Wind Over Bone: The Estralony Cycle #2 (Young Adult Fantasy Romance) (24 page)

Mari bit her fingers to keep from laughing. “Poor work for a boy.” She walked over and patted his cheek and kissed him on the top of his head. Rubnik went redder than his hair.

“
Thank you, Rubnik,” said Savvel. “Little pitchers have big feet they can walk out the door with.”

Rubnik took the hint and ran out the door. “None so big as yours, m’lord.”

“You know what they say,” said Savvel. He closed the door.

“
Why the flowers?” said Leva.

“
Because I feel bad.”

“
For what? Going off like you did?”

“
No. I just feel bad.”

“
Why?”

“
Ida’s going to use you as bait.”

Mari looked over at Sarid as Leva took a petal off the table. She shredded it into strips. They curled out of her fingers like tongues. “All right,” she said. “How?”

Twenty-Two

The wind made a mournful sound through the carved eves of Meliona. A draft crept through a window and felt around the room, lifting the bed curtains, making the violets on the table twist and blush with cold. The candle blew out.

“I’ve come to make amends.”

Yelse was sitting on a stool, combing her hair. She looked at her sister in the mirror. “Why now?”

“I’m tired,” said Sarid. “Tired of being used and ignored. Tired of being nanny to a lunatic. I am especially tired of Leva. She punched me in the stomach.” She lifted her dress and touched the bruise above her underskirts. “Here. Just because I took Savvel away without permission.”

Yelse turned around, rose from her stool. “She hasn’t improved?”

“No. I’m done with them. All of them.”

“
Are you?” Yelse slid a finger up and down the comb’s teeth. “How can I possibly trust you?”

“
I don’t know.” Sarid wiped her sweaty palms on her skirts. “I know you want Leva dead.”

“
Savvel, too.”

Sarid hesitated. “He’s harmless.”

“They want to make a king of him.”

“
I’ll take him away somewhere.”

“
I want him dead, Sarid. I want to
see
it.”

“
All right. Both of them.”

“
Still not enough,” said Yelse, smiling a little.

“
What else would you have me do?”

“
Use your imagination.”

“
I’ll let you bind my power.”

Yelse went very still and stared into Sarid’s eyes as though she were searching for something. Sarid turned away; her skin was damp and cold, and the gown clung to her.

“An interesting proposition,” Yelse said. “I accept.”

“
How will I kill them, without power?”

“
I’ll do it. And you will let me.”

“
How? They’re surrounded by their people every minute. Will you kill a crowd of people in the middle of a city?”

“
Lure them away,” said Yelse, putting the comb on the table and turning toward the mirror.

“
Alright. And when I’ve done that, how shall I fetch you?”

“
Summon me.” She started braiding her hair.

“
Without power?”

“
I haven’t got to bind
that
.”

Sarid relaxed a tiny bit. “Where shall I take them?”

“We’re going to Charevost next week, Rischa and I. So my barons can swear fealty.”

“
You want me to bring them up to Charevost?” said Sarid, incredulous.

“
Why not? The
Vara
is isolated and thick
with saebelen.”

“
How will I manage to get them to Charevost?”

“
Go back, put the thought in their heads. After you’ve done that, I’ll bind your power.”

“
But if Rischa’s up there as well––”

“
You needn’t concern yourself with Rischa.”

Sarid said carefully, “I am concerned. He’s not as naive as you think.”

“So I’ll play with his head, make him go south––”

“
Do you do that a lot?” said Sarid. Sweat had soaked through the waist of her gown. “Don’t you think he guesses?”

Yelse stared at herself in the mirror. “If you’re that worried, write him a letter and seal it with Savvel’s ring. He’ll ride out to meet his brother and we’ll be rid of him.”

“You’ll unbind me when you have what you want?”

“
Yes.”

“
Do you promise?”

Yelse knotted the end of her braid and curled it round her finger. “Yes. I’ve never lied to you before.”

“Can I ask a favor?”

“
I’ll hear it.”

Sarid steeled herself and said: “When you are Ravinya, will you give me Rischa?”

Yelse looked at the ceiling and laughed. “Is that it?”

“
Yes,” said Sarid.

“
I don’t know that I can part with him.”

“
Then I don’t know that I can help you.”

Almost imperceptibly Yelse’s face tightened. “What do you want with him? There are plenty of handsome boys the land over. Choose one of them.”

Sarid felt for the thread in her sister’s voice and followed it to its end. “You love him?”

“
A Ravinya needs a Ravyir.”

Sarid tried to keep from laughing, and her bruise stung. “I can scarcely believe you capable of it. Very well, you can have him. You’ll grow tired of him soon enough, or he’ll come to see you’re manning his cock like a tiller. I’ll be patient.”

“You’re pathetic,” said her sister, turning away from her. Her hand tossed and a flame flickered from the candle again.

***

That evening Sarid walked down to the unkempt garden with the cypresses. Gloom sat so heavy on her she felt as though her stomach were filled with stones.

At midnight she opened a circle and summoned her sister. Yelse stepped out of the circle, and Sarid stepped in, and Yelse banked the flame in Sarid’s heart. And all the while Sarid silenced the little voice in her mind that said she was sentencing everyone to death.

It felt wretched, having her power bound, like being squeezed and and rolled into a tiny bead and held tight in a fist. She could scarcely breathe.

Afterwards, though it was almost summer and very humid, Sarid wrapped herself in cloaks and wore woolen underclothes, and shuddered at the dead feel of her skin.

***

A week later rumor went round that Rischa and Yelse had set north toward Charevost with an escort of five hundred.

Sarid, Savvel, and Leva made preparations to follow them. Mari wasn’t happy about it.

