Through Wolf's Eyes (28 page)

"Then is reuniting so wise?" Derian countered.

"The only alternative," Colby replied soberly, "is
continuing the cycle of war into uneasy peace and into war again. So it
has been all my life and all my father's life. Two of my siblings died
from this fighting, both in battles so small that I doubt any but those
who won glory in them even remember them, but my brothers died just the
same. I begrudge the loss of a son to such circumstances—I even
begrudge the death of a horse or ox if there is an alternative."

Mention of the ox made Derian uncomfortably aware of
his own Ox, who could have died quite easily despite all his great
strength if one of the arrows that had scarred his broad hide had been
luckier in finding its target.

"We need a strong monarch," Derian said thoughtfully,
"whether this Duke Allister or not. One who can lead us well in war and
guide us in peace. Is there anyone among our noble families fit for
that task?"

"Not your wolf-girl?" Colby said teasingly. "You've spoken warmly enough of her courage."

"Courage and to spare," Derian agreed, "but not
necessarily wisdom, though that could be gained. But can she unite
these jealous nobles behind her, even with King Tedric's support?"

"I don't know," Colby said honestly. "All I can do is
listen in the market, listen to my clients, listen to the travelers who
cross the borders. Now that we are somewhat at peace with Bright
Bay—more, I think, because they hope to win our kingdom through
inheritance than because hostilities are ended—there are those who
travel between the kingdoms once more."

"Merchants, entertainers," Derian said, thinking back to those he had met when working in his father's business, "tinkers,
and simply the footloose—and any one of them might be a spy."

"True," Colby said, "but I watch my tongue. I'm but a
simple livery stable owner, concerned with my horses and wagons. My
wife's the brains of the operation—everyone knows that."

They laughed together at the old joke. Colby was often underestimated, Vernita never. The arrangement suited them both nicely.

"I'll keep your words in mind, Father," Derian said
soberly. "And you take care. Some may learn you have a son in Kestrel
service and think you more clever than you would wish."

"I will," Colby promised, "and you also take care.
There will be those who will resent the kennel keeper of a new-minted
noblewoman, especially one who looks suspiciously like she's becoming a
princess."

Derian nodded. Without further comment, they finished
their ales, settled their score with the tavern keeper, and headed up
the hill toward the castle. A few steps away from the gate, Colby gave
Derian a bone-crushing hug.

"Come see us again soon, son. Bring your work with you if you'd like. Just don't be a stranger."

"I won't," Derian repeated, his heart lighter than
before, though these new twists to the already complex political
picture made his head swim.

He turned to watch his father walk down the lamplit
streets into the city, then knocked on the iron-bound door. The porter
opened it so quickly that Derian knew he'd been watching through his
peephole.

"Good visit with the folks at home?"

"Good enough," Derian said. "Wish I could have stayed longer."

"I'm glad to have you back," the porter said with anxious eagerness. "You're Lady Blysse Norwood's man, aren't you?"

"I am," Derian agreed, wondering. He hadn't thought any of the servants knew him as yet.

"Is it true she keeps an enormous wolf as a pet?"

"She has a wolf with her, yes," Derian answered, careful even in Firekeeper's absence not to refer to Blind Seer as a pet.

"And a falcon the size of an eagle, big enough to carry off a small child or a lamb?"

"She has a peregrine falcon of good size," Derian answered, amused.

"Then I'm glad you're back," the porter repeated. "Good to know there's someone managing them all."

Derian hid a grin, pleased enough with this sudden rise in status, but unwilling to let the man think he was mocking him.

"I'll just hurry up then and make certain they're all settled for bed," Derian said politely.

"Good." With a heavy thud of iron-bound oak, the
porter swung the door shut after Derian. "First time I ever heard of
locking the door to keep the wolf
in,
" he muttered.

Running up the wide, smooth stone stairs into the tower, Derian grinned.

