Masques

THREE

The inn lay about halfway between the small village of Torin and the smaller village of Kestral. It had been built snugly to keep out the bitter cold of the northern winters. When the snow lay thick on the ground, the inn would have been picturesque, nestled cozily in a small valley between the impressive mountains of northern Reth. Without the masking snow, the building showed the onset of neglect.

The inn had had many prosperous years because the trappers of the Northlands were bringing down the thick pelts of the various animals that inhabited the northern mountain wilds. For many years, merchants from all over flocked to Kestral each summer because it was as far south as the reclusive trappers would travel. However, over the last several years, the trappers had gradually grown fewer, and what furs they now brought to trade were hardly worth owning—and the inn, like the villages, suffered.

The Northlands had always been uncanny: the kind of place that a sensible person stayed away from. The trappers who came to stay at the inn had always brought with them stories of the Howlaas that screamed unseen in front of the winter winds to drive men mad. They told of the Old Man of the Mountain, a being who was not a man, no matter what he was called, who could make a man rich or turn him into a beast with no more than a whisper.

But now there were new stories, though the storytellers were fewer. One man’s partner disappeared one night, leaving his bedding and clothes behind although the snow lay thick and trackless on the ground. A giant bird hovered over a campsite where four frozen bodies sat in front of a blazing fire. One trapper swore that he’d seen a dragon, though everyone knew that the dragons had been gone since the last of the Wizard Wars.

Without the trappers or the merchants who came to buy the furs, the inn depended more heavily on the local farmers’ night out and less on overnight guests. The once-tidy yard was overgrown and covered with muck from horses and other beasts, some of them two-legged.

Inside, greasy tallow candles sputtered fitfully, illuminating rough-hewn walls that would have lent a soiled air to a far-more-presentable crowd than the one that occupied the inn. The chipped, wooden pitchers adorning the tables were filled with some unidentifiable but highly alcoholic brew. The tabletops themselves were black with grease and other less savory substances.

Rushing here and there amid the customers, a woman trotted blithely between tables refilling pitchers and obviously enjoying the fondles that were part of any good barmaid’s job. She wasn’t as clean as she could have been, but then neither was anyone else. She also wasn’t as young as she claimed to be, but the dim light was kind to her graying hair, and much was forgiven because of her wholehearted approval of the male species.

The only other woman in the room was wielding a mop across the uneven floor. It might have done more good if both the water and the rag mop she used weren’t dirtier than the floor. The wet bottom of her skirt did as much to remove the accumulated muck as the mop.

As she passed close to the tables, she deftly avoided the casual hands that came her way. Not that many did. Most of the customers were regulars and were aware that if someone got too pushy, he was liable to end up with the bucket over his head for his troubles.

Dishwater blond hair was pulled into an irregular bun at the back of her neck. Her plain face was not improved by the discontented expression that held sway on her thin lips as she swung the mop. “Discontented” was a mild word for how Aralorn was feeling.

A month after she’d returned from the ae’Magi’s castle, Ren had called her into his office and told her that he was sending her to the middle of nowhere to keep an eye on the local inhabitants. The only reason that she’d been able to think of for her demotion to this kind of assignment was that Ren no longer trusted her; something that he had in common with most of the rest of Sianim. The story of what she had said to Talor had somehow become common knowledge, and even her closest friends avoided her as if she had a case of the pox. Ren hadn’t been interested in discussing it one way or the other.

She had spent almost a full month cleaning floors, scrubbing tables, and serving poor man’s ale. Profits might be down, but business at the inn was still fairly brisk because of a high rate of alcoholism and infidelity among the people of both villages. If the tavern had been located in the middle of a busy town, she might have picked up some useful bits of information for Ren. However, the inn was mostly frequented by tinkers, drunken “family men,” and occasionally by one very impoverished highwayman—the more skilled and ruthless of his kind having left for richer pastures.

The most monumental thing that had happened since Aralorn started there was when the daughter of the Head-man of Kestral ran off with somebody named Harold the Rat. When the highwayman came in next time looking more miserable than usual, accompanied by a female who was taller than he by a good six inches and harangued him from the time they sat down until they left, Aralorn concluded that he was the mysterious Harold and offered him her silent condolences.

