Part 34 (2/2)
Meri just snuggled up into Lyll's arms until her mother closed her eyes and rested her chin on Meri's dark head. Watching them, I felt a strange tightness in my chest, and I pulled away, feeling out of place and uncertain.
Wierolf spotted me hiding behind a column. He strode over, seeming lanky and comfortable in his new role.
”You look like you own the place,” I said. ”Maybe you should make Bryn Shaer your seat.”
”After all the work the Nemair have put in? Hardly! No,” he said, his grin vanis.h.i.+ng. ”I have another palace in mind. Come with us, Digger. You know you're welcome.”
”And what would I do in an army?”
He burst out laughing. ”I don't know, mount daring missions behind enemy lines, maybe? I think we could find a place for you.” He touched my shoulder. ”You have medical experience; you could work in the field hospitals. I can think of worse people to tend the wounded.”
I looked at my bandaged hand. What would I be left with when my injuries healed? Didn't surgeons need ten good fingers? Didn't thieves? ”No,” I said. ”I don't want to always wonder if the next patient I see will be you. Now that I know you, I kind of like you.”
”Well, I'm glad we have that established,” he said. ”Don't worry. I plan to be around to antagonize you for a long while to come.” He lifted me off the ground by the shoulders and kissed the top of my head.
”G.o.ds!” I cried, pulling away. ”Lady Lyll has got to find you a woman, Your Highness.”
He grinned and darted a jab at me, which I blocked smoothly. And I took his ring again, because I could. He could have it back later. Maybe.
Antoch was the only one who seemed to share my sense of being unmoored. I'd find him sitting at the council table long after everyone else had left, staring at the maps but not quite seeing them. One evening I finally gathered up my nerve and went to him.
”I'm sorry,” I said - wanting to elaborate, but not quite sure how to say every thing I was feeling. That I was sorry not only for my role, but for what Daul had done, who he had been . . . things I wasn't remotely responsible for, but felt bad about anyway.
Antoch gave a sigh and gathered up the maps. ”It's an old sadness,” he said. ”You haven't made it any worse. Daul, the Sethe. Some people let bitterness and envy fester until there's no curing it.”
But I wondered. Maybe there could have been some reconciliation, or at least understanding between Antoch and Daul. Perhaps Daul hadn't crossed so far to the edge that he could not have been pulled back. But we'd never find out, because I'd helped shove him over the side.
We held Meri's kernja-velde exactly one week later than scheduled. The tables in the Round Court were pulled back for the whole room to be filled with dancing and merriment. Meri wore a beaded gown, yellow silk woven of threads that appeared soft green when looked at one way, and ever so faintly violet another. I wondered if there was some coded language of fabrics; could she send secret messages by the precise swis.h.i.+ng of her skirts? But I kept my mouth clamped tight on that; no need to give Lyll or Lady Cardom any ideas.
Meri floated through the room, her hair loose down her back, her arms laden with trea sures. All the girls and women of Bryn Shaer had a ceremonial role in guiding her along from childhood to adulthood. There weren't any family members younger than she, so the tiny redheaded Sarist and a girl from the kitchens took their places. Meri moved from the youngest girl to the eldest woman, pa.s.sing off a doll and an outgrown kirtle to the younger girls, and accepting gifts from those older than she: a volume of poetry from Marlytt, a sewing kit from her mother, a heavy brooch from Lady Cardom. Lady Lyll had a.s.signed me the traditional bottle of wine to give, handing it off to me with a grin.
Lady Lyll read out the benediction as Meri stepped forward. ”May all the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses smile upon our daughter, Merista, who this day leaves her childhood behind. By Celys and Sar, Tiboran and Mend-kaal, Zet, Marau, and the Nameless One, may she live a rich and blessed life.”
Meri knelt on an embroidered cloth, a lively confection of flowers and animals at the center, blended artfully with celestial symbols radiating toward the edges. For a moment, it looked as though she were the center of the universe. With my hand bandaged, I couldn't help braid her hair for the ritual, so the job went to Lady Cardom, who glowed with plea sure as she and Marlytt did up the plaits and twists. But I stood by, holding a gla.s.s bowl of pearls and gold beads; and if one or two or a dozen vanished from the bowl before reaching Lady Merista's coiffure, I'm sure I couldn't explain it.
