Starcrossed (39 page)

“Werne?” The name slipped out, a faint little whisper.

“What happened to you at the Celystra?” Wierolf’s voice was gentle.

I pulled back. “Nothing.”

“Did it involve your brother?”

I turned to him. “What? No, I told you —”

“Do you know you flinch anytime someone mentions him?”

“I do not!” But I did. I knew I did. “Why am I talking to you?” I got up again and found the knife where it had fallen, across the room at the base of the target.

“You want to,” Wierolf said easily. “Celyn, you’re not small and powerless anymore. Whatever it is, it can’t hurt you now.”

“Oh, yes it can.” But somehow, it suddenly seemed intolerable that
Daul
was the only person who knew this, when I was surrounded by people who wouldn’t use that knowledge to hurt me — Meri and Lyll and Wierolf. The prince was wrong; this was very dangerous, but hiding from the truth couldn’t keep it at bay forever. Wierolf had shown no interest in the throne — yet he’d been attacked by his uncle’s men anyway. And I couldn’t keep pretending that renouncing my brother meant the connection between us did not exist.

I took the knife and sat back down beside Wierolf. He looked at me expectantly. “Let me see that pendant you wear,” I said. He quirked an eyebrow at me, but handed it over. “What does this look like to you?” I asked.

“Uh — bronze? A circle, with a star on it? Why, what does it look like to you?”

I gripped it in my hand, until the magic frothed through my fingers. “Like sunlight on water. Like — heat haze. Or a fog.”

“You have magic.” Somehow, there was no surprise at all in his voice.

“I
see
magic. You don’t want to see magic at the Celystra. My brother was the devout one; he told me I was unclean. He called me an
abomination
, a corrupt thing unworthy of the gods.”

Wierolf touched my hand. “That’s unforgivable.”

“No — what’s unforgivable is that I believed him. For years, I thought somehow, maybe he was right. Surely he
knew
, right? Hadn’t Celys chosen him to speak for her? If the Lord High Inquisitor calls something unholy, it must be so.”

The prince’s dark eyes grew wide. “Wait. Your brother is —”

I was halfway there already. I took a breath and undid the lie I’d been hiding behind for five years. “Werne the Bloodletter.”

He just
looked
at me a moment, utter disbelief on his face. Then he made a strange, strangled sound, and covered his face with his big hand.

“Laughing. You’re laughing? I tell you my brother is the king’s Inquisitor, and your response is to laugh.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly, Celyn — that’s just so much
bigger
than I expected! I knew you had a secret, but by Tiboran —”

“Did you ever think that maybe this is one of the reasons people want you dead?” I snapped. “No wonder they favor Astilan.”

The smile dipped. “I deserved that,” he said. “I know what it cost you to tell me this. But you speak truly? You really are the Inquisitor’s sister?”

I closed my eyes and kissed the knuckles of my left hand. “I swear by Tiboran and the Nameless One, I would not lie about that.”

“No, I believe you — it’s just . . . I’ve never heard that he had any siblings.” He uncurled my fingers from his medallion. “But I suppose the reason for that is obvious.” There was a long, silent pause, as Wierolf seemed to try to place this new information in his understanding of the universe. “So it’s Celyn Nebraut, then? Who’s Celyn Contrare?”

“An invention. And it’s not Celyn at all. It’s Digger.”

He looked amused again. “The Inquisitor has a sister called Digger. What’s your real name?”

“Children born inside the convent aren’t given names until they take their vows. I wasn’t there that long.” The prince was still watching me in astonishment. “It’s a long story.”

“Then tell me.” His voice was gentle, inviting.
Go ahead, Celyn, give us your tale.
And somehow, there I was, telling him every thing. About the Celystra, about the man who’d died when I’d informed on him, however unwittingly, about leaving the convent and making a life on the streets as a pickpocket. How I’d buried myself so deep in the slums, as Werne rose so high in the church, that I was sure we’d never find each other ever again.

“Who were your parents?”

My voice was rusty and stiff on this unpracticed story. “My mother came to the Celystra when she was pregnant with me, though Werne always liked to claim I was one of the priests’ children. She’d been married to
his
father, a potter who died when Werne was small.” A monk had told me that once, meaning to be kind. “She died when I was born, so I don’t even know her name. Werne would never tell me. She died in grace, he’d say, and her life before meant nothing.”

I sighed and looked into my skirts. “I’ve always wondered what kind of life she had hoped for, coming there. What she’d wanted for us. She got it with Werne, at least.” My voice sounded bitter.

“How old were you when you left?”

“Eleven. I really did just climb up over the wall and drop down on the other side — smack in the heart of Gerse. That first night — I was sure I would die. Everything was so
loud
, and disorderly. A horse from a passing coach nearly ran me down, and I thought it was Celys, come to drag me back inside. I ran. I’m still running.” I took a breath, remembering. “But another girl found me when I nicked a roll from a cart, and she took me to a tavern and told me all about Tiboran. And everyone there was messy, and devious, and they laughed at
every thing
, and they gave me a knife and told me to go cut a man’s purse strings — and I did it, and I was good at it. And I liked it. I loved it.”

“And somehow you ended up at Bryn Shaer.”

I explained how that had happened as well. Wierolf mulled this over for a bit, then surprised me by standing, and by pulling me to my feet too. “Well met, Digger of Gerse,” he said. “I am Prince Wierolf, and I’ve a few questionable relations of my own.”

Now that the words were said, I felt horribly exposed, as if someone had stripped away my clothes and pushed me out into the snow. “What now?” I said. “What happens next?”

He regarded me solemnly. “Now you can figure out the next secret on that list.”

