The Keeper of the Mist (14 page)

“And the garnets and opals and things?”

Tassel took a deep breath and pointed to the third column of figures. This one was sparse, with far fewer entries and much bigger numbers. “I think he was selling them. Not just within Nimmira. I think he was selling some of them to Eschalion. Sorcerers do use jewels in their magic—”

“Isn't that mostly in Tor Carron?”

“Well, maybe the people of Eschalion just think garnets are pretty, even if their sorcerers pull magic out of sunlight or whatever. Either way, garnets might sell for a good price in Eschalion. You know how Tor Carron refuses to trade with Eschalion, and you can hardly blame them, but I think your father was taking advantage of that. This, these listings here, I don't think it was just plain garnets, but finished jewelry as well.” She ran her finger down the fourth and last column of figures. There were only half a dozen entries in this column. “This is gold. Gold coming into Nimmira, not going out. I mean, I doubt we have that much gold anywhere in Nimmira; there's just that one seam up above Ironforge, and if that gold disappeared, I expect people would notice. But
this
gold came in, and I have no idea where it went.”

“Gold,” Keri said quietly. “My father sold our grain right out of the mouths of our own people, and traded jewels to sorcerers in Eschalion, just to get gold for himself.” She had despised her father. But she could hardly believe this was even possible. She said, blank and astonished, “But how
could
he?”

“I'm sorry, Keri. I don't know. I mean, everyone's aware he got, well, more profligate, I suppose, over the past years, but…I don't know. I wouldn't have thought…surely nobody would have thought he might be doing something like
this.
But it really looks like that to me.” Tassel turned the page, and then the next, and the next. They all looked the same. Four columns of figures, with many entries in the first column and few in the last. “Grain for gold, with lots of metal and jewels in between.”

“How?
How?
I mean, jewels are small. Anyone could carry a handful of jewels to Eschalion and a bag of gold back. Well, not anyone, but you know what I mean! Like the players do it, like a mouse through a crack in the wall. But grain and bronze?
Tons
of grain and bronze? How could he even
do
this?” She paused. “I think we know now what Osman Tor the Younger was lying about. He knew all about Nimmira. Didn't he? He was trading with my father….”

“I think so. But if I were him, I'd have been a lot more interested in the magic of Nimmira than in wheat and peaches. A lot more. I think that's what he was looking for when he crossed the boundary. I think he believes this is his chance to find out how we've concealed ourselves from our enemies for so long.”

The two girls exchanged a look.

Keri took a deep breath and let it trickle out between her teeth. “We'd better tell all this to Cort.”

But Domeric, summoned by Callia, arrived first. Keri had almost forgotten she'd sent for him, but here he was, and now she mostly just wanted to get rid of him again. Complicated, everything had to be so
complicated.
But she smiled. If it looked stiff, well, she had any number of reasons to feel uncomfortable talking to her brother.

“Domeric,” she said, nodding to him, “I'm to have a private supper with Lord Osman, you may have heard. I hoped you might be able to tell me a little about him.”

Domeric made the room look smaller just by stepping through the door. He didn't actually have to duck to pass through doorways, but he did give that impression. He also didn't actually glower at Keri, but he gave the impression that he was glowering. Keri wondered what it was like to be the sort of man who looked dangerous all the time. Maybe he liked looking that way. It was probably useful for a man who owned three taverns.

“A private supper,” Domeric repeated. He shook his head. “You should have asked me this first. I think he'll make too much of it, that's what I think. And I think, if you're going to honor these
guests
with private suppers, you should have asked that sorcerer first. Osman's an arrogant bastard, but he knows no small country dares offend the Wyvern King.”

“You could be right,” said Keri, which had been her mother's way of turning aside criticism, whether overt or implied.
Why, yes, you could be right,
and then you just went ahead with whatever you were doing. It was amazing how people often hadn't even noticed her mother hadn't taken their advice. Her mother had known exactly how to handle people, and Keri never had learned how to do that. From Domeric's narrowing eyes, she was sure she hadn't gotten the earnest tone quite right this time, either. She went on, quickly, “So he's arrogant, is he? You can see why. I mean, he's his father's heir, isn't he, and he's known it all his life, isn't that right? Is that why he brought twenty men with him? To show he can? I thought he might be nervous about crossing the boundary. Though I don't suppose twenty men are enough to make you…not be nervous. If you're stepping into an unknown country, I mean.”

