Starcrossed (46 page)

Not that it mattered. Werne already had Antoch and Lyll’s most valuable possession.

“Celyn!” Meri’s voice was a sob. She stared at me with wide red eyes, straining her hands, and I saw that she was bound to the chair — with silver chains. I took a calm breath and set the food down quietly on the desk beside her.

“They have Stagne!” Meri whispered ur gently.

I shook my head. “Impossible. He’s safe, Meri, I promise.”

Desperate, awful hope burned in her eyes. “But she said —”

“Who said?” My voice was a hiss, and I made a pretense of noisily arranging the food to cover our conversation.

She looked at me miserably. “Phandre.”

“What!” A hot sickness spread through every inch of me, and on a table a few feet away I now saw what I had missed at first: two small, leather-bound books, one black, one gray . . . and both of them held down by a thick silver weight. Beside them was a flat, grayish-blue stone — one of the lodestones carried by the Confessors to detect the presence of magic — and a host of wicked-looking instruments with orbits and dials and compass faces. The kinder tools of the Confessors’ trade. Everything in me crumbled. If they had her magic books . . . But I saw that Meri was fighting for bravery now that I was here, and so I knelt beside her and squeezed her hand. “It’s all right, Meri. They won’t hurt you. We’ll get you out.”

She nodded tearfully, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. I held her hand tightly, fiercely, my fingers digging into hers, but no spark, no thread of light twined our hands together. Meri pulled her fingers out of my grip, curling them back under her bound hands, giving her head the faintest shake. Desperately I wished someone else were here to help me — anyone. Wierolf. Lyll. Tegen, who would have devised an escape for Meri bordering on genius. Tegen — who had not been able to free himself from three Greenmen. But who had saved me.

A strong hand grabbed my arm and yanked me away from Meri. “What’s this, then?” said a dangerous voice, and I looked up into the pockmarked face of a leering Greenman. “Another little magic-lover, no doubt. Let’s strap her down as well, see what she’ll give up.”

“Guardsman Jost! This is a nobleman’s home, not some dockyard alehouse.” One of the Confessors gave him a chilling look. “Try to comport yourself with some dignity, if that’s even possible.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” The Greenman dropped my arm and stepped away from me.

Well, they knew I was here now. “Don’t you people know who this is?” I said. “That’s their lordships’ daughter — and you have her chained up in here like a common criminal. I demand to know why!”

“Silence, wretch!” the Confessor snapped in a voice like a whip cracking. “You presume to question the work of the Holy Mother’s servants? Begone before we’re moved to take another prisoner.”

I remembered those voices. The man was older, graying at the temples, and he looked mean. Not fighting mean, but dark and cruel, the sort of person who could sit for hours, pulling out a girl’s fingernails. I took an involuntary step backward — but a voice like a tether grabbed me and held me steady.

“Be easy, Brother Hessop.” The Lord High Inquisitor turned away from his contemplation at the window. “We must be always ready to explain why our Holy Mother makes the demands on us she does.”

I remembered that voice too. Soft, soothing, always so utterly reasonable — Werne had always been able to convince anyone of anything. He moved toward us in a practiced, gliding step that made him seem to float above the floor.

“Tell me, child, who are you?”

Hysterically I almost laughed. But before I could make up my mind how to answer, Meri spoke up: “My maid, Celyn. Don’t you touch her!”

Alarmed, I grabbed for Meri’s shoulders. Werne spun his gaze on her, and like that it switched from benevolence to venom. He leaned over her and almost spat in her face.

“If you speak again in this room, sinner, I will have your blaspheming tongue cut out.”

“Don’t talk to her that way,” I cried. “This is
her father’s
room!”

“Celyn!” Meri sobbed, her voice raw and full of terror.

Werne slapped her. Hard, backhanded, across the face with a gloved hand. I flew at him, forgetting every calm and disciplined fighting move that had ever been drilled into me, screeching, kicking, flailing madly with my hands, until strong arms grabbed me from behind and lifted me bodily from the ground.

Vaguely I understood that this was all going horribly wrong; I was making every thing unutterably worse for Meri and myself. I stopped screaming, at least. I had to — a hand was clamped hard across my mouth. Blessed Tiboran, for once I had the good sense
not
to bite.

The Greenman gave me a violent shake. “How dare you touch His Worship with your filthy Sarist hands!” He drew his nightstick and pressed it up beneath my jaw. “We’ll cut off those hands and feed them to you, little girl.”

“Enough!” Werne was unharmed, stumbling backward briefly before regaining his footing and his composure. He brushed his robes down, but he looked shaken. He put his fingers together and stared at them a moment, with dark brooding eyes — did
mine
look like that? — taking slow, smooth breaths. My chest tightened, watching him, his movements too familiar, and I looked away. We
weren’t
alike. We weren’t.

No, I was an impetuous fool who was going to get Meri killed, and he was the pillar of icy calm who was going to wield the blade, right in front of me where I could watch.
Oh, Meri, I’m so sorry
. I couldn’t say the words aloud, with the guard’s hand over my mouth. Meri slumped mutely in her chair.

“Forgive me,” Werne said, and it was a shrieking, insane parody of an apology. “While the work of Blessed Inquiry often inspires — passionate — reactions, we do not normally witness such displays. My daughter, it is worthy that you have inspired such devotion in your maid. Perhaps our Holy Mother will look upon you both with mercy.” He glanced briefly at me. “Get . . . that out of here.”

The guard holding me carried me to the door — but Werne was still looking at us strangely. “Wait.”