Normally, she’d have been relatively content with the assignment, especially since she’d added a few new tales to her collection of stories—courtesy of the few trappers she’d seen. But she had the doubtful privilege of knowing that the ae’Magi was striving to re-create the power the wizards had held before the Wizard Wars—and hold that power all by himself.

She should be doing something, but for the life of her she couldn’t think what. If she left without orders or extreme necessity, being banished from Sianim was the very least of the punishments she was likely to suffer. It was more likely she’d be hung if they caught her.

Tonight, her restlessness was particularly bad. It might have had something to do with the innkeeper’s wife being sick, leaving the innkeeper doing all of the cooking—rendering the food even less edible than it usually was. That led to more than the average number of customers getting sick on the floor—because the only thing left to do at the inn was drink, and the alcohol that they served was none of the best and quite probably mildly poisonous judging by the state of the poor fools who drank it.

As the newest barmaid, the task of cleaning up fell to Aralorn. With the tools she’d been handed, this consisted mostly of moving the mess around until it blended with the rest of the grime on the floor. The lye in the water ate at the skin on her hands almost as badly as the smell of the inn ate at her nose.

She dipped the foul-smelling mop into the fouler-smelling water in her bucket and occupied herself with the thought of what she would do to Ren the next time she saw him. As she was scrubbing—humming a merry accompaniment to her thoughts, a sudden hush fell into the room.

Aralorn looked up to see the cause of the unusual quiet. Against the grime and darkness of the inn, the brilliant clothing of the two men in court attire was more than a little incongruous.

Not nobles surely, but pages or messengers from the royal court. They were usually used to run messages from the court to a noble’s estate. What they were doing at this little pedestrian inn was anyone’s guess. Unobtrusively, Aralorn worked her way to a better observation post and watched the proceedings carefully.

One of the messengers stayed near the door. The other walked to the center of the room. He spoke slowly so that his strange court accent wouldn’t keep the northerners from understanding his memorized message.

“Greetings, people. We bring you tragic news. Two weeks ago—Myr, your king, overset by the deaths of his parents, attacked and killed several of his own palace guard. Overwrought by what he had done, His Majesty seized a horse and left the royal castle. Geoffrey ae’Magi has consented to the Assembly’s request to accept the Regency of Reth until such time as King Myr is found and restored to his senses. The ae’Magi has asked that the people of Reth look for their king so that a cure may be effected. As he is not right in his mind, it may, regrettably, be necessary to restrain the king by force. As this is a crime punishable by death, the Regent has issued a pardon. If the king can be brought to the ae’Magi, there is every possibility that he can be cured. As loyal subjects, it is your duty to find Myr.

“It is understood that a journey to the royal castle will be a financial hardship, thus you will have just recompense for your service to your king. A thousand marks will be paid to the party that brings King Myr to the capital or restrains him and sends a message to the court. I have been authorized to repeat this message to the citizens of Reth by the Regent, Geoffrey ae’Magi.” He repeated his message twice, word for word each time, then he bowed and left the inn with his companion.

A thousand marks was more than a farmer or innkeeper would make in a lifetime of hard work. Recompense, my aching rump, thought Aralorn, it was merely a legal way to put a bounty on Myr’s head.

Wandering between tables, she caught bits and pieces of conversation and found that most people seemed to feel the ae’Magi had done them a great service by taking the throne. They didn’t all agree on what ought to be done for the king. She heard an old farmer announce that everything should be done to see that Myr was captured and taken to be cured, poor lad. He was answered by agreeable muttering from his table.

Olin, the tanner from Torin (and more than slightly drunk), spoke up loudly. “Anyone who cares about Reth should kill Myr and ask for Geoffrey ae’Magi to take the kingship of us. Who needs a king what is going to attack his own folk out of the blue like that? Just think what’d be like havin’ the Archmage for a king. We’d not worry ’bout those Darranians, who’re claiming our mines over in the west borderlands.” He paused to belch. “’N with the most powerful magician in the world, we could even drive those Uriah spooks outta the wilds. We could claim the Northlands altogether. Then we could be rich again.”

The patrons of the inn shifted uncomfortably and chose another topic to speak on; but they didn’t disagree with what he’d said.

Proof, if she’d needed it, that what Wolf had warned her of was actually taking place. The whole of Reth had adored their handsome prince, who was promising both as a warrior and a statesman—and it didn’t hurt that he was the spitting image of his grandfather, who had been a great king by any reckoning. Two years ago, the last time Aralorn had worked a job in Reth, Olin’s words would have gotten him into a rough argument or even a beating.

