Through Wolf's Eyes (34 page)

He stopped suddenly. "I realize I'm being terribly familiar," he said. "I, of course, know who you are, but I don't
suppose you remember me. Our circles haven't crossed that frequently."

Just as Elise was realizing who this must be, the man made a deep and formal bow:

"Sir Jared Surcliffe, at your service, my lady. I am a somewhat distant younger cousin of the Earl Kestrel."

"Lady Elise Archer," Elise replied with appropriate
formality, and curtsies. Then she smiled. "I remembered you just as you
introduced yourself. When I was quite small, my parents took me out to
the Kestrel estates. You were there, too, and very patiently supervised
me and Earl Kestrel's boys while we rode our ponies. Later you took us
out fishing by that wonderful stone bridge—the one that looked as if it
must have trolls under it. We've shared company since, but I hope you
don't mind that that particular occasion is the one I remember best."

"Not at all." Sir Jared grinned, an open expression
that made him look much as he had ten years before, not at all like the
mature man of twenty-four or twenty-five that he must be. For the first
time, Elise realized that there was something vaguely sad about the
grown man's expression that had not been present in the boy's. She
struggled to remember what she could about him.

"I'm being very rude keeping you standing in the
hallway," Sir Jared added. "Would you like to come in and wait, or
shall we stroll down to the gardens and make certain that Blind Seer
hasn't eaten one of the gardener's sons?"

Elise giggled and was immediately horrified. Jared Surcliffe didn't appear to notice.

"I think," Elise replied, cloaking herself in the
shreds of her dignity, "that I would like to go down to the garden.
Blind Seer may not be a problem, but the falcon might be."

Jared laughed. "Then if the Lady Archer . . ."

"Elise, please," she hastily interrupted. "No one
calls me Lady Archer yet except on terribly formal occasions. I don't
need to use the title until I reach my majority."

"And you're not in a great hurry to get there," Surcliffe mused, almost to himself, as he stepped out into the hallway
and shut the door behind him. "Now, there is a wisdom one doesn't often see in a young lady."

Elise felt flattered rather than insulted and, as Sir
Jared's comment had been spoken quietly, she avoided a direct reply.
Instead she walked beside him down the corridors and toward the stairs
leading out into the gardens, searching her memory for everything she
could remember about her new companion.

Surcliffe, she recalled from her geography lessons,
was a minor holding in the Norwood grant. Theoretically, it belonged to
the Kestrels, but in practice those small holdings passed from parent
to child along similar lines of inheritance followed in other matters.
Only if the Surcliffes mismanaged the estate or did something horrible
or the line died out completely would the Norwood family dare step in
and reassign the land. Thus, for all practical purposes, Jared
Surcliffe was a minor noble, never mind that under Queen Zorana's rules
restricting titles he did not even merit the title "Lord."

Jared's knighthood was a different matter. He had
earned it in the same battle in which Crown Princess Lovella had lost
her life. Assigned to the princess's company in a support capacity—as a
medic, Elise thought—he had been among the first to see the princess
fall. Despite being unarmored and unarmed, Surcliffe had raced out into
the field. Using Princess Lovella's own spear, he had held back the
attackers until Lovella's troops rallied. Then he had done his best to
save Lovella's life through his medical arts.

Lovella's wounds had been too severe to be mended—
even by one with the healing talent—but due to Sir Jared's care the
crown princess had lived long enough to bid both her husband and her
parents farewell. King Tedric—some said at Lovella's express
request—had made Jared Surcliffe a knight of the Order of the White
Eagle, the highest honor in the land. Elise had been present at his
investiture, one figure in the silent and awed crowd. She blushed now
to think that she could have failed to recognize him.

She allowed herself some leeway, for the man striding
along beside her was very different from the solemn, formally clad
figure who had knelt in front of his king and
queen
to receive their thanks and blessing. He seemed younger, more relaxed,
even in some strange way playful. Perhaps, Elise thought, she could
almost be forgiven.

Then she realized that Surcliffe was speaking to her and apologized:

"I'm sorry, Sir Jared, I was distracted by my thoughts. May I beg you to repeat yourself?"

"No need to beg, Lady Elise," Surcliffe said. "I was
offering you my congratulations on your recent engagement. I've met Jet
Shield in passing and he seems like a fine fellow."

Elise nodded. "Thank you. We've known each other since we were children and I've always been fond of him."

Fond,
she thought.
Fond! Is that the way to speak of the man who has captured my heart and my hand?

Yet, somehow, in Jared Surcliffe's company she could
not go into the effusions that were so easy when she was among her lady
friends. All of them were more than willing to praise every aspect of
Jet: his form, his manners, his seat on a horse, even the color of his
hair and the line of his eyebrows.

Fleetingly, Elise found herself thinking of her
mother and the tear she had glimpsed on her cheek. To distract herself,
she asked Surcliffe:

"Are you married, Sir Jared?"

"I am," he replied stiffly, "a widower. My wife died
in childbirth three years ago. Our baby died as well. Since then I have
occupied myself with other things."

"I'm sorry," Elise murmured, not certain whether she was expressing sympathy for his loss or apologizing for her tactlessness.

Certainly she must have heard about his bereavement!
When he had been knighted every aspect of the new hero's character and
person would have been discussed both in meetings and in more informal
gossip sessions.

"Thank you," Sir Jared said, accepting her sympathy.
"My marriage was arranged, but as with you and your Jet, I had known my
bride since we were children together. Losing her came as a shock."

