The Truth-Teller's Tale (22 page)

“Adele,” I said in a low voice.

“Yes?”

“I think this is the most dreadful Summermoon ever.”

I heard her laugh and then move about on the bed again. I knew she was sitting up now, her spine against the headboard, her knees drawn up, her hands linked around her ankles. I knew, because I was taking the same position. So we had talked, quietly and in the dark, since we were very small.

“The most dreadful, the most wonderful,” she said with a sigh. “I don't know how we'll manage once it's over.”

“Roelynn and Alexander,” I said.

“You and Gregory.”

“Micah and you.”

Silence for a moment, and then she said, “At least the dancing lessons are over. That's been the hardest part.”

“And the best part.”

The cottony sound of her head nodding against the pillow propped behind her on the headboard. “I don't know any terrible secrets about Gregory, if you were wondering,” she said. “I couldn't tell you if I
did
, but I can tell you that I don't.”

“He wants me to go with him, tomorrow night,” I said. “To see some players. I told him I couldn't get away—too busy—but he thought we could trade nights off, me tomorrow and you the night after.”

“Do you want to go with him?” she asked.

“Oh—I do, I don't. One more memory to store up later and spend a lot of time trying to forget.”

“I think you should go,” she said. “I can take care of your chores for one night. But only if you want to.”

I sighed. “I don't suppose it matters. He'll be gone once Summermoon is over. Better that way, of course, and I know it, but I will be so dejected when he's gone.”

“Better that way,” she echoed sadly. “Than to see him every day and think—and wonder—” Her voice stopped abruptly in the dark.

“Micah loves you,” I said. I could hear her nod again. “Does he want to marry you? Does he even talk about such things?”

“All the time. He wants to defy his father and elope. But I—it would be—I would be the cause of a rift between him and his father that would last for their lifetimes. How can I do such a thing? How can I be such a barrier? I have told him I will not marry him without his father's blessing.”

“Well, that must throw him into despair on a regular basis!” I exclaimed.

She made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Oh, he thinks that if Roelynn ever does marry the prince, Karro will be so delighted he will let Micah wed where he will.”

I thought of Roelynn and Alexander, and the light in Roelynn's face that I had not seen during any of her other disastrous liaisons. “I don't think Roelynn will be marrying the prince anytime soon,” I said.

“No, and who would want her to?” Adele agreed. “Like the rest of us, she deserves to be happy—and to choose her own way to achieve that happiness. I could not want her to sacrifice her joy in order to guarantee mine.”

I sighed again. It was a night made for sighing. “I no longer even know what to long for,” I said, sliding down a little in the bed. “I think, ‘Melinda will be here soon, and then I will make a wish that she will make come true.' But I don't know what that wish would be. So many other lives seem tangled up with my own hopes and wishes. I would want all our dreams to come true.”

I could hear Adele moving, too, stretching back out on the bed and pushing her pillow into a more agreeable shape. “Yes, I have been thinking about Melinda, too,” she said. “I know what I would wish for—just this one time, just for this Summermoon. I would wish that you and I would be allowed to go to Karro's for the ball. I don't even want to be invited to dance. I just want to stand in the shadows and watch. I have the feeling that everything would be solved then—if we were there, in the house, on Summermoon night.”

Personally, I couldn't see that such a wish had much value—if you were going to expend the energy to fashion a dream that was not going to come true, it might as well be a grand one. “I guess my wishes are a little more vague,” I said. “I want us to be happy and have love. All three of us.”

“All six,” Adele murmured.

I laughed, and snuggled my cheek against the pillow. “Everyone,” I whispered drowsily. “The whole world.”

“I would settle for us,” she replied, yawning through the words. We were silent a few more moments, and then we slept.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In the morning, in the middle of a rainstorm, Melinda arrived. She was astonished and a little put out to discover that there was no space left at the Leaf & Berry. “What? You've given away my room to some vagrants from Wodenderry?” she demanded as she sat in the kitchen and had tea with my mother, Adele, and me. Alexander and Gregory had vanished for the afternoon, and the house was curiously silent without the bright music percolating in from the parlor. “You have
always
had a place for me! I can count on you absolutely!”

