Through Wolf's Eyes (21 page)

Derian wished that he had a touch of the gift of
foresight. Then, as quickly, he withdrew that wish. Knowing—especially
if the news was bad—wouldn't make tonight's ordeal any easier. He would
like to know how King Tedric viewed henchmen, though, and devoutly
hoped that they were not judged in the light of their master's
ambitions.

Tonight, Valet served as footman. Derian would drive
the coach, thus eliminating the need to bring anyone else into Earl
Kestrel's secret. Ox and Race would provide their only escort.

Turning away as Valet closed the carriage door upon
the earl and his niece, Derian spared a prayer to his ancestors that
Norvin Norwood would remember to be patient with the young woman.
Firekeeper had distinctly disliked the closed coach the times using one
had been necessary. Then only her strong sense of personal dignity
(surprising in one who still could not remember when modesty was
appropriate) had kept her from bolting.

Up on the box, Derian shook the reins and felt the
elegant team of matched rose-greys step out as smartly as if they were
on parade, their momentary fear of wolf scent forgotten. The
pre-planned route to the palace carefully avoided the market and the
streets where the guild members kept their shops, so traffic was light.
Ox and Race, riding in front, took care of obstacles as they occurred.

At the carriage's approach the palace gates swung
open. A rider in the smart uniform of the King's Own Guard trotted his
liver chestnut gelding out to intercept them.

"Follow me, please," he said, his tone making the phrase an order.

Derian obeyed, amusing himself by pricing the man's
elegant mount and deciding that it must belong to the guard's stables.
If it was the man's personal mount, Derian figured he himself should
consider going for a soldier. The pay was obviously quite good.

In a private walled courtyard, Derian brought the team to a halt and swung lithely down from the box.

"Take care of these," he said, tossing the reins to a
dutifully bored-looking guard standing outside the towering stone
archway. "Earl Kestrel will need me."

A wide-eyed look of surprise and sudden anger
shattered the man's trained indifference. Clearly, he had not expected
to be so spoken to by a coachman.

Earl Kestrel's sharp bark of "Derian!" smothered
whatever dressing-down the guard had been planning for the impertinent
redhead. Drawing the mantle of the earl's favor around him, Derian
crossed to where Valet held open the carriage door. Norvin Norwood
stood to one side of the portable steps. Firekeeper crouched in the
doorway, her traveling cloak pulled up around her face, her nose
wrinkling as she took in all the unfamiliar scents. Blind Seer's head
poked around her waist, his own nose busy.

"Derian, if you would explain to my ward," Earl
Kestrel said, his tones barely civil with suppressed tension, "that we
have an appointment and should not keep the king waiting."

Derian nodded and extended a hand to the young woman.

"Come on, Firekeeper," he coaxed. "There will be time
enough for that later. Right now, we need to follow Race and Ox through
that doorway."

She looked at him, her dark eyes showing none of the confusion she must feel.

"And see this king?"

"And see
the
king," he agreed with soft emphasis on the article. "Here there is only one."

"Here," she said, gathering up her skirts in massive,
unladylike bunches. "I remember. Elsewhere, Blind Seer and I know it is
different."

Derian was quietly impressed with how the guards at
the door maintained their wooden expressions when confronted with woman
and wolf. They passed them through without comment, though the two who
led the way down the corridor seemed unnaturally tense. Doubtless they
feared being leapt upon from behind.

The castle at Eagle's Nest was an old building as
such things were judged in the New World. It had been built some two
hundred and twenty-five years before by the family Gildcrest.
They
had been granted land in this area by a ruler of some faraway nation in
the Old World, an old woman who had never and would never see any more
of the holdings she divvied up among her followers than their outlines
on a map.

However, this Old World ruler firmly believed in
rewarding well those who might otherwise become troublesome. If those
rewards were located at a great distance and presented in such a
fashion that refusing to relocate to them could be taken as a grievous
insult, then all the better.

