Firekeeper Saga - Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart Part 21

"The winged folk," screeched an eagle with pride, "have not let humans go completely un.o.bserved. We resist being taken captive-though this has happened from time to time-but as you have already been told, we continue to watch. During this last war our spies knew where Queen Gustin IV lurked, letting others fight her battles, and we knew the fury she concealed at being stripped of her place."

Without much hope, Firekeeper said, "Cannot your own agents steal these objects? I cannot cross the ocean without being noticed, nor can I walk into the queen's stronghold. What about the clever-fingered racc.o.o.ns or the sly foxes or those famous thieves-the ravens and crows?"

Murmurs rose at this protest and Firekeeper realized that some of the Royal Beasts were no more pleased by her possible involvement than she was herself. Murmurs became roars and screeches, howls and hoots and growls.

Perceiving that the council had degenerated into unredeemable argument, the raven adjourned the meeting again, this time until midmorning, so as to permit time for sleeping and hunting.

Shortly before dawn, when she had fed and run and chased some of the fear from her soul, Firekeeper curled herself for sleep between the warm bodies of the One Female and Blind Seer.

The blue-eyed wolf, who had listened to all that had been said but had held his tongue as was proper for a young wolf in the company of his elders, now asked his first question: "Mother, what is the lesson of the songbirds?"

"Hush," the One Female said, lifting her silver-furred head and scanning the forest with amber eyes. "This is not the time or place for that tale. Ask another night and I may tell you, though in truth it belongs to the lore of the Ones."

Wolf-obedient, Blind Seer submitted to her wisdom-knowing as always that it was backed up by the threat of her fangs.Firekeeper wondered some as she drifted off to sleep, but her mind was so full of new thoughts that she could not hold another.

Winter or not, the royal contingent from Bright Bay did not leave Eagle's Nest the moment the wedding celebrations were concluded. Indeed, the weather took one of those turns toward bright days and sunshine that often happen in early winter, the type of weather that causes the optimists to predict a mild winter and the pessimists to grumble about threats of summer drought.

Instead, there followed a whirl of parties, receptions, b.a.l.l.s, and banquets that would be talked about for years to come. Everyone was giddy with the promise of peace after a century of intermittent war-or at least everyone acted as if this was so.

Certainly there were those among the dancers and diners who must be less than happy with the changes that had been made and changes that were to come, but these had the sense to keep their mouths shut.

Most of these, in fact, were more interested in finding out how they could best benefit from the new order-if new order there was to be-without sacrificing the prerogatives they had claimed under the old.

As a member of the official diplomatic contingent accompanying Duke Marek of Half-Moon Island, Baron Endbrook was invited practically everywhere. He used his time well, mostly making business contacts for his shipping fleet, for he found many of Hawk Haven's n.o.ble-born were almost pathetically enchanted with the sea, as is so often the case when a thing is alien and strange.

However, Waln also found opportunity to speak with the diplomats from New Kelvin. Even in their homeland, the New Kelvinese's peculiar manner of dress and facial ornamentation-which was echoed to greater or lesser degree through all levels of society-had been astonishing. Here in Hawk Haven, where even a lady's cosmetics were styled to look as natural as possible, the New Kelvinese seemed to belong to another race.

And that may be their intention, the baron thought, given their d.a.m.ned superior att.i.tude-though if that was the case, they wouldn't bother with the stuff at home, would they?

The custom followed by both men and women of the New Kelvinese upper cla.s.ses-at least Waln thought they were the upper cla.s.ses-of shaving the hair at the front of their heads, back to just before the tops of their ears, and wearing the hair long behind conferred a curious androgyny.

This androgynous appearance was a.s.sisted by the ornate, floor-length robes the New Kelvinese wore.

These gorgeous garments were usually silk and often heavily embroidered. However, the weight of the fabric and the cut of the robe masked all but the most obvious physical cues to gender.

The New Kelvinese diplomats-there were three in the group-all affected a mincing gait, rather as if their curly-tipped shoes were too tight. It should have looked funny, but instead conferred a peculiar dignity-something like the stiltedly deliberate walk of a praying mantis.

Happily for Waln, the New Kelvinese were known throughout the region as purveyors of goods that could be found nowhere else. Best known, of course, were their silks and carpets, but they also sold herbs and powders. Some of these were medicinal, but others seemed to serve no purpose but to induce strange dreams and visions. And then there was their gla.s.s-a difficult item to ship, but worth the effort for its fine, clear colors.

