HM02 House of Moons (4 page)

“I told him to stay inside with me and the girls.” Her voice had tiny cracks in it, like a crystal already shattered by the hammer and about to fall apart. “I told him to let the field hands handle the bandits when they attacked, but he just laughed and said, ‘They’re only chierra, Mother,’ as if I didn’t understand that he was a man and could do a man’s work.”

She stretched out trembling fingers toward the cold, alabaster-pale hand under its gossamer covering of fine Merir silk. The fluted pots of chispa-fire placed around the walls flickered as her unshielded sorrow surged through the room. “He would have been the most talented Lord in our family for generations!”

Kevisson glanced back at the additional bodies laid out on rough wooden biers at the other end of the chapel, undoubtedly all dark-haired, five-fingered chierra workers who had fallen defending the Lenhe estate beside this child.

Myriel walked slowly along the bier, studying the golden-haired boy laid out in his blue-and-gold ceremonial best. “I saw their leader, you know, when he struck Lat down.” She looked at Kevisson for the first time, her reddened eyes overlarge in her drawn white face. “There was something wrong with his eyes.” Her hand trembled as she straightened the silken veil draped over the body. “They were the wrong color. I actually tried to kill him myself, but my mind couldn’t get a grasp on him. It was like ...” She shook her head as tears welled again and trickled down her cheeks. “I can’t really explain. It was like ... he was Talented.”

The wrong color ... Kevisson’s mouth compressed. He had once known a Lowlander with blue eyes, an oddity among a race of brown-eyed people, a freeborn chierra who had lived in the middle of the Great Forest in a nest of bandits. And that Lowlander had been protected by the ilseri. Had he been the one who attacked here today?

“Of course, I’m only rated as a Plus-One, but ...” She crossed her arms, hugging herself fiercely. “I’ve never had any trouble controlling our servants. It should have been enough to kill one of
them!
They have no shields, and Lat was a Plus-Four, even if he hadn’t been fully trained—that should have been more than enough.” Her voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “What will I do now? Father has been dead these last three years and my other children are only girls. How long will the Council allow me to hold Lenhe’ayn without a male heir?”

Kevisson took her arm; her clammy skin was as cold as the flagstones beneath their feet. “Why don’t you come back to the house, Myriel? We’ll discuss it.”

“No.” Suddenly she looked at him as if truly seeing him for the first time and twisted out of his grasp. “You’ve come from Shael’donn, haven’t you? To express their sympathies.” The pupils in her eyes were so dilated that he could hardly see the gold of her irises. “Well, there wouldn’t have to be any so-called sympathies if you
men
had done your job. The Council is supposed to protect us. Those chierra could come back and finish us off any moment! Where are the men to keep it from happening again?”

“Myriel, you know Monmart’ayn has never held a seat on the Council.” He trailed after her as she turned back to the bier. His boots echoed through the emptiness of the large room. “But I’ll go back and speak to them for you.”

“I asked you for help once and you refused.” She gathered a double handful of the tiny white anith flowers strewn around the bier’s edge and pressed them to her face. “I don’t want anything from you now. Go back to Shael’donn and let your beloved books keep you warm at night. I’ll take care of myself, as I’ve always had to.”

“The Council wants me to investiga—”

“I said go!” She whirled on him, the flowers crushed between her fingers and her knuckles white. “I don’t want you here! Go away!” Snowy petals drifted to the floor.

A figure dressed in gray homespun detached itself from the shadows by the wooden biers in the back and hurried toward her. “Begging your pardon, my Lord, but if you could just persuade her Ladyship to rest for a bit.” Brushing past him, the old chierra servant with swollen, wet eyes slipped an arm around the staring woman and drew her gently toward the outside door. “She’s not herself right now.”

Myriel resisted for a moment. then turned to look at the old woman. “Dorria, what will I do?” Her voice was high-pitched and strained.

“You just let old Dorria worry about that, child.” The chierra folded Myriel’s head to her ample bosom and rocked her gently within her arms. “Dorria’s never let you down, has she, all these years?”

Myriel began to cry, her body wracked with great convulsive sobs. The old woman glanced up at him. “If you will just go on back to the main house, your Lordship, they should be setting out supper in a bit. Her Ladyship and I will be along by and by.”

Kevisson turned back to take one last look at the still, colorless face of Myriel’s son, the child who might have been his had he answered her differently all those years ago. Then he walked back to the door and let himself outside into the late afternoon sunlight.

