Part 7 (1/2)

She pointed, and under the last wisps of sunset, I could see the gap in the mountains. Three miles, but I could blot it all out with my thumb.

”And that's the nearest habitation?”

”Yes, why? Were you wanting to visit somebody, then?” There was merriment in her voice. ”I suppose we could all make a trip of it once we're settled, if the weather holds. There's not much to see, of course - just some farms and a lot of very temperamental goats. I'm not sure how the locals would feel about the neighboring lords descending upon them like an army, though.”

Just three miles - yet impossibly far away. Having spent four days twisting through the endless bleak press of stone and trees, I was beginning to have an idea of what a ”wide pa.s.s” through these mountains might mean.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

We settled in to Bryn Shaer with as much efficiency as the rest of our journey. The brand-new Lodge had been readied for our arrival by a party of servants who'd been sent on ahead, led by Yselle, the Nemair's handpicked Corles housekeeper. The family rooms were on the second floor, above the central public gathering s.p.a.ces of the Round Court, Lesser Court, Armory, and a half dozen other large and nearly identical rooms an ordinary person would need a map to keep straight. Phandre and I followed Meri upstairs, through a long corridor of dark paneling, flickering torchlight, and impossibly soft rugs beneath our feet. Shadowy and silent - a thief's dream.

Meri led the way a little uncertainly, pausing in stairwells and looking down hallways with a little frown. Twisting her silver necklace in her fingers, she pushed open a door midway down the second floor, and halted in the threshold. Phandre shoved her way past, and let out a long, low whistle. Curious, I followed, leaving Meri lingering in the doorway.

Inside, I wanted to laugh. I had been in n.o.bs' bedrooms before - but city rooms, and never with the lamps lit. And never to stay. Even the rooms at Favom couldn't compare to this. The top floor of my entire Gerse rooming house would have nestled comfortably in Meri's Bryn Shaer bedroom, with its high plaster ceilings, wall of leaded windows, and ornate carved fireplace, already burning with a merry glow. And the bed - that bed. It was all I could do not to fling myself atop it and roll on the velvet coverlet like a happy dog in a pile of muck.

”Meri,” Phandre announced, ”I do believe I love you.”

Meri still hesitated, but Phandre grabbed her hands and yanked her inside.

”At Charicaux, my window overlooked a garden,” Meri said faintly. ”There was a pear tree right below, and a dove that would sit in its branches and sing to me.”

”Charicaux?” I said, adding, ”Milady?”

”Durrel's house.”

She looked so lost and forlorn I couldn't help myself. I swung an arm around her shoulders. ”Well, my last rooms in Gerse looked out on a sewage ca.n.a.l, and my room at the convent didn't have a window, so I think this is magnificent.”

Meri gave me a weak smile, but leaned her dark head against my shoulder, her skin sparking faintly as her hair brushed my cheek.

As part of the gathering-in before Meri's kernja-velde, Bryn Shaer was preparing to host any number of visiting n.o.bs (among them several prospective husbands for Meri), and apparently there weren't enough servants for all that work. Which is how I found myself, obscenely early the next morning, in the chilly courtyard with Phandre, beating clouds of dust from feather mattresses we'd dragged out of the guest apartments and draped over the paddock fence. The morning was misty and gray; the air smelled of smoke and damp and age, as if with every violent strike of the staves, we were beating some forgotten Bryn Shaerin generation from the linen and down.

”I could be in” - thwup - ”Tratua right now” - thwup - ”eating grapes from the fingers of Maharal serving boys.” Thwup. Phandre brushed an armful of hair from her smudged face and leaned on her staff. ”But no! I'm stuck here, at the a.r.s.e end of nowhere, with mousy Meri and General Lyllace, playing scullery maid with you!” She gave another savage thrust to the bed. It was a miracle she didn't poke a hole in it. Hastily I rescued the mattress and moved it to the stack of clean beds waiting to be returned to the castle. I stayed well out of her range and kept the bed between us - Phandre didn't know how to wield a staff as a weapon, but she had annoyance on her side and I wasn't entirely sure she wouldn't crack me upside the skull.

And then I'd have to rough her up a little, and n.o.body wanted that.

We were both beginning to suspect the truth of it all, though. The grown-up Lady Merista would be expected to know all there was to managing a fine household, and if Phandre and I had any hope of landing husbands in our lady's wake, so would we. There was no sense objecting to this plan; if it came down to it, I didn't think the Nemair could make me marry somebody. And Phandre didn't dare protest: She was almost nineteen and an orphan; it was past time she cultivated a few a.s.sets that would please a farsighted suitor, and everybody knew it.

And so we all three were to have instruction in housekeeping, tending the stillroom, cheese making, needlework, and the torture of innocent mattresses with technique that would do a Greenman proud. As I hefted the next bed onto the hurdle of twisted vines and twigs, Lady Lyllace sailed by, Meri hard at her heels. Lyllace was rattling off instructions even Yselle would have strained to take in, but Meri was practically beaming - like a puppy thrilled to be included in the games of its older fellows. She was settling in nicely; as her mother's shadow, she'd shed her ner vous ness. Or maybe she just preferred housework to luxury.

Lyllace paused a moment to inspect our work, nodding briskly. ”Good. Stacking the beds like this will keep the moist air out. Be sure you get them back inside before too long, though. We don't want them to mildew.”

