Starcrossed (29 page)

It would have been an interesting challenge, if not for the sparkling pages that kept reminding me how important it was that I get this exactly right.

Revealing my magic to Meri didn’t seem to change things between us, except she now considered me her confidante, which brought a whole layer of intimacy I could happily have done without. That night in bed, I heard more details of her tryst with Stagne, which sounded more heart breakingly innocent the more I learned. And she wanted to talk about
magic
— what she was learning from the people in the forest, what it felt like, how it was to use it freely, to have a friend who understood her.

It took me a brief, paralyzing instant to realize that she meant me.

Lady Lyll knowing somehow bothered me more. As I worked beside her in the stillroom the next few days, preparing medicines I now gathered were going to treat the prince, I kept stealing sidelong glances at her, willing her to give up some clue that she suspected — had
always
suspected — me of harboring magic, like her daughter. It made my skin itch unpleasantly, thinking that I’d been working side by side all these weeks with someone who knew my secret.

And the more time I spent with Daul’s journal, the more confused I became. I’d hoped copying it out might give me
some
hint at its importance to him, but I was more than halfway through and still couldn’t see how it connected to the Nemair’s secrets.

I wanted to put all the pieces together, and I had a feeling that the prince was at the heart of them. But I certainly couldn’t just
ask
Lady Lyll what I wanted to know, so it seemed my only option was to keep slipping down to the hidden chamber under the stillroom, and prodding at the only person who seemed to know even less about what was going on than I did.

Those first few days the prince was still drifting in and out of fever dreams, and half the time I wasn’t sure he even believed I was real. I expected him to slip up any moment and tell Lady Lyll — or whoever was tending to him — that a maid named Celyn had checked his bandages and dosed him up with poppy. But days went by and Lord Antoch’s guards never seized me by the hair and had me flung into the dungeons, so I figured I was more or less safe.

“Someone’s bound to find out I’ve been here,” I said on my third or fourth visit. He was clear-eyed and lucid, but his face still had that ragged, sickly look. “I’m not helping you, and I don’t even want to think about what they’ll do if they catch me.” I’d had the good sense to stop playing nurse, at least.

“You’re helping. Look, I’m getting stronger already.” He pushed himself up in bed to prove it, though the movement left him pale and breathless. “Besides, you’re the only person who stays long enough to talk to me. The others hardly say anything — and I think that one of them doesn’t speak any Llyvrin.”

Yselle. So that answered one question. “She’s Corles,” I said. “I don’t understand a word she says either.”

“Tell me more about this place, Celyn just-a-maid. Where is it? What is its name, who are its keepers?”

“I —” I hesitated. I still wasn’t sure what he knew, or was supposed to know — but then, he was the one in the most danger here, and Marau’s balls, if the man was ever going to be king, starting off completely ignorant about his own situation was a stupid way to begin such a career. But maybe we two befuddled wretches could help each other. “Only if you tell me what happened to you.”

Finally he nodded. “What I remember, anyway.”

“You’re at Bryn Shaer,” I said. “It’s a fortress in the Carskadon Mountains.”

“I know it. I was in Olin . . .”

“Bryn Shaer is held by An —”

“Antoch Nemair.” The prince gave a cough that sounded weak and strained. “Right. His wife — what’s his wife’s name?”

“Lady Lyllace.” He mouthed the name even as I said it, his face screwed shut as he fought for the words. “Do you know them?”

“No, I just —” He didn’t have to finish. He just knew the names of major nobs and landholders. Of course he did. “It’s hard to remember,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Olin?” I prompted gently, the name twitching at my memory.

The prince looked at me a long moment, and I couldn’t decide what was in that steady, unnerving gaze. Why didn’t people mention
that
about him, when they told tales of what kind of a man he was? Finally he dropped his head back and spoke to the ceiling. “It’s a hunting lodge. It belongs to an old friend of my mother. I was there for the stag.”

I wondered what kind of figure he must have cut, just weeks ago, riding through the forest on his great royal horse, a bow in his hand. Suspecting this might be a long story, or at least a difficult one, I poured him some water. His hand lifting the cup to his mouth was steadier than it had been even a few days ago. Fighting with the silver in his wounds or not, that medallion he wore must be very powerful. I wondered what such a thing might be worth — a charmed pendant, to keep a prince alive.

“We had chased the quarry into a clearing, but when I got there, it was empty. My — companions were nowhere to be found, and nor was the deer.” Wincing, he said, “I heard a shot, and I remember falling, and that’s it. I don’t know about —” He gestured to the bandages binding the gruesome sword wound. Then he turned to me, and the expression on his face was anguished. “Celyn,” he said, “we don’t use firearms for deer.”

“No,” I said gently, and although I had no idea if that were true or not, I understood what he was asking me. “Nor swords, I imagine.”

“No.” He looked into the distance then, and his eyes were damp. I fought a weird urge to reach out to him, although there wasn’t a thing I could do to make what had happened to him any better. Lured by his friends into an assassination attempt? What did you do with that?

“You’re very lucky,” I said, though the words were hollow. How lucky did I feel when I got away from the Greenmen who’d killed Tegen? I pulled away and stared at my knees.

