Through Wolf's Eyes (20 page)

Each of Melina Shield's children was named for a
precious gem, an affectation most believed. Some whispered, however,
that Melina practiced sorcerous arts thought lost when the Plague
caused the Old World nations to abandon their colonies. Certainly the
physical appearance of each of Melina's children bore out the latter
rumors.

Elise didn't know which tale to believe. Her own mother, Aurella Wellward, had known Melina Shield since they were
both children. Aurella said that she thought that Melina chose names for her children only
after
they were born and some moon-spans grown. Certainly, her confinements
at private estates permitted this luxury. However, Lady Melina's old
maidservant claimed loudly and frequently that her mistress chose each
infant's name as soon as she was certain that she was carrying.

Whatever Rolfston Redbriar thought on the matter, he
was not saying. Personally, Elise believed he was too canny to meddle
with anything that brought his branch of the family such respect and
awe.

"May I join you ladies?" Jet asked, sliding into a
seat next to Elise without waiting for an answer. This close she was
aware of his scent, something musky and masculine, just touched with a
faint hint of pipe smoke.

A year past his majority, Jet had joined his sister
in the matrimonial battles. Unlike her, he would doubtless have less
time to peruse the selection open to him. Sapphire was a good six years
older than Elise, her next equivalent competitor for matches. Although
Jet was five years older than Purcel, Zorana was far more aggressive
than Elise's father and had already been hinting about making a
betrothal for her son. Such hints narrowed the field before the race
had really begun.

So Jet turned what was already becoming a practiced smile on his second cousin.

"You look beautiful tonight, Elise," he said. "Your
complexion is so well suited to the paler shades. Pinks just make my
sister look sallow."

Elise ignored the dig, though she could see Sapphire
fuming. It was true, though, that Sapphire was best suited to stronger
colors: blues, reds, purples. It was also true that there was no love
lost between these siblings.

Long resenting Sapphire's place as heir, Jet now
treasured the dream that if his father became King Tedric's successor,
he, not Sapphire, would be named crown prince: "Sapphire has trained
long and hard," Jet had told Elise, after pledging her to silence, "to
manage the estates our family has inherited from both Shields and
Redbriars. Why should that training
be wasted?
Rather, let her continue as heir to our family holdings. I am free to
prepare, with no previous bias and no distractions, to follow our
father, after his own long reign, onto the throne."

Doubtless Sapphire knew her brother's feelings on the
matter. As she glowered at him, too well trained to pull his hair as
she would have when they were in the nursery, Elise wished that
someone, something, would break this uncomfortable moment.

Her wish was granted. A footman came to the door of
the parlor where the grandnieces and grandnephews had been sequestered
to await the end of their elders' counsels.

"His Majesty," the man boomed, looking at the carved
paneling on the far wall rather than at any one of the ten eager faces
now turned toward him, "requests that you attend him in the Eagle's
Hall."

Suddenly meek and obedient, the cousins set down
goblets and tankards, smoothed hair, surreptitiously checked
reflections in mirrors and polished glass. Then, falling into order as
they had so many times before, in so many gatherings like, but unlike,
this one, the cousins filed from the parlor. Only one voice broke the
silence.

Kenre Trueheart, at the age of seven the youngest of
the cousins, whispered to his older sister, "Now, Deste, now we'll find
out what it's all about."

Smiling softly to herself, Elise could not help but
think that little Kenre was uttering the words imprinted on each of
their hearts.

S
OMETIMES
, F
IREKEEPER THOUGHT
she would go insane. It was the noise. Or perhaps it was the smells.
Maybe it was some undefined sense of too many people—just the people,
just the humans—forget their dogs and cats, horses and mules, cows,
goats, sheep, chickens . . .

She would go mad.

Each day when she bathed in the metal tub that Derian
filled for her in the great stone-walled chamber that was her haven in
Earl Kestrel's mansion, she checked herself for bite marks. Surely she
must have been bitten by some rabid fox or possum. Surely, it was that,
something in her blood, running through her mind, setting it afire.

There could not be so many people in all the world.

But the falcon Elation told her with sardonic calm
that there were—that this city of Eagle's Nest was large, but not the
only such swarming of humans, not the largest even.

But Firekeeper had long been the only human in all
the world. She never realized that this was what she had believed. Now
she must acknowledge that she had believed herself unique.

Even the evidence of the artifacts—the knife and the
tinderbox—these had not convinced her that there were other humans in
the world. Now she must face humans in their varied colors, shapes,
sizes, and smells.

She would go mad.

Derian entered the room to find her sitting on the
floor, her head buried against Blind Seer's flank. She ignored the man.
Hoped that he would go away. Knew from the gusting exhalation of the
breath beneath her brother's ribs that he would not.

"Firekeeper?"

A finger poked her gently in the side. She growled.

"C'mon, kid."

Hands on her shoulders.

"Today is the day. You don't dare disappoint Earl Kestrel."

Why not?
she thought. She had disappointed
herself. Why shouldn't she disappoint that small, hawk-nosed male with
his arrogant, proprietary attitude?

"Please?"

