Читать книгу Winter Moon: Moontide / The Heart of the Moon / Banshee Cries - C.E. Murphy - Страница 8

Lady Reanna watched with interest as Moira na Ferson took her chain-mail shirt, pooled it like glittery liquid on the bed, and slipped it into a grey velvet bag lined with chamois. It was an exquisitely made shirt; the links were tiny, and immensely strong; Moira only wished it was as featherlight as it looked.

“Your father doesn’t know what he’s getting back,” Reanna observed, cupping her round chin with one deceptively soft hand, and flicking aside a golden curl with the other.

“My father didn’t know what he sent away,” Moira countered, just as her heavy, coiled braid came loose and dropped down her back for the third time. With a sigh, she repositioned it again, picked up the silver bodkin that had dropped to the floor, and skewered it in place. “He looked at me and saw a cipher, a nonentity. He saw what I hoped he would see, because I wanted him to send me far, far away from that wretched place. Maybe I have my mother’s moon-magic, maybe I’m just good at playacting. He saw a little bit of uninteresting girl-flesh, not worth keeping, and by getting rid of it he did what I wanted.” Candle- and firelight glinted on the fine embroidered trim of an indigo-colored gown, and gleamed on the steel of the bodice knife she slipped into the sheath that the embroidery concealed.

“But to send you here!” Reanna shook her head. “What was he thinking?”

“Exactly nothing, I expect.” Moira hid her leather gauntlets inside a linen chemise, and inserted a pair of stiletto blades inside the stays of a corset. “I’m sure he fully expected to have a half-dozen male heirs by now, and wanted only to find somewhere to be rid of me at worst, and to polish me up into a marriage token at best. He looked about for someone to foist me off on—which would have to be some relation of my mother’s, since he’s not on speaking terms with most of his House—and picked the one most likely to turn me into something he could use for an alliance. You have to admit, the Countess has a reputation for taking troublesome young hoydens and turning out lovely women.” The ironic smile with which she delivered those last words was not lost on her best friend. Reanna choked, and her pink cheeks turned pinker.

“Lovely women who use bodkins to put up their hair!” she exclaimed. “Lovely women who—”

“Peace,” Moira cautioned. “Perhaps the moon-magic had a hand in that, too. If it did, well, all to the good.” An entire matched set of ornate silver bodkins joined the gauntlets in the pack, bundled with comb, brush, and hand mirror. “There can be only one reason why Father wants me home now. He plans to wed me to some handpicked suitor. Perhaps it’s for an alliance, perhaps it’s to someone he is grooming as his successor. In either case, though he knows it not, he is going to find himself thwarted. I intend to marry no one not of my own choosing.”

Reanna rested her chin on her hands and looked up at Moira with deceptively limpid blue eyes. “I don’t know how you’ll manage that. You’ll be one young woman in a keep full of your father’s men.”

“And the law in Highclere says that no woman can be wed against her will. Not even the heir to a sea-keep. And the keep will be mine, whether he likes it or not, for I am the only child.” Moira rolled wool stockings into balls and stuffed them in odd places in the pack. She was going to miss this cozy room. The sea-keep was not noted for comfort. “I will admit, I do not know, yet, what I will do when he proposes such a match. But the Countess has not taught me in vain. I will think of something.”

“And it will be something clever,” Reanna murmured. “And you will make your father think it was all his idea.”

Moira tossed her head like a restive horse. “Of course!” she replied. “Am I not one of her Grey Ladies?”

Moira’s midnight-black braid came down again, and she coiled it up automatically, casting a look at herself in the mirror as she did so. As she was now—without the arts of paint and brush she had learned from Countess Vrenable—no man would look twice at her. This was a good thing, for a beauty had a hard time making herself plain and unnoticed, but one who possessed a certain cast of pale features that might be called “plain” had the potential to be either ignored or to make herself by art into a beauty. Strange that she and Reanna should have become such fast friends from the very moment she had entered the gates of Viridian Manor. She, so dark and pale, and Reanna, so golden and rosy—yet beneath the surface, they were very much two of a kind. Both had been sent here by parents who had no use for them; daughters who must be dowered were a liability, but girls schooled by Countess Vrenable had a certain cachet as brides, and often the King could be coaxed into providing an addition to an otherwise meager dower. Especially when the King himself was using the bride as the bond of an alliance, which had also been known to happen to girls schooled by the Countess. Both Moira and Reanna were the same age, and when it came to their interests and skills, unlikely as it might seem, they were a perfectly matched set.

And both had, two years ago, been taken into the especial schooling that made them something more than the Countess’s fosterlings. Both had been invited to become Grey Ladies.

It sometimes occurred to Moira that the difference between girls fostered with Countess Vrenable and those fostered elsewhere, was that the other girls went through their lives assuming that no matter what happened, no matter what terrible thing befell them, there would be a rescue and a rescuer. The Grey Ladies knew very well that if there was a rescue to be had, they would be doing the rescuing themselves.

There was a great deal to be said for not relying on anyone but yourself.

“You’re not a Grey Lady yet,” Reanna reminded her, from her perch on the bolster of the bed. “That’s for the Countess to decide.”

A polite cough beside them made them both turn toward the door. “In fact, my dear, the Countess is about to make that decision right now.”

No one took Countess Vrenable, first cousin to the King, for granted. And it was not only because of her nearness in blood to the throne. She was not tall, yet she gave the impression of being stately; she was no beauty, yet she caused the eyes of men to turn away from those who were “mere” beauties. It was said that there was no skill she had not mastered. She danced with elegance, conversed with wit, sang, played, embroidered—had all of the accomplishments any well-born woman could need. And several more, besides. Her hair was pure white, yet her finely chiseled face was ageless. Some said her hair had been white for the past thirty years, that it had turned white the day her husband, the Count, died in her arms.

“You are a little young to be one of my Ladies, child,” the Countess said, in a tone that suggested otherwise. “However, this move on your father’s part holds…potential.”

The older woman turned with a practiced grace that Moira envied, and began pacing back and forth in the confined space of the small room she shared with Reanna. “I should tell you a key fact, my dear. I created the Grey Ladies after my dear husband died, because it was lack of information that caused his death.”

She paused in her pacing to look at both girls. Reanna blinked, looking puzzled, but too polite to say anything.

The Countess smiled. “Yes, my children, to most, he died because he threw himself between an assassin and the King. But the King and I realized even as he was dying that the moment of his death began long before the knife struck him. We know that if we had had the proper information, the assassin would never have gotten that far. Assassins, feuds, even wars—all can be averted with the right information at the right time.” She passed a hand along a fold of her sable gown. “My cousin has kept peace within our borders and without because he values cunning over force. But it is a never-ending struggle, and in that struggle, information is the most powerful weapon he has.”

As Reanna’s mouth formed a silent O, the Countess turned to Moira. “Here is the dilemma I face. There is information that I need to know in, and about, the Sea-Keep of Highclere and its lord. But conflicting loyalties—”

Moira raised an eyebrow. “My lady, I have not seen my father for more than a handful of days in all my life. I know well that although my mother loved him, he wedded her only to have her dower, and it was her desperate attempt to give him the male heir he craved that killed her. He cast me off like an outworn glove, and now he calls me back when he at last has need of me. I have had more loving kindness from you in a single day than I have had from him in all my life. If he works against the King, it is my duty to thwart him.” She met the Countess’s intensely blue eyes with her own pale grey ones. “There are no conflicting loyalties, my lady. I owe my birth to him—but to you, I owe all that I am now.”

What she did not, and would not say, was a memory held tight within her, of the night her mother had died, trying to give birth to the male child her father had so desperately wanted. How her mother lay dying and calling out for him, while he had eyes only for the son born dead. How he had mourned that half-formed infant the full seven days and had it buried with great ceremony, while his wife went unattended to her grave but for Moira and a single maidservant. She had never forgiven him for that, and never would.

The Countess held herself very still, and her eyes grew dark with sadness. “My dear child, I understand you. And I am sorry for it.”

Reanna sighed. “Not all of us are blessed with loving parents, my lady,” she said.

The Countess’s lips thinned. “If you had loving parents, child, I would be the last person to remove you from their care,” she replied briskly, and Moira suddenly understood why she felt she had joined some sort of sisterhood when she came to foster under the Countess’s care. None of them had been considered anything other than burdens at worst, and tokens of negotiation at best, by their parents.

Which makes us apt to trust the first hand that offers kindness instead of a blow, she thought. Which was, of course, a thought born of the Countess’s own training. The Countess taught them all to look for weaknesses and strengths, and to never accept anything at its face value, even the girls who were not recruited into the ranks of the Grey Ladies.

But then her mind added, And it is a very good thing for all of us that milady is truly kind, and truly cares. Because she had no doubt of that. The Countess cared deeply about her fosterlings, whether they were Grey Ladies or not.

But it did make her wonder what someone with less scruples could accomplish with the same material to work on.

“Would that I had a year further training of you, Moira,” the Countess said, frowning just a little. “I am loath to throw you into what may be a lion’s den with less than a full quiver of arrows.”

“I am thrown there anyway,” Moira replied logically. “My father will have me home, and you cannot withhold me. I would as soon be of some use.” And then something occurred to her, which made the corners of her mouth turn up. “But I shall want my reward, my lady.”

“Oh, so?” The Countess did not take affront at this. One fine eyebrow rose; that was all.

“Should I find my father in treason, his estates are confiscated to the Crown, are they not?” she asked. “Well then, as we both know, your word is as good as the King’s. So should information I lay be the cause of such a finding, I wish your hand and seal upon it that the Sea-Keep of Highclere, my mother’s dower, remains with me.”

Slowly, the Countess smiled; it was, Moira thought, a smile that some men might have killed for, because it was a smile full of warmth and approval. “I have taught you well,” she said at last. “Better than I had thought. Well enough, my hand and seal on it, and if you can think thus straightly, I believe you may serve your King.” And she took pen and parchment from the desk and wrote it out. “And you, Reanna—you may hold this in surety for your friend,” she continued, handing the parchment to Reanna, who waved it in the air to dry. “I think it best that you, Moira, not be found with any such thing on your person.”

Moira and Reanna both nodded. Moira, because she knew that no one would be able to part Reanna from the paper if Reanna didn’t wish to give it up. Reanna—well, perhaps because Reanna knew that the Countess would never attempt to take it from her.

“All right, child,” the Countess said then. “I am going to steal you away from your packing long enough to try and cram a year’s worth of teaching into an afternoon.”

In the end, the Countess took more than an afternoon, and even then, Moira felt as if her head had been packed too full for her to really think about what she had learned.

The escort that her father had sent had been forced to cool its collective heels until the Countess saw fit to deliver Moira into their hands. There was not a great deal they could do about that; the Countess Vrenable outranked the mere Lord of Highclere Sea-Keep. The Countess was not completely without a heart; she did see that they were properly fed and housed. But she wanted it made exquisitely clear that affairs would proceed at her pace and convenience, not those of some upstart from the costal provinces.

But there was more here than the Countess establishing her ascendancy, for the lady never did anything without having at least three reasons behind her action. The Countess was also goading Lord Ferson of Highclere Sea-Keep, seeing if he could be prodded into rash behavior. Holding on to Moira a day or two more would be a minor irritation for most fathers, especially since his men had turned up unheralded and unannounced. In fact, a reasonable man would only think that the Countess was fond of his daughter and loath to lose her. But an unreasonable man, or a man hovering on the edge of rebellion, might see this as provocation. And he might then act before he thought.

