Reader and Raelynx

  “You told him,” she said in an ominous voice.

  He nodded happily. “Had to. I told you he was coming. Only fair I told him you were waiting.”

  “You told him!” she shouted, and pounced on him, grabbing him in a headlock and then wrestling him to the ground. He yelped and flailed around, trying to get free, but Cammon was no fighter, and she landed a few hard blows just to teach him a lesson. “I ought to roast your heart in your chest!”

  “Ow! Ow! Donnal! Help! Tayse! Help!”

  Tayse actually came to his rescue, putting a hand under Senneth’s arm and pulling them both to their feet. She kept her arm locked around Cammon’s throat, though, and another around his waist, but now the grip was more affectionate than punishing. He left off trying to get free and stood tamely in her arms.

  Tayse watched Cammon with his eyebrows lifted. “So? What information did you give him? And how?”

  “I met them outside the palace gates yesterday afternoon. He knew to wait for me but he didn’t know why.” He grinned and elbowed Senneth in the ribs, so she briefly squeezed his throat again. When he could speak once more, he said, “He’d guessed, though.”

  Tayse glanced at the cabin, where Riders were spilling in and out of the door, and a great deal of commotion was being created on the copper-bottomed drums. “And they managed to elude us how? Through Lirren magic?”

  Senneth nodded. “That would be my guess. Ellynor snuck them inside the gate—and past a whole gauntlet of Riders. Both of them.”

  He met her eyes, a certain disquiet in his own. “I find this extremely disturbing.”

  “Oh, but you can trust Ellynor!” Cammon exclaimed.

  Senneth released him and gave him a little shove. “You half-wit, what about her brothers and her cousins and the members of feuding clans?” she demanded. “What about Lirrenfolk who might be siding with Halchon Gisseltess? What if they decide to come sneaking into the palace grounds at night? You can’t sense Ellynor, you’ve said that before. Riders can’t see them or hear them. Not Riders guarding the gate, not Riders stationed along a pathway where they know one of them is going to come. I find it disturbing myself.”

  Cammon looked horrified, but Tayse’s dark eyes glittered. “And yet, if this is a magic we can harness, I find it very valuable indeed,” he said.

  “Well,” Senneth said. “They’ve ruined our surprise and scared us to death, but let’s go say hello to them anyway.”

  “Yes,” said Tayse, turning to lead the way. “It will be good to have Justin back.”

  IT was maybe two hours before all of the other Riders cleared out. Senneth was not much for playing hostess, but Kirra had hissed at her and grabbed her arm, dragging her to the small kitchen, where Ellynor was standing in some bemusement. The Lirren girl was delicate and pretty, with exceedingly long black hair that just now was piled on top of her head in a hasty knot. She was scarcely more dressed than Justin, though he’d obviously given her time to wash her face and pull on a gown before he went out to taunt the welcoming party.

  “Am I supposed to feed everybody?” she whispered when the other two joined her. “Is there food? What am I supposed to do?”

  “They’re Riders. You don’t have to take care of them,” Senneth said, but Kirra had been raised more politely than that.

  “We’ll go to the barracks and lift some bread and fruit,” Kirra said. “I’m not going to cook or anything, but maybe it would be nice to offer them something to eat. Oh, but do you like the plates? Do you like the pans? We picked them out for you, but if you don’t like them—”

  Ellynor still looked overwhelmed, but now gratitude crossed her fine features. “That was so kind! I’ve never been to such a big city! I thought Neft was an intimidating place, but I’ll never be able to find my way around Ghosenhall!”

  Senneth laughed. “I don’t believe you. If you can track your brothers through the Lirren wilds, you can make your way through the royal city.”

  Ellynor smiled. “Fewer dangers in the Lirren wilds,” she said.

  “That’s probably true,” Kirra said. “But come with us, then, if you want to see the city. Senneth and I can protect anybody.”

