Wind Over Bone: The Estralony Cycle #2 (Young Adult Fantasy Romance) (22 page)

“
Definitely not,” the Duchess echoed, and Rokal slouched in his seat.

“
I’ll go,” said Savvel and Sarid at the same time.

“
Yelse will roast you,” said Sarid to Savvel. “And I can turn into a wind.”

“
I bet you could turn me into a wind.” He sounded like a petulant little boy.

“
Out of the question,” said the dame. “You’re our Suncat.”

Savvel turned his hands in his shirt. “I see. I’m a puppet.”

“Well spotted,” said the dame in what Sarid thought was a rather daring remark, considering they had just put Savvel second in the line of succession.

“
Was that a joke?” Savvel stood up and stretched his arms behind his head. “Because it was a rotten one.” He climbed up the terraced seating and left.

“
I think,” said the dame, ignoring his departure, “that we should send Lady Hyeda. She will be safe from her sister’s enchantments, and besides”––she spoke to Sarid directly––“you were the boy’s lover.”

“
I don’t know if that will make him more or less inclined to listen to me,” said Sarid. “But I’ll go to Meliona.”

The rest of the council concurred.

***

Again the three girls and Savvel ate in private, in the girls’ dining room.

“There’s a hair in my wine,” said Mari. She fished it out with a finger.

“
Yours, probably,” said Sarid.

“
No. It’s crooked.”

Savvel gagged and put his knife down.

“Too forthright, princess?” said Mari. “It belongs to you, I think. No one else has such curly, lustrous––”

“
Would you put him off his food?” said Sarid. “He’s already like a stick.”

“
Your tantrum was superb,” said Mari to Savvel. “Put Leva to shame.”

Leva stared at her shellfish and dragged a finger up and down her side in a long line. Along the scar she had got from her horse.

“Aren’t you hungry, Leva?” said Mari.

“
I don’t want to be Ravinya.”

“
It’s the headdress,” said Savvel. “The weight can kill.”

Leva laughed and then her face went blank. She gazed straight ahead, began crying silently. Up and down went her finger, up and down.

“I’m frightened.” Leva looked at Sarid. “Kill her. You promise you’ll kill her?” She wiped her tears away. “I’m a coward.”

“
You’re the bravest girl I’ve ever met,” said Sarid.

***

That night Sarid lay in bed listening to the night birds outside the window. She drowsed, and half-dreamed of Leva lying on a hillside, her hair spread around her in a wheel, blood at her throat. A swing with an iron seat hung from an oak and spun gently. Footprints led away, tracking blood. Sarid followed the prints down the hill, all the way to a pair of shell-white feet. Her eyes slid over the feet, up the legs, and then she woke.

She put her hands on her heart and breathed it back to a normal pace. She slipped from her bed and went out into the hall. Her nightgown billowed around her, and the tiles were cold under her feet. She walked all the way to Savvel’s room, and silently encouraged the sentry to fall asleep against the wall.

She knocked softly. Savvel opened the door, face guarded, body angled away.

“
Oh.” He drew her in.

“
I’m too restless to sleep,” she said.

“
Me too.” He took her over to his great stone of a bed, and put her in it.

They tried to cure the restlessness in a number of ways, and afterwards pleasure sat in the pit of her stomach and her eyes grew heavy. She was drowsing again when Savvel pinched her.

“Ass.”

“
I’m making sure you aren’t a dream.”

“
Pinch yourself, then.”

“
I don’t trust my judgment.”

“
Go to sleep.”

“
I want to talk.”

So she rubbed her eyes and told him to get on with it.

He took a breath and looked toward the ceiling. “There are things,” he said. “Thoughts. Different futures, constantly shifting under me––”

“
I wouldn’t have thought it possible on such a great bed.”

“
Suppose I refuse to do anything––suppose I make one Ravyir and Rischa another, and we go to war. Or, suppose”––he kissed her hand––“you and I run back to the mountains.”

“
Do you care for your brother?”

“
Yes.”

“
Stay with that thought. Least prone to shifting.”

“
It will, though.  I’ll fall through.”

“
To where?”

“
The other side.”

“
Other side of what?”

“
Reality.”

She took her hand away and sighed. “Really, Savvel? There isn’t another side of reality.”

He started smiling. A mad smile. “What if there was?”

“
Go to sleep, Savya.”

“
You could find the truth.”

Sarid snorted.

“Most people,” he said, “don’t search far enough.”

“
Don’t,” she said. “Don’t go looking for the other side of reality.”

He kissed the top of her head and went to sleep.

Twenty

“
When are you going to Rischa?” he asked over breakfast.

“
The sooner I go the less time I’ll have to think about it.” Sarid speared a piece of melon with her knife. “Probably after lunch.”

Savvel tilted his chair back. “If you leave me here I’ll fall in love with Leva.” His chair landed with a thump.

Sarid rolled a linen napkin between her hands. “Best of luck to you both.”

“
I mean it.”

“
If I took you along, Grete Eianhurt would never trust me again.”

“
So what?”

