“Is that so?” Magret eyed Amon with new hostility.
“It’s so,” Amon said, with that direct Byrne look that could be so convincing. “But it was on Lord Demonai’s orders. He’ll be here soon.”
“Well,” Magret said grudgingly, “she can’t go back to the party if she’s sick, can she?”
Amon shook his head solemnly. “No, doesn’t seem wise.”
Raisa hated both of them.
“Come,” Magret said, pulling her toward the bed chamber. “Let’s get you into your bath, dearie.” When Amon made as if to follow, Magret straight-armed him. “You sit here by the fire, Corporal Byrne.”
“Lord Demonai told me to keep a close eye on her until he came,” Amon said stubbornly. “She’s not herself.”
Magret scowled at him. “Where’s she going to get off to, with you out here by the door?” she said.
“I gave my word,” Amon said, and Raisa knew he was thinking of the passage that led from the closet to the garden. He wasn’t about to give her the chance to escape that way. Raisa cursed the day she’d shared that secret with him.
Amon displayed the usual Byrne boneheadedness, and in the end, Magret put up a screen around Raisa’s tub, and Amon plunked himself down in a chair next to the window. It seemed strange to know he was just on the other side of the screen when she had no clothes on.
Once she was pronounced clean, Magret helped her into her nightgown, and Raisa emerged from behind the screen to find Amon, his shirt off, wet hair sticking up, scrubbing down using a basin and pitcher. His broad shoulders and muscular arms shone in the firelight. This image reverberated with memories of Micah Bayar’s planed face and dark eyes until Raisa thought she might be sick again.
“Sweet martyred lady!” Magret said, actually blushing and closing her eyes to shut out the view, then opening them again and peeking back at Amon. “Come, Your Highness, let’s get you into bed.”
Raisa had just climbed under the covers when there was a knock at the outer door. Magret gave Amon the evil eye of warning and went to answer.
It was her father, Averill, and her grandmother, Elena, both still in their clan ceremonial robes from Micah’s party. Elena carried a beaded remedy bag.
“Thank you for your help,” Elena said to Magret, and somehow maneuvered the nurse out the door. Then she crossed to Raisa’s bedside.
Smiling down at Raisa, she laid her palm on her forehead. “Briar Rose, granddaughter, how is it with you?”
“I don’t know, Elena Cennestre,” Raisa said with spirit. “I may be sick, but everyone around me is crazy.” She glared at her father and Amon Byrne, who must have found a shirt somewhere, because he was covered up now.
Elena laughed, slapping her thigh, and Raisa immediately felt better. Elena would sort everyone out.
“Let’s see this mark of yours,” Elena said, untying the string at the neck of Raisa’s gown. She spread the fabric and studied the mark at the base of Raisa’s neck. There were blisters now, centered around an area of tender pink skin.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“No. I didn’t even know it was there,” Raisa admitted. “I must have reacted to the pendant.”
“So it seems.” Elena studied the wound some more, and then fished in her bag, producing a stone jar. “It doesn’t seem to have gone too deep,” she said. “I’m not the healer Willo is, but I have some skill.” She yanked out the stopper and held out a jar of light green ointment. “It’s rowan, and some other herbs. With your permission?”
“All right,” Raisa said warily.
Elena dipped her fingers into the ointment and smeared it over the blisters on Raisa’s neck. It smelled like pine and fresh air and seemed to cool her entire body. She settled back into her pillows, releasing a long breath. Her head stopped spinning. Where she had been feverish and agitated, now she felt calm and focused. Her mind slowly cleared of doubt and confusion and desire, like sediment settling from a mountain lake.
“Thank you, Mother Elena,” she whispered. “That’s much better.”
Elena recorked the jar and dropped it into her remedy bag. “Your father said you were with the wizard Micah Bayar. What happened between you?”
Raisa wasn’t certain exactly what her grandmother was asking. “Well, we danced. And…and kissed.”
“Nothing else?” Elena’s eyes were fixed on her face.