As a consequence, Moira had more than enough time to pack, and she had some additions, courtesy of the Countess, to her baggage when she was done.

In the dawn of the fourth day after her father’s men arrived with their summons, she took her leave of Viridian Manor.

As the eastern sky began to lighten, she mounted a gentle mule amid her escort of guards and the maidservant they had brought with them. She took the aid offered by the chief of the guardsmen; not that she needed it, for she could have leaped astride the mule without even touching foot to stirrup had she chosen to do so—but from this moment on, she would be painting a portrait of a very different Moira from the one that the Countess had trained. This Moira was quiet, speaking only when spoken to, and in all ways acting as an ordinary well schooled maiden with no “extra” skills. The rest of her “personality” would be decided when Moira herself had more information to work with. The reason for her abrupt recall had still not been voiced aloud, so until Moira was told face-to-face why her father had summoned her, it was best to reveal as little as possible.

That said, it was as well that the maid was a stranger to her; indeed, it was as well that the entire escort was composed of strangers. The fewer who remembered her, the better.

This was hardly surprising; she had been a mere child when she left, and at that time she hadn’t known more than a handful of her father’s men-at-arms by sight. She had known more of the maidservants, but who knew if any of them were still serving? Two wives her father had wed since the death of her mother; neither had lasted more than four years before the harsh winters of Highclere claimed them, and neither had produced another heir.

Of course, father’s penchant for delicate little flowers did make it difficult for them. Tiny, small-boned creatures scarcely out of girlhood were his choice companions, timid and shy, big eyed and frail as a glass bird. Moira’s mother had looked like that—in fact, if she hadn’t wed so young (too young, Moira now thought) she might have matured into what Moira was now—ethereal in appearance, but tough as whipcord inside.

She felt obscurely sorry for those dead wives. She hadn’t been there, and she didn’t know them, but she could imagine their shock and horror when confronted by the winter storms that coated the cliffs and the walls of the keep with ice a palm-length deep. She was sturdier stuff, fifteen generations born and bred on the cliffs of Highclere, like those who had come before her. Pale and slender she might be, but she was tough enough to ride the day through and dance half the night afterward. So her mother still would be, if she’d had more care for herself.

The maidservant was up on pillion behind one of the guards. There were seven of them, three to ride before, and three to ride behind, with the seventh taking the maid and Moira on her mule beside him. They seemed competent, well armed, well mounted; not friendly, but that would have been presumptuous.

She looked up at the sky above the manor walls as they loaded her baggage onto the pack mule, and sniffed the air. A few weeks ago, it had still been false summer, the last, golden breath of autumn, but now—now there was that bitter scent of dying leaves, and branches already leafless, which told her the season had turned. It would be colder in Highclere. And in another month at most, or a week or two at worst, the winter storms would begin.

It was a strange time for a wedding, if that was what she was being summoned to.

“Are you ready, my lady?”

She glanced down at the guard at her stirrup, who did not wait for an answer. He swung up onto his horse and signaled to the rest of the group, and they rode out without a backward glance. Not even Moira looked back; she had said her farewells last night. If her father’s men were watching, let them think she rode away from here with no regret in her heart.

They thought she rode with her eyes modestly down, but she was watching, watching everything. It was a pity she could not simply enjoy the ride, for the weather was brisk without being harsh, and the breeze full of the pleasant scents of frost, wood smoke, and occasionally, apples being pressed for cider. The Countess’s lands were well situated and protected from the worst of all weathers, and even in midwinter, travel was not unduly difficult. The mule had a comfortable gait to sit, and if only she had had good company to enjoy it all with, the trip would have been enchanting.

The guards were disciplined but not happy. They rode without banter, without conversation, all morning long. And it was not as if the weather oppressed them, because it was a glorious day with only the first hints of winter in the air. As they rode through the lands belonging to Viridian Manor, there were workers out harvesting the last of the nuts, cutting deadfall, herding sheep and cattle into their winter pastures, mostly singing as they worked. The air was cold without being frigid, the sky cloudless, the sun bright, and the leaves that littered the ground still carried their vivid colors, so that the group rode on a carpet of gold and red. There could not possibly have been a more glorious day. And yet the guards all rode as if they were traveling under leaden skies through a lifeless landscape.

They stopped at about noon, and rode on again until dark. In all that time, the guards exchanged perhaps a dozen words with her, and less than a hundred among one another. But when camp was made for the evening, the maid, at least, was a little more talkative. Lord Ferson had provided a pavilion for Moira to share with the maid; if it had been up to Moira, she would have been perfectly content to sleep under the moon and stars. She felt a pang as she stepped into the shelter of the tent, wishing she did not have to be shut away for the night.

She let the maid help her out of her overgown, and sat down on the folding stool provided for her comfort while the maid finished her ministrations. “I have not seen Highclere Sea-Keep in many years,” Moira said, in a neutral tone, as the maid brought her a bowl of the same stew and hard bread the men were eating. “Have you served the lord long?”

“Eight years, milady,” the maid said. She was as neutral a creature as could be imagined, with opaque brown eyes, like two water-smoothed pebbles that gave away nothing. She was, like nearly every other inhabitant of the lands in and around Highclere, very lean, very rangy, dark haired and dark eyed. The Sea-Keep had always provided its servants with clothing; hers was the usual garb of an upper maidservant in winter—dark woolen skirt, laced leather tunic, and undyed woolen chemise—and not the finer woolen overgown and bleached lamb’s wool chemise that Moira recalled her mother’s personal maidservant wearing. So her father had sent an upper maid, but not a truly superior handmaiden. This was not necessarily a slight; handmaidens tended to be young, were often pretty, and could be a temptation to the guards. This woman, old enough to be Moira’s mother, plain and commonplace, and entirely in control of herself and her situation, was a better choice for a journey.

“Has the keep changed much in that time?” Moira asked, as she finished her meal and set the bowl aside. It was a natural question, and a neutral one.

The woman shrugged as she took Moira’s braid down from its coil and began brushing it. Needless to say, the pins holding it in place were simple silver with polished heads, not bodkins. “The keep never changes,” she replied. “My lady has fine hair.”

“It is my one beauty,” Moira replied. “And my lord my noble father is well?”

“I am told he is never ill,” said the maid, concentrating on rebraiding Moira’s plaits.

Moira nodded; this woman might not be a superior lady’s maid, but she was not rough handed. “He is a strong man. The sea-keeps need strong hands to rule them.”

Bit by bit, she drew tiny scraps of information from the maid. It wasn’t a great deal, but by the time she slipped beneath the blankets of her sleeping roll, she began to have the idea that the people of Highclere Sea-Keep were not encouraged to speak much among themselves, and even less encouraged to speak to “outsiders” about what befell the keep. And that could be a sign that the lord of the sea-keep was holding a dark secret.

If so, then this was precisely what the Countess Vrenable of Viridian Manor wished to find out.

Highclere Sea-Keep was less than impressive from the road. In fact, very little of it was visible from the road.

The road led through what the local people called “forest.” These were not the tall trees that surrounded Viridian Manor; the growth here was windswept, permanently bent from the prevailing wind from the sea, and stunted by the salt. The forest didn’t change much, no matter what the season; it was mostly a dark, nearly black evergreen she had never seen anywhere else but on the coast. Though the trees weren’t tall, this forest hid the land-wall and gatehouse of the sea-keep right up until the point where the road made an abrupt turn and dropped them all on the doorstep.

And there was a welcome waiting, which Moira, to be frank, had not expected.

She had not forgotten what her home looked like, and at least here on the cliff, it had not changed. A thick, protective granite wall with never less than four men patrolling the top ran right up to the cliff’s edge, making it unlikely anyone could attack the keep from above. There was a gatehouse spanning both sides of the gate, which was provided with both a drop-down iron portcullis and a set of heavy wooden doors. Above the gate was a watch room connected with both gatehouses, which could be manned even when the worst of storms battered the cliff. Both the portcullis and the wooden doors stood open, and arranged in front of them was a guard of honor, eight men all in her father’s livery of blue and silver, with the Highclere Sea-Keep device of a breaking wave on their surcoats.

Moira dismounted from her mule—but only after waiting for the leader of the honor guard to help her. He bowed after handing her down from the saddle, as the sea wind swept over all of them, making the pennants on either tower of the gatehouse snap, and blowing her heavy skirts flat against her legs.

There was ice in that wind, and the promise that winter here was coming early, a promise echoed by the fact that the trees that were not evergreens already stretched skeletal, bare limbs to the sky.

“Welcome home, Lady Moira,” the leader of the guard said, bowing a second time. “The Lord Ferson awaits you in the hall below.”

“Then take me to him immediately,” she said, dropping her eyes and nodding her head—but not curtsying. The head of the honor guard, a knight by his white belt, was below her in status. She should be modest, but not give him deference. This was one of the many things she should have learned—and of course, had—under anyone’s fosterage. She had no doubt that this knight would be reporting everything he saw to her father, later.

The knight offered her his arm, and she took it. Most ladies would need such help on the rest of the journey. She and the knight led the way through the gates, with the honor guard falling in behind; the maid and her journey escort brought up the rear.

Just inside the gates stood the stables and the Upper Guard barracks. These were the only buildings visible. Just past them was the edge of the cliff, and the sea.

She took in a deep breath of the tangy salt air; for once, there was no more than a light wind blowing. This was home. And despite everything, she felt an odd sense of contentment settle over her as the knight led her courteously toward the cliff edge, and the set of stairs, only visible when you were right atop them, that were cut into the living rock of the cliff. And only when you looked down from that vantage did you see the sea-keep itself.

It was built both on a terrace jutting out over the ocean, and into the cliff itself. The side facing the sea was six feet thick, and needed to be, for when the winter storms came those walls would shake with the force of the waves crashing against them, and only walls that thick could prevent the keep from tumbling down into the foam.

Today, with the sun shining and the wind moderate, the spray from the waves beating against the base of the cliff far below was nowhere near the lowest level of the terraces—which, in a storm, would be awash.

From the highest terrace at either side were two walkways leading along the cliff. These led in turn to the second reason for the existence of the sea-keeps—the beacons.

It was the duty of the lord of each sea-keep to man the beacons and keep them alight, from dusk to dawn, and during all times of fog and storm. They warned ships away from the rocks, and provided a guide to navigators. In return, because even the beacons could not protect every ship from grief, the lords had salvage right to anything washed ashore. It was from this salvage right that the lords obtained their wealth. Ships could and did sink even far out to sea; ambergris and sea coal came ashore, and also here at Highclere, true amber and jet. Seaweed and kelp were burned for—well, here Moira had to admit she didn’t know precisely what they were burned for, but apparently the ash was quite valuable. And there were some types of kelp that were edible, by people and animals. She’d had kelp soup hundreds of times; it was one of her favorites. Other kinds made jelly superior to that made with calves’ feet. When the tide went out, the scavengers came out to scour the shingle, and half of what they found was the property of the lord.

If a typical keep were to be set on its side, its entrance facing upward, that is how the sea-keeps were built. The stair led downward to the entrance, a kind of hatchway with two enormous double doors, which now were open to the sky and laid flat against the roof of the topmost tower.

