Oath of Fealty

37

The sun was almost down when she rode away, her own shirt—washed hastily in water from the well and spread to dry—on her back once more, her trousers almost dry, her boots still squelching a bit with every step. She had tasted everything; she had been hugged by grimy, bright-eyed children, thanked again and again by every adult. Her escort said nothing until they were well away from the village.

“What happened down that well?” Black Sef asked.

“Much that I don’t understand,” Dorrin said. An evening breeze wafted across the way and chilled her legs in the damp trousers.

“Did you know you could do all that?”

“No,” Dorrin said. “I just knew I had to do something.”

“I didn’t know magelords could move rocks.”

“It’s in the Chronicles,” Mattis said. Dorrin remembered he was Girdish. “Some battle, a magelord took the water from a river and made it come out a well and it drowned people.”

“That’s water, not rocks,” Black Sef said.

“Bucket of water’s as heavy as a rock,” Mattis said. “Lifting’s lifting.” He looked at Dorrin. “Captain—uh … my lord—if you could lift yourself and a rock up, why did we have to lower you down on the rope?”

“Would you step off a cliff if you had friends with a rope to lower you?” Dorrin asked, then legged her horse into a canter.

She came to the house just before dark. A strange horse grazed in the front field. Her belly clenched: trouble?—but the house was silent, light glowing from a few windows. Closer, she could see it was a red chestnut with a star and white stockings behind.

“You?” she said to the horse. It raised its head, flicked an ear, and blew a soft whuffle. “You are Paks’s horse—”

A stamp of hoof. Dorrin understood that Paks belonged to the horse, not the other way around.

“There’s a comfortable stall in the stable,” she said. The horse scratched an ear with a hind hoof and turned away, walking down toward the stream. Dorrin heard a chuckle from her escort; she shrugged and rode on into the stableyard, her heart lighter at the thought of seeing Paks.

She went in through the kitchen. The cook looked up. “You’re later than I thought you’d be. Them villagers keep a-wrangling till dark?”

“No,” Dorrin said. “They had a surprise for me.”

“A wet one, I see,” the cook said, glaring at Dorrin’s boots and the floor.

“That’s why I came in this way,” Dorrin said. “Where are our guests?”

“Front hall. What happened? They throw you in the river?”

“No, there was a problem with the well.” Dorrin squelched on through. “I need a bath; I’ll go straight up.” At least she could now bathe in more privacy than the servants’ bathhouse without fear of being killed by some clever trap.

She came down, wearing the soft slippers she favored in the house. Paks and the royal courier were seated around a small table someone had moved from the kitchen, and one of the kitchen maids was dishing out something that smelled almost as good as the fire-roasted lamb. The maid glanced up and saw her.

“My lord Duke—shall I set a place in the dining room?”

“No—I’ll sit here. Just bring a plate and things.”

The courier had jumped up, almost knocking his chair over. “My lord Duke—”

“Sit down, both of you.” Dorrin dragged a chair to the table. “I’m sorry I was later than I said I’d be. The visit did not go quite as planned.”

“A judgment?” Paks asked.

“I thought it was to be a judgment, but as it turned out, it was several other things as well. But let us talk of lighter things as you eat. You were at Kieri’s coronation, Paks, were you not?”

“Indeed.” Paks swallowed hastily. “The Lady was there—it must be strange to have your grandmother as co-ruler.”

“And you had good weather on your journey here?” She had no idea where Paks had been in the meantime, but that could wait.

“It rained one day,” Paks said. “But the road was sound. And you?” she said, turning to the courier.

“Two days,” he said. “How long is the ride to Chaya? I have a message for the king.”

“And I a message for your prince from the king,” Paks said. “He regrets he will be unable to attend the coronation, for concerns of state in his own realm. He will send an envoy.”

After he finished, the royal courier excused himself to use the bath Dorrin had offered.

“I just found out today is my birth-day,” Dorrin said when they were alone.

