Dawnbringer

Chapter Seven

JADAREN HOLD

1585 DR-THE YEAR OF THE BLOODIED MANACLES

Arna 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?”

Vidor flushed. “I had thought of that. I’ve told my cousin that those spells mustn’t fail, even though we must charge more for them. But as for the rest, they’re a way for those without riches to have the conveniences you and I take for granted.”

“It’s a clever idea, I’ll grant you that,” said Arna, distracted. “Vidor, when is it you go to Turmish?”

“I leave with the mule train tomorrow morning and join the Andula caravan that afternoon,” said Vidor, putting the small box with the fire cantrips away in his leather sample pack.

“And you are determined to solicit the Beguines?”

Vidor gave him an odd look. “We need backing and the promise of a substantial market to produce the cantrip papers, especially if we’re going to improve the reliability. House Jadaren has the scope to support the venture, but your uncle’s not interested. House Beguine’s an obvious place to try before I go farther abroad.”

He pulled the strap tight. “I know there’s bad blood between your Houses, but business is business, and you can’t expect-”

Arna laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you not to go to House Beguine. In fact, I’d like to come with you.”

Vidor shouldered his pack. “As far as Sespech, you mean, as before? And have your uncle skin me alive for not nursemaiding sufficiently far from that merrow-den?”

“No,” said Arna. “I mean to go to Nonthal with you, as your assistant, to trade with the Beguines.”

“Funny,” said Vidor, flatly.

Arna hurried behind him as he left Arna’s rooms, through the maze of passageways that threaded the family quarters of Jadaren Hold.

It was many years since Gareth Jadaren had claimed the Giant’s Fist, shed the name of pirate, married the daughter of one of Beredel’s thanes, and exploited the nascent trade routes branching between Erlkazar and the Unapproachable East, and had finally died old and fat and prosperous, surrounded by his descendants and assured that the name of House Jadaren would endure. Between then and now, the tunnels that threaded the monolith like worms through cheese, excavated by some race lost to recorded history, had been cleared out and expanded by Jadaren workers. Caverns at the base of the gigantic rock were hollowed out further, creating shelter for caravans and great chambers to serve as meeting halls and places to feast and entertain. Additional hollows functioned as storerooms for trading goods as well as for supplies to meet the ongoing needs of the household, the servants, guards, and visitors. Tunnels that branched from both the base of the rock as well and the summit were enlarged until they resembled the hallways of some great palace, with steps carved out of the living rock leading from level to level, allowing easy passage from kitchens to banquet hall, bathing chambers to guest quarters, storerooms to the family’s chambers. Here and there large voids in the body of the monolith were broken into, and proved to be mirror-smooth bubbles of obsidian, or chambers full of white and amethyst crystal.

Sometimes in walking through the passageways that generations of Jadaren chatelaines had striven to make both comfortable and magnificent, laying carpets to cushion the feet and tapestries to delight the eye, it was easy to forget that one was in the center of a block of volcanic rock. Only the lack of outside light and the constant light of spellcast torches, flickering in the currents of air that the ventilation holes drilled perpendicularly through the monolith, spoiled the illusion that Jadaren Hold was like any other merchant’s house.

“I’m serious,” Arna told Vidor as they both squeezed against the wall to allow a servant girl bearing an oversize tray of soiled crockery to go by. “I don’t intend any prank or game. I’ve a good reason to see the Beguines for myself. Or at least one Beguine in particular.”

“Why is that?” asked Vidor. The hallway was clear, and he slowed to allow Arna to catch up with him.

“Because I’m supposed to marry her.”

Vidor stopped so abruptly that Arna had to stumble backward to avoid bumping into him, earning them both a glare from a second servant who was trying to balance a load of clean linens on her head. They both muttered an apology and let her pass before they proceeded, Vidor grasping Arna’s sleeve.

“Marry a Beguine! Are you mad? Your entire family would expire of shock!”

Arna shrugged. “It’s Uncle Bron’s idea. Or possibly Nicol Beguine’s. I don’t know who had it first. Not many, not even our trading allies, know about it, but we and House Beguine have been in negotiations for at least a year to bring an end to the feud.”

“But the feud has lasted for centuries!”

They were near one of the many alcoves scattered throughout the Jadaren Hold tunnel system, crafted for the convenience of any who desired to step away from the human traffic that sometimes streamed through the passageways, busy as any traveler’s path on a sunny day. Arna pulled his friend aside as yet another linen-laden servant-it must have been one of the twice-tenday cleaning days his aunt mandated-went by, glancing at them curiously.

“Yes, it has,” said Arna. “But can any tell why?”

“Well …” Vidor furrowed his brow in thought. “There was the matter of House Andula’s entire season of cider shipments being undercut, with House Beguine having a stake in it. And the disagreement with the Jeweler’s Guild. And that ship at Mulmaster, with Clan Testra’s half stake in it, burning after the crew fought one of House Beguine’s.”

