Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart (45 page)

Lady Luella smiled, and Firekeeper thought that she had passed some test.

"You speak quite clearly. If your accent is harsh, what else can be expected?"

This was the first time Firekeeper had been told that she possessed an accent and the unfamiliar word puzzled her. Her habit of asking questions took over before she could stop herself.

"Accent?"

"A touch common," Lady Luella explained, "but then your tutors have been common-born, have they not?"

Firekeeper was already beginning to regret her question, but the rabbit was running and she saw no course but to chase it.

"I not know what 'accent' is," she replied.

"Accent…" Lady Luella looked thoughtful for a second. Then she said, "Accent is the way you say a word, the way you shape the sounds."

Firekeeper tilted her head to one side, reluctant to ask for clarification, but completely confused. Lady Luella continued, the cadence of her reply falling into the pedagogical rhythms with which Firekeeper was already familiar.

"A gentle-born person," she said, "will most often say words carefully, pronouncing all the sounds distinctly. A less gently born person will often run them together—lazy or perhaps hurriedly.

"T'morrow," Lady Luella said by means of illustration, "instead of 'tomorrow.' "

Firekeeper could hear the difference and nodded.

"And one way of saying is better?" she asked.

"Some people," Lady Luella said with smile, "think so. My mother and father were very strict on this point."

"And so you are?" Firekeeper asked.

"I try," Lady Luella looked fleetingly sad, "but since we have come to spend so much time at Norwood, I think that my children are becoming lazy. You lived at court, did you not?"

"Some," Firekeeper said, knowing from Elise's stories about her childhood that humans envied this as a wolf might another wolf tearing the liver from a fresh kill.

"Did you like it?"

"Sometimes," Firekeeper said honestly. "Others, no. It was very close and full of stone."

Lady Luella frowned slightly, but there was no anger in her expression, only the mild puzzlement that Firekeeper was accustomed to see on others' faces when the wolf-woman thought she was being perfectly clear.

"I like Norwood," Firekeeper explained. "There are more trees and fewer people."

"So you like trees better than people?"

There was challenge in the older woman's tone and a mildly malicious glee as if she had trapped Firekeeper into some misstep.

"No." Firekeeper shook her head vigorously, a trace frustrated. "I like people much—some people. I don't know all people. But sometimes too many people is…" She gestured wildly. 'Too many."

She felt trapped by the cool eyes of Earl Kestrel's wife, a sense that somehow, despite her best efforts, she was going to offend this woman and cause trouble for herself. Desperate to avert the disaster she felt approaching, Firekeeper blurted:

"Lady Luella, I no take the meat from your cubs!"

Lady Luella looked completely astonished.

"Meat?"

"I no want anything that is your children's," Firekeeper said more slowly. "Earl Kestrel came west for a reason. He no wanted me; he wanted Prince Barden's Blysse. I know this."

Lady Luella leaned forward.

"Are you Prince Barden's Blysse?"

Firekeeper shrugged. "I don't know. King Tedric didn't say I am, so even if I am, I'm not."

Lady Luella laughed, a dry, throaty sound.

"You're more intelligent than I'd have believed. Tell me about your childhood with the wolves."

So Firekeeper did so, continuing when Lady Luella's maid—made rather nervous when she realized Blind Seer was present—arrived to style the lady's drying hair. It was the longest narration the wolf-woman had ever attempted to sustain without assistance and she was quite relieved when Lady Luella raised a finger in an imperious gesture for silence.

"Blysse, the dinner hour is approaching and, although your attire is quite appropriate, perhaps you should return to your room and ring for your maid."

Lady Luella's aristocratic lips twitched in what might have been an amused smile. 'Tell her to remove the worst of the wolf hair from your gown."

Firekeeper rose from the flowered puff with a touch more alacrity than might have been perfectly polite, but she remembered her curtsy, and Blind Seer—showing his fangs in an amused grin at the maid's anxious start when he rose to his full height—gave a polite bow.

As they hurried back to Firekeeper's room, the wolf-woman couldn't help but think that as cold as was the winter wind, she rather preferred it to the frost that had never quite left the lady's smile.