“You didn’t know?”

“No. The name-day, not the birth-day, mattered to my family, and my name-day was Midsummer Eve. My villagers knew, though, and lured me out to celebrate it their way. If I had not been able to tell them of the prince’s messenger, I’d be there yet.” Dorrin looked at Paks; it was still hard to believe this young woman—so young—had been through so much. She still had the same open, engaging grin that had made her such an attractive recruit, but the gray eyes had wisdom beyond her years. “So—you are on your way to the coronation in Vérella, I suppose? I’m glad you came this way.”

“No,” Paks said, picking up another stuffed pastry. “One coronation a year is enough. I came here because I felt it.”

“Felt—”

“I can’t explain. I had to come, as I had to leave Chaya and wander the woods in Lyonya awhile. This is delicious—do you eat like this every night?”

“Not quite,” Dorrin said. “The cook made something special for the prince’s courier and, I suppose, you.”

“This place is huge,” Paks said. “The entrance hall’s as big as some granges.” She eyed the dish of plums and then looked straight at Dorrin. “Are you happy, Captain—Duke, I mean?”

“Happy?” Dorrin bit back the comment she’d almost made—happiness was a child’s wish, not an adult’s duty—but Paks was clearly happy, and she was no naive child. Paks’s easy patience pulled answers out of her. “Sometimes. I had forgotten how beautiful it could be. Not the house; the house is …” She shook her head and left it there. “But the land. The land and the people. It’s softer land than Kieri’s—the king’s—was. Settled longer, cared for longer. The kitchen orchard’s thick with fruit this year. But as I said in Chaya, I never meant to come back. They didn’t want me back. It was …” Again she stopped, feeling tears burning her eyes.

“Their evil is not your fault, Captain,” Paks said.

“I know, but—” In halting phrases, at first, Dorrin told Paks what had happened, the discovery of Verrakai’s use of others, even their own children, to transfer personalities from one to another, the traps and poisons she’d had to disarm before she dared sleep in any of the beds. The deaths.

“I had to do it,” she said. “And I know that’s what my family would say about what they did. They had to, it was … expedient. If I had not, they would have killed others—and how many there are loose in the land I do not know, since I don’t know if all the transfers are recorded in the family book.”

Paks reached out and touched her hand; Dorrin felt a rush of goodwill and strength. “You have a hard task,” Paks said. “But you are faithful; that much is clear. Your people love you already, or they would not have celebrated your birthday.”

“I am better than my uncle, under whom they suffered,” Dorrin said. “Their gratitude is too great for the little I have done so far. It is all undoing—undoing curses, unsetting traps—before I can do anything real,” Dorrin said. “Though today—” She paused.

“Tell me,” Paks said, taking a plum from the bowl.

“The villagers had a well; my uncle cursed it.” Dorrin told the rest of it, hurrying through the details and staring at her hands clasped on the table, for she felt tears rise again and did not want to cry in front of Paks.

“Undoing such evil is no small thing,” Paks said, when Dorrin paused for breath. Dorrin looked up to see that Paks’s eyes glittered with unshed tears in the lamplight.

“It is so … so sad,” Dorrin said, past the lump in her own throat. “And it makes me so angry. All that waste, all that unnecessary pain and struggle … the years they had to send someone all the way to the stream for water, and why? Because my uncle chose it.” She stopped again; Paks said nothing. “And then, at the end, where I expected water fouled past cleansing … the well was dry.”

“Completely?”

“Yes. I felt the rock. Dry as Andressat in late summer; dry as if it had never been a well. I sat there, with the bones wrapped in my shirt, those pitiful bones—” Tears came despite her intent; she felt them on her face, but went on. “And when I asked the gods, no words came to me, nothing, and so I cried, as—as I am now.” She choked, then found her voice again. “My family—does not—cry. All I could think—was the waste—the misery—the pain—we have caused. Year after year, and for what? And then the water came.”