“Yes,” Arna interrupted. “And we both could point to a double handful of fights, and raids, and downright sabotage throughout the years without even thinking hard. Some of them are even legendary, and the subject of songs and ballads-very dirty ballads, I might add. But is there a reason for them?”

“Pursuit of profit,” answered Vidor, with the confidence of a merchant’s child.

“Ah, profit, the blessing of Waukeen,” said Arna. “But does this bickering profit anyone in the end? We do dirty by the Beguines because they do dirty to us, and each expects it in return. The only reason for the feud is the feud itself. But the lives lost, people injured, and the good-gods! — the goods that might be sold or traded, wasted for the mere satisfaction of hurting an enemy. What’s the good of it?”

“There must have been a reason for the feud once,” said Vidor.

“Oh, likely. A very good reason, I would guess, considering the strength of the hatred, and how long it’s lasted. Even through wars and Spellplague and the fall and rise of cities. But does anyone remember it now? It’s buried beneath the fall of the years, forgotten, and it’s time we forgot the feud it spawned.”

“So you agree with your uncle, and with Nicol.”

“Of course. Why should a baker in Sespech have her flour spoiled by beetles because a Jadaren is trying to ruin a deal? Or a sailor’s wife be widowed because a Beguine mage cursed his ship and her load of Jadaren lumber? Why, in fact, should my beauteous self be endangered by a forgotten wrong?”

“Or my beauteous self for that matter, for the sin of being your friend?” said Vidor.

Arna grinned. “Correct entirely. Oh, Uncle Bron is wise as a serpent in this matter. But there is a complication. He and Nicol want a public testament to the end of the war. They want the advent of a new harmonious era to be crystal clear to everyone, family and ally as well as stranger. And what better way to do it than to marry the children of both Houses together?”

Vidor leaned against the polished stone wall and folded his arms, regarding his friend with sympathy.

“And what do you think of being the sacrificial ox?”

“I am of two minds. One agrees with Uncle Bron. An alliance with House Beguine will mean a new era of prosperity, and linking our two Houses together through marriage is a small sacrifice to pay-and no sacrifice at all, really, since the Beguine daughter would come to Jadaren Hold to train as its chatelaine.”

Vidor nodded. “That makes sense, since House Beguine has two daughters and a son to manage their affairs. And your other mind?”

“My other mind is selfish, and concerned with my own comfort, and would like to see my proposed bride before I commit myself for life. Sad, and I blush to admit it, but true.”

Vidor laughed and gave Arna a light shove.

“So you would like to come with me and spy out whether the Beguine girl is pretty enough for your exalted tastes, is that it?”

“Alas, but I am flawed. And think of this: it’s not fair for her to have to marry a man who doesn’t find her to his liking, is it?”

“Ever the gentleman,” said Vidor. “Very well, pack your gear and meet me in the caverns. We have to leave soon, and I won’t wait for you. And I expect you to do your share to sell my cantrips, by the way. None of these snide comments about quality and shoddy goods.”

The sun was just shy of being overhead by the time Vidor Druit and Arna Jadaren, accompanied by three seasoned guards, who had served the Druit household for a decade, and a pair of laden mules passed Jandi’s Oak. Over the years the way to Jadaren Hold had grown from a barely perceptible path to a wide road, capable of letting a small army pass. The long tongue of trees that once reached out from the branching of the Chondalwood and Thornwood had been pushed back, cleared for its wood and to allow the road to expand.

The great oak, so alien amid the other trees, was spared, and now grew flourishing and massive-trunked by itself, standing like a gigantic rooted guardian overlooking the road and the distant anthill of Jadaren Hold. Beneath the stretch of its branches was a small shrine, waist-high to a human, made of stacked lava stones. Before the shrine was a circle of similar stones, making a small fire pit that was now filled with cold black char.

“Wait,” called Arna, sliding off his horse. The horse, a short fat draft form, which Arna had tumbled off on a regular basis since the age of nine, snorted and rooted for grass at the stones at the side of the road.

“We’re late enough,” called Vidor.

Arna waved back in reply, but didn’t pause on his way up the slight slope to the shade of the oak above.

Under Jandi’s Oak it was very quiet, as it always was. Even when the road was busy, all sounds seemed to be muted to those who sat under its branches, and today, with the Druit party the only travelers nearby, the sole sound was the faint twitter of finches, invisible between the dark green leaves.

The black lava-rock shrine was little more than a simple pile of rocks, fitted together without mortar, and topped with a big geode that was broken open at one side, leaving a hollow area lined with a haze of tiny gray crystals. It was likely formed at the same time as the Giant’s Fist, in the same frenzy of volcanic activity that had made the black river of lava at the bottom of the valley.