* * *

“I never know where I stand with Kevisson.” Haemas spread her palms against the chill windowpanes in her study as the flock of girl students roughhoused outside in the falling snow. The cold seeped through her hands up into her arms. “Sometimes we’re so close, I feel we’ve a single mind between us, thinking the same thoughts. He’s the other half of me. Then other times I feel as if I were sixteen again and he’s come to drag me by the scruff of my neck back to my father.”

“Well, wanting to help him is one thing.” Enissa looked up from her thick leather-bound book of accounts. “Interfering is something else again.”

The wind gusted, rattling the windowpanes and sending flurries of the dry, dust-like snow flying. Outside, the girls shrieked and ran harder, their young legs pumping, slipping, then getting up to run again. Haemas shivered. Had she ever felt as young as that, played with that kind of reckless abandon? She felt cold just watching them. “But Master Ellirt meant Kevisson to succeed him. It’s not right that Shael’donn goes to someone else, especially to a man like Riklin Senn.” Dropping the heavy velvet drapes, she turned away from the window’s frosted panes. “What would you have done?”

“The same.” Enissa’s grayish-gold eyes crinkled merrily at the corners as she laid aside her pen. “I never could keep my nose where it belonged, but that’s no excuse for you to be as bad.” She pushed her metal spectacles back in place with her middle finger. “You should have more sense.”

Haemas gazed at the older woman affectionately, thinking how difficult, even with Master Ellirt’s help, it would have been to set up the House of Moons without her. She remembered the day a gray-haired stranger had shown up at Shael’donn. Brother Alidale had knocked on her door, then peeked in, his usually sober face amused. “Someone to see you,” he had said, radiating a barely contained mirth through his shields.

A wave of irritation washed through her. “I don’t have time.” She glanced up from the raw crystal she was evaluating for a new portal set for Senn’ayn. “Tell him to come back later.”

Alidale’s golden eyes danced merrily. “But it isn’t a ‘he.’”

“Tell
her
to go away, then.” Haemas adjusted the lathe and picked up the blue crystal again. “This set has been promised in a ten-day. I’m busy.”

“Not too busy for me, I trust,” said a calm, low-pitched voice from the doorway.

Haemas looked up into the plump, lined face of an older woman. “I’m afraid today is a bad time, Lady ...?”

“Saxbury.” The round-faced woman walked into the small workroom, then dumped a large leather pouch on the floor at Haemas’s feet. “But I don’t intend to be Lady Saxbury anymore. I don’t like her.”

Alidale’s mouth twitched. Haemas could see that in another second, he would be laughing in the poor woman’s face. “Thank you, Brother Alidale,” she said crisply. “I can handle this from here.”

“As you wish.” Alidale’s cheeks bulged with the effort of remaining silent as he backed out the door, then closed it behind him.

“Please.” Haemas rose from her seat and pulled out another one beside her work table. “Sit down.”

The woman sat, folding her hands on the table and studying Haemas closely with shrewd golden eyes. She was dressed in a richly cut dark-green velvet skirt and jacket that smelled, strangely enough, of furniture polish and paint. Her mouth twisted as she glanced down and brushed at a spot of white paint on her sleeve. “Drat,” she muttered. “That’s what comes of always having to show servants how it’s done.”

“Now,” Haemas said as she reseated herself, “how may I help you?”

“For a start, you can call me Enissa.” The gray-haired woman nodded. “I’ve come to work in your House of Moons.”

“I
will
be looking for staff once the house is finished next summer.” Haemas turned the blue crystal over in her fingers, searching for flaws. “But I don’t have a place for you until then.”

“Oh, I’ll just stay with you.” Enissa gazed around the simple room and its overflowing bookshelves with satisfaction. “I wanted to study here when I was growing up, but, of course, Shael’donn never allowed females—until you came along.” She leaned over the table and stared into Haemas’s eyes. “I can’t imagine how you persuaded them to train you. I’m a natural healer, myself, although no one would ever teach me.”

Haemas was dumbfounded. “A healer?”

The woman reached out and pressed Haemas’s right hand between her two small palms. A sense of warmth and wellbeing enveloped Haemas, as if sunlight were playing over her face. A faint taste of cinnamon hung in the back of her throat, and she felt a subtle, relaxing energy quite unlike anything she’d ever known.