Once Meri's hair was in its complicated adult arrangement, Kespa and an older woman from Reynart's people rolled back Meri's sleeves and lifted her skirts, and spent the next half hour inking every inch of her exposed skin from feet to face with an elaborate pattern of deep violet stars and scrollwork that transformed her into an eldritch crea ture from some other realm. Even her fingernails were not spared, and though it was simply temporary ink, and not more tattoos, I thought Lady Lyll would have an apoplexy. But she controlled herself with typical steely calm.
Somehow the stately, dignified affair the Nemair had planned was dissolving into a strange ceremony that only Meri really understood, but that everyone else seemed to enjoy all the same. Reynart and his band mingled easily with the n.o.bs, and I learned that some of them had been aristocrats once themselves. Stagne caught me, stroking a swirl of purple vine down the back of my hand with his brush.
”I'm no wizard,” I warned him.
He shrugged and grinned. ”If you say so.” But after he floated off again, I found myself turning my hand back and forth in the light, until the inked leaves seemed to move on their own. Maybe Sar's fearsome gift had a playful side, as well. I had seen magic tear through the army camp, and Werne had every reason to fear it. But the only reason I had to be afraid of my magic was Werne.
I looked over the party, with rebel and wizard and prince and thief all consorting together, and wondered if everyone in this room was utterly mad. If only Werne had stayed for this, we'd have every lunacy in Llyvraneth represented here. Could any of this amity survive beyond this strange sheltered place in the mountains? I had my doubts; I had seen too well how the climate outside these walls warped and killed. But this - well, not perhaps this exactly, but something very like it - was what they were all fighting for.
Meri danced with her father, then Wierolf, and then Stagne, and as she and Stagne fumbled and laughed their way through a wild reel that grew faster and harder with every round, I realized that Lord Cardom was standing beside me, holding out a cup of sparkling Grisel and smiling faintly at the two of them.
”They look happy,” he said, and he didn't sound the least bit wistful or disappointed. He was a nice man, and he would have treated Meri well, but Meri had chosen a penniless Sarist boy instead. Then Cardom was holding out his arm to me. We made a ridiculous couple, but I downed the Grisel in one draught and let him pull me into the dance.
”Mother wants to bring you home to Tratua with us,” he said. ”I thought I should warn you.”
I choked out a laugh. ”Tell her I'll consider it.”
”Yes, that's probably wise.”
As we danced, I glanced across the room, to where Marlytt sat in lively conversation with three of the Nemair guard. I had kept her complicity with Daul mostly out of the official story. She had enough black marks against her.
”Are you going back soon?” I asked Lord Cardom when the music ended, and he nodded.
”His Highness needs s.h.i.+ps, and Mother wants to get started telling our neighbors which side they'll be on in the coming fight.”
”May I ask a favor, milord? Will you take Marlytt to Tratua with you?”
He blinked at me. ”Marlytt? Certainly, but why?”
Marlytt sat alone now, in a sea of ice-blue silk, a wine gla.s.s in her hand. The admirers had departed, and she looked tired. ”Her family's there,” I said.
Finally I found a place to hide, back in the shadows behind the fireplace. I had half a roast partridge I'd nicked off somebody's plate, and I was getting ready to enjoy wiping my hand on my gold skirts, when Meri found me. She said nothing, just settled beside me on the floor. I handed her a chunk of bird, and we sat there for ages, watching her party swirl on into the night. She spread her purple-or-green skirts out before her and stroked the cloth, which I'd been wanting to do all day. I reached out my hand, but paused an inch above the silk. I had, just for a moment, forgotten about the bandages.
”Does it still hurt?” she asked.
”Not so much,” I said. ”How about you?”
She fluttered her fingers, and a ripple of sparks spun through them. ”Getting better. You were so brave,” she added.
”We were brave,” I corrected. Something slipped into my memory, and I murmured, ”Just staying alive is brave these days.”
Meri looked at me quizzically.
”Something your cousin said to me.” At the time I had believed him, wanted to believe him. But was it really enough just to stay alive? I knew the answer.
Not for Meri, not for Lyll and Antoch, not for Wierolf.
Not for me.
Not anymore.
”Mother says you'll still be able to write, and sew, and play music, and work a stillroom,” Meri said. There was an odd note in her voice, something final and bittersweet. ”You won't stay, will you?”
Sweet Meri. I put my bandaged hand on hers. ”Eptin Cwalo is leaving in a few days, and he's offered me a place in his caravan, as long as I let him make another case for Garod.”
She bit her lip. ”Where will you go?”
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