Lark's Quest: The Complete Story (The Deeds of the Ariane), page 10
A bit of hope stirred in him for a moment. Perhaps there was a chance that the people of the Silver Isle could be led out of the tragedy in which they found themselves. Perhaps the past did not have to dictate the future. He had believed that when he was young, but had lost that faith. Was it possible to regain it?
The stableman handed Raven the reins of a fresh horse. The man carefully avoided touching Raven, for even in his anonymous garb Raven clearly was above his rank. Raven made a point of touching the man's hand as the reins were passed, looking him in the eye, and murmuring a quick "thank you" to him. Some stubborn streak in him made him insist on showing that courtesy, because it was illegal. The man seemed startled, but quickly moved away to help Lark with her horse.
For a royal, such a man was not just below him, he was untouchable, so far beneath his rank that even the man's shadow should never cross Raven's own. In his old life he had only encountered such people as slaves in the castle—and at the illegal worship services with his mother. There he had been welcomed by them, and had wondered why he was not allowed to share that welcome in public. Now he lived among them, and still he was no more help to them than he had been as a child.
When he was twelve he had watched such people die before his eyes, and something in him had reached across the divide of wealth and class to recognize the shared humanity in them all. That moment of recognition should have helped, but instead had led to the death of his own family and the destruction of the leadership of the Silver Isle. How had the search for justice led to injustice? He had never found the answer, and now he was trapped in a world he himself had created, where people lived in fear of the powerful, and he had no answers to offer them.
He looked at Lark, who was busily examining her horse's tack. She seemed to think it was so simple. Go back home and become king. But how could he possibly lead the people who had murdered his family? How could he do any better at straightening out this confused society than he had done before?
The stableman hovered about the yard solicitously, his presence clearly bothering Lark, but secretly amusing Raven. Any delay annoyed her, and he couldn't help but enjoy the annoyance of his infuriating captor. Raven made a point of encouraging the man's many offers of help, as this slowed the proceedings down considerably.
"We have a long way to travel before nightfall," Lark said pointedly.
Raven smiled. "Of course, My Lady Ariane. But I must make sure my horse's girth is fastened correctly, mustn't I?"
At that the stableman hurried to adjust the tack. "Sir, it is quite secure," he mumbled.
"You had better check again to be sure," Raven said.
Lark muttered something from the far side of the horse. Raven ignored her. This little rebellion was ultimately pointless, but it had managed to cheer him up considerably.
"My Lord," the stableman whispered to him, with a quick glance over the horse's withers to see if Lark was listening.
Raven looked down at him. The man was not much older than he, but was much shorter, and his face was seamed with worry lines.
"Yes?"
The man quickly handed him a rough-sewn sack, which, though bulky, was light as feathers. "A good price you could get in the city where you'll be going, yes?"
Raven was suddenly no longer amused. The man must be desperate to take such a risk in front of an Ariane. Raven didn't bother to open the sack. "Where did you get them?"
"They're from our own moths. We didn't steal nothing." Despite this last whispered statement, he glanced back at Lark, who did not appear to be listening.
"Then why don't you sell them yourself in the nearest market?"
The man looked at him as if he were a fool. Of course he couldn't take the silkworm cocoons to the market. For if he did, word would get out that he had bypassed the tax collectors and held back some of last fall's crop for himself. How long had he kept this meager sack hidden, hoping for a chance at a profit? "Our new son is sickly," the man said, as if it answered the question, as Raven supposed it did. What had happened to the promised reforms of the Ariane steward? The corruption of the last king was supposedly a thing of the past. How had their world come to this?
Lark suddenly rustled about on the other side of the horse, rather ostentatiously doing nothing in particular.
The stableman shuffled away to tend to the horse's headgear, leaving Raven holding the sack of precious cocoons.
He looked at the man. What could he tell him? That he had no answers? That the world was unfair, and Raven could not solve the problems that faced this country, and furthermore, that it was not his responsibility? The man needed food for his family, and the nobles who ruled this district didn't care. He couldn't fix the world, but he could fix this one thing. Raven reached across the horse's back, palm up.
"My Lady Ariane?" he said.
She looked up, saw his upturned palm.
With a grunt that he assumed signified disapproval, she opened her pack and pulled out a coin. She smiled faintly as she looked at it, then handed it to him across the horse's back.
When she dropped it in his palm he felt the faint brush of her fingertips across his skin and almost jumped. How could this girl so infuriate him and then send his senses reeling in the next breath? He quickly drew his hand back.
"Here," he said quietly to the man. He handed him the coin, and he realized why Lark had smiled. The gold coin bore the likeness of the prince of the Silver Isle.
Again the man's reaction showed he thought Raven was daft, but he quickly pocketed the gold. "It's worth every bit of it, Sir," the man whispered. "You'll be happy when you reach the city of Chÿar."
"You have no idea," Raven muttered.
•••
Lark listened to the prince's steady breathing as he lay by that night's campfire. She leaned against the trunk of a cypress tree and watched his chest rise and fall evenly in the firelight. She felt each breath he took as a tingle down her spine. She must find a way to calm her nerves. Finally his breathing slowed into sleep, and she began to relax.