Since Duke Marek had styled Waln as the Isle's Minister for Trade, the baron's frequent conversationswith the New Kelvinese excited no comment. During these meetings, they promised him accommodations upon his arrival, gave him maps with the best routes to Dragon's Breath from Hawk Haven marked out, and smiled darkly when he refused to name who he was bringing with him.

Of course the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds know, Waln thought in annoyance. They couldn't fail to know-as Queen Valora herself said, there simply aren't many who are willing to claim knowledge of the sorcerous arts.

Momentarily, a suspicion flickered into his mind that this entire intrigue was a charade to get him to escort Lady Melina to New Kelvin. He dismissed the idea as idiotic. If the New Kelvinese wanted her to come, all they needed to do was invite her. Her fervent interest in their land and its secrets had been obvious.

To comfort himself, Warn Endbrook dreamed of a duke-dom. He'd settle for Dog Island, where he had been born, and if any there thought to call him "Walnut"...

He smirked as he thought about the things he could do with a t.i.tle and a queen behind him.

Elise couldn't decide whether the huge stack of invitations that arrived by every post, as well as by hand, was a welcome or unwelcome distraction from the darker concerns haunting her.

Some were very welcome, such as the one from d.u.c.h.ess Kestrel, for Elise could be fairly certain that both Derian and Jared would be present at that gathering.

Another one that she welcomed was from Jet Shield on behalf of his mother and himself. Elise knew that her parents were astonished that Elise accepted, for she had avoided Jet as much as possible since their engagement had been broken and she couldn't help but feel a bit guilty when Aurella patted her hand approvingly.

"I really had thought," Aurella said, "that we would need to drag you there and that then you would make excuses to leave as soon as possible."

Elise colored and looked at the tips of her shoes.

"Mother, I was an idiot about Jet-I know that now and I'm determined not to make another mistake.

Like him or not-and I don't-Jet is the crown princess's brother. Never mind that Sapphire is technically King Tedric's daughter now. No one is going to forget her birth family-just like there are those who will never believe that Lady Blysse is not his granddaughter."

Aurella patted Elise's hand. "I'm proud of you. You've grown a great deal wiser about such things than you were last summer."

"I've learned at a hard school," Elise replied a trace bitterly, "and had a good teacher in your example.

You've never forgotten that Queen Elexa is your aunt and our family has benefitted from that."

"It doesn't hurt," Aurella replied mildly, "that I like Aunt Elexa, but, yes, I've been aware all my life that if I was to give my children-my child-any advantages I should cultivate that relationship."

The sorrow that touched Aurella's delicate features when she mentioned "children"-a reference to Elise's stillborn siblings-made Elise hold her tongue when her mother moved the conversation to a less pleasant topic.

"Elise, on the matter of attachments," Aurella dipped her needle through her embroidery canvas as shespoke, "your father and I have been concerned that you are forming another."

Elise swallowed hard, knowing what lecture was about to come.

"Sir Jared," Aurella said, as if unaware that the name on her lips sent an odd mixture of defiance and joy through Elise, "is by all accounts a good, brave, and intelligent man. He is well connected by birth and seems to have won the favor of both of the heirs apparent. Moreover, the talent with which he is blessed seems to say that he has found favor with his ancestors."

Her needle dipped and rose as relentlessly her a.n.a.lysis continued: "However, Sir Jared is landless and without immediate prospects in that direction. The Surcliffes hold poor land and though they are gaining some reputation for their wines, they show no sign of becoming anything but a solid trade family.

"In short," Aurella looked up and met her daughter's eyes, "he is not the man we would wish you to marry."

Elise rubbed her hands across her face and said in tones not convincing even to herself, "I never said I wanted to marry him," and then even more defiantly, "and he has never even hinted at such thoughts."

"He wouldn't," Aurella said, needle rising and falling once more. "He is a gentleman in the truest sense of the word. He knows your station is above his own and would never insult you by suggesting a liaison.

You would need to be the one to propose and even then you would probably meet resistance."

Elise started. It had never occurred to her that Jared wouldn't offer for her. She had even daydreamed something along those lines: "My love, I have nothing to offer you but my heart and adoration. Even so, I beg you for permission to ask your father for your hand..."

Her indignant snort was for her own idiocy, but Aurella-quite reasonably-took it as meant for herself.

"Your father and I are all too aware of how little a barony may come to be in the new kingdom of Bright Haven-a project we support with all our faith. The land your father inherited from his father has been borderland. Were it not that the Barren runs rough, we would have seen much fighting there. Even so, you have seen the graveyard."

Recovering herself, Elise nodded.

