Reader and Raelynx (Twelve Houses) Read online

  Rewrapping his clever little weapon, Dalcey put away everything except his court clothes. Draping those over his arm, he left the room and locked the door. As he’d expected, the proprietor was happy to promise that the waistcoat and trousers would be pressed for him and returned that evening; and, most certainly, he could order bathwater to be brought to his room first thing in the morning.

  “An important appointment, I suppose, sir?” the innkeeper asked.

  Yes, I will be going off to kill your king. “Oh, when a man’s in business, every appointment is important,” Dalcey said.

  The innkeeper grinned. “And every customer is important, that’s what I say. We certainly appreciate your business, sir.”

  Dalcey nodded and went out. Time to walk the city, to determine the best route back from the palace—as well as two alternate courses in case soldiers blocked his way. The walking made him hungry, so he stopped at an anonymous tavern, ate a hearty meal, left an insignificant tip, and headed back toward his room. It was even colder than before, and Dalcey cursed the wind. The weather never got this severe down south in Fortunalt. Dalcey was still shivering as he unlocked his room, and he built up the fire even before he took off his coat. Then he lit a half dozen candles and once again spread the contents of the valise upon his bed.

  This was the ritual he always went through: focusing his mind on the great task before him, reviewing all the details of the heist or the assassination. For the hundredth time, he studied his diagram of the palace; for the thousandth, his map of the city. He unwrapped the tiny crossbow again, took it apart, put it together again, aimed it across the room, and imagined that the washstand pitcher was King Baryn’s face. His finger tightened on the firing mechanism, but he did not launch the arrow. He wanted its metal tip perfectly smooth, unmarred by dents and nicks.

  He had disassembled the weapon again and laid the parts precisely across the bed when there was a knock at the door. “Your clothes, sir,” said a woman’s voice.

  Dalcey tossed his spare shirt over the parts of the weapon and turned the palace diagram facedown before unlocking the door. “Very efficient,” he said as he opened it. “You can tell your master I said so.”

  He was confused at the sight of the woman who stepped through, his coat and trousers folded neatly over her arm. She was quite tall, with messy pale hair, and she looked nothing like any serving woman Dalcey had ever seen. “Shall I just lay these on the bed?” she asked, crossing the room before he could answer.

  Dalcey stared after her, his hand still on the latch. She was wearing men’s trousers. And a knife at her belt. His own knives were on the other side of the room, closed in the armoire. “Who are you?” he asked stupidly.

  She turned and smiled at him, but before she could speak a second figure shouldered into the room. It was a man, huge, dark-haired, dressed all in black, and he had his hands around Dalcey’s throat before Dalcey could think to scream. Dalcey fought, or attempted to; he flailed in the man’s grip, tried to land punches, tried to land kicks, tried to stomp on the floor to draw the attention of the proprietor or his staff. Outlaws! Robbing people here in your very inn! But he couldn’t swing hard enough to make an impression on the big man’s ribs. He couldn’t get a knee near the other man’s groin, couldn’t shout, couldn’t breathe. He felt himself starting to black out. Panic began to replace his first spurt of anger as he realized he was about to die. He clawed at the hard hands clenched around his neck, scratching desperately. No use, no use—

  “Don’t kill him, Tayse,” he heard the woman say, and the strangle-hold loosened enough to allow him to suck in air.

  Dalcey only had a second to consider mounting a counterattack before the big man spun him around and grabbed him from behind, pinning his arms and bruising his ribs and throat. Gasping for air, he tried to assess the situation. The woman was bending over the bed, tossing through his clothes, his maps, and his disassembled weapon. A third person was standing beside her—someone who must have entered behind the man called Tayse—a slightly built young man with a ragged shock of light brown hair.

  “What do you want?” Dalcey wheezed, trying to draw in enough breath to shout for help. It was impossible that brigands could slip so boldly into such a respectable inn! Had they murdered the innkeeper and all of his staff downstairs? “My money is in my coat, on the back of the chair.”