Domeric gave her a look. “He could do a lot with twenty men, if he realized Nimmira has no soldiers at all. You be careful not to give that away, chatting over supper.”

“I won't,” Keri assured him, trying for a bit more earnest sincerity this time.

“Those men are the best, it seems. A personal bodyguard. One gathers it's an honor and a privilege for a man to join that company. But whether those men are really his or whether they're his father's—” Domeric shrugged, a big, rolling gesture. “I wondered if maybe Osman the Younger crossed the border without asking his father. I get the impression the captain of his guard isn't happy with him. Since you ask me—” And he paused here to give Keri a hard look. “Since you ask,
I
think Lord Osman needs to bring his father something solid.”

That was good to know. That might be very important. Keri was suddenly glad she'd asked Domeric's opinion after all.

Her brother went on, coming down hard on every word, “I think you had better take care, little sister, what ideas Lord Osman gets in his head about what that might be. He's the kind of man who gets ideas, I think. I'd have told you that before you arranged your intimate little supper, if you'd asked earlier, when it might have made a difference. You be careful what you promise that man, you hear me? Even a stupid man might get ideas if you go on like that, and Lord Osman isn't stupid.”

“Even the clever ones hear just what they want to,” Tassel said sharply. “
Especially
the clever ones.”

“But I'll be careful,” Keri said. She didn't ask Domeric whether he thought
she
was stupid.

“You can't think she'd be so foolish,” Cort said sharply from the doorway. He turned his shoulder to Domeric and said to Keri, with pointed courtesy, “You wanted to see me, Lady?”

“Oh, yes,” Keri said, trying to recover from the surprise of Cort's unexpected support. “Yes, I think we have business we had better discuss.” She stopped and waited, looking at Domeric.

“The moment you're free,” agreed Cort. He raised his eyebrows pointedly at Domeric.

“Huh,” muttered Domeric. “If you—”

Keri said, “If you could find out for sure what Lord Osman's men think, about whether their captain is truly at odds with Lord Osman, anything like that would be so helpful.”

Domeric eyed Keri for a moment, nodded abruptly, and said, “But next time, if you would talk to me
before
planning your actions, sister.” But Keri only smiled and nodded, and he finally let out an exasperated breath, turned, and strode away.

“He doesn't respect you,” Cort said grimly, staring after him.

“Well, I, I mean, no one ever expected—”

“I know! But you aren't a fool, Keri, and you always do the best you can, and generally make a good job of it, too. The sooner your brothers get that through their heads, the better!”

“Oh, well.” Keri, taken by surprise, didn't know quite how to answer this. She stammered, “Well, I hope— Never mind. Tassel, tell Cort what you've found out.”

Cort listened to Tassel's explanation, which was smoother this time, and with clearer clarifications of the letter codes, with a baffled expression. “This is impossible,” he said. He swung around to glower at Keri as though this were her fault. “This is impossible. Even granting the
Lord of Nimmira
would do something like
this.
I know Dorric was venal and selfish, but this! Even if he'd wanted to steal grain out of his own people's mouths, moving
tons
of grain across the border? Tassel, you say this was going on for years? You don't carry tons of grain out on your back; you'd need wagons and mules, and wagons can't go cross-country. There's not a single road that runs right up to the border—” He paused.

“So there
is
a road,” Keri said. She didn't need his slight, startled nod to know she was right. “Where is it?”

“Just over…” Cort turned toward the south. “A wagon trail. Rough, but…it comes directly off the south road, runs straight east, right into the border.” He shook his head incredulously. “That track runs right into Tor Carron.” He paused, and swallowed, and turned back to face Keri. “I didn't see it,” he admitted. “I don't understand how I could have missed it.”

“You didn't have reason to look,” Keri told him. “It ought to be impossible to run a road through the border, right? Or even a wagon trail.”

