Starcrossed (44 page)

Meri and I went back to his room after that and stripped away the evidence. It took hours and a heavy stone I’d pried from a crumbling tunnel wall to break apart the bed — all the gods damn me, I thought those things were supposed to be
portable
! — but before we’d lost all the night, Wierolf’s chamber looked like what it was supposed to be: an adjunct to the stillroom. We left the prayer stand but dragged in a little shelf, stashed bottles every where, spilled a little oil on the floor, lit and put out a tiny fire to scorch a circle on the shelf and fill the room with heady, acrid smoke. It was good work: I was a practiced forger, after all, with experience making things appear to be what they were not.

Still, I had to quell a little pang as we rolled a dirty rug over the floor. I’d never see him again, but that was hardly new; I’d parted from most of the people I’d known in my life. Funny how one winter at Bryn Shaer could make me grow attached to people I shouldn’t even know. I leaned up against the door frame and sniffed. It was a tiny, stuffy, poorly heated room; I should be glad to be rid of it.

By the time we climbed back out to the main corridors, darkness was starting to fade from the sky. Tired as I was, I wasn’t quite ready to just slip into bed. I took Meri out onto the battlement, where I’d once watched her meet with Stagne.

I leaned over the wall, looking over the spread of mountains. This early they were barely more than hulking shadows, tipped with moonslight. Six moons in various phases dotted the sky — all but Zet, protector of royalty, who must have ducked into hiding with her prince. I hoped she’d watch over him, wherever Reynart and his band took him. Tiboran was a fat pink blob to the northeast, disappearing behind the crest of a hill, or into a cloud, or into a broad valley somewhere — it was hard to tell, in the darkness. I grinned at it. Fair enough; I could do this on my own.

At dusk on the eve of midwinter, the Inquisition came riding to Bryn Shaer. And they brought the king’s army with them.

Everyone gathered on the east tower, where we had watched the avalanche pin us to the mountain, to see the soldiers flood through the pass and spread up the sides of the mountain like poison in a wound. Beside me, Meri made a stricken sound and clutched tight to my arm. I felt sure we’d done right, sending the prince off with the Sarists, but as the Green Army crawled inexorably toward us, I wondered. If Werne and the Confessors had found Wierolf here, would that be a big enough prize to leave us alone?

I knew the answer to that.

I had seen no more of Berdal’s “friends” from the mountains, but I knew Lord Antoch rode out every morning with Meri, and I hoped our little Bryn Shaer family was growing. The missing member of our strange assemblage had not gone unnoticed however. The morning after Meri and I had our last late-night adventure, Lady Lyll confronted me. We were in the solar, putting the finishing stitches in Meri’s ceremonial embroidery.

“Celyn, dear, I seem to have . . . mislaid an item of some value. You would not have seen it anywhere, by chance?”

“Item, milady?” I looked up. Lady Cardom was watching us over the edge of her embroidery hoop.

Lyll bent closer. “This is no time for games. Do you know where he is?”

I studied my own needlework. “No, milady, not precisely. And more to the point, nor do you or Lord Antoch or Meri. Or Daul. But he’s safe. I’m certain of it.”

She looked vexed — she
was
vexed, but there was nothing she could do about it. Finally she sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Now, back at the battlement, Lord Antoch lifted his spyglass — that new, heretical invention from Corlesanne, with which we could look up and examine the faces of the moons — and trained it on the Breijarda Velde. “I’m counting about two hundred fifty men,” he said.

Lyll reached for the glass. “Why so few? That’s not an invasion force.”

“No,” Cwalo put in. “It’s a statement.”

I understood him. It meant Bardolph could reach us here, at the most remote place in Llyvraneth, and that only a handful of soldiers would be required to subdue any brewing rebellion.

“Our supplies are low; we can’t hold out a siege.”

“No siege,” said Lyll. “No siege engines. But perhaps they mean to occupy us.”

A tremor of revulsion went through me. Greenmen billeted in every Bryn Shaer bedroom, touching the Nemair’s belongings — and the Nemair’s guests? I turned to Lyll. Her face was set, impassive, even though all her plans were surely at an end. Even with the men Berdal had brought, we were no match for the king’s soldiers.

“What’s going to happen?” I asked.

She was grim. “The Inquisitor and his men will ride to the gates, and we’ll let them in. There will be some formalities — an exchange of greetings and such — and then Werne will request we give lodging to his men.”

“And if you do?”

Lyll shook her head. “We’ll be prisoners in our own home. They will hold us here until Bardolph decides we’re no longer a threat.”

“How long will that be?”

She just looked at me. “Forever.”

I felt sick. I had done this — Daul and I had worked together to bring Werne here.

We stayed there in the fading light as the Green Army filled in the dip below Bryn Shaer, that impossibly narrow ridge of plain that was the only place to launch an attack on the castle. They were all in green, the same bright-grass color, and it was hard to tell them apart: sol dier from Greenman, ordinary priest from Confessor. But one figure stood apart.

Small and slight against the fighting men, astride a mule at the head of the cavalry, the Inquisitor rode with his six Confessors, and something about him, so still and singular and composed among the tumult of the army, made the hundreds of soldiers at his back seem irrelevant. The Goddess’s pale light shone only on her most beloved servant, and Werne the Bloodletter looked like he could sack Bryn Shaer all on his own.

Meri watched him, her gaze fixed. I put a hand on her arm to pull her back, but she wouldn’t move. In the dusky light, my hand on hers pulsed brightly.

“I told you you should have gone with the others,” I said, but she pulled away from me.

“My place is here,” she said — and she didn’t sound so young, suddenly. She held fast to the tower wall until the stones started to glow under her grip.