  The woman turned to look at him. She was actually laughing. In her hands she held the frame of the crossbow, the arrow, and the detached trigger mechanism. “Money?” she repeated. “I imagine you got paid so much money for this act of treason that you couldn’t possibly have brought it all with you.”

  He was astonished. “Act of—act of treason?” What could she possibly know? How could she possibly know?

  She held up the parts of the weapon for him to see and then deftly locked them together with a couple of quick twists. Now he was both stupefied and very, very frightened. “Met a man from Arberharst once who carried one of these,” she said. “I would have paid him any amount of money for it, but he wouldn’t sell it. Nastiest thing I’ve ever seen for killing a man at short range.”

  They had the weapon, they knew what it was, but they could have no idea what he meant to do with it. “Kill a man,” he blustered. “Why, I wouldn’t—how could you think—who are you people? How dare you come into my room?”

  The young man had picked up the various papers littering the bed. “The castle, the city,” he recited. “Oh, and look. Here it is. His card of admittance to see the king tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Tayse, and his grip tightened so dramatically that Dalcey felt his ribs splinter inward. The woman watched him coolly as he contorted in Tayse’s arms, seeming to judge exactly how long he could survive without breathing.

  “Tayse,” she said at last, and again the big man’s hold loosened.

  “What do you want from me?” Dalcey panted.

  She seemed to think about it. “Well, first, I want you to not succeed at killing the king,” she said in a mild voice.

  “I—wouldn’t! How could you think—”

  “And then I want you to tell us who sent you here to try,” she continued. “And then I want you to be thrown into a cell for the rest of your life, although I think Tayse would rather strangle you outright.”

  They had no proof. The weapon, the maps, those could all be explained away. He tried for outrage, though he was too afraid to make it really successful. “How could you come here tonight—and accuse me of such heinous intentions! Who are you? Who do you think I am? I am a simple merchant from Arberharst who has been granted the favor of an interview with your monarch—”

  The slight young man spoke up again. “You’re a Fortunalt man who has come to Ghosenhall to kill the king,” he said. “I could feel you the minute you started thinking about it. There’s so much violence in you. It came rolling out of you and almost knocked me over.”

  Dalcey stared at him in disbelief. The boy was speaking gibberish. “You—what? You felt me—what? Who are you?”

  The woman clapped the young man on the shoulder. “He’s Cammon. He’s a mystic. He can read minds.”

  “And your mind is a cesspool,” Tayse interjected from over Dalcey’s shoulder.

  “I can’t actually read minds,” Cammon said.

  Dalcey started struggling again in Tayse’s hold, feeling a sort of relief wash over him. Still no proof, just the crazy made-up ramblings of an idiot mystic boy! “You can’t possibly believe—just because this lunatic says—let me go! I demand to see a magistrate! I demand to see the king! He will be incensed to learn how grievously I have been treated, an envoy from a foreign sovereign nation!”

  The woman was laughing. “Cammon is never wrong,” she said cheerfully. “So Tayse and I believe you have come here to murder the king. And Tayse will find a way to make you tell him who sent you. And you may scream your head off, if you like,” she added, as Dalcey drew breath to do just that, “but no one in this inn will in
terfere with us.”

  “With brigands? With outlaws?” Dalcey sputtered. “What kind of city is this where such atrocities are allowed?”

  It was as if he had not spoken. “Tayse is a King’s Rider, you see,” she continued. “And his word is law in Ghosenhall.”

  Now, finally, Dalcey believed he was truly caught. A King’s Rider! Fifty of them served the crown, fifty of the fiercest fighters of the realm, all of them fanatically devoted to their king. No one would gainsay a Rider—no one would believe a nameless man caught in questionable circumstances no matter how hard he argued his innocence.

  He could not be tortured. He could not betray Rayson. It was a point of pride on Dalcey’s part never to leave clues that pointed to the men who had employed him. He would not buy his own skin by sacrificing someone else’s.

  The candy. The poison. One piece of that and he would thwart the torturer. Time for meekness. “Where—where are you taking me?” he asked in a quavering voice, pretending that all the fight had gone out of him. “Will you allow me to bring my things? Will you allow me to contact my family?”

