Blackveil (82 page)

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Authors: Kristen Britain

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #fantasy, #Epic

BOOK: Blackveil
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“Aye, ma’am. Must get me broom.” The woman fumbled after the broom.
“Leave it,” Estora commanded. “I wish you to go
now.
”
The servant unfolded and stood tall. A pair of sharp green eyes peered at Estora from beneath strands of hair hanging over her smudged face. Estora blinked rapidly at the woman’s transformation from a simple servant to a personage with a commanding presence. Someone of intelligence and cunning, someone dangerous.
“Beryl Spencer,” she said on an exhalation.
“At your service, Your Highness.” She bowed, and there was a mocking edge to it.
“I’ve heard about your ability,” Estora said, “but I did not expect so direct a demonstration.”
“Connly emphasized discretion,” Beryl replied. “If anyone saw me, they saw only a simple servant with a broom. But then most people don’t really see servants. They are beneath notice.”
It was true. One might be aware of servants moving about the castle as they attended to their duties, but to most who carried on their more important work as ambassadors, officers, or courtiers, servants might as well be invisible. They were undistinguished, and indistinguishable.
The role Beryl Spencer had chosen to play was clever, but in a way, disturbing. Who else could disguise themselves as a servant and gain access to the entire castle? Estora shuddered. She was being paranoid again. It was Beryl’s special ability to portray a role that made her so convincing, and yet . . . Estora decided she would take this as a lesson in the security, or lack thereof, in the castle.
“It appears much has happened since last I was here,” Beryl said.
“Yes,” Estora replied simply. She did not doubt the Green Rider had already gleaned all the fine details of the assassination attempt and the subsequent wedding and who all the players were. She had, after all, skills beyond playing roles like that of a servant attending to her cleaning. Zachary had used those skills exhaustively, and Beryl had spent years as a spy in the court of Tomas Mirwell. It was these skills Estora now intended to make use of. However, she wondered what Beryl thought of her sudden marriage to Zachary and the confinement of Captain Mapstone. Would Beryl be willing to help her?
Beryl cocked her head, but gave away nothing. Estora felt uneasy under her scrutiny. “Thank you for agreeing to see me,” she said.
Beryl inclined her head. “You are the queen. I serve.”
For some reason, Estora did not feel reassured by the words. She imagined they were like the words Beryl had used with Tomas Mirwell before she betrayed him. She’d played her role in Mirwell fully, and Estora heard that many in Mirwell’s court feared Beryl more than Mirwell himself. She’d served as his aide, his enforcer, his interrogator. People disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again.
What were her true loyalties? Estora wondered. But Zachary trusted her, and she was, after all, a Green Rider. Would she have been called to the messenger service if she were disloyal to Sacoridia and its king?
“What do you wish of me, my lady?” Beryl asked. “General Harborough is pressing Connly to send me north.”
“Yes, I am aware of this, and you will not be sent without my say-so. General Harborough must answer to me.”
There was an almost imperceptible flicker of approval on Beryl’s face.
“I require your particular skills here for the time being,” Estora said.
Now Beryl looked intrigued. “How may I serve?”
“Have you ever chanced to meet my cousin, Lord Richmont Spane?”
“We have not met formally, but I am aware of him, of course.”
The way Beryl said “of course” indicated to Estora that the Rider knew something of his intrigues. Estora smiled. Beryl was in her way more frightening than Richmont ever would be, but Estora needed to trust her. She prayed that trust was well placed.
“I believe we’ve much to discuss then,” Estora said.
“It would be my honor,” Beryl replied.
SIGNET RING
T
he walking, or rather limping, proved grueling, and sweat streamed down Karigan’s brow. Even with the aid of the bonewood, she could not keep up with the swift pace Graelalea set, but this time, when she straggled behind, Ard or Telagioth would call ahead telling Graelalea to wait. Karigan did the best she could, and kept focused on the path ahead. Still, dancers with masks taunted her from the shadows. Once, when she looked dead on, the dancers melted into trees, their limbs swaying with the passage of a breeze.
Another time she looked, she became so besotted with the scene of dancers strutting to some dissonance that Telagioth had to shake her out of it.
“You don’t see them?” she asked him.
“See who?”
“The dancers. The masquerade.”
“No, I do not. I see trees, and they wear no masks.”
Karigan nodded and pushed on, resigning herself to the fact that she walked in two worlds: the one wrought by the poison of the thorns, and the other, the world as her companions saw it.
When finally they paused for a break, Karigan came up from behind to find Graelalea drawing in the mud with the tip of her dagger.
“If we can keep up our pace,” she said, “we will reach Castle Argenthyne in a few days.”
The drawing, Karigan saw, was a map showing where they were and how far they had yet to go. Yates looked frustrated he could not see it. They were on a squiggly path to a spot marked with an
X
, and they did not look far from the
X
.
When Grakelalea finished, everyone except Yates went their separate way to sit or take a drink of water. “Karigan,” he called.
She limped over to him. “I’m here.”
“Good.” He lifted the strap of his satchel over his shoulder and thrust it into her hands. “You need to copy whatever Graelalea’s drawn,” he said. “For the king.”
Karigan’s mouth dropped open. She wasn’t much of an artist. “But—”
“You’ve got the neatest hand among us,” Yates said. “Just do your best.”