"Peace means that our lands-rather than being on the edge of a contested river-will be in the middle of a prosperous kingdom. We have already begun to toy with the idea of ca.n.a.ls to bypa.s.s the roughest reaches, but such would take money beyond our small treasury. Agreements could be reached with our neighbors to expand the ca.n.a.ls into a great network. Indeed, we are fortunate that much of the land is held by the Crown, which should favor such development, for it would increase their revenues from what are now tenant farms."

Caught in this vision for the future, Aurella forgot her embroidery. Her hands sketched maps in the air and she seemed quite the girl.

"My father might grant us some funds in return for a promise of return to House Peregrine, but a far surer source of support would be one made through a marriage alliance on the part of the future heir of House Archer."

"Me," Elise said flatly."You," Aurella agreed. "Arranged marriages are not bad things. Your father has been good to me, even when it became clear that I could only bear him one child. The Archer Barony has prospered-as you yourself have seen-from its ties not only to House Peregrine, but to the royal family."

"And now it's my turn," Elise said.

"You need to consider what you would be giving up if you married a relatively penniless man," Aurella said. "This barony will be your responsibility. Even if your father and I manage to build the ca.n.a.ls, you will need to upkeep them. Consider the importance of an alliance. Earl Kestrel may favor his cousin, but he has children of his own, and what of his treasury can be spared from the duchy will go to support them and their projects."

Elise bit her lip. Responsibility to her land had been drummed into her from as long as she could remember. Her father had walked her barefoot through the newly plowed fields, boated with her on the little streams, introduced her to all their tenant farmers, and made her attend every possible naming, wedding, and betrothal.

The Archer Barony was not poor, but it was not as prosperous as lands managed by those with greater resources. Could she ignore the needs of her tenants merely because she found it easy to talk to Jared?

"I understand, Mother," Elise said at last. "I really do."

"One more thing," her mother said. "Your options are not limited to Hawk Haven any longer. Bright Bay has its Great Houses and these often lack land, for their wealth has come from the sea. There will be many a house happy to ally with a landed house-even of lesser rank-and to shower their monies into its development.

"I am very glad that you have agreed to go to so many of the social events surrounding the royal wedding. While you are there, I want you to get to know as many of the people here from Bright Bay as possible. It could well be to our advantage."

Elise tried to smile.

"I'll do that, Mother," she promised.

Later that day, between a card party and a dinner, she stole into the small room where their family shrine hung. It was a duplicate of the one at home. The ancestral masks hung on the sides. The back was decorated with an ornate and detailed map of their lands. Elise studied that map for a long time, filling in from memory the faces of the tenants, the sound of the Barren as it rushed over rocks, the silence of the graveyard.

That last stayed with her. Those who were buried there-including her grandfather Purcel-had given so much for Hawk Haven and for the Archer family.

Could she give less?

Chapter XIV.

Derian found the days subsequent to the royal wedding pleasant ones. The weather was an ancestral blessing, making working at the stables a joy-sunny enough to feel warm, cool enough that there wereno flies.

Waking in his own room with the bottle window and his initials carved into the doorframe seemed nicer than being waited on by servants in any of the castles in which he'd stayed. The smell of burnt sugar as Cook sprinkled the breakfast bread, the sound of his mother and Damita arguing about the appropriateness of her current outfit, even Brock bursting in to show Derian the progress of his latest effort at wood-carving were better than plush tapestries and vintage wines.

Derian came to a tentative peace with his parents' expectations. This was not out of any n.o.bility in his own soul, but because he realized that he was indeed a different person than the young man who had ventured out with Earl Kestrel the previous spring and that he now had very different options open to him. The young man he had been the spring before had been full of p.r.i.c.kly pride and quick to take offense-even if that offense had remained unvoiced-at slights real and imagined. Firekeeper had been a large part of the change, Derian mused. While he had been teaching her, she had been teaching him.

The wolf-woman's fierce loyalty to those who deserved her respect, her open scorn for those she despised might not be safe reactions, but they were honest. Derian now found that he sometimes tried to examine issues as she might and chuckled to himself as he imagined himself trying to explain to her why he resisted taking on a job with some n.o.ble patron.

Derian: "I have my place here at home with my family. Why should I go elsewhere?"

Firekeeper: "Young wolves have pack, but still they disperse."

Derian (stubbornly): "But, why should I? I have everything I need here."

Firekeeper: "And you need nothing else? You no get things from going elsewhere?"