As she watched him, so close and yet out of reach, she felt a longing well up inside her, something lonely and lost that she had never acknowledged in herself. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but it was impossible. It was impossible because he was royal. It was impossible because she was Ariane. She could watch him, but never have him, never earn his trust, never mean anything to him. But now, as she had all her life, she could stand at a distance and watch him breathe.
She had always watched his kind. As a child, she had watched the royal family as a slave watches the master—learning to mind-read, to appease, to stay out of the way. Were they angry today? Were they happy? Indulgent?
She didn't like to think of those days. She had been invisible then, not the same person she was now. What had Raven said he remembered about her? That she had been tiny. That was true enough. The first time he had spoken to her she had been a third the prince's age, four years to his twelve—
"Why are you staring?"
She jumped. Raven was watching her from across the fire. He sat up. "There's no need to guard me so closely. Even if Ox could get his hands on a horse, he couldn't ride it without getting himself arrested. He cannot catch up."
"I'm glad. I really don't want to kill him."
"You don't, do you?" He seemed to think that was funny. "You are an odd Ariane, I'll give you that. So why are you staring at me then? Afraid I will run away?"
She shook her head. "You said you would not. You cannot lie."
He smiled. "Perhaps that is just another myth about me. You seem to believe so many of them."
"I believe what I've seen with my own eyes, Your Grace."
He shook his head. "You think you know me. You really don't."
Lark fold her arms across her chest. "You really want to know why I was staring at you? No, I'm not changing the subject, Your Grace," she added at his confused look.
"All right," he said. "Tell me what you were thinking."
"I was remembering the first time you ever spoke to me."
That seemed to catch him off-guard. "You remember that?"
He really did not realize, did he? Perhaps that was his problem. Maybe he really didn't see why he must be king. Could it be he really didn't understand how special he was? What power he had in the minds of the people? What he was as others saw him?
Even as a small child she had understood that he was unlike anyone else. The servants worshipped him. The peasants threw flowers at his feet when he passed, in deference as much to his blessed mother as to himself. But the nobles—on more than one occasion Lark had seen the sidelong glances as the boy passed. Looks of jealousy at his popularity. Looks of concern at his awkward position as the much admired, yet younger, son of the hated king. Looks of downright hatred for the radical opinions that even at that early age he voiced at every opportunity. She had spent her life searching for him, not because he was the last of the royal family, but because the last royal was Raven yr Griffon, and that meant something. How could she make him understand that?
"Tell me about the first time we spoke," he said. He motioned to a spot near him by the fire.
She came closer and sat down, just out of reach. "You were getting tall then—not as tall as you are now, of course, but you must have been near twelve years old. It was around your birthday. We share a birth month, I remember that, so I must have been four or five. But our month of birth was all we shared." She looked away from him, into the fire, but she knew by his stillness he was listening closely.
"I was serving evening meal. I remember you were wearing slippers of the finest red silk, embroidered with symbols of the nobles' gods in gold threads. The slippers were lined in sable fox fur. Do you remember them?"
"No." It was almost a whisper from him.
"I do. They were beautiful, but I suppose you had many like them. I remember watching you and wondering what it felt like to have a full belly and warm toes."
"I'm sorry."
She looked up at him and smiled. "Exactly. You, the Prince of the Silver Isle, are sorry that a slave's feet were cold. You really don't understand what that means, do you?" He looked startled, and then gazed away at the tree tops, unwilling to meet her stare.
She picked up a small branch that had fallen from the cypress tree and gripped it tight, feeling the prickle of the needles against her palm. "You had eaten two joints of lamb already, and a third lay on your plate. I remember telling myself not to get my hopes up about the meat left on the bones, though my mouth watered at the sight of it. I knew the bones would go to the dogs before it got to a mere slave like me. Then suddenly"—even at the thought her stomach turned over in memory of the gut-wrenching fear—"I saw you were watching me. I forced myself to look down at the floor. Please don't notice me, I prayed.
"You picked up the third joint of meat on your plate. You cleared your throat and I looked up. Unfortunately, so did everyone else in the room. You were holding the meat out to me, actually offering it to me. I don't know what insanity possessed you to acknowledge me like that, but I was terrified. No one said anything, and you must have finally noticed the attention focused on you." She threw the branch into the fire, and the flame caught at it. She watched the needles shrivel up and turn to embers as red as those silk slippers had been.
She whispered: "'This meat is cold, slave,' you said. 'I cannot eat such dreck.' You dropped it on the floor at my feet. 'Pick it up, slave.' You sounded bored. I bent down to pick up the meat. 'Why are you standing there?' you said. 'Shouldn't you take it away and dispose of it?' And then you winked at me." She smiled finally at the memory. "It was like it was our little secret, like you were on my side somehow. I hid out by the middens and gulped down the meat, choking on the unfamiliar richness of it."
She finally looked at him again.
He looked ashamed. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to treat you with disrespect. It was all I could do."
"You don't understand, Your Grace. You were kind to me."
"It wasn't enough."
