Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses) (29 page)

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Authors: Sharon Shinn

BOOK: Fortune and Fate (Twelve Houses)
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Chapter 15
 
 
THEY WERE A HALF DAY’S JOURNEY OUTSIDE OF GISSEL
Plain when dark found them still on the road. Senneth sighed at the prospect of spending another night at a roadside inn. Not that she was eager to arrive at Gissel Plain and whatever hospitality her brother might provide, but she was wearying of the travel.
 
 
Tayse, of course, had foreseen by noon that they wouldn’t make it to journey’s end by nightfall, so he’d sent on ahead to arrange for their lodging for the night. Sunset found them in a good-sized town with a commodious inn clearly designed to appeal to the wealthy. Tayse and Justin disappeared to settle the royal troops for the night, while the other Riders followed Cammon.
 
 
A tall, gaunt woman of indeterminate years led Cammon and his entourage to the second floor, pointing out the chambers that had been reserved for the Riders and then unlocking the door for royalty. After the Riders had inspected it for hazards and withdrawn, Senneth took one quick look around at the luxurious furnishings. The canopied bed in the middle of the room was enormous; she rather thought all nine Riders could sleep alongside Cammon and none of them would feel particularly crowded.
 
 
“Water will be brought immediately for your bath,” the haggard woman said in a sepulchral voice. “Would you like dinner in your chambers or in a private room?”
 
 
“Oh, in the taproom, please,” Cammon said.
 
 
The proprietress gave him a look of horror. “Among the common people? Grubby and uncivilized?”
 
 
Cammon laughed. He seemed to find something about her, invisible to Senneth, charming in the extreme, for he was giving her his brightest smile. “They’re
my
people, after all,” he said.
 
 
“Highness, you might reconsider,” the woman urged.
 
 
Senneth wished he would, too, but she didn’t like strangers trying to give Cammon advice. “He knows very well where he would like to eat,” she said sharply. “Now, perhaps you could show me where I’m staying tonight?”
 
 
The woman gave Senneth one long, comprehensive appraisal. “Aren’t you one of the Queen’s Riders?” she said. “Won’t you be sleeping with them?”
 
 
In fact, considering she lived with a Rider, she was usually sleeping with one, and the gods knew she had had billets far more rough than an inn room with a half dozen soldiers. But the woman’s haughty tone infuriated her. To be three weeks on the road, tired to the bone, and have to contend with the insults of innkeepers! Her temper rose.
 
 
“I am advisor to the crown,” she said, her voice edged with ice and anger. “I require my own chamber
and
a bath
and
a certain level of courtesy, if you please.”
 
 
The woman replied, “I can send for the bathwater, but I’m afraid courtesy is out of the question.”
 
 
For a second, Senneth was too astonished to speak, but Cammon’s choking fit of laughter clued her in. “Kirra, you wretched girl!” she exclaimed. “How many times will I fall for your—oh, you’re impossible!” But she was laughing, too. First she gave Kirra a hard shove on the shoulder, and then she drew her into a quick embrace. When she pulled back, Kirra was herself, all tumbling gold hair and mischievous blue eyes.
 
 
“It’s too hard to do that when Cammon’s in the room,” Kirra said, fanning herself with her hand as if overheated from effort. “I can’t even look at him because he’s trying so hard not to laugh.”
 
 
Cammon hugged her in turn. “Where’s Donnal?” he asked.
 
 
“I have no idea. I assume he was waiting for Tayse and Justin down near the field where they were going to put the soldiers. He was in the shape of a black dog last time I saw him, but Tayse and Justin will probably recognize him sooner than my closest friend recognized
me
.”
 
 
“
I’m
your closest friend?” Senneth said incredulously, though she knew it to be true. “Imagine how well you treat the people you dislike.”
 
 
“I don’t bother dealing with those people at all.”
 
 
“So
is
there a room for me?” Senneth asked. “How do you come to be escorting us around the inn, anyway? Did you take a job here? Are you low on funds?”
 
 
It was a joke, of course; as serramarra of Danalustrous, Kirra could never want for money. Of course, Senneth was a serramarra of Brassenthwaite and there had been plenty of times when she’d been penniless; but Kirra had always had a far better relationship with her family than Senneth had had with hers.
 
 
“No, I just skulked around the inn all day, waiting for your arrival, so I knew where your rooms were. Cammon let me know you were coming here, of course,” she added.
 
 
“Of course.”
 
 
“And the innkeeper’s wife had conveniently stepped out to run an errand when I saw you pull up. I couldn’t resist taking on her appearance.”
 
 
“I hope she’s nicer than you were,” Senneth said.
 
 
“She does seem to be,” Kirra said, moving uninvited toward the great bed, and curling up on top of the coverlet. “So tell me about your trip! Any adventures so far?”
 
 
Cammon, never a stickler for propriety, sprawled next to her. Senneth gave up any attempt at decorum and climbed up beside them. Feather mattress, or maybe two; she hoped her own bed was as soft.
 