During the years when the Plague gave lie to all
claims of power and dominion, the castle's builders had perished. The
castle with its strong walls had been much fought over until Queen
Zorana the First had won it and kept it. That possession, almost as
much as the loyalty of her people to her, had made her queen then and
made her grandson Tedric king today.

And will Blysse be queen thereafter?
Derian mused as he escorted his charge down the wide stone corridors.
That, I suppose, is precisely what we're here to learn
.

Then he turned a corner, stepped through a towering
door, and royalty was before him. Derian had never seen either King
Tedric or Queen Elexa from any closer than a seat in the crowd during
some public festival. Up close, he found them both more and less
impressive than he had imagined.

Distance had erased lines from both of the monarchs'
faces. When Derian raised his head from making his homage on the dense
New Kelvinese carpet at the foot of the steps leading to the thrones,
he was shocked to see how ancient they both looked.

Intellectually, he knew that King Tedric was
seventy-five years old, old for even his long-lived family. Queen Elexa
was somewhat younger at sixty-nine, but the illness that years before
had robbed her of her ability to bear children had given her frailty
beyond her age in poor return. Beneath her tissue-paper-fine skin, the
blood could be seen running faintly blue. The crocheted lace gloves on
her hands could not completely hide the dark splotches of age spots.

Her gaze, though, was kind and compassionate. The gracious
dip of her head acknowledged commoners as well as their master.

King Tedric was less kind, more shrewd than his
queen. His faded brown eyes flickered over each of them swiftly,
leaving Derian with the inescapable impression that the monarch would
remember each individual. There was a taut alertness to the agèd ruler
that Derian had never noticed when he had gazed upon him from the
crowds and something of the eagle in the tight grasp of his bony hands
on the arms of his throne.

"So, Norwood," the king snapped, "this girl is the one you claim as Barden's daughter?"

He said the disowned prince's name without any hesitation—a good omen for the earl's cause.

Earl Kestrel nodded. "And these four men can bear witness to her finding, as can my cousin Sir Jared Surcliffe."

"So you said when you came before us with your
fanciful tale. Well, I see little of my son in this young woman and
less of your sister. Must she bring her dog with her? I am willing to
credit your tale of survival in the wilds without such props."

Norwood stiffened slightly. "My ward has her own will, Your Majesty. She did not wish to be parted from the wolf."

King Tedric's lips moved slightly in something not quite a smile.

"Wolf? Never have I seen one so large. Rather, I think, an enormous hybrid."

Derian glanced at Firekeeper, worried that she would
react to the insult to her beloved "brother," but the king's diction
and use of the unfamiliar term "hybrid" had only confused her. She
waited, still patient for now.

Earl Kestrel also chose not to challenge the king and so Tedric continued:

"Now, I have seen the lass. Let me see this other proof you mentioned."

This was the moment that Derian had dreaded over all
others. Firekeeper had refused to let the knife—her Fang, she called
it—leave her person. Not even when she had slept or bathed had she put
it by. No offer of a substitute, longer,
sharper, or more ornately made—Earl Kestrel had brought many such, some worth small fortunes in themselves—had moved her.

At the earl's request, Derian had coached Firekeeper
long and carefully for this moment. He found he was holding his breath
when Earl Kestrel turned to the young woman.

"Lady Blysse," the earl said steadily, "show the king your knife."

The guards to either side of the dais tensed at these
ominous-sounding words, but King Tedric, briefed to expect them, only
waved his hand imperiously when they would interpose themselves between
his royal self and perceived danger.

"Back," he said. "There should be no harm here."

Firekeeper stood where she had risen from her homage
to the throne. A slim, even slight figure in her long gown of maiden's
white embroidered at throat and hem with ribbons, her cobalt-blue
traveling cloak tossed back from her shoulders, the young woman didn't
look a threat. Her dark-brown hair was an unruly mass of curls, worn
rather shorter than was the fashion. Her only adornments were a simple
wreath of flowers and a short necklace of pearls.

