The Silvered (4 page)

“Mirian, stop slouching.”

She straightened and endured her mother twitching at her bodice—forcing the neckline lower, higher, then lower again. “The Imperial army is in Pyrahn,” she began.

“And the Pack Leader is in Bercarit,” her father pointed out. “I think we’re safe.”

“Pack Leader or not…” And honestly, it wasn’t like he could perform miracles. He was, when it came to it, flesh and blood, the same as everyone else. “…we’re only seventeen miles from the border. We should…”

“We need to use this opportunity the Lord and Lady have granted us. We have never had so many members of the Pack in Bercarit.” Her mother’s tone declared this was the final word on the matter. “Unless you know something no one else does?” The words hung between them, taking up all the extra room in the carriage, then her mother wrapped her hand around Mirian’s wrist and added, tone now speculative, “You don’t, do you? Your marrying into the Pack would be preferable, but if your father and I were able to provide them with a good Soothsayer, I’m sure they’d be grateful. In fact, as there’s no telling what member of the Pack you’d attract, that might…”

“I’m not a Soothsayer, Mother.” Her father, at least, looked relieved she didn’t face insanity. “And I’m not going to attract a member of the Pack.”

“Not with that attitude, you’re not. I’m not sure about this hairstyle on you.” She poked a finger into the mass of tousled curls. “It looks disheveled.”

“Isn’t it supposed to look disheveled?” Mirian sighed. Her mother’s maid had spent half an hour torturing her with a hot iron and pins, the chambermaid who usually assisted her having been declared too inexperienced for such an occasion.

“
Artfully
disheveled,” her mother sighed. “You look as though you just climbed out of bed. With Lady Hagen setting the fashion for golden hair and your hair so entirely unremarkably brown, we’ll have to use what we have. All things considered, a little suggestiveness can’t hurt. Once you’re part of the Mage-pack, you can cut it all off, and I’m sure that will make you happy.” As the carriage came to a stop, she leaned in, a fingertip on Mirian’s right cheek, pulling her eye open wider. “Still gray. Paler if anything,” she sighed. “We’ll have to hold to the knowledge that your entrance tests were strong and I’ve made sure everyone knows that. Brush against them when you get the chance,” she added as the door opened. “The Pack is very tactile.”

Even if Mirian had been able to respond, her protest would have been lost as her mother emerged from the carriage, one hand in her husband’s as he assisted her down the step and the other trailing shawl, and reticule, and attitude. As Mirian stepped out a moment later, she was surprised to see her father waiting, and put her hand on his with a smile.

“Your mother has spotted one of her particular friends,” he said, with a nod toward the wide plaza outside the Opera House and familiar green feathers bobbing above a cluster of women.

“Father, if I can’t attract…”

“You can do anything you put your mind to, Miri, and my bank can very much use the Pack’s attention. Smile, be pleasant. You may not be this season’s fashion, but you’re a pretty girl; it’ll work out.” He tucked her hand in his elbow as the carriage pulled away, its place taken immediately by another. “So, why no first in Metals?” he asked as they started up the broad steps.

“Pardon?”

“Your mother said you had a first level in everything but Metals. Why no Metals?”

“The Metals-master…” Had been scathing about her inability to stay with one craft and had refused to examine her. “…felt I wasn’t suited.”

“Well, I’m sure he knows best.” He patted her hand then released her as her mother reclaimed him.

“Stop dawdling, Kollin, I want to be seated before the Pack enters so we can see who’s attending.”

Mirian dropped back behind her parents, smiled at a truncated greeting from a friend hurrying past, and paused between the wings of the huge glass-and-wrought-iron doors. The sky over the city was clear, but, as much as she hated to admit it, her mother had been right.

She could hear the bass rumble of thunder in the distance.

The tragic love story of
Onnesmina
was the gem of the Bercarit Opera Company and they hauled it out for polishing every other season. Mirian had seen it half a dozen times and not even Emilohi Okafor, the visiting soprano—lauded in the program for her beauty of tone and dramatic acuity—could capture her complete attention.

Lord and Lady Hagen were in Lord Berin’s great box, across the theater and a tier lower from the much smaller box that came with her parents’ subscription. Lord and Lady Berin, who had grandsons with the Hunt Pack, were the height of Bercarit society, and Mirian’s mother had fought to get the box with the best line of sight. It looked as though the Pack Leader and his wife had been accompanied by every member of the Pack currently in Bercarit.

“If there were only a way of telling which of the men were unattached,” her mother muttered, peering at the box through her opera glasses. “Do you feel an attraction to any of them, Mirian?”

“I don’t…”

“Well, you won’t if you keep staring at the stage!”

Catching a sigh behind her teeth, Mirian directed her own glasses away from the stage to Lord Berin’s box. With the glasses, the blur her own eyes would have offered at that distance resolved itself into individual faces all staring enthralled at Okafor whose performance was definitely giving those who’d never seen
Onnesmina
before an amazing introduction to the opera.

“Well?”

“No, Mother.”

“Try harder.”

A second glance showed they weren’t
all
staring enthralled. Lord Berin appeared to be dozing and Lord Hagen seemed distracted. All things considered, Mirian found that unsettling and watched the Pack Leader with an intensity that made even her mother happy.

At the first intermission Lord Hagen was up and out of his seat almost before the curtain had closed. The male members of the Pack charged out of the box after him, leaving the women to follow more sedately.

Mirian found herself nearly lifted out of her seat and dragged onto the upper concourse, her mother’s hand like a steel band around her wrist.

