Forgotten - Kingdom Gone Book 3, page 14
“Guests?” Farine rarely joined court for meals. Her father only demanded it when they had dignitaries or other royals in attendance. So far as Malcolm had revealed, however, the only visitor they had was this messenger from Gault. Hardly worth making her come to the dining hall for.
“That is the end of my message, princess. Good day to you all.” Jerod spun on his heel and fled. It wasn’t his fault. They trained them to be cagey. Still, his message soured her mood even more than Malcolm’s reluctance to answer her prodding about his mission.
She didn’t want to go to dinner. She wanted to search the castle for this big rock Mastral was hiding. If the First Mage had sent Malcolm to the ports, it would be for something special, something he’d brought from overseas, perhaps. It would be something magical.
“Aren’t you going to read it?” The goodmother took a stab at Hadja again. “What is his excuse today?”
“You heard what the page said. There are visitors demanding the king’s attention.” The maid stood and smoothed her skirts, brushing off the fragment of lawn that clung to her coarse homespun. “Come, Farine, we must get you ready.”
No matter that she hadn’t been available in that account for days, that she’d slipped away to the gardens every chance she got and left Farine to straighten out her hair alone, both maidless and mirrorless. Now, Hadja had to help her, now that it served her purposes as well. She only wanted to escape the goodmother’s questions the same way Malcolm had dodged Farine’s.
A pox on the lot of them. Farine bit her lip and mentally took back the curse. Even so, she fumed silently. Malcolm stood when she moved, followed her like a puppy and she, in turn, followed Hadja. The wretched child danced at the side of the herbs, sticking out her tongue at them and then tittering and darting away again.
Maybe just a curse on that one. That one could use it.
Farine stormed inside, her mood darkened and she traced after Hadja’s steps without seeing the sun or the garden any longer. They wanted to keep things from her, fine. She’d have better luck, no doubt, at dinner. Guests in the castle meant gossip. It meant wine and chatter and the loosening of lips. Dinner, in fact, suddenly seemed like a grand plan. If the First Mage had a magic rock hidden in the castle, Farine couldn’t think of a better way to discover where, couldn’t imagine a better tactic than a fine conversation over her father’s table.
As she marched away from the garden cottage, she forgot the cursed child, the goodmother and even Malcolm striding behind her. Her answer, the one she’d bring to Kerrigan on the morrow, lay directly ahead.
Ý
Payne readied her gear and tried not to panic. They meant to split up. Of course they did. How much help could she offer if they all clumped together and searched? She should have worked that much out when she agreed to Slipstone’s offer.
The fiend flitted into the pocket and back, fetching supplies and directions from the Gentry band that refused to pry itself into the ordinary world any longer. Not that she could blame them. Still, it unnerved her a little to be working for people she couldn’t see and had never lain eyes upon. Then again, she’d no more venture into the pocket to meet them than they would wander out to meet her.
But Slipstone and Neeta would go by pocket too. Payne clutched the food sack they’d given her to her chest and squinted down at the fiend’s map. Someone had lined it out on a dried skin, roughly sketched in the sea and the Shadow Mountains and marked a few small towns with red exes. It said, don’t go here, plainly enough, and of course that was exactly where they wanted her to go.
“Don’t wander into Ramstown proper,” the imp squeaked. “We’ve mapped a pocket right in the center of town if we should ever want it.”
“We don’t.” Neeta fluttered her wings and held the curl out of the map’s ends. She kept her body in the center, used her wings to expand the space she occupied and to keep Slipstone out of reach of Payne’s curse.
“Right. But we need to know of any nearby. I’ll take this southern stretch here.” He stabbed at the map and drew an invisible arc from the mountains down to the southwest. “Neeta will cover the ground between us, and you will skirt the town and then follow the ridge south. Make note of any pockets you sense, and we’ll meet here, at the southern road into Westwood.”
