Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses) (66 page)

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Authors: Sharon Shinn

BOOK: Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses)
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“I’ve always thought the Lirrenlands were rife with a strange kind of magic,” Senneth said. “Which might make the queen a mystic—of a sort.”
Donnal looked unconvinced. “Or she might just be a Merrenstow girl who has a love for wild animals,” he said. “You have to admit, many people would be fascinated to have such a creature brought to their doors.”
“Maybe,” Senneth said. “But I must say, I almost want to go with Cammon when he meets the queen in the garden.”
Tayse gave her another one of those infrequent glances. “Or bring her with you when you take your wild animal back to the mountains.”
She smiled. “Maybe I’ll invite her along.”
Justin looked as disquieted as Senneth had ever seen him. “So what happens next?” he asked. “To us—to you, I mean? We go back to the barracks and you stay in the palace tonight and then—what? Do you just ride away in the morning? Is this the last we’ll see of you?”
Cammon looked stricken, as if none of these thoughts had crossed his mind. Kirra appeared to be faintly amused. Senneth smiled and put her hand briefly to Justin’s freshly shaved cheek.
“It will be a day or so before I ride out again—maybe more,” she said. “And I would never leave without saying good-bye. And I would never leave without seeing Cammon settled. Don’t worry yet.”
“But the adventure’s almost over,” Cammon said in a small boy’s voice.
Now Senneth smiled at him. “This one,” she said. “There are always more adventures.”
 