“
Don’t take it personally,” said Sarid. “You’re much safer down here.”

“
Besides,” said Savvel, “we’ll need someone to tell our story if we all become worm food. And you have a way with words.”

“
Good gods,” said Mari.

“
The gods choose their vessels blindly,” said Savvel, brushing his big horse. It was early morning and they hadn’t woken the groomsmen, wanting to go about their business as secretly as possible. “They must have had their eyes out when they chose Maryena Haek.”

“
Shut up,” said Mari. “He never shuts up.”

“
Stop worrying so,” said Leva. She heaved a saddlebag up and buckled it to the skirt. Her palfrey tossed her head in protest. “If I die, it’ll be for a worthy cause.”

“
I thought you were scared out of your wits of Yelse.”

“
I am,” she said, and shrugged.  She had shadows under her eyes.

“
You break my heart,” said Mari.

***

The trip north was uneventful. Pleasant, even. The good weather never broke except for a flash of a thunderstorm somewhere between Dirlan and the Gagethene. The rain soaked in and evaporated, leaving the roads packed hard and smooth, and Sarid was in time given her own horse, a little bay mare, so they could travel faster.

They went round the water meadows without sinking into any bogs––“Pity,” said Savvel, “it might have been a less painful way to die”––and traveled past the Hill of the Maids of Heartache, trying not to look at it––“There’s your last chance to dedicate your life,” Savvel said to Leva, “to castration, which you’d be good at, I’m sure”––and came to Amarstad, northernmost city of the Nolak River––“Anyone fancy the life of a bargeman? Because there’s our last––” At this point Leva said she’d burn Savvel in his sleeping roll and squat on his ashes if he said one more word.

***

They took rooms at the same inn they’d stayed at earlier that year. Savvel wrote Rischa a long, persuasive, fawning letter, asking him to come and talk with him in Ningrav, just the two of them. He sealed it with his ring, and they went to post it.

The day was early and the weather warm; the mountains hung like a bank of purple clouds to the north. “He’s sure to get it in half a day at least,” said Sarid, dropping it in the bag at the posting station “He’ll think it’s been in circulation a while. We’ll waylay him when he’s a little way from Charevost.”

“
What if he brings along his five hundred men?” said Savvel.

“
And leaves Yelse all alone?”

“
He’ll bring some with him.”

“
Not enough to slow him down.”

“
Even five is a bit of a wall to break through.”

“
Five, ten, twenty––people get stupider the more of them there are. We’ll think of something.”

***

Sarid did think of something: She remembered how easily she’d been mistaken for a scullion at Charevost.

She left the others at the posting station, and went alone to an apothecary’s shop. She searched among the salves and powders for a certain salt prized by the Aindelden of the Daynen mountains. It allowed, when ingested, long hours of work at high altitudes. It also turned the skin soft and the cheeks pink, and had been developed in Lorila as a cosmetic.

She found it, poured a scoop into a little satchel, and thought of how absurd was the business of beauty. In moderate doses the salt upset the stomach and caused convulsions. In high doses it was lethal.

Back at the inn, she found a stained sarafan in a back room, and put it in her saddlebag.

And then the three of them rode toward Charevost, staying within sight of the dust from the courier horse. The day was sunny, and Sarid smelled the heady, mossy smell of the mountains. It didn’t put her at ease.

They came to the woods below Charevost and settled in a hollow with a brook at the bottom. Sarid donned the sarafan; she had no blouse, and her skinny arms poked out of it like bones. She bound her hair up in a dirty scarf, and Leva helped her rub dirt and flour over her face and arms. After she was filthy enough to be unrecognizable, she put the pouch of salt in her pocket, and she and her horse continued on alone.

The sun was low overhead. A girl driving a flock of geese over a field stared at her as she passed. Thinking Leva might have patted on too much flour, Sarid scraped most of it off.

The hall came into view, sitting on its goose-grey lake, unchanged, its many eyes looking out at the foothills. The western roofs flashed in the sunset. She led her horse behind a jut of rock and tied the leads to a birch in a grassy spot, and then entered a southwest wicket as easily as if she had never left.

Keeping her head down, she walked through a courtyard and down a flight of steps to the kitchens, where she blended with the workers.

After a half-hour of kneading, chopping, and subtle questioning, she learned a caravan was being prepared––they were gathering supplies and packing baskets in the front courtyard. The party was planning on leaving the next day, in the early dawn. She was thinking sadly of how the Rischa of last year would’ve scorned an escort, when a cook pinched her arm and called her a lazybones. She climbed the stairs with a side of cured beef and came outside.

A dog barked hysterically. She blinked in the light, looking round. A big, white hound pushed through the people preparing the bags and slobbered all over Sarid’s arms.

“
Hush.” She pressed Gryka’s head against her skirt. The dog wiggled under her hands and looked at her with adoring eyes.

A girl said something apologetically in Rileldine, and Sarid, preparing an answer, lifted her head and found herself face to face with Dreida.

The girl looked so horrified that Sarid wondered if her skin had fallen off.

She shook her head and put a finger to her mouth. Dreida backed away, slipped through the workers, and stared at Sarid from the other side of the pile of baggage.

Sarid shrugged––there was no accounting for it. She soon lost sight of Dreida and decided to get the thing over with, before the girl had time to talk. Gryka wiggled round her still, but the behavior wasn’t unwarranted; Sarid still had her side of beef.

She went over to the food bags and took out the little satchel of salt from the apothecary. It looked just like the salt covering the meat.

She crouched so her sarafan hid the basket, and made a show of packing her beef inside it, so no one could see her rub the salt over all the meat. It wasn’t enough to kill anyone—just make them sick for a while.