“What’s in Westwood?” Payne squinted at the map. It wasn’t a great distance to cover, but it put her closest to the risk of human contact.
“Nothing.” Slipstone snapped the word. Out of character, that, and odd enough to make the fiend flutter again.
She answered in more detail. “It’s a little lump of town built around some Old Kingdoms ruins. Lots of pockets there. Not a lot of people.”
“Great. But I can live without the pockets.” Malcolm had mentioned Westwood too, and now it seemed she would end up there regardless of her rebellion.
“We’ll meet here,” Slipstone said. “In three days. If you have trouble just find a visible spot and wait for Neeta to find you.”
“I’ll scout from the air if you’re late.”
“I won’t be late.” Payne stood up fully and slung the food sack over her shoulder, opposite her own pack. She wore the remnants of magic, the relics she’d pilfered from the temple stores. They’d have to serve her well enough to slip past Ramstown. Once she’d made it away from that danger, once she’d skirted the actual town and the open road, she’d take to the hills and the woods beyond.
She shook her head and turned to offer the shrine one last, long examination. Searching for pockets. The very thing that made her insides churn and rebel, for now, would be her only goal. But when she met the imp and fiend again, when they gathered on the road to Westwood, it would be time for answers.
In this “little lump of town” Slipstone would make good on his end of the bargain. If he could tell her whose hand had thrown this curse upon her, then she’d know whose hand could end it. She’d make them do exactly that, make them free her from the band and the horror inside it…and then she’d make whoever it was suffer as she had. Then, she’d make the bastard pay.
Chapter Eighteen
Malcolm’s messenger from Gault had brought his own elves along. The members of the Northern Glade had darker complexions than their southern counterparts. They were no less stiff or haughty, however, and the four that joined them at the long table in her father’s formal dining room blended in with the local elves. At least seven of those had been invited along with the First Mage and herself.
She sat at her father’s left. Mastral’s chair was to his right. The three of them headed a table ringed with elves and one, obviously cowed, human messenger from the Kingdom of Gault. For his part, that man stared at his plate and focused all of his attention on eating. His hands rattled the silverware so badly that Farine found her own attention riveted, waiting to see if the next bite would make it to his mouth or tumble into his lap.
“Most desperate situation in Gault aside,” One of the foreign elves replied to her father’s question about their loyalties. He had dark markings over his skin, like freshly turned soil. They wound across dusky shoulders and up to embrace his neck in a squirmy collar of natural tattoos. “our allegiance is to the land, and war is rarely good for the land.”
“Except, perhaps, for the fertilizer it provides.” Mastral lifted his goblet and tilted it at the man. His eyes glinted, sharp as daggers, and the elves all laughed. The sound was musical and just as mysterious as their birthmarks, the magic in their veins that could not be contained and so manifested at the age of maturity in an individual pattern across the skin.
Farine’s head felt swimmy around them. She’d forgotten that much, and perhaps it was the true reason she didn’t care for the elves’ company. The arrogance, she could have lived with, but the dizzy sensation caused by all that magic in one place made her want to flee the room.
“The people of Gault do not wish…” The human’s speech was interrupted by the clatter of his fork against the table. He ignored it and steadied his hands against the surface on either side of his plate. “Do not wish to become fertilizer on some battlefield.”
“Agreed!” Leopold bellowed. Farine flinched toward the elf on her other side, felt ridiculous until she saw Mastral mirror her movement. Her father leaned forward, thumping his elbows beside his own plate and gesturing with his eating knife. “Nor do the people here. No. This move by Atla threatens a long-standing peace. It endangers the good thing we’ve built together, the whole of the Kingdoms this side of the Southern Sea.”
Farine poked her fork into the pie on her plate and watched the gravy ooze through the holes. They had enjoyed a long era of peace and prosperity. What might possess a man like Atla to march across borders with hostile intent? Gault had nothing more than he had in Canton, nothing that couldn’t be bartered for or offered freely without the need for armies.
