Grand Conspiracy (46 page)

Like many Koriani, Elaira had not aged, despite the passage of two dozen years. Nor had she lost the sharp-witted perception that, by the unfailing prompt of female instinct, Feylind knew had captured Prince Arithon's affection. Because of that memory, the moment of recognition between the two women carried an impacting weight of close secrets.

Elaira's fierce irony as always dispelled unsafe pitfalls and strangling awkwardness. ‘You have mooring fees piling up while we wait?'

Snapped back to the subject of safer concerns, Feylind collared the reluctant lad and shoved his rawboned, shrinking frame forward. ‘The knife work's the fault of Skjend wine seller's potboy.
Evenstar
pays your work fee, but I'd be much obliged if you'd charge his shop extra for provocation and nuisance.'

Elaira laughed. ‘I can try. But prying coin from that skinflint's coffer is like squeezing a pig's bladder and praying the stream that pours out will smell like southcoast brandy.' Her lightning move caught the deckhand's wrist before he quite realized she intended to touch him.

As he fidgeted in dread apprehension, and the
Evenstar
's brawny, practical mate sought excuses to direct his glance elsewhere, Elaira pulled a small steel knife from her boot cuff. Both men flinched back, yet she did nothing more than slice through the knots in the cheesecloth. The stained wrapping fell away and bared the gashed palm to the light.

Her prognosis was expert and swift. ‘Can't move any fingers but the first and the thumb?'

The young deckhand managed a tongue-tied nod.

‘Sit. Stop worrying.' Her no-nonsense touch steered the lad onto the stool. ‘You won't feel a thing. In ten minutes, guaranteed, you'll be asleep and dreaming of girls, or better, the sweetcakes your grandame used to bake for the solstice.' From a hamper, she pulled a square of clean, boiled linen, and folded it into a compress. ‘There.' She glanced to the mate, and evidently decided he would fare better if he was kept busy. ‘Hold this in place and press down firmly. That should slow down the bleeding while I mix up a posset.'

Elaira turned her back, pulled a glazed mug from a shelf, then filled it with water poured from a stoneware jug. She asked Feylind, ‘Can your mate heft an unconscious lug to his berth?'

Her guttersnipe dialect set the officer at ease, and he answered the query himself. ‘Done that often enough when the drinking's been rough, and for louts twice as beefy as this one.'

‘Then you're hired.' Elaira tipped in a dosage of carefully measured droplets from several glass phials, then laid a sigil of binding over the brew to augment and speed the effects. ‘Drink this down,' she instructed the injured boy. She received back the emptied mug. The ship's mate assumed position at the deckhand's shoulder and propped him as his posture swayed and slackened into a slump. ‘Lay him out on my cot, and then be so kind as to hold the lamp while I'm working.'

While the enchantress gathered her sharp needles and gut thread, her surgical knife, and her remedies, Feylind moved in and removed the deckhand's splashed boots. Then she lent her own muscle to the mate's work by shifting the unconscious man's ankles. ‘Sing out as you need things.'

‘Thanks. I will.' Elaira laid her selected instruments on a packing crate, tucked up her feet, and settled cross-legged on the bare dirt. She then draped a fresh square of linen on her knees. ‘The compress can come off now.' A fine line marred her brow as she took the gashed hand into her lap and splayed the fingers over the cloth. ‘The cut's clean. The sewing shouldn't be difficult. If you want something to drink while you're waiting, heat the water in the flask slung from the brazier. There's tea in the crock by the dish shelf.'

Feylind unhooked the flint striker and followed directions, while her mate, set at ease like a bone-lazy dog, settled on the
stool with the lamp. If the shack's state of spotless, neat poverty surprised her, respect held her silent as she scrounged up two more chipped mugs, a bent spoon, and a small hoard of honey in a jar with a mended lid. She laid one drink, heavily sweetened, by Elaira's elbow, then sat on the floor with her back propped against the pine trestle, nursing the other herself.

By then, the enchantress had already sewn two of the tendons. Her conjury was impeccable; several neat, glowing sigils damped back the blood flow, and a third, pulsing violet, performed a function beyond Feylind's awareness to fathom.