 
“None to speak of,” Cammon answered. “If you mean sword fights and people trying to kill us.”
 
 
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” Kirra said. “Like our
usual
trips.”
 
 
“Well, I hear there are brigands on the roads near the southern Houses, but none of them have been misguided enough to assault us,” Senneth said. “Did you see? We have nine Riders and seventy soldiers in our party! Enough to go to war, practically.”
 
 
Kirra grinned. “Will Nate feel threatened when you arrive at Gissel Plain with so many soldiers at your back?”
 
 
“Tayse thinks he’ll feel honored instead by all the pomp.”
 
 
Kirra lolled back on the bed. “I haven’t seen Nate since his wedding,” Kirra said. “I can’t suppose he’s improved much.”
 
 
Senneth bit back a laugh. “He’s Nate, as always,” she said. “Very proper and pompous and strict. But he does seem—maybe the right word is gentler. Happier, anyway. To think he loved Sabina all those years while she was married to Halchon.” She shook her head. “To think she loved
him
all that time. That’s what’s so surprising.”
 
 
“Still, love doesn’t make all your problems disappear, and they can’t have had an easy time of it,” Kirra said. “Taking over Gisseltess after the war! The people who supported Halchon would despise both Nate and Sabina, and the people who hated Halchon would be demanding wholesale reforms, I imagine. These must have been two very rocky years.”
 
 
“Better than you’d expect,” Cammon said. “I think the very things Senneth hates about him are the things that have made Nate a good administrator in such hard times. He has a passion for rules and order, and Gisseltess has benefited from both.”
 
 
Kirra stared at him, then turned her eyes to Senneth. “Was that
Cammon
talking?” she demanded. “About political strategy?”
 
 
“Yes, our little vagabond has become quite the savvy king,” Senneth said.
 
 
“I’m
not
the king.”
 
 
“It’s like having one of my father’s dogs sit up and start explaining higher mathematics to me,” Kirra said. “I can’t quite take it in.”
 
 
“It’s easier when you see him every day,” Senneth said. “But not much.”
 
 
“I haven’t really changed,” Cammon said.
 
 
Kirra patted his head as affectionately as she would have if he really were one of her father’s hounds. “Speaking as someone who remakes herself hour by hour and day by day,” she said, “change is not such a terrible thing.”
 
 
There was a knock on the door, then Justin pushed it open before Cammon could issue an invitation to enter. “Look who we found down in the stables!” Justin said, striding into the room behind a sleek black dog. Tayse stepped in last. “I figure it has to be Donnal, because he followed us all over town as we were getting the soldiers settled. Wasn’t even tempted by a strip of jerky that one of the guards offered him.”
 
 
“He knows better than to take food from a stranger’s hand,” Kirra said. Donnal put his paws up on the bed and uttered a sharp bark—a hello to Cammon, Senneth supposed—and then he settled back down on his haunches to watch them all.
 
 
Tayse nodded a greeting to Kirra, then pulled up a chair, reversed it, and sat. “Are you coming with us to Gissel Plain?” he inquired. He was always exceedingly blunt with Kirra, which sometimes seemed rude and sometimes seemed the only way to deal with the flighty serramarra. “And if so, why?”
 
 
“Well, that’s not very welcoming!” Kirra said, sitting up. “Yes, I thought I’d join you. Don’t I always lend an air of respectability to any gathering?”
 
 
“Maybe if the gathering was thieves and criminals,” Justin said.
 
 
“Oh—you mean,
your
typical friends?” she replied sweetly.
 
 
Such byplay was what passed for casual conversation between Justin and Kirra, and Tayse ignored them. “Any reason why you want to join us?” he repeated.
 
 
“Of course I miss you all,” she said in a soulful manner. Then, more briskly, “But, truly, no, I just happened to be in the area and Cammon let me know that you would be passing through. We can stay for dinner and be gone in the morning, if you like.”
 
 
“Oh, come with us to Gissel Plain,” Cammon said. “It’s such a treat to have just the six of us together for a little while. Let’s stretch it out as long as we can.”
 
 
That was when Senneth, startled, looked around the room and realized he was right. By Justin’s smirk, it was clear he had noticed this wondrous fact already. Just the six of them, as it had been three years ago when they first came together on a mission for the king. Some of them strangers then, and a few of them filled with distrust and suspicion. Hardly the group you would have expected to forge such unshakable bonds. Now with the changes in their lives—Justin’s marriage to Ellynor, the birth of his daughter; Cammon’s marriage to Amalie and astonishing elevation in rank—it was rare for the six of them to find themselves together and unencumbered by other responsibilities.
 
 
“We couldn’t have managed this if we’d tried to,” Justin said with a laugh.
 
 
“Then I bow to the fates,” Tayse said, suiting action to words. “Travel with us as long as you like.”
 
 
KIRRA
persuaded Cammon to forgo the meal in the taproom so that the six of them could catch up on their lives. Donnal even took human shape for dinner and entertained them with an account of an unfortunate hunting incident in Coravann during which Kirra almost ended up in someone’s supper pot.

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