 
KIRRA insisted they dress for dinner and went so far as to manufacture from their traveling clothes gowns of astonishing finery. For herself, she fashioned an outfit of gold and lace, and twined lace in her golden hair to heighten the effect. For Senneth, she designed a gown of Brassenthwaite blue, relatively unadorned, but featuring a deeply plunging neckline.
“Show off your housemark!” Kirra commanded when Senneth protested. “Wear that lovely old gold necklace to cover it, but let everyone know you are who you say you are.”
“I don’t
want
to traipse around as Senneth Brassenthwaite.”
“Too bad,” Kirra said unsympathetically. “Because, especially in this place, that’s who you are.”
“Can’t I wear something just a little less conspicuous?”
“No,” Kirra said. “Besides, you look beautiful. It’s the perfect color for your skin. It even makes your eyes look blue.”
“Well, they’re not.”
Kirra grinned and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “After dinner, you should go down to the barracks. Show Tayse how you look in a fine gown.”
Senneth drew back sharply, both irritated and depressed. “He’d be even more likely to stay clear of me then,” she said.
Kirra was smiling. “I think you underestimate your charms.”
“I think you overlook the time,” Senneth said, turning from the mirror. “We’ll be late for dinner.”
There were maybe twenty other nobles gathered in the drawing room adjacent to the dining hall when Kirra and Senneth arrived. Senneth thought she recognized one or two—older men who might have visited Brassen Court when she was a girl—but there was no one she knew well enough to address. Kirra, of course, was familiar with everyone there and moved effortlessly between knots of people, saying hello, introducing Senneth, asking after friends and relatives. Despite her claim to hate all such social gatherings, Kirra was clearly enjoying herself and completely at ease. Senneth tried to keep her face impassive when each individual lord or lady exclaimed, “Senneth
Brassenthwaite!
But I thought—it’s lovely to meet you at last.” She let Kirra make most of the conversation and allowed the rest of them to think her mannerless. She didn’t want to be friends with them, anyway.
But she found her interest sharpening when Kirra led her up to a handsome, broad-shouldered man who looked just a bit impatient with the pomp and ritual of a formal dinner. He was tall, though not as tall as Tayse. His thick golden hair, which he wore unbound to his shoulders, was only slightly duller than Kirra’s. His eyes were a steady brown, and his face was serious and intelligent.
“Lord Romar,” Kirra said, drawing him away from a conversation he was auditing, and which did not seem to interest him much. “I am so pleased to see you again. You may not remember me—I’m Malcolm Danalustrous’s daughter Kirra.”
“Serra Kirra. Yes, of course I remember you,” Romar said. Senneth thought he did not sound at all certain.
“I was at your wedding last year,” Kirra said helpfully. “How do you find you like married life?”
“It is most pleasant, thank you very much.” He seemed amused. “My wife is not with me, as I am here on political business, or I’m sure she’d be happy to renew her acquaintance with you.”
Kirra’s hand on her shoulder drew Senneth forward. “I don’t know if you’re already acquainted with Senneth Brassenthwaite or if you need an introduction.”
His eyes showed a flash of interest but no surprise; no doubt, he had been briefed by his king. “Serramarra Senneth,” he said, taking her hand in a warm clasp and looking at her with a lively curiosity. “I have had some dealings with your brothers and always found them most honest and forthright.”
It was the polite thing to say; she couldn’t bring herself to make the expected response. “You have the advantage of me. I have not dealt with my brothers in more than fifteen years,” she said in a light voice. “But I’m glad they didn’t make an effort to cheat you.”
“Sen,” Kirra hissed.
Lord Romar dropped her hand, but he appeared even more intrigued and not at all discomposed. A man who appreciated plain dealing, it would seem. “I have to confess, I was less fond of your father, but your brothers seem like honorable men,” he said. “Very loyal to my brother-in-law.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said.
Lord Romar glanced between Senneth and Kirra. “I hear the two of you have just come back from some adventuring on behalf of the king,” he said. “Are there any stories you can tell, or is it all secrets and political maneuvering?”
Just then a servant rang a small silver bell, and the whole crowd began to drift into the dining room. Kirra was laughing. “Some of the stories we can tell, I think,” she said. “If we are sitting near you, we will recount the best ones.”
But while Kirra was seated immediately to Romar’s left, Senneth was half a table away. She had been given the place of supreme honor at Baryn’s right hand, a fact which she could tell was causing no end of consternation and speculation among the other nobles at the table. She could not forbear giving her king a murderous look, which caused him to laugh out loud right before he introduced her to the people sitting nearest to her. High-ranking nobles of Tilt and Kianlever and Storian. Her peers, at least in theory, and she just might be related to the ones from Kianlever, if she had time to work the genealogy. Senneth murmured appropriate phrases, and answered any questions addressed to her directly, but made no other effort to be gracious. She did not feel gracious. She did not want to be made over into a Brassenthwaite heiress after spending literally half of her life escaping that identity. She decided on the spot that she would never attend a formal dinner again, in Ghosenhall or any of the holdings of the Twelve Houses. The decision restored some of her equanimity, and she ate most of her meal in a more cheerful frame of mind.
She excused herself from the activities planned for after the meal—cards and music, it seemed, entertainments that everyone else appeared to be looking forward to—noting that she was tired from the long journey.
“Come see me tomorrow,” the king said as she prepared to leave the dining room. “At two hours past noon. We have things to discuss, you and I.”
She could not help but return his smile. “Yours to command, sire,” she said, giving him the best curtsey she could manage.
His voice was full of satisfaction. “Every Brassenthwaite is.”
 