W
HEN ELISE HEARD
footsteps coming up the garden path behind her, her heart leapt in her
breast. Irrationally, stupidly, with an eagerness she felt was unworthy
of the dignity of her seventeen years, she hoped it would be Jet. She
hadn't seen him since he made his proposal two days before and the
suspense had been unbearable. Although her initial impulse had been to
blurt out everything to her mother, the few hours' delay while waiting
for Lady Aurella to return from the castle had shown Elise this would
be unwise.

Aurella Wellward was a good mother. Since Elise was
an only child, Aurella had spent much time with her rather than
delegating the more routine matters of her daughter's upbringing to a
nursemaid as was more typical in noble houses. Mother and daughter had
their disagreements, their times of estrangement, but lately they had
been quite close. Still, Aurella was too much a lady of the royal court
to not first think of the political maneuvering in Jet's proposal
rather than the romantic possibilities.

And Elise so very much wanted to dwell on those
romantic possibilities. This was her first marriage proposal (and maybe
her only) and Jet was very handsome. She wanted to dream of moonlight
rides, of holding hands, of whispered confidences. That was why, even
though the sound of two pairs of feet scampering up the graveled path
could never be the measured tread of one set of masculine boots firmly
striding,
her heart leapt and she turned with careful grace to meet . . .

Citrine Shield and Kenre Trueheart ran up, hands
clasped, faces flushed. For a moment, Elise preserved the hope that
Citrine bore a message from her older brother, but the girl's words
dispelled even that fleeting fantasy.

"Cousin Elise!" she said. "Good morning! Your maid Ninette told us you had come to the castle early."

"You're staying here, aren't you?" Elise said,
bending to hug each of the children. An only child herself, she had
always doted on her younger cousins, viewing them as substitutes for
the siblings she herself lacked. The little ones returned her affection
openly, so openly that Sapphire had been known to comment cattily that
Elise wouldn't like the brats nearly so much if she had to spend more
time with them.

"We are," Citrine said, "though Jet's gone riding with Father. Mother and Sapphire are attending upon the queen."

Poor Mother,
Elise thought.
Lady Melina would be enough to set me off my breakfast.

Innocent in her romantic ideals, she didn't reflect
that if she married Jet she would see Melina Shield far more often than
at the occasional breakfast.

Kenre cut in, "My family's staying here too, but Purcel's out with his troops. I think he's bored."

Elise nodded. "Are you bored too? Is that why you're out and about so early?"

"No," Kenre said, "we're not bored. We've been visiting with the wolf-woman. She likes us."

"Wolf-woman?" Elise asked, but even as the question
was shaped she realized who Kenre must mean. Everyone had heard of the
great grey wolf who followed Lady Blysse wherever she went—to the
discomfort of every resident of the castle other than King Tedric.
"That isn't a polite way to refer to Lady Blysse."

"She likes it," Citrine said. "She likes it better
than Blysse. The second day we played with her she told us to call her
Firekeeper. She said that's her real name, the name the wolves gave her
when she was small."

"Want to come meet her?" Kenre asked before Elise could
voice
any of the dozen questions that Citrine's speech had raised. "We
thought you might when we saw Ninette in the corridor. Firekeeper's in
the castle meadows."

"How do you know?" Elise asked. "Did you make plans to meet her there?"

"Not really," Citrine said. Grabbing Elise's hand,
she pointed up into the sky. "See the bird, way up there? That's
Firekeeper's peregrine falcon, Elation. They go out into the meadows in
the morning before Earl Kestrel needs Firekeeper so that she can get
some air and so Blind Seer can run."

Allowing herself to be towed along—after all, if Jet
was out riding with Rolfston Redbriar he wasn't likely to come looking
for her loitering among the roses—Elise asked:

"Blind Seer?"

"That's the wolf," Kenre said. "Firekeeper calls him
her brother. She gets really mad if you call him her pet. Derian said .
. ."

"Derian? Who is that? Her horse?"

Citrine giggled. "Derian is her manservant. He's from the town. He was at the banquet: a tall man with red hair."

Elise remembered this Derian now, a handsome enough
commoner standing awkwardly behind Lady Blysse's chair, his face
flushing dark red every time his charge made a particularly vigorous
social gaffe.