Among those gathered in the lofty stone audience hall
only Derian and Race suspected that Firekeeper was far more deadly than
any of the armed and armored guards, despite their swords and
ceremonial halberds. However, Derian and Race could do nothing with
their knowledge but wait, tense and ready.

At Earl Kestrel's command, Firekeeper dropped her
hand to her waist. There, rather than the more usual girdle of flowers
and ribbons, she wore a brown leather belt, much stained from the
weather.

"My knife," she said, drawing the weapon and holding
it so that Prince Barden's crest and the smooth garnet in the hilt were
clearly visible. "Mine!"

The emphasis was clear, even without the growl that
trailed the announcement. One of King Tedric's shaggy eyebrows flew
upward in astonishment. The queen gasped. Earl Kestrel colored a fiery
red.

Embarrassment or anger?
Derian wondered.

King Tedric recovered first. "Yours, then. I only wish to see it more closely."

The words barely were past his lips before
Firekeeper, despite the encumbering skirts, had flown up the steps to
stand at his side. The knife she held inches from his face could have
as easily vanished between his ribs, but the king neither started nor
paled. Waiting below, Blind Seer thumped his tail briefly in what
Derian could swear was muted applause.

The king examined the knife with all due consideration.

"It could be Barden's," he said at last. "It bears his crest and I seem to recall some such blade."

Queen Elexa recovered from her shock and now she,
too, examined the knife. "I have seen this before. It was given to
Barden by Lovella on his wedding day. She showed it to me beforehand,
pleased by its craftsmanship. This one is just its like."

"A knife can be imitated," the king said cautiously.

"Perhaps," Elexa agreed, a faint smile on her lips,
"but the knife Lovella showed me possessed a secret. I doubt that any
who sought to imitate the weapon merely from its external appearance
could have known of it."

"Can you show us what this secret is?" the king asked, interested yet impatient.

"If the girl will let me touch the knife," the queen said, moving a fragile hand slightly.

Firekeeper had been listening, her head cocked to one
side, struggling with words and language patterns unfamiliar to her.
From the expression on her face, Derian knew that she was growing
confused—and when she was confused, her temper grew unpredictable.

"Lady Blysse," he called, without waiting for
permission, "the queen doesn't want your knife. She simply wants to
touch it. Let her."

"Touch?" Firekeeper said, the hoarseness of an almost growl in her throat.

"Touch," Derian assured her. Shrugging slightly, for he had already committed one social misstep, he addressed the
queen directly. "Your Majesty, if you would move slowly, so as not to alarm her."

Accustomed to always being accorded social graces,
the queen was less offended by their violation in a good cause than
someone of lesser standing might be. Giving Blysse a reassuring smile,
she reached out delicately with thumb and forefinger and grasped the
garnet set into the pommel.

"Firekeeper," Derian said warningly when his charge stiffened, "hold still."

She did, to his infinite relief. When the queen had
difficulty, she even steadied the hilt of the knife so that the queen
could twist more strongly.

"There!" the queen said, pleased. Then, directly to
the young woman standing before her, "Dear, my hands are not as strong
as they once were. If you would grab the stone as I did and twist hard."

Derian doubted that Firekeeper understood all the
words, but the queen's gestures were eloquent. Firekeeper obeyed. A
firm turn or so and the garnet began to loosen.

Derian had shown the girl how to pull out corks, but
a threaded cap was something new and frustrated her momentarily.
However, at the queen's urging Firekeeper continued to twist. At last,
with a small grating of sand caught in infrequently used grooves, the
stone came free, revealing a small compartment in the hilt.

"Not so very large," the queen said complacently,
examining the hollow spot, "but large enough to bear a message or some
small item. Lovella was quite delighted with it."

"Then without a doubt, this is Barden's knife," King
Tedric's gaze was shrewd. "And there is less a doubt that this is
Barden's daughter."

Fascinated, Derian watched the king's eyes narrow in
an expression far too like Earl Kestrel's for him to doubt the type of
thoughts the ruler was entertaining. Norvin Norwood had been right.
King Tedric had not at all liked being subject to the manipulations of
his siblings and their young kin.