“Yes. Unless the Doorkeeper colluded in this.” Cort paused again. A flush had risen up his face, ruddy beneath his tanned skin. “That mud-crawling leech-eating misbegotten bastard son of a swamp snake. That slimy dog's puke—”

“The Bookkeeper colluded, too,” Tassel told him, though whether she meant this as a kind of we're-all-in-the-same-place sympathy or just to interrupt Cort's fury was not clear to Keri. Tassel turned the bone pen over in her fingers and touched the brown leather book. “It makes me feel, well, dirty just to read this,” she told her cousin. “She was helping them. They couldn't possibly have hidden this from her.”

Cort hissed through his teeth and turned his back, plainly struggling for control.

“The question is,” Keri said, pointing out the obvious, “who else knew? Mem and Tamman? I think they both must have known at least
something,
don't you?”

“That Mem, I bet she did,” Tassel agreed, nodding. “She must have; your father couldn't have kept that big a secret from his head of staff. Tamman, I don't know. He would do what he was told, I think.”

Even with her brief experience of the man, Keri thought so, too. “Who else? My brothers? Do you think Domeric is the kind of man to be aware of something like this and keep quiet about it?”

“I think Brann might,” said Tassel. “But Domeric?” She exchanged a glance with Cort and they both shrugged.

“That's what I thought,” Keri agreed. She took a deep breath. “What of the Timekeeper? Do you suppose he's laughing at us right now?”

“I assure you, Lady, I am not laughing,” said a grim, weary voice.

The Timekeeper stood in the doorway. His tall, elegant form was just the same, but his bony features now looked to Keri less like natural asceticism and more as though he had been slowly worn down by many burdened years of anxiety. He said, his tone as uninflected as ever, “You are right that a certain number of people knew. But I assure you, no one is amused. No one understood how much of his own personal magic Lord Dorric was substituting for the proper border defenses of Nimmira. No one suspected that on his death, the border mist would fail.” He looked slowly from one of them to the next, meeting Keri's eyes last. He bowed his head. “I did not precisely collude in this. But I failed to prevent it. Now the border is open. I did not anticipate that at all.”

Keri stared at him. She asked after a moment, “You say a lot of people knew. My brothers?”

The Timekeeper opened a hand in a gesture of uncertainty. “I think not. Your father did not wish his possible heirs to know.”

“But—” began Tassel, and then said, “Because they'd have objected, you mean. Lord Dorric was weakening Nimmira. Any one of them would have objected. They wouldn't have been put off. Not even Lucas. Not even Brann. Brann assumed he'd get the succession, so he wouldn't care about gold if he thought there'd be any risk to Nimmira. Domeric—if he found out, who knows what he'd have done? Whatever else, they wouldn't have been little mice like that fool Nynn. A woman like that had no business being Bookkeeper.”

The Timekeeper inclined his head. “Had Dorric's sons discovered what he had done and was still doing, they would certainly have attempted to force the succession. But the succession could not take place until its proper time.”

“The proper
time
!” exclaimed Keri. “The proper time would have been
before
my father had done all this in the first place.”

The Timekeeper said nothing.

Keri raked her fingers through her hair, trying to think. She could see that her brothers couldn't have known. Tassel was right about that. She could just see Brann flinging the truth to the four corners of Nimmira. It might be unkind to suspect he would have enjoyed taking a self-righteous stance against their father, that he would have even enjoyed forcing their father to resign. Which, all right, the Timekeeper was correct, too: it was not as easy or as safe to force a Lord of Nimmira to resign his place as it might be for the lords of other lands. But she said, “It would have been better if they had found out. Everyone in all of Nimmira would have taken sides. But my father would have lost.”

“Just so,” agreed the Timekeeper. “Thus, Lord Dorric kept the truth close. He must have deliberately acted to thin the boundary mist here near Glassforge, and perhaps elsewhere; he must have deliberately substituted some form of sorcery for the proper magic that should protect Nimmira. But I believe he thought the boundary would repair itself on his heir's ascension. I would have thought so myself. It seems…otherwise.”