Derian sounded more unhappy than annoyed.
Reluctantly, Firekeeper permitted the smallest tendril of sympathy for
him and his predicament to finger through her own misery. Earl Kestrel
was always patient with her, even kind in a stiff,
wooden
fashion that owed more than a little to his fear of Blind Seer. He was
not always so with Derian. More than once Firekeeper had heard him
yelling at the younger man, berating him for failures incomprehensible
to her.

She raised her head from the comforting fur. Derian
was kneeling on the floor beside her. To his credit, he was ignoring
Blind Seer's baleful blue gaze, having learned that the wolf could be
trusted on his terms. As long as Derian did not make what the wolf
interpreted as a threatening gesture toward the woman, he was safe.

"Firekeeper," Derian said, catching her gaze and
holding it when she would look away, "today you meet the king. Tonight
you dine in his halls. It is for this that Earl Kestrel brought you
from the wilds. You can't back out now."

"I can," she threatened.

"You can," he agreed, "but I wouldn't like to be you
if you do. Earl Kestrel has always had his own uses for you, no matter
what pretty speeches he makes for other ears. If you fail him . . ."

She said nothing.

Derian shrugged. "The best you can hope for is being
turned out into the streets. You might be fine. So would the falcon,
but I wouldn't give Blind Seer a chance, not even at night."

Firekeeper knew too well what he meant. She had seen
the city streets, had been taken out into them cloaked and after dark
under Derian and Ox's escort. (Fleetingly she wondered why the big man
permitted his own to call him after a castrated bull.)

Using curtains of heavy fabric, Derian had made her a
concealed place from which she could watch the city traffic without
being seen by either the inmates of the manse or the passersby.

So many people!

She felt the mad panic returning and stamped it back. Even so, it filled her voice as she challenged Derian.

"He turn us out," she said sharply. "How he do that? Little man, big voice, no teeth."

"There you are wrong, Lady Blysse." Derian surged to his
feet
and crossed to where a new gown had been spread on the bed. "Earl
Kestrel has many teeth. You just don't know how to see them. Do you
think Ox is the only big man he commands or Race the only one who can
use a bow?"

She snarled. Derian continued as if she had not.

"You are probably meaner than any one of them—maybe
than any two. But in the end, they would win. You would be gone. Blind
Seer would be dead."

He shrugged. "Or you can put on this pretty gown,
scrub the tears from your cheeks, and let me comb your hair. Then we'll
have an audience with the king . . ."

He shook his head in wonder, still struggling with
the idea that he was to meet the king. "And then come back here and
tell Blind Seer all about it."

She knew he was humoring her in this last. He didn't
believe that she could speak with the wolf, understand all that he said
to her in return. At Elation's prompting, she had agreed to stop trying
to convince him.

"With me?" she asked, rising to her feet in turn. "Blind Seer come with me?"

Derian shook his head. "Not this time. You'll have to settle for me and Ox."

"Blind Seer comes," she insisted stubbornly. "Tell
Earl Kestrel, Norvin Norwood, Uncle Norvin—whatever name. Blind Seer
comes with me."

Valet spoke from the doorway, his soft-footed arrival
having been unnoticed even by the wolves. "Derian, I will advise my
master to give Lady Blysse her will in this matter. There are
advantages."

Firekeeper spun to stare at the little brown man.

"Do," she said, "and I will make ready."

Valet bowed deeply, an acknowledgment of a deal made and sealed rather than in abasement, and vanished.

"
Well done, Sister
," Blind Seer said. "
I look forward to meeting this One above Ones. Now, you must make ready. I, of course, am already perfect
."

"Braggart," she replied in the human language.

The gown she was to wear tonight was made of some soft stuff the color of bone, decorated with thin lines of scarlet
and of blue. With it went a wreath of flowers and a string of small round pebbles Derian called pearls.

"A lovely ensemble," Derian commented, lifting the
gown by its shoulders so she could inspect it. "I believe that Duchess
Kestrel, the earl's mother, selected it at her son's request. It should
look good on you—very delicate and virginal."

He chuckled. "Of course the belt knife and the wolf will rather ruin that effect."

Firekeeper cocked a brow at him. They had long
settled that whether or not she was wearing formal attire a few
accessories were non-negotiable. Her knife and fire-making tools stayed
with her and she flatly refused to wear shoes. Even Earl Kestrel had
given up in his efforts to convince her otherwise.

She pulled off her leather vest and dropped her
breeches, enjoying the small victory of watching Derian's fair skin
turn dark red. Then she gestured imperiously toward the fire.

"My bath, Derian," she said. "Then we go see this king."

A
S
D
ERIAN HANDED
F
IREKEEPER
into the carriage— an assistance she permitted only because of her
difficulties handling long skirts—he imagined many eyes watching them
from behind the curtained and shuttered windows of the Kestrel Manse.
No matter what the earl had ordered, some would disobey, would peek
out. They would tell their fellows of the strange girl but partially
glimpsed in the darkness and of the pale grey shadow whose very
presence had terrified the horses in the instant before it had leapt
into the carriage.

He shrugged. Secrecy wouldn't matter after tonight.
After tonight, the entire city would be alive with tales. The only
question was what those tales would tell. Would they be about the
return of a long-lost granddaughter to her joyful grandfather, as Earl
Kestrel hoped? Or would they be about an impertinent nobleman
imprisoned—or perhaps executed—
for his presumption in forcing upon the king one he had wished forgotten?