“All right,” she replied uncertainly. She dragged herself to a nearby rock and sat, then removed Yates’ journal and writing supplies from the satchel. As she flipped through the journal, she found pages filled with his own tidy handwriting, maps sketched out with measurements and landmarks, and other drawings that appeared to be more of a personal nature. She did not think it any of her business to pry, so she did not pause to look at the pictures, but the journal fell open to a lovely rendering of Hana. He must have done it early on in their journey, for he’d captured her with a hint of a smile on her face.
“You’re an amazing artist,” Karigan said. It was even more amazing she had not known this side of him.
“I take after my mother,” he said proudly. “She did most of the etchings and art for my father’s press.”
As Karigan searched for a blank page, she caught glances of drawings of the forest, its flora and fauna, including hummingbirds. She shuddered, and hastily found a blank page. She copied Graelalea’s map as best she could, jotting down notes. It was nowhere as good as Yates would have done, but passable. Thanks to her practice in keeping the Rider books, her hand was very neat.
When the ink dried, she replaced the journal and pen in the satchel, and put it into Yates’ hands, but he immediately passed it back to her.
“You’d better hold onto it,” he said, “in case something else needs recording.” More somberly he added, “You also have a better chance of getting this back to the king.”
Karigan started to protest, but he shook his head. “I’m not giving up, just being realistic.”
Another layer of gloom blanketed her. She knew he was right, but she did not have to accept it. They would get out of Blackveil. All of them. They had to.
Grant paced nearby holding his arm to himself. He was pale and perspiring. “Nythlings,” he muttered. “Gotta let the nythlings come.”
Graelalea came and crouched before Karigan. “I would like to take a look at your leg.”
“Maybe you should look at Grant’s arm.”
Graelalea sighed. “I have tried, and more than once. He refuses me and becomes violent if I press him.”
“I’ve seen it,” Ard said, easing down onto a nearby rock. “He didn’t show me, mind, but I saw him looking at it. Sickly in color with black lumps on it.”
“I cannot aid him unless he wishes it,” Graelalea murmured, and she set to tending Karigan’s leg with fresh evaleoren salve. Karigan sighed as the salve absorbed the pain.
“I offered to help, too,” Ard said, “and he offered to smash my face in.”
Short of all of them jumping on Grant to hold him down, Karigan didn’t know how else they could help him. Perhaps if he got much worse, they’d have to do just that.
When Graelalea finished with Karigan’s leg and moved off, Karigan glanced at Ard who sat with his head bowed and eyes closed as he rested. The journey had been hard on him as it had been on all of them. He’d lost considerable weight. When she looked at his hands splayed on his knees, his knuckles skinned and embeded with dirt, a shining silver ring that she had not noticed before caught her attention. Had he worn it all along and she just hadn’t seen it, or was it something he put on recently? If so, why?
It was not a wedding ring, though it was placed on the customary finger. Ard had stated he’d no family. It bore a sigil depicting the cormorant crest of Clan Coutre, so perhaps he was, in a way, bound to the clan in no less of an important way than a marriage. He must be held in great esteem by Clan Coutre for a simple forester to be in possession of such a ring.
Ard stirred and met her gaze. “Something on your mind?” he asked gruffly.
“I was just admiring your ring.”
His hands came together and absently he twisted the ring around his finger. “A gift,” he said, “from the lady.”
“Lady Coutre?”
“No, my Lady Estora. When she gave a blessing upon me for my safe return from Blackveil. The ring is a gift of trust that I will carry out my duty here in the best interest of the clan, which it is my honor to do.”
Ard’s eyes were hooded as he regarded her and she sensed there was more to it than he said. Karigan did not have a chance to probe more deeply, however, for Graelalea announced it was time they continued their journey.
Over the days that followed, Karigan’s strength gradually improved, her leg showing minute signs of mending with each application of the evaleoren salve. Her visions of dancers in the forest became less frequent as well. One or two would occasionally catch the edge of her sight but would then quickly vanish.
She still fell behind, and Ard often dropped back to walk companionably beside her, not speaking, but keeping an eye on her. On the whole, the company made little conversation. The farther along they got, the faster Graelalea led them, and the faster Graelalea went, the more Karigan fell behind. She had especial trouble on a part of the trail that was at the base of a cliff buried beneath a sloping rock fall. They had to pick their way over slick boulders and wobbly rocks. The uneven and treacherous surfaces taxed Karigan’s bad leg and she fell farther and farther behind, but Ard patiently stayed with her. She was pleased by his company.
“Have you always been a forester for Clan Coutre?” Karigan asked him, her interest in his background aroused by his signet ring. Her feet almost flew out from beneath her on a slimy rock. She saved herself, heart thudding, and was once again thankful for the bonewood staff, which helped her regain her balance.
Ard, watching her from several boulders ahead, said. “Always. And my father before me. Lord Spane took him in, gave him the position to assist the head forester, looking after Lord Coutre’s lands. We’d been destitute before that, but Lord Spane took care of us.”
“That was very good of him,” Karigan replied.
Ard stayed perched on his boulder watching her, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. He glanced over his shoulder. The rest of the company was out of sight.
“Aye,” he said. “And then the lady was born. Sweetest child ever there was.”
It was difficult for Karigan to imagine Estora as a tiny child. Try as she might, she could only picture Estora as she was now, the stately, devastatingly beautiful woman.

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