“Indeed, and I feel most dreadful about turning you away,” said my mother, who had agonized over this issue for the past three days. “I don't know what we were thinking when we booked the inn to these young men for such a long time! But now that they're here, we can hardly turn them out—”

“And I suppose I am to go from door to door, in the rain, to see if I can find anyone willing to take me in,” Melinda said. I thought she was amused rather than offended by the situation, particularly since my mother was clearly so distraught, but she couldn't help teasing just a little.

“No, no, we have found a place for you already,” my mother said eagerly. “Constance has just begun to rent out her top room—really, it's charming, and the street is quieter than ours. I've already reserved it for you, for you know how crowded Merendon gets on Summermoon. But she was delighted to think the Dream-Maker would be her guest. I hate to send you there. You'll like the place so much you'll never come back to the Leaf and Berry.”

Melinda blew on her tea, then took a cautious sip. “So, Hannah, who are these young men who have ousted me from my place? Do I know them?”

“A dancing master named Gregory and his apprentice, Alexander,” Mother said.

“Alexander has long fair hair that he usually wears tied back. Aristocratic features. Handsome,” I said. I was trying not to pile on too many adjectives. “Gregory is dark, blue-eyed, has a beard. They both seem well born but not very well off.”

Melinda looked thoughtful, then shook her head. “I don't know anyone with those names who answers to those descriptions. But I'm hardly acquainted with every fallen nobleman in the kingdom. I take it they've been popular additions to the cultural scene?”

My mother threw her hands in the air. “Oh, Melinda! This is the first time the inn has been quiet since they arrived! That music never stops! I hear it when I'm dreaming.”

Melinda smiled. “Well, I'm sorry to miss them. Maybe I'll catch them some afternoon when I come over to have tea with you. Though the next few days look to be very busy, and with Summermoon the day after tomorrow—”

“I'm sure you'll meet them one day or another,” Adele said softly. “It seems like everyone has.”

 

 

It was still raining when I gathered Melinda's bags and escorted her to Constance's house just two blocks off High Street. In fact, the Dream-Maker quite liked the cozy little room on the second floor with its ruffled lace curtains and fluffy white bedspread. “Though it's not quite the Leaf and Berry,” she said, smiling at me. “I would tell you to wait here until the rain lets up, but I don't think it's going to.”

“I've got to get back anyway, whether I'm wet or not,” I said. I had to work ahead on tonight's dinner since I wouldn't be there to help serve it. Of course, if it kept raining, not even the amazing acrobatic troupe would be able to perform. Now there was a discouraging thought. “It's just not the same without you in the inn on Summermoon!”

“Remember that next year before you give away my room.”

In a few moments, I was back out on the street, holding a heavy shawl over my head in a rather feeble attempt to keep the rain from my face. The cobblestones were slick with mud, water, and the occasional unwary worm; the world smelled like hot, wet brick. The faint breeze was cool enough now, but once the rain stopped, the air would heat up to a sultry pitch, uncomfortable for as long as the sun stayed out. Still, there was an excellent chance that the temperature would be tolerable by nightfall.

I splashed along as quickly as I could, turning the corner onto our street and making for the inn, only a few blocks away. A dark and rather broad man, head down and shoulders hunched against the rain, headed directly for me, and I stepped closer to the buildings to try to keep out of his way. A pointless civility—he caught my arm as I hurried past, and peered in under my shawl to try to identify me. It was Roelynn's father.

“You—you're that girl from the inn, aren't you?” he demanded. “My daughter's friend?”

Imprecise but true. I nodded. “Yes.”

“I need to tell you something.”