Inside the crystal-lined hollow was a tiny figure, like a small doll, exquisitely braided out of dried grass stems or fine wooden fibers. Knotted around its neck was a length of green thread with three knots at the end. Arna ignored it and pulled out a small round of copper from an inner pocket of his jerkin. The tiny coin was pierced through, and a length of red string threaded it. Arna quickly tied a square knot in the middle of the string and laid it inside the geode, next to the straw figure.

From the road, Vidor gestured impatiently. Arna waved again, but he placed his hand on the rough bark that girdled the immense trunk of the tree, over a scar that looked as though it might have been a carved letter before age and growth had obscured it.

Briefly he bowed his head. “Guard my days, Jandi,” he breathed. The words felt strange. He hadn’t uttered them since he was a child, and he was a little embarrassed at saying them now. Jandi’s Oak had always been here, and it was a tradition for travelers to ask the protection of the nymph, or dryad, or whatever fey creature Jandi had been-if she had ever really existed.

It was also a tradition for the local folk to leave a tribute in the shape of small coins when they were about to embark on great journeys or changes of life. Girls from the local farms would leave their coppers, marked by a uniquely knotted or colored thread, to ask if they would marry their lovers, or leave their homes to find their fortunes, and were answered by the appearance of tiny works of intricate craftsmanship, designated with the same thread they had left with the coin, which were supposed to be signs from the spirits of the nearby forest.

Arna has his own theory about the coins and the figures. He imagined they were made not by spirits but by some reclusive forest dwellers, a race with clever hands and some small magic of concealment. Sometime long ago this method of barter-payment of small coins for their craft-had arisen, a way for folk who didn’t want to be found, yet who desired to sell their goods, to do trade. Somehow the idea that the small figures were a means of fortune-telling was born, and bandied about, and became for all intents and purposes the truth.

Yet he desired to make the gesture of leaving the coin, of asking Jandi’s protection. Coming events would be momentous, both for him and his House. He wouldn’t scruple to seek aid anywhere.

Returning to the road, he mounted his horse. The animal huffed indignantly at being pulled away from the sweet grass at the verge.

“When you’re quite ready, Master Arna,” said Vidor, wheeling his mount westward with an annoyed glance at his friend.

“I had to ask Jandi’s blessings on our enterprise,” replied Arna. “And with the quality of the goods in your packs, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

“You risk a beating for your insubordination,” said Vidor, raising a fist in mock rage. “And you’ll kindly remember that you’re here by my goodwill alone.”

“Forgive me, Master Druit,” said Arna, kneeing his horse until he caught up with Vidor. “I’ll make every effort to watch my tongue.”

Beneath Jandi’s Oak all was still, save for a whisper of wind along the grass that whirled and spiraled as no honest wind ought to do. And from the line of trees that over time and by human traffic had been hacked, burned, and driven farther and farther back, something patient and hungry watched the party as it disappeared into the dust of the road.

NONTHAL, TURMISH

1585 DR-YEAR OF THE BLOODIED MANACLES

Sanwar Beguine twisted a strand of long chestnut brown hair around his finger, letting it bite deep. He watched, fascinated, as his pinched skin grew red, then purple before he released the hair.

Four more hairs lay on an unmarked piece of paper on his desk. He put the one he had been playing with down and contemplated them. Each was at least the length of his forearm, from his elbow to the tip of his middle finger: thick hairs, almost coarse, that varied from the color of the very wood of his desk to pale amber. They were strong hairs, unbroken. He picked up his jeweler’s glass and examined them minutely. Under magnification, the substance of each hair looked like thick glass, with a clear core in the center. The ends of all five hairs had the tiny bulb that had rooted the hair in Kestrel’s scalp.

Vorsha had wept when she gave them to him the night before.

From a slot in his desk Sanwar pulled another length of clean, thick paper. He took three of Kestrel’s hairs, looped them neatly, and folded them securely inside the paper, making a tiny packet. He tucked this in a pocket inside his coat and returned to his contemplation of the other two.

It was his intention to make Kestrel an amulet. He’d told Vorsha the truth about that. But that required three of her hairs. He had different plans for the other two. They would help him answer a question that had lingered in his mind ever since he’d seen his niece toddle down the hallway outside the children’s wing, clutching her nurse’s hand. Now, when he saw the girl in unguarded moments, laughing with her sister or reviewing a vendor’s tally sheet, he wondered.

He yanked at a tuft of his own hair, wincing. Examining the resultant hairs between his fingers, he selected the two that were longest and placed them next to Kestrel’s, flicking the rest off his fingers and onto the floor. His hairs were coarser and curlier than the girl’s and of a more uniform brown. He looked at them through the glass. The tints were similar, but then, his hair was the same color as his brother’s.

The simple-seeming construction of his desk hid many small drawers and compartments. Sanwar tapped an inset, smooth-headed wooden screw on the right side with his middle finger, giving three discreet, forceful taps. In response, a small, spring-loaded door opened on the side, revealing a small space just big enough to hold a rounded ceramic bowl, the size of a man’s cupped hand.

