Sword (5 page)

He did guess it.

She raised a hand, stopping his words.

"Let’s not speak of... it. Let's just say I feel that instruction with the Fraonir would be useful." Devin closed his lips over his words and silently mouthed “useful.” She could almost hear the doubt. "And see that you don’t get caught alone with any Westerners," she added under her breath.

They were still sitting in silence when their father came back in, carrying a sword in a plain leather scabbard. He handed it to her without ceremony. If he noticed the state of the room, or the dust in his children’s hair, he gave no sign. "You’ll wear it belted until they’ve determined you’ve earned the baldric, mind," he said, looking at the sword instead of at her. "I don’t think you’ll grow much taller, but it ought to stand you in good stead for a few years even if you do." He set a pair of daggers, sheathed and bound in a belt, atop the sword. "You’ll learn these before you learn the sword, I expect."

Kyali blinked up at her father wordlessly, arms full of weapons, and he looked impatiently about the room. "Right. Bread, cheese, water… and I suggest you get out of that silken target. Wear one of the roughspuns. And put a scarf over that hair of yours."

"Are you so eager to be rid of me?"

Gold flashed briefly in his eyes, then sank like a stone in a stream.
I must learn how to do that
, Kyali thought. His hand came up and smoothed briskly over her head, dislodging a drifting cloud of horsehair. Across the table, Devin's jaw had dropped.

"You’ve a lot of hard work ahead of you, girl," her father said. "Now’s as good a time to start as any."

C
HAPTER
3

L
eaves had invaded the castle in large numbers and they skirled through the halls like frightened mice, rattling and crunching underfoot. Some crunched under
his
feet, and Devin grimaced as the noise drew the attention of Baron Cian, who was passing by with his lady on his arm in what looked to be the direction of the great hall. He leaned back against the tapestry-covered stone wall.

Then he smiled, with conscious charm, as Cian and Alys turned to face him, stately as ships, stalling the passage of servants and guards trying to pass by.

Master Emayn would be turning the corner any minute now, out of breath and furious, and it felt like half the people in the hall were looking at him. He thought briefly of just throwing the tapestry behind him over his head and holding very still, but he'd probably choke to death on the dust it hid.

"My lord Cian," he said, bowing. "Lady Alys."

She had a lovely smile. And she looked younger than Cian by a decade. His bow in her direction was a little lower that he'd intended, and his smile got wider and crooked as she held her hand out for him like he was a lord, instead the wayward son of one. With Cian's gimlet gaze boring a hole in the top of his head, Devin only held her hand for a moment and bowed slightly over it, though she seemed as though she wouldn't mind if he kissed it.

Get caught leaving a lady's bedroom
once
and you were added to some list at the back of everyone's minds, like a reformed thief in a treasury.

At the other end of the hall rose a commotion of raised voices and footsteps. Lady Alys craned her neck to see, retrieving her hand. Devin cast a panicked glance that way and saw Master Emayn's wispy white hair flying like a flag in a high wind above a small cluster of servants bent over a spilled bowl of apples. He sucked in a chestful of air.

"Just come from lessons, then," Cian said, not missing that.

"Ah—yes, actually. My lord, Lady Alys, if I could—"

"Would serve you right if I held you here for him to catch up to, you young rascal. What did you do to him this time?"

"Nothing, my lord!" Cian had hold of his arm; he couldn't escape now without insulting a baron, which the man clearly knew and, by the flicker of humor in his eyes, enjoyed. He met Devin' s best look of innocence with a stern frown.

Emayn was closing in, robes askew, his hair wafting up wildly with every stride forward. He could move amazingly fast for such an old man. "
Devin Corwynall
!" he shouted, his wrathful voice bouncing off every stone in the walls and the ceiling, and hells, now
everyone
was looking at him.

"He just found out about the Hedgewizard's Gavotte," Devin said, desperate.

Cian's grip grew tighter as he looked from Devin to Master Emayn and then back. Lady Alys made a surprised sort of noise, then put one hand over her lips and began to laugh, shoulders shaking. Cian sent her an irritated look, but a grin was spreading slowly over his craggy face.