“The Pack will, of course, have gone to the café in the lower lobby,” she said, moving purposefully toward the stairs.

Wishing for the courage to dig her heels in, Mirian lifted her skirt in her other hand, trying not to step on her small train and end up taking the stairs headfirst. “Your subscription doesn’t allow you into the café,” she pointed out a little breathlessly as they reached the lower level.

“We don’t need to go in. We’ll just walk by so they can get your scent.”

“Mother!” Feeling the blood rush to her face, Mirian began to wish she
had
taken the stairs headfirst. A fall would have been significantly less embarrassing. It didn’t help that the makeup of the crowd swirling about the wrought-iron barrier between the café and the lobby suggested the idea was not her mother’s alone.

“You mark my words, Annalyse. In your lifetime there will be a Pack member on the stage.”

Danika kept half her attention on the discussion going on across the small table between Lady Berin and her granddaughter-in-law—the Pack loved opera and many of them had amazing voices, but not even the youngest and most rebellious would do anything so vulgar as take to the stage—and half her attention on her husband standing over by the far wall. He was deep in conversation with Neils Yervick—his wife had sent her excuses and Danika had to admit she
was just as glad not to have her attention split by Kirstin’s sharp tongue. While their verbal fencing often made her more boring social obligations bearable, tonight the Imperial army was at the border and Danika neither wanted nor needed the distraction.

Among the uniformed men surrounding Ryder and Neils, she could see General Narvine of the 2nd, Colonels Greer and Aryat of the 2/2 and 2/4, and a number of younger officers she didn’t recognize. To a man, their expressions whether talking or listening were so completely neutral, she shivered. She could almost hear Ryder instructing them to hide their reactions from the surrounding civilians.

Tucked behind her own mask of polite interest, she noted that while facial expressions might be under control, some Pack members were visibly agitated, shifting their weight and pulling at their clothing. Jaspyr, usually among the most levelheaded of Ryder’s cousins, worried the three pewter buttons on his jacket in and out of their holes, his fingers in constant motion. What news had they heard that…?

“Lady Hagen?”

Danika turned toward the soft touch on her arm to find Annalyse had shifted her attention from Lady Berin—now arguing the lack of vigor in recent hunts with the equally elderly Lady Evanjylan. When Annalyse inclined her head toward the front of the café, Danika followed the younger woman’s line of sight and suddenly understood Jaspyr’s problem.

The mass of people passing back and forth in the lobby outside the café was almost entirely made up of mothers and mages of a marriageable age. A quick glance around the café confirmed the unmated Pack members were most affected by the scents rising from the crowd.

A word to one of the officers of the Opera House and Danika could have the crowd dispersed, but that hardly seemed fair as she, herself, had caught Ryder’s attention as part of a similar promenade. Here and now, however, the Pack needed to remain focused on the security of Aydori. Reaching out with power, she combed through the air currents and redirected them so that they flowed from the café to the lobby.

After a moment, she glanced back at the men surrounding her
husband in time to see Jaspyr move his hand away from the front of his jacket, the buttons now securely fastened. When she shifted her gaze to Ryder, he caught and held it long enough to nod his thanks before returning to his conversation with General Narvine. The general nodded in agreement when Ryder stopped speaking and, although Danika couldn’t see the general’s face, must have said something in turn as the lieutenant beside him snapped to attention, pivoted on one heel, and all but ran from the café.

That didn’t look good.

Behind her, Annalyse drew in a sharp breath, and Danika remembered the younger woman’s husband was with the Hunt Pack and the Hunt Pack had met the Imperial army some hours before.

The Pack healed so quickly they were very hard to kill. Silver poisoned them, but they’d been careful to keep that knowledge from their enemies.

Still, only three months married and hours without news…

Reassurance would be meaningless as Danika knew no more than Annalyse did, so it would have to be distraction. Tugging on the cuff of her lace mitten as she turned, she waggled the fingers of her right hand and said softly, “Forced by circumstance to a public display of mage-craft, how very vulgar.”

Annalyse’s green-flecked eyes widened, then she smiled. A polite smile, a society smile, but it lifted a little of her distress. “As the Alpha Female, Lady Hagen, you set the fashion. At least, that’s what Geoffrey told me when I joined the Pack.”

“So I cannot, therefore, be vulgar?” Danika lifted her cup and grinned over the rim. “That could come in handy.”

This smile reached Annalyse’s eyes, crinkling them at the corners. “My much more vulgar solution would have involved washing the scent from the air.”

Sixth level Water at least, Danika realized, setting her cup down, and she clearly had a more delicate touch than most Water-mages managed. “You could actually make it rain inside the building?”

“If there’s moisture enough. With so many people and the ceilings so high…” She waved off her ability to perform an impressive bit of mage-craft, her gaze sliding past Danika’s shoulder, back to the men around the Pack Leader. “Do you think something has happened? Something bad?”

“Of course something bad has happened,” Lady Berin growled. “To the Imperials. The Hunt Pack will have sent them howling home with their tails between their legs.” She reached across the table and gripped her granddaughter-in-law’s wrist, the back of her hand grown hairy with age. “Our Geoffrey will be back in no time. Isn’t that right, Lady Hagen?”

If she’d been born Pack, Danika would have bared teeth at Lady Berin’s tone even as she was aware she was demanding reassurance, not challenging. Instead, she smiled carefully and said, “The Hunt Pack is the best Aydori has to offer.”

Lady Berin nodded in satisfaction, but Danika could see that Annalyse knew her words meant nothing at all.