“Came how?” Paks asked, leaning forward. “And where?”

“Out of a cleft of the rock. It is—scarcely believable. I cried like a child, tears dripping right onto the rock, and then … the water came creeping out of that cleft.”

“Did it frighten you?” Paks asked. “You down a well and the water rising? But wait—you had a rope, you could get out safely.”

“Not quite,” Dorrin said. “It came slowly at first and then suddenly, a gush that lifted me up like a branch in a torrent.” An echo of the joy she’d felt at the water dried the tears on her face as she grinned. “What I’m sure will be told behind my back for the rest of my life, one peasant to another, is how I looked, rising up on that gush of water half naked, with my burden of bones wrapped in my shirt.”

Paks stared. “No shirt? But—oh, but you had to carry the bones—but—” She shook her head, chuckling.

“It was not,” Dorrin said, laughter replacing tears, “not the dignity of a duke. I did think of that, on the way up, but too late.”

“In terms of undoing your family’s pride—” Paks began, but was laughing too hard to continue.

“My uncle would be mortified,” Dorrin said. Laughter and tears together had left her now, and she felt more relaxed than she had since—since she could not remember. “My mother—well, she disowned me, years ago, but this would leave even her speechless.”

“It was a very good thing,” Paks said. “That is how magery should be used.”

“I hope the Council will see it that way,” Dorrin said. “It is still against Tsaian law, since Gird’s time.”

“I came for more than a visit,” Paks said. “You should go to the Tsaian prince’s coronation … you have had the invitation—?”

Dorrin looked up, startled. “That must be what the courier brought. I had no time; I had to go to what I thought was a judgment, and then I forgot.” She looked around, and saw the courier’s velvet pouch, embroidered with the royal arms of Tsaia lying on a side table. Inside was a scroll tied with rose and silver ribbons. Dorrin unrolled the stiff parchment. In formal flowery language it requested the honor of her presence as a peer of the realm at the coronation of Mikeli Vostan Keriel, rightful heir to the throne of Tsaia, unto whom she, as peer, would pledge fealty. It carried the seals of Tsaia, the signatures of Dukes Marrakai and Mahieran, members of the Regency Council, and the crown prince.

A smaller, thinner paper, rolled into the scroll, bore a personal, less formal message from the prince himself.

No word of her family members sent to Vérella, no comment on her rule so far. She pushed both across the table to Paks. “You were right; it is the invitation to the coronation. But I cannot go. I’ve still not found the young men and older boys who were here before I came—evidence of their sudden departure, yes, but by the time I had dealt with those left behind, they were beyond tracing. I expected them to come back, to attack—I still do—but so far, nothing. I have no one here I can trust, yet, to guard it while I’m gone, no one who knows it well enough.”

Paks read intently, her finger moving down the lines. “Why do the peers—that’s lords I suppose—have to swear fealty again? If they aren’t loyal already, why are they on the Council?”

“Didn’t Kieri—the king—have them do that in Lyonya?”

“He was new to them,” Paks said. “That made sense, but this—they’ve known the prince for years—”

“As prince, not as king,” Dorrin said. “Now it will be personal, as yours was to Kieri in the Company.”

“If all are swearing fealty again, you should go,” Paks said. “They must all—all the lords, and the prince—see that you have a personal oath to him. And you should know them, as you are one of them now.”

Dorrin traced the seal of Tsaia lightly with her forefinger. “And leave behind those the prince and Council told me to protect and rule?”

“Others do.”

“Others do not have a domain infested with Verrakai malice to deal with,” Dorrin said. “Come—I will show you.” Taking a lamp, she led the way to her uncle’s office. Along the way, she warned Paks of the many traps and spells. “I disarmed as many as I could. Some are magical, some not—but all are subtle and dangerous. Every piece of furniture, so far, has had its way of killing the unwary, many that I did not know of, since children were brought here only rarely.”