Enissa’s eyes drifted shut. “Don’t get much rest, do you?” she murmured. The warmth crept up Haemas’s arm, threading through her brain in slow, lazy swirls. “They keep you far too busy, and you’re always afraid to say no, afraid they’ll say you can’t keep up, that you’re not good enough.” She squeezed Haemas’s hand, then released it and sat back in her chair. “Being in charge will mean recognizing your own limitations as well as everyone else’s. You need to remember that.”

“I—” Haemas flexed her still-tingling fingers.

“Yes, yes, I know.” The older woman’s no-nonsense mouth frowned. “There’s no such beast as a female healer, is there? At least, that’s what they’d like us to think. Well, I won’t put up with it anymore, not when there’s finally somewhere else to go—and something that needs doing. I don’t want to be a lady of a great House anymore. My children are all grown; the last of them just married a few days ago. My husband has been dead now eight years, and only the Light above knows how glad my son will be to have his wife, a proper Rald granddaughter, no less, as Lady of Sithnal’ayn instead of me. Sometimes I have to wonder at Rhydal, my departed husband. Whatever possessed him to take me, a mere Revann Saxbury with almost no dowry, to wife?”

Unable to think of a reply, Haemas stared at the older woman’s unconcerned face.

“Oh, you won’t get rid of me,” Enissa said. “I’m here to stay.”

And a good thing, too, Haemas thought now, or no telling where she and the House of Moons would be. She turned away from the window and the shrieking students, rubbing her chilled palms against her tunic. “So you think I should apologize.”

Enissa winked. “Or, at the very least, lie. He’s not likely to forgive you otherwise.”

Haemas massaged her temples with her forefingers. She was an abominable liar, and besides, she wasn’t a child anymore. Now that she was grown, the fact that Kevisson was ten years older than herself no longer mattered, and she ached for him to take her seriously. She had as much right to her opinion as he had to his. She wasn’t going to give in this time.

She picked up her schedule book. “Well, I’ll talk to him when he comes back from Lenhe’ayn. I’ll make him understand.”

“LADY MYRIEL WON’T
sleep, my Lord.” The old chierra servant’s round face was still swollen with tears. “Not for a minute, not since—” She pressed a work-worn hand over her mouth and turned away, staring at a Lenhe crest woven into the wall hanging. Her distress spread through Kevisson’s mind like a dark cloud.

He laid aside the list of damages he was tallying for the Council and stood, his fingers sliding over the red spine-wood of the fine desk. The old Lord’s study must have been his favorite room, he thought. From the look of the papers and ledgers still scattered about, little had been touched since Avlan Lenhe’s death some three years ago. The blue-and-gold ebari-wool throws were still casually laid over the chair turned to the hearth as if the old Lord would be back in only a moment, the brocade drapes were drawn against the late afternoon sun, the wing-backed chairs huddled close to the fire for guests who would never come. This seemed to be a house waiting for something.

“Perhaps I can be of some help—” He paused, having forgotten her name, then concentrated and plucked it lightly from the edge of her conscious thoughts. “Dorria.”

“If you would be so kind. I have been that worried about her.” Dorria dabbed at her reddened eyes with a worn gray shawl. “I’ve seen after two generations of Lenhe children now and I never failed any of them, not until—” Tears welled up in the dark-brown eyes again.

“It wasn’t your fault, Dorria.” He stood up and clasped her trembling shoulder. “I’m sure you’ve always done the very best you could.”
You’re of no use to your Lady when you’re this upset,
he murmured into her mind, using the contact of his hand on her shoulder to deepen the faint link between them.
You must calm yourself so she won’t pick it up from you.

Although the old woman’s chierra mind could not hear him on a conscious level, her body began to relax. Keeping his arm lightly around her shoulder, Kevisson walked her up the winding, carpeted staircase to the family’s personal wing, using his Talent to ease the terrible grief the old servant felt for Myriel, whom she had raised, and for Myriel’s dead son. Although Andiine vows forbade imposing his will on others under most circumstances, blunting of grief was a widely accepted practice.

When they reached the carved expanse of Myriel’s private door, Kevisson turned to the servant. “Wait out here while I speak with her. I’ll call if she needs you.”

Breathing somewhat more easily already, the old woman nodded and stood aside, bowing her head.

Inside, the sitting room was a shambles, as was the bedroom beyond, clothes thrown everywhere, the expensive velvets, wools, and silks ripped, then tossed aside. The fire had burned down into ashes, the air was cold, and the reek of a dozen perfumes mingled near one wall where the smashed jars lay in a heap at the baseboard. In the far corner, Myriel gazed out the window at the wild tangle of woods two fields away, her fists pressed hard against her sides.

