Through Wolf's Eyes (50 page)

"Come to chaperon us, Elise?" Derian asked, rising
politely to his feet in greeting. He'd been sitting to one side mending
a small tear in the hem of the gown Firekeeper was to wear tonight.

"Everyone in camp has heard of your valor last night,
Derian," she said lightly. "I doubt that such a hero would molest a
young girl."

Firekeeper snorted through her nose, but Derian, more skilled than she in hearing the nuances of human intonation, frowned.

"Is something wrong, my lady?"

"Yes. No. I . . ."

Firekeeper dropped the brush and crossed to Elise.
The other woman was clearly in pain, her expressive blue eyes widening
in surprise as her hand rose to touch her lips.

Elise began again. "I came to thank you both for
saving my cousin. Sapphire can be both ambitious and obnoxious, but she
is brave and honest as well."

"That," Firekeeper said with certainty, "is not just what you want to say."

"No," Elise agreed, licking her lips nervously. "But
I don't think I should try to say anything more now. Tell me, are you
going to the reception tonight?"

"Am," Firekeeper agreed, not satisfied with this
evasion, but willing to accept it for now. "Earl Kestrel requests I do
the honor of accompanying him to reception for the diplomatic parties.
I am not certain I understand what this is but he asks and it is a
small enough thing."

Derian brought forward a campstool and offered it to
Elise. Firekeeper could see that he, too, was unhappy with Elise's
sudden change of the subject. Unlike Firekeeper, however, he was too
aware of his social position to press a noble lady into confidences.

"Sit for a bit, Lady," Derian said, his use of her
title twice in such a short time underscoring his unease. "Even better,
ask Ninette to join us and you both can advise me in how
to dress Firekeeper's hair. It's getting long enough now that it escapes my skill."

Firekeeper expected Elise to refuse, but Elise suddenly smiled.

"Would it be too much trouble for Earl Kestrel if I
brought all my dressing here? My father is away with his troops and my
tent seems so lonely."

"She is afraid,"
Blind Seer growled from where he had been napping outside the tent.
"Her scent is sour with fear."

Before Derian could vacillate, Firekeeper leapt in.

"Yes. Tell Ninette to bring. Valet can help if she needs."

Now it was Elise's turn to look uncertain, as if she
suddenly dreaded her own request, but Firekeeper left her no room to
change her mind.

Hurrying outside, she found Ninette huddled by the
cook fire as if the day were quite chill. Valet was filling her teacup.
Firekeeper caught the scent of skullcap, wood betony, lavender and
lemon balm. She cocked an eyebrow, knowing this concoction was used to
soothe a troubled mind. Whatever had happened to Elise had affected her
maid as well.

"Valet," Firekeeper said, "please if you have time,
go to Lady Elise's big tent—pavilion—and bring her gown and other
things for tonight's reception. She and Ninette are to dine with us
this evening so they can tell Derian what to do with my hair. They will
go straight from here to meet Baron Archer for the reception."

Imperturbable, Valet nodded. "Very good, Lady Firekeeper. I am certain that Earl Kestrel would approve."

"I wonder,"
Blind Seer commented,
"what nose he uses to smell fear, for he smells it as surely as do I."

"And I,"
Firekeeper agreed.

She returned to the pavilion and her interrupted foot
scrubbing, but no matter how subtly she and Derian phrased their
questions, Elise would say nothing more about what was evidently
troubling her. Ninette's only reply was to tremble so violently that
she could hardly handle her combs and cosmetics.

"I am learning to lie,"
Firekeeper said to Blind Seer,
"for
otherwise how could I refuse to say what I think when I see these two so bravely afraid?"

"You are,"
the wolf said,
"becoming
human. Tonight while you are at this reception—where I think I would be
less than welcome—I shall cast about. Perhaps I can learn where she
went, who she saw."

"So many people here, so many to blur the scent,"
Fire-keeper said doubtfully.

"I can but try."