With her knightly escort holding to her arm and walking on the outside of the stair, Moira descended the stair to the tower top, and then passed into the keep itself.

Inside, the stair broadened, and continued descending into the Great Hall. There was only one set of windows in the Great Hall—because the glass had to be very thick, recessed into the stone, and protected by an overhang on the sea side. That set of windows stood in back of the lord’s dais, so that the lord of the sea-keep was haloed by light. He had a fine view of whoever entered his hall—but to those who came down that stair, or stood in the hall below, he was nothing more than a silhouette.

Moira was prepared for this, of course. She took only a glance to assure herself that her father was standing on the dais as she had anticipated, then paid careful attention to her footing.

I suppose it must be Father, anyway. I can’t think who else would dare to stand there.

Every step echoed in the vast hall, and she was glad of her cloak, because it was nearly as cold here as it was on the cliff with the sea wind blowing. During a winter storm there were rooms in the keep that were nearly uninhabitable, they were so damp and cold, and even with a roaring fire in the fireplace, more heat was sucked up the chimney than went into the room.

At last, she reached the floor, and her escort immediately let go of her arm. He released her so quickly, in fact, that it was rather funny. Was he afraid her father would be offended if he held to her arm a heartbeat longer than absolutely necessary?

Moira kept her expression sober, however. Lord Ferson would not find it that amusing.

She walked with her head up and her eyes on the dais between two of the long, rough wooden tables that would hold anyone of any consequence here in the keep at meals. Well, except for the kitchen staff. But everyone else, except for the very lowest of bound serfs, ate in the Great Hall. Lord Ferson liked it that way; he wanted his people under his eye three times a day. Moira wasn’t quite sure why that was; perhaps he thought it would be harder for anyone to foment rebellion undetected with the lord of the keep keeping a sharp eye out for the signs. Perhaps it was only because he enjoyed all the trappings of his position, and those trappings included having his underlings arrayed before him on a regular basis. She had been very young and entirely unschooled in reading men when she had left, and memory, as she had come to understand, was a most imprecise tool when it was untrained.

But except for those times when Lord Ferson had shared his position with a spouse, he had never in her memory had another person on the dais with him.

And as her eyes adjusted to the light, just before she sank into a deep curtsy, she realized with a sense of slight shock that he had someone up there with him now, standing deferentially behind him. There was something odd about the second person’s silhouette, as if he was standing slightly askew.

“And what do you make of the wench, Kedric? She’s learned some graces, at least.” Her father’s voice hadn’t changed much, except, perhaps, to take on a touch of roughness. Probably from all the years of shouting orders over a roaring ocean. It was still deep, still resonant, and still layered with hints of impatience and contempt. Moira remained where she was, deep in her curtsy, head down.

“Comely, my lord. And graceful. Obedient and respectful.” This was a new voice, presumably that of the man who sat at her father’s feet. Not much higher, but smoother, and definitely softer. A much more pleasant voice to listen to.

“Graceful, that I’ll grant, and it’s as well, since I sent her away an awkward, half-fledged thing. Obedient and respectful, so it seems. But comely? Stand up, girl! Look at me!”

Girl? Can it be that he doesn’t remember my name?

Moira raised her eyes and stood up. Lord Ferson had thickened a bit—not that he was fat, but he no longer had a discernible waistline. There was grey in his black hair and beard, and lines in his face. He peered down at her with a faint frown, hands on hips. “Comely, no. Properly groomed, neat, seemly, but pale as the belly of a dead fish. So girl, what have you to say to your father of that?”

“I am as God made me, my lord,” she replied, in an utterly neutral tone of voice.

“Oh, a properly modest, maidenly, and pious response!” Lord Ferson barked what might have been a laugh, had it possessed any humor at all. “And I suppose you wonder why I brought you home, don’t you, girl?”

“My lord will tell me when he feels it is needful for me to know,” she said, dropping her eyes, as much to keep him from reading her dislike of him as to feign maiden modesty.

“Another proper answer. You’ve been taught well, that I’ll grant.” Lord Ferson snorted. “You, men—report back to your captain. Go on, Kedric, escort the lady to her chambers. You’ll be joining us at dinner as is the custom, daughter.”

“Yes, my lord,” she replied, and dropped another curtsy—this one not nearly as deep—as the man, dressed in fool’s patchwork motley (though oddly enough, it was patterned in black-and-white rather than colors) descended from the dais at her father’s orders. He offered her his arm, and she took it, examining him through her eyelashes.

He was just as pale as she, though she couldn’t tell what color his hair was under the fool’s hood that covered his head. For a fool, he had a strange air of dignity, and of melancholy, though one didn’t have to look much past the hunched shoulder to understand the reason for the latter. He also was not very tall—just about her height—and quite slender, with long, sensitive-looking hands. There did seem to be something wrong with his shoulder. He wasn’t a hunchback, but it did seem to be slightly twisted upward. Perhaps an old injury—

“If you will come with me, my lady Moira,” he said, with a slight tug on her hand. He truly had a very pleasant voice, low and warm.

“Certainly, though I know the way,” she replied as he guided her to the door beneath the stair that led deeper into the keep.

But he shook his head. “You are not to be quartered in your old chamber, my lady,” he said, directing her down another stair, this one a spiraling stone stair cut into the rock of the cliff that she knew well, lit by oil lamps fastened to the wall just above head height at intervals. “You have been given new quarters from those you remember. The old nursery chamber would not suit your new stature.”

She bit off the question she was going to ask—And what is my stature? It was best to remember that she needed to tread as carefully here as if she was in an enemy stronghold, because, if the King and the Countess’s suspicions were correct, she might be.

“What is my disposition to be, then?” she asked instead.

“You are to have the Keep Lady’s suite for now,” came the interesting reply. Interesting, because as long as Lord Ferson had evidenced any intention of remarrying, he had kept those rooms vacant. So if he was putting her in them now, did it mean that he was giving up the notion of taking another wife?

Or was it simply that the Keep Lady’s suite was the most secure? Almost impossible for anyone to break into.

Or out of.

It had one window, which provided light to the inaptly named “solar,” and that one was tucked into a curve of the keep so that all one could see from it was the cliff face and a tiny slice of ocean. From the window it was a sheer drop six stories down to jagged rocks and the water. The rest of the suite, like this stair, was carved into the rock of the cliff and never saw daylight. Moira had once overheard Ferson’s second wife tell the handmaiden she had brought with her that it was like living in a cave.

At least it was not as drafty in a storm as some of the rest of the rooms. And the chimney always drew well, no matter what the weather.

“I regret that no handmaidens have been selected for my lady as yet,” Kedric was saying, as he gestured that she should precede him through the narrow door at the bottom of the stair. “I fear my lady will be attending to the disposition of her own possessions. Lady Violetta’s handmaiden departed upon Lady Violetta’s death, and no suitable person has been found for my Lady Moira.”

Interesting that he would know that; the comings and goings of servants were not usually part of a fool’s purview.

“I hardly think I will fall into a decline because I need to unpack for myself,” she said drily. “The Countess’s fosterlings usually took care of each other. However, if no one objects, I would not be averse to having the woman who attended me on my journey as my servant.”

“I will inform the seneschal, who will be greatly relieved, my lady,” Kedric replied. “My lord is reluctant to bring in outsiders; nearly as reluctant as they are to serve here.”

“Life in a sea-keep is not an easy one,” she said automatically as they traversed the long corridor of hewn stone that would end in the Keep Lady’s rooms. Their steps, thank heavens, did not echo here; the corridors and private rooms were carpeted with thick pads of woven sea grass, or no one would ever have gotten any sleep in this place. There was an entire room and four serf women devoted to weaving sea-grass squares and sewing them into carpets, which were replaced monthly in the areas inhabited by the lord and his immediate family and whatever guests he might have. Not that the carpets so replaced went to waste—there was a steady migration of the carpets from one area of the keep to another, until at last they ended up in the kennels and the stables as bedding for hounds and horses.

And as Kedric courteously opened the massive wooden door into the Keep Lady’s quarters for her, she saw that one or another of her father’s wives had made still another improvement for the sake of comfort. There were woolen carpets and fur skins atop the sea-grass carpets, and hangings on all of the stone walls.

The window—one of the few, besides the one in the Great Hall that had glass in it, a construction of panes as thick as her thumb and about the size of her hand leaded together into a frame that could be opened to let in a breeze when the weather was fair—was closed, and Moira went immediately to open it. The hinges protested, and she raised an eyebrow. Evidently Lady Violetta hadn’t cared for sea air.

“I should like those oiled as soon as possible, please,” she said briskly. If Kedric was—as he seemed to be—taking responsibility for her for now, then he might as well get someone in here to do that, too. “Do you know if my things have been brought down yet?”

“I presume so, my lady,” Kedric replied. “If my lady will excuse me, I will see that the seneschal sends the servant you require.”

Something in his tone of voice made her turn, and smile at him impulsively. “Thank you, Kedric. Yours is the first kindly face and voice I have seen or heard since I left Viridian Manor.”

He blinked, as if taken entirely by surprise, and suddenly smiled back at her. “You are welcome, my lady.” He hesitated a moment, then went on. “I have fond memories of Countess Vrenable. She is a gracious lady.”

Interesting. “How is it that you came into my father’s service?” she asked, now that there was no one to overhear. “When I knew him, he was not the sort of man to employ your sort of fool.”

He raised a sardonic eyebrow at her wry twist of the lips. “And by this, you imply that I am not the usual sort of fool? You would be correct. I was in the King’s service, until your father entertained him a year or so ago. Your father remarked on my…usefulness, as well as my talents. I believe he found my manner of jesting to his liking.”

“And what manner of jests are those?” she asked. She knew her father. Foolery did not amuse him. The feebleminded infuriated him. But wit—at the expense of others—

“The King was wont to say that my wit was sharper than any of his knight’s swords, and employed far more frequently.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Perhaps he tired of it. More likely, his knights did, and he wearied of their complaints. My Lord Ferson finds it to his liking.” He shrugged. “At any rate, when he admired my talents, the King offered him my services, and he accepted. Like many another who serves, a fool cannot pick and choose his master.”

Now here, Moira had to school herself carefully, for she had never, ever known the King to dispose of anyone in his retinue in such a cavalier fashion. So either Kedric the Fool had egregiously overstepped both the bounds of his profession and the King’s tolerance, or—

Or the King had carefully planned all of this in order to plant the fool in her father’s household.

Someone had certainly sent the information that had led to Countess Vrenable asking Moira to spy on her own father. Could that someone have been Kedric?

“When you say talents, I assume this means you exercise more than your wit?” she asked, carefully.

If he was, indeed, an agent of the King, he was not about to give himself away—yet. “I am a passable musician, and your father did not have a household musician. I have a wide fund of tales, and at need, I can play the scribe and secretary. And I am useful for delivering messages to his underlings, since there are no pages here, either.” He shrugged. “As, you see, I am about to do for you, if my lady will excuse me?”

She tried not to allow a chill to enter her voice. After all, even if he was an agent of the King, why should he trust her? He could not yet have heard from his master that she was the Countess’s eyes and ears. So far as he knew, she was no more than what she seemed to be, a girl schooled in fosterage who had no notion of what the Grey Ladies were. And if, in fact, it was difficult for him to send and receive information, he might not learn this for weeks, or even months.

