Dawnbringer: A Forgotten Realms Novel (16 page)

“Anything,” she whispered.

“It destroys me to think of that little girl trapped in that den of serpents. I can’t stop her from going—not without a miracle—but I can try to protect her in my small way. I need your help to do it.”

Vorsha did open her eyes then and looked up at Sanwar guilelessly. “I’ll help however I can.”

“I can make her an amulet—something that will give her warning when danger is near, and can turn aside a stealthy blow or curse. It’s not a guarantee she’ll be safe, but if someone wishes her harm, at least she’ll have a fighting chance. But I need something from her to craft it. I don’t want to upset her by asking her myself, but you could get it for me without anyone knowing.”

“What do you need?”

He smiled and put his finger under her chin, tipping up her face to the warm sunlight streaming through the circular window. He brushed his lips lightly against her neck and felt her shiver with anticipation.

“Nothing of any significance. Five hairs from her brush—five long, unbroken hairs. No more and no less.”

She looked into his eyes, and unexpectedly, her eyes narrowed. “For a protective amulet, you say? No more, no less?”

He looked hurt. “Do you think I’d harm her?”

“Not intentionally,” she said, considering.

He withdrew, and all warmth and life seemed to go with him, leaving her cold and alone.

“I only want to shield her, Vorsha. It seems I might be the only one who objects to throwing your daughter to the Jadaren wolves. But if you truly distrust me …” He turned from her.

“No!” She flung herself into his arms, and, to her inexpressible relief, he scooped her up, embracing her. She felt she could bathe in his warmth. She buried her face in his chest and fought back tears.

“Of course I’ll get them for you, of course.”

“Good girl,” he said, stroking her hair and looking over her head at the rows of books, leather-bound, hidebound, hinged in steel and locked in silver. The books would tell him what to do.

Kestrel had a big slant-topped writing desk in her chambers. Her mother found her with an accounts book spread wide on top of it. She was sitting at a stool before it, holding a short ivory pointer in her hand and running it down a column of figures. Vorsha had entered when there was no answer to her soft knock, and it didn’t surprise her to find her daughter engrossed in numbers. Kestrel had caught her lower lip up between her teeth,
and to Vorsha she looked very much like the child she had been seventeen years before, learning her figures and the marvelous written tools of commerce at her father’s knee.

At Vorsha’s light step, Kestrel looked up from the cream-colored pages, startled, and smiled.

“What are you reading, love?” asked Vorsha, crossing behind the desk and stool to Kestrel’s dressing table. There were a few cosmetics scattered across the wooden surface of this other fine piece of imported furniture inlaid with fanciful figures, men riding horses, and small dragons, in brass and silver. She straightened the items, capping a perfume bottle that leaked the smell of summer flowers, and gathered some well-used pens into an alabaster cup. Smiling, she rubbed at an ink blot that marred the tail of a mounted dragon. She knew nothing save sanding that would get it out, and she knew no amount of scolding would stop Kestrel from scribbling at figures anywhere it struck her.

“The accounts from the spice trade two years ago,” said Kestrel, lifting the tip of her ivory stick from one column to another. “Ciari told me the price of saffron has jumped extraordinarily, and the Testra clan is claiming the flowers were damaged by hail. But at this time two years ago there were similar storms, and the increase was not nearly so great. They have a new proctor, and we suspect he’s taking the opportunity to set a new bar.”

Vorsha fingered the carved wooden handle of a brush, examining the bristles for strands of hair, but Kestrel must have cleaned it.

“You can hardly blame the man. You’d do the same thing.” She took the brush and went to Kestrel, standing
behind her and gathering her thick brown hair behind her shoulders. Kestrel sat straight, as she had as a child when her mother brushed her hair to dry it before the fire.

“I would, but I wouldn’t attract attention by tripling the price. A ten or fifteen percent increase would pass by unnoticed or excused. Three hundred percent is simply greedy.”

“What do you propose to do?”

“In this case, merely to get my figures in order. Then I’ll pass them to Ciari, and she’ll have a chat with the Testra proctor.”

Vorsha couldn’t help laughing. “Poor man.”

“She’ll scold him up and down the guildhall. Then they’ll work out a fair price and drink on it. He’s a man of business and a big boy—he can take it.”

In answer, Vorsha brushed her hair, with long strong strokes from the hairline all the way to the tips. Kestrel sighed and tilted her head back a little, closing her eyes in pleasure.

Vorsha worked methodically, gathering each section and brushing it until it gleamed. “You have a tangle back here,” she said.

“Yes. I’m incorrigible,” replied Kestrel, eyes still closed. “What am I going to do without you when I’m married?”

They were both silent, struck suddenly by the casual finality of that statement. Vorsha continued brushing without pause. “Kestrel, are you certain about this? Marrying a Jadaren—yes, I know your father considers this feud outdated. And to tell the truth, I’ve never heard any evil of Arna. But just as there are Beguines who cannot overcome their hatred for House Jadaren …”

“Like Uncle Sanwar.” Kestrel’s voice sounded sleepy.

Vorsha hesitated, holding a thick skein of hair, and her hand trembled. But she forced herself to continue, and her internal shaking stopped. She desired Sanwar, yearned for his desire, and despised herself for it. But when it came to her brother-in-law, it seemed she couldn’t control her body. And Sanwar had promised to protect Kestrel.