Keri thought about this. “But, then, can't we do whatever kind of sorcery he did, fix it that way, at least for now?”

“Perhaps we might,” the Timekeeper said without expression, “if we numbered among our trusted allies a sorcerer. Alas, the only sorcerer currently available is…not a trusted ally.”

“No,” agreed Keri. “No.” She couldn't imagine taking this problem to Magister Eroniel. She wondered just how thin the mist had grown along the border with Eschalion. Thin enough that the Wyvern King had sent one of his people to find out what was on the other side, obviously, but…perhaps not so thin that Aranaon Mirtaelior himself actually
knew
about Nimmira yet. Perhaps not so thin that he had realized exactly what had lain hidden, or for how long.

She wished she could ask Magister Eroniel, but she had no idea how to ask so subtly that he wouldn't realize what she was asking. Perhaps Tassel could manage it. Or maybe even Brann. But she was sure no one would be able to find a subtle means of getting the sorcerer to reinforce Nimmira's boundary mist. She said, thinking about that, “I wonder who did this sorcery for my father?”

“Lucas's mother?” said Tassel. “Though I don't know whether this has been going on
that
long, and nobody ever said Eline was a sorceress.” She saw the others staring at her and said, “What? She
was
from Eschalion, you know. Everyone knows that.”

“Well, but she was just a player, wasn't she?” Keri asked.

“So far as we
know,
she was a player,” snapped Cort, and glared at the Timekeeper. But the Timekeeper only opened a hand to show his lack of knowledge. Cort snorted, paced across the room, and came back. “But we can be sure the former Doorkeeper certainly knew about all this. We might get him to tell us who else was involved. Eventually. That son of a—”

“Of course,” murmured the Timekeeper, interrupting what promised to turn into another and even more savage list of imprecations. “And Nynn, of course. The others—you will know some of the names, if you think. Eroth Duval, Tirres Corran—”

“Gannon?” Cort demanded, rounding on the old man. “Was
Gannon
part of this?”

Keri held her breath. She knew the two men the Timekeeper had named, or she knew of them. They owned the two largest farms near Glassforge. No wonder they had been part of a scheme to sell wheat outside Nimmira; they
grew
the wheat. And Cort's brother owned the third-largest nearby farm. A farm convenient to that wagon trail, too. She stared at the Timekeeper, anxious for Cort's sake.

But the Timekeeper shook his head. “I think not. Your father, possibly. But Gannon—no. I think not.”

“Well, that's something, at least. Fine. Good. If nothing else, Gannon had the sense to stay out of this ill-conceived, avaricious, irresponsible—”

“And who'd have thought we'd ever have cause to appreciate Gannon's self-righteous snobbery?” interrupted Tassel, patting Cort on the arm. She was looking narrowly at the Timekeeper. “Osman Tor knew all about this, didn't he? But he couldn't actually find Nimmira even so?”

The Timekeeper tilted his head. “But he did find us. Or very nearly. The misdirection and confusion of our border is a powerful magic. Or it was. Yet clearly he was prepared to cross the border the moment the boundary mist thinned. I believe it has weakened most severely near Glassforge, but I also believe Lord Osman's attention must have been fixed on something close to the correct location even before the mist failed. Although the trade through the boundary has certainly compromised its magic, I strongly suspect Lord Osman may possess some small magic of his own, for otherwise I do not believe he would have found his way into Nimmira so quickly.”

Keri thought this idea was actually somewhat reassuring. They could all hope that the boundary was indeed weakest here by Glassforge; maybe that meant its strength would linger for a while longer in the north, along their border with Eschalion. That would be very good.

But the Timekeeper was going on, his dry voice quiet enough that she had to listen closely to hear him. “Yet whatever little magic the young Bear Lord may hold in his hand, I imagine he now believes that the success of the trade between Tor Carron and Nimmira has made the Lady so confident she feels little need to conceal her land, and has come to desire further trade and stronger ties between Tor Carron and Nimmira. That will be in his mind now. His attention will be bent toward coaxing us into confidence in his friendship, in the hope of gaining an understanding of our magic.”