  “Your family in Arberharst?” she asked with mock politeness. “I’m sure you’d like to get a message off to them.”

  “Grab his clothes and let’s go,” Tayse said. “Cammon, check the dresser, see if anything’s there.”

  Dalcey stood limp in Tayse’s arms, trying to appear utterly defeated, but he watched closely out of the corner of his eyes as the woman and the young man gathered and repacked his personal items. The maps and the crossbow, of course, were laid aside to be kept as evidence, but they seemed perfectly willing to turn over everything else to him. His gloves were tucked into the pockets of his coat, the newly pressed clothes were crammed back into the bag, and the silver box of candies was dropped in on top of them. Dalcey closed his eyes in unutterable relief. The woman glanced around as if to make sure nothing had been overlooked.

  “Wait a minute, Senneth,” Cammon said, and pulled the silver box back out of the valise.

  Dalcey felt the chill hands of fear close over his throat more tightly than Tayse’s fingers ever had.

  “What’s that?” asked the woman called Senneth, taking the box from him. She flicked it open and sniffed at one of the sugary bits.

  “I don’t know, but he wants it.”

  Senneth snapped the lid shut and gave Cammon a warm smile. “Then we want it more.” She glanced at Tayse. “What do you think? Poison?”

  Tayse grunted and squeezed harder. Again, for a moment, Dalcey couldn’t breathe. “Likely enough.”

  “We’ll have it tested.” She turned back to Cammon. “Anything else we should be wary of?”

  “That seems to be the thing he’s focused on most.”

  Rage suddenly enflamed Dalcey, and he made a furious, insane effort to wrench away from the Rider. “Give it back! Give it back! Give it back!” he started shrieking, meaning the weapon, or the poison, or his freedom, or his life, he couldn’t even have specified. Through the open door, he could hear footsteps approaching and voices muttering, but he was in a berserker fury. “Let go of me! Give it back!”

  A hard clout to the head from behind, and Dalcey was on his knees, with his senses spinning and his vision blurring. Tayse kept one hand on Dalcey’s wrists and used the other to yank Dalcey’s head back by the hair. “Be quiet,” the big man said in a threatening voice. His black eyes bored into Dalcey’s; they looked fierce enough to pierce a man’s skull.

  Dalcey whimpered and tore his gaze away. He found himself staring straight at the young man, Cammon, the mystic. He wasn’t frightening, not in the rough physical way that Tayse was, but there was something otherworldly about him. His eyes were huge and strangely colored; his face was preternaturally calm. He was watching Dalcey as if the stranger was a wild animal brought over from a foreign shore, a creature both fascinating and repugnant.

  “May the Pale Mother strike you dead,” Dalcey whispered, not that he believed in the goddess, not that he believed in curses, but he wanted to express his venom, and everybody knew that mystics feared the Silver Lady.

  Cammon didn’t blink or look away or appear frightened in the least, just continued watching him. For a moment, Dalcey had the strangest feeling, as if this boy really could read his mind, scan his heart and retrieve all of his long-held memories, chart the tangled and vicious course of Dalcey’s life. Everything he was, everything he had felt, said, offered, refused, stolen, coveted, or destroyed—all of it—the boy comprehended each piece of Dalcey’s life in a single glance.

  And looked away, unimpressed. “Are we done here?” Cammon asked. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER

  2

  JERRIL was trying to prove to Cammon that he was stronger than snow, and Cammon wasn’t having any of it.

  “It’s too cold out here,” he protested for the seventh or eighth time. “I can’t even feel my toes.”

  “You’re allowing your body to control your mind,” Jerril said in his usual, imperturbable fashion. “You must teach your mind to control your body.”

  “I can do that when I haven’t frozen to death,” Cammon said.

  Jerril merely smiled and waited. Jerril was the most patient man Cammon had ever met. Tall, bony, bald, and dreamy-eyed, Jerril always gave the impression that he had just been struck by some new and fascinating thought and needed a moment to merely stand and consider it. Cammon had seen Jerril happy, had seen him enthusiastic, had seen him tired, but he had never seen Jerril irritable or anxious or in a hurry.