Derian (exasperated): "Of course I have." (Thinks, almost guiltily, of the ruby counselor's ring glowing with soft fire in his family's shrine.) Firekeeper: "Wolves have sharp fangs and thick fur. I have neither so I use these." (Gestures to clothing and to belt knife.) "I think not dispersing be like me biting with dull human teeth-I can if I must, but it is stupid if can have knife."

Derian (thinking aloud): "And the things I can learn, the people I can meet-not to mention the tokens I can earn-those are all like knives. If I stay here, I'm biting the challenges of the future with dull human teeth when I could have had knives."

Firekeeper (looking slightly puzzled as she often does when confronting a long speech): "Yes. In human world there is not just One Male, One Female-there are many who are Ones. It isn't reasonable, but it is so. If you would be a wolf among rabbits, you need to have fangs."

Derian, who had been currying the sorrel riding horse belonging to King Allister as he framed this mental dialogue, laughed to himself with such gusto that the horse's ears flicked back as if asking what the joke might be.

Firekeeper might say what Derian had just imagined; she might also say that if Derian could rale his pack, why did he want to be a lesser wolf elsewhere?

"The point is," Derian said, continuing his mental dialogue, "I don't rule 'my pack'-not yet and not for a long time if the ancestors are kind and can do without my parents for a while. That being the case, what I'm really saying when I say I want to stay here and work with the family business is that I want to stay a child. And while that might be nice for a while, I'd hate myself before long."Having reached this temporary truce with himself, Derian dove with true enthusiasm into both his work for his family and his private project for Elise. He confided some of the details of the latter to his father, knowing that Colby had learned so much from other people's gossip that he eschewed the vice himself.

"What I'm trying to learn, Father," Derian said one morning as they walked out to the stables, "is if this man, Waln-or any of his a.s.sociates-is making plans for an unannounced journey. How do you think I can find out without being obvious?"

Colby scratched his head, a gesture he had affected for so many years in his self-appointed role of simple stable man that it had become habit.

"Well, he hasn't made arrangements with me, son," Colby replied, "though the horses the diplomats from the Isles rode here from Bright Bay are in our stables, but then, if Baron Waln is involved in skulduggery he might not want to work through us-you being connected to the Crown and all. Yet he's not local and the Horse Fair won't be until the spring."

That was a long speech for Colby Carter and he fell silent as they continued on through a more crowded portion of the streets. When they had pa.s.sed through the wall and were in more open country again, Colby said: "Your man'll want to hire and, even if the lady you mentioned is involved, he won't want any trace of her involvement. That rules out using her family's mounts."

Derian offered his own partly formed plan. "I'd thought to check the other livery stables, but I hadn't worked out how to ask without making clear what I was doing."

Colby brightened. "Tell them you're asking because the same gent came asking us and we think he's trying to undercut local business and tie up resources. He's a foreigner and we can use that to our advantages. Don't be too coy-be indignant."

Grinning, Derian slapped his father on the shoulder.

"That's the very thing!"

He went to it that very day, using the excuse of going around to the various stables to collect Prancing Steed Stables' portion of the stabling fees so that his visit would seem even less obvious.

Luck wasn't with him on his first few stops. Happily, neither was the resentment he had thought he might meet in his role as fee collector. The flush of business at what should have been the beginning of the slow season-combined with the fact that gentle-born patrons stood for a higher tariff than did the merchants who usually would have provided the bulk of trade-made for good humor all around.

This continued as Derian pa.s.sed on to the smaller stables and carting establishments. For these he could not use the excuse of collecting the Prancing Steed's share, but he'd worked out a ruse involving asking after their available s.p.a.ce and resources-implying but never promising that the Carters might be bringing business their way.

And I'm not precisely lying, Derian comforted himself, for if the plans Mother and Father have for expanding our business into Bright Bay come through, we will indeed need extra hands.

He ended each spiel with a variation on the same theme.

"We've heard-and in fact my mother intends to bring the matter before the guild next meeting-that some of our foreign guests don't understand fair trade. There's one fellow-and I won't name names, justsay that he's a big man from across the water-who's been going around promising his business to several stables. The word is that he's getting the best price he can by offering a solid commitment, but..."

And here Derian let his voice drop. "The thing I've heard is that he's offered that commitment to more than one stable!"

Eventually, Derian got the information he needed and as he pieced together the picture his respect for Baron Waln rose a notch.

Waln had indeed made contracts with several stables, but never for more than two animals. In this way he had acquired three good horses-these trained for either riding or hauling, a brace of pack mules, and a light wagon that converted with comparative ease to sleigh runners.