Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses) (29 page)

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Authors: Sharon Shinn

BOOK: Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses)
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Kirra sighed. “They feared us anyway. Maybe now a few more people have reason to love us.”
 
 
The serving girl came by their table to see if they wanted more to drink. Kirra and Justin both said yes, but Donnal said no. “I’m tired,” the dark-haired man said, shaking off a yawn. “I need to sleep.”
 
 
“Where are you putting up?” Justin asked. “I’ve got a room if you need a bed. Not very plush, but tolerable.”
 
 
“Thank you. I bespoke accommodations at an inn before I came looking for you,” Kirra said. She tossed Donnal the room key. “I’ll be back within an hour. Just the idea of sleeping on a real bed—I don’t think I can resist much longer.”
 
 
Donnal nodded and left the table. Justin waited until their glasses had been refilled before he asked another question. “So. How does it go? Between you and Donnal?”
 
 
He hadn’t been sure Kirra would answer—they were not exactly used to confiding in each other—but she didn’t respond with either a jest or a sarcastic comment. Instead, her face became thoughtful, a little rueful, and she tapped her fingers against her glass. “Mostly it goes very well,” she said at last. “I know him better than I know any person, any creature, in the kingdom. He knows the thoughts in my head before I express them. I cannot imagine anyone more suited to me, anyone who could love me more.” She looked up, her blue eyes direct. Even in the partially disguised face, her eyes were still unmistakably Kirra’s. “But I can imagine other ways, other lovers. I remember how I felt about Romar—even if he does not remember how much he loved me. It is hard to give my whole heart. Donnal has such a very, very big part of it—but I have kept a little bit for myself.”
 
 
“Maybe he’s kept a fraction of his own heart and decided not to give it to your careless hands.”
 
 
She smiled then. “Maybe. But Donnal has never been very good at keeping anything from me if I decided I wanted it.”
 
 
“And Romar?”
 
 
“We haven’t talked. Or—no more than our social positions required. During the summit . . . Sometimes he would look at me and I would see this sort of puzzlement in his eyes. Like he knew there was something about me he’d forgotten— something important—a secret I told him once or a dreadful thing he saw me do. But he couldn’t remember.” She shook her head. “It’s better that he doesn’t remember.”
 
 
Justin didn’t have all the details, but he did know that Kirra had used some potent spell to erase herself from the regent’s heart. He found it a little frightening that it was something she was able to do. Was willing to do. “And what if the magic wears off someday? What if he suddenly sees you—and every memory returns?”
 
 
“I suppose I’ll deal with that day when it comes. But I don’t think it will be soon.” She sipped from her glass, but did not look as if she tasted the beer. “Anyway. He will have much else to preoccupy him soon. His wife is expecting their first child sometime next year. And perhaps more will be on the way after that.”
 
 
Justin drank from his own glass, thinking. “Don’t ever do that to me,” he said finally. “Go into my head. Change things around.”
 
 
“Justin, you’re impervious. Nobody’s magic could get past your thick skull.”
 
 
He grinned. “I know enough about your magic to know that’s not true.”
 
 
She shook off the pensive mood and gave him one of her wide, mischievous smiles. “But let’s talk about something far more interesting! Tell me about this girl! This—this novice.
How
did you meet her and
what
is going on?”
 
 
“Rescued her on the street one day when a drunkard tried to steal a kiss. We made friends.”
 
 
She widened her eyes and nodded in an encouraging way. “Yes? And? I need more details.”
 
 
He fidgeted. He wanted to pour out the whole story, recount every conversation and dissect the significance of every one of Ellynor’s sidelong glances. He needed someone with more experience to explain to him what all of this might mean. And yet he didn’t want to repeat a word; he wanted to hoard every sentence, every laugh, in the closed storeroom of his heart.
 
 
“She came to the convent to be with her cousin. She’s not a fanatic like the Lestra and so many of the novices. She’s never been away from home before—not this far, anyway—and she comes from some back-country part of the world where they don’t have much in the way of shops and restaurants and commerce. She thinks Neft is a big city! But she’s not—that makes her sound like some kind of yokel, but she’s—she has a sort of wisdom. There’s a kind of peacefulness to her. Oh, and kindness. The Lestra sent her back to town last week to take care of this sick old woman, and I could tell how gently she’s treating this old lady, how she’s come to care for the woman even in just a few days. Everything interests her. Everything she sees in Neft—everything I tell her. She just absorbs everything. I wish I could talk to her every day.”
 
 
He fell silent, conscious of doing a poor job, of not describing Ellynor with any accuracy at all.
She makes me talk about myself. She makes me like talking
, he wanted to add, but that seemed stupid. Irrelevant. That wasn’t about Ellynor at all.
 
 
Kirra was smiling at him, the expression on her face wondering, with only the faintest trace of teasing. “But, Justin! You sound like you’ve fallen in love with her!”
 
 
Maybe she expected him to vehemently deny it; she looked surprised when he showed her an anxious face. “Does it? I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what it’s like to fall in love. I don’t know how you’re supposed to feel. But I can’t remember feeling like
this
before. Around any of the women I ever knew. You, or Senneth, or the women among the Riders— I like you all. Well, not
you
, not all the time, but you’re all my friends. This girl is my friend, too, but somehow it feels different.”
 
 
“What’s her name?”
 
 
“Ellynor.”
 
 
“What does she look like?”
 