Moving unobtrusively, Aralorn took the slop bucket outside to dump it. That done, she strolled to the stables, where Sheen was.

She received a lot of harassment from Ren when she took the warhorse with her on assignments, because he was too valuable to go unremarked. Talor carried an old coin for luck when he went into battle: It must be much more convenient than a horse.

She did what she could to disguise his worth. He’d long ago learned to limp on command, which helped somewhat. She also left him ungroomed, but anyone with an eye for horses could see that he was no farmer’s plug.

At the inn, she’d let it be known that he was the only legacy left to her when her elderly protector died. The innkeeper didn’t ask her too many questions—just retained the better part of her weekly salary in payment and half the stud fees Sheen had been earning.

Aralorn scuffed her foot lightly in the dirt as she leaned against the stall door. Sheen moved over to her and shoved his head against her shoulder. Obligingly, she rubbed his jaw.

“The last time I saw Myr, he was hardly distraught enough to go berserk,” she confided. “Convenient that the Assembly decided to place the ae’Magi as Regent. I wonder how he managed that—only in Reth would a mage of any sort be welcome to help himself to the throne. But there are some really strong mages in the Assembly. Hard to believe he could use his magic on them, and no one even noticed.”

The stallion whickered softly, and Aralorn fed him the carrot she’d taken before it would have gone to its death in some greasy pot of stew. She tangled her hand in Sheen’s coarse gray-black mane as he munched. “I could go to Ren with this, but given his present attitude toward the ae’Magi, I don’t know what he would do—and doubtless he knows about it anyway. Probably supports it the same way those fools in the inn do—and for the same reason.” She tightened her hands in the horsehair, and whispered, “I think we should go looking for Myr, don’t you? Myr is immune to magic—he’s the ideal hero to stand against the ae’Magi. An outcast spy from Sianim isn’t enough to make a difference, but maybe I can help with strategy. At the very least, I can tell Myr why everyone is suddenly against him.”

There was a noise—she froze for a moment, but it was only the wind rattling a broken board on one of the stall doors.

Even so, she lowered her voice further. “I only wish I had some way of contacting Wolf. Knowing him, he probably could tell us exactly where Myr went.” Wolf was full of useful information when he chose to share it. “It could take us quite a while to find Myr.” She paused, then smiled. “But if I’m going out to engage in hopeless tasks, I’d rather look for Myr than struggle to clean that floor another day. We’ll start with those messengers and see what they know.”

Finished with the carrot, Sheen bumped her impatiently—asking for more. “Well, Sheen, what do you say? Should we abandon our post and go missing-monarch hunting?” The gray head moved enthusiastically against her hand when she caught a particularly itchy spot: It looked for all the world as if he were nodding in agreement.

The restlessness that had been plaguing her was gone. Like a hunting dog let off the leash, she had a purpose at last. She snuck into the kitchen and blessed her luck because no one was there—she could hear the innkeeper arguing with someone in the common room. It sounded as though he might be occupied for a long time, which suited her just fine.

She located a large cloth that was almost clean and folded it to hold such provisions as would keep on a journey: bread, cheese, dried salt meat.

Cautiously, she made her way upstairs without meeting anyone and snuck into the room that had belonged to the only son of the innkeeper. He’d died last winter of some disease or the other, and no one had yet had the heart to clean out his room. Everything in the room was neat and tidy—and she had the sudden thought that perhaps it hadn’t been the change in customs that caused the inn to fall on harder times. She murmured a soft explanation of what she was doing and why in case the young man’s spirit lingered nearby.

She opened the chest at the foot of the bed and found a cloak, a pair of leather trousers, and a tunic: tough, unremarkable clothes well suited to traveling. At the bottom of the trunk, she found a pair of sturdy riding boots and a set of riding gloves. She wrapped all of her ill-gotten goods in the cloak and hurried out of the room and up the ladder to her attic room.

She retrieved her sword from its hiding place inside the straw mattress (she generally slept on the floor, it being less likely to be infested by miscellaneous vermin). Before sliding the sheath onto her belt, she drew the sword from habit—to make sure that the blade needed neither sharpening nor cleaning. It was a sword she’d found hidden in one of the many cubbyholes of her father’s castle—the odd pinkish gold luster of the metal had intrigued her. It was also the only sword in the place that fit her, her father’s blood tending toward large and muscle-bound, which she was not. Aside from Sheen, it was the only thing she’d taken from her home when she left.

