The Keeper of the Mist (7 page)

Keri, taken completely by surprise despite everything she had ever heard about her youngest half brother, could think of no sensible response to this nonsense. She wondered whether he was baiting her or their older brothers. Even in her confusion, she noticed that Brann gave Lucas a disgusted stare and Domeric's glower deepened. She also saw how the Timekeeper, so still he seemed almost to have become one more furnishing among the others in this room, did not smile, but permitted himself the tiniest lift of his eyebrows, and thought that might indicate something like a flicker of humor.

But the next second, that tiny quirk of eyebrows and that hint of humor were both gone.

None of her half brothers seemed even to have noticed the Timekeeper. Brann set his wineglass aside on a table where dozens of others stood waiting, along with a decanter of wine. His air of disdain had become even more marked. He turned his shoulder to Lucas and said to Keri, his tone as chilly as his manner, “Our youngest brother is a fool who somehow manages to believe that his comic manner is endearing, but one bit of his foolery at least is accurate. We are all endlessly grateful it wasn't him.”

“See?” said Lucas, in a didn't-I-tell-you? tone of voice.

“Allow me to welcome you to your House, young sister, and offer you every felicitation on your startling rise,” Brann said smoothly to Keri, ignoring his younger brother entirely. He extended his hand to Keri and, when she took it warily, bowed neatly over hers. But his eyes were cold, and she thought that although everyone might genuinely be glad the succession hadn't come to Lucas, Brann, at least, was furious it hadn't come to him. Which, of course, she had known he would be. But she was positive now that her half brothers hadn't yet heard about the foreigners. She suspected that all three of them must have waited in seclusion for this meeting. Because it was the proper thing, perhaps, and, unlike her, they had been raised to know what was proper. Or maybe they had all been in such vile tempers since being passed over that no one had dared tell them about the Bear soldiers. Or possibly the whole House was so absorbed in its own affairs that hardly anyone had heard anything yet.

It seemed just as well. Keri thought her half brothers were plenty to deal with, without adding in a whole company of Bear soldiers on top.

Brann, oldest of Lord Dorric's sons, was in his early thirties. He was…
polished,
was the closest Keri could come. He dressed and moved and spoke with elegance, but it was a restrained elegance, not the foppish vanity some wealthy young men affected. His formal coat, black embroidered with pewter gray and touches of violet, had a high, stiff collar, burnished brass buttons all down the front, and flaring cuffs turned back to show the violet lining. His soft-soled house boots, not meant to touch even the cleanest raked gravel or cobbles, had the same violet embroidery and brass buttons running up the sides.

But Brann would, Keri thought, manage something of the same polished elegance even if he were wearing exactly the sort of rough farm clothing that, say, Cort did. It was part of who he was, part of what he'd inherited from his mother, eldest daughter and heir of one of the wealthiest men of the town, who had brought up her son to appreciate his special inheritance. It was why so many people, especially wealthy townspeople, had hoped he would take his father's place as Lord of Nimmira. A man with class, they thought, a man with style; he got on with everyone, or everyone who mattered, and he always knew how to turn a nice phrase: he must surely have the makings of a fine Lord.

Keri's mother had disliked Brann, however, and although Keri had not known exactly why, she had been willing to disapprove of her oldest half brother for her mother's sake. But she'd always believed he would probably be Lord after their common father. She'd thought Brann's only real competition would come from Domeric.

Domeric was not at all like his older brother. He was built like an ox, that was one thing. Then he had a face that looked as though it had been hacked out of an oak slab with a hatchet, shoulders so wide he had to turn sideways to get through narrower doorways, and a twisted smile that implied a threat even when he was in a good mood. His coats had to be specially made by a tailor—Tassel, who knew such things, had once mentioned this to Keri—and he always wore jewel colors rather than formal black so that he could look more like a civilized man and not some street thug.