“
I can’t turn you into a wind. I don’t have the first clue how.”

“
You can do transfigurations. I’ve seen you.”

“
I can’t make a wind of you.”

“
Something that flies, then,” he said.

“
A bird?”

“
Or a very big moth.”

She poured water from a pitcher over her sticky hand, and flung the water over the balcony. “Why should you come?”

“If Rischa knows I’m alive and in my right mind, he might be more amenable.”

She looked over the balcony at the spread of green slate roofs. “I suppose you’re right.”

“And you want me to come.”

“
I could do without you.”

“
You want me to come.”

“
You,” said Sarid, “want to make certain I don’t diddle your brother.”

“
Take me with you.”

***

She paced the balcony after breakfast, thinking about it. The truth was, she didn’t want to go at all. She didn’t want to face Rischa, didn’t want to surprise him. He’d think she’d come to kill him. She imagined his face, mouth slightly open, throat working, trying to swallow. She shuddered. How could she possibly convince him of anything?

She thought about what she might do. Afterwards, if the Eianhurts and Caveiras never trusted her again––well, Savvel was right. It didn’t matter. She could do what she wanted. She was closest to the problem, knew all its tangles better than anyone, and she was more powerful, besides. But about Savvel––

She could do transfigurations, but not on her own. She considered calling to her father. But she didn’t trust him. She searched through the scraps of memory from her mad time; some names came to her mind––
Brindlaeche, Oluindre
, the
Vorya:
saebelen who changed things. She still knew how to summon and bind them.

She went to find Savvel.

He was in his washroom, dropping rose petals through the window, watching them spin to the ground.

“
You want to change to a bird?” she said.

He nodded. “A pelican.”

“Why a pelican?”

He shrugged, then looked up and saw she was serious. “You’re letting me come?”

“Yes. But you’re so lazy I’ll probably have to blow you to Meliona.”

He tossed a rosebud out the window. “When?”

“Tonight, when the moon rises. We’ll do it in one of the gardens.”

***

Evening fell, turning the shadows blue and the towers marigold, and Leva looked at Savvel and said, “He looks too content by half.”

“
He’s just exhausted,” said Mari. “He and Sarid have been bidding each other farewell all afternoon.”

They were leaning over a bridge, looking into the silvery water. Savvel was on the other side, scaring away a group of grubby boys who’d been spitting on the boats passing beneath.

He walked back over, sliding his hands into his pockets, feeling around. “I’ve been robbed.”

“
Don’t put coins in your outside pockets,” said Mari.

He looked back at the boys. “They’ll buy wine instead of bread for their mothers. Pity their sisters weren’t there. Girls are less selfish.”

Sarid doubted it. She looked into the canal and saw the moon. It was waning: a thin, white fingerprint stamped in the water.

As they walked back to the palace, darkness fell, and the lapping sound of the water rose above everything. The lamplighters wove strings of lights above and below them, and bells tolled the city into night.

Mari and Leva went inside; Savvel and Sarid said they would like to walk a bit longer. They wandered around the palace gardens until they found one where the grass was tall and the hedges unkempt, and old cypresses curled over the walls like fingers.

“
I’m going to call to Oluindre, who will help us change you,” said Sarid.

“
Who?”

“
A moon saebel.”

Savvel watched as she chose a place on the lawn where the moonlight was brightest. She found four stones with which to mark the four points of a circle. She knelt and kneaded the stones with her palms until they were hot and the air was thick and dancing above them. She said the words for grounding. She went into the circle and opened it, and voices came from far off. The air smelled like a thunderstorm, a crossroads, a hole in time.

Sarid stood just outside it. She said with her feet, mouth, hands and eyes:
Gloraghlla Oluindre caeforgiolaeghl Gloraghlla Oluindre lieaidiollaina.
The words for binding.

The moonlight in the circle turned into a light silver snow. The flakes blew together, forming a something solid––a bird with a great, swooping swallowtail. The bird became tall, humanoid.

She had a perfect, porcelain face with only one eye: lidless, big as a sand dollar, with a pupil that dilated like a bird’s. Her wings were wrapped tightly around her, moth green, drops of dew caught in the feathers.

Aleksei’s daughter, what does she want?
said Oluindre.

“
Speak in Gireldine,” commanded Sarid, “so we can both understand. I know you’re old enough.”

“
What does she want?” said Oluindre. “Courtesy demands she makes up her mind before we are summoned.” She was impatient, so Sarid got right to it:

“
I want Savvel to be a bird whenever I say he shall be one. And I want Savvel to be a human whenever I say he shall be one.”

“
Dictator,” said Savvel.

“
So shall it be,” said Oluindre.

Moonlight shone down Sarid’s throat and into her ears, lighting her like a lamp.

“Be a bird, Savvel,” she commanded.

Moonlight caught at Savvel’s fingertips, dripping off them like milk. His fingers lengthened and thinned; he held them up and watched the pinions come out. Feathers spread down his arms, and he crouched, and went smaller and smaller. A tail curled out of his back. His feet were strong and yellow, and his eyes darkened to an orangey-gold.