  They made a foray to the barracks and returned with an assortment of food and drinks, Donnal assisting them. Senneth noticed that Ellynor was pleased to see Donnal and reflected that the shy Lirren girl probably found Donnal the least frightening of Justin’s friends. But she, at least, was not fooled by Ellynor’s soft voice and kind expression. The woman was unyielding if called upon to protect someone she loved; she had literally hauled Justin back from the abyss of death. And she was dense with magic. No, Ellynor was no helpless child dependent on the strength of her husband or her friends.

  Although even a mystic might quail at the thought of navigating Ghosenhall on her own.

  Eventually the Riders had had their fill of purloined breakfast goods and ribald jokes. Tayse practically pushed Hammond out the door, and Wen was still talking to Justin through the front window. But finally everyone else was gone. Kirra and Cammon flopped onto two of the chairs, Senneth coaxed the hearth fire higher, and Tayse turned the lock on the door.

  Cammon looked swiftly around the room, an oddly sweet smile on his face. That was when Senneth realized it: For the first time in more than six weeks, the six of them were together again.

  Seven. The seven of them. For Ellynor sat curled next to Justin, who had sprawled on the floor before the fire. Not one of them and yet somehow belonging, somehow seeming to fit right there under the crook of Justin’s arm.

  Tayse dropped easily to the floor near Justin, while Senneth took one of the other chairs. At some point, Donnal had melted into his familiar shape of a shaggy black dog, and lay with his head across Kirra’s dainty feet.

  “Let me commend you on your trick,” Tayse said. “Very effective.”

  Justin grinned. “Wasn’t sure we could pull it off, not when I saw a Rider every three paces for a quarter of a mile! And then getting through the front door—how to do that so no one saw it open?”

  “And how did you?” Kirra asked.

  Justin looked down at Ellynor, who answered in her sweet voice. “I made the shadow so deep no one would notice it, and then we slipped inside.”

  “I’m even more concerned about how you breached the front gate, where I know four Riders were on duty,” Tayse said in a calm voice. “How did you manage to open that without anyone being the wiser?”

  Justin shook his head. “Didn’t even try. We came in with another party last night—a group of nobles all dressed up, so I suppose they were arriving for dinner. Ellynor just cloaked us in magic, and we stepped in right behind them.”

  Tayse nodded. “That’s a slight comfort, but very slight. You could bring a whole troop inside the palace grounds if you slipped them in by ones and twos behind other parties.”

  Justin looked grave. “I wasn’t thinking about it that way yesterday, but you’re right.” His eyes narrowed; he was already considering solutions. “So then—maybe some kind of trip wire—the Lirrenfolk are impossible to see, but they still have weight and mass. Though, that won’t work—everyone would stumble over that.”

  “What about dogs?” Kirra asked. She prodded Donnal and he sat up, ears pricked forward. “Or a wolf? Would Donnal have noticed you going by last night?” She glanced at Senneth. “We should have slept outside after all.”

  “You might have heard or smelled us,” Ellynor admitted. “The few times my brothers were caught were when a guard dog raised the alarm. But I can cover almost all trace of our passage. It has to be a pretty smart dog.”

  “Donnal’s an exceptional animal,” Kirra drawled. Donnal’s black mouth opened in a canine grin.

  “Let’s try that,” Tayse said. “Over the next few days. See how well Ellynor can trick Donnal and what he has to do to catch her. See if Cammon can learn how to sense her, too.”

  Senneth smiled at Ellynor, who looked a little startled. “He never asks,”
she said. “He just assumes that everyone is as focused as he is on keeping the palace and all its inhabitants safe.”

  “Of course—whatever I can do,” Ellynor said earnestly, and the rest of them laughed.

  “Jerril can help, I bet,” Cammon said. To Ellynor he explained, “Jerril’s my tutor. He’s teaching me how to improve my magic.”

  “Oh, because you’re so weak and useless to us now,” Justin said.

  But Senneth was nodding. “Good idea.”

  “You’ll like Jerril,” Cammon said to Ellynor, who did look just a bit nervous. “He couldn’t be nicer.”

  “Not like the lot of us, you mean,” Kirra said lazily. “Unprincipled and ruthless.”

  “Sounds about right,” Justin said with a grin.