The study was emptier now; Dorrin had removed one item after another, to be dismantled and its traps destroyed outside. “Here’s the record of transfers—the words are hidden unless I unlock them with magery.” She glanced at Paks; Paks nodded. At Dorrin’s command, the hidden pages came into view. “Most give the new host only a single name, no location or occupation. Those within the family have this symbol—” She pointed.

“You use the lamp,” Paks commented, “instead of your own light.”

“I use magery as little as may be,” Dorrin said. “Aside from practice and at need.”

“Does it want to be used?”

Dorrin turned to her. “Every moment. It is like the pressure of a stream; once the Knight-Commander and you released it, it has been harder to contain than to use. When I arrived here, and my relatives used theirs against me, it swelled into a river. You and the Knight-Commander had said you thought I had great power. So it proved, enough power to hold them all motionless, silent, under my will.”

“Was that frightening at first?” Paks asked.

“Yes.” Dorrin shivered at the memory. “Most frightening was how I enjoyed it. I can understand—do not wish to understand but cannot help it—how my ancestors fell into evil, from the sheer joy of having such mastery. So I use lamps, and climb the stairs, and reach for things I might command with a word. Today, with the well, is the first time I have used magery so openly among my people. Those here saw me control my family, of course.”

“That is wise,” Paks said.

“But this is not all I wanted to show you,” Dorrin said. “Not only are there Verrakai abroad in others’ bodies, enemies of the realm, of the prince and king-to-be, but here is something I have not dared explore, when I was the only one here with power I could trust.”

She led Paks to the far end of the study, where the vault door still gaped open a little on the bare patch of wall and the remains of the picture and its frame lay on the floor in front of it. Paks came alight.

“That is blood magery—evil—!”

“Yes. It was a portrait of one of our ancestors. It was there in my childhood; it had been there, I was told, for long ages, since the Verrakaien came north. When I first came into this room, it radiated evil; it called my magery; it threatened me.” She stared at the remnants on the floor. “It bled when I pierced it—bled like a man, Paksenarrion. It was not painted on wood or fabric, like most paintings, but on skin—I believe human skin. And the frame, which looked—you can see the upper part—like carved and painted wood, is actually made of bones, plastered over.”

“That power is not all gone.”

“No. I can feel that. The blood dried and vanished in a mist, and most of the power here went—somewhere. I prayed, Paksenarrion, that it might never return.”

“What’s behind the door?”

“I saw an urn filled with blood; the blood dried and vanished in mist like the rest. A casket of carved wood inlaid with colored patterns. There might be more. I have left it as I found it, the door slightly open so I could watch for new blood.”

“Take it out,” Paks said. Dorrin glanced at her. Her clear paladin’s light filled the room, leaving no shadows. “Whatever it is, I know we must discover it.”

Whatever it was, if a paladin told her to stick her hand in a hole and bring something out—she would. Dorrin opened the vault door wider and light filled the chamber. Paks’s light, like her own magery, revealed the traps she had not seen before. Paks came nearer.

“Your ancestors trusted no one, did they?”

“I can’t speak for all,” Dorrin said, “but no one so steeped in evil as my uncle and his followers trusts.”

“Let me see if I can—” Paks pointed at the traps revealed, and one by one they withered. She turned to grin at Dorrin. “You’re right. It is fun to play with power—not something the gods grant often to paladins.”

Inside the vault, the box gleamed in that light, its designs twisting, interlacing … moving? Behind it, Dorrin could just see something else, something wrapped in what looked like old gray leather. “I don’t remember that,” she said. “It may’ve been there, but hidden in the dark.”

“First the urn,” Paks said. “Filled with magical blood, you said?”

“Real blood, preserved by magery. I don’t know whose.” Dorrin touched it and felt a tingle up her arm. She jerked it back.

“Magery?” Paks said.

“Something.”

