Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart (37 page)

But this time
, Allister thought,
Shad is going from us not merely into unfamiliar waters, but into a way of life none of us can imagine. Now he must learn to reign
—
not simply to command
—
and he must learn to be a married man, not simply a promising youth. I wonder if I'm feeling the first touch of old age's frost
.

Allister laughed at the idea. In truth, he had rarely felt more alive or more anticipation for what the future would bring. The trip to Hawk Haven had solidified his relations with some of those members of his court about whom he had felt uncertain. In an unfamiliar place, surrounded by people for whom strange customs and accents were familiar, the guests from Bright Bay had formed a tenuous bond that their king looked forward to twisting into a stronger rope.

Allister was not so naive as to think that the trip had been enough to win over those who were inclined to be his enemies—not in the least—but he was certain that he had progressed in forming alliances with those whose feelings were more neutral.

Reports from the two regents he had left governing in his stead at the capital were promising. Grand Duchess Seastar was taking advantage of his absence to promote her sons, but not to the point of encouraging treason. Mostly she seemed interested in having Culver made an admiral and Dillon being promoted to some important but not too onerous position at court.

Earle Oyster, who had taken charge over investigating the assassination attempt in the absence of both the king and Whyte Steel, reported (in cipher!) that she had run into nothing but dead ends. She apologized to her brother-in-law for her failure and begged his permission to continue. As of yet, Opulence Rosen was not agitating to return home to Waterland and she still hoped to learn something from him or his correspondence.

Let her keep trying
, Allister thought.
There is nothing to be lost by appearing firm, but I suspect that the Opulence knows no more than anyone else and that no one will be foolish enough to write anything incriminating
.

Really, given that no one irreplaceable had been killed and that Shad and Sapphire had become heroes in the eyes of the public, Allister could almost be grateful to whoever had attempted the assassination. It didn't hurt to have one's heirs popular with those who would be ruled by them. Not only did their popularity solidify the future, but it strengthened the present reign as well—at least until the heirs apparent grew ambitious for the throne. Shad and Sapphire would have plenty to keep them busy, so that they should not be in a hurry for more responsibility.

King Allister chuckled softly to himself, thinking that had not there been so much blood and the injuries to both Shad and Sapphire
and
the slain guards, his political adversaries might have thought the entire thing a put-up job on the part of the king. All the tales being told and ballads being sung would nicely keep both Shad and Sapphire vivid in the public imagination, even when their duties carried them off into Hawk Haven.

Some of the king's cheery mood left him as he thought of the guards who had died, those men in their shining dress armor, so proud to have been chosen to attend upon the royal family. Death in the line of duty had been common enough of late—King Allister's War had seen to that—but even so the king should invent some posthumous award to recognize this particular sacrifice on this unusual battlefield.

Such an award would provide incentive to those guards who—as they had every day since the assassination attempt—continued to put themselves between their king and possible disaster. Since Allister had refused to be locked in a carriage, feeling that this would simply mean that their undeclared enemy had won a smaller victory, the guards had a difficult task indeed. Still, a king who hid in fear soon became no king at all.

Allister nudged Hot Toddy with his heels and the sorrel trotted up toward the middle of the line, where Queen Pearl rode in a carriage with her ladies. On the way, he passed Nydia Trueheart—now her family's heir apparent—and Prince Tavis riding side by side, engrossed in a competition to discover who could recite from memory more lines out of the canon of some New Kelvinese poet.

The rhythmic syllables—never mind that they were in a language Allister didn't understand—provided a completely nonmartial counterpoint to the thudding of horse hooves on the dirt road and jingling of harness leathers.

Life seemed very pleasant indeed. Even the weather changing to rain the next day, transforming the roads to mud couldn't alter Allister's sense of deep contentment. The weddings were over, the coronation concluded. Now he could get onto challenges he understood without ceremony to fetter his energy.

