and I laughed over so many of those court geese doing just that, before the war. Male or female, they take one look at a pretty face, and their wits flap right out the window.”
“But we’re not talking about court, Wren.” Teressa’s smile was gone, though her voice stayed gentle. “Do you really believe that I, Teressa, with the responsibilities I have now, and my parents not two years dead, would really lose my head at the first sight of a handsome face?”
Wren felt danger tingling in her palms. She stood at the window and looked back at Teressa, and saw for the first time that her old friend really wasn’t a girl any more. Her once-rounded cheeks had flattened, her cleft chin jutted, reminding Wren of King Verne, her brow was high and her eyes direct. She was a young woman, not a girl, and though they’d been friends for all these years, Wren had somehow managed not to notice the change.
She didn’t tell me
, Wren thought.
She knew about Hawk months ago and didn’t tell me
.
And now they were on the verge of their very first argument. Ever.
So Wren said, “Of course I don’t. It’s just that I don’t trust Hawk Rhiscarlan. Annnnd . . . I guess maybe sometimes I exaggerate, just a little, when I worry.” She held up her forefinger and thumb with about a hair’s breadth space between them.
Teressa’s smile returned, but it was pensive, rather than genuine. “He’s likely to only stay a season, and I plan to find out a lot more from him than he does from me,” she said.
He’s probably down there in the stable bragging the same thing to his cronies
, Wren thought, but she didn’t say it.
For the first time she couldn’t say what she wanted to her old friend. She no longer felt like one girl with another girl, but like a girl with a young woman—a queen.
Wren tried to smile. “You’ll be getting a summons that he’s here any moment. And Tyron asked if I’d teach the basic illusions class while Fliss is gone. I guess I’d better get back and prepare for it.”
And after that, get busy with my journeymage project. Better to shiver underground translating old glyphs than . . .
She slipped out the door, leaving Teressa staring down at Wren’s untouched cup of chocolate.
Tyron saw a flicker of movement outside the window of the classroom. He moved closer. There was a familiar short, round figure in a brown tunic toiling up the pathway, long yellow-streaked brown braids swinging, her brow furrowed, her blue eyes narrowed in a way he hadn’t seen for at least a year.
Tyron frowned. Wren, angry? Good-natured, ever-joking Wren, who was supposed to be up at the palace now?
Uh oh.
“Did I say it wrong?”
Tyron blinked at his four staring students, their practice books open, pens sharp, ink ready for dipping.
“Let’s have that spell again,” he said.
The four chanted obediently, “The spell for cleaning water binds to the container. We begin with the summons-spell for all particles hidden and unhidden . . .”
Tyron waited impatiently until they were done with the long process for making cleaning-buckets for dishes and clothing, then said quickly, “Your assignment now is to look in the archives and find three different spells for cleaning the water in streams, perform them, and next class report on which is most effective, which is least effective, and why.”
He resisted the impulse to dash out the door ahead of them, and made himself wait until they were gone. He wore the white tunic of a master, and masters didn’t dash around yelling wildly, not without good cause. Especially these days, when so many still woke up having nightmares about the Lirwani attack.
When the last student vanished around the corner he dashed off in the other direction, straight to the dormitories for the senior students.
Wren’s door was closed. She almost always left it open whether she was there or not. Tyron hesitated, then knocked lightly.
After a long moment the door cracked opened and one light blue eye peered out.
Then Wren sighed and opened the door the rest of the way. “You may’s well come on in, though how you nosed it out so fast—”
“Nosed what out?” he interrupted.
“Teressa didn’t send you some kind of message?”
Tyron didn’t miss that rare use of Teressa’s full name. “I saw you running past my window. You’re supposed to be at the palace.”
Wren flopped down on her bed, leaving the chair for Tyron.
He lifted a couple books and papers from it and sat down. “What happened?”
Wren groaned. “It’s that disgusting skunk of a Hawk.”
“Oh. He’s here, is he?”
Wren sat up, her eyes wide. “You knew, too? Nobody told me!” She added grimly, “I suppose everyone in the entire city knows?”
“They probably will by tonight. Anyone who cares to.” Tyron lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “But until today, only Teressa and Halfrid and I knew. She showed us a letter from Hawk right after New Year’s. We talked about it. What happened to upset you?”
“I tried to talk her into letting me send him right back to whatever stenchiferous lair he lurks in,” Wren said. “I brought up good reasons—like him having tried to kill three of us, and kidnap her—but all she said was, ‘He’s handsome.’” Wren grimaced, then rubbed her eyes. “Well, no, that’s not quite fair. But she had all these stupid reasons to let him court her. And she did say he’s handsome. When people say that, it just means trouble.”
Tyron scratched his head and looked out Wren’s window to where a couple of skylarks chased across the sky as he considered his own response.
“What is it?” Wren eyed him suspiciously. “You’re holding something back.”
“Am I?”
Wren’s grin was lopsided. “When we were younger you used to turn into a big old knot of arms and legs when you knew something awful and couldn’t tell anyone. Now you just do that with your hair until it sticks out like a fright wig for the theatre player clowns.” She mimed running her hands through her hair.
Tyron put his hands down. “I think Teressa and Hawk are playing high politics now. Testing one another.”
“That means they aren’t going to follow the same rules regular people do?” Wren asked. “And why not? Things like honesty and trust work well enough for those of us not wearing crowns. Maybe if more kings tried these same rules, there wouldn’t be so many wars.”
“You would accuse King Verne of dishonesty and untrustworthiness?”
Wren’s face was always a good mirror to her thoughts. Tyron could see her thinking back to the days when Teressa’s father had ruled. He’d been regarded as a wise, compassionate, and honest king.