"I
knew
that was your work," the baron of Maurynim said. "Your rhymes are hard to mistake. You're going to have to face him someday, Devin."

"Indeed, my lord. Some... other day, perhaps?"

Cian snorted, but let him go. “Good luck,” he grunted.

"Thank you!" Devin said fervently, and bolted as Emayn came skidding to a halt in front of Cian and Alys. Two maids carrying linens leapt aside as he barreled past. Behind him, Devin could hear Cian asking his magic tutor something about the moon phase, bless him, followed by Emayn's slightly frantic reply. He threw himself around a corner, nearly collided with a footman, and raced down the next passage that offered itself without a thought except
away
.

It turned out to be a cul-de-sac, gods help him, and Cian wasn’t going to hold Emayn much longer.

Desperate, he turned, and turned again, trying to tell just from the look of the shut doors if any of the rooms’ occupants would welcome a general’s son with trouble on his heels. Listening hard, he heard, with a certain despair, Baron Brisham’s nasal voice behind one of the doors. The words were muffled, but the anger in his tone was enough to make Devin pause.

“We shall have to… if he does not accede… for her own sake.”

“There are other options.”

Curiosity held him in place. He didn’t recognize the other voice, though it was easier to make out. It didn’t sound like a servant, or a soldier: Brisham, rumor had it, treated his staff like unwelcome houseguests, and they spoke to him softly. This person had the tone of an equal, or at least someone who thought he was.

Baron Brisham of Sevassis province had arrived only a mere month after Kyali had disappeared into the mountains, dragging a train of attendants and cooking staff with him and kicking up a storm of gossip and confusion. Western barons came East only for the great affairs of state—none of which, so far as
he
knew, were planned for some time.

It had made his father suspicious, which in turn made Devin wary. He stepped closer and tried to listen simultaneously for Brisham’s words and Emayn’s footsteps.

"And what of the other one?" the baron asked.

"No sign. But we know where she has run to, my lord."

"Not good enough!"

A shout from the main corridor had him leaning away from the door: Emayn had escaped Cian and Alys.

“What was that?" Brisham snapped from inside.

Devin spun and ran, even knowing it was pointless; there was nowhere to go. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel its beats in his temples, and it had nothing—well, little—to do with his magic tutor's wrath.

Had they been talking about his sister in that room? And if so, did that mean more of the West than Baron Walderan wanted Kyali dead?

Anger grew in him, grew so fast he didn’t have time to swallow it down with reason or cool it with caution. And with it, inevitably, ever since the day he'd picked up a fiddle and shattered all the windows on the first floor of his father's house, came his unruly Gift. He flinched as the tallow candles in the sconce across from him flipped out of their holders to rattle on the floor. He pressed his back to the wall on the other side of a jutting lintel, then pressed his hands to his forehead.

“Not now,” he hissed.

He was in more than enough trouble already.

Emayn's steps came to a halt. There was a scrape as the door that hid Baron Brisham first unlatched and then slid open, and Devin pressed further back, hopeless as it was. He didn't think he could look Brisham in the face right now and pretend all was well. He thought he might strike the man. He was actually shaking with fury.

"Devin," came a whisper from just beside him, startling him badly. He looked around, seeing nothing, and then the tapestry to his left twitched.

What in the
hells
?

"Get in here!" the tapestry whispered fiercely.

Not about to question the provenance of such a well-timed gift, Devin flung the tapestry over himself, received a faceful of dust, and saw Taireasa looking up at him from a shadowed space in the stone wall. She got a fistful of his doublet and yanked with unexpected strength, pulling him utterly off balance. He fell forward into a darkness that smelled of dank stone and moldering linen and Taireasa’s perfume, which had lilacs in it. His face was mashed into the soft wool covering her shoulder. The princess, apparently not as embarrassed as he was by this unintended familiarity, grunted, then got a better grip on him and hauled hard. His knee scraped over a sharp lip of stone as he came sliding all the way inside.

“Close the door!”