Swinging down from the saddle, Allister hummed softly as he helped shove yet another wagon out of a patch of sticky mud. Discovering Tavis behind him, placing his own shoulder against the wagon's side while still reciting poetry to a laughing Nydia, only added to the music in the king's heart.

O
n the day following King Allister's departure, in those dusky moments that are neither evening nor yet night, that time when stars can be seen but the sky itself is bluish rather than black, a curious thing might have been glimpsed in the semi-wild gardens back of Eagle's Nest Castle.

A figure, slim and graceful, so soundless that it might have been taken for a shadow had there been anything present to cast such a shadow, mounted the wall that separated the wilder gardens from the exquisitely tended ones within.

In the days when Eagle's Nest had been merely the name for a castle, rather than that of the town sprawled about the castle's feet, the dwellers in the castle had claimed for themselves not only the gardens within the walls, but the space surrounding those walls.

As the castle itself stood on a high bluff overlooking the Flin River, and as the owners of the castle were both martial and magical in nature, no one felt inclined to protest. Even years later, when the castle had been captured by she who would become known as Queen Zorana the Great, the claim on the surrounding lands had been maintained.

In more recent years, indeed, since the reign of King Tedric (long though that had been), the city had grown up close to the eastern walls of the castle. A wide, open field was still maintained there, but it was used often as a gathering place when the king addressed his people or as an arena for public spectacles such as circuses, tilting matches, and important executions.

The area west of the castle, however—the high ground along the bluff—had remained in the keeping of the castle. No herds or flocks were grazed there, excepting a few dairy cows and goats kept for the convenience of the castle's occupants. No crops were grown there—even the castle's kitchen gardens were within the walls.

Sometimes small parties hunted in this wilder zone—mostly with hawks, for larger game found its way onto the bluff only rarely now that the surrounding regions were so well farmed and tended. Mostly it was left to itself but for occasional inspections by intelligent and sharp-eyed soldiers who came to cut back trees that might be felled to bridge the ravines that separated the bluff from the lower lands.

Yet it was from this wild garden that the shadowy figure emerged. Nor did the stone wall—quite high and topped with iron spikes—give it pause. It slipped between the spikes and dropped lightly to the ground. Moments later, had any been listening, they would have heard the thunk of a bolt being shot back, a faint squeak as the hinges of a little-used gate swung open.

Now a second shadow, more massy than the first but lower to the ground, joined the first. After it had passed in, the gate was closed and, if ears could be believed, the bolt slid home.

The shadows were lost in the gathering darkness.

F
irekeeper had been puzzled about where to go when she returned to Eagle's Nest—for Eagle's Nest was where she hoped to find friends to help her in the duty imposed on her by the Royal Beasts.

Wolf-like, she wanted the support of a pack, but that was not her only reason for coming here first rather than hurrying down to the warehouse in Port Haven where the enchanted objects might still be found. Firekeeper knew too well her weakness regarding human ways and means. If she was to be better than a raccoon or fox at this theft, she needed human knowledge.

Although she had lived in Eagle's Nest for some time, Firekeeper knew little of the city. At King Tedric's request, she had resided at the castle and had been glad enough for the invitation to do so. The city contained more humans than her mind had been prepared to accept. In the castle's grounds, amid its smaller population, she could adjust to the idea that she was not the only human on the earth.

So to the castle she had returned, making her way with ease across ravines that would have barred armies—partly because no one sought to actively prevent her, partly because she could find footholds and handholds where most could not.

Blind Seer had experienced some difficulty in the climb, but Firekeeper had anticipated this. A farmhouse had provided a coil of light but strong rope. Now understanding something of human customs of payment, Firekeeper had left a trio of freshly killed rabbits in its stead. This rope, knotted into a rough harness, had provided the means for hauling the wolf across the deepest divides.

But Blind Seer, too, had learned something in his journeys. Climbing up the Barren River Canyon had given him perfect skill in judging just how far he might jump, just how high he could leap. Thus, they only needed to resort to the harness a few times.