F
ox Driver was as good as his word. The horses were calmed by midday, hitched, and ready to go.

For his part, Baron Endbrook employed himself inquiring after road conditions and confirming that the map he had purchased in Hawk Haven was accurate enough for his purposes.

Lady Melina was actively helpful—even eager—in these preparations for travel. She hovered near, effacing herself lest in this border town she might chance on some acquaintance from Hawk Haven. However, whenever Waln's ability to splice his dozen or so New Kelvinese words to gestures and carefully enunciated phrases in Pellish—the language of Gildcrest and thus that of Hawk Haven and Bright Bay—failed to communicate their desire, she stepped forward and acted as translator.

Often the subject of their inquiry—be it shopkeeper, hostler, or local official—was so pleased and astonished to be addressed in the language of the country that he—or she or it, Waln privately admitted that he still had trouble telling the gender of many of the heavily robed figures—would reveal a reasonable fluency in Pellish.

In this way, they learned that the roads should be clear for this day's journey, but that they should be prepared to convert the wagon to sleigh runners before continuing on the next day.

The road they would be taking to Dragon's Breath ran along the western foothills of the Sword of Kelvin Mountains and these, extending as they did in a roughly north-south line, trapped both the weather from the oceans to the east, and that blown down from the Iron Mountains (called here the Death Touch Mountains) to the west. However, though the weather promised to be unpleasant this time of year, the New Kelvinese government paid to have this important road packed and rolled, so sledding should prove both easier and swifter than hauling the wagon over rutted and muddy New Kelvinese roads had been.

As an Islander—a member of a people who, until just a few moonspans before, had simply been loosely annexed to a kingdom whose effective ability to reign had been limited by the interposing ocean—Baron Endbrook was astonished by the New Kelvinese's pride in the works of their nation.

In the Isles, one was first of all oneself—a sailor, a merchant, a fisher, a whoreson (this last flickered into his mind unbidden and was squelched immediately). Next one might be a resident of a particular island—though even that was not a reason for pride. Islanders were more likely to identify themselves by the ships they sailed upon. Belonging to Bright Bay had been an incidental matter, useful when collecting bounty on Waterlander vessels fortuitously chanced upon, but little more.

Even in Hawk Haven it had seemed to Waln that those he met identified themselves first as members of their own houses—if they were noble-born—or as members of their families, craft guilds, and Societies. Service to the larger kingdom—as in King Allister's War—was done as a matter of service to those more personal alliances.

But here in New Kelvin all the people he had spoken to—whether on this trip or his last—seemed to think of themselves as New Kelvinese first and foremost. Even the filthiest beggar on the streets of Dragon's Breath had seemed to look upon the baron's unpainted face and then to accept his charity with the condescension of one making a concession to a lesser being.

On his initial journey, Waln had thought that perhaps his assessment of the New Kelvinese character had been colored by his personal awareness of his gutter origins. Now, as time after time Lady Melina's ability to speak—even haltingly—in the language of the country opened comparative floodgates of information, Waln realized he had been right.

Perhaps the ability to speak of "color" that the New Kelvinese diplomats had desired was not only the ability to speak knowledgeably about magic, but to do so in their own language as well. Doubtless, Lady Melina's previous visit had made her aware of their bigotry, and thus was explained her dutiful—even fanatical—attention to her studies in the course of their journey.

Baron Endbrook had not made his fortune in trade without learning the value of intangibles. He immediately resolved to learn to speak New Kelvinese and acted on his resolve so promptly that by their last stop before departing—the public room of a pleasant inn where they ate a hot meal—he was making the serving wench laugh with his attempts to echo her as she told him the local names for such basic items as beer, bread, and soup.

T
hough the customs officer who had checked their map had been deprecating about the condition of the road immediately outside of town, Waln was pleasantly surprised at how smooth and well cared for it was. Replete with hot food and perhaps one more mug of the dark autumn beer than he should have drunk, he sat his horse and estimated that they would reach their destination—an inn accustomed to foreign travelers—by dusk if not before.