She leaned toward him. "Yes. It was. At that moment it was everything. It changed my whole world."
He looked down at the ground. "I cannot be king, Lark. I understand what you are trying to say, but I cannot do it."
"Why not?"
"Because more will die if I am king than if I am not. I cannot changed the world. The murders that I already caused are proof of that."
He looked so sorrowful and ashamed she reached out her hand to grasp his before she realized what she was doing. "You did not cause the deaths, Your Grace. You did everything a young boy could have done to stop the killing. Please believe that."
His palm felt warm against hers, and his long fingers wrapped around hers like they were meant to fit together. He held on to her as if it brought him comfort. "I am doing the right thing by abdicating," he whispered.
"But Your Grace—"
"Stop calling me that."
She looked down at their hands intertwined. "What should I call you?" she whispered.
"You know my name."
"I cannot call you that."
"Yes, you can." He leaned over her, and she could smell his scent of skin and musk mingling with the resinous scent of the pine fire. "Say my name," he whispered.
"Raven," she whispered.
He smiled, let go of her hand, then turned away to lie down and go back to sleep facing the cold forest.
She sat there, rubbing the palm that felt so cold without his hand against it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Wolf rowed his small coracle out of the shallows toward the meeting point. By the gods, this fog was so thick he'd be lucky if he didn't get run over by a Var longship in the dark. His small boat rocked in the current, but he had made this short voyage many times before, and knew the way.
The count was short. Far short. Ulik would be angry—but when was he not angry? Wolf was just the messenger, but he would take the blame. He did as his Lady wished, though he made sure her wishes matched his own. He was supposedly her servant, but he wondered if the Lady Willow knew who was really serving whom.
He owed the Var Prince Ulik two bales of dyed silk fabric, and he carried barely one in the coracle. The savage might slit his throat before the night was out. But Wolf hadn't gotten where he was by being a coward. The Var were primitives. They must be managed, like a wild animal is managed, so they do not harm anything important. Meat must occasionally thrown their way to keep them occupied—and if the peasants in the coastal villages suffered, it was a small price to pay to keep more important people and resources safe.
He heard the creak of a large Var ship off to starboard. He whistled softly—the sound carrying like a shout over the fogbound sea.
A whistle answered him, then he saw the dark wood of the Var hull before him. The dragon on the prow glared down at him, in the primitives' attempt to ward off evil spirits and witches—"witches" being the Var's word for the silver-clad Ariane—the magical women warriors who struck fear into the hearts of the superstitious savages. No Ariane had ever been captured by the Var, and they must never realize the Ariane were mortal, for if the Var found out the secrets of the Ariane women, or the secrets of the silk bundles Wolf himself carried, they would have no reason not to wipe out the people of the Silver Isle. The Var's fear was useful, for it kept them in line.
A rope was lowered over the side.
With a deep breath, he swung himself aboard, the sack of fabric over his shoulder.
This ship was one of the great seagoing Var vessels, perfect for carrying legitimate cargo to the foreign markets. The people of the Silver Isle expected all Var ships to be attack ships—lean and fast and shallow—perfect for skimming through the water and landing fifty soldiers close in to the shore before an alarm could be raised. But Wolf had not seen any of those ships in years. This ship was still dangerous, but was designed for a savage prince who intimidated islanders into giving him trade goods, not for secret attacks.
They couldn't come in to shore as easily as the small vessels could, though Wolf often wondered if those attack ships were nearby, within call of the prince should he decide smuggling was not making him enough wealth.
The ship was larger than any of his own people's. Even the Var themselves were larger, big sallow-skinned brutes with yellow hair and odd, pale eyes. They were like huge beasts, crude and loud and smelly. But they were masters of the sea, he must admit. The primitives ruled the ocean in their sleek, dragon-prowed ships, and none dared travel across the water to trade without reckoning with the Var.
Years ago the rulers of the Silver Isle had reconciled themselves to paying these inferiors to carry their goods to market on the mainland. After several unsuccessful encounters with the Var ships at sea, a trade agreement had seemed a simple solution to avoid conflict. But things were never that simple.
The Var prince, Ulik, was there, as expected, along with his sister, Ruari. The princess was comely enough, for a barbarian. Flame-red curls down her back, skin the color of a pearl, a shapely figure—what could be seen of it in that pirate get-up she always wore—and the heir to a barbarian kingdom in the bargain. All she needed was a personality and she'd be quite a catch. Wolf knew himself to be a connoisseur of women, and an expert at seducing them, but this particular one, as always, scowled at him, immune to his charms. Her loss.
Ulik cleared his throat. The big man towered over him, as all the Var did, and his expression was less than welcoming. Wolf noted his stained leather tunic and breeches, and the ever-present charms on gold chains around his neck—for Ulik, like all these savages, surrounded himself with mystical talismans to protect himself from the dangers of the world—most dangerous of all, the silver-clad Ariane "witches."
The Var must be handled carefully, with a certain skill that Wolf knew himself to possess. He started the conversation with that knowledge—and a quick dig at Ulik's weakness. "The Lady Willow y Ariane sends her greetings to the Prince of the Var."
