Brenwyr stalked through the halls of Mount Alban with Aerulan in her arms. She was very upset, which upset her even more.
Since childhood she had known that she was a berserker and maledight, and had prided herself on having learned to control those traits. Only that cold pride, duty to her house, and Aerulan had allowed her to live with who she was and what as a child she had done. After Aerulan's death, her life had been achingly bleak but (thanks to Adiraina's training and her brother's compliance) still largely under her control.
Then the Knorth had reappeared.
And now this.
Brenwyr believed in the god of her people—how could she not?—but not as an active force in her world, much less in herself. Like many Kencyr, lacking proof to the contrary, she had almost convinced herself that the old prophecies were mere singers' tales, and been glad to think them so. In that case, to be a Shanir was like having a tendency to drop plates or walk off high buildings, awkward and potentially dangerous, but manageable. But "nemesis" implied the divine, working through her, using her . . . as perhaps it had always tried to do? Was that upstart Jaran right? Had she been straining all her life to control a force which, ultimately, would control her?
Moreover, if Kirien was right, it was also at work in the Knorth Jameth.
Brenwyr's grip on Aerulan tightened. She didn't want to share anything with that wretched girl. Damn her anyway, when the very thought of her existence made Brenwyr's temper threaten to flare. Why, why, why should any Knorth be alive when Aerulan was dead?
"Steady, steady," she could almost hear Adiraina say, as in lessons oft repeated long ago. "Remember that the loss of control is death."
Yes. Remember. Hadn't she killed two of the only four people she had ever loved? Rather than curse Adiraina or her brother that way, she would use the white-hilted suicide knife which she had carried in her boot since Aerulan's murder. Perhaps all nemeses should be killed, false and true. If only she'd had a knife that night, she might at least have used it on that yellow-eyed assassin, the custom be damned that Highborn women shouldn't fight. It could hardly have been less effective than the curse which she had spat at him—her only malediction ever apparently to fail.
She had cursed the Knorth Jameth too.
As if thinking of the girl conjured her up, Brenwyr heard her voice, enough like Aerulan's to make her heart jump. She was approaching the half-open door of the infirmary. Inside, the Knorth was saying:
". . . sorry not to appear more grateful. You see, I'd hoped that the filthy thing was out of my life for good. You were right, though, to fetch it from Hurlen: it's far too dangerous to be left to its own devices."
"I'm so glad you approve," answered a sharp voice, almost snarling. "Next time, think twice what job you give me."
"Maybe you should think again, too, about serving me at all."
"What else can I do—go back to Karkinaroth?"
"Even to Restormir, for all I care."
Brenwyr stood outside the door, transfixed by the tone of deep resentments seething up unexpectedly, perhaps disastrously. Then a moment's taut silence within was broken by an exclamation that made her jump:
"Spy on us, will you?"
No. He didn't mean her. Hasty footsteps had crossed the floor, away from the door.
"Who sent you? Tell me, you damned spook!"
"Graykin, stop shaking him. Damn. I should have warned the infirmarian not to let him over-tire himself. He's gone blank again, just as he must have done at the Cataracts."
Brenwyr suddenly realized whom they meant. She threw open the door. In one far corner, an ounce leaped off a cot and scuttled under it. In the other sat a white-haired Shanir, staring vacantly past the dark figure who bent over him.
"Bastard," she heard herself say harshly, feeling the power in her voice surge almost into a curse. "Go back where you belong."
The Shanir rose. Like a sleep-walker, pale eyes open but unfocused, he stumbled past her out of the room.
The room's third occupant had also shambled forward a step as if to follow; but his companion in black stopped him, saying softly in the Knorth's voice:
"She doesn't mean you, Graykin. Perhaps you should keep an eye on Kindrie, though."
Go, said her warning tone, anger forgotten. Now. This is dangerous.
Brenwyr snorted. She felt dangerous. She felt deadly.