They were out of the castle now and crossing the rose
gardens,
following the path down and around to where the kitchen gardens stood
within their stone-walled enclosure. Deftly, Sir Jared turned the
conversation to the shade of a particularly lovely yellow and orange
rose. Elise replied, telling him how the bush had been brought from New
Kelvin when she was but a child, and so they both were saved from
further awkward and painful revelations.

"N
O, DEARIE
," H
OLLY
Gardener said, coming over to demonstrate. "Don't pull the carrot by
the fluffy part at the top. Grasp here at the base, firmly, and give it
a tug."

Firekeeper obeyed, eager to do this right. She was
becoming desperately fond of this bent old woman with her wispy white
hair. Holly was the only person she had met thus far who didn't think
of Firekeeper as a potential heir to the throne. To Holly, she was just
a girl who wanted to learn about gardens. In her presence, Firekeeper
somehow felt younger, but without any of the vulnerability her youth
and relative lack of strength had given her among the wolves.

Over the days that Firekeeper had been visiting the
gardens and attached orchard, Holly had trusted her with more and more
duties. At first Firekeeper had been permitted only to carry baskets
and to fetch water from the well, but even these tasks had delighted
her, giving exercise to muscles going soft from no greater challenge
than occasional horseback rides and her daily romps with Blind Seer.

Lately, Firekeeper had graduated into picking fruit
and vegetables. The late-summer harvest was beginning and even with the
extra help hired from the town the castle's own staff could barely keep
up with their duties. Firekeeper hoped that she could learn to pick the
vegetables without harming either them or the marvelous plants that
bore them. Then she would free another to do those jobs she had yet to
master.

On her second try, the carrot slid freely from the dirt.
Firekeeper gazed upon it, fat and orange, lightly dusted with soil, with as much pride as if she had grown it herself.

"Good job, dearie!" Holly said, her praise falling
sweetly on Firekeeper's ears, for the gardener could be as quick to
criticize as her name plant was to prick unwary fingers. "Now, if you
wish, you may harvest the rest of that row. Leave the little carrots to
grow into the space left by their fellows."

Firekeeper obeyed. A pack member all her life, it
felt good to be contributing to the survival of the whole. Even though
most of her days as a wolf had been spent foraging for herself, still
the Ones had often trusted her to watch over the pups. Sometimes they
even sent her ahead to scout the herds of elk or deer. In the moon
cycles that had followed her departure from west of the Iron Mountains,
all of Firekeeper's basic needs had been provided for. Moreover,
someone else was always more skilled than she in the tasks at hand.

This last had become particularly irksome since they
had come to live in the castle. Here, even Derian—who had never been
without some task—now found himself idle except for his duties teaching
Firekeeper. Firekeeper, however, had a limited attention span for
lessons in etiquette and dancing. When she rebelled, Derian had learned
to let her be.

For his part, Blind Seer had no difficulty accepting
idleness. A wolf proverb stated: "Hunt when hungry, sleep when not, for
hunger always returns."

This afternoon, faithful to his creed, the wolf
drowsed in the shade of a crab-apple tree whose fruits had already been
harvested to make jelly. The garden staff detoured widely to avoid him.
Consequently, Firekeeper and the old woman were alone in this
particular garden.

Overhead, Elation circled easily above the neat
square and rectangular plots, occasionally stooping upon some luckless
rodent. The first few times the huge bird had plummeted from the sky,
she had scared the wits out of the gardening staff. Now that they had
grown accustomed to her, they were rather delighted in having a
creature usually reserved for noble sport take part in their routine.
They had nicknamed her
"Garden Cat"—an indignity the falcon accepted with her usual arrogant grace.

Firekeeper heard a shrill call from above.

"Company coming! Elise and Doc! They'll be upon you in a moment."

Firekeeper sniffed the breeze, but it was blowing
from the wrong direction. Even if it had not been, she doubted she
would smell anything but the heavy scents of dirt, manure, bruised
leaves, fresh vegetables, and hot sunlight.

Carrot in her hand, she rose, turning to face the gate in the stone wall. She greeted her friends as they passed through:

"Elise, Doc," she said with measured solemnity. "What brings you here?"

"Our feet," Jared replied with equal formality. "What else?"

Firekeeper grinned then. "I've been picking . . ."

"Pulling," interrupted Holly, who, like the rest of
those Firekeeper named as friends, believed it was her job to correct
the wolfling's speech at every turn.

"Pulling," Firekeeper repeated obediently, "carrots.
For the root cellar, for the castle, for the winter. Also for the
kitchen today and so that the carrots still in the ground can grow
wider."

She shook her head, still amazed by the varied
wonders of gardening. Elise broke into a broad smile that Firekeeper
far preferred to the strained and weary look that had been on Lady
Archer's face when she had entered the garden.

"Will you introduce me to your friend?" Elise asked,
this both a real request and a subtle prompt for Firekeeper to practice
her social graces.

Firekeeper nodded, straightened, and gestured with
the carrot. Unconsciously, she adopted the mannerisms of Steward
Silver, a woman she quietly admired for her ability to always know the
right way through the tangled maze of human social customs.

"Lady Elise . . ." She paused, glanced at Elise. "Or should I say Lady Archer?"

"Lady Archer is best if you want someone to know my
social
connections," Elise explained. "Lady Elise if you think they already
know them, since you know that I prefer to be called simply Elise."

Firekeeper still felt uncertain, a state of mind not
helped by Blind Seer's quiet sniggering from under the crab-apple tree.
The wolf would not admit that he, too, found human customs fascinating,
secure that
he
at least would never be forced to use them. Doc came to her rescue:

"In such circumstances, Firekeeper, I have found that it is always better to err on the side of greater formality."

Elise nodded. "True."