Not to mention that if he was not the King’s man—if, in fact, he had been dismissed from the King’s service to enter Lord Ferson’s—there was no reason on earth why he should have responded to that little opening with anything other than the statements he’d made. She needed to remember to walk cautiously….

“I do indeed excuse you, Kedric. And I thank you for your help.” She smiled again, though this time it was with a touch of sadness. “I hope you will not decide to exercise your wit at my expense, though I am certain my father would enjoy the results.”

He had begun to turn away, but he turned back at that, and his expression had darkened. “My lady,” he said, with what she was certain was carefully controlled anger, “can be absolutely certain that I will not abuse my talent in such a way.”

And then he was gone, leaving her to stand, dumbfounded, staring at the closed door.

What could have brought that particular comment on? It was very nearly an outburst.

There was only one thing she was sure of now. Lord Ferson might enjoy the wit and company of his fool, but his fool did not care in the least for Lord Ferson.

She was actually rather pleased that the maid did not turn up until after she had put her own things away. One of the Countess’s lessons for all her girls, and not just would-be Grey Ladies, was in how to contrive hiding places for things one did not want found. It didn’t take a great deal of work, just a very sharp and exceedingly strong knife. Most chests were never moved from where they were set; working at the bottom, one could remove one or more of the boards and create a hiding place between the bottom and the floor. The backs of wardrobes could often be removed as well, and often enough there were panels that had not been intended to conceal, but which could usually be removed and objects put behind them. By the time the maid appeared, her chain mail, sword, and knives were all carefully hidden away, as were a few things that the Countess had entrusted her with. When the woman turned up at her door, there was nothing visible that should not have been in the luggage of a well-born and proper young woman.

“My lady has been busy,” the maid said, blinking a little in surprise.

“I am well used to tending to my own things,” she told the woman. “I suppose it is not fitting that I should do so now that I am grown, but I saw no need to sit with folded hands and wait for someone to come to deal with my belongings.”

“I will tend to all such matters from now on, my lady,” the woman replied, though Moira thought she saw a brief glimmer of approval. “You are correct—it is not meet that you should be doing the work of a servant, now that you are a lady.”

And as if to emphasize that, she proceeded to bustle about the room, checking the contents of every chest and the wooden wardrobes. This made Moira doubly glad that she had taken the precaution of stowing away anything she didn’t want the woman to find.

That did not take long, and perhaps it was only that the maid wanted to be sure where Moira had put things in order to understand where they were to be kept. Soon the maid was helping her out of her traveling gown and chemise, wrapping her in a woolen robe, and tending to her hair.

“Do you know if Lady Violetta left any fine-work stores behind?” she asked, as the maid made a better job of combing out her hair than had been possible in a tent lit by a single small lantern.

“I can find out,” the maid said. “Shall I bring anything of the sort here for your use?”

“Please. And you do have a name, don’t you?” she added, feeling impatient, all at once, with this nonsense of treating a servant like a nonentity. That might do for her father, but it did not suit her. She had known the names of every servant she came into contact with at Viridian Manor. It was one of the little niceties that the Countess had insisted on.

“Anatha,” the maid responded, sounding surprised. “Milady.”

“Then, Anatha, if you would be so kind as to find whatever fancywork and supplies any and all of my father’s wives might have left behind and bring them to my solar, I would be most appreciative.” She turned her head slightly so as to meet the maid’s eyes. “As you know, I brought nothing of the sort with me. Such fine-work as we did was done for the Countess and her household. I wish my lord father to be aware that I am not idle, and I am well schooled.”

“Very well, my lady.” Anatha nodded. “If I may suggest the blue wool for dinner, my lady.”

So, she’s not entirely unfamiliar with what a lady’s maid is supposed to do. Good. “The blue wool it is,” she replied.

Anatha was entirely at a loss when it came to selecting jewelry and accessories, however. It was Moira who selected the silver circlet for her hair, the silver-and-chalcedony torque and rings, and the silver-plaque belt. But her cosmetic box was hidden away, and she was not going to get it out. Until she knew what her father was up to, she had no intention of doing anything to enhance her looks.

The jewelry, however, she felt she needed to wear. Similar sets had come, regular as the turning of the year, every birthday and every Christmastide. Although she had seldom worn any of it at Viridian Manor, the chest that it was all contained in made for a substantial weight, for these were not insignificant pieces, and she had the feeling that her father assumed she was wearing it all as a kind of display and reminder of his wealth and importance.

The fact that it had probably all come to him as gleanings from wrecks was something she had preferred not to think too much about. Clasping the necklets, torques, and necklaces around her throat sometimes made her shiver, as at the touch of dead men’s fingers there.

But Lord Ferson would expect her to wear it now, and might be considerably angered if she failed to do so. This was not the time to anger him.

Twilight was already falling and the torches and lanterns had been lit by the time she went up to the Great Hall. There was no signal to announce dinner, as there was at Viridian Manor, but she took her cue from Anatha’s behavior as to when to leave. The moment the maid began to look a bit restless, and just a touch apprehensive, she had asked for a lantern to light the way—not all the halls were well lit, and even when they were, when storms blew up, torches and lamps blew out. The lamps in the sea-keeps burned a highly flammable and smokeless fish oil, from the little ones of the sort Anatha carried, to the huge beacons above the rocks. It didn’t matter how the beacons smelled, but at least the lamp oil was scented with ambergris and had a pleasant perfume. Shell plates, thinner than paper and nearly as transparent as glass, sheltered the flame from drafts. Anatha followed her, holding the lantern high, and Moira’s shadow stretched out in front of both of them.

Moira took a light mantle, remembering how cold some of the hallways and the hall itself got, and as she made her way upward, the now-silent maid a few paces behind, she was glad that she had. The wind had picked up, and many of the staircases, as she well recalled, acted like chimneys, with a whistling wind streaming up them.

The Great Hall was half-full; a fire roared in the fireplace, and an entire deer roasted on a spit above it. That alone told her that, however little her father seemed to regard her, this evening was significant. Meat for the entire company was a rarity; the usual fare at dinner here was shellfish chowder and fish baked in salt for the common folk. They tasted meat three or four times a year at most.

Moira was used to the order and discipline that held in the Great Hall at Highclere, and the same was true of Viridian Manor; it had come as something of a surprise to her to hear of brawling and quarreling at the lower tables of other great houses. That discipline still held; as she entered the hall, there was no great change in the sound level. The steady murmuring continued, and those who were already here kept to their seats, though most craned their necks to look at her. Those who were still on their feet bowed with respect toward her before taking their seats on the long benches. Strict precedence was kept; there were choice seats at the tables—nearest the fire, for the lowly, and nearest the High Table for those with some pretension to rank. But the one thing that struck her after her long absence was that beneath the sound of restrained voices, there was no music.

The Countess had musicians and her own fool to entertain during meals, and sometimes the services of traveling minstrels and entertainers; that had never been the case at Highclere since her father had taken over. On occasion, Lord Ferson would call for a wrestling contest or the like at the final course, or when the women retired and the men sat over wine and ale, but traveling entertainers were few, and only appeared in summer, and he had kept no entertainers of his own until now.

And it was quite clear as she approached the dais and the High Table that he had not much changed his habits. He might have a fool, but the man was not making merry for the company; nor was there precisely “entertainment” to be shared by high- and lowborn alike. Kedric was sitting on a stool on the dais to one side of the table, fingering a lute but not singing. It wouldn’t be possible for anyone more than ten paces from the table to hear the soft music.

Lord Ferson was already in his seat, though nothing had been served as yet. Moira approached the table and went into a deep curtsy in front of his seat, but this time she kept her head up and her eyes on him, and rose at his gesture.

“Take the Keep Lady’s seat, girl,” he said. “We have guests, but they’ve not yet come up.”

She did as she was told, moving around the side of the table that Kedric was sitting at—but before she sat down, she took the pitcher of wine from the table and poured her father’s cup full. She waited until he took it with a raised brow for the courtesy, then filled her own, and sat in her chair. There were chairs at the High Table, another touch that showed the difference between the low and the high. The high need not rub elbows and jostle for room at their dinner.

Serving the Keep Lord his wine was, of course, the Keep Lady’s duty, unless he had a page, which Ferson did not—and it had also been a test, she suspected, to see just how well schooled she was. If so, she had passed it.

“Guests, my lord?” she said in an inquiring tone. This was a surprise, and not a particularly pleasant one. On the whole she really would rather not have the duty of being a hostess thrust on her so soon. And she could not help but feel that these “guests” might well have something to do with a marriage. Probably hers.

“You’ll see,” he replied simply.

And a moment later, there was a bit of a stir at the door, and she did, indeed, see.

And as soon as she did, she had to fight to keep herself from stiffening up all over.

Striding into the hall as if he were the right and proper lord here, was a tall, lanky, saturnine man, with a neat, trimmed beard and a long face. The trouble was that even if Moira had not recognized the emblem embroidered on his oddly cut and brilliantly scarlet, quilted silk surcoat—which she did—she would have known by the styling of the garment, by the voluminous ochre silk breeches and wrapped ochre sash instead of a belt, the pointed-toed boots, and by the matching ochre scarf tied about his head, ornamented at the front with a topaz brooch that was worth, if not a king’s, at least a prince’s ransom, that he was from the Khaleemate of Jendara.

And by the sign of the phoenix rising from the flames embroidered on his surcoat, he was the eldest son of the Khaleem himself.

There was just one small problem with this scenario. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Khaleem was a pirate. His ships had been preying on this kingdom’s merchants and navy for the past two hundred years, at least. And the only reason that outright war had never been declared between the two countries was that the Khaleem always disavowed any knowledge of the piracy, and would, on occasion, make a show of attempting to “root out the problem.” Raids would cease for a few seasons, then it was business as usual.

She had been expecting many possibilities. This was not one of them. And, as Kedric fumbled three notes of the song he was playing, the fool was just as surprised and shocked at the identity of their “guest.”

Behind the Khaleem’s son came three more men. All of them were as richly dressed as he, in blue, ochre, and green, but their surcoats told those who had eyes to read them that these three were Great Captains—high of rank, to be sure, but barely more than servants when compared to their leader’s son.

Lord Ferson was standing. Moira remained seated, which was perfectly proper. No Jendaran would pay the least bit of attention to a mere female anyway, so it hardly mattered what she did. “Welcome to my hall and table, Massid,” her father said in that booming voice, as the man stopped at virtually the same place Moira had, and made a slight bow of his head with his wrists crossed over his chest. It did not escape Moira’s attention that heavy gold cuff bracelets adorned those wrists. Lord Ferson gestured to a servant, who brought a plate with half a loaf and a small bowl on it. He offered it to Massid, who tore off a small piece, dipped it in the salt, and ate it, then offered it to the other three Jendarans, who did the same.

The ceremony of bread and salt. So…suddenly my father and these people have a truce.

That truce would not bind anyone but Massid and the three captains with him, of course, and if the Khaleem chose to attack the sea-keep at this very moment, by his way of thinking, he would be violating no pledge. But he would be mad to try. Only a fool who wanted very much to die would attack a sea-keep with less than a hundred ships, and even then, it would take a moon, maybe two, to conquer it. Unless, of course, a storm blew up, at which point, the battle would be over and anyone not inside the walls would be dead.

Moira cast her eyes down to her empty plate, but watched all this through her lashes, so stunned for the moment that she fell back on the default expedient of appearing quiet and withdrawn. Massid of Jendara! Here! What could it mean?