  “The problem remains,” Tayse said, “finding a way to make sure none of Ellynor’s friends and cousins—or enemies and uncles—can come stealing into the palace completely undetected. I hardly think we can expect Donnal to spend the remaining days of his life prowling these few acres and trying to scent out trouble.”

  “Why can’t we use real dogs?” Justin said. “Specifically on the watch for someone trying to enter the gate by stealth?”

  Tayse nodded. “We could do that. The head groom at the royal stables knows an animal trainer. We could work with him.”

  Senneth glanced at Kirra. “And maybe we could supplement the real dogs with some enchanted ones,” she said. “I’ve been thinking it’s time to recruit more mystics.”

  Kirra straightened in her chair. “Carrebos!” she exclaimed. “We can see who’s on hand there.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Justin said.

  “City not far from Fortunalt lands that apparently has become a community of mystics,” Senneth said. “Maybe some of them would like to come work for the king.”

  Tayse looked intrigued. For a man who had distrusted magic for most of his life, he had become awfully willing to turn it to his advantage. “You think there might be shape-shifters among them? That would make an interesting contingent to add to the king’s troops.”

  Senneth shrugged. “Won’t know till we go investigate. I thought Kirra and I could head down there in a few days and see what we might find.” Donnal barked sharply. “Donnal would come with us, of course,” Senneth added.

  Tayse gave her a quick smile, private despite the fact that five other people could witness it. “So would I,” he said. Because I intend to never be parted from you again.

  Kirra made a tiny cooing sound, but even that didn’t keep the slow shiver from tickling down Senneth’s spine. “So would you,” she agreed softly. Because I could not bear it if you were.

  CHAPTER

  11

  IF Cammon had had to describe his emotional state during the next week, he would have called it sublimely content. Justin was back—the others had not yet departed—Amalie wanted to see him every morning—and Jerril was coming to the palace to practice magic. Nothing was missing from his life; every ingredient that he considered essential was solidly in place.

  Three more suitors arrived that week, so Cammon had little chance for private conversation with Amalie. Instead, he and Valri and assorted Riders spent an aggregate of hours lurking behind the false walls and eavesdropping on three varieties of wooing. This should have been tedious in the extreme, but somehow it was not. Valri had had a couple of chairs and a small table hauled in, all of them just narrow enough to fit in the secret corridor, and she and Cammon sat there during every interview and silently played cards. When part of the conversation caught their attention, they would look up from their game and either laugh silently, or show their surprise, or roll their eyes and grimace in distaste. This made the hours pass in an entertaining fashion and kept Cammon from thinking too hard about the cold reality underlying the whole exercise: The princess was trying to pick her husband. He didn’t know why he so much disliked the idea of her getting married.

  One reason, perhaps, was that none of the latest crop of beaux seemed remotely worthy of her. The first one was quite young, rather tongue-tied, and extremely nervous. Amalie was gentle with him, but Cammon didn’t need her critique afterward to know she had not considered him appealing. The second was older, very polished, and superficially agreeable, but Cammon found something about him to be repulsive. Maybe it was that Cammon sensed cold calculation in his admiring compliments and honeyed phrases. Maybe it was that Amalie laughed a great deal during their extended and playful conversation.

  “You seemed to enjoy your visit with the Tilt lord,” Valri remarked once the suitor had gone off to change for dinner.

  “He’s a toad,” Amalie said calmly. “He kept looking around the room as if wondering what it would be like to own the whole palace. And looking at me like—well. Like he was wondering what it would be like to own me.”

  Valri seemed amused. “You’ve become rather an expert at concealing what you’re thinking, then. I couldn’t tell you disliked him.”

  “I find it easier to pretend when I don’t like someone,” she said. “I might be more nervous when I do.”

  She was not nervous in the presence of the third suitor, a Nocklyn man old enough to be her father. The noble had seated himself, accepted a glass of wine, and traded trivialities for a few moments before he broke off his speech with a laugh.

