Winter Moon (9 page)

It seemed as good a time as any to send the Countess another message. But what? Moira still had no idea why Massid was here. No marriage had yet been proposed. And yet—

Frustrated, she essentially repeated her previous warning with the addition of the rumor about the storm being “sent,” adding only that Massid was spending all his time in her father's company. She released the dove with a sense of futility, and carried a basket of eggs down to the cook as her excuse for being up there in the first place.

With nothing much to do, she went into the Great
Hall before returning to her rooms, and stood at the window, brooding down at the ocean.

“Pining for a beloved, my lady?” Kedric's dry voice came from behind her.

“If you know anything at all about the women schooled by the Countess, you know we don't pine for anything,” she replied, without turning. “And as for a beloved, you would know that we also are aware that our lives are not our own to give.”

“Ah yes, you are well schooled in obedience—” The bitterness in his voice made her turn and regard him with a lifted brow.

“Perhaps, Kedric, you are insufficiently acquainted with the meaning of the phrase
noblesse oblige
,” she replied, keeping her tone cool, and just on the polite side of sarcastic. “It means that those who are born into a position of power inherit obligations and responsibilities far in excess of the benefits of privilege. It means that we are obligated to protect those who give us their loyalty and service. Sometimes that protection comes at the cost of a life. Sometimes the cost is only freedom. But we
owe
them that. This is what
noblesse oblige
means.”

She could not read Kedric's face, so she continued. “Men,” she said with some bitterness of her own, “think that being willing to lay down their lives is difficult. They have no conception of what it means to be willing to lay down your life as a woman does—not for a moment of sacrifice, but for years, decades of sacrifice. To surrender it in that way so that the people you have sworn to protect
are
protected.”

“And so, you lie down and let yourself—” Kedric began.

She interrupted him, a cold fury in her voice that she could not entirely repress. “Is that what you think? That this is mere, passive obedience, weak and weak willed? I thought you wiser than your motley, Kedric. It is hard, hard, to subdue the will, to force aside
I want
for
I must
. But you mistake me. Even in the most loveless and calculated of marriages, there are children to love and be loved by. I refer to the hardest sacrifice of all, for a woman to steel her will to live alone and unwedded, not because she wishes to, but because, for the sake of her people, she must—to look down the long years ahead and see nothing at the end of them but an empty bed and a lonely singleness.”

He made a little strangling sound, and she sniffed, interpreting his odd expression, she thought, correctly. “What? You thought the Countess remained single because she wished to? Or because she does not care for men? Oh, she mourns the Count her husband, and she truly loved him, but she stays a single widow because it is her cousin the King's will, so that she can be the stalking horse, be dangled, like a prize at a fair, for all to see but ultimately never be won by any. And she takes no lovers, for she is the King's cousin, and like Caesar's wife, she must be above reproach. She knows that, has always known it, and she makes sure her Gr—her ladies know that there is more than one way in which the King may ask for their obedience, and what the cost may be.”

“I—see,” he managed. “That had not occurred to me.”

“And to protect my people, if I thought it
would
protect them, yes, I would give myself over to be locked away in a seraglio in Jendara,” she added, turning back to the window. “But I do not think it would protect them. I think the opposite, and I think the King would agree.”

“I think he would, too, my lady.” Kedric's tone was firm again.

Well, there it was. The unspoken message and alliance she had been hoping to hear. Kedric was the King's man, and he was here to be the King's eyes and ears. “The trouble is, I do not know how to prevent it,” she said, sadly. “Short of throwing myself into the sea.”

“You are the heir to a sea-keep, my lady, and as such you can wed any of the King's subjects you choose without his leave,” Kedric said slowly, as if he was thinking aloud. “But by the law of the land and the charter by which a sea-keep is held, you
cannot
wed someone who is
not
one of his subjects without his leave.”

And there it was—her escape. Or at least a way to stall for time. Her father would have to pretend that he was sending for the King's permission. Probably he would forge such a message, but
she
had been schooled by the Countess, and she had seen and learned how to recognize the King's hand and seal. She didn't think there was anyone here with sufficient talent to successfully forge a royal decree.

“That,” she said aloud, “is quite true. And it is exceedingly useful to keep in mind.”

“I am pleased to have given you something useful, my lady,” he replied, as she turned back to look down at the ocean.

A movement along the cliff face caught her eye. It was the work crew, going out to replenish the fuel for the beacon—and that reminded her, suddenly, of the mark she had made on the window of the nursery, a mark which might give her some information, though what use she could make of it, she was not yet sure.

“You'll excuse me, I hope,” she said, after a moment—but then, abruptly, added, “unless you would care to accompany me to the old nursery. I think I might have left something there that might interest you.”

He looked at her askance, but nodded. “If you wish, my lady, and you think I may be of service.”

She smiled without humor. “Say, rather, it might be instructive to you to see how a sea-keep child begins its life. We are not sheltered.”

“That,” the minstrel said, raising his eyebrows, “I can
truly
believe.”

He followed her to the nursery, and did not voice any objections to the chill, stale air as she opened the door. It was dark, as she had expected. As far as she could tell, no one had opened the shutters on the window since she herself had closed them.

She went straight to the window, and opened them—she didn't fling them open, she moved them quietly, to make as little noise as possible.

“What are you—” Kedric began. She held up a cautioning hand.