I
F EARL KESTREL WAS RELIEVED
when Firekeeper informed him that Blind Seer would not be attending the
reception, he was too well-mannered to say so. Firekeeper didn't think
she needed to tell him that Elation would be on guard, tracking them
from the air and then watching from some perch high above the crowd.

All three of the wild creatures had their wind up,
Elise's fear touching nerves honed to hear warning in crow call or
squirrel scolding. Never mind that most of the time the warnings were
against
them
—still, they had learned to heed and to take care. What frightened one so deeply might mean danger to all.

Baron Archer came to meet his daughter at the Kestrel
camp, adding his considerable social weight to an escort already heavy
with earl and knight, for Jared Surcliffe was also of their company.
Tonight bodyguards and caretakers were left behind, an agreement that
pleased the rival powers only slightly less than the alternative.
Knowing that Derian was deeply concerned, Firekeeper found a moment to
comfort him.

"Don't worry, Fox Hair," she said. "I am to be the perfect lady, just like Elise. Look, I have even put my Fang here—"

She hiked up her skirt to show the sheath strapped to her right thigh.

"—not around my waist so the guard will not be frightened."

Derian laughed and almost managed not to blush. "You
are a little savage," he said affectionately. "Behave. Remember, your manners reflect on me."

"Haven't I promised?" she replied, evading actually
promising. "Elation will watch from without. If I am in greater trouble
than I can handle, she will rescue me."

Derian groaned, "Great! Now I'm really relaxed."

The Toll House on Bridgeton, where the reception was
being held, was a huge building. It straddled the entirety of a bridge
so wide that its span was lined with houses and shops on either edge.
Room remained between the buildings for carts and foot traffic to pass
in two directions.

In its time, the Toll House had been fortress, shop,
and administration building. Tonight it was an unofficial palace,
flaunting the peculiar semi-independence of Hope and Good Crossing to
those who would claim the towns as their own, while forcing
acknowledgment of those qualities in the very use of the twinned cities
for this meeting.

Walls of polished river rock were adorned with pitch
torches, their yellow-orange light sputtering slightly in the gusts of
river wind. The paired arches at the base of the structure, each wide
enough to admit a heavily laden cart, glowed like the mouths of some
sea demon from Old World legend. The flags and pennants flying from the
poles on the roof high above were invisible except as snapping black
forms that blocked the wheeling constellations.

The Toll House was actually two buildings standing
back to back, a wide neutral zone between them. This courtyard was
where the reception was being held tonight. For light, chandeliers the
size of wagon wheels had been slung from great cables strung between
the two buildings and more torches were set on the walls. In this
light, the guests could admire paving stones scrubbed as clean as the
deck of a ship and adorned with thick carpets.

Long tables bent slightly beneath the weight of the
food and drink spread upon them. Light music performed by scattered
musicians filtered its way between conversations, creating an illusion
of privacy.

Here, tense beneath her superficial composure, Firekeeper witnessed the first meeting of King Tedric of Hawk Haven
with
his nephew, Duke Allister Seagleam of Bright Bay. She had been long
enough among humans by now to see them with something closer to their
own eyes.

From that newly expanded perspective, crowned in
silver set with rubies and gowned in regal scarlet trimmed in white,
the elderly monarch looked quite august—no longer merely an old man as
Firekeeper had first seen him. Yet even in the torchlight her wolf's
eyes could see that the king's lips were faintly blue and his fingers,
when he had extended them earlier for her to kiss, had been cold as ice.

Beside his uncle, Allister Seagleam cut something
less of a impressive figure. His greying blond hair, though neatly tied
back, showed a tendency to escape its bounds, framing his features with
wisps of straw. Nor did the sea green and gold he wore suit him, making
him rather sallow. In the artificial light, Allister squinted,
reminding Firekeeper a bit of bookish Lord Aksel Trueheart. Yet there
was confidence in his bearing and nothing either servile or groveling
in his bow.

"Uncle Tedric," he said, and his voice carried in the
sudden hush spreading through the courtyard. "I am honored to have the
privilege of finally meeting you."

King Tedric did not bow in return, but opened his arms.