 
IN the morning, Senneth was awake early and quickly dressed in a set of her travel clothes. They had been cleaned and pressed by the palace servants, so they did not look quite as disreputable as they had for the past few weeks. She asked the footman at the door—and then two or three different gardeners and groundskeepers as she passed—where Queen Valri’s private gardens might be found. The compound comprised several hundred acres; it was easy for anyone to get lost.
Eventually she located the queen’s own property, which looked to be maybe thirty square yards enclosed by a high brick wall. Tendrils of last year’s ivy trailed over the brick from the other side; a few thin branches from ornamental trees poked their heads up over the wall. Senneth circled the enclosure till she found the scrollwork metal grate set in the north side, but she did not have the key to open the lock.
She pushed her face through the bars and peered in. A tangle of shrubs and vines and exotic bushes met her eyes. In summer, this place must be thickly overgrown with plant life. Now everything was brown and dusty-looking, patiently awaiting the advent of spring.
“Cammon?” she called. “Are you in here?”
A rustle of dry branches and Cammon appeared, bounding over to her like a happy puppy. “Senneth! You’re awake early.”
“Not as early as you,” she replied, amused. “How’s our wild friend?”
“Wild,” he admitted. “Calmer today than he was yesterday when they first set him free. But he keeps pacing and then every once in a while he gives that howl—you know the one I mean—”
She nodded. “Good thing the garden is so far from the palace.”
He laughed. “That’s what I thought.”
“How’d you get in?” she asked. “The gate’s locked.”
He pulled something from his pocket. “The queen gave me a key.”
Senneth’s eyebrows rose. “She did, did she? She must have taken quite a liking to you.”
Cammon grinned and unlocked the gate. Senneth slipped inside quickly, and he locked it again behind her. “She took a liking to the raelynx, and she could tell I cared for it. That made me her ally.”
Senneth glanced around, looking for the raelynx. For a moment, she couldn’t spot it, which made the back of her neck prickle. There was no way it had managed to overlook her arrival, and she did not like the idea that it was lying in wait, close enough to spring on her. But then she spotted the wave of russet through the densely overgrown bushes, and she saw it sitting about ten feet away, watching her, its tail twitching ominously back and forth.
“Has he been fed since we arrived?” she asked.
Cammon nodded. “A few squirrels had made their homes in the garden. They’re gone now.” He shrugged, showing little sympathy for the short lives and violent deaths of those unfortunate creatures. “And the queen had raw meat sent in this morning. Venison, I think.”
“So she really came here yesterday afternoon? To see it?”
Cammon nodded.
“What did she say?”
Cammon spread his hands. “She asked how we’d found it, and how old we thought it was, and how you managed to use it to scare off the Daughters of the Pale Mother. The whole time she was talking to me, though, she was watching the raelynx, and it was pacing around the garden, and pouncing on game and acting very edgy. I was a little worried that her presence would stir him up so much that he’d attack her, but I had a pretty close grip on his mind.”
Senneth turned to look at him. Cammon was never particularly good at hiding his emotions, and she could tell that something had happened yesterday to trouble or excite him. “And then?” she asked.
“And then she—Senneth, it’s hard to explain. It was a lot like when you would transfer control of him to me, or I’d give him back to you, except I didn’t know she was going to do it. She just—she took him from me. All of a sudden, he wasn’t in my head anymore, and I could see by the expression on her face that
she
was the one holding him. And the raelynx didn’t like it at first. He let out one of those terrifying screams, and he started pacing even more tightly. You know how he gets, with his ears down and his tail going. But she just stood there, so quiet, not moving at all. It was like she wasn’t even breathing. And then the raelynx started to calm down—stopped pacing, sat back on his hind legs and just watched us for a while.
“And then,” said Cammon, his voice trembling a little, “it stood up again and came over to us. Like a dog or a housecat. But it was snarling a little—you could see its teeth. I backed up to the wall, but the queen just stood there—had her hand out, as if she would stop it. And it sat back down. And then it lay on the ground and stretched out, right at her feet. It was close enough to lick her shoes. I swear, for a moment I thought she was going to reach down and touch it on the head, but she didn’t. She just stood there a long time looking down at it while it looked up at her. And then suddenly she spun around and left the garden. And the raelynx jumped up and acted like he wanted to attack
me,
” Cammon concluded, with some grievance in his voice, “but I had hold of its mind again before it could come any closer.”
Senneth’s emotions were an unworthy mix of admiration, speculation, and jealousy. She turned her attention back to the raelynx, who was on his feet and prowling through the undergrowth, sending occasional calculating glances back their way. “That’s very impressive,” she said in a neutral voice. “And while she was proving her mastery over the raelynx, did you scent any magic on her? Sense any kind of sorcery at all?”

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