Finally I heard a sigh. Thinking it was my cue to leave, I rose, but the prince spoke again. “What kind of woman is she?”

I blinked. “Milord?”

“What kind of woman would you say Lady Lyllace is? Is she trust worthy? Scheming? What is she like?”

“I —” Gods, how to answer that question? “Trustworthy? I hope so, though I haven’t had cause to test that. She’s — good, I think. Kind. Wise, strong. What?”

The prince was smiling strangely at me. “I hear your answer in your voice, Celyn just-a-maid. You’ve said enough.”

But I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet
, I thought a little wildly: the collection of former Sarists, the possible rebellion she was planning, the guns she probably had stashed behind his room. . . . I pressed my head back against the ledge of wood behind me. “Milord, I think —” I took a hard swallow and launched myself toward madness. “I’m going to tell you some more names.”

He eyed me strangely. “Go ahead.”

I listed them all: Nemair, Cardom, Sposa, Wellyth, Séthe, and Daul. The fog from his injury had affected his memory, but if he’d managed to dredge up Lord Antoch and Lady Lyll, who’d been quietly living overseas for years now, then he should hear the rest. His face remained impassive when I started my list, but midway through I saw him start to tense up — just barely, just a hint of anxiety he was trying to hide. I had seen that look when I had tended his wounds.

A frown creasing his brow, he shifted himself into a new position. “Are those the other — guests? Wintering at Bryn Shaer?”

Somehow it didn’t surprise me that he’d worked that out. “Do you know who they are?”

“Oh, yes.” Wierolf said gravely.

“I just — I thought you should know.”

“I’m glad. I think I need to have a conversation with the woman who changes my bandages.”

Daul’s journal remained an irritating distraction all that week. Though I made good progress on my forgery, I still had no idea why anyone would care so much about this dull little book. It didn’t mention anyone or anything of note, beyond a few choice hunting grounds or notable huntsmen who’d died a hundred years before the writer put ink to paper. In fact, Meri’s scrawlings, scattered throughout the book’s once-empty pages, were the only thing of interest.

Once I had the text in hand, I turned my attention to the binding. It wasn’t my best skill — lacing the pages into the leather cover involved a
needle
, and I was just sure I’d botch the job by bleeding all over it. The cross-shaped seal I’d nicked from Daul’s desk was meant for pressing wax, not leather, but with the help of a little water and a heavy stone wrapped in linen, I was able to pound a convincing approximation of the seal of the House of Daul into the binding.

Finally, a little more than a week after finding the prince, I was done. It was good work: nice, the binding tight; the script convincing; the missing pages of Meri’s notes now accounted for by a new set of page numbers. The one peculiar thing I noted was that a leaf at the very front had been sliced out of the original volume, so I carefully drew the point of Durrel’s blade along the spine of my copy, nicking the leather with the tip, just like the real one. When I checked my work against the original, I saw that the scratches continued under its pasted-down endpapers.

Taking care not to tear anything, I slid the knife blade under. The glue was old and brittle and the whole sheet popped away in one piece, revealing a strange series of cut marks incised into the wrong side of the leather. It was as if someone very angry with the book had attacked it, but as I examined the scratches, I started to make out a meaning in all those sharp, intersecting diagonal lines. I took one of my pieces of scrap and laid it over the cover, tracing the lines lightly with a dry nib of my pen, until I had scratched the same shape into the paper. Meri would have recognized it: It matched her tattoo.

It was a peculiar thing: a Sarist’s book, with a hidden Sarist symbol, but no Sarist content? I wondered yet again what Daul was after. In the end, the binding on the new one was a little less black, and a little less flexible — but I doubted Daul would notice.

I waited until Meri had ridden off to meet Stagne one morning, then slipped off for Daul’s rooms.

“I have it. Let me in.”

It was almost as if those words were the magical key that sprang the lock on that door. I should have tried them before. The door swung open, and Daul gave me a slow, thin smile.

“Mouse! This is an unexpected plea sure. I’d nearly given up on you, after your last report. Well, don’t just stand there; let me see it.” He stepped back and ushered me inside.

As usual, his rooms were much too hot. Daul’s beard had gone scruffy, and apparently I’d interrupted him in the act of shaving, for he held a sharply curved blade in one hand. Calmly I passed him my work of the last several days. He stopped, stared hard at me for a moment in which I was very good and did not fidget at all, and then took the book from me, almost reverently. He held it in his palms a moment, and the strangest thing happened — he closed his eyes and seemed to slump just a little.

“Thank you,” he said, and I stared at him. Thank you? From Daul? He held the book before him, thumbs stroking the leather. “Eighteen years.” The words were a sigh.

“All right, so what is it?”

For a second there he almost looked like an ordinary person. “This book was written by my father. During the war. It’s the only thing that could lift his mind away from the battles for a few moments.”

I bit down on my tongue before I could say something unkind about military commanders staying focused on wars they were losing. Daul leafed through my pages, fingering the letters, and for the briefest of moments I almost felt sorry. His father had never touched this book, never written those words. The memory that Daul was experiencing now was a forgery.