He placed the bowl on the flat surface of the desk, beside the paper that held Kestrel’s hairs and his own. The glaze on it was uncrazed, the green of corroded copper. The bowl was otherwise undecorated. Sanwar pulled a clean, soft cloth from his pocket and wiped the already-clean interior until not a speck of dust could possibly remain.

Quickly he coiled all four strands of hair into the bowl. Another compartment in the desk held small glass vials filled with various powders. He removed two-one filled with a yellowish white powder. The other contained a powder so dark it looked black, but when grains of it were exposed to the light, it proved to be a deep red.

Sanwar sprinkled a goodly amount of the light powder into the bowl, and a scant smatter of the red. He paused and took a deep breath.

Arna knew that Nonthal was nowhere near the glory it had once boasted, years ago when Turmish was the center of trade of a significant portion of Faerun, and that its central market was like as not a mere shadow of what had existed there before. How glorious must that age have been, therefore, when the remnant was so brisk, and bustling, and filled with all manner of shops and stalls hawking everything from spices to silks, amulets to baskets of many varieties of apples. Here was a farm-woman selling poultry: chickens in willow-wand cages and quail and ducks as well, all cheeping and quacking in their precariously stacked quarters. He paused to glance at a countertop piled high with used armor, some of it scored with ominous-seeming burn marks. The merchant, a dwarf with elaborate braids in her autumn red hair and arm muscles that easily surpassed Arna’s own in girth, glanced up at him from her task of hammering out the dents in a breastplate, ran her eye over him, and turned back to her work, obviously dismissing him as a likely purchaser of fighting gear.

“Stop gawking like a country cousin on his first trip to a town temple,” muttered Vidor, hitting him lightly on the shoulder. “It’s not your first venture outside that rock you call home. And you’ve seen more goods in the caravans bound for Imaskar.”

“Sespech isn’t like this,” returned Arna. “And trade goods are packed tight when they come to Jadaren Hold.”

“Nonsense,” said Vidor distractedly, pulling a roll of paper the length and thickness of his finger from an inner pocket of his stained traveling jacket. “When the caravans come in, the undercaves of Jadaren Hold are like a pasha’s treasure trove. You and I hid there between the bales as youngsters often enough, spying out the bargaining.”

He unrolled the paper partway and frowned at it.

“Nicole Beguine’s manner is as pretty and noncommittal as his handwriting,” he said. “He salutes my clan and pedigree. He pats me on the head for my clever cantrips, as if I were a deserving student. He apologizes that he cannot make the time to discuss the matter with me in a timely fashion, and begs the pressures of business. He refers me to his daughter Ciari, who is empowered to act for the family in all ways.”

Arna snorted. “He’s good.”

“The Beguines are all very good at what they do. It’s a brilliant reply, really. Very kind, nothing you could claim was insulting, and yet it’s perfectly designed to put me at a disadvantage-to make me a petitioner begging for a favor.”

He nudged Arna, who was still looking about him at the panoply of merchant’s stalls and sniffing hungrily after the aroma of meat cooking over an open brazier.

“It doesn’t help that you refuse to let me meet the Beguine daughters at their quarters, and instead hunt them down in the market like some opportunist carpet seller. They’ll never take me seriously.”

Arna shrugged. “My apologies, but I can’t take the risk some member of the household won’t recognize me. It’s not the safest place for a Jadaren. There are those hell-bent on keeping the feud alive. And if Kestrel finds that I came spying after her …”

“If so, it’s only the truth,” said Vidor, tartly.

“And should you keep an appointment with Ciara at House Beguine, there’s no guarantee that Kestrel will accompany her, while all are agreed that every third and seventh day they go marketing together for the needs of the House.”

“Our innkeeper is agreed,” muttered Vidor. “That’s hardly all.”

“Look, Vidor, if this falls through, I’ll take up the issue with my uncle. Fair enough?”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Vidor peered through the increasing mass of people, while Arna looked around for the source of the delicious smell. “Say, Arna, are you sure of your source? I see no pair of sisters bargaining at stalls, and I can’t imagine a Beguine not arguing for the best price.”

“It’s early in the day yet,” replied his friend. “And neither of us knows them by sight.”

He moved three paces to the armory stall, where the dwarf still hammered diligently at a breastplate, wielding her hammer with a delicacy at odds with one so muscular. Arna made a polite bow and addressed her.

“Your pardon, goodmistress dwarf,” he said. “We have business with the sisters of House Beguine, who are to go to market this day. Would you know the ladies?”

The dwarf paused in her work and contemplated him from under bristling eyebrows, unsmiling. Something in his boyish, open face must have struck her as harmless, because she pointed over his shoulder with the head of her hammer.