“Beg pardon, princess.” The soft voice drew her gaze from the messenger directly to the seat beside her. The elf who sat there hadn’t spoken a word throughout the meal, nor had he touched twice his silverware or the food on his dish. He had wide, almond eyes the color of steel and hair so dark it seemed to eat the light around him. His voice lilted barely above a whisper. “The topic can hardly be called suitable with a lady present.”
A lady present. He meant her, and yet, never in her father’s halls had she been tip-toed around in that fashion. She’d been relegated to permanent childhood as far as the king was concerned, but this elf looked at her without any condescension. His gaze was level and serious, and he spoke to her directly.
She’d hardly even noticed him there.
“No pardon necessary.” She tried to imagine how a lady would answer him. “The conversation at my father’s table often turns to serious matters.”
“That’s a pity. I should think in this Kingdom you’d have far more gentle things to discuss.”
“Why is that?” Farine’s face warmed. She sensed the hint of something in his remark, not quite an insult but not complimentary either. “I don’t imagine our table is much different than Gault’s.”
“Even before the invasion, neither Gault nor Canton enjoyed quite the same prosperity that you do here. Certainly there was peace, but Leopold’s lands and his influence stretch far wider than Hunan’s, and Atla’s Kingdom is as arid as it is broad and flat.”
“I’ve never been to Canton.”
“Nor to Gault I’d venture, though I suspect you’d like it. The Northern woods are far brighter and less damp.”
“Perhaps when the conflict is resolved I might visit Gault.” She only meant it to be polite, but her dining companion glowed with approval.
He nodded, and his eyes locked on hers for a second longer than she was comfortable with. “I should think, once the alliance is forged, that time could come swiftly, lady.”
“Alliance?”
“Certainly. The Southern Glade seeks our allegiance, and your good father is quite eager to know what might cement my people’s loyalty to the South…should war come this far.”
“Your people?”
The elf’s smile widened, but it was Mastral Weredewell that answered her question. “You haven’t been properly introduced,” he said. “Farine, this is Yedan, young leader of the Northern Glade.”
“Princess.” Yedan inclined his head again.
“It is my turn to beg pardon,” Farine resisted the urge to chew her lip, to fidget away the heat creeping across her face. “I wasn’t aware.”
“None required. You have been a charming dinner companion to the last.”
Except she’d been silent for most of it, ignored him, and now…his comments took on a more insidious implication. Why would the leader of the Northern Glade invite her to visit Gault? Something to cement his people’s loyalty? She eyed the gravy seeping from her meat pie.
“The situation in Gault is unacceptable.” The messenger continued his petition, seizing any quiet as a chance to forward his cause. “Atla has overstepped reasonable bounds. He’s brought his entire force to bear on our boundaries without any provocation.”
“Canton has not moved against us, however.” Leopold the Mighty sat back in his chair and nodded his head. “Moving to aid Gault would mean directly violating our own treaties with Atla.”
“But Gault will fall without your aide!” The Gaultean messenger pushed his chair away from the table. His silver clattered to the hall tiles. “We are under siege!”
“Mind your bearing, Breen.” The elf, Yedan, spoke. His tone remained as soft as ever, and yet the table fell silent. All the elves leaned forward to catch his words. “And remember where you are.”
King Leopold grunted and stabbed at his meat pie. He cast a look upon the Gaultean delegate that Farine had seen before, usually when she’d done something expressly forbidden. The table waited, hovered in the moment of tension while the king spilled gravy freely onto his plate. They waited while this Breen pushed his chair back to a respectable position. Then, Mastral Weredewell burst the bubble of silence.
“I have word that Atla himself has crossed the Shadow Mountains. I heard he meant to speak with you, Yedan. They say in the ports that he means to woo the Northern Glade.”
“That, I’m sure he does.” Yedan softened his pose and his lithe shoulders lifted and fell. “But we serve the peace in our own way, and we have long held true to our allegiance with Gault. It would take something special, indeed, to convince me to part ways with Hunan.”