“This, you see, is the view every child of the lord of a sea-keep gets from the time it leaves the cradle,” she said, as she leaned down to scrutinize the windowpanes. Finally she resorted to finding the scratch she had made by touch rather than by sight. Somewhat to her surprise, it wasn't standing out the way she had thought it would. Perhaps too many fantastic tales of lovelorn maidens or tragically imprisoned heroes inscribing poems on the windows of their rooms had given her the mistaken impression that all it would take was a little rubbing with a diamond to leave a visible mark.

At length she found it, sat down on the window seat, and tried to make the mark line up with the beacon just visible from where she sat.

It did nothing of the sort. The trouble was, it didn't line up with any place that people would be able to get to. While she could certainly imagine that her father would have the cleverness to construct a false beacon, this one was apparently somewhere beyond the cliff itself, out in the water.

Which was…odd.

“It's a bit of a harrowing view for a child, I would think,” Kedric said. Then he whispered, “What exactly are you doing, my lady? I hope you didn't bring me here to reminisce.”

“During the storm, I made a scratch on the glass to line up with the beacon,” she whispered back, “because it seemed to me that it was in the wrong place,
and the only way to know for sure was to see if the mark lined up with the structure when the storm cleared.

“Here, take my seat and see for yourself,” she said, louder, relinquishing her spot on the window seat. “Generations of sea-keep children grew up on this view, come storm or sunshine.”

He replaced her, while she spoke in conversational tones about the beacon, the storms, and the beachcombers down on the rocks and what they might find.

He lined himself up with her mark, and peered through the window, frowning. “What keeps the beacon alight?” he asked, still frowning.

“Sea coal, but something's done to it magically,” she replied. “A little of it burns with a tall, bright flame. There are reflectors behind the flame to send as much of the light as possible out to sea. We have to get the special coal from the King and store it. He sends it to us by packhorse. It must be very hard to make, because we have to account for every bit burned, and if we use more than we've been allotted, we have to say why.”

With his back to her, she could see that one of his shoulders was significantly higher than the other, and his spine was slightly twisted. It looked very painful.

Perhaps that accounted for his sourness.

“The beacon and your scratch do not match up, my lady,” he said softly. “Is there any significance to the position where it does match up?”

“Of course, the beacon is meant to show sailors where the coast is, when there are storms and fog,” she said aloud. “During times like those, ships hug the coastline, so they navigate by the beacons in order to avoid being lost at sea. But also a beacon has to be placed precisely, because at the spot where it has been built, there are generally shoals or rocks where ships can run aground.”

He nodded. “So if, say, something were to destroy this beacon, the new one would have to be built on exactly the same spot?”

“Oh, more than that. Even if this one were destroyed,
some
sort of temporary beacon would have to be put there immediately,” she replied. “It's just too vital.”

She watched his lips compress and his eyes narrow, only at that moment realizing that they were a dark grey that seemed to darken even as she watched. He knew something that she didn't.

“I wish, my lady, that we could discover just
where
along your coastline this scratch does line up,” he whispered.

“There is no way to tell, and I wouldn't care to go outside in a storm to try to find out,” she whispered back. Then she said, in a normal tone, “If it were not for the beacons, of course, it would not be possible for trade ships to sail in the winter, nor for the coastal patrols to keep enemies from our shores. Fishermen have no need of them, of course, for when the weather is foul they wisely do not put out to sea.”

“Indeed. Well, this has been very enlightening, my
lady, and I thank you for your hospitality.” He stood up abruptly, forcing her to step back with some haste. He sketched a bow. “There is a great deal more about this sea-keep and its daughter than meets the eye.”

He held the door open for her courteously, and she stepped through. They parted at the intersection of the two corridors, and she returned to her room, feeling irritated and uneasy.
She
had shared her information with him, but he had given her nothing.

 

Her irritation only increased when she returned to the Great Hall, intending, if nothing else, to watch the beachcombers and her father's overseer below from the vantage point of the great window behind the High Table on the dais, thinking perhaps she might be able also to guess where the displaced beacon had been, though she could not for a moment imagine how the light had
been
displaced. As far as she could tell, though she was far from certain about this, it had been “moved” several hundred yards down the coastline and a bit farther out to sea. Which, if she was correct, would mean that any boat using it as a guide would think the promontory and rocks that the beacon stood over were there, and that once past, it would be safe to cut in closer to shore.

Which would, of course, depending on the accuracy of the beacon, put a ship directly
on
the rocks.

Was it just greed that had driven her father to storm-assisted piracy? That didn't make a great deal of sense. In summer, when storms never lasted more than a day, yes. But winter storms lasted several days,
and it wouldn't do her father a great deal of good if the ship he wanted was wrecked on the first or second day of a storm. You couldn't go out on the rocks for salvage in the teeth of a winter gale, and anything washed up after a wreck would soon be taken away by the sea and tides again. If he was colluding with the Khaleem to bring in invaders—

Well, that made no sense, either. You would want the beacon where it actually
was
if you were bringing in strangers to this coast, and anyway, where would they land? The docks for the keep were small, nowhere near big enough for an invasion force. And anyway, the Khaleemate ran to pirates, not soldiers. It was one thing to turn them loose on the high seas and tax them on their booty when they returned to port. It was quite another to expect them to come in to land and act like soldiers.