The meadows were outside the castle walls, but Cousin
Purcel had explained to Elise at great length how they were far more
defensible than they might initially appear. It had something to do
with the high cliffs rising behind the fields and the ravines—some
natural, some otherwise—that flanked them. In a pinch, Purcel had told
her with martial enthusiasm, a few trees could be felled, some
pasturage burned to create a kill zone, and the woods and meadows would
be almost as secure as the castle itself. This was one of the reasons
that the Eagle's Nest was nearly impossible to take by siege. As long
as the woods and water were accessible, the besieged could hold out
indefinitely.

Every child knew how Queen Zorana had taken the
castle by intrigue rather than by force, establishing herself once and
forever as the dominant figure in the civil conflict.

A few steps outside of the arched doorway in the
stone wall, Elise shook her hands free from the children's grasp. If
she was going to meet a rival for the throne, she shouldn't look too
undignified. A moment later, she learned that dignity—at least in the
way she had been taught to define it— wasn't a concern for Lady Blysse.
When the three cousins entered the meadow, this youngest heir to the
Great House of Norwood was sitting sprawled in a trampled patch of
grass and wild flowers.

She was clad in brown leather breeches cut off just
below the knee and a battered leather vest loosely buttoned over small
breasts. One tanned arm was flung about the neck of an enormous grey
wolf with startling blue eyes. Lady Blysse's face was bright with
unguarded curiosity, but she showed no surprise, as if she had been
given warning of their coming.

When Citrine and Kenre ran up to her, Blysse jumped
to her feet, giving each child a rough but affectionate embrace. Then
she looked toward Elise, her expression less open.

"Who that?" she asked.

"This is our best cousin," Citrine said,
inadvertently warming Elise's heart, "Lady Elise Archer, heir to the
House of Archer. Her father is Kenre's mother's brother."

"Best is good," Blysse replied. Turning to Elise, she offered her an awkward bow after the masculine fashion.

Initially shocked, Elise immediately realized that a
curtsy performed in trousers would look quite silly. Indeed, with her
dark hair drawn back in a short queue, man-fashion, her bare feet, and
her small, neat figure, Blysse looked more like a delicately featured
lad than a girl of fifteen.

Elise returned the greeting with a curtsy, only then
acknowledging the red-haired man who had scrambled to his feet at her
entry. Derian Carter, she thought, had potential to be quite handsome
when he grew into perfect comfort with his young man's body. He was
attractive even now with his clear hazel-green eyes and fair skin; his
hair was auburn rather than carroty.

Derian's bearing was respectful without being groveling, so that Elise found herself returning his bow as she would
to
an equal rather than to a servant. Somehow, she realized when she
turned her attention to Lady Blysse, this had done her no harm in the
newcomer's opinion.

"Firekeeper," Citrine was saying happily, "did you catch anything this morning?"

"Rabbits" was the solemn response, "three, but Blind
Seer ate them all. He likes his meat blood-warm, but still eats what Ox
brings him. I tell him he get too big."

"Fat," Citrine said bossily. Elise caught her breath
at this rudeness, but something in Blysse's bearing told her that
language lessons must have been a regular part of these meetings.

"Fat," Lady Blysse repeated, then tilted her head to one side. "Why fat? Derian say fat is white part of meat."

Derian spoke for the first time. Elise was delighted
to hear that his voice was a pleasant, measured baritone with only a
trace of a lower-class accent.

"Fat in meat makes big," he explained, frowning
slightly as he tried to keep his words simple. His eyes twinkled as he
added, "If we cut Blind Seer open, his meat would have much white."

Lady Blysse laughed at this, punching the wolf hard
on one shoulder as if the animal had understood the joke. From a tree
branch overhead, the peregrine falcon shrieked.

Feeling a bit left out, Elise essayed, "Does Earl Kestrel know you come out here to hunt?"

"He know," Blysse responded. "Not like when first."

Derian clarified, "Earl Kestrel was not delighted the
first time his ward came out here without his express permission. I had
been permitted to visit my parents in town, so Fire-keeper was on her
own. However, he has had to acknowledge that you can't keep a wolf
walled up without the furniture taking considerable damage."