The Greenman halted, mid-turn, his hand dropping away from my mouth.

“Your face is familiar, child. Do I know you?”

I could have gotten out of there. One word would have dumped me safely in the corridor, so I could flee back to Lyll and Antoch with the news of what I’d seen. One word.

I didn’t say it.

“Of course you know me,” I said recklessly. “I used to be your sister.”

The look that came across Werne the Bloodletter’s face at that instant was priceless. I would have cherished it, if it hadn’t been so deadly dangerous. He stared at me, eyes ink-dark and penetrating, but I refused to look away. I heard Meri gasp.

“Speak that lie again, blasphemer.” But there was confusion, doubt in his voice.

“No lie,” I said, struggling a little in the Greenman’s arms. He set me back down on the floor but didn’t quite release me. I still felt a little wild, and I had the strange sense that Werne had
always
made me feel that way, as if all his goodness and restraint brought out the recklessness and insolence in me. Like the moons of Celys and Marau, always pulling each other in opposition through the heavens. All these years, I’d been so afraid of him finding me again — but it was like he’d forgotten he ever even had a sister.

Werne crept closer, as if concerned I might strike out at him again, or that something noxious on me might rub off on him if he got too close. “I had a sister once,” he said softly, almost to himself. “But she died, long ago. A heretic, unclean. It was the greatest sorrow of my life.”

“Unclean!” I spat back. “You said those words to a child! A child, Werne!”

An arm gripped me tight. “Do not speak so familiarly to the Lord High Inquisitor,” said a voice of iron in my ear. “Do you wish me to remove her, Your Worship?”

The Inquisitor —
my brother
— was looking at me, and through me, his fingers pressed together again. I could not tell what might be going on behind those intense, brooding eyes.

“You are somewhat like her,” he said finally. “But it’s impossible. Yes, Jost, return this . . . person to her people. I — I must have solitude to pray for guidance in how to deal with these outlandish claims.” He lifted the hood of his robe and turned toward the door.

“Your Grace?” One of the Confessors, a tall woman with steel gray hair, spoke up. “What shall we do with the prisoner?”

Werne turned to her like the wall had spoken, and it baffled him. “What do we always do with them?” he said, and stepped out of the room.

By the time the Greenman dumped me in the hallway and I’d scram bled to my feet again, out of reach of the guards at the door, Werne had disappeared. What would he do now, my strange confession nagging at him? I was sure he was telling himself he didn’t believe me, that I was just another lying heretic who’d say anything to save herself or a loved one, albeit one with a bizarre claim. There was no chance of a loving reconciliation here, even if either of us wanted it. Most likely, I’d be arrested before I could spread my lies any farther afield. Before anyone might suspect I was telling the truth. Before anyone realized that Werne Nebraut’s sister might be magical.

Would that ruin him? Magic in the family had ruined plenty of others, highborn and low; by rights it should do no less damage to the High Inquisitor himself. But I hadn’t known the gods to play fair yet. It would probably only manage to increase his esteem.

I pulled myself together a little, beating the wrinkles from my skirts and tucking loose strands of my hair back in place, and went to tell Meri’s parents.

Marlytt had gathered everyone together in the Lesser Court — Antoch and Lyll, Cwalo, Lords Sposa and Wellyth, and the Cardom. Evidently she had not been successful in locating Daul. I had thought I was calm, but then I saw Phandre.

“You
cow
! How could you!” I got one good blow in, a beautiful jab to her beautiful jaw, and she dropped, shocked, a hand pressed to her cheek. Somebody little caught me from behind — Cwalo, probably — and Lyll and Antoch rose, looking horrified. Phandre saw them, and something shifted across her face, from fear to fury.

“Did you see that?” she cried. “That gutter rat struck me! I’ll see you flogged for that!”

“Hard to see anything with your traitorous eyes cut out!” I yelled back. Cwalo pulled me back against him.

“Easy, girl,” he said in his low smooth voice.

“She —”

“Girls!” That thunderclap could only have come from Antoch, and it shocked the entire room to silence. Lyll swept over and stood between me and Phandre, who had started to whimper just a little. She was lucky I didn’t kick her.

“Celyn, Phandre! What on earth is the meaning of this?”

Before the lying snake could say a word, I pulled away from Cwalo. “Milady, your lordship — Meri’s been arrested.”

All the iron seemed to go out of Lyll just then, and I was suddenly sorry I hadn’t thought of a gentler way to say it. She wavered and sank against Antoch, who caught her.

“But this is outrageous!” Lord Wellyth cried. “In your own home, your own daughter?”

I went to put my arms around Lady Lyll, and she gathered me to her. “What happened?”

I was so angry I could hardly speak, but I restrained myself for Lyll’s sake alone. “She was betrayed by Lady Phandre,” I said. “She stole her books and lured Meri to their room by
pretending
they had arrested someone else.”

“You’re lying,” Phandre said simply, but there was no real effort to convince anyone. “Prove that it was me.”

“I don’t have to prove it!” I said. “Meri told me.”

Lyll turned slowly to Phandre, who wilted a little.

“She’s making it up,” she said, but couldn’t quite meet Lyll’s eyes.

“They have her bound with
silver
, milady,” I said.

Lyll’s smooth face went white, and she squeezed my arms tight. “How —”

Everyone else pressed close, trying to hear. I hesitated, but nothing could be served by sparing the rest. “She has a Sarist tattoo. They’re bound to find it. Phandre must have known about it.” That was a guess, but it seemed logical. And Phandre, for her part, just stared back boldly, hatred in her green eyes.