her instruments 03 - laisrathera (2 page)

“Which would be….” He paused, then nodded. “You mean to call in my kinsman.”

She tipped her head. “The Tams have been waiting full long enough for their chance to come home,” she said. “Their resources will be of little use if we cannot secure enough time to put them to use, but I have summoned Lesandurel all the same. Once I have gathered what strength I may, we will return at best speed. But we cannot go home without some sword to lift against our enemies, Hiran. Surely you know it.”

He did. But he could not resist speaking, his own words clouded with shadows. “You left her amid them, on a world she barely knows. With winter approaching, who has never known a winter.”

“Has she never?” Liolesa asked, the searing lava of her aura fading briefly at the distraction of the thought. “How extraordinary. Are you certain?”

Swift as rain coursing he felt the rush of all the memories he’d ever gathered from her mind, by accident or by gift. “Unless you count the ball of ice where the crystals dwelt, then no. But what good can she possibly do, Lia?”

“I don’t know,” Liolesa said. “But I have done her the grace of leaving her to make the attempt. You should rest, ere that healer returns to reproach us both. Mend now while you may, cousin, for when we leave I need you on your feet.” She rose, skirts hissing as they slid from the stool. “It will not be long now.” She hesitated, then added, “I have done with seeing you laid so low, Hiran. Prithee, sleep and fade the memories.”

“I will,” he promised. And added, quiet, “You said of the Tams… ‘a chance to come home.’ To our world.”

“No mistake there,” his cousin said—who was also Queen of the Eldritch, and the third to reign since their Settlement centuries ago. “When all this is over… our world will be home to more than the Eldritch.” And then, in a show of affection that startled him, she touched the backs of her fingers to his temple, and let him feel the sharpness of her worry for him straight through the fineness of the fabric of her gloves. Even her tone of address became familiar. “Now, to bed with thee, I charge it.”

It was not in him to argue. If she was right and they were leaving soon, he needed all the rest he could have now… because when they left for home again, there would be nothing between him and Theresa but the bodies of their enemies, and he fully vowed to be the one to slay them all.

Reese’s breath came in clouds, misting her lips as she stared through the trees. “You’re making a joke.”

“No,” said Taylor from behind her. “No, the map’s right. What about it, Belinor-alet?”

The Eldritch youth—a youth who was twice her age, for all Reese knew—joined them at the forest’s edge, keeping a proper distance from them. There he studied the vista, shivering in the cold but holding himself with a dignity so determined Reese decided he was maybe closer to half her age instead. In his accented Universal, he said, “She has the right of it, Lady. That is the castle Rose Point.”

“Wow,” Irine murmured from behind her. “Somehow I expected it to be… more… “

“More what?” Taylor asked with interest, glancing at the Harat-Shar.

“More less of everything.”

That said it all, Reese thought, trembling, and not with cold. When she had put her idea to the Queen of the Eldritch, that she should stay and find some way to do something heroic—what, she had no idea—she and the others had debated where they should set down. Liolesa’s Eldritch enemies would expect her to go to one of the two strongholds of her allies: either to Jisiensire in the south or to the western Galares, further inland. The pirates would expect her to stay in the capital and try to take Ontine. Maybe. Right?

What they were all pretty sure of was that she wouldn’t head for the land the Queen had deeded her, for the very good reason that it was at the northern edge of nowhere and abandoned. There was no hope of finding allies there; certainly there were no resources ready to hand. It would have made a great ballad, Reese thought: gathering everyone to the flag of a dead land, and from there marching to the capital singing. On horseback, knowing the Eldritch. But it was also a stupid idea, and they’d been betting that their enemies wouldn’t think they’d do something stupid.

What Reese hadn’t counted on was arriving to find a real castle, still mostly intact. An enormous castle, perched alongside the sea, a beautiful castle.
Her
castle. A castle of her own. Who’d never so much as owned a patch of dirt. Whose only home for years now had been a rattletrap freighter with just enough crew space to sleep in. And now she had a castle—an intact castle, a large castle—a castle with sheep grazing around it, and in its courtyard. Wild sheep. Dirty sheep. Were they supposed to be that grayish color?