Whatever was toward, her father was acting as if this pirate was an old and trusted ally; he gestured to the chairs on his left, the opposite side to which Moira was sitting, and the four men took their places, with Massid sitting closest to Lord Ferson.

This seemed to be the signal for service, for servants came hurrying through the doors from the kitchens laden with the serving stones.

This was an innovation Moira had never seen anywhere else, nor heard of being used except in the sea-keeps. It was a long way through cold hallways from the kitchens of Highclere Sea-Keep, and a very long time ago the lords of the keep had gotten decidedly weary of eating their food stone cold. So what came through the doors first at each meal were teams of men carrying boxes full of round stones from the beaches below. Those stones had been heating in and around the ovens all day. Once the boxes were in place around the perimeter of the hall, the food came in. Baskets of bread, huge kettles of shellfish soup and stewed kelp, roasted vegetables, all the courses needed for a full formal dinner. All of these were placed on the hot stones to keep them warm throughout the meal, and only then did the actual serving begin. Anywhere else, smaller bowls and platters of food would be brought to the tables from the kitchens; here those smaller platters were served from the food left warming in the stone boxes at the sides of the Hall.

The trencher bread was served first, to act as a plate—and as part of the meal—for those who were not of the High Table. Then bowls of shellfish soup were brought to the tables—wooden bowls, for those at the low tables, silver for those at the high. Lord Ferson had never stinted the appetites of his people; until the kettles were empty, anyone could have as much of the common food as he wished, and after a long day of work in the cold, appetites were always hearty. This was one of Moira’s favorite foods, but she had little taste for it tonight.

“And this is what, Lord Ferson?” asked Massid with interest, as the bowl was placed before him. Without waiting for an answer, he dipped his spoon in it and tasted it. Of course he wasn’t worried about poison—he’d seen himself that everyone was served from the same common kettles.

“Interesting!” he said after the first cautious taste. “It could do with saffron, but—” he dipped for another spoonful “—quite tasty. I shall have spices sent to your kitchen, with instruction to their use, saffron among them. I believe you will find it improves an already excellent dish.”

“Most gracious of you, Prince,” Ferson replied, managing to sound gracious himself, given that he had no interest whatsoever in what he was given to eat so long as it wasn’t raw or burned. “Instructions would be wise. I have never heard of, nor tasted, this ‘saffron,’ and I fear my cook would be at a loss to deal with it.”

“More precious than gold, I promise you.” Moira could not see Massid from where he sat, though she had the uneasy feeling that he was staring in her direction. “Though not so precious as…other things.”

Without a doubt, that was intended to be a compliment directed at her, and although she wished profoundly that she could call it a clumsy one, in all truth, it was courtly and elegant. And she only wished she could appreciate it. Massid was not uncomely. He was courteous, and if only he wasn’t the Prince of Jendara….

But he was. And the King could never have approved of this, or she would have been informed. So this was all happening without the King’s knowledge.

Treason? Very probably. Why else keep the knowledge of this little visit—and what Moira could only assume was going to be a marriage proposal and alliance with Lord Ferson of Highclere Sea-Keep—from the King?

This was bad. This was very, very bad.

And she had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

Whatever curiosity those at the lower tables had about the visitor was completely overshadowed by the slices of venison laid on their trenchers. The High Table had a full haunch, which Ferson himself carved, but even the least and lowest got some bit of meat and the drippings that had been thriftily saved during the cooking poured over his bread. Nothing in the conversation of their superiors could possibly compete with that.

Her father and the Prince continued to make polite conversation throughout the rest of the meal, which Moira ate without tasting. It was no more than polite conversation, however, with no hints of what was being planned; there was talk of how the weather had affected shipping this past summer, and how soon the storms would start. Massid spoke largely of falconry, her father of coursing hounds against stag and boar. And if there was a code in any of that, she couldn’t decipher it. By the time the sweet course came in, and the betrothal announcement she had dreaded throughout the entire meal never materialized, she felt a little of her tension ebbing. Only a little, but evidently there was going to be some negotiation going on before she was handed over.

Which was going to give her the chance to think calmly about her situation, and perhaps do something about it.

Or at least, so she hoped.

When the wine came in, after the sweet course, and all but the highest-ranked men in the keep departed for their duties or their beds, Moira rose as her father had probably expected her to do, and made the formal request to retire “with her ladies.” She didn’t have any ladies, of course, but that was the traditional phrase, and her father, deep in some conversation with Massid and his captains about horses, absently waved his permission.

She left the hall without a backward glance, although once again she felt Massid’s eyes on her until the moment she left the room.

And it was all she could do not to run.

Back in her chambers, after Anatha had helped her disrobe and she had gotten into bed, she stared up at the darkness beneath the canopy of the huge bed with only the firelight, winking through the places where the bed curtains hadn’t quite closed, for illumination. She needed to calm her mind, or she wouldn’t be able to think.

She heard the distant sounds of walking, but nothing nearby, so at least there wasn’t a guard on her door. Obviously her father didn’t expect her to do anything that an ordinary lady of the sort he’d been marrying wouldn’t do—such as go roaming the halls seeing what she could overhear.

Not yet. I want to save that for when I need to do it.

First, above all else, she needed to get word to the Countess—and thus, the King—of Massid’s presence here.

That wouldn’t be as difficult as getting detailed information out. She did have a way to do that immediately, though she’d hoped not to have to use it. Unfortunately, the communication would be strictly one-way; unless the Countess in her turn found a way to get a messenger to physically contact Moira, there would be no way that she could get any advice from her mentor.

She closed her eyes, and tried to reckon how likely that would be, and could only arrive at one conclusion: swine would be swooping among the gulls first. With the Prince of Jendara here, Lord Ferson would be making very sure that no one traveled into or out of his realm without his express knowledge and permission, and that would only be given to those whose loyalty he could either trust or compel. In past years, once past All Hallows’ Eve—and that night had come and gone while she was en route—there had never been so much as a hint of traveling entertainers or peddlers. It wasn’t just that the winter weather along the coast was harsh—which it was. Once winter truly closed in, the forest between the sea-keep and the rest of civilization became dangerous with storms and hungry wild animals. It wasn’t worth the risk for an uncertain welcome at a place where, if you were truly unfortunate, you could be trapped until spring came. Any so-called minstrel or peddler who showed his face now would simply not be permitted past the gates at the top of the cliff, because her father would be sure he was a spy.

So she was on her own, here.

Given that, what were her possible choices?

It had been a long time since she had lived here, but some knowledge never completely faded. There was a sound in the waves below that warned that she—and the Prince—had only just arrived ahead of the bad weather. Storms far out to sea sent echoes of their anger racing ahead of them in the form of surging waves, and anyone who lived at a sea-keep learned to read those waves. So, the prince would be here till spring, whether or not he had planned to be.

The first of her options that came to mind was the most obvious. Marry the Prince. She ignored the finger of cold that traced its way down her spine at that thought, and she looked that choice squarely in the face.

She could marry the Prince, in obedience to her father. Then what?

Well, the Jendarans did not have a very good reputation when it came to treating women like anything other than property to be sequestered away from the eyes of all other men. If he regarded her in the same light as a Jendaran bride, she’d find herself confined to these rooms with a guard on the door, never seeing anyone but her maid except during Massid’s…conjugal visits. Not that she was particularly afraid of those, but being confined to two rooms with no company but a maid would drive her mad.

Although the traditional guard is a eunuch, I don’t think he brought one with him, and I don’t foresee anyone of the keep men volunteering for the operation…

It would also leave Massid and her father free to do whatever it was they were planning without anyone at all able to discern what it was.

Then, when spring came and the sea calmed enough to travel on, Massid would probably send her back to Jendara, which would be even worse. She’d be a captive among his flock of wives and concubines, none of whom would speak her language, all of whom would probably be hostile. If she wasn’t driven to insanity by such imprisonment, one or more of them would probably try to poison her out of jealousy if Massid showed the slightest bit of preference for her. Travelers’ tales of war among the women of a Jendaran chareen might be partially apocryphal, but where there was smoke, there was usually flame somewhere about.

Not a good option, for herself or her King.

Next choice—try to escape.

She wouldn’t get more than a single chance at that, and she would need to be very careful about the timing. I won’t get a chance at all once there’s a wedding, so it will have to be before then if I try it. That much she was sure of—or at least, she wouldn’t get a chance unless something completely catastrophic happened that threw the entire keep into an uproar and removed the probable guard from her door. So any attempt would have to take place after she learned as much as she could, but before a wedding.

The autumn and winter storms were on their way, and both Ferson and Massid must be as aware of that as she was, so whatever her father and the Prince were planning was probably intended to take advantage of the storms. But those same storms would also make getting to and from the keep from the landward side quite difficult. Not impossible, but it took a very determined traveler to brave the wind, snow, and above all, the ice storms that pounded the coastline by winter. If she was to escape, she’d have to plan things to a nicety, and she would have to have a great deal of luck. The closest place likely to take her in was one of the two nearest sea-keeps, but there was no telling whether or not Ferson was including the Lord of Lornetel and the Lord of Man-deles in his plans. If she fled to either of them, she might find herself handed back over. So the safest direction to flee would be inland, and it would take her at least twice as long to get to another inland keep as it would to get to the nearest sea-keeps.

Escape was not a good option. It might be the only one, but it was not much better than going through with the wedding.

Whatever the King and Countess suspected, it was nothing like this, or surely they’d have given her more warnings—and more of the sort of arcane aid that resided beneath the floor of the wardrobe.

Nevertheless, there had been a lot of thought put into this plot, whatever it was.

He must have been planning this for a while—but not for too long, or he would have summoned me earlier. This scheme could not have been hatched before this time last year.

The moment she realized that, she was certain of something else.

This had not been Lord Ferson’s idea. Or at least, it didn’t originate with him.

It wasn’t that her father wasn’t intelligent, because he was. He wasn’t clever, he wasn’t good at coming up with cunning plans, but he was intelligent. He knew how to read men, to the point where some of his underlings thought he could see what was in a man’s mind. He was also cautious. Living in a sea-keep tended to make you cautious; the sea was temperamental and unforgiving; slip once, and she tended to kill you for your carelessness.

He also hated risk. He always measured risk against gain. But he wasn’t creative, and he never initiated anything if he could help it.

Any overtures would have to have come from the Khaleem, and the promises of reward would have had to be quite substantial before he would even have considered answering the initial contact.

Whatever Lord Ferson had been promised, it had to have been something big enough to override that intelligence and native caution. And whatever was afoot, it had to be something that Lord Ferson was quite sure of bringing to fruition without being caught.

This was probably the Khaleem’s idea. He had promised her father a great deal—and might even have already paid him some of what was promised as a gesture of good faith. Until this moment, there would not have been a great deal that anyone could point to as evidence of treason. Even now—well, entertaining Massid for the winter was a dubious move, but not precisely treasonable. It could even be said, and likely Ferson would if he was caught, that he had been trying to open negotiations to end the Khaleem’s piracy.

Only if he made some more overt move, such as pledging his daughter to Massid, would he enter the realm of treason, and he had timed things so word of that was unlikely to escape before the greater plan came to fruition.

Now, something about that tickled her mind, but she couldn’t put a finger on it. Mentally, she set it aside in the back of her mind and continued pursuing her original train of thought, jumping a little as the fire popped.