Paks reached past her and took out the urn. Once clear of the vault, it changed in her hands to a goblet, jewel-encrusted.

“Holy Falk,” Dorrin said. “Ward this house.”

“Gird’s grace,” Paks said. “It has writing on it, but I can’t read it—”

Around the rim, a script Dorrin had never seen before squirmed and reformed into something she could read. Who drinks from me without a right shall live for aye in endless night; the true king’s draught shall hold him hale until the day his magery fail. Dorrin recited this aloud to Paks.

“What is it?” Paks asked. “What does that mean?”

Dorrin felt cold all over. “It is—it must be—a coronation goblet for some king. From very long ago, and from whence I have no idea. Why it was a blood-filled urn I do not know either. Unless drinking blood was part of the coronation rite.”

“Here,” Paks said. “You hold it.”

“Just put it down on the table,” Dorrin said.

“But if it made you feel something, maybe it has more to teach. Tammarion’s sword, that was the king’s—”

“I can hold it later.” Dorrin fought her magery, that wanted to hold it now, fill it with wine now, drink from it now. “There’s more—we should get it all out, and somewhere safe.”

Paks set the goblet on the table. “Do you want me to take the things out?”

She did, but it was her own heritage. “I will,” Dorrin said. The box, when she touched it, sent the same thrill up her arm, but this time she did not flinch and the box did not change shape when she took it from the vault. It was heavier than it looked; she carried it to the table and set it down. She and Paks stared down at the designs on the upper surface.

“It reminds me of the designs in Luap’s Stronghold, in Kolobia,” Paks said after a long moment. “Not just beautiful, but powerful.”

“Yes,” Dorrin said. Her finger wanted to follow the lines, her thumb wanted to press there. She did not realize she had done so until the box opened, not like an ordinary box but like an intricately folded paper, flowerlike.

Glittering in the clear light Paks gave were jewels—sapphires and diamonds—fashioned into pieces Dorrin instantly recognized as someone’s crown jewels … a ring like a ducal ring, only larger, a pair of earrings, broad bracelets large enough for a man’s wrists, a pin such as might hold a cloak to a shoulder, a belt clasp as large as her hand.

Yours. The voice in her mind was clear as her own. At last. A tendril of light rose from the goblet, arced over, and touched a sapphire on the ring, big as a grape.

“I didn’t do that,” Paks said mildly. “Did you?”

“Not intentionally,” Dorrin said. “What—what have we found?”

“What have your family kept hidden is the better question. A coronation goblet, jewels like these, whatever else is in there—have they been thieves or—or what?”

“The stories—family stories—say we were once kings. I never believed them.”

“When, in Gird’s day?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to know, Paks. I wanted to get away and never come back.”

“The box opened to your touch. The urn changed—”

“In your hands, not mine.” But it would have, she knew. “If it is true—if these are crown jewels from Old Aare—that doesn’t mean Verrakaien are royal. We might be thieves only. That would explain hiding them, wouldn’t it?” Dorrin looked at Paks, then at the open vault. “I begin to think I was foolish to start this in darkness, without a troop of Marshals, Captains, and another paladin or two.”

Paks shook her head. “The gods sent me; they must think we can do it. Whatever it is.”

Dorrin touched her ruby for luck and reached into the vault once more. The bundle that had been hidden behind the box felt stiff to the touch like old dried leather. She shuddered at the thought that it was also human skin, but as she drew it out, it changed into a cloth embroidered in brilliant blue, gold, and silver, soft and unworn, wrapped around something heavy—she knew without unwrapping what it must be.

On the table, she unfolded the cloth. Centered on the cloth’s design, a many-pointed star, alternating gold and silver points against the blue, was an obvious crown, itself glittering with sapphires and diamonds but for one blank spot.

Joy burst over Dorrin like a wave; the light in the room shimmered, and without her intent, the crown rose off the table and hung in the air before her.

You are the one. At last I am free.