Myriel?
Kevisson closed the door softly behind him.
Why don’t you lie down? It’s getting dark and a lot of people will be here tomorrow.

Myriel stiffened as he spoke directly into her mind. She was still beautiful, he thought, her tall body only slightly rounder than he remembered from all those years ago when his Search had led him into the Lowlands and he had availed himself of her father’s hospitality.

“Go away!” she hissed without looking at him.

Think of your daughters.
He edged closer.
They’re grieving, too. You must take care of yourself for their sake.

“My daughters!” She turned around, and he realized with a shock that she was laughing in hard, wrenching sobs. Her face twisted. “My daughters, oh, that is just the way one of you would think!” She looked down at the green, soot-smudged gown she still wore, then brushed absently at a few blackened streaks. “I only wish I had sent my daughters out to face the chierra—then I would still have my son!”

You don’t mean that.
Probing beneath her shields, Kevisson blanched at the wildness seething through her mind.

“You don’t understand.” Her gaze turned back to the window and the charred fields beyond. “You’re a man—and a son. You’ve never had to think about these things the way a daughter must. If I still had Lat, I would have Lenhe’ayn.” A muscle twitched in her jaw. “Neither of my girls can inherit; my father entailed this estate solely upon my male heirs, of which I have none now to present to the Council.”

There will be time to think about that later.
Kevisson resolved to send for a healer from the House of Moons as soon as he had persuaded her to rest; she needed far more care than he could give her.
Come and lie down for a little while.
He touched her shoulder.

Unexpectedly she whirled on him like a bavval, clawing at his eyes and shoving him back against the wall. Caught off guard, he enfolded her in his arms and held her hard against his chest.
Myriel, stop this!
He poured all the strength of his Plus-Ten Talent against the inadequate defenses of her Plus-One mind.
Stop fighting me and rest!

But grief and pain were lending her unsuspected reserves. Continuing to struggle, she worked one arm free and scratched his face.
I’ll rest when I have another son!
she cried into his mind, her loss laid painfully bare before him. Her need poured over him, hot and savage.
Give me another son!
Then her lips were at his, pressing, demanding.

For a second, he almost responded. Then he drew away from her tear-ravaged face.
Perhaps you will have another son someday, but not like this.

You refused me before.

Even as he forced her back onto the bed, he felt the aching need that she projected burning through him.

Don’t say no again! Give me a son and I swear I will love him! That’s why you wouldn’t before, wasn’t it? You thought I wouldn’t love him!

It was true; he had refused her because he had caught a glimpse of himself through her mind: the disappointing reality that his eyes and hair were golden brown, not the true gold that the Kashi prized as the visible proof of their superiority to the chierra. Any child of his would likely have carried that same chierra-like coloring, and he would never give his child to her or anyone else to be scorned as he had been.

It won’t matter!
Myriel’s arms wrapped around his neck, drawing him down to her desperate need.
I swear it won’t!

For a moment, tangled in her arms, with the fire of her body pressed against his, he was tempted, almost swept beyond thinking. She was still lovely—in fact, she was all the more beautiful for the years that had transformed her from the shallow, ambitious girl he remembered into this grieving matron. But his heart had chosen long ago, for all the good it had ever done him, and it had not chosen her.

Freeing his arms, Kevisson folded her to him as if she were an ailing child and stroked the ash gold of her wild hair. His face ached where she had scratched him.
Sleep,
he whispered into her mind, knowing tomorrow would be difficult for her even if she did manage to rest. She struggled within his grip, trying to escape, but he pinned her arms, projecting an aura of calm he did not feel.
Sleep,
he commanded her again.
I won’t leave you.

Then he leaned back against the wooden headboard of her bed, using his will against hers, feeling the tension drain gradually from her body until at last his strength overpowered hers and she slept. For a long time, he watched her chest rise and fall in the evenness of a sleep that eased grief for the moment, watched until most of the lines smoothed from the curve of her still-perfect cheek.

Would he have been so firm in his refusal, he wondered, if he had never known Haemas Sennay Tal?

* * *

Even before she met Enissa in the hallway, Haemas caught Enissa’s grumbling thoughts as the older woman rounded the comer. She was struggling into her heaviest wool cloak while trying to balance her medicinal pouch at the same time.