“It happens that the Beguine girls are over there, at the Widow Bejuer-Vaud’s pie stall,” she said, her voice deep and surprisingly musical.

Arna turned to look, with a certain sense of foreboding. His promised bride was closer than he had thought, and he hadn’t a notion of what to expect.

Vidor had turned to look as well. “There,” he said.

Arna tilted his head to look between the milling mass of folk who had come to do business this day: respectable-looking housewives, sleek upper servants restocking their masters’ pantries, knots of travel-stained adventurers looking to renew their supplies, pickpockets looking for distracted targets.

There was the stall, with neatly wrapped stacked of pies high on the counter, and a portable stove glowing behind it-the source of the tantalizing smell. Several folk-man-size as well as a brace of halflings who mounted a wooden step set out for such as them to view the wares-clustered around the pie shop.

Without turning around, Arna leaned closer to the dwarf. “I don’t know them. Can you tell me which is Kestrel Beguine?”

The lump in his throat, which had been bothering him since the morning, seemed to double in size at that moment. He was about to see the woman he would cleave to for the rest of his life-or would if his uncle and a phalanx of interested parties from both Houses had their way. He felt hot and cold at once, and his forehead felt clammy, as if he were a small boy before his uncle’s desk, being tested in his numbering.

Everything depended on the color of the flame. A yellow flame would simply mean that a close relative of Sanwar’s had sired Kestrel. It would prove Nicol’s paternity, since Sanwar was not aware of any other brothers he might have lying about. A blue flame-well, that would be an extremely interesting situation. It would mean Vorsha was far more duplicitous than he could imagine, and had betrayed both brothers by admitting yet a third man to her bed.

But a green flame would prove the matter of his suspicions true, and Kestrel would be revealed as his daughter, and as her supposed father’s niece.

He lifted his hand and spoke a word, soft and sibilant. Heat flared at the tip of his index finger, and he held it over the green ceramic bowl in time to direct the flame that spurted out into the hairs and Powers within. There was a faint sizzle as the strands, short and long, crisped black and coiled in on themselves like maggots cast into a fire, and then there was a smell like burned meat.

A flame, small yet steady, pulsed over them-a flame green as the cracked heart of an emerald.

“Ouch!”

Kestrel’s hand flew to her head. At the cry of pain, Ciari Beguine left off looking at the stack of savory pies and turned to her sister.

“What’s the matter? Did someone pull your hair?” Ciari cast an angry eye at Widow Bejuer-Vaud’s customers clustering around the stall, as if to force a confession from the culpable party. A halfling standing near her on a convenient stepstool drew back in alarm, but no one looked guilty.

“No, I don’t think so.” Kestrel rubbed at a spot just over her right temple. “It was more of a little jab-as if something bit me.”

She glanced at her fingers and saw a tiny speck of blood.

“Look, Ciari,” she began. “Something did.… Oh!”

She clasped her head again, wincing, and the ledger book she always bore on market days thumped to the ground at her feet.

Concerned, Ciari took her sister by the shoulders and pulled her away from the crush of folk at the counter.

“What’s the matter, my love?” she said, her voice gentling. Ciari was at least a head taller than Kestrel, and built on broader lines. It was a running joke among the Beguine caravan guards that Ciari could take any of them on, male or female, in a fair fight.

“It burned!” Kestrel rubbed at her temple. “It’s much better now. It hardly itches.”

Ciari shifted the market basket on her arm. “An insect?”

Kestrel shook her head. “It felt like someone held a lit straw to my head, but now it’s gone. Sorry, Ciari. I don’t know what the matter is with me. Pay it no mind.”

She bent to retrieve her ledger book, thumbing through it to check for loosened pages, while Ciari efficiently glared away a street urchin who was contemplating an attempt on the sweetmeats she carried in her basket and turned back to her assessment of Widow Bejuer-Vaud’s pies.

The dwarf, engrossed in her work, didn’t look up this time. Without taking her eyes off the silver-chased steel over her knee, she pointed again.

“Mistress Kestrel is the one at the counter over there,” she said.

Arna swallowed hard, braced himself, and looked, holding his breath. Then, impressed, he let his air out with a swoosh. The marriage alliance between House Beguine and House Jadaren, brokered by seasoned merchants with little care for romance and its inefficiencies, wouldn’t saddle him with an unattractive wife-quite the opposite, in fact.

Kestrel Beguine was tall, straight of back and well built, with reddish brown hair braided into an elaborate bun at the nape of her elegant neck. She wore a simple dress, deep blue with a tiny repeating pattern worked in gold thread, a modified version of those the more modish women of Turmish wore. His merchant’s eye told him it was well cut and of fine fabric. A wide leather and brass belt clasped about her waist was hung with all manner of keys and small useful tools-and also served to accentuate her figure. She bore a market basket-his aunt had one similar, although Jadaren Hold had no market-hung over one arm. She was currently speaking intently to the small wizened woman, so shrunk and wrinkled that he would make no wager that she was fully human. Kestrel gestured at a neat stack of pies before her, and the wrinkled little woman shook her head.