“Just like Sanwar, yes,” she said, banishing the quaver from her voice. “Like your uncle, there are Jadarens who hate us, and will hate you, and will have you at their mercy in that great hulking hold they hunker down in. Who knows what could happen to you there?”

“They aren’t monsters, Mama,” Kestrel said, rising and embracing her mother. “And I plan to overcome them with my irresistible charm.”

Vorsha hugged her, suddenly and fiercely. In the brush she held over Kestrel’s shoulder, she could see the brown gleam of hair in the bristles. Kestrel pulled back and smiled.

“I’m tired with talking, and if I don’t stop looking through the account book, I’ll have visions all night of columns of figures swirling around me. I have to go to bed now, or I’ll fall asleep on the floor and you’ll have to carry me to bed, undress me, and tuck me in, as you did when I was five. Oh, Mama,” she said as the bright water sprang to Vorsha’s eyes. “Please don’t cry. It’ll be ages yet before I go. We have to negotiate, and I want to close the leatherwork accounts. And maybe Arna won’t even like my face.”

Vorsha wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and laughed. “I can’t imagine that, my sweet.”

She kissed Kestrel on the cheek and went to the dressing table, placing the brush next to the cup with the pens. With her back to Kestrel, she pulled out the hairs that clung to the bristles and tucked them into her palm.

Outside Kestrel’s room she examined her prize. Some of the hairs had broken, but she had at least ten, whole and complete, that shone with tints of walnut wood and amber. Holding them carefully to her breast, she walked quickly along the hall to the room where she would try to wash the smell of Sanwar off her thighs and pretend to sleep before Nicol came to bed. The hot tears came unbidden and streaked along the side of her face, as if driven by the wind.

A
rna Jadaren held a twisted coil of paper between his thumb and forefinger and frowned at it.

“So far I’m not impressed,” he told Vidor Druit, who snorted and snatched the paper back.

“Nor was your uncle,” he said. “Which is why we’re going to see if House Beguine is more forward-thinking than you stick-in-the muds.”

Arna stirred the rest of the bits of paper that were piled in the small soapstone box his friend had brought.

“Careful,” Vidor told him. “They’re designed to be easy to ignite, and that’s all the samples I have at hand.”

Arna withdrew his hand. “So show me. What makes these marketable?”

“Watch,” said Vidor. He took the twist of paper and, with a quick jerk of the wrist, flicked it on the surface of the table. As it hit, there was a thin
pop
, and the paper blazed up in a tall flame, bright yellow, then blue as the paper crumbled to ash and the flame died. Curious, Arna rubbed the surface of the table with his finger, feeling
only a slight warmth and a few grains of grit. There was a faint brown mark where the paper had flared.

“Useful, no?” said Vidor, his freckled face stretched in a grin.

Arna shrugged. “For what? A couple seconds of light? A trick for the children?”

Vidor shook his head. “You’re spoiled from easy living in this monstrous rock of yours. Come on the road with me, or a tenday exploring the wild, or even spend a day or so in a crofter’s hut. Somewhere where a servant isn’t ready at hand to light a fire whenever you want one. You can spend a few minutes striking flints together, and gods help you if they’re wet. Or maybe you have live coals left from the night before, but most likely not. Or if you’re very lucky, you have a spellcaster to hand. Or you might have a box of these, cheap and handy. All you need is a bed of twigs and tinder, and snap! The cantrip’s already spelled on it. Your weary goodwife needs no spells nor skill, just one of these to flick on the hearth. There’s another to sharpen a dull blade, and another to test if your well water is pure. And we’re working on more.”

“Hmm.” Maybe Vidor had a point. Arna took a twist and imitated Vidor’s action, flicking his wrist as he’d seen his friend do. The paper bounced against the table and emitted a weak fizzle. There was a singed smell in the air and the paper was blackened, but no flame showed.

“Ah, yes.” Vidor looked a little crestfallen. “Unfortunately, the success rate of the lots we’ve produced isn’t as high as we’d like.”

“You mean the fail rate’s
higher
than you’d like.”

“You need a wizard to impregnate the cantrip papers with the spell. Wizards don’t come cheap—none of the ones worth using, at least. Your workaday goodwife or man-for-hire doesn’t have the coin to pay for a box of these. And those with coin often enough have staff to light a fire, or sharpen the knives, or rid the room of fleas. We need to make them cheap enough to sell to market, so the wizard must work quickly. Out of a lot of twenty, one or two, three maybe, are duds. It won’t matter to the goodwife. She’ll just swear and reach for another, for she can afford plenty.”

He replaced the lid of the soapstone box on the little hoard of cantrip papers with a resigned air.

“Five to fifteen percent,” said Arna. “That’s a little high for a middleman to want to deal with. And the big Houses have their reputations to think of.”

“Hypocrite,” returned Vidor. “We all know the fruit seller who, stuck with a crate of spoiled plums, puts one in each basketful he sells, for no one cares about one bad plum, and that way all share the burden and lose nothing. We all do the same to one degree or another. Finding a shipment of cloth not up to standard and with the seller long gone, doesn’t your uncle sell them as ‘rustic-weave,’ and command as high a price as he can?”

Arna laughed. “Fair enough. So your goodwife might have to use flints for her fire, and sharpen her kitchen knives on her own whetstone. But what if the cantrip fails to tell of the bad water, when folk thought it would?”