  “I cannot believe a nineteen-year-old girl looks at me and sees a potential husband,” he said. “I am here because Mayva Nocklyn asked me to make a case for myself, not because I expect to win your hand. So let me enumerate all the advantages of my rank and station, and you can listen politely. Once that is all out of the way, we can talk of other things. I imagine that will be a much more pleasant way to pass the day.”

  There was a smile in Amalie’s voice. “I imagine it will.”

  Valri, who had been contemplating her discard when the lord started speaking, paused long enough to listen to this little interchange. Now she glanced at Cammon with her eyebrows raised, as if to ask, Is he sincere? Cammon, whose own hand was unplayable, nodded back. There was no lust for power, no lust for a young girl’s body, hovering over this middle-aged swain. Cammon saw Valri’s face sharpen with interest; she started weighing the advantages of an unpretentious, settled older man who treated his young bride with kindness.

  Cammon frowned at her and mouthed, Too old. Valri shrugged and pointed at herself. Look at me, she meant, married to a man in his sixties. Cammon’s frown grew more pronounced. Different, he said silently. She gave a half-smile and shook her head. Not really. Cammon disagreed, but it was impossible to explain why, given the circumstances.

  Amalie seemed to be enjoying her conversation with the amiable Nocklyn lord, which didn’t particularly cheer Cammon. The visitor was describing the crops his lands yielded and the markets where he sold them.

  “Do you trade with foreign merchants?” she asked, as if she was really interested.

  “Sometimes with Sovenfeld,” he answered. “I’ve been looking toward Arberharst, but I’m not sure what they produce there that would be worth the exchange.”

  Honey spice, Cammon thought, imagining those great fields heavy with bright red flowers.

  “Honey spice, perhaps?” Amalie said in the most natural voice.

  Cammon laid down his cards and stared at the partition as if he could see right through it. Did she know that? Or had she picked up the thought in his head? Valri looked at him curiously, but he was too focused on the dialogue on the other side of the screen to glance in her direction.

  “I’ve heard of it,” the Nocklyn man admitted, “but never tasted it. What’s it like?”

  Amalie hesitated for a second. Cammon thought, Richer than cinnamon, and a little rougher. Amalie said, “It’s a little like cinnamon, but the flavor is a bit stronger.”

  Cammon felt his hands contract into fists.

  “So, it’s used in baking? Sweets and pastries, that sort of thing?”

  And some meat dish
es like chicken.

  “I believe some people also use it when they’re cooking poultry.”

  “Might be a market for it in the four corners,” the Nocklyn man said. Fortunalt, Gisseltess, Brassenthwaite, and Danalustrous were the four Houses on the “corners” of Gillengaria and widely regarded as the most sophisticated of the Twelve.

  You can buy it in Ghosenhall, Cammon thought, but it’s expensive.

  “There are a few specialty shops here in the city that carry it, I believe,” Amalie said. “If you wanted to try it. You might ask them where they get their supplies and if they would be interested in another source.”

  There was a smile in the man’s voice. “I’ll do that—if I decide I want to expand my trading circle over the ocean.”

  “My father likes the idea of more foreign commerce,” Amalie said, and they were off on a topic that she knew better than Cammon did. He took a deep breath, relaxed his shoulders, and turned to look at Valri again.

  The queen was watching him closely, her green eyes narrowed to slits. She did not look happy. He wasn’t sure what to tell her. But it was clear that, no matter what kind of magic Valri was conjuring to keep Amalie safe, it only worked in one direction. Amalie’s thoughts and emotions might be cloaked from the world, hidden so expertly that even a reader like Cammon could not uncover them. But he could communicate with her. He could cast his magic like a net and let it settle invisibly over her shining hair—and Amalie welcomed its arrival, tilted back her head as if to absorb it through her skin. He wasn’t sure which Valri would find more alarming—that Amalie was susceptible to enchantment, or that she delighted in it.

  The instant Amalie accompanied the Nocklyn lord out of the room and the door shut behind them, Valri clutched Cammon’s arm. “What did you do?” she demanded. “Were you putting thoughts in her mind? How can you do that?”

  He didn’t know how to play this. “I’m not exactly sure,” he said cautiously. “She did seem to be picking up on some of the things I was thinking.”