Despite his rich sapphire-blue coat, though, Keri thought Domeric looked like he should be keeping order in a tavern, knocking together the heads of drunken brawlers and roaring, “Take it outside!” Her opinion might have been influenced by the awareness that Domeric owned three of the rougher taverns in town and had been known, on more than one occasion, to step in personally when customers went beyond raucous to unruly. He had, people said, a punch like a draft horse's kick and a bellow that could stop a bull at a hundred paces—and they said he didn't mind using either. Some people said this in an admiring way, others with a kind of disapproval that seemed, Keri had always thought, to go beyond simple physical nervousness.

Domeric had gotten the brawn from his father, though he was at least five stone heavier than the old Lord had been in his prime, but no one was quite sure where he'd gotten his coarse features or his rough voice. Certainly neither seemed to have come to him from his mother, the small, graceful third daughter of a well-to-do farming family. Her family, like Brann's mother's family, hadn't in the least objected to their daughter's liaison with Lord Dorric, though it was said they'd been less pleased when the Lord had tired of her and taken a new mistress. Though how they could have been surprised was a mystery to Keri; surely by then everyone knew that Dorric was casual in his interest and never kept a woman long.

The new mistress had been Eline, an obscure but beautiful player and puppeteer who had become, of course, much better known after she'd caught the Lord's wandering eye. She was a woman from Outside, from Eschalion, with more than a touch of magic in her blood, or so people whispered. She had come to Nimmira by some hidden player's way, using secret player's magic, because players never settled in one place for long and yearned to look for new tales and new audiences and so always found ways to slip across every border. Their magic was a little like Nimmira's own magic; they wandered wherever they pleased, and even the powerful sorcery of Eschalion looked past them unseeing. In Nimmira, everyone thought players brought good luck, and so Eline was welcomed everywhere, even when she found her way into the Lord's House and the Lord's bed.

Unlike the mothers of his first two sons, Eline had known perfectly well that she would not be a permanent resident in the Lord's House. She'd wheedled expensive gifts from her lover while she had him, bought a shop in the center of town, and set herself up as a purveyor of an exclusive inventory of alluring perfumes, fine cloth, and beautifully carved puppets. Everyone said her more exotic wares came from the lands Outside. No one asked too closely concerning that trade. Players came and went in Nimmira, more often during those years than before or since, with their fantastical costumes and their carved puppets and their marvelous stories.

But when her son, Lucas, had turned fifteen, Eline had signed her shop and house over to him and vanished to go back to her traveling player's life. Or that's what people said. Keri supposed it must be true. It occurred to her now that Lucas, who from time to time vanished for a few days or a few weeks, might perhaps know something useful about that, though everyone said he only visited girls in Woodridge or Ironforge or out in some country village. Keri studied him, appraising what she saw. She had to admit it was a little difficult to imagine Lucas carefully keeping any important secret from anybody. Dorric's youngest son, everyone agreed, had gotten his father's liking for easy company and his mother's looks and charm, which made for a devastating but thoroughly unreliable combination.

At the moment, Lucas was entertaining himself by building a pyramid out of wineglasses. He had cleared half a dozen glass sculptures out of the way to make room for his own effort, which took up the whole top of the admittedly small table. So far he had balanced fourteen of the delicate wineglasses in his pyramid. As Keri watched, he finished it off by delicately placing a fifteenth on the top. The top wineglass was Brann's, still full of wine. She paused, fascinated despite herself, as Lucas eased his hand away from it. The pyramid trembled, the wine shimmered, and she found herself holding her breath. But the pyramid held.

“Fool,” said Brann, and turned his back on his brother's antics.

Keri took a steadying breath, nodded to her oldest half brother, and said, she hoped somewhat as smoothly as he had, “I thank you for your welcome and your felicitations.”

“And for his support and service, which of course he means to offer in the customary fashion,” said the Timekeeper dispassionately, without otherwise moving. He had been sitting so still that when he spoke, his voice was almost as surprising as if one of the glass figurines on the nearby table had suddenly declaimed a line of ancient poetry. Brann, whose back had been to the Timekeeper and who therefore had not been prepared for him to speak, twitched. The muscles of his face went tight for a moment. Then he smiled and offered Keri another bow, a little deeper than the first, and said, “Of course, sister. I am certain you will do well as Lady of Nimmira, but if there is any small assistance I am able to render, I would naturally be delighted.”