“Blood in the dirt,” she muttered. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“That’s fine,” Taylor said. “Just don’t tell anyone else.” The Tam-illee foxine glanced at her data tablet. “The sheep make for a fine confusion of life signs, and they’re probably in and out of here all the time, so a few more warm bodies won’t make a difference. Why don’t we go take a closer look?”

“Sure,” Reese said. “That sounds like a great idea.”

Reese watched the woman set off. The Eldritch youth glanced at her. “My Lady,” he said. “It will be no warmer inside, but at least we won’t be exposed to the wind.” Then he followed Taylor, leaving Reese standing beside the trees with Irine, who’d been her irreverent co-pilot, employee and the ship busybody for years now.

“You have a castle,” Irine observed.

“I have a castle.”

“You don’t know how to feel about that.” Irine cocked her head, mouth twitching.

“Have I told you yet how ridiculous you look with a shirt wrapped around your head?”

“Yes, well, if my gorgeous ears get frostbitten I won’t be able to tell when Sascha’s nibbling on them.” Irine rested a hand on Reese’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go get settled.”

As they walked, Reese said, “I have sheep.”

“I think those sheep have themselves,” Irine answered. “But I guess if you can find someone to round them up and put them in one place… then yes, you’ll have sheep.”

But the tigraine was frowning. It was such a normal thing, to see Irine frown, such a welcome thing to have some normalcy at that point, that Reese said, “What?”

“I was thinking about us having sheep,” Irine said. “To eat. Tonight.”

“You can eat sheep?”

Irine covered her face with one hand and used to the other to keep pushing Reese in the right direction.

They caught up with the others in front of the enormous doors set into the castle wall, where Taylor was consulting her data tablet and Belinor was waiting, huddled in robes that seemed thick enough to keep him warm, but didn’t seem to be doing the job. As they approached, he said, “Yon fox is finding whether it be safe to open them. Those doors are centuries old now.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t rotted,” Irine said, and paused. Reese looked past her and hissed.

“My castle’s missing a tower!”

“So it is,” Belinor said, subdued.

“Why is my castle missing a tower?” Reese asked, trying not to be surprised. When Liolesa had granted her the property she’d expected ruins, so finding the building still upright had been a pleasant surprise. It also made the hole in the castle’s side feel like an unexpected wound.

“Because,” Belinor said. “This was once the home of Corel.” At their blank stares, he said, “The mind-mage. The first mind-mage. The one who went mad, and upon whom Queen Jerisa threw her legions, and they died and watered this field with their blood.”

Reese’s heart gave a great double-beat as whispers erupted in her head, ancient as childhood stories of the soil of Mars reddening with the blood of fallen patriots. She suppressed the urge to look down at the ground, see for herself her new life and the old mingling. Trying not to shiver, she said, “And then what?”

“And there he would have conquered, had not love brought him low,” Belinor continued, looking at the tower. The gray sky and sea reflected off his eyes, winter-dulled. “But the love of a woman caused him to give himself over to judgment. Or so they say. Some of the tales say he killed himself for remorse for having slain her by accident.”

“Wouldn’t you… well, remember?” Irine asked, trying to be delicate about it. “It hasn’t been all that many generations, has it?”

“I wasn’t alive, certainly!” Belinor exclaimed. And then peering at her, added, “How well do you remember the events of your childhood? The details? Can you see them clearly in your mind? Could you describe them in the exact same way to more than one person, and know that you are recalling them truly?”

Irine opened her mouth, then closed it and looked away, frowning. “Okay, right. And I’m only a few decades old. Good point.”

“You’d think ‘committed suicide’ or ‘was dragged back for a trial’ wouldn’t be a matter of detail,” Reese said, studying the gash in the castle and the long spray of stones that extended out from it, crusted over with sea salt and streaked with rain and rust. “Did the army pull down the tower?”

“No,” Belinor said, hushed. “On that matter all the records are clear.” They looked at him and he hunched into his robes. “The mind-mage did that, in his fury.”

Which is when it really hit her, what Liolesa had done. Indignant, Reese exclaimed, “The Queen gave me the first mind-mage’s castle? Me? What, is she expecting me to die to keep Hirianthial sane? If she is, I’ve got news for her!”

Irine covered her mouth with her hand but her giggles escaped her anyway. Reese glared at her and noticed again just how poorly her glares worked on her crew. “Oh, Reese,” Irine said, laughing aloud finally. “You think that woman thinks you’d roll over for anything?” She shook her head, eyes sparkling. “I bet it’s a joke.”