“Not now,” Dorrin said aloud. Magery ran like fire through her veins; she could scarcely see Paks, though the silver circle on her brow burned brightly. Dorrin reached out, nonetheless, and took the crown in her hands, setting it back in its wrappings.

“Was that what I—what was that?” Paks said. She did not sound alarmed, just interested. Her calmness steadied Dorrin.

“It talked to me,” Dorrin said. “Did you hear it?”

“No. What was it saying?”

“From the first—the goblet—” Dorrin nodded at the goblet. “It said it was mine. And so did the crown.” She drew a long breath. “If—if my family heard such voices, and believed them, it would explain—”

Nothing. The voice was implacable. They bound us with blood we did not want. You are different. We are yours. Dorrin shivered.

“It said something else?” Paks said.

“Yes. It said they—my family—bound these things with blood—blood it did not want. That I am different, and these things belong to me.”

“There was more,” Paks said, looking at the jewels in the unfolded box. “See this space here?” She pointed to an empty space with the slight impression of something in the velvet lining. She looked at Dorrin, brow wrinkled around the circle. “I’ve seen something—somewhere—that’s like these. A necklace. I know—” She looked excited now. “Brewersbridge, when I was there before I went to Fin Panir. Arvid—that thief—gave it to me. I gave it to the Girdish treasury when they chose me for paladin’s training.”

Dorrin smoothed the cloth that had been around the crown. Not a worn stitch, not a frayed edge. “I wish I knew what this meant.” She touched the star-figure inside the arc of the crown. “It must be symbolic, but—”

“I saw it in Luap’s Stronghold,” Paks said. “A cloth something like this, but I don’t know what it means. It was in a small chamber, empty but for the cloth laid on the sleeping shelf. I wasn’t thinking about that, then. I was already falling into Achrya’s spell.”

“Do you think these things are evil?” Dorrin’s own magery insisted NO but she did not trust it. “The voices from an evil spirit, tempting me?”

Paks touched them one by one. “No. Whatever evil has been here has not corrupted them, not that I can tell. I felt evil in the room—the remnants of that picture and its frame among them—but not these things. Yet they have a power—”

“That I do not understand,” Dorrin said. “Falk and the High Lord give us wisdom to understand what this means.”

“And what we should do,” Paks said. She touched the jewels again. “I wonder why such jewels would be in Gird’s colors.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Dorrin looked. The goblet alone bore jewels in other colors, not many; the crown and those in the unfolded box were all blue and white.

“Could it mean Gird was crowned king at some point?” Paks asked. “There’s nothing about that at all in the legends.”

“But in his colors. Would he have taken blue as his color because at the time it was a royal color?”

“That’s not mentioned either. I admit, I was not that interested in the history they taught us in Fin Panir. Maybe the Marshal-General would know. She might be at the coronation: there’s another reason you must go. And take these with you.”

“Take them—” Dorrin felt a weight land on her shoulders. “I can’t go; I told you. There’s no one—”

“I’ll stay here,” Paks said.

“You—is this your call?”

“Yes,” Paks said, with utter certainty. “I understand it now. You must go, for all the reasons the prince gave and because of these—” She tipped her head to the goblet, crown, and jewels. “They’ve been at the heart of treachery for generations, though they themselves were not at fault. You must find out what they are, all that they are, and to whom they really belong.”

Me. They belong to me. The thoughts came unbidden to Dorrin’s mind; her magery surged, wanting free, wanting to show Paks, everyone, what it could do. She fought that down, fought the desire to claim that regalia, and with it, whatever realm it offered.

“But if there’s trouble here—I should be here.”

“Leave me Phelan’s cohort. If anything goes amiss, I’ll send word. Selfer and the cohort will keep me out of trouble.”

That was almost saucy; Dorrin found herself grinning. “Do paladins get into trouble?”