He said this perfectly easily, but Keri was certain that Brann would be far from delighted to offer her any assistance whatsoever. She knew he was resentful and angry and probably bitter. She even thought he might be glad to see her fail, though that failure would entail tumbling prosperity for the whole of Nimmira.

She wanted to say,
Maybe I'll surprise you.
But what she actually said was, “Thank you so much, Brann. How kind you are.”

Then she turned to Domeric.

Her largest and most intimidating half brother straightened, twitched his sapphire coat straight, took a step toward her—she was a little surprised the floor did not creak and quiver under his weight—and gave her a short nod. He rumbled in a voice that sounded as though it came from the center of the earth, “Well, little sister, I suppose I must felicitate you as well.” He glowered at her, but this seemed his normal expression, and anyway, Keri thought she preferred Domeric's honest glower to Brann's smooth falsity.

“You will do well enough, I am sure,” Domeric said, his voice coming down heavily on each word, like so many bricks striking the earth. “But if I may aid you, sister, you have only to call upon me.”

Keri thought that any aid or support Domeric gave her, even if he meant this offer, would be given with a heavy glare and poor grace. But she also thought that if she had to call upon both Brann and Domeric, Domeric would be more likely to come to her aid. She said, “I shall depend upon it,” and let him make his bow. Her hand in his was like a child's.

Lucas, in contrast to his older half brothers, smiled, bowed over Keri's hand, and said, “Lady, you have my support, and in the truly unlikely event you desire my service, it is yours to command! I'm sure it will be a delight to assist you in any way you request.”

He was the first of her half brothers to use Keri's proper title, and was that as sincere a recognition of her new position as it seemed, or was it actually a subtle dig at Brann and Domeric because they had not offered as much? Either way, Keri couldn't help but smile back at Lucas, and when she thanked him, she did not have to try to sound warm. No wonder Tassel liked Lucas the best! He almost seemed actually nice.

“So now we shall all be friends, I am sure,” Lucas concluded. “Certainly that is worth a toast or three!” His expansive gesture as he offered Keri a glass of wine nearly toppled his pyramid of wineglasses, a peril he pretended not to notice.

Keri, contrary to all her expectations for this meeting, found herself trying not to laugh as she accepted the glass.

“To friends and family: may they be one and the same! Or at least enjoy
some
overlap!” Lucas said, lifting his own glass. He was smiling at Brann and Domeric with sunny insolence. Brann's jaw tightened, and Domeric's brow lowered threateningly. Neither of them moved to drink.

“Well,
I'll
drink to that hope, at least!” Lucas declared, unquenched, and did. Keri sipped, too. The flavor of the wine unfolded in complex layers in her mouth: it tasted of pine and apples and the smoke of a winter bonfire. She had never tasted anything like it and was unsure whether it pleased her. She tried not to blink.

“And I'm sure our brothers are actually eager to toast your succession as well,” Lucas said, his tone lightly mocking. He held his wineglass out to Brann with a little flourish that almost, but not quite, sent the remaining wine splashing out of the glass.

Brann, his lip curling, backed up a step. But as he turned, his hip struck the edge of one of the spindly tables—the one where Lucas's pyramid of wineglasses stood. Keri could see from his face that he knew what he'd done even before he turned, and that he knew as well that he could not rescue the moment. He turned anyway, sharply, reaching out helplessly as the wineglasses trembled. It was impossible to catch fifteen wineglasses at once. The one on top of the pyramid, weighted with wine, was the first to fall. Brann snatched after it, too late: his fingers, brushing its stem, sent it spinning across the room. All the rest of the wineglasses tumbled, some to the table but many to the floor, a chiming, crystalline disaster that sent slivers of glass in every direction, as the white rug proved insufficient to cushion them against the impact. The topmost wineglass described a tumbling arc across one of the white chairs, droplets of dark red wine trailing behind it.