He turned around as best he could without outright sitting on her and pushed at what turned out to be a very heavy block of wood with a veneer of stone on the outside. It swung shut in total silence. Taireasa scrambled out from under him, elbowing him in the neck in the process, and stood. The brisk rustle of cloth suggested she was brushing herself off, but it was pitch black and he couldn’t see even the faintest outline of her. He sat for another moment, hearing the distant rise and fall of voices outside the wall.

Gods, it sounded like they were a league away in a cave, not within arm’s reach.

Her hand closed over his collar and tugged, then moved to his sleeve as he stood. He followed her silent direction through a series of turns, one hand out to feel the crumbly smoothness of very, very old stone.

“So this is where you two hare off to,” he murmured. He felt Taireasa’s fingers clench over his wrist and was sorry: she still went wet-eyed and hard-jawed whenever Kyali’s name was mentioned.

“They go all over the castle,” she said shortly, not bothering to keep her voice down now, and she let him go to fumble after something in the dark. A moment later there was a scrape and a rattle, then flame blossomed between them, casting their shadows hugely onto walls of pale, small, close-fitted stones and crumbling mortar. She shut the lantern’s door and lifted it up between them, making Devin wince at the sudden light. “We’ll be near the kitchens if we keep going this way."

She knew her way around these odd tunnels very well, it seemed.

Afraid to say anything else that might upset her, he brushed at his clothes, giving her a moment to collect herself. His anger was fading, though slowly. Taireasa swept something from his shoulder and then turned, arms folding and shoulders hunching, to stare at a wall.

“
Hared
,” she said, her voice low and unhappy.

“She’ll come back, Taireasa. It’s not forever.”

“It’s years, though, isn’t it?”

He’d been trying not to think of it that way. “Yes,” he said, sighing. “It is. Can you say it’s not necessary?”

One shoulder drew up in a shrug. She didn’t turn to face him. “Of course it was necessary,” she muttered. “That doesn’t make it fair. Who were you running from this time?” she asked, just as he was opening his mouth to say something sympathetic and probably irritating.

“Oh, Emayn.”

“He found out about the song?”

“He
heard
it,” Devin said mournfully and Taireasa snorted, scrubbed at her face, and finally turned around. In the uneven light of the lantern, her face looked older, and tired, and... puffy, as though she had been weeping.

“Taireasa... why are you in here?”

“Baron Brisham proposed,” she said, sounding more defeated than he’d ever heard her before. It hurt him, hearing that tone from Taireasa.

She had been in his life ever since she and Kyali had met, nearly a decade ago. They had been instantly inseparable, and Taireasa had become a familiar presence at the Corwynall estate: a jumble of thin limbs, messy curls, strong opinions, and mischief, her easy laugh and brash daring the complete opposite of (and perfect match for) his quiet, arrogant, serious little sister. The two of them had been his playmates, and opponents; the victims of his pranks, and his occasional tormentors. Taireasa was like a second sister to him, and seeing her like this made him want to go back to the cul-de-sac so he could, in fact, strike Brisham right in his pompous face.

“You’re
sixteen
,” Devin said, and cringed at the way his voice echoed in the closeness of the tunnel.

The look she sent him was part scorn, part rueful affection. “I’m a
princess
, Devin. We do tend to marry earlier. And he suggested the wedding might take place after I’m of age.”

“How generous of him,” Devin growled, and had to run his hands through his hair and take several deep breaths, lest he knock the lantern over with his anger and disgust and set the place afire. He thought about telling Taireasa what he’d overheard—but she was already so upset, and really, he’d no proof, only a handful of words and a suspicion. He leaned against the wall, then remembered how the mortar had been crumbling out of it and straightened, knowing his doublet was probably already ruined. “I hope you told him you’re already spoken for.”

The startled flicker of her eyes lifted his spirits a bit. “To whom, pray tell.”

He linked arms with her, pulling her in the same direction she’d been pulling him just a moment ago. “Why, to
me
, of course. Dashing, handsome, melodic, charming… me. How could that old vulture hope to compete with such magnificence? Just think how he’d screech if he heard you were betrothed to one of the other two heirs he’s supposed to choose among when they vote for you to be queen.”