“Meri, they’ll see you!”

She set her jaw. “Good. Let them.”

On the ledge below, Werne dismounted awkwardly from the mule, shaking out the skirts of his robes. The Confessors followed, surrounding him in a circle of green that moved as one toward the path leading up to Bryn Shaer’s gates. As Werne disappeared beneath the jut of rock, Lady Lyll stood back from the wall.

“Time to greet our guests,” she said.

We had always met visitors out in the courtyard, but tonight Lyll and Antoch arranged themselves in the wide flagstone entry hall before the massive arched doors, now flung open to the snow and wind. Firelight flickered from torches set around the space. Flanked by a dozen of their black-and-silver guard, the Nemair looked like an extension of the stone walls of Bryn Shaer, ancient, austere, immovable.

I did what I had done since I could remember: I hid. I tucked myself onto a narrow balcony overlooking the entry court, drawn back behind a tapestry so no one below could see me. Meri joined me after a while, though by rights she should have been beside her parents. I was glad she’d grown a mea sure of caution and knew better than to present her magical self before Werne the Bloodletter — though she’d have to, eventually. There was no hope that the Inquisitor could come to Bryn Shaer ostensibly for Merista Nemair’s
kernja-velde
and not ever meet her.

The seven figures in green strode as one into the Lodge, moving from the snowy courtyard to the dark stone floor in perfect unison, even the damp hems of their robes and cloaks swinging together across the threshold. They fanned out into a half-moon, Werne at their center. A dozen Greenmen stood at attention behind them. The Nemair were all grace, sinking just as smoothly to their knees, heads bowed.

“Be you welcome to Bryn Shaer, Your Worship,” Lady Lyll said, her voice as warm and strong as ever, lifting her face to meet Werne’s. “We have been expecting you for some time.”

The Inquisitor placed a hand on her dark head and gave a murmuring reply that I couldn’t make out. Meri frowned a little. “He doesn’t look like I’d thought,” she said softly. “He’s just . . . ordinary.”

It was true, I thought, looking down on that face I hadn’t seen in so many years. My slight build, my dark curly hair. At twenty-six, he had filled out some, but he wasn’t very tall. The hands that touched Lady Nemair’s head and accepted a kiss from Lord Antoch were smooth and tan and delicate. A great round of blue-and-brown chalcedony — earthstone — hung from his belt, but instead of the moon-shaped beads worn round the wrist by most servants of Celys, he carried a blade at his hip. It was probably only ceremonial — the image of Werne in a knife fight was almost amusing — but it was his badge of office as an inquisitor, not just a mere priest.

The Confessors carried swords. And I had no doubt that theirs were sharp and practiced.

Lyll and Antoch rose, and Werne stepped aside to introduce his party. “My confessorial staff and my personal guard,” he said.

Lyll gave a serene smile. “Confessors, your Worship? We are honored, of course, but are surprised your Grace would require them to preside over our daughter’s
kernja-velde.
”

“Not to mention the armed escort that brought you here,” Lord Antoch added quietly.

Werne’s dark gaze shifted to Antoch. “A show of friendship. His Majesty wishes to remind his subjects that we are all one family in Celys.”

“Good,” Lyll said. “We thought perhaps he was feeling . . . over protective.”

The Inquisitor glanced backward at the waiting Greenmen. “Quite. I told his Majesty I did not require them, but as you can see, they are here nonetheless. I do not expect them to interfere with my . . . work, here.”

“Ah, then we shall consider the troops merely decorative,” Lady Lyll said brightly. “You may thank His Majesty for us, but do mention that we should have been more than happy to provide our own ‘ornamental’ guard for the occasion.” And with that, she hooked her arm into her husband’s and led everyone to the Round Court.

“What will happen now?” Meri asked, squeezed tight to me.

A voice behind me startled me, and I glanced up and found Eptin Cwalo sharing our vantage point. “Tonight Bryn Shaer will feast the Inquisition and its men,” he said as if this was all part of some pre arranged plan. “And tomorrow we’ll all be asked to report on one another’s habits, secrets, heresies, and petty blasphemies.”

Meri turned wide eyes to him. “What does that mean?”

He bowed his pale head. “Even in houses that are blameless, there are always people frightened enough of the Confessors to inform on someone else. If we’re lucky, they’ll find only minor transgressions, and consent to merely confine your parents to the castle.”

Even Meri didn’t bother to ask what would happen if we weren’t lucky. Because Bryn Shaer was far from blameless, and we all knew it.

No one ate much that night — at least no one from Bryn Shaer. Yselle and the cooks had prepared a sumptuous feast from Meri’s stockpiled
kernja-velde
food, because everyone knew that you did Celys honor by feeding her servants well. Closer to, Werne certainly didn’t look like he’d missed many meals. I happily sat as far as possible from him, since ladies-in-waiting were hardly worthy of His Worship’s exalted company, down across the room with Phandre and Eptin Cwalo. Poor Meri was pressed between her parents, looking terrified. Beside Lyll, Werne ate steadily, scarcely looking up the whole meal.

“I do hope you’ll try the roast pork, Your Worship,” Lady Lyll said smoothly. “It’s rather a Bryn Shaer specialty. Our cook is Corles, and I’m afraid we picked up some foreign customs while abroad.”

“His Worship prefers to dine in silence,” one of the Confessors said sternly.

Lady Lyll smiled and ignored her. “Will you take wine, my lord?” she asked cheerily.

The Confessor glared at her. “His Worship never indulges in spirits.”

“Pity,” Lord Antoch said, pouring himself a great draught from the flagon. “Splendid local vintage. Tiboran truly smiled on the vineyards that year. The Masked God’s blessing to you, Your Worship.”