Part 15 (1/2)

Lying in the chest atop my shoes and belts, where I always kept it, was Durrel Decath's pearl-handled dagger.

The one I'd lost in the woods with the Sarists.

I dropped to my knees on the floor, staring at the clothes trunk, those cold, clutching fingers grabbing at my chest again. I picked up the knife, but it swirled now with residual magic, like finger smears on the blade, and when I wiped it with my skirts, it only got all over me. I pulled my dress up, exposing my leg - but it didn't feel safe anymore. I dropped my skirts and left the knife where Meri had put it.

The red jewel in its hilt winked up at me from the pile of stockings and slippers. Be a friend to her, Celyn. Pox and b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.ls.

I started with the shoe chest, then the desk and cupboard and the prayer stand. Under the cus.h.i.+ons of the window seat. Inside my old hiding spot (I'd found another, in the hollow beneath a loose stair tread in the servants' stair). I even popped Phandre's door and took a peek around her spa.r.s.e belongings. Where would Merista Nemair store her girlish secrets?

I was lost. They were so much bigger than I'd ever suspected from her, but as I looked around the room, I forced myself to stop and think. Really think about this. About the dreamy smiles on Meri's face after her morning ”rides.” About the fair-haired local boy who'd walked me back so confidently to Bryn Shaer. In the dark. It was possible.

As I stood there, the window seat kept tugging at me. It was hollow for storage - we kept blankets there - but the compartment wasn't as deep as it should have been. I pulled the cus.h.i.+ons off and flipped the lid, tapping and pressing along all the seams in the boards of the bottom. Was I looking for a panel, a door, a spring? I dug my too-long fingernails into every gap, feeling for a latch. But there was nothing. On the outside, then. I worked my hands along the carvings at the base, the sculpted rosettes and swooping leaves, until my fingers found the place where one rose's center sat a little too deep. I gave it a gentle push, heard the click, and watched the panel spring back to reveal the hollow.

”Oh, Meri - very nice.” What obliging parents the Nemair must be, to outfit their daughter's bedroom with a secret compartment. And to outfit their daughter with two heavy silver chains and a thick silver bracelet. And a protector like Cousin Durrel. And a secure mountain stronghold in which to pa.s.s into adulthood unthreatened.

I sat back on my heels. Life for a n.o.b with magic would come with peculiar challenges. Up until now she'd been able to lead a relatively sheltered life - her parents were overseas, and she was young enough not to be much in demand in society. But she was just about to come of age, get married, and be thrust into public life, with all the visibility and gossip and touching that came with that life. I knew how easily a n.o.b's secrets could be exposed. Was it possible that along with the training in housekeeping and the social graces, the Nemair had brought Meri to Bryn Shaer for her to learn to manage her magic?

n.o.bs' children with embarra.s.sing secrets - too many fingers, a susceptibility to fits - were normally offered up to the Celystra for a soft life as honored servants of the G.o.ddess. And the Celystra was only too eager to accept them, and the fat dowries they brought with them.

I could imagine all too well what the Celystra would do with a girl like Merista Nemair.

I reached my hand inside the hidden opening. The cavity was not large - you couldn't hide a whole Sarist rebel down there, or even his spare clothing.

But it was plenty big enough for a couple of missing books. I pulled out the first small volume: the gray primer on magic from Antoch's library. It left behind enough of its not-quite-light for me to see the object that had been sharing its quarters. I fetched it into daylight as well: a worn book of black leather, a mark embossed on the spine: a wide, curving cross inside a circle. The seal of the House of Daul.

First Daul, now Meri? What was in this book that made it so irresistible? My fingers practically itched as I cracked it open.

To - nothing. I flipped through a few pages in smooth black script, but it seemed to be nothing more than some kind of treatise on hunting. There were detailed chapters on dressing the horses, the best weather and terrain for various game, and endless advice on training the dogs. Definitely a n.o.b's book, but why was Daul so keen for it? And why did Meri have it?

Pox, this didn't make any d.a.m.n sense. And it wasn't my business. We never read the doc.u.ments we stole, not any more than necessary to be sure they were the right ones. What was I doing? Getting involved, that's what.

And that was the third rule.

Stay alive.

Don't get caught.

Don't get involved.

But I hadn't signed on for this job. I'd been recruited. I figured I had some right to know what I was being asked to do. And I didn't like being played.

I sat with the book on my lap and scowled at it. Well, why do people usually want doc.u.ments stolen? Because the doc.u.ments say something bad about them or contain secrets they don't want revealed. I turned to the end and made my search more carefully. Sections of pages through the book were blank, as if the author's thoughts had been interrupted and he'd started back up again at random, and as I flipped through the empty leaves, I found something. Someone had filled a page or two with childish, exuberant drawings - a sketch of a typical Gersin river house, a bounding deer whose head was too big, a black mountain menaced by a great dark cloud.

But there in a corner, among a squiggle of random shapes and inky finger-smudges, was something else entirely. Someone had taken blue and red inks, and traced them over each other to make purple. And in that makes.h.i.+ft, forbidden violet ink, someone had drawn stars, a whole constellation of them. Purple stars, with seven points, the seventh longer than the rest. The symbol of Sar.

Was this what Daul was after? This page of scribbles in some old hunting guide was the compelling evidence he sought against the Nemair? Even as my fingers trembled, I scowled at the improbabil ity of it.