“I imagine we can. I certainly ate too much at King Kieri’s coronation feast—they had mushrooms I’d never tasted before.”

Dorrin shook her head. “I know you’re a paladin, Paks, but sometimes you are so like the girl you were.”

“And still am, inside,” Paks said. “I know—it’s very strange. To me you’re still Captain Dorrin, who once terrified me—all you captains did. You knew everything I thought.”

“You know our warts now—”

“No, it’s not that. I know you’re now Duke Verrakai, someone more important—as far as rank goes—than a captain in the Duke’s Company. But the person I see is the same person, not the rank.” Her brow wrinkled again. “I don’t know why. I see people now a little differently than before, when I was with the Company those first three years. Gird, maybe, or maybe one of the gods, has let me see a little way inside.”

“Or experience,” Dorrin said. “You are older; you have been through many things—”

“Yes,” Paks said. “But more than that—the light we paladins are given to help us discern truth lets us see a little into the hearts of everyone we meet.”

Dorrin had a moment of stark panic. What was deep in her Verrakai heart? But Paks was still talking.

“I remember you as much like a fine blade—trustworthy, keen-edged, someone any of us soldiers could trust when our own captain was away, someone who never delighted in causing pain. Your own cohort respected you absolutely. When I met you again, last fall, you were the same, but now I could see the flame of life the Marshal-General told us all have. Yours burns clear and clean—it did then, and it does now.”

“I—I am—I don’t know—I make mistakes—”

Paks shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Remember when you told the Knight-Commander you had once dreamed of being a paladin?”

“Yes.” Dorrin felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “It was a foolish child’s dream—”

“Was mine?” Paks asked. “Mine was much the same, barring the part about not wanting to spend my time weaving and shoveling dung. It is not foolish to want to be better, to spend a life helping others.”

“But I was a Verrakai. To think I might be acceptable to Falk, to the gods—of course it could not be.” But even as she spoke, her magery surged again, yearning toward the crown she had put down.

Paks snorted. “If the gods could accept a sheepfarmer’s daughter from the edge of nowhere why would they care about your family? They do not select paladins in family groups, but individually.”

“And I was not fit.”

“Captain—Lord Duke—”

“Oh, just call me Dorrin,” Dorrin said. “We are past rank here.”

“Dorrin, then. What you said that night of the torment you endured as a child—it was as bad for you as the torment the Liartians put me through in Vérella. Worse, for you had no experience of good, had you? And you but a child. I at least knew I’d been chosen. I had seen Gird and the others, when I was fully healed. When you came to the Company of Falk, you were still unhealed, is that not so?”

“Yes, but … what are you saying?” The old dream rose in her mind; her magery took it and held it fast.

“I say to you what Master Oakhallow said to me, in different words: You are what you are, and the gods may have plans for you now that you were not able to fulfill then.”

“It is too late to become a paladin,” Dorrin said, surprising herself as the words came out of her mouth.

“I don’t know if that’s what the gods intend for you,” Paks said. “But consider what you did today. Removing the curse from a well is much like healing it, I would say. And you cannot have that—” She pointed at the table. “—for no reason. If they want you for a paladin, you will become one—after all, they made one of me, after so many thought me a useless coward.”

“You were never that,” Dorrin said.

“You were never a villainous Verrakai.”

“Some were,” Dorrin said, looking at the crown again. “Paks, supposing I do go—why should I risk these treasures on the road? What of thieves and—for that matter—attack by my own kin? I should keep them safe, where they cannot be stolen—”

Paks shook her head. “Think again. What are your relatives likely to tell the prince about you?”

“That I’m vindictive and not wholly sane, not to be believed. They are innocent and loyal; I’m the family traitor and having broken troth with them am inherently unfaithful.”

“They will expect you to have the jewels, and they will expect you to keep them. That is what they would do. If they reveal the jewels and you are found with a crown … what do you think the prince will think?”