The one called Graykin had started at the Knorth's touch, for a moment looking frightened and confused. Now he gave her a sharp glance, a half nod, and slipped sideways out of the infirmary, watching Brenwyr askance as he passed like a cur expecting a kick.
The Knorth remained, standing her ground. Only by her voice did Brenwyr recognize her, having still been blind the last time they had met. Black jacket with one tight sleeve and one full, slim waist tightly belted, black pants tucked into black boots, black gloves and mask . . . . Highborn girls sometimes had an unnatural craving to dress as boys, but they grew out of it just as they did out of mock berserker tendencies, at about the same time.
This girl has refused to grow up, thought Brenwyr with scorn, her own travelling gear not for a moment crossing her mind. She's still a child, willful, spoiled, perverse.
"Matriarch," said the child, saluting her, polite but wary. "Aerulan."
Brenwyr's grip on the banner tightened. Waking in the room below, for one aching moment she had felt Aerulan behind her, almost the touch of her hand. When she had turned, the first thing she had seen after a week of darkness had been Aerulan's face—woven of the clothes in which she had died. Dead, dead . . . but for the Knorth, somehow, still a living presence in this room.
"She's been with you, hasn't she?" Brenwyr heard herself demand hoarsely. "All this time, she's been with you."
"Er . . . yes. We kept each other company on the road."
She might as well have said "on the moon," for all the sense it made to Brenwyr for a moment. Highborn girls rarely travelled, except under heavy guard. Aerulan had never before left Gothregor. It simply hadn't occurred to the Council of Matriarchs that Jameth wasn't still hiding in the deserted halls, sulking over her scratched face.
Until this moment, Brenwyr had forgotten that the Knorth had been hurt, much less how or by whom. Adiraina had spoken slightingly of the "accident," not realizing that Brenwyr had seen the blow struck or that Hawthorn had told her of the slashed sampler which the Ardeth matriarch had ordered to be dipped in the Knorth's blood on the council chamber floor.
"Your face . . . ." she said involuntarily.
The Knorth stiffened. "Yes, matriarch?" she said with chilling courtesy, as if in rebuke to an equal.
"Don't you dare take that tone with me, girl!"
The other's mouth twitched, almost into Aerulan's smile. "I apologize—again. Truly, I don't mean to keep offending you. It just seems to be a talent. About Aerulan, though, I don't quite understand. I know that Lord Brandan pledged a huge sum for her contract in perpetuity, that Ganth was about to give up all rights to her forever. Your brother must have loved her very much . . . ."
"It had nothing to do with him!" Brenwyr burst out, then swore at herself and began incontinently to pace.
Her agitated path obliged the Knorth to dodge aside, swooping to snatch an old knapsack containing something pale out from under her very feet. One part of Brenwyr's mind told her that the Knorth was using wind-blowing kantirs to keep out of her way; another rejected the idea: Highborn girls were not taught the Senethar.
"Matriarch . . . ." said the Knorth, slipping aside yet again, "sometimes I'm very stupid. This concerns sister-kinship, doesn't it?"
Brenwyr spun around, almost pinning the girl between two cots, but she rolled over one and out of the way in an instinctive, flowing evasion as if from a physical attack. That must be the Senethar, Brenwyr thought, or its dance form, the Senetha. More forbidden knowledge.
"What do you know about the sisterhood?" she demanded.
"Precious little. Only that there's much more to life in the Women's World than any man realizes."
"Be quiet! You have no right to speak of such things!"
"You did ask. All right, all right." The moving pattern of her black gloved hands seemed to deflect Brenwyr's anger. "I've offended you again. Again, I apologize. Are you going to curse me?"
"No! I can control . . . dammit, I could control myself before you . . . before you . . . ."