Raisa’s face burned with embarrassment. This was not the sort of conversation she wanted to have with her grandmother. Much less the Matriarch of Demonai Camp. And not with Amon Byrne watching. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed.
“That’s pretty much it,” she said bluntly.
Elena and Averill exchanged meaningful glances.
“So I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Raisa said. “If I want to dance with Micah Bayar, I will. He’s…he’s a good dancer,” she finished lamely. “And charming.”
Amon Byrne rolled his eyes, and Raisa resisted the urge to stick out her tongue at him.
“The necklace the Bayars gave you was a seduction amulet, Raisa,” Averill said. “In common use before the Breaking, but forbidden these days. It works with the ring young Bayar was wearing to create a powerful attraction in both parties.”
You finally wore it, Raisa, Micah had said, in his intense fashion. I was afraid perhaps you didn’t like it.
“But why would he use it on me?” Raisa asked. “It does him no good.” There was a plague of throat clearing, and her face went hot again. “I mean, aside from—you know. Whatever he said at the party, he knows we can’t marry. He should be using it on Princess Marina or someone like that.”
As soon as she said it, she realized he wouldn’t need it for that purpose either. Political marriages were what they were, arranged by others to create alliances and build power. Seduction had nothing to do with it. And even if it did, Raisa had no doubt Micah Bayar would do quite well on his own.
“That’s the question, isn’t it,” Averill said, looking grave. “Why would he use it on you?”
I know somewhere we can go, Micah had said. And yet…
“I don’t think he knew what it was,” Raisa said. “I think the whole thing took him by surprise.”
“Raisa,” her father began, looking troubled, “I know you like to think the best of people—”
Raisa put up her hand. “Just stop. I do not like to think the best of people. In fact, I often think the worst. Especially about Micah Bayar. But he looked completely blindsided when you ripped off my necklace and threw it at him. I think he had no clue there was a connection between his ring and my necklace. He thought he was charming me all on his own.”
Amon spoke for the first time. “Let me get this straight. You think it was a coincidence that you were both wearing jinxpieces?” He raised that annoying eyebrow.
“If it wasn’t him, someone else arranged it,” Averill said. “The question is, why. And if they have this weapon, what else do they have? And where are they keeping it?”
“Where’s the ring I gave you?” Elena asked abruptly. “I told you to keep it on.”
Raisa frowned, remembering. “Oh. I was going to wear it, but Mother suggested I wear the emerald necklace instead.”
They all stared at her.
“What?” Raisa asked irritably. “You think my mother the queen is involved in a conspiracy against her own daughter? No. I’m sure it was a matter of fashion, not politics.”
“Where is the ring now?” Elena asked.
Raisa struggled to remember. “It’s on my dressing table.” She waved vaguely toward the sitting room.
“I’ll fetch it,” Amon said, and bolted through the doorway as if glad to have a job to do. He returned moments later with the ring clutched in his large fist. He handed it to Raisa.
She hung it around her neck again. The ring felt cold against her heated skin.
“Micah questioned why he shouldn’t be allowed to marry you,” Averill reminded her. “He said he planne
d to continue to court you.”
“Kiss me,” Raisa said. “He said he liked kissing me and planned to keep it up.”
“What about you?” Elena asked. “Do you plan to keep it up?”
Raisa was suddenly tired of the interrogation, tired of being made to feel foolish when she was doing the best she could. Tired.
“I don’t know,” she said, yawning. “I might.”
As she fell asleep, her last recollection was Averill, Elena, and Amon Byrne, their heads together, whispering. No doubt planning a conspiracy of their own.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ON THE BORDERLAND
It wasn’t like Han expected to be the center of attention at Marisa Pines. But he wasn’t used to being overlooked entirely, and that was the way it seemed. The renaming ceremony was bearing down on them—it was only a week away now. Bird spent long hours of every day in seclusion in the women’s temple, meditating on her future. Han tried sneaking in for a visit once, figuring she would welcome the distraction, since she already knew what she wanted to be, after all. He’d had hopes they’d get back to kissing. And move on from there.