It wasn’t a direct answer. Even Farine could see that, but the elf’s gentle gaze drifted to her again and she had to look away from it. She found Mastral watching, and the subject had come at last to one that she might benefit from.
“Malcolm tells me he retrieved your shipment from the port without incident.” She watched the First Mage’s face closely. Were his stones a secret? She’d meant to broach the topic here, but with Gault’s representative and Yedan present, perhaps it was not the time.
“The bloody rocks,” King Leopold grumbled. “Cost a fortune to bring, Weredewell. Better be worth it.”
“I assure you. They are.”
“What sort of stone comes across the sea to Leopold?” Yedan’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but Farine guessed he knew the answer already.
“We have our own walls to defend,” her father answered. He swept his hand into the air and clicked for the staff to swoop in and clear away the plates. No matter that half the guests hadn’t finished. Leopold the Mighty had lost his appetite. “And we will do so. As to Gault.”
He held up a hand to stall the messenger, Breen, whose mouth had opened to comment.
“To Gault we will send the standing army…with a reserve guard remaining here. If Atla thinks to take Gault, then I’m quite certain he means not to stop there. He’ll be pounding at our own borders next if we let him.”
“Your majesty is wise,” Breen lowered his head and stared at his lap.
“To Leopold the Mighty!” Someone toward the far end of the table lifted a glass and the toast echoed back to the head along with a wave of raised arms. At her right, Yedan sniffed softly. She heard him, even as he lifted his goblet to join the cheer. His eyes drifted to her face, dark and wide and with more in them than admiration for her father’s decision.
“To Leopold the Mighty,” he said. “And the special stones from over the sea.” His voice didn’t change. It remained, as ever, soft and gentle. That fact didn’t stop the chill, the icy tremble that crept through her skeleton as the cheering faded. Yedan, leader of the Northern Glade, gazed down at her with nothing showing in his eyes, no hint of his true motives, but she was certain to the last that something ugly hid behind them.
Ý
Payne eased the dagger from its sheath and circled the tree, keeping its trunk between her and the sound of voices. She’d skirted Ramstown that morning, had crossed the open road when it was vacant and worked unnoticed through the field on the opposite side. The way was not well traveled, it seemed, and no one rode toward or away from town. She slipped into the trees with too much confidence, assured that she would find things just as vacant for the rest of the journey.
She’d sensed two pockets already, pinpointed the locations and fixed the images in her memory for the fiend to retrieve when next they met. But she’d stumbled shortly after, had wandered into the open glade without worry and spooked a trio of hunters from the brush on the far side. Her Stealth sigil did little good when face to face with open danger.
Now they tracked her instead of game, and from the sound of it, with just as much mercy as they might afford any quarry.
“Seen her go this way.” The brush crunched and snapped, and Payne scooted around the tree.
At least those were robust here, and the ground below the trunks was woven with brambles and stubby brush thick enough to hide in.
“Branches snapped back there, though. On the deer path.”
“Well, she’d do that wouldn’t she? If’n she wanted to throw us off the trail.”
“S’what? We gunna chase after her all damn day? I got brambles in my boots.”
“How long since you had a woman, idiot? An you’re worryin’ about yer damn feet?”
The dagger felt light as a feather in her fingers, smooth and tipped with justice. Payne had never used a bow, but she had spent more afternoons than she could count tossing a knife at her bedroom wall. She didn’t have to kill them with it anyway, just lure them close enough to grab her instead of shooting her with the damn bows on their backs.
Just in case they had them out, she squatted low before peering around the tree. The bark scratched at her cheek. A bird tittered above her, and the nearest hunter froze and swiveled his head in her direction.
They were big men, dark and hairy from who knew how many days in the woods. She almost forgot, when the low chuckle reached her, that she didn’t have anything to be afraid of.
“Well lookie here,” he said. “There you are.”