“The Queen does not jest,” Belinor muttered.

Reese glanced at the castle. “Not about something like this, no,” she said. Black towers against thick winter sky, the smell of brine, the slap and distant hiss of the sea on the shore. No, this hadn’t been meant as a joke. A correction, maybe, of something that had gone wrong. Maybe Liolesa expected them to re-write the story of this Corel, and give it a happy ending this time. And for that to happen….

“Taylor,” she said. “Tell me there’s a way into this relic. And that you know how to cook a sheep.”

The foxine looked up, bemused. “I don’t know about cooking sheep, Captain, but I can get us inside.”

“That’s a start.”

In the end, they didn’t go through the doors because they were so massive they had to be opened by chains that had locked up centuries past, with rust and age. So Reese entered her new home, the one she’d been given, the one that the Queen had written out a deed for, to make the transfer of ownership official… by climbing in through one of the windows.

“This is not how I imagined this happening,” she grumbled.

“Think of the story you’ll be able to tell your kits,” Irine said.

Reese shot her a fulminating glare, and this one actually worked. A little anyway. “Fine,” the tigraine said. “Think of the stories you’ll be able to tell
my
kits.”

They had landed in a narrow corridor, much taller than seemed necessary but close at the elbows. It reminded Reese of the corridors of the
Earthrise
: nice and claustrophobic. She could get used to castles, maybe, if they were built like spaceships. Trailing after Taylor, she drew in a deep breath and wondered why the air wasn’t thicker. Weren’t shut-in places supposed to be full of dead air?

And then she found out why the corridor smelled so fresh.

“Angels,” Irine whispered as they reached the corner, and stepped out of the rubble into a crumbled courtyard. It had been whole once, Reese thought, halting abruptly at the sight. There were filigreed gates in wilted ruin, evidence of gazebos and arbors, and the remains of low walls and benches. There had been entire buildings in it too, if the wreckage was any indication. But there was nothing there now, but a garden. A garden blooming in winter, a garden that had overgrown every boundary and flowed like the ocean to the interior walls, a garden that in places was as tall as a hedge maze and dense with black thorns as long as Reese’s palm.

And everywhere, everywhere she could look, was a profusion of white roses, their perfume mingling with the sea breeze that swept in through the broken wall.

“God and Lady!” Belinor whispered.

“Do… do roses do that?” Reese asked. Before her the two Pelted women had flattened ears and low tails, and she was trying not to find the whole thing uncanny. “I thought flowers died in winter.”

“Winter roses do not.” The acolyte stared, awed, looking toward the crumbled tower where the flowers were twining, sinking roots into the remains of the mortar. “They are rare, though. I don’t know of anywhere they grow like this…!”

“You won’t find anywhere they grow like this,” came a voice from above them. “And unless you tell me now what you mean to do here, they will be the last sight you see.”

Reese froze. A man’s voice—young, she thought—but speaking Universal. Did he have an accent? She couldn’t discern one. Had she led them into a trap after all? And then she tried to move, and discovered she couldn’t.

Belinor cried in outrage, “Mind-mage! Release us, misbegotten cretin!”

And the chances of their enemies having a mind-mage were… what… astronomical? Wasn’t Hirianthial supposed to be the first in a million years? Reese frowned and said, “I’d rather not talk to someone behind my back.”

“I’d rather not let you see me.”

She sighed. “Blood and freedom, what is it with you Eldritch and your having to be all dramatic? What, if I see you, you might have to kill me? Or you just enjoy being mysterious? Trust me, I’ve had enough of mysterious to last me a lifetime.”

“Um, Reese—”

“Not now, Irine. I’m not done yet.” She pulled against the invisible chains holding her in place. “And can I tell you how rude it is to do this? If you can freeze us anytime you want, then what’s the point of threatening us with it? You can’t possibly have anything to fear from us—”

“Reese!” Irine hissed.

“And another thing,” Reese added. “This is my bleeding castle, and I’ve already paid blood and sweat and tears for it, so you’re the one trespassing! I have a deed to prove it, even. Or I did, before the Queen’s enemies made off with it, damn them to all the hells.”