Once within the castle grounds, Firekeeper made not for the towering fortress in which the king resided, but for the low-walled kitchen gardens. As these walls were meant mostly to hide the mundane herb and vegetable gardens from the sight of those who would walk among the roses or through the intricate knot gardens, their gates were not locked.

Firekeeper knew the kitchen gardens well—having frequented them the summer before King Allister's War—and now she made her way through the mazes of walls and buildings to where a small cottage nestled among gnarled fruit trees. These were bare now, picked clean of even the withered leavings of the harvest, but Firekeeper had seen them bent beneath their bounty and welcomed them like old friends.

Most of the cottage's windows were shuttered against the cold, but a small one near the front door remained open, though curtains were drawn against the glass within. Through this translucent aperture, Firekeeper glimpsed the warm reddish light of a fire not yet banked to coals.

She lifted the knocker—a clever thing shaped like a hummingbird nestled in a flower—and rapped several times, enjoying the sound as the bird fell against the wide-spread petals of the bronze blossom.

Her sharp hearing caught the sound of a chair being pushed back from a table, the sound of footsteps assisted by a cane. Then she saw the curtain pushed back from the window as the occupant sought to see who waited without. Some bit of mischief made her stand away from the window, but the door was opened nonetheless and a strong though aged voice began:

"Robyn! How many times have I told you…"

The remonstrance, delivered with firmness but not anger, cut off in midphrase. The cottage's occupant, a rather bent woman with a face like a withered apple haloed in wispy white hair, said instead:

"Dan… Firekeeper! Out in the cold and snow, and with bare feet and head! Come in, child, and warm yourself by the fire."

Firekeeper obeyed, for though there had been little snow since she left the mountains, the stone flags of the path were like ice. The air temperature without was not unbearable for one who had been climbing walls and the like, but it was brisk when one stopped.

Blind Seer paused at the threshold as if uncertain that the invitation included him, but the old woman waved him in as well.

"Come in, come in!" she said to the wolf, glancing up and around and into the tree branches, "and the falcon, too, if she's with you."

"Elation is not," Firekeeper said. "She has gone to look about, maybe for Derian."

"She'll find him at his parents' house, I believe," the old woman said, leading them into the cottage's central room and clearing her dinner dishes from a table by the fire as she continued, "Though not for much longer. Derian takes service with Earl Kestrel this winter, teaching riding and helping assess the stables."

"You have seen him?" Firekeeper asked.

"He visited, dearie," came the reply as the old woman moved the teapot over the fire to heat, "a few days after the wedding. Timin had some small business with Prancing Steed Stables and Derian chose to run the errand."

She turned and held open her arms.

"Now give this old lady a hug and tell her where you have been and what you've been up to."

Gladly, Firekeeper hugged her. Holly Gardener had become her friend at a time when the feral woman knew few she trusted to value her for herself, rather than out of any hope of personal gain. Holly was no noblewoman; her family's place as the castle's gardeners was secure. Thus she had accepted Firekeeper simply as a girl who wanted to learn gardening.

The former head gardener for the castle, Holly had retired some years before, passing the job on to her son, Timin. Both mother and son possessed the Green Thumb, a talent that assured that these walled gardens would produce more and better fruit and flowers than could be expected under even the best of ordinary care.

From Holly, Firekeeper had learned something of the mysteries involved in growing rather than hunting one's food, and familiarity had not diminished the high respect she felt for the old woman's knowledge.

Once she had released Holly from an enthusiastic embrace, Firekeeper nestled on the hearth rug and leaned back against Blind Seer, who lay watching the flames through slit eyes.

"I been up to mountains west," she said in answer to Holly's question. As she framed the sentence, she was vaguely aware that her grammar had suffered from disuse.

"So Derian told me," Holly replied. "He said that your folks needed you."