She stumbled to a halt, watching those hands weave before her, unable to look away. The quality of light in the room changed, thickening like honey. Lithe, black hands swam through its amber glow, deft fingers easing the knots of her rage and restraint, try as she would to keep them tight. As if in a dream, she heard herself speak:
"I've learned to control when I curse, but not what I say when I do. Then the words just come, and sometimes kill."
"You cursed me once. Will I die?"
"I don't know. I don't think so." Sinuous hands, charming her . . . . "Perhaps we're too much alike. Snakes with similar venom. Nemeses . . . ."
"Can you lift the curse you put on me?"
"No." Seducing . . . .
"Have you ever tried to raise a curse?"
No, no, no . . . .
"Yes. Once. When I was six."
The knots had given way. "Forget what you can't help," Adiraina had told her over and over, but now she remembered, oh, God, she remembered . . . .
"I borrowed my brother's clothes and dressed up in them. Mother caught me. She was furious, called me perverted, tore them off . . . . I-I was so angry. 'I hope you break your neck.' I said that. And she did, going down the stairs with her arms full of shirts, and pants, and boots . . . . Oh, Mother, don't! I take it back, I take it back . . . ."
She was kneeling on the floor, looking into her mother's terrified eyes, hearing the breath escape her paralyzed lungs and not return.
"I take it back . . . ."
Aerulan held her. "You were only a child. You didn't mean it. You weren't responsible!"
Aerulan, who also had died in her arms, gasping, with a severed throat . . . .
The white-hilted knife was in her hand. What right had she to live, whose curse had slain both blood- and sister-kin?
Someone was wrestling with her, saying breathlessly, "Oh, don't, don't, don't . . . ."
Then black gloves caught her wrist and twisted. Her fingers sprang open. The blade dropped with a deadly thunk, to quiver upright in the floor which began to rot at its cold touch. It wasn't her knife at all, although for a moment she thought that her own face stared back at her, naked and hag-like, from the carved ivory pommel.
"Can't I leave you alone for a minute?" demanded Graykin from the doorway.
"Apparently not." The Knorth's voice shook. So did her hand as she reclaimed and resheathed the Ivory Knife. "Matriarch?"
"Leave me alone," said Brenwyr thickly. She dragged herself to her feet and stumbled over to lean on the window sill. What had she been saying? What in ancestors' names had she been about to do?
"Forget what you can't help." Forget, forget . . . .
But the light was still strange. It had been bright morning when Brenwyr had entered the infirmary and must be morning still, but the air had taken a jaundiced tinge with an under-taint of sulfur. She looked down on the backs of slowly swirling clouds, bounded by mountain slopes, roofed by more clouds of a darker, more sullen hue. Clearly, Mount Alban had stopped again, but where? She felt she ought to know. If only this room faced east instead of west—what would she see? A side-valley of the Silver in the Riverland, the main fortress hidden by clouds but rising over them at the upper end of the gorge, the Witch's tower. The keep below: Wilden. This filthy light: Rawneth, conjuring.
Dammit. She had told that wretched Shanir to go back where he belonged, and he had taken Mount Alban with him.
But it wouldn't last. The college was only some fifty miles south of home now. The pull of its anchoring hill fort foundation would lift it off this reef with the next weirding touch. The important thing now was that no one else disembark, least of all the Knorth.
"I did keep an eye on him, just as you told me," Graykin was protesting, full of self-righteousness but with a wary edge. "Didn't I see him walk down straight into the priests' arms? Taken him back where he belongs, haven't they? Best to let him go. You can't tangle with them."
"Oh, can't I? Watch."
Brenwyr was across the floor, between the Knorth and the door, faster than she would have believed possible. "You aren't to leave this room," she said sharply. "I forbid it."
"Matriarch, you don't understand. I dragged Kindrie into this. He's my responsibility."
"A bastard has no claims on anyone, least of all on you. I-it's indecent that you even met."
"Lady, I've led a less sheltered life than you can probably imagine. I don't shock easily. Why poor Kindrie 'least of all'? Who is he, anyway?"