Nevertheless, even with powerful incentives, and a strong likelihood of success, there was something missing from this equation. There were too many things that could go wrong, too many uncertainties. The Khaleems were not known for fidelity to their promises in the past. Lord Ferson had never been noted for being a risk taker.

Something in his life must have changed in the past year to make him even consider such an overture, much less follow through on it.

She took in a shuddering breath. This was getting more complicated by the moment. She was going to have to watch every step she took, every word she spoke.

So far her options were marriage, and escape. Both were fraught with the potential to go wrong. There was a third option—to delay—but she didn’t think that she would get very far with that—except…

Hmm.

There was a narrow path through all of this, perhaps. She had boldly told the Countess there was no way her father could force her into a marriage against her will. Legally, that is, and when she had claimed that, she had assumed any such marriage would be to a fellow countryman, who would be bound by the law and custom of the sea-keeps. But that assumed there would be someone here to oppose her father’s will; she had also assumed that no actual marriage could take place before spring, and that such a wedding would involve the invitations to the other lords of the sea-keeps. At least one of them would have answered to an appeal from her. Especially since all of them were very jealous of their equality in power, and would resent anything that made the Lord of Highclere the most powerful of the lot.

The arrival of Massid put rest to all of those assumptions.

However….

Part of what had been tickling the back of her thoughts finally bloomed into an idea. She couldn’t depend on the law…but she could use it.

She closed her eyes briefly and said a little prayer of thanks that she had managed to keep her father from knowing precisely what kind of person he had welcomed back into his keep. The good God must have been in the back of her mind, keeping her from betraying her intelligence this whole time, from the moment she had left Viridian Manor to this moment. Because using the law to delay was going to depend entirely on Lord Ferson’s impression that she was passive, ordinary, and above all, stupid. Stupid enough not to realize why Massid was here, and stupid enough to believe the law would actually protect her from a marriage to anyone she didn’t wish to wed. Stupid enough to blurt out her rights in public, thus reminding the rest of the freedmen of the keep that those rights existed, and make them feel unease that those ancient rights—as ancient as the ones that kept them free rather than serfs—were being threatened.

She was under no illusion that any of them would leap to her defense. Oh no. Those that weren’t blindly loyal to Ferson—and there would be some, perhaps many—were also smart enough to know that opposing him in this could mean an unfortunate slip on an icy parapet in the middle of a storm.

However, that was not what she was aiming at. Fully half of those who served Ferson were freedmen; they were jealous of those rights that kept them free, and though they were not quick to anger, their anger burned long and sullen when it was aroused.

It would be a mistake to arouse their suspicions of the motives of their Lord at any time, but to do so when the winter storms were coming and everyone was confined here for months…that was dangerous. It had not happened in recent times, but there were tales, and plenty of them, of winters when one man ruled a sea-keep, but at the arrival of spring, another pledged fealty to the King in his place. Unfortunate slips on icy parapets in the middle of winter storms did not happen to only the lowborn.

Those who dwelled in the sea-keeps were isolated from the rest of the land at the best of times. The King was a far and distant figure; their lords and ladies stood with them through the storm as well as the zephyr. It was hard to give loyalty to one who was only a profile on a coin; easier by far to tell oneself that loyalty should go to those whom one knew. They might soothe their consciences by telling themselves that the King did not matter, that he cared nothing for them, so they were not obliged to care for him. But if they thought that their own lord threatened their rights—then they would begin to doubt, and every doubt served her purposes.

It was a thin plan, but at least it was a plan. First, before she did anything else, she needed to get word to the Countess of what she knew.

And she would have to be as hard to read as the stones of Highclere Sea-Keep. Her best hope of success lay with her father expecting one thing from her, and getting something quite, quite different.

Anatha woke her in the morning, the first morning in a very long time that she had not awakened by herself. Part of it was the sound of the sea beneath the walls of the keep; it had been her lullaby as a child, and the familiar sound, at once wild and rhythmic, was strangely soothing. Even the warning of storm to come in the waves below her window was not enough to keep the waves from lulling her. Part of it was the darkness of her rooms. Not even in the long nights and dull days of winter were the rooms at Viridian Manor this dark.

But the sound of footsteps in the outer room did, finally, penetrate her slumber, and the sound was unfamiliar enough to bring her to full wakefulness in the time it took to draw a breath.

Anatha did not speak, but as soon as Moira was awake, she recognized the sounds of someone tending the fire and assumed it could only be her new maid. She pulled back the bed curtains herself in time to see Anatha flinging back the shutters in the solar to let in the daylight.

“My lady!” the woman said, turning at the sound of the fabric being pulled back. “What gown do you wish?”

“The brown wool, please, Anatha,” she said quietly. “And the amber torque and carnelian bracelet.” Not ostentatious, but enough ornament that her father would find nothing to fault in her appearance—and she had a use for the carnelian bracelet. “Have you found the fine-work you told me of?”

“I now know where it is stored, my lady,” the maid replied, removing the gown from the wardrobe and a chemise from the chest. “I shall fetch it for you when you are dressed.”

“I have been dressing myself since I was a child, Anatha,” she replied. “I think I can do so now, and I should like to have the fine-work here as soon as may be. It is dull here without other ladies to speak to. I shall need something besides my duties to occupy me.”

There. Let Anatha carry the tale that she was interested only in “womanly” things. And that there was some “womanly” vanity involved, probably. The gowns she had brought with her were plain and mostly unornamented; any embroidery to make herself fine she would have to do with her own two hands.

“If you will be so kind as to deal with the fine-work,” Moira continued, “I shall attend to myself.” She smiled at the maid’s hesitation. “I doubt anyone will question your diligence so long as I do not.”

Anatha bowed her head slightly. “Very well, my lady,” she replied, as Moira pulled the chemise over her head. The door was closing behind her as Moira’s head emerged from the folds of fabric.

Which was precisely what Moira had hoped for.

Quickly she removed the bottom from the wardrobe, and removed a small box. From the box she took a metal capsule fastened to a leather band, and a slip of paper as light and thin as silk. There were only a half dozen of those capsules, but she doubted very much that she would get many chances to use them all with storms coming. She took both, and the quill and ink from her desk, to the window. She needed all the light she could get to write the tiniest letters she could manage.

“Prince Massid, son of Khaleem of Jendara here,” she wrote. “Ferson’s guest. Purpose unknown. Possible alliance and marriage?”

She nibbled the end of the quill and added, “King’s fool Kedric also here.” It was all she could fit in; it would have to do.

She waved the paper until the ink was dry, then rolled it until it would fit inside the tiny capsule, and screwed the capsule up tight. She picked up her favorite bracelet, silver, with a carnelian cabochon. The metal backing the cabochon on the inside of the bracelet was hinged; the capsule fit snugly inside it with the thin leather tucked in around it.

Then she hastily pulled on the brown woolen gown, clasped the necklet around her neck, restored the wardrobe, and returned the ink and quill to their proper places.

By the time Anatha returned with two servants carrying wooden chests, she was sitting quietly on a stool, brushing out her own hair.

“I’ll do that, my lady,” the maid said, with faint disapproval, putting the casket she herself held down on the chest at the foot of the bed. “You two! Put those chests down next to my lady’s tapestry frame in the solar and go!”

Moira surrendered the brush to Anatha, and allowed the maid to brush and braid her hair with brown silk ribbons. She sat quietly during the whole process, only allowing her fingers to rub the surface of the carnelian. Was there a faint warmth there?

Well, the first, and easiest part was done with. Now she had to find an excuse to go up to the top of the cliff this afternoon.

Prince Massid was nowhere to be seen when she went down to the hall to break her fast, but she didn’t expect him to be there. Princes of Jendara did not eat with common folk, and only the evening meal was held in state at Highclere Sea-Keep. There was food set out in the morning, and again at noontide, and one was expected to help oneself. Though of course, anyone with rank to command a servant could have food brought to her room.

And I may just do that. The less Father sees of me, the better. Bread and butter, small beer, and an apple, all taken from the side tables, had served her well enough this morning; she was apparently Keep Lady now, and she should take up her duties as such.

An inspection of the kitchen and kitchen staff was definitely in order. They needed to see her; she needed to see them. In all likelihood, absolutely nothing would change, except that the order of responsibility would have been established. And this, too, was something she would have—and indeed had—learned under Countess Vrenable’s tutelage.

Lord Ferson was not the sort to allow his staff to be left to their own devices even though there was no Keep Lady. He must have established strong superior servants in place when his second wife proved unequal to the challenge of truly running the daily business of the keep. The head cook was a formidable man, muscled like a fisherman used to hauling in heavy nets, and the housekeeper his equally formidable wife whose build nearly matched his. They came after the time when Moira had been sent off to fosterage, but she found nothing to fault with either of them. She did, however, take charge of the keys to the spice cupboard and the wine cellar. Not that there probably wasn’t another set, and perhaps two, but the Keep Lady was supposed to be at least nominally in charge of the spices and fine drink, and appearances had to be maintained.

She spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon inspecting the rest of the household stores with Anatha in tow, then had exactly the excuse she needed to go up to the top of the cliff when the cook came to her with the evening’s menu for her approval, which included a dove pie for the High Table, and asked if she would also care to see the chicken pens and dovecote above.

“Indeed,” Moira said promptly. “And I will take the opportunity to see the stables and the kennels as well. There are storms coming, and I do not think there will be another good chance soon.”

“My lady has the sea sense,” the cook rumbled with approval, and sent her up with two of the sturdiest kitchen maids as escort.

Fish was a staple and plentiful at the sea-keeps, but those who sat at the High Table had the benefit of a more varied diet. There would be game laid away as soon as the first storm brought real cold, but the two things that could be depended on to supply a change in menu were the chicken yard and the dovecote. Both were in the lee of the seaward wall, to keep the worst of the storms off them. There was nothing to distinguish either from every other dovecote and chicken yard she had ever seen—though both were impeccably kept—but she went through the motions of inspecting them. Then, while the maids selected doves for the pie, she picked a bright-eyed, strong young dove on a perch, and calmly reached toward it with the hand bearing the carnelian bracelet. The dove stared at the stone, transfixed, and she picked him up as casually as selecting an egg. The maids didn’t even notice.

She took him outside, made sure that there was no one near to see what she was doing, then took off the bracelet. She had practiced this a hundred times under the Countess’s sharp eye; it was a matter of moments to extract the capsule containing her message, tie it to the bird’s leg securely, slip the bracelet back on, and toss the dove in the air.

The capsule, of course, had been enchanted. While it was touching her, it would freeze a bird in a kind of sleep. The moment it left her hand, it told the bird that home was not here, home was in the little dovecote where the Countess kept her “pets” in the solar of Viridian Manor. Pigeons were well-known for swift flight and homing ability. This one would be with the Countess by tomorrow at the latest, where, saved from becoming pie, he would live out his life as a pampered pet, and perhaps go on to sire more doves from the lines of Highclere. But the spell was strictly one way, nor would it have been wise for her to be looking for messages among her father’s doves. She could never be sure when a message would arrive, and for one to fall into anyone else’s hands but hers would be a disaster.

With the dove away, she turned her attention to the chicken yard, then the kennel and stables. All were immaculate, but she expected nothing less from her father. Firstly, he was a man with a powerful sense of order, and secondly, there were visitors to impress. Perhaps the Prince of Jendara was unlikely to venture up here to look at ordinary hounds and horses, but in case he did, Lord Ferson would want stables and kennels to be ready for him.