Vidor’s hand on his arm made him stifle a shriek.

“Easy, fairlady,” said his friend. “The lovely Beguine sisters are at hand, and it is time to do some business. Many thanks, my friend,” he added to the dwarf behind them, who grunted without looking up from the dent she was coaxing into true.

Together they wound their way between the folk streaming between the market stalls. Arna could hear Kestrel as she addressed the pie shop owner. Her voice was penetrating-not unpleasant, but he suspected it could become shrewish with time and usage.

“Why should I pay so much? Our kitchens are sufficient. I buy for convenience, nothing more, that our cook can turn her attention to more important matters. But she can make our pies at need.”

The little widow’s reply sounded amused, and not at all offended, as if they had had this conversation many times.

“The day your kitchens can turn out pies like mine, I will close my shop, young mistress,” she said. “You well know your cooks, skilled as they may be, could never do better.”

“It’s not their practice to use cats-meat as the main ingredient,” said Kestrel dismissively.

Arna and Vidor paused at the outskirts of the stall, where the fringe of the striped cloth hung to shelter customers from the sun shivered in the slight breeze. Arna turned to his friend and quirked an eyebrow. Vidor didn’t see it. He was staring at Kestrel Beguine as she bargained, his mouth slightly open, like a small creature hypnotized by a snake.

A girl stood just behind Kestrel, slighter than the Beguine girl and wearing a dress a rich brown tint. She was brushing dust off her skirt and carried a leather case or book beneath her arm. She was Kestrel’s maid, perhaps, or given the quills strapped on her wide belt beside her purse, her accounts keeper.

She glanced up to see the Vidor staring, looked to Kestrel and back at him, and lifted her eyebrows in turn. Arna saw the resemblance then. The hair, gathered at the nape of her neck and left to tumble down her back, was of a similar tint to Kestrel’s chignon but with more chestnut and fewer red highlights. Her eyes were of a similar shape, although a different color. The curve of the cheek was also similar to Kestrel’s, as was the way she held her shoulders. Arna narrowed his eyes, recalling the Jadaren records room and the innumerable rolled parchments that recorded the families and genealogies of all the merchant families his own had dealings with. This must be Ciari, Kestrel’s elder sister.

She noticed him looking at her then, and he swallowed, thankful she didn’t know he’d mistaken her for a servant. One corner of her mouth quirked up into a wry smile, and she winked at him. Perhaps she did know at that. He shrugged in apology.

He wondered if she was herself betrothed. She and Kestrel were the only Beguine daughters, he recalled, their only sibling an elder brother of an adventurous mind who had elected to look after the family interests in Imaskar.

“Twenty delivered to the House the day after tomorrow-fresh that morning, mind. I won’t serve the stale leavings of your storehouse to my guests or family, good-widow, especially not at the price you demand. And you’ll give me one to take home now, for goodwill.”

She took a length of clean linen from her basket and slapped it on the counter.

“Waukeen forgive you for abusing a poor woman at the end of her life,” replied Mistress Bejuer-Vaud, with perfect good cheer, as she took the cloth and wrapped a pie in it, deftly tying the ends into a neat knot before she slipped it into Kestrel’s basket. “Soon I’ll be dead, and you may burn candles to light my passing to temper your many sins,” she added, looking more than ever like an elderly gnome.

Kestrel grinned. “Never change, Mother Bejuer-Vaud,” she said, sweeping her basket up and turning to go, her sister beside her. The old woman beamed, having made a profitable sale this day.

Vidor had been looking for his chance. As the Beguine girls left the stall, he stepped before them with a polite bow. Arna hastened to stay beside him.

“Your pardon, goodlady Beguine,” Vidor began, bending toward Ciari. He must have deduced that the girl in autumn brown must be Kestrel’s sister, Arna noted. Both girls halted, Ciari holding her leather packet to her breast and Kestrel starting to frown.

Perhaps she wasn’t frowning, thought Arna. Perhaps she was just preoccupied. No, she was frowning. Arna tried not to think of how it would be to wake up next to that frown every day for the rest of his life.

“Pardon my intrusion, but I’ve come at the behest of your good father,” continued Vidor, offering Ciari the coil of the paper from Nicol Beguine. “My family has been developing portable cantrips, suitable for anyone to use at his convenience. Perhaps you received our gift of a box of samples.”

Ciari took it between her long, slim fingers, one of which, Arna noticed, had a blot of ink at the knuckle. He stifled a smile, thinking of how often he’d missed a similar blot until he spotted it out in public. Ciari must do the accounting after all.

Kestrel exhaled impatiently and snatched the paper from her sister’s hand. She glanced at it and thrust it back at Vidor, who took it, startled.