"You have the look of my sister about you, Allister. Something in the shape of your mouth, I think. Her hair, too, was light."

Accepting the kinsman's embrace with dignified grace that did not overstep the bounds of familiarity, Allister replied:

"No one has told me of that resemblance before and I
am pleased to learn of it. May I present my wife, Pearl Oyster, and our
children?"

While Allister was introducing a lady as plump and
pale as the full moon and several children who resembled both of their
parents to varying degrees, Firekeeper's attention wandered. Everyone
else was watching the proceedings with great interest. Firekeeper noted
that a fierce look, almost a hunger, crossed Lady Zorana's face as
Allister presented his sons.

Zorana looks as if she will eat one of them, bones and all!
Firekeeper mused silently.
Yet from what I have been told, she will be lucky to get near the plate.

With skill that did not quite reject the rest of the
company, King Tedric drew Allister and his family aside. From what
Firekeeper could overhear, all they were discussing were family
matters, including the daily life of Princess Caryl in Bright Bay. As
the wolf-woman drifted restlessly about the courtyard, accepting
food—but never drink—from the footmen who circulated with trays, she
was amused to learn that almost everyone else thought that high matters
of state were being settled in that private gathering.

As she walked around the courtyard, Firekeeper was
astonished to discover that humans come in different colors. Until this
point, she had thought they were all basically like herself: light skin
shading into reddish brown with exposure to the sun, hair mostly in
brownish hues though occasionally lighter or redder. Here in the
courtyard, apparently as representatives of some of the interested
countries she had only known by name, were people with skin the
yellowed shade of grass in the winter and hair as fine as silk and
black as a raven's wing. Their eyes were shaped differently, too,
slanting somehow.

There were also people so fair that they made her
look dark, their skin a rosy pink flushing red from sun or wind. These
people had hair so light that it almost glowed. Their eyes were very
round, so that Firekeeper felt her own must seem heavy-lidded. These
round eyes shouted with blue or green beneath brows so pale that they
seemed a dream of a shape. These people were large, though trim about
the waist and hip, where the Winter Grass people were small and
delicate.

Finally, just three or five among the many, there
were people who in coloring were quite like those of Hawk Haven or
Bright Bay, but their attire was so strange that they seemed the most
alien of all. Men and women alike shaved the front of their heads and
grew the hair long behind. The exposed skin was colored in elaborate
patterns that extended over their faces. They wore long, straight robes
embroidered with
complicated patterns in many colors and their shoes curled at the toes.

Viewing the contrasting humanity pleased Firekeeper.
She had thought that humans might be like deer or rabbits, limited in
their coats and forms. Learning that they were more like wolves—who
could be any color from snow white to mingled shades of grey or brown
to night black, who could have eyes the color of pine tree tears or
maple leaves in autumn or a piece of the summer sky—was quite a relief.
Deep inside, Firekeeper felt that homogeneity was for prey animals, not
predators.

When viewing the passing scene palled, Firekeeper
sought her companions. Earl Kestrel was deep in conversation with some
military counterpart from Allister Seagleam's escort: one of the Winter
Grass men, someone he had apparently met before on the field of battle.
Their verbal sparring, which barely kept the blade in the sheath,
amused Firekeeper for a time, but eventually became filled with
references to events far beyond her ken.

Doc was part of a group that included Lady Elise, Jet
Shield, and several representatives from the guilds in Hope and Good
Crossing. Their discussion bored Firekeeper almost immediately, largely
surpassing her command of the language. When everyone burst into
laughter for the third time at some witty comment that had not seemed
at all funny to her, Firekeeper gave up in disgust.

Her vague hope that there might be dancing to liven
the evening gradually dying, Firekeeper moved to one side of the span
to where she could watch the water flowing beneath the bridge. The
torches reflected in the black water made it seem as if the stars
themselves had descended to eavesdrop on these monumental human affairs.

Seeing her alone, the falcon Elation flew down from
one of the Toll House towers to perch on a jutting abutment below the
line of sight of the party.