I felt raw and hollow after my confession to the prince, like after a bad sickness. I had said the words, and they hadn’t killed me, but it would take a while before I felt like myself again. I took the kennel route from Wierolf’s chamber, to delay the moment I’d have to face people. Afternoon had faded to evening, and Tiboran’s moon was high and bright in a deepening sky. I looked up at it gravely, then sketched a formal, actor’s bow. “Thank you,” I said aloud. He had guided my per for mance all these years, after all. I had to have faith that the timing he’d chosen for the end of my masquerade was the right one.

The next few days were peaceful ones at Bryn Shaer, even amid the birthday prep ara tions. Lady Lyll’s late-night meetings with the conspirators continued; Meri and I “attended” another one together, and they seemed to be piecing together their final arguments for the king’s representative. I knew Lyll nursed some concern for Lord Antoch’s party, now a day or so overdue, but for me, with Daul gone, it almost really was like a holiday.

One morning I came back from the stillroom to find Phandre pawing through Meri’s clothes chest.

“What are you doing?” I crossed the room and slammed the lid shut, unfortunately missing her fingers.

“Looking for Meri’s pink sleeves,” she said haughtily. The garments in question were balled up in her hand. “Not that it’s any of your business. I wanted them for luncheon this afternoon.”

“Wear your own sleeves,” I snapped, snatching them away from her. As I smoothed the silk, I saw a little tear in the lining. “Phandre . . .”

Phandre ignored me, just strode across the room, looking around like she didn’t live here too. “Where is she this morning?” she asked sweetly. “She disappears a lot, doesn’t she? Like you. I came in late last night, and what a suprise to find your bed empty.”

“I’m sure you find that strange,” I said. “If Meri wanted you to know what she was doing, she’d tell you.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot.
You’re
her great confidante now.” Phandre gave me a little sniff and headed off to her own room — but not before plucking the pink sleeves from my hands again.

I shook my head.
Nobs
.

Meri returned a few minutes later, bubbling over with excitement. “Stagne and I materialized a ball of flame for a full minute before it dissipated!” As I helped her out of her riding clothes, she added, “I saw Marlytt in the courtyard. She’d like to speak to you.”

When I didn’t respond, she squeezed my arm. “Say you’ll go. I don’t like to see you two quarreling. She says she has something to give you.”

Outside, a figure in blue descended the east tower steps and came to meet me, long hem trailing behind her in the snow.

“I know you don’t want to talk to me,” Marlytt said. She held the neck of her coat closed with one shivering hand. “So just listen.”

Warily I nodded, and she set off walking toward the moonslit sculpture garden. I followed close behind.

“When Daul found me, I was in Tratua with a man called Mils Rhonin. He was a low-level city official, a widower. I had been with him almost a year.” She paused and looked up into the sky. Ice crystals had formed on her long, pale lashes. “He wanted to marry me.”

She kept a mea sured pace, and her voice in the whipping wind was soft but distinct. “I think he mostly wanted a mother for his children — a girl and two little boys. They had a house with a view of the sea, and a courtyard where the children could play.” She looked straight at me. “It was the kind of life that girls like us never dream of having.

“And then one night I met Daul at a banquet — some city function that Mils had to attend. I danced two dances with him, and by the end of the night he’d told me to leave Mils and come with him. I refused, of course. The next day I saw him again, when Mils’s daughter and I were drawing water at the city fountain. He claimed to have contacts in the Inquisition. He again told me to leave Mils, this time in much less . . . subtle terms. Mils’s daughter had to stand there and listen while Daul called me a whore.

“A week later, five Acolyte Guardsmen arrested Mils at our house, in front of his children. Daul was there an hour later. And that time, I went with him.”

She arranged a strand of fair hair that had slipped loose. “He brought me here to spy on Antoch, to seduce him. But when it came time, he wouldn’t let me. I guess Daul turned out to be a jealous lover after all. Not that Antoch would ever have been tempted; I saw that immediately. He’s too good a man. And then you showed up, a new toy Daul just couldn’t resist.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Digger. I didn’t mean to get you into this.”

Her eyes were as icy as I’d ever seen them. “Daul is cold and he is ambitious. When he wants something, he gets it. When he hurts you, he leaves no marks — but you bleed to death on the inside, from a thousand invisible cuts.” She turned her gaze into the distance, toward the wall and the mountains and, maybe, the canals of Tratua. “I saw Mils one more time. Daul took me to see them release him from prison. It had only been a few days, but he’d changed so much. The worst thing, though,” she said, so softly I almost didn’t hear her, “the worst was the look in his eyes when he saw me standing in the boat beside Daul.”

She turned to face me. “So you can stop giving me that look like I’ve plunged a knife into you, and don’t you dare judge me. Because I know what it feels like to betray someone I care about, and believe me — this is nothing.”

Before I could say anything, Marlytt pulled something from her sleeve and held it out to me. A packet of letters, a little road-worn and rumpled still from being crushed against someone’s rib cage for a month. Her hand was blue with cold, but steady somehow. “I think you were looking for these,” she said. “Don’t lose them again.”

She lifted the sable hood up over her face, turned, and walked back to the castle with mea sured dignity.

I didn’t follow. But in the fading light, I unfolded Chavel’s letters. And there, along with the letter to Vichet and Wierolf’s death warrant and the incomprehensible list of odd markings, was something new: a worn and much-folded slip of paper that read
In these pages, I have recorded the truth.
I knew that dark, spidery hand all too well: Senim Daul, my expert huntsman. Beneath that pronouncement, the page was covered in numbers that spread onto the back side. Folded with it was another sheet, in a hand I didn’t recognize, but could guess: Senim’s son. This one was filled with little notes and scratch marks, as if he’d been trying to puzzle something out. And, standing there in the late morning chill, I thought I knew what.