“Vidor Druit, is it?” she snapped. Arna saw she had fine eyes, so brown they were almost black.

“Well, is it? Speak up, man,” she continued, as Vidor only stared up at her, nonplussed.

“So I am, goodlady,” he stammered. “It’s my honor-”

“I’ll have you know two of your so-called fire starters fizzled out with nary a spark,” Kestrel interrupted. “You can hardly expect us to put our good name to shoddy goods, can you?”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” returned Vidor with some of his accustomed spirit. “Yet two failing meant eighteen worked, correct? For I’m sure you tried them all.”

She only frowned in answer. It was a pretty enough frown, Arna conceded. Still, he hoped she didn’t make it a habit, although he feared she did.

“How often must one strike a flint until the fire catches?” Vidor pressed on. “Many times, and if the flint is wet or worn, one might never get warm.”

“Ten percent is not acceptable,” she said with such finality that Arna felt he must defend his friend’s venture.

“But it is, for something that can be sold so cheaply and is not convenient in the main,” he interjected, then blinked as Kestrel turned the full force of her gaze on him. His argument, so clear before he spoke, became muddled in his head, and he grasped at what Vidor had told him at Jadaren Hold.

“We’ve all had a basket of bad plums that must be disposed of,” he continued, struggling for coherency, “and no one complains if each customer has no more than one.”

“Bad plums?” said Kestrel. Arna glanced at Ciari, who was shaking her head with a slight smile. Kestrel drew a deep breath, as if she were about to plunge deep into a cold pool, and proceeded to tell him and Vidor exactly what she thought of bad plums. It took a long time, and was very skillfully done, and both men felt fairly bruised when it was over.

When Kestrel ended her diatribe, or perhaps was just drawing breath for another go, Vidor jumped in.

“We’ll get the failure rate below one in twenty, goodlady. We can do it more quickly with backing from House Beguine, however.”

She only stared at him as if he were a particularly unattractive slime mold, tossed her head, and turned away.

“Bad plums, indeed,” she muttered.

Ciari was looking at Arna with an expression of amused sympathy, and he made bold to lean in close to her.

“What do you do with your bad plums?” he whispered.

“We cook them down into plum butter to sell in wintertime,” she whispered back, with a glance at her sister, who was tapping her foot impatiently. “Enough brandy, and a little overripeness is easily forgiven.”

She looked a trifle distracted, as if something were bothering her, and her hazel eyes narrowed slightly, as if she were in pain.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She smiled at him and touched the side of her head briefly. “It’s nothing. A slight headache, which is passing.”

“Come,” called Kestrel. “I want to get home and see to your head.”

With a final glare for Vidor and Arna she hastened away.

“I’ll send word to your House, then, when the shipments are ready,” called Vidor after her, but she only stiffened her shoulders.

So now he knew for sure.

There was nothing but pale ash in the green bowl now, and the smell of burned hair hung like a miasma in the room. But there was no doubt about it; the green flame, though short-lived, was unmistakable. Kestrel, Vorsha’s youngest, was Sanwar’s daughter.

He drummed his broad-tipped fingers on the side of the desk and contemplated that information, what it meant and, most importantly, what to do with it.

Some use must be made of the fact that the Beguine maiden Nicol so blithely proposed throwing to the enemy was Sanwar’s child.

Arna and Vidor watched as the sisters walked away, Kestrel clutching the market basket to her side, Ciari with her ledger book tucked under her arm. Once Ciari glanced back at Arna with a rueful smile on her lips and sympathy in her hazel eyes. Arna felt his heart thump against his ribs. Kestrel put her hand firmly on her sister’s shoulder, and the older girl turned away, looking forward obediently. The swirl of their long skirts beat the dry dust of the market street into a small cloud at their feet, and as the clamor of dozens of sellers rose about them, they looked neither right nor left, their backs straight, strong, graceful, and uncompromising as they vanished into the morass of carts, people, and trade goods.

Vidor drew a long, shuddering breath and grasped Arna’s elbow.

“Arna Jadaren,” he said, his voice tinged by wonder.

Arna snorted. “Yes, I know. Come, let’s get out of the thoroughfare.”

But Vidor, like a man under a spell, didn’t move, still gazing, at the spot where the girls had disappeared between a glassblower and a booth hawking many colors of thread. His fingers tightened over Arna’s flesh and bone, and the youth winced.

“Arna Jadaren,” he said again, slowly, as if puzzling out the words. “You bastard.”

“No need to break my elbow,” said Arna, pulling his friend from the path of a pair of inebriated-looking mercenaries and a pack of giggling children. Vidor complied passively, continuing to look past the thread merchant as if he had a hope of bending his vision around the booth and seeing where the Beguine daughters had gone.