I thought I saw Phandre's knuckles whiten. Meri gave us a little wave as she scurried after her mother.

”That woman! You'd think she owned the whole mountain, the way she gives orders.”

”I like her,” I said - not entirely to annoy Phandre.

Phandre glared at me. ”You would.”

Late that night, we tucked ourselves beside the roaring fire in Meri's bedroom. With the addition of a few more luxuries we'd nicked from adjoining bedchambers - a huge Kurkyat tuffet, a Tratuan gla.s.s serving set, a weird painting of a girl wearing a snail amulet on her forehead - we had put the final polish on a set of apartments definitely worthy of a n.o.blewoman on the rise and her two loyal retainers. I stretched my feet out onto the tuffet and bent my head back to watch the shadows leap against the sculpted plaster ceiling. In the distance, the barking of dogs carried on the night wind.

Meri was curled on a cus.h.i.+oned bench, reading aloud from a book of history. ”Oh, hear this,” she'd say, quoting us some long dry pa.s.sage about strategy at Valdoth Bridge or the heroic deaths of Sarist soldiers at Aarn. Her silver off, I watched the sparkling dust motes swim about her face and hands. There was something fascinating about it, like the sparkle of a ring on a n.o.b's finger, moving through a crowded market - dangerous and forbidden and right here where I could touch it, if I just reached out. What did that feel like, to Meri? Was the silver restrictive, like a corset or too many hairpins? Did she feel a rush of power when she took those necklaces off?

Phandre pinched one of the Tratuan gla.s.ses in her fingers, admiring the way the lamplight played on its gold-dusted rim. ”You know, it's a shame to waste these,” she said. ”We really ought to properly inaugurate our new home.”

”How?” Meri asked eagerly.

”I'll bet this place has an impressive wine cellar.”

Meri nodded. ”It does. They grow fine grapes in Breijardarl.”

”And that steward looked like he hadn't missed many nightly libations.” That was me.

Phandre grinned. ”Excellent. Why don't we see what we can dig up, then?” Her eyes turned pointedly to me. I almost laughed. I was the obvious choice for such a mission, of course. To Phandre I was expendable, and she would be only too happy to get me in trouble, and Meri seemed to think I was bold and daring. I rose and bowed grandly - like a man, not the dainty curtsy of a lady's maid - then ducked out the door.

As I trotted down the corridors, I built a map of Bryn Shaer in my head. Meri's rooms were about two minutes from the main kitchens - down two flights of stairs and past the Round Court (a vast room ringed with carved banquet tables, its tapestry-draped walls soaring up to a b.u.t.tressed wooden dome). I skipped past the vaulted entryway and its huge arched doors with the heavy iron bindings locking out the wilderness.

I found my way into the darkened ser vice pa.s.sages, head bowed lest someone see me, but my eyes skirting the shadows, pulling out details. The main kitchens were right behind the central court, and I guessed the wine cellar could be reached fairly easily from somewhere nearby.

Kitchens were never empty, but at this hour they should be quiet; I went a few yards past the doorway first, to check for cellar entrances, but found none. I quickly concocted an excuse, if some overeager scullery wench discovered me here, and pushed my way in.

The great fire had died to embers, and a boy in a tunic that was almost too small lay curled up on the hearth, one sleeping hand on the rake. A single heavy candle burned in a lamp, a plump gray cat eyed me casually from the sideboard, but I saw no one else.

At last - there beyond the butcher block and the great carving table, a pretty painted door with a new, beautiful lock. I seemed to have found my prize; wine was expensive and servants untrustworthy. I slipped a lock pick from my corset and had the door open before the cat could finish yawning. The cellar stairs disappeared into inky blackness, so I borrowed the lamp and let myself down.

Bryn Shaer's wine stores were not quite so impressive as Phandre might have hoped; a few well-stocked racks and behind them, several casks of ale and barrels of wine and mead, but beyond those, the cellars sank deeper into darkness. I cast my lamp into the shadows but caught up nothing but a startled mouse, staring at me with wide dark eyes that for a brief amusing moment made me think of Meri. I turned my attentions to the racks, turning over the dusty bottles to find something suitable - nothing too expensive, or someone would notice it was missing; but nothing too cheap either, or what was the point?

Tegen would have chosen a bottle of rare sparkling Grisel from Corlesanne, and nicked the special fluted gla.s.ses to go with it. We would have shared the bottle right here, getting recklessly drunk and leaving the bottle and gla.s.ses behind, ”So they'd know we were here.”

Suddenly I didn't want the wine anymore.

With a sigh, I tucked a bottle under my arm and went back upstairs. The door locked as easily as it had opened, and the fire boy slept on. The cat gave me a reproachful look, and I saluted him with the bottle.

That was when I heard the voices, and saw the crack of light beneath a door on the far side of the kitchen - the door to Lady Lyll's stillroom.

If I'd been a smart little lady's maid, I'd have scurried back upstairs to the roaring fire and cracked open the wine warming under my arm. But the smooth wood, and the hushed voices behind it, were just too tempting. I crept closer, and was rewarded by Lady Lyllace's voice, but her normally low, soft tones had turned fierce and definite.

”You tell milord that we are very grateful to Reynart, but that he and his men must leave.”

If her companion made a response, I couldn't hear it.

”I don't care - pay them off if you have to. No, you have my permission. Now good night.”