I glanced quickly over both shoulders, looking for shelter, but he shrugged off such inessentials. “It'll be quick,” he said. “I just—this has been weighing on me. I want—I had to tell someone, and who better than you?”

“What is it?” I said cautiously.

“I sent a cutter out,” he said flatly. “To intercept one of Mac Balder's ships. He's got a fresh cargo from a foreign port, or he says he has, coming in within the next two days. I don't want—damn it,
I'm
the one who brings in the exotic merchandise!
I'm
the one who makes the best deals with other kingdoms! So I sent a ship out to commandeer his freight. You know his men will fight—
my
men would, under the same circumstances. I'm afraid there might be—well—who knows how it will end? Not well, that seems certain.”

I was staring at him from under the awning of my shawl. Gaping, more like. I could feel the rain beating against my dress from the knees on down, soaking the fabric, soaking my shoes. None of that seemed to matter at the moment. “You wanted to tell me that?” I demanded.

He shrugged. “Dreadful, I know. The things a man does to stay in business! The stories I could tell you of my last thirty years would turn that yellow hair of yours pure white. Never thought I'd have anything to say to a Safe-Keeper, but it's true what everyone claims. I feel better having gotten all that off my chest.”

“I'm not—” I began, but he interrupted me.

“I know,” he said. “You're not going to tell anyone.” He shook his head. “What a strange day this has been,” he said. And without saying another word, or giving me a chance to say one, he turned away and plunged back into the pouring rain.

More slowly I walked the final yards to the Leaf & Berry, letting my shawl fall over my head like a limp mantle, so wet now it did not seem worth the effort to try to keep my face dry. Clearly Karro had confided in the wrong sister; he had failed to ask the crucial question about my identity. But his confession was more shocking than his lapse of judgment. He had sent out a team of pirates to steal another man's cargo—and, perhaps, to kill another man's crew! It was heinous. It was unforgivable. I should be running even now to go pounding on Mac Balder's door, to inform the harbormaster and Joe Muller and the other key townspeople of Merendon that this outrage was being enacted even as we spoke. I was a Truth-Teller; they would believe me without proof.

But. My essential honesty forced me to wrestle with this dilemma: I had been told his secret under false pretenses. I had done nothing to deceive him, but he had acted in accordance with the rules as he understood them. If it had, in fact, been Adele to whom he told his secret, no force in this world would have made her repeat his words. Did I not stand in for Adele, in this instance? Did I not owe him the courtesy of the covenant? Was not the role of a Safe-Keeper merely to listen, and to know, and to keep silence?

Only one person in the world could answer these questions for me, and she was gone when I came panting into the kitchen.

“Where's Adele?” I asked my mother as I vigorously toweled off my hair and tossed my sodden shoes into the corner. “I have to talk to her. Right now.”

From the other room, I could hear the tinkling sounds of the music box plucking away at one of its melodies. The kitchen itself smelled like baking ham and cooling cobbler. My mother looked up from the table, where she sat staring at a pile of silver coins. “She's not here right now,” Mother said in a strange voice.

I threw my shawl over a hook and sat at the table beside her. “Where did she go? Why do you look like that? What's all that money for?”

Mother stared over at me, her soft blue eyes a little dazed. “It's from Karro,” she said. “Can you believe how much? It'll pay to fix the roof and refurbish half the rooms!”

“Karro!” I exclaimed. He must have been coming from the Leaf & Berry even as I encountered him in the street. “What did he want? Was he looking for Adele?”

My mother shook her head, then nodded. “He was looking for both of you, actually. He said he wanted to hire your services on Summermoon night. One of his kitchen girls was called away because her mother's dying and another one had to be let go just yesterday because he caught her stealing. He has all those people coming for the ball—he wants you and Adele to work for him, just that one night.” She fingered the silver coins spread on the table. “And he paid us all this money.”

I felt a little shiver go down my back. That was what Adele had wished for—to be at Karro's on Summermoon. “But you need us on Summermoon,” I said slowly. “It's our busiest night of the year.”