There was no mews here; the lords of the sea-keeps generally kept no birds of prey. The ducks that swam in the sea, coots and scups and the like, tasted like the worst of fish and fowl combined. Not much in the way of game birds populated Lord Ferson’s lands, and even if they had, they didn’t vary greatly enough in taste from dove, pigeon, and chicken for him to care to bother. And at Highclere, no one hunted for pleasure. This was a working, quasi-military keep; there were no highborn fellows idling about. Hunts were purposeful, for meat, and conducted with the intention of spending as little time on them as possible. Boar and deer were tracked, netted, and, if deemed “fair” game, quickly dispatched. Rabbits and hares were snared. The gamekeepers brought the catch in to be stored, and that was the end of it; Lord Ferson himself rarely participated.

So the kennels here were nothing like those at Viridian Manor; there were coursing hounds, calm and purposeful, but aloof. Nor were the stables full of anything but sturdy workhorses. Still, Moira had enough of sea-keep blood in her that she had never really enjoyed hunting and riding the way most of the other girls fostered with the Countess had. Riding was a way to get from here to there quickly, and as for hunting, why spend all day pursuing something your gamekeeper could take down in an hour? The only thing she had really enjoyed was falconry, and then it was in watching the swift and agile birds, riding the winds like the embodiment of wind itself.

She followed the kitchen maids with their burdens back down into the keep, noting as the door to the upper stairs closed behind her that the sound of the waves had intensified. The storm would arrive soon, possibly around dinnertime.

She wondered how the Prince of Jendara would like it. The Khaleemate was not noted for weather.

The storm broke over the keep as she was descending into the Great Hall for dinner. She had spent the remainder of her afternoon going over the contents of the chests her maid had hunted up out of storage, and they had been surprising. Her own mother had not been noted for her needlework, preferring to cut bands of fine work from old, outworn garments and stitch them with nearly invisible stitches to new ones, rather than embroider anything of her own. Sometimes, when the sea brought salvage in the way of clothing or fabric, she would use the ornaments from those, or carefully cut long strips of brocade to hem into trim. But Lord Ferson’s next wives, it appeared, had been expert needlewomen. The chests contained fine linen and silk, hemmed strips of frieze for covering with counted stitches, and skeins of fine, beautifully dyed wool for tapestry and the heavy embroidery called crewel. The smaller casket held embroidery silks and gold and silver bullion meant for a truly skilled worker with the needle—and golden needles. The latter were not for show—a needle made of gold would never snag on even the thinnest of silk, but pass through it smoothly and easily.

In this, Moira was not like her mother. She enjoyed needlework, and had brought her skills up to a level where even the Countess admired her work. She smiled with pleasure at the sight of such riches.

There was even a half-finished neck placket for a gown there, and she wasted no time in mounting it to the frame by the window and setting out what she would use to complete it before the sky began to darken with clouds racing before the storm. The next few days would be so dark that she would not be able to discern colors well; she would have to know what was where in her holder in order to work in the dim light.

The nearer the time came to dinner, the more her stomach knotted. Surely tonight the announcement would come—and she had no idea what to do yet.

By the time she paced into the hall, as the first bolts of lightning flashed outside the windows and the storm winds screamed at the stones, she was as taut as a harp string with tension.

But there was no one on the dais, and she took her seat with as much outward calm as she could manage. Already it was much colder in the hall than last night, and servants had set shields made of paper-thin slices of mica around any open lamp. Not that there were many of those; the one thing Highclere never ran short of was drafts, and most lamps were shielded.

The onset of the storm made no difference to the folk of the keep, except for those who would be manning the storm beacons. In this sort of weather, they would not be taking the path that clung to the cliff—that would be courting death. There were ways out to the two nearer beacons which cut through the cliff itself from the keep. The passages were narrow and claustrophobic, but better than trying to inch along the path with rain and wave striving to tear you from it. Those two near beacons marked the site of dangerous current and rocks, and were the reason the sea-keep had been built where it was. The further beacons, showing only where the coastline was, were built on the top of the cliff, much like watchtowers, and the men manning them stayed there for a week at a time.

Moira felt the stone of the keep shiver under her feet as the storm waves outside began to pound against the cliff side and the keep itself. Now the roar of the waves penetrated even the thick stone; it would be a hard night, and the storm might last two or three days altogether.

Then a bolt of lightning flashed down somewhere very nearby, for the crash of thunder that shook the entire keep came simultaneously with the flash that lit up the hall more brightly than daylight.

Moira was not ashamed that she jumped and smothered an involuntary scream. Half of the people in the hall did the same, and the other half started and clutched at something.

Her heart was pounding and one hand was at her throat as she forced calm onto herself, just as the Prince of Jendara and her father came in. She had barely gotten her heart under control. Kedric followed a few paces behind. Moira was secretly pleased that Massid was visibly shaken, wide-eyed and, she thought, a little pale under his tan.

Her father seemed to be assessing the Prince as they took their seats, and Moira thought he made up his mind about something as he gave the signal to begin the serving.

“You told me your weather was—formidable, Lord Ferson,” Massid said. To his credit, his voice was steady. “I did not grasp quite what you meant. This is an order of magnitude greater than I had thought.”

Moira looked down at her soup, but concentrated on every word, and especially, the nuances of expression in their voices.

“I have never known an outsider who had any grasp of what a winter storm could be like before he came to a sea-keep, Prince Massid,” her father replied, and there was an interesting inflection in his voice, something Moira could not quite grasp. “Nevertheless, this is an unusually strong storm, even for this time of year. I think it is a very good thing that your ship is safe in the harbor.”

The Prince of Jendara and her father exchanged a wordless glance. Moira could not see her father’s expression, but Massid looked like someone who was harboring a very satisfying secret. She felt the back of her neck prickle. “As my father told you, my lord, we have never lost a ship to a storm, though our enemies have—often.” He smiled then, a smile that called to mind the grin of a shark with a seal in its jaws.

“Depending on who was caught in this weather, what kind of ship and pilot they have, we may be gathering our winter harvest when the storm ends,” Lord Ferson replied, and he did not trouble to hide the satisfaction in his voice.

Moira shivered. Fortunately her father’s attention was on his guest, and to a man from Jendara, a woman was too unimportant to take note of. She knew very well what he meant. At a sea-keep, the “winter harvest” meant the salvage cast up on the rocks after a wreck.

“In a storm this strong,” her father continued, “any ship that’s been hugging the coastline had better have a sharp pilot and a good lookout to avoid the rocks, or she’ll be driven straight onto them. Even with the beacons, you need luck on your side when the Winter Witch comes in, because if you don’t make your turn, you’re on the teeth, and there’s an end to you.”

He was gloating. She knew it—she knew that tone. He was gloating, and she didn’t know why—

“So unfortunate.” Massid shook his head, and added, silkily, “And I suppose that turning out to sea and beating away from the coast is no better?”

“You’d better be provisioned for a double fortnight. The Winter Witch can take you a long way from where you ought to be, if she catches you away from the coast. And then, of course, there’s pirates.” Ferson’s voice took on a sly note.

Yes, and you both should know about pirates, Moira thought.

“Ah, pirates. A terrible scourge. I am told they often follow along behind one of these storms as if they knew where it was going,” Massid replied—but out of the corner of her eye, Moira saw him straighten, and abruptly his tone took on a lighter cast, with no shades of meaning. “Ah, what is this?”

“Fish baked in a salt crust, my lord,” replied Ferson, as if they had been discussing no more than food the moment before. “It is one of my cook’s specialties. This fish, baked in this way, leaves no bones in the meat, and the herbs it is stuffed with permeate the flesh, while the flesh itself remains moist. We make a virtue of necessity, having plenty of fish and no lack of salt. The salt sticks to the skin and never touches the flesh.”

“Interesting!” As the server laid a portion before the guest, he leaned over and sniffed it. “Thyme, bay, and basil, I think. How very pleasant!”

Moira knew some sort of secret dialogue had been passing between the two of them, but she simply did not have the key to understanding what was going on under the surface. It was exceedingly frustrating.

Kedric played quietly throughout the meal though his presence was not in the least soothing. At least, she didn’t find it so. The time or two she took her attention off Massid and her father, she found the fool staring at her with a strange intensity, which was as unnerving as the unspoken conversation going on between Ferson and his guest.

Once again, the announcement she had dreaded never came, and she excused herself as soon as she could.

She didn’t feel completely easy until she was in the semidarkness of the passage and out of sight of the High Table. As a child, during storms, she used to run through the passages as quickly as she could, because the lamps would snuff out seemingly by themselves. Strange currents of air would whisper or whine in corners, and all she could think about were the stories of how all those who had drowned when their ships ran up on the Teeth of Highclere followed the wind and the sea into the keep when the Winter Witch blew.

Now, as an adult, she knew that strange behavior of wind and sound was usual in a storm. No matter how well shielded the lanterns were, not all remained lit; drafts were so unpredictable that servants went through every passage at intervals, relighting the lamps that had blown out. And there was no way to keep drafts out of a place like this in storm season.

She felt sorry for anyone who had to take the passages to the beacons. There was no hope of doing anything except making your way in the darkness. No lamp flame could survive the blast that traveled along that tunnel, which was the source of the uncanny moan that signaled the beginning of a storm and didn’t end until it was over.

As she neared her chambers, she paused for a moment, then, prompted by a feeling that she ought to, she abruptly took a different turn, going down the corridor that led to her old childhood nursery. The nursery had a window, and one of the best views in the entire keep. This wasn’t an accident. The idea was that the children of a sea-keep should get used to the worst that storms could throw at the keep at an early age, and the cradle was not considered too early. Moira remembered many, many gloomy afternoons when it was too dark to have lessons or read or do needlework, lying in her bed on her stomach, peeking out through the curtains at the foot of her bed and watching rain lash the window. The curtained bed had seemed very safe when she was small, a good place to retreat to if the storm became so fierce the walls shook.

And she remembered nights, too, when lightning flashed through the cracks of the shutters while thunder vibrated the whole keep. Storms had never frightened her once she had gotten past a certain age; in fact, she’d found them exciting, exhilarating.

Though in the dark of the night, with witch fire dancing on the points of pikes, the tips of towers, and the tops of flagpoles, and the wind keening a death cry, the idea that those drowned souls might come looking for the warmth of the living could still make her skin crawl. At least they weren’t looking for revenge. It was the honor and the duty of the sea-keeps to prevent them from coming aground….

Yes, but why was Father saying those things to the Prince of Jendara, then?

She shivered, opened the door to the nursery, and wrinkled her nose at the cold, dusty smell of the place. Clearly no one had been in here since she had left.

She felt her way along the wall, huddling into her warm shawl. The stone was like ice, the room itself as cold as a snow cave, but she wanted to see the storm over the ocean for herself. It was a sight she hadn’t had since she’d left. The storms at Viridian Manor were impressive, but nothing like the Winter Witch riding the waves.

She came to the shutters and flipped the worn, wooden latch, opening them just as a bolt of lightning struck the sea outside.