 
“Dark. Small. I guess you’d say she’s delicate. She has the littlest hands. Her face is—at first I thought she was only pretty, but now when I see her, I think she’s beautiful.”
 
 
He looked at Kirra as if daring her to call his comment ridiculous, but she merely nodded. “Where does she come from? What part of Gillengaria?”
 
 
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think she wants to tell me.”
 
 
Kirra raised her eyebrows. “Secrets? That’s not so good.”
 
 
He snorted. “Well, it’s not like I’m not hiding things from her.”
 
 
“Yes, but secrets can get you killed. And, Justin . . . she’s a novice. At the
convent
. Where people like her are trained to hate people like me.”
 
 
“I don’t think she hates mystics,” he said.
 
 
“You don’t sound so sure.”
 
 
“We haven’t discussed it. Exactly.”
 
 
“Well, you might see if you can find out how she
does
feel about magic. Exactly.”
 
 
“I think—I think she’s a little uneasy at the situation she’s found herself in,” he said. “I think she’s not sure the Lestra will ever let her leave. Will let any of them leave. And she’s feeling a little trapped.”
 
 
“So. A trapped, desperate, beautiful woman—with secrets— turns for help to a solitary man who appears to be something of a drifter, who obviously has some skill with a sword, and who’s already proved he’s willing to fight for her honor. If I were a more cynical woman, I’d say you were being carefully manipulated by someone with a deep agenda. As it is—Wild Mother watch me! Justin, these are troubled waters.”
 
 
“You don’t know her,” he said. “How can you say something like that? She’s—I’d bet my life she’s exactly as she seems.”
 
 
“That’s exactly what you could be betting,” Kirra said. “Make sure you know the stakes.”
 
 
He gave her a long, serious look. She stared back at him from her boy’s face, waiting for whatever he would say next. “I can’t see that it matters,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual. He even shrugged. “I mean—you think I’m falling in love with her and maybe that’s true, I don’t know. But why would she fall in love with me? Who am I? What would I even have to offer a woman? I’m nothing but a sword arm and a pack of muscle. I’ve never been anything else. Never
will
be anything else. I don’t know why she’d want to be with me.”
 
 
For a moment, Kirra’s disguise actually wavered. He saw her true face flicker across her cheeks as her eyes softened and she laid a hand on his arm. “
Justin
. Don’t say such a thing.”
 
 
He pulled away because people might be watching. “It’s true.”
 
 
“It’s
not
true. You have so much more to offer than a sword! Intelligence. Loyalty. You have—you are—you don’t give up. You’re—well, I’ve always thought of you as
dogged
, but I mean that in the best sense! If something matters to you, you can’t be turned aside. And if this girl matters to you—” She shook her head. “Nothing I say will keep you from her. I just hope she deserves your heart if you decide to lay it at her feet.”
 
 
“I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to find out. I don’t know if I’ll see her again. She’s back in the convent now, and who knows when she’ll get a chance to return to Neft? And it’s not like I can go visit her there.”
 
 
Kirra had her facade under control now, but she was still watching him. He thought he had rarely seen her so serious. “If you want to see her again, Justin, I’m sure you’ll find a way.”
 
 
 
 
IN the morning, Justin told Delz he had business to attend to, and he joined Kirra and Donnal a few miles outside of town. Neft was situated in the middle of flatlands that offered little vegetation besides spiky trees and cluttered undergrowth. They had to go some distance to be out of sight of the main road. When they were in a small, brushy valley that seemed completely safe from observation, they dropped their belongings and their basket of food.
 
 
“You realize Tayse will kill me if he ever realizes I’ve done this,” Kirra said cheerfully.
 
 
“Any number of people want to kill you for any number of reasons,” Justin replied. “Let’s not worry about Tayse.”
 
 
Last night before they had parted, she had agreed to practiceher shape-changing skills on him—again. It was strictly forbidden for shiftlings to transform any humans but themselves, and in fact most shiftlings didn’t even have the magic necessary to do so. But Kirra had learned the spells, and she had obviously turned them to good account this summer as she visited the patients on Dorrin Isle. Justin was the first person she had ever changed from man to beast, and she had twice turned him into a shaggy yellow hound. He had loved the sensation of being four-footed and fleet, bounding across a field with a wholly foreign kind of energy. He had loved the rich scents that tickled his nose, the distant sounds that played distinctly across his ears.
 
 
Today they were trying something else. Kirra was going to turn him into a bird.
 
 
“It won’t do you any good to watch Donnal transform, but watch him anyway,” Kirra instructed, and almost before the words were out of her mouth, Donnal was a crow. His obsidian feathers glinted in the weak sunlight; his eyes were an unblinking black. “Now watch the way he moves. See him lift his wings. Pay attention to how he moves his weight. Notice the placement of his eyes? On either side of his head? You won’t see things the way you normally see them. You won’t be looking straight in front of you.”
 
 
“All right,” said Justin impatiently. “Just change me. Now.”
 
 
She laid her hands on his shoulders and pushed him down so they were both crouching in the yellowed grass. He could feel the heat in her hands, saw the intense strain on her face as she called up her power. His own body strung with a sudden tension, then his chest was crushed with pressure. He felt himself gasping for breath, unable to take it in. His hands balled into fists— or tried to—his fingers wouldn’t curl, he had no fingers, he had no hands. The world whirled and shifted, grew monstrous, grew strange, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t speak.

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