Dorrin scowled, then nodded. “That I am false, and planning to seize the throne. But I swear, Paks, it is not this throne the crown speaks of.”

“It matters not. Your relatives will insist it is.”

“And some will believe them, even though they distrust my relatives,” Dorrin said. “Just as some will always believe me false, because I am a Verrakai.”

“Exactly,” Paks said. “The king told me that most judge not by actual deeds, but by reputation. Remember, when you were there, how the master of horse in Chaya believed grays were dangerous because of their color?”

“Yes,” Dorrin said. “But I thought, sending my family to Vérella, as ordered, would prove my loyalty. I see now that someone might argue I had a grudge against those I sent, and did not capture those I liked.”

“Yes. If you are at the coronation, if you present the king with these things—especially the crown—and explain that you found them hidden—and give your oath in front of all, that will go some way toward gaining the trust of those who have long distrusted Verrakaien.”

Dorrin saw the logic of that, and yet—“These things belong somewhere else,” she said. “Not in Tsaia at all. I feel I must find out where, and—and take them there, maybe.”

“Not stay in Tsaia?”

“Not forever, I think. Kieri said—the king said—he thought the Tsaian king did not intend me to hold Verrakai forever, but to name an heir, one of those Verrakai who is found innocent of taint.”

“I met such a one,” Paks said. “On my way from the Duke’s Stronghold to Lyonya. Ganarrion, his name was; he’s in the Royal Guard. You might seek him out.”

“I am past bearing an heir of the body,” Dorrin said, “even if I wished to do so. I thought of one of the children here, but they have spent their whole lives in the influence of my uncle and his kind.”

“How are they now?”

“Better, I think, but who can tell, with children? Having none of my own, I never studied how best to train them; I must leave much of that to the nurserymaids, and trust I have weeded out the vicious from among those.”

“Another reason to let me ward this place for you while you’re in Vérella,” Paks said, grinning. “I am closer to my own childhood, as you said, and I had younger sibs—I like children.”

“But never wanted some of your own?” Dorrin asked.

“No. Wiped too many dirty bottoms, and saw my mother’s birth pangs too many times. A soldier’s life is thought hard, and it is, but that day-by-day watchfulness and worry—I was not meant for that.”

“Indeed, you were not,” Dorrin said. “Nor was I. Well. I don’t want to go, but I see I must.” Another thought struck her. “Oh gods above!”

“What?”

“I have no court clothes.” Paks looked blank. “Tsaian court clothes. For the coronation and everything else; everyone else will have them. They’ll expect—it will be an insult if I turn up like this—” Dorrin gestured at her plain shirt and trousers. “And it’s too late to get anything made in Vérella; every tailor will be racing to finish things ordered at the Evener or before.”

“Did your relatives take all their clothes with them?”

“No, but—” Dorrin shook her head. “It is a jest, but a bitter one. I was so disgusted with their finery … I threw them out, all those fancy things, or most of them. Told the house staff to cut them up and make clothes for themselves, or give them to their families. And besides, nothing would have fit me—the ladies of this house had magery, not muscles.”

“Must you wear skirts at court? You were titled duke, not duchess.”

“I suppose—” Dorrin thought about it. “If I’m going to be an outcast anyway, and the only female duke, I might as well be outrageous in my dress. That’s good; I hate skirts. Men’s dress at court is still court dress, but I might contrive something more easily. I wonder if Verrakai House in Vérella has been sold—”

“Your family has two houses?”

Dorrin nodded. “Verrakai had more than two houses, if any are left to us, if the Crown did not confiscate them for my uncle’s treason. A house in Vérella, where family attending court lived. Houses here and there for family members who wanted to live apart for a while.”

“Perhaps your uncle left court clothes there, and you could use them.”

“I would not want to wear anything that had touched his body,” Dorrin said. “The touch of his magery—”

“Falk will protect you,” Paks said with such confidence that Dorrin felt her own doubts vanish.