He got rudely evicted for his pains.
Even when Bird wasn’t meditating, she was consumed in plans for her name day. She had no time for hunting, for fishing, for swimming in the Dyrnnewater or Old Woman Creek. She didn’t want to hike up Hanalea to camp by the lake or take in the view from the top.
Like anything forbidden, she became fascinating to Han. When she walked through the camp in her summer skirts, he couldn’t help noticing the sway of her hips, her rare brilliant smile against her dusky skin. Even often overlooked parts, like elbows and knees, seemed appealing.
But he was relegated to watching from a distance.
Dancer was different, but worse, in a way. He’d always been slender and fine-boned, but now he looked hollow-cheeked, almost cadaverous. Was he ill? Or was the anger he carried around burning away his flesh?
Whatever grievance lay between him and his mother seemed to have deepened. Han was staying with Willo and Dancer in the Matriarch Lodge. They scarcely spoke to each other in public, and within the lodge the tension was oppressive. Sometimes they welcomed his presence, as if it was an excuse not to deal with each other. Other times he would walk in on conversations that collapsed into stony silence. Sometimes he slept elsewhere just to avoid feeling like an interloper.
Willo also spent hours in meetings with the elders of the clan. A delegation came from Demonai, on the eastern slopes, and all of the elders closed themselves up in the temple for hours.
A dozen Demonai warriors accompanied the visitors, and Han found excuses to pass by their camp. They were proud, elite, mysterious—the stuff of legends that dated from before the Breaking, to the wars between the wizards and the clans.
In the old days, it was said that the Demonai put a braid in their hair for every wizard killed. Many of them still wore braids studded with beads, and some said killing a wizard and taking his amulet was still the price of admission to their ranks.
It’s like any gang, Han thought. You have to show what you’re made of to get in.
The Demonai warriors rode the best horses and carried the most powerful enchanted clan-made weapons. They wore the Demonai symbol around their necks—an eye radiating flames. It was said they floated over the ground, leaving no trace of their passing. Han often saw Bird sitting at their fires, eating from their common pot, raptly listening to what they had to say. Having little to say herself for once.
Han couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy. More than a twinge—a bone-deep ache. Truth be told, he felt left out. For the nobility in the city, name day parties proclaimed them of age and eligible for marriage. Some of them came into their inheritances then. Wizards received their amulets and left for the academy at Oden’s Ford to explore the mysteries of their calling.
Among the clans, the renaming ceremony admitted the young to full membership in the lodge, launched their life’s work, welcomed them to the temples, and often began the dance of courtship.
Han was in a kind of no-man’s-land of existence. His sixteenth birthday had come and gone months ago, scarcely noticed. Mam had brought home a honey cake from the bakery on the corner and had reminded him that he needed to find a real job. No ceremony marked Han’s transition from lytling to grown-up. He just oozed over the borderlands, like any creature close to the ground.
So Han was envious, yet Dancer seemed miserable. Was he having trouble choosing a vocation? Was Willo pressuring him into something he didn’t want?
He tried to talk to Dancer about it, one day when they were fishing. At least Dancer would fish with him. In fact, he seemed eager to be out on the mountain and away from camp. He’d seize any excuse to do so.
“So,” Han said, flicking the tip of his pole so his fly lighted on the water, “Digging Bird barely talks to me. She always has her nose in the air.”
Dancer grunted. “She’ll talk to you, don’t worry. After the ceremony.” Dancer set down his pole and lay back on the riverbank, closing his eyes. His eyelids looked like great bruises in his unusually pale face.
“If…if I had to choose, I don’t know what I’d be,” Han said, feeling like he was rattling on against Dancer’s silence. “I’ve had lots of vocations already.”
“A vocation is different from a job,” Dancer muttered. “Trust me.”
“How is it different?” Han asked, encouraged by Dancer’s response.
“A vocation is not something you slap on, like a coat of paint, and change whenever you want. A vocation is built into you. You have no choice. If you try to do something else, you fail.” This last was said with deep bitterness.