Haemas took the pouch from her. “Is there an emergency?”

A head shorter than Haemas, the older woman drew her stout body up and regarded her impatiently. “Now what else do you think could pry me out of my warm bed at this late hour? If you must know, Kevisson asked me to come down to Lenhe’ayn and see after one of the family who’s in a bad way.”

“Oh.” Haemas’s face warmed as she realized Kevisson had contacted Enissa without even leaving her a message. “Do you think you’ll be back by morning? The girls seemed rather subdued at the table tonight. I’m afraid they may be upset about the attack.”

A half smile quirked the edges of Enissa’s mouth as she took her bulky shoulder pouch of medicines back. “There’s not one among that lot who can think much beyond the cut of her next festival gown, and that’s a pure fact.”

Haemas started to protest, then didn’t. The Kashi daughters sent from all over the Highlands as well as the Lowlands to study mindarts at the House of Moons did seem to have an overwhelming preoccupation with things other than studying, such as clothes and boys—and marriage. Softening her shields, she skimmed at the surface mindchatter of the girls housed on the upper floor and caught at the edges of a few carelessly broadcast thoughts: the latest colors in Cholee velvets ... eligible oldest sons ... invitations to the Dynd Naming to come in the next ten-day ... and the undisputed goldness of young Arrich Dynd’s eyes.

Haemas shook her head ruefully. “I guess you’re right. Do you want me to come with you?”

“I most certainly do not.” Enissa shouldered her bag. “These flighty, half-witted girls need you right here, where you can keep an eye on them.” Enissa reached out with both hands and pushed her toward her own chambers. “Get some rest.” She opened Haemas’s door and guided her inside. “The night’s half over as it is. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then she shut the door firmly in Haemas’s face.

Well, good-bye to you, too,
Haemas said as the older woman started down the staircase, then shook her head. The air in her sitting room was cooler than she’d expected, the fire in her blue-tiled hearth barely more than glowing red embers. Kneeling, she added more kindling, then prodded and stirred until the flames crackled again. But even though she held her hands close, the fire seemed to give off far too little warmth. Stretching her hands closer, she watched the shimmering fire, suddenly too weary to go about even the simple business of undressing for bed.

The events of the last few days swept back over her: Master Ellirt’s sudden death, the appointment of Riklin Senn as the Head of Shael’donn, Kevisson’s anger with her. It was all more than she could take in. Gathering her legs to her chest, she rested her chin on her knees and tried to concentrate on her schedule for the next few days.

Saatha Bramm had a Testing coming up; no doubt her father, Lord Ellric Bramm, self-important Lowlander that he was, would insist on being present to make sure the House of Moons didn’t botch it. And then there was Meryet Alimn ...

Stifling a yawn, she blinked at the yellow flames for a moment. Meryet? For some reason, she couldn’t remember what had been on her mind. A chill, bone-aching weariness seeped up from the tips of her toes, spreading until she could hardly remember her own name. Reaching back, she loosened her mass of pale-gold hair from its single braid and shook it out, combing it with her fingers.

Meryet ... Shivering, Haemas pushed herself up from the floor, then balanced there dizzily. No doubt, she should have eaten something instead of merely playing with her stew at the evening meal. Well, she scolded herself, that had been foolish. How could she expect people to trust her with their daughters when she didn’t even take proper care of herself?

Something rustled behind her. Turning her head, she peered through the flickering shadows. Was someone standing there, watching her, over by the far wall?

“Who’s there?” she demanded, thinking that one of the girls had sneaked in.

“So, Lady,” a cool voice said from the shadows, “shall we resume our discussion?”

It was Diren Chee, and she realized suddenly that her strange malaise was being projected by him. Heart pounding, she strengthened her shields and darted toward the door, but in two determined strides he caught up with her and threw his arm around her neck, jerking her almost off her feet. Before she could cry out, something hard and sharp-edged pressed against her temple and loosed a lightning bolt deep into her brain. Gasping with pain and shock, she tried to push it away.

He caught her wrist in iron fingers and twisted it behind her back. “You will come with me now,” he whispered. “Say it!”

The words echoed inside her head until she thought it would burst. She threw her will against the grinding pain, trying to shield it out, but it increased twofold, then threefold. Her knees sagged as she was drawn down into a dark vortex of pain.

“Fool!” Chee shifted his arms to take her weight and keep her from falling. “Fighting only makes it worse! Do you want to kill yourself?”