And then I turned the page, and any desire to hand the journal over to Daul shriveled up inside me. I knew that handwriting - I was get ting to know the handwriting of everybody at Bryn Shaer - and I felt those cold fingers scrabbling at my heart again as I read the words Meri had been copying out: The Seeing Dream. To Appear Without Form. The Sacred Circle. The Dreamless Sleep. It went on for pages - not just the words, but symbols and diagrams, all copied from the Sarist book we'd found in Antoch's rooms.

Meri was teaching herself magic. Word by word, through rote memorization, using the pages of a half-empty book she'd found in her father's study, she was working her way through the principles and lessons of the old mages.

I held the journal tightly in my hands, wondering. Did she do this alone? Was there anyone working with her, to show her how to shape the symbols, make the words more than words? Or must she do this in secret, late at night, under the guise of sewing by moonslight - her bedfellow and companion possibly even under the influence of this Dreamless Sleep? You sleep so soundly, you never notice.

I pressed my fingers to the pages Meri was using as a workbook, watching the mist bunch together on the paper. Somewhere she'd crossed from scribbles to spellcraft. Did she know? Was there some special ink required? What put the magic into the paper? All good questions, and I didn't want to know the answers.

The spring I turned eleven, temple guards captured a man with magic inside the cloistered gates. He was a harmless old gaffer who traded his skills as a tinker for fruit and honey grown inside the Celystra. There was no proof he'd been seditious, or even that he'd ever used his magic. By all accounts, he was a devout Celyst, and came to wors.h.i.+p every week at the chapel, laying prayer stones for his family. He liked the convent children, and once brought a small girl a sugar mouse.

When he was exposed, they stripped him naked, cut off his hands and burned them, then suspended him upside down from the Hanging Ash, so he'd bleed to death right there in the green courtyard.

He was killed because someone had seen the magic on his skin.

Because I'd told my brother what I'd seen.

I learned to keep quiet after that, that my touch was dangerous, and secrecy was the only way to ensure survival. There was no way of knowing who to trust, so it became safer not to talk about it at all, just pretend I was like everybody else, I didn't see anything. And as soon as I could, I'd done the thing Meri and Durrel had thought so brave. I'd run away from that place and tried not to look back. Tegen was the only one who knew my secret, and he'd found out by accident. We never spoke of it, and he'd never told another living soul, until yelling, Digger, run! with a knife to his throat.

Was it like that for Meri? A fight to always stay hidden, stay unnoticed, pretend she was like everybody else? My parents are heroes, you know. Sarist heroes, of a rebellion that would have decriminalized magic. What was it like to be their daughter - their magical daughter?

I looked up, past the window seat, out into the snowy world below. Had she found someplace where she didn't have to hide, even for an hour a day, weather permitting?

Without thinking, I reached for the magic book, flipped it open, and laid my hand palm down on the pages, until I had one hand on the journal, one on the primer. The air turned watery and thick, s.h.i.+mmering against my skin. I could only see it, and how I hated the hiding and the fear. Being able to wield it must be unbearable.

Carefully, I closed the journal and the book and replaced them inside the hidden compartment. I did my job, tidying up the linen chest and the window seat, making sure the room was perfect and undisturbed. I laid out Meri's clothes, and changed into a fresh dress for the day.

And then I strapped Durrel's dagger to my thigh, right where it belonged.

I'd found what Daul wanted, but there was no way in seven h.e.l.ls I would give it up to him, not now.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

I charged out of Meri's rooms with purpose but without direction. The hallways of Bryn Shaer were empty, and I scurried downstairs to where Lady Lyll would be waiting in the stillroom, but the little workroom was locked, and there was no answer when I tugged on the door. No Meri, no Lyll. I had Daul's journal, but couldn't give it to him. Full of energy and nowhere to fling it, I let myself back out into the courtyard, where wind and servants had swept most of the snow into the corners. It was a cold, clear day, and the rooks wheeled around the white tower, voicing their eerie cries into the thin air.

I stopped for a moment, watching them. Their movements were hypnotic, curving through the sky in smooth black arcs, like lines of ink on a blank page. Something tugged at my memory, but my thoughts were too scattered to draw it out.

One of the rooks dived toward the earth, a straight swift plummet - and my heart went with it. Daul.

I had told him about the Sarists in the woods.

Meri's Sarists.

I gave my bodice a yank and set across the courtyard at a run. Now that I knew where Meri had gone, I might actually be able to track her, but instead I turned back to the Lodge. Berdal had told me Daul spent mornings with Lord Antoch, so I headed for the Armory, a long, wide room linking the Lodge with the older Bryn Shaer, where the men often a.s.sembled while the women gathered in the solar.

Inside, Daul was fencing with Antoch, while Lord Wellyth and Eptin Cwalo rearranged the markers on a map table. I hung just inside the door. Antoch and Daul were oddly matched, and it was like watching a bear dodge a whip. Antoch moved with an unexpected fluid grace, like Meri when she danced, though Daul slashed at him with a frenzied focus, driv ing him back and back. Daul struck a point, to a round of applause from their audience - Marlytt and Phandre hanging on the arms of Lord Sposa and Lord Cardom - and Antoch gave a bow, handing over his sword.

Daul stepped back, wiping an arm against his forehead. ”Let's go again.”

”Nay, Remy, you've beaten me enough!” Antoch laughed. ”Come sit by the fire and warm up.” He turned away, but Daul grabbed his arm.