He was a little sparhawk, colored all tawny.

“
I thought I was to be a pelican,” said the sparhawk.

“
His mind has no say in it,” said Oluindre. “His body makes the choice.”

“
I’m sorry, Savvel.” Sarid pulled her sleeve over her hand and bent down. He stepped onto her arm. “Your body won’t have you be a clown.” She turned to Oluindre. “What are his limitations?”

“
Five days from now,” the saebel said, “it will be the dark of the moon. Our power wanes, then. His shape won’t hold in the starlight.”

“
He’ll go back to human form whether I tell him to or not?”

“
Only in the starlight, which doesn’t change and doesn’t lie.”

“
Do you hear that?” said Sarid to Savvel. “Don’t fly when there’s no moon.”

At this Savvel remembered his wings and wanted to try them. But Sarid said she’d better change him back to a human, to make sure the transformation worked in its completion. “Be a man, Savvel,” she said, and he stood taller than her again. She thanked Oluindre, and banished her.

The saebel faded away, leaving some feathers that melted and became moonlight over the grass. Sarid closed the circle and put the stones back.

“
Shall we go tonight?” said Savvel. His hair and clothes were wildly mussed. He looked wide awake.

“
No,” said Sarid. “I’m bone tired.”

***

They woke early, when the sky was just starting to turn green. Savvel lit the charcoal in the samovar, saying he needed his morning tea if he wasn’t to be so lazy, and Sarid went out on the balcony. She put a hand in the air; there was a warm breeze that smelled of salt.

“
Good for practice,” she said.

He gave them both a cup of tea, and pretended to read the dregs. “Truth will drop from the sky, crushing a nitwit. Very cryptic.”  Then she said the words––again it looked as though shining milk dripped from his fingers––and he shrank to a bird. He opened his wings and gave them a few beats, which lifted and carried him almost to the balustrade.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll give it a go.” She put him up on the balustrade.

He spread his wings, took a step, and fell off the balcony. She watched him drop like a stone, her heart hammering. Then he opened his wings, was flapping, flapping, gliding––and had soon risen high above her.

A little while later he alighted on a lemon tree growing just before the balcony. She said, “I wondered if you’d come back.”

“
Let’s go. I would dearly like to do that again. Like riding a great, warm wave.”

“
They’re going to think I stole you away and delivered you to Yelse as a special gift.”

“
You think she goes hawking?” He lifted a leg and scratched beneath his wing. “I left a note. They’ll know I went willingly.”

“
I doubt that will make them less nervous. We’re going to Trulba, first, remember? In case we get separated.”

“
And then Merstig, Pengrava, and Meliona.”

“
See if we can make it in three days. I’ll be right beneath you.”

He dove off the balcony and soared westward. She followed. The city passed under them and dwindled, and patches of green and brown spread out, speckled blue where clouds cast fast shadows.

“Could you be a little warmer?” said Savvel. “I won’t have to flap so much.” She took gulps of sun-warmed air and spread them beneath him. “Very good,” he said. “You blow very well. Best blower I’ve ever met.”

Some hours later he had a rest in a tree, and she told him he’d better find other things to talk about or he’d have icy blasts bruising his rump all the way to Meliona.

They set off again, and the fields wrinkled into brown hills. The hills climbed higher, waves of deciduous forest dotted through with the dark of pine. Finally they spotted Trulba by a small, blue lake, and landed on the far shore. The light of the setting sun turned the water to fire.

“
Will you change me back?” said Savvel, “or shall I eat a bluetit for dinner?”

“
Do they know your face in Trulba?”

“
No.”

“
Did you bring your bow, or were you going to raid a rabbit hutch?”

Savvel stayed a sparhawk. He caught a finch and wrung its neck with his thick talons; and afterwards Sarid looked politely away as he hacked bones into the grass.

***

They continued like this for three days. They crossed a big river into Anefeln and came at last to Meliona, a city of brightly painted wood and carved gables. It was tucked between three low hills, surrounded by farmsteads and rivers and pine thickets. Savvel said the locals made a fete of repainting their houses every five years. He’d spent his childhood summers there, the city being the seat of one of his family’s largest holdings.

The hall stood at the top of a hill, made all of wood, with fat, square towers, turnip-shaped roofs, and arched windows and doors.

Sarid stood in the street under the hall, and said to Savvel, who was on her arm, “I suppose you could fly in easy enough. But if I went as a wind, people would wonder when the lamps went out.”

“It’s a nice evening,” said Savvel. “With a breeze. Windows will be open.”

“
I don’t know––”

“
You wanted it over with. It’s after supper, we can corner him in his room.”

So Sarid dissolved and followed Savvel up the hill, through a wooded area, over a moat coated with water lilies. They passed through a window. The sun had gone. Sarid snuffed out several lamps, carrying the smoke with her.

Savvel fared little better, flitting from rafter to rafter, narrowly avoiding the heads of servants.

They entered into a high hall with round windows. People were wiping down the tables; they looked about them when Sarid blew the lamps out.