‘Don't stare directly at the spells,' Elaira warned gently. ‘They can harm the unshielded eyes.' She knotted her gut thread, snatched a swallow of tea, then resumed work in unbroken concentration.

Outside, a cur barked. Someone stocky wearing hobnailed boots crunched past the shack's closed door. More distant, a drunk couple argued. Inured to disturbances, squarely at home amid the packed, squalling denizens of the poor quarter, the enchantress laid down neat stitches like clockwork. Something more than the labor beneath her sure hands pinched her lip between thoughtful teeth. ‘Does your mate serve you closely?'

Feylind picked up the odd drift of the question. ‘He knows all my secrets, if that's what you mean.' Her quick grin came and went, and a swift shared glance with the man whose silent company attended her. In fact, he was
Evenstar
's second-in-command, and her lover, those nights she felt maudlin.

A looped knot, a snip of the knife; Elaira swabbed the wound clean with astringent. With one hand clasped beneath the deckhand's elbow to feel for the sequential flex of the muscles, she tested each finger in turn with a slight bearing tension. ‘Well, we've apparently joined the correct piece to its counterpart.' Satisfied, she changed needles and started the less fussy process of closing the torn flap of skin.

Feylind could bear the drawn quiet no longer. ‘You have something to say? I have friends, perhaps, who could make certain your thought finds the right destination.'

Elaira's hand lifted, paused, then resumed her task, patient. Her directness, point-blank, displayed courage that humbled. ‘He swore your mother his oath that you wouldn't take undue risks.'

That pronoun, between them, held no ambiguity. As fondly attached to the Prince of Rathain, Feylind grinned like a shark in
the dimness. ‘Well, I don't always follow instructions. Do you?' At once, she regretted her tactless phrasing.

Elaira's mouth jerked to a hardened, thin line. She answered, though words cost her agony. ‘Where my Koriani vow of obedience is at stake, I've no choice.' Stern discipline kept her touch steady on the needle. The loose tendrils of bronze hair wisped at her temples were but mildly dampened with sweat. Through a strung pause, she finished and knotted the next stitch. ‘I beg you, for his life's sake, take extreme care what you say. Nor should you mention those friends in my hearing. If I know who they are, they could be taken and used against him.'

Feylind returned the small grace of her silence.

At considered length, the enchantress stalked obliquely toward the original bent of her inquiry. ‘You were young, but do you recall the healing of the fisherman's son who dismembered his wrist in a squall line?'

Feylind took a shaky, sharp breath, and chose to be first to state the unsafe name outright. ‘The one who caused the Master of Shadow to leave us, and you to pack up and flee Merior? I recall.'

Elaira's tension broke into laughter. ‘I don't know what's worse, your fearless brashness or your brother's habit of throwing small stones with horrible, stinging accuracy.' She set another stitch, then asked the mate to trim the lamp. A sip of her cooling tea eased the interval while she pondered, or perhaps wet a throat grown too fear parched to speak. Aware of the steel in the depths of her eyes, Feylind could not but admire her trust, as she laid herself bare to a stranger.

‘There were spells done that night, supported by the gift of the Masterbard's music.' Elaira set down her drained mug. Her neat movements showed resolve as she rethreaded the curved needle. ‘The jointure of my art and his talent came at a price. An empathic link still remains in place between us. Distance and ocean blur the clarity of thought, but not the strength of emotion. He knows I'm concerned for him. Until you crossed my threshold, I had no means at all to safely let Arithon know why.'

That name, on her lips, held a bittersweet sorrow, touched to a tragic note of trapped longing.

Feylind caught back an unexpected rush of tears. Hands pressed to her face, as though bone and flesh could eclipse the relentless pain of his absence, she said softly, ‘He sings for you. At sea, alone at his ship's helm, I've heard him. Sky and earth can but
weep for the beauty of those melodies. He loves you, Elaira. His heart is still yours as no other's.' The last words came hardest; the only poor token of sympathy she could give to ease a separation as relentless as this one. ‘I take comfort in knowing you feel the same way, no matter the distance between you.'

Any two other women could have indulged their paired grief and wept in each other's arms.

Elaira just swallowed. Her eyes shimmered, too bright, but only for a second before a smile like fire lit her elfin features from within. ‘Thank you for that, from the core of my spirit.' She had to wait for her fingers to steady before she assayed the last stitches. Poultice paste, then the flash-point-bright sigils of healing and closure, and a clean dressing put the finishing touch on her handiwork.