In the brief flash of light, she could see that the waves were already washing over the stone terrace of the lowest level of the keep. As usual, water would be running in under the door there, and down the stairs. No matter. There was a drain for it at the foot of the stairs, and no one would go out that door until the storm was over, so it didn’t matter if the stairs were slippery. She’d gone down there once or twice, daring herself to touch that foot-thick door as it trembled visibly under the full fury of the storm. All the keep children did. It was a rite of passage, to prove that you dared the witch to take you, and you were brave enough to face her down.

This was, definitely, one of the worst storms in her memory, especially for one so early.

She sat down on the chest just beneath the window, propped her elbows on the sill with her chin in both hands, and peered through the darkness, looking for the northern beacon that marked the beginning of the Teeth—and frowned.

She should see it clearly from here. No matter how terrible the storm, she should be seeing the beacon! Nothing could blow it out, and never, in all the history of the sea-keep, had anyone failed to light it in darkness or storm and keep it lit. This was no tiny lantern flame to be blown out—it was a great, roaring, oil-fed conflagration, shielded in a large bubble of greenish glass as thick as a thumb and surrounded by polished brass mirrors that reflected all the landward light out to sea.

Then, turning her head a little, she saw it, breathed a sigh of relief—then frowned more deeply.

It wasn’t where it should be. It should be much farther away, along the cliff face. It wasn’t where she remembered, and she had very vivid physical memories of planting both elbows on this windowsill, in little depressions that countless other elbows had worn into the wood, and looking straight out through the center pane to see it. Not through the pane that was left of center.

But I’m older and much taller—

No, that wasn’t the problem. It couldn’t be the problem. Taller would make no difference in where the beacon appeared to be from the view through this window—

But I can’t be sure….

She stared at the warm, yellow light; it was, of course, much dimmer from the land side. The reflectors that sent as much light out to sea as possible saw to that. But the more she stared, and the more she positioned herself within the window frame, the more certain she was that it was not her memory that was at fault here.

But there was a way to be absolutely certain, and as she sucked on her lower lip anxiously, she decided she was going to make that test for herself. Because if something was wrong, she wanted to know, and she wasn’t going to go to her father to try to find out. He had, after all, brought the Prince of Jendara here, and she was certain that it was without the King’s knowledge or permission.

Quietly—in fact, on tiptoe, though she could not have said why she felt the need for stealth—she slipped back to her rooms. Anatha was not there. She was probably still enjoying her own dinner with the rest of the servants, for Moira had made it quite clear that she did not require her maid to dance attendance on her at every waking hour. There was no reason to leave the hall; the banks of hot stones that kept the food warm more than made up for the winds whistling in the rafters and stealing the warmth of the fires up the chimneys. And if she was in particularly good graces with the cook and the housekeeper, Anatha would be invited afterward to the warm room backing onto the baking oven, which the superior servants used as a parlor in winter.

Thank heavens. Anatha’s absence made this much easier—no need to conjure up excuses for going back to the nursery.

She opened her jewelry casket underneath the lamp and found the ring she was looking for. Slipping it onto her middle finger, she stole back down the hall to the nursery, carefully closing the door behind her this time.

She positioned herself at the window with her eyes mere inches from the center pane, and making a fist, rubbed a little scratch in the glass right where the beacon shone through the storm with the diamond in the ring.

There. When the storm broke, she could come back here in daylight and see if the scratch lined up with the beacon. If it did, she had been anxious over nothing.

If it didn’t—

If it didn’t, there was something very, very strange going on at Highclere Sea-Keep. And she would have to find out what it was—and more important, why it was happening.

When Anatha returned to Moira’s rooms, she found her mistress with her feet resting on a stone warmed on the hearth with a fur rug covering her lap, sitting beside the fire, knitting. Knitting was a very plebian pastime, and most ladies didn’t even bother to learn, but Moira found it soothing. It was one of the few tasks that could be done by the uncertain light of a flickering fire and guttering lamps during a storm. And it certainly did no harm to have extra soft, lamb’s-wool hose on hand in a sea-keep winter.

“A wild night, my lady,” was all Anatha said. “The Winter Witch has come early.”

“I thought as much—but I also wondered if my memory had been at fault,” Moira replied. “Well, what are the canny old sailors saying?”

“That—that it isn’t natural, my lady,” Anatha replied, looking over her shoulder first, as if she expected to see someone spying on them from a corner. “The witch has never flown before all the leaves are gone, not in anyone’s memory.”

Once again, Moira felt an odd little sense of warning. “The leaves will certainly not outlast this storm,” she replied, and yawned. “Are they saying this means a bad winter?”

Anatha looked over her shoulder, and this time, she leaned very close to Moira and whispered, “They’re saying, this storm was sent.”

Once again, that touch of warning, that sense as if a single ice-cold fingertip had been touched to the back of her neck. She thought about her father and Prince Massid exchanging cryptic comments and glances full of meaning about the winter storms.

But no one could control the weather. Even the greatest of magicians couldn’t control the weather—the one who could would have a great and terrible weapon at his disposal. Such a magician wouldn’t be content to serve a greater master. He himself would use that power to become a powerful ruler.

Not that Moira had any great acquaintance with magicians. They were few and far between, the genuine ones, anyway. The Countess had her wizard, Lady Amaranth, but she had never performed any magic more powerful than the spell that allowed the Grey Ladies to use pigeon-mail. And Lady Amaranth was supposed to be the most powerful wizard in the kingdom, except for those that served the King.

“How could such a storm be sent?” she replied, keeping her tone light and disbelieving. “And more to the point, why? This is a sea-keep—we are used to such storms. At most, it is an inconvenience. The men-at-arms won’t be able to hunt until it’s over, and we might run a bit short of fresh meat, but the High Table will not suffer. The beacons will have to be tended, and the poor fellows who have to do the tending will spend a miserable time of it. Soon or late, it doesn’t matter when the Winter Witch flies, she’ll have no effect on Highclere. And I hope you aren’t going to tell me that God has sent the storms early for our sins! I shall be quite cross with you.”

Anatha laughed at that. “No, my lady. You’re right, of course. It was all just kitchen talk.”

“Then I count on you to be sensible,” Moira replied, with a nod. “When that sort of talk begins again, make sure you are the one who keeps her head.” She yawned and set aside her work. “And I believe that I will be sensible and go to bed.”

Tucked up in bed, with the curtains closed tightly all around to prevent icy drafts from waking her, Moira did not feel in the least sleepy. She turned on her side to think.

If someone was a powerful magician, and could control the weather, at least in part—he’d use that power to make himself a king. Wouldn’t he?

But what if he already was a king? Or, say, a Khaleem, which was basically the same thing.

Massid had said that the Khaleemate had never lost a ship to storms. Maybe that wasn’t just good luck. Maybe the Khaleems of Jendara had power over the weather.

If that was their only power, it was a cursed useful one, especially for a nation that fielded an enormous navy, and unofficially fielded a second enormous force of pirates.

But why would that be attractive to her father? It was true that bad storms could bring a few more ships to grief on the Teeth of Highclere, and that in turn would certainly increase the coffers of the Lord of Highclere Sea-Keep. But the gain would be offset by some loss; the worse the storms were, the less hunting there would be, the less fishing, and the more likely that one of those unfortunate accidents would befall whoever was supposed to be working outside. She vividly recalled a particularly wretched winter when frequent, though not violent, storms had kept everyone pent up within the walls right up until late spring. The number of fights had been appalling. Feuds had begun that were probably still being played out to this day. Ferson had lost a dozen men to accidents and to fights; it had been hard to replace them, and the keep had been shorthanded for nearly a year.

So what possible use could Ferson make of such a power that would outweigh the disadvantages?

She couldn’t think of anything. So whatever had brought the Prince of Jendara here, it probably wasn’t that.

She fell asleep still trying to figure out what had.

After four days of wind and storm, the morning of the fifth day broke over calm seas and a cloudless—if icy—sky.

Immediately, the scavengers went out to comb the shores for whatever the sea had cast up. Heaps of extremely useful kelp was always thrown upon the rocks, of course, but there were other things. Amber, jet, sea coal. And sometimes the sea in her fickle nature elected to toss back things that had gone to the bottom in previous wrecks. By the time Moira went down to breakfast, the keep was practically empty. Everyone who could be spared was out combing the shore, and everyone who could hunt was up in the forest doing so. The cook would make only one hot meal today, as most of his helpers would be elsewhere.

It seemed as good a time as any to send the Countess another message. But what? Moira still had no idea why Massid was here. No marriage had yet been proposed. And yet—

Frustrated, she essentially repeated her previous warning with the addition of the rumor about the storm being “sent,” adding only that Massid was spending all his time in her father’s company. She released the dove with a sense of futility, and carried a basket of eggs down to the cook as her excuse for being up there in the first place.

With nothing much to do, she went into the Great Hall before returning to her rooms, and stood at the window, brooding down at the ocean.

“Pining for a beloved, my lady?” Kedric’s dry voice came from behind her.

“If you know anything at all about the women schooled by the Countess, you know we don’t pine for anything,” she replied, without turning. “And as for a beloved, you would know that we also are aware that our lives are not our own to give.”

“Ah yes, you are well schooled in obedience—” The bitterness in his voice made her turn and regard him with a lifted brow.

“Perhaps, Kedric, you are insufficiently acquainted with the meaning of the phrase noblesse oblige,” she replied, keeping her tone cool, and just on the polite side of sarcastic. “It means that those who are born into a position of power inherit obligations and responsibilities far in excess of the benefits of privilege. It means that we are obligated to protect those who give us their loyalty and service. Sometimes that protection comes at the cost of a life. Sometimes the cost is only freedom. But we owe them that. This is what noblesse oblige means.”

She could not read Kedric’s face, so she continued. “Men,” she said with some bitterness of her own, “think that being willing to lay down their lives is difficult. They have no conception of what it means to be willing to lay down your life as a woman does—not for a moment of sacrifice, but for years, decades of sacrifice. To surrender it in that way so that the people you have sworn to protect are protected.”

“And so, you lie down and let yourself—” Kedric began.

She interrupted him, a cold fury in her voice that she could not entirely repress. “Is that what you think? That this is mere, passive obedience, weak and weak willed? I thought you wiser than your motley, Kedric. It is hard, hard, to subdue the will, to force aside I want for I must. But you mistake me. Even in the most loveless and calculated of marriages, there are children to love and be loved by. I refer to the hardest sacrifice of all, for a woman to steel her will to live alone and unwedded, not because she wishes to, but because, for the sake of her people, she must—to look down the long years ahead and see nothing at the end of them but an empty bed and a lonely singleness.”

He made a little strangling sound, and she sniffed, interpreting his odd expression, she thought, correctly. “What? You thought the Countess remained single because she wished to? Or because she does not care for men? Oh, she mourns the Count her husband, and she truly loved him, but she stays a single widow because it is her cousin the King’s will, so that she can be the stalking horse, be dangled, like a prize at a fair, for all to see but ultimately never be won by any. And she takes no lovers, for she is the King’s cousin, and like Caesar’s wife, she must be above reproach. She knows that, has always known it, and she makes sure her Gr—her ladies know that there is more than one way in which the King may ask for their obedience, and what the cost may be.”

“I—see,” he managed. “That had not occurred to me.”

“And to protect my people, if I thought it would protect them, yes, I would give myself over to be locked away in a seraglio in Jendara,” she added, turning back to the window. “But I do not think it would protect them. I think the opposite, and I think the King would agree.”