"The shame of your house. Tieri's bastard, born in the moon garden at Gothregor where his mother's death banner still hangs in disgrace. There. Now are you satisfied?"
Jame stared. "He said his grandmother was named Telarien."
"Bastards don't have grandmothers. Telarien was Tieri's mother and Kinzi's daughter."
"If I had some chalk, I'd work this out on a wall, if I had a wall. Kinzi, the last Knorth Matriarch, was the mother of Telarien, who was the mother of Tieri, who was the mother of Kindrie. Tieri was my father's full sister. That makes Kinzi my great-grandmother, Telarien my grandmother, Tieri my aunt, and Kindrie my first cousin. Correct?"
"Yes. I mean, no! Bastards don't have cousins!"
"Be damned to that," Jame muttered.
She should have worked all of this out long ago. She would have, if the thought of priestling blood-kin hadn't so thoroughly appalled her. But Kindrie wasn't a priest, despite having been thrown repeatedly into their arms. There he would wake again, probably not even knowing how he had gotten there. Back in hell . . . .
"Matriarch, I've got to go after him. Think! This is Tieri's son, the child of the girl whom Aerulan died to save."
Brenwyr hadn't moved. "You can't go down to Wilden. There are . . . other reasons as well. Kinzi and the Randir Matriarch Rawneth . . . they quarreled."
"So?" Then behind the mask, gray eyes widened. "Are you saying that I've inherited a blood feud, and no one saw fit to tell me?"
"There was no need. Anyway, it never came to blows."
"Let me guess. Before anything so unladylike could happen, the Shadow Assassins slaughtered every Knorth woman at Gothregor except Tieri . . . and no one ever knew why."
This time, Brenwyr's jaw fell. "You don't mean . . . you can't think . . . "
"Don't I? Can't you? God's teeth and toenails, if it was even a possibility, why wasn't Ganth told? But that might have led to civil war, the Knorth and their allies against the Randir and theirs. Better to keep it a secret of the Women's World. Better to see my house destroyed than all the Kencyrath, except that the White Hills nearly did that anyway."
Brenwyr was backing away, hands over her ears. "I won't listen to this. I won't think about it. You're mad, Jameth. All the Knorth are. Everyone knows that."
"My name is not Jameth. It's Jamethiel."
Brenwyr made an incoherent sound and bolted out of the room, slamming and locking the door behind her. They could hear her in the hall, piling furniture against it.
"I think you rattled her," said Graykin.
"By God, she's floored me. Secrets! How many will it take to get us all killed?"
Secrets . . . .
She hadn't meant to pry any out of the matriarch with her hand-dance, much less something so raw. That poor woman. The soul-reaping Senetha she had learned in Perimal Darkling and practiced in Tai-tastigon to control rowdy taverners should never have been put to such a use—except that Brenwyr's combination of maledight and berserker tendencies terrified her.
Secrets.
Could what she had suggested to the matriarch possibly be true? All that death and destruction, to have grown out of some squabble in the cloistered halls of the Women's World? Surely not. And yet, who had told the assassins where to look for her five days ago? Who had stood by in the shadows of the Randir compound, watching while the killers nearly fulfilled their contract in the Forecourt? Whose soul had Rawneth used to make the demon which she had sent after Jame and Kindrie? Who wanted the last Knorth lady dead?
"I think I recognized that last crash," said Graykin. "If your matriarch has tipped over the wardrobe beside the door, we're trapped here until someone rescues us. Too bad about the healer."
He sounded pleased. So much for one more rival.
Jame put an arm around his thin shoulders. "Dear Graykin. For your future reference, a few points. First: to be served by you is an honor, but not my only obligation. Second: as you keep saying, very little stops me, common sense least of all. Third: as for being trapped anywhere . . . ."
She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. Graykin, following the gesture, blanched.
"Oh, no."
"Oh, but yes. Where there's a window, there's always a way."