Han nodded. Sometimes it seemed like he’d never escape his past life as streetlord of Ragmarket. If you were good at something, if you made a name, that something stuck to you, haunting you all of your days.
He fingered the silver cuffs around his wrists. They seemed to symbolize his lack of options. If he could just get them off, he might turn into someone else. At least he wouldn’t be so easily recognized.
“I guess it’s important to figure out what it is you were meant to do,” Han said. “What would you do, if you could choose anything?”
Dancer opened his eyes, squinting against the shafts of sunlight leaking through the trees. “I always thought I’d like to apprentice with a Demonai goldsmith, like Elena, and learn to make jewelry, amulets, and magical pieces.”
Dancer had always gravitated toward the gold and silversmith tables at the markets.
“Have you asked her?” Han asked.
Dancer closed his eyes. “She won’t take me on.”
That was strange. Elena knew Dancer, would know him to be a hard worker, and honest. “Well…can your vocation change? Are you locked in? Do you have to do the same thing all your life?
“It depends,” Dancer said. “Some of us have no choice at all.” He swiped at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Then he stood and walked away, into the woods, leaving all his fishing gear behind.
A week after his arrival at Marisa Pines, Han decided to visit Lucius Frowsley’s place. He had to let him know he’d no longer be able to deliver his product to Fellsmarch. He hoped Lucius would give him some other kind of job, something he could do without going to town, but he knew that was unlikely.
He descended using the Spirit Trail, then cut away on the path leading to Lucius’s place.
The cabin looked deserted as usual, no smoke curling from the chimney. But Lucius wasn’t fishing on the creek bank, or tending his still on the hillside. In fact, the fire under the boiler had gone out and the brick liner was cold. That never happened. Lucius might be slow, but he was consistent.
Han piled wood under the boiler and replenished the wash, but didn’t light it, and left the distillate where it was.
Perplexed, he walked back to Lucius’s cabin, which was the last place he’d expect to find him on a sunny spring day. He could leave a not
e, but that’d do no good to a blind man. He had a last bit of money he owed Lucius, but he hated to leave it in the cabin when the old man wasn’t there.
He knocked loudly. There followed a spatter of barking, and then Dog’s solid body hit the door.
He must be here, Han thought. Lucius and Dog were always together.
“Hey, Dog,” he said, pushing open the cabin door. Dog was all over him, slapping his face with his long wet tongue, all in a dog frenzy of joy. “Where’s Lucius?” Han asked, feeling a twinge of worry.
His eyes adjusted to the dim light, and then he saw movement on the bed in the corner. “Lucius?”
There were no lamps, of course, but Han ripped the curtains open to admit some light into the room. The old man was sitting on his bed, curled up against the wall, cradling a bottle, sick or drunk or something.
Han glanced around the cabin. Dog’s water dish was empty, and his food dish too.
“Lucius? What’s the matter with you?”
“Who is it?” the old man quavered. Then his voice changed, grew shrill and defiant. “Cowards. Have you come for me too?”
“It’s me. Han,” Han said, hesitating in the doorway. “Don’t you know me?”
Lucius slung his arm over his face as if he could hide behind it. “Go away. I know the boy’s dead. I a’ready heard, so don’t try to fool me. You’ve got what you wanted, so leave me alone.”
Han crossed to Lucius and patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. The old man flinched away, clutching his bottle like a lifeline.
“What are you talking about? I’m not dead. You’re talking crazy.”
The old man opened his clouded eyes. “You don’t have it, do you? The jinxpiece. The boy hid it good, did he?” Lucius cackled. “Well, I don’t have it, if that’s what you’re after. Do your worst. You can torture me, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”
“Just stop it, Lucius,” Han said, losing patience. “I’m going to get you something to eat.”
If Lucius hadn’t fed Dog, chances were he hadn’t fed himself either. Han went out to the pump in the yard and filled a bucket with water. He brought it in and filled Dog’s water dish and dipped some into a cup for Lucius.