‘Your sailor should rest through tomorrow,' she said, brisk. ‘If he rises too soon, that last seal will make him miserable with nausea. The hand will recover, but the closed wound must be kept stringently clean. No swabbing decks, and no labor in the rigging for at least the next fortnight.' Face tipped up to encompass the steady presence of the ship's mate, she finished, ‘You can dim back the flame in the lamp.'

The shadows closed in like a flood as she rose. By touch, or long habit, she found her rusted bucket of seawater and rinsed her hands. Her words were grained velvet, fast and low, as she added her message for Arithon.

‘Tell my beloved, the unbroken calm at Avenor bodes ill. The merchants grow fat and satisfied, unaware they are part of a masking design. Know this: Lysaer's false priesthood has begun to wield magic. Unclean little spells that link minds and send images. Those powers bend lane force to subtle disharmony, enough that some with the talent of birth-gifted mage-sight take notice.' She paused, deadly careful; by word or gesture, she must not reveal any more secrets than the ordinary hedge witch might glean, from watching the flight patterns of birds or touching the awareness of stones in the stream bottoms. ‘The deflections are less likely to be felt at sea since they don't carry well over salt water. For Arithon, the new danger will come to bear on the Mistwraith's curse, and must not surface as a surprise: Avenor will soon be equipped to share communication on an instant with other enclaves sworn to the Light. The network will eventually span the five kingdoms. Once that happens, a single informant could trigger a coordinated
muster. His Grace of Rathain must not set foot ashore on the continent.'

In a vehemence of desperate and frightful intensity, Elaira locked glances with the
Evenstar
's blond-haired captain. ‘Hear me clearly.
No matter what happens, regardless of provocation, he
should keep to the sea and stay safe
.'

A winter-sharp chill ranged down Feylind's spine. ‘There's more you're not saying.'

‘Ath, how much, you can't fathom. My senior sisters spin secretive webs.' Even inside the order, few realized a fraction of what transpired when an enchantress put off the gray sleeves of charitable service and donned the robes of high administrative rank with their banded scarlet borders. Bleak as scaled granite, Elaira lifted her shoulders in an oblique shrug. ‘Arithon's grandfather was wise, in his way. Politics and spelled conjury don't mix.'

Nor was Feylind a fool. She knew from her brother's brokerage in Shand how the westshore merchants who paid tithe to the Alliance had been lulled into silk-wound complacency. Tysan's cities had received sheltered protection for years, with Avenor's crown garrison defending their trade routes until coffers overflowed from the profits. That trend gave rise to ominous overtones set against this fresh news of a high priesthood versant in magelore. The unpleasant conclusion sat uneasily on her shoulders. ‘Enchantress, you've implied there are reasons, beyond practice of sorcery, why the Alliance wants gifted talent driven out of town walls.'

‘Talent reads pattern and lines of intent.' Elaira blotted her damp hands on her blouse, not owning a towel for the purpose. ‘And small conjury affects lane force, everywhere, for anyone with mage-sight to read.'

‘Then the powerful don't want back-alley eyes befouling the works of their covert conspiracies.' Feylind's snapped gesture encompassed the made-over fish shack, with its gapped boards and flimsy construction. ‘You don't seem terribly concerned, for yourself.'

‘Well, Lysaer's no idiot.' Elaira rummaged after her flask of alcohol. One by one, she wiped clean her specialized array of steel needles. ‘The Koriani Order's too massive and too organized to suffer persecution from his cult of amateur priests. Morriel hates hedge witches and necromancers of all stripes. The sisterhood has always regarded their works as an undisciplined nuisance, sometimes with good reason since chicanery too often becomes
mixed with dangerous, slipshod practice. As long as the Alliance examiners stay focused on lay talent, our Senior Circle won't be moved to interfere.' Which implied, as well, that Alliance interests and Koriani policy trod the same paths, near enough. ‘If there's a succession, the new Prime Matriarch may or may not take a stand against the Crown Examiner's practices.'

Which perilously was more than ought to be said, out of safety for the herbalist who had sworn over the key to her consciousness to bind the order's stern vow of obedience.