That would be a useful spell to package and sell, thought Arna incongruously as he pushed Vidor between the stall where apples were piled red, yellow, and green on the counter and the secondhand armor merchant. The dwarf looked up at them, shook her head, and bent back to her hammering.

“You lucky, lucky bastard,” said Vidor.

“You needn’t make fun,” said Arna. “She can’t be as bad as that all the time.”

“As bad as …” Vidor turned to him, and Arna saw he still held Nicol Beguine’s note curled between his fingers like a talisman. “You lucky piece of …” He gestured in the air as if tasked with explaining advanced accounting to an idiot. “That creature,” he continued. “That magnificent, gorgeous creature. That’s the kind of bride a man could search the world over for, and kill for, and die for. And, you lucky bastard, she’s yours for a handshake.”

“You mean Kestrel Beguine?” said Arna, nonplussed.

“No, I mean the Queen of the Goblins! Who else could I mean? I wish my family had an age-old feud with House Beguine, if such a thing meant marrying Kestrel.”

“The woman who just scolded you in a public street for having shoddy goods?”

Vidor smiled as if remembering his first kiss. “Oh, she never meant all that,” he said. “She’s just setting the scene for bargaining advantage.”

“Didn’t sound like that to me,” said Arna. “Sounded more like she never wanted to see your face again. Or mine, for that matter.” It occurred to him, at this belated moment, that Kestrel was likely to remember his face when they were formally introduced-and she didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor. Ciari would certainly recognize him. Not much escaped her observant gaze. He could tell that much. Would she be offended on behalf of her sister?

Suddenly it seemed important that Ciari not despise him, and he wondered why.

“You’re dense as a post,” said Vidor. “And it’s not fair, because you still get to marry her. Don’t tell me you regret the bargain, because I won’t believe you for a moment.”

By Waukeen’s purse, Vidor seemed ready to fight him over the matter. Arna lifted a placating hand.

“She’s a magnificent woman, of course,” he said. “I am very fortunate. Let’s get back to our rooms, and contemplate my good fortune and your stock of cantrips. I still don’t feel entirely safe in Beguine territory.” He tugged at Vidor’s sleeve.

With a final longing glance down the market, Vidor complied, following Arna blindly and muttering beneath his breath. Arna was glad he’d taken special note of the street turnings that would take them back to the inn.

“Vidor,” he said as he nudged his friend around a corner. “Vidor, are you reciting poetry?”

“I wish I could recall more,” Vidor said. “What’s that verse in Tomas of Meryton’s poem about the eladrin princess who married a mortal man? ‘Child of night and starlight, her beauty as a crown …’ and then I can’t remember. ‘Something something something down …’ or was it ‘town’? I know you’ve read it.”

“What will I do with you?” said Arna, amused. He had a wild idea of switching identities with Vidor, of trying his hand at furthering the Druit cantrip venture and letting his friend wed his promised bride, since he seemed to have fallen violently in love with her. No, it couldn’t be love, not so soon. Let it be infatuation, then.

“Did you mark her sister?” he said innocently. “Very pretty, wasn’t she? A sweet face and manner.”

Vidor shook his head impatiently. “Yes, yes, she looked well enough. But a pale shadow, my friend, to your promised bride. If you had hopes of my aligning myself with the Beguines, that is not the path to it. If Kestrel refuses you, however, at the altar or before … that’s a path I’ll gladly tread. ‘Down roads of man, to mortal town …’ No, that’s not it.”

He suspected Vidor would agree to a switch of identities, but it would never do. He’d hurt his family and House Beguine in the end. It would be best to go through with the bargain, for the sake of peace and the business.

There were worse fates, after all, than marrying a beautiful woman, however hard her tongue.

There were two more coppers in the lava-rock shrine beneath Jandi’s Oak, one knotted with green thread; another with blue. The small doll figure was gone, and in its place, topped with his scarlet string with the square knot, was a box, intricately woven of tiny strips of bark. It fit easily in the hollow of his hand.

Carefully he opened it. The close-fitted lid lifted away to reveal another box inside. He laughed to himself when the second box proved to contain another, no bigger than his thumbnail.

He managed to pry off the tiny lid without destroying it. Inside was not, as he half expected, another box but a rough white crystal, such as one might find in the streambed below. He shook it into his palm and rubbed his thumb over it. It was just a small fragment of quartz, smaller than a pebble, with no special quality about it.

Smiling, he restored the stone to the smallest box and nestled them all inside one another as he had found them. He was at a loss to decide how to interpret the Jandi’s gift-or the craft of the forest folk-as an augury of his future. Could it mean he was to look past his bride’s brash exterior? That was an uncomfortable thought; it could mean she had a heart of stone. Or the bit of quartz could indicate a hidden jewel when it came from the people of the woods.

He slipped the box into his pocket. It was well made, even if it told him nothing, and he didn’t intend to drive himself mad trying to guess the future.