His mount, a sandy bay gelding whose feathered hocks bespoke one of the larger breeds in its ancestry, seemed to have forgotten its earlier fear and paced along, its ears perked forward in pleasant anticipation of what lay along their course.

"Ride with me, Lady," he said to Lady Melina once they were under way, "and continue my studies. I appear to have been remiss."

"I am pleased to do so," she said, trotting her dapple grey to his side.

As they rode on, Waln was encouraged to think that Lady Melina's pleasure might have had a more personal element as well. When he finally pronounced correctly an intricate phrase, she blew him a kiss as a lady might to acknowledge her champion on the field. When he mangled a complicated honorific, she playfully leaned from her saddle to swat him lightly on the arm. Indeed, given that they were separated by the need to control their mounts, she seemed to find more man ample excuses to touch him.

When they arrived at the promised inn—named the Stone Giant, after some local legend—Lady Melina held out her arms quite automatically to be lifted from the saddle. Despite himself, Waln's blood was humming as he followed her into the Stone Giant. He was a sailor a long way from home and here was a woman who seemed to desire him, not some whore more interested in his money than his person.

As the innkeeper led the way to their rooms, Waln cleared his throat.

"I was thinking, Sister," he said, fearing that the words sounded stilted, "that we could dine in my suite tonight. There is much I would discuss with you."

"That would be fine, Brother," Lady Melina agreed with demure courtesy.

Her words were proper—even dull—but the slightly lascivious twinkle in her eyes as she smiled up at him suggested that she had guessed his ulterior motives.

Waln wondered if the porter who trudged behind them with the lady's box balanced lightly on one shoulder saw the color that flushed his cheeks. Not wishing to seem too eager for Lady Melina's company, Waln excused himself until dinner.

Leaving all his luggage but the satchel with his precious trust in his room, Waln headed downstairs again. A few words with the innkeeper—who thankfully spoke Pellish fluently—arranged for a small but elegant private banquet for two. Then Waln went out to check on their mounts and goods.

"They're all settled, Baron," Fox said, a trace of insolence—or perhaps envy—in his tone despite the respectful words. "Not even too worn. I had to fight to get stabling for them, though, some high-and-mighty from Dragon's Breath is staying here as well and his groom was puffed with his master's importance."

Fox grinned. "I diced him for spaces and we're settled now."

He gestured with a toss of his head toward a row of stalls. "Four of the best, right at the end."

"And the wagon?" Waln asked.

"That was easier," Fox said. "The high-and-mighty isn't traveling with trade goods. Ours are under cover right outside the stable. I'll be sleeping in the loft above the horses, so no one should meddle without my hearing."

"Can you find someone to help you change the wheels for runners?" Waln asked. "The innkeeper confirmed that the roads are packed snow from here to Dragon's Breath."

Fox nodded. "Easily done."

Though his pulse was beating time in his ears, Waln chatted a bit longer with Driver before returning to the inn. He strolled through the common room, catching a glimpse of a colorfully painted personage with hair the color of a bleached seashell sipping some steaming beverage at a table almost concealed in a sheltered alcove.

Waln's self-possession abandoned him when he was free of the public areas and he found himself taking the stairs two at a time, suddenly nervous that he had dallied too long. As he had ordered earlier, hot water for a bath was waiting. With a sense of anticipation he had not felt since he was courting Oralia, Waln scrubbed the trail dirt from every inch of his skin, conscious of the fact that, if all went as he hoped, he would be open to quite a private inspection.

Lady Melina was just late enough that Waln had begun to fear that the knock on the door would announce not the lady but some flunky bearing her excuse. However, she herself glided in, apologizing that she had needed to wait until a serving maid was available to lace her into her dress.

The dress was one of several she had brought along, quite suitable to her persona as a prosperous farm owner. Waln thought Lady Melina wore the simple midnight-blue wool as a queen might, her own inner dignity infusing it with grace and elegance. Her silvering hair was braided and caught up in a knot at the back of her head. Waln found himself imagining how it might look after he had set it free.