This made sense. Keri nodded. “And the Wyvern King? And this sorcerer of his, Magister Eroniel?”

“One hesitates to speculate too broadly regarding the mind of the Wyvern King. But I do not believe that either Aranaon Mirtaelior or Eroniel Kaskarian will have realized that the quiet trade in garnets and opals and glassware was anyone's secret scheme for personal gain. The trade was important for Lord Dorric and his…cronies. But I am certain it must have been a small trade for Eschalion. Nothing so important as to arouse suspicion. I suspect that even yet, the Wyvern King does not realize quite what has been hidden from his eye.”

Keri nodded again, reassured that the Timekeeper agreed with her own hopes. She said quietly, “You knew all about what my father was doing, of course. You knew everything.”

The Timekeeper met her eyes. “Eventually. Yes.”

“And you didn't tell us. You didn't tell me.”

“If I had explained, you might have refused the succession. Or later, you might have refused the ascension.”

Keri stared at him. She had not even known it was possible to refuse either. In fact, she was almost sure she remembered the Timekeeper implying that refusal was impossible.

“It has happened before in the long reaches of time,” he told her, in his dust-dry, ageless murmur. “Lord Dorric was not the first Lord to lead Nimmira in an unfortunate direction. Nimmira will have chosen the Lady it needs for this moment and this time. I feared to interfere with its choice. Or risk allowing you to decline the choice. That has also happened before. I feared such refusal might lead to worse than a corrupt and venal Lord.”

Keri looked at Tassel, raising her eyebrows, and Tassel nodded agreement that they had to look up that particular history.

“At the appropriate moment, I would have spoken,” added the Timekeeper. “If you and your Bookkeeper had not come upon the truth yourselves.”

“The appropriate moment!” Cort said scornfully.

But Keri touched his arm and shook her head. She understood, or thought she did. Though she also thought she should be very, very angry. Perhaps she would be, later. She said at last, “And do you know anything else that you're waiting for
the appropriate moment
to mention?”

The Timekeeper closed his eyes briefly. Then he opened them again and said calmly, “Lady, I hope I know nothing else that even begins to rival the truth you have already discovered.”

“All right.” Keri wondered if she believed this. But she met his eyes as if she did and demanded, “What am I supposed to do to fix this, then? If I'm the appropriate Lady and this is my moment and my time, what am I supposed to
do
?”

But the Timekeeper only opened one long, bony hand—it was empty, except perhaps for a fragment of insubstantial time—and answered, “Lady, that you must discover or decide. I do not know. I have never known.”

Keri had been sure he would say something like that. She was, she thought, just about ready to get angry now.

The door banged open at that moment, and Mem stalked in, dragging Linnet by one wrist. The girl's eyes were narrowed with outrage, but she wasn't trying to get free—maybe because it would have been undignified, but maybe because Domeric was right behind them, his deep voice raised in a rumbling protest that Keri could not at the moment, distracted as she was, decipher. She stared at all of them in bewilderment.

“This little strumpet was
kissing
your brother!” declared Mem, drawing herself up, her eyes snapping with offended fury. “Right out in a public hallway, the shameless chit!” She pushed Linnet away, toward the back rooms where Keri's personal staff lived and slept. “Gather your things, girl, and get out!”

“Later!” said Cort. “We have important problems to sort out, and you barge in on us for such trivialities?”

“Trivialities!”

“What
is
this?” Keri said, a bit weakly, she thought. But Linnet straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and faced her without a word. Behind the girl, Domeric closed his mouth on whatever protest he had been trying to utter. He flushed, slowly and thoroughly. But then he stepped forward and rested his big hands on Linnet's shoulders.

Keri stared at the little tableau, taken utterly aback by this descent from her father's shocking crimes into ordinary, everyday scandal. It seemed unreal. Or perhaps it was her father's crimes that seemed unreal, and the contrast with ordinary life was simply too much to believe. She had not guessed, when Linnet said Domeric was
good to his girls,
that Linnet herself might be one of them. But she found she did not mind that a bit, if it meant Linnet had never been one of her
father's
girls.