  “All right, I’ll try again,” Cammon grumbled. He was sitting right in the middle of a snowbank, wearing no coat, and his bare toes were buried beneath an inch of ice. They had been out in the tiny, winter-brown garden behind Jerril’s house for twenty minutes now, and Cammon was starting to shiver. “And then I’m going in.”

  “That’s fair,” Jerril said. “Close your eyes.”

  Cammon did, but it scarcely mattered. It was all still visible to him—or, no, that wasn’t the right word—tangible, perhaps. Jerril sitting before him, perfectly comfortable in the cold snow on the hard ground, Lynnette humming in the kitchen as she began organizing the evening meal, Areel upstairs hunched over some obscure textbook and muttering in his daft way. The busy streets of Ghosenhall, crowded with thousands of residents and hundreds of visitors, some sad, some weary, some angry, some excited, most just concentrating on their particular task of the moment, calculating how quickly it could be accomplished and what their chances of success would be. Fainter, farther, but still, if he strained, discernible, a blurred oceanic mass of thoughts and feelings and desires from all the souls of Gillengaria collected on the continent from northeastern Brassenthwaite to southwestern Fortunalt.

  Scattered across that map, five bright, urgent spots of color. Tayse and Senneth closest to hand, only a mile or so away at the royal palace. Kirra and Donnal in restless motion, somewhere to the west and hundreds of miles distant. Justin to the east, so far away he was difficult to detect—still across the Lireth Mountains, then—and followed by a persistent shadow. Ellynor. Cammon still could not sense Ellynor’s existence independent of Justin, but he could feel her insistent pull on Justin’s attention and by that alone gauge where she was and if she was well.

  “Close your eyes and concentrate,” Jerril said, his voice mildly reproving. “Shut out the thoughts of everything else.”

  “I can’t,” Cammon said.

  “It’s not easy,” Jerril corrected, “but you can. You know how to close your mind to the world around you. You can block out the existence of strangers. Shut those doors. Close them off.”

  It took a tremendous effort but Cammon did it, envisioning, as Jerril said, doors slamming shut between his line of sight and everybody else in the world. First he lost the sense of the great expanse of Gillengaria, then he walled off his perceptions of the city of Ghosenhall. It was harder to overlook Jerril and Lynnette and Areel, and he didn’t think he’d ever be able to cho
ke off the other five. It would be like smothering his thoughts completely; it might happen when he was dead.

  “Now. Imagine me turning invisible. Remove me from your consciousness. Put yourself in a small shelter, a tiny place made of stone and sunlight. You are there all alone. The heat is beating down. There is only you and air and sunshine.”

  A snug shelter against weather and intrusions; Cammon could build that in his mind. But what took shape was not a small stone cottage on a bright day. What he saw, as clearly as if he were sitting there now, was a dilapidated temple, half open to the elements, snow sifting in through the fractured rafters. A fire made merry in the middle of the floor. Senneth’s magic turned the whole place so warm that they were peeling off coats and boots, turning to each other with appreciative smiles. Justin was settling the horses, while Kirra and Donnal prowled around, examining something painted on the walls. Tayse had a hand on his dagger, still not convinced that danger did not lurk somewhere in the shadows, but all of the rest of them knew that they were safe. Safe, warm, together, unafraid. Finally at rest.

  “Cammon. Cammon.” The voice seemed to come from a long way off and sounded as if it had been speaking for quite some time. For a moment, Cammon couldn’t place it—who had found them in this forgotten temple in the middle of a blizzard, who had been able to track them so far?—and then a hand shook his shoulder. He started and his eyes flew open, and briefly he was confused to find himself sitting outside in daylight face-to-face with an utter stranger.

  Jerril.

  Jerril’s house. Jerril’s lesson. The world snapped back into focus.

  “I think I might have gotten it that time,” Cammon said cautiously. He was no longer shivering, though as soon as the illusion vanished, so did his sense of warmth and well-being. He would be cold again in about half a minute. He checked his toes. Pink and toasty.