She wasn’t a swordswoman by any means. Practice and more practice had made her competent enough to make it useful against things like the Uriah, creatures too big to be killed quickly with a dagger and not easily downed with a staff—creatures not holding swords of their own.

She gratefully rid herself of the filthy maidservant’s dress and dropped it on the floor, donning instead the stolen garments and found that, as she expected, they were very tight in the hips and chest and ridiculously big everywhere else. The boots, in particular, were huge. If the innkeeper’s son had lived to grow up, he would have been a big man.

Her mother’s people could switch their sex as easily as most people changed shoes, but Aralorn had never been able to take on a male’s shape. Perhaps it was her human blood, or perhaps she’d never tried hard enough. Fortunately, the boy whose clothes she’d appropriated had been slender, so that it was an easy thing to become a tall, angular, and androgynous woman—with big feet—who could pass as a man.

Once dressed, she was satisfied she looked enough like a young man neither rich nor poor, a farmer’s son . . . or an innkeeper’s. Someone who wouldn’t seem out of place on a sturdy draft horse.

Most of the items in the room she left behind, though she took the copper pieces that she’d earned as well as the small number of coins that she always kept with her as an emergency fund.

She shut the door to her room and made sure that the bundle that she was carrying wasn’t awkward-looking. As she made her way down the stairs, she was met by the other barmaid. Aralorn gave the woman a healthy grin and swept past her unchallenged.

In the stable, Aralorn saddled Sheen. The cloak and the food she packed into her copious saddlebags. She filched an empty grain sack from a stack of the same and filled it with oats, tying it to the saddle. From one of the saddlebags, she took out a small jar of white paste. Carefully, she painted the horse’s shoulders with white patches such as a heavy work collar tends to leave with time. Farmer’s plug no, but he could well pass for a squire’s prize draft horse.

On the road, she hesitated before turning north toward Kestral. That was the direction that the messengers had been traveling. If she could find them, in the guise of a young farmer, she could question them without anyone’s taking too much notice—as the barmaid could not have. A second reason for looking north was that the mountains were the best place for someone seeking to hide from a human magician. Human magic didn’t work as well in the Northland mountains as it did elsewhere. She knew stories of places in the mountains where human magic wouldn’t function at all. Conversely, green-magic users, her mother’s brother had told her, found that magic was easier to work in the north. She’d experienced that herself.

As Myr was from Reth, Aralorn felt that it was safe to assume that he was aware of the partial protection the Northlands offered. There were very few other places as easily accessible that offered any protection from the ae’Magi. Unfortunately, the ae’Magi would also be aware that the Northlands were the most likely place for Myr to go, hence the messengers to the otherwise-unimportant villages that dotted the border of Reth.

Although it was still late summer, the air was brisk with the chill winds. They retained their bite this far north year-round, making Aralorn grateful for the soft leather gloves and warm cloak she wore.

Several miles down the road, she turned off to take a trail she’d heard the highwayman describe when, half-drunk, he bragged about getting away from an angry merchant. The shortcut traversed the mountain rather than wandering around its base. With luck and the powerful animal under her, she could cut more than an hour off her travel time.

Sheen snorted and willingly took on the climb, his powerful hindquarters easily pushing his bulk and hers up the treacherously steep grade. His weight and large hooves worked against him on the rocky, uncertain ground, though, and Aralorn held him to a slow trot that left Sheen snorting and tossing his head in impatience.

“Easy now, sweetheart. What’s your hurry? We may have a long way to go yet this evening. Save it for later.” Always mindful that someone could overhear, she kept her voice low and boyish.

One dark-tipped ear twitched back. After a small crow hop of protest, Sheen settled into stride, only occasionally breaking gait to bounce over an obstacle in his way.

As evening wore on, the light began to fade, and Aralorn slowed him into a walk. In full dark, his eyesight was better than hers, but in the twilight, he couldn’t see the rocks and roots hidden by shadows. They had a few miles before the sun went down completely, then they could pick up the pace again.

Being unable to see clearly made the seasoned campaigner nervous, and he began to snort and dance at every sound. There was a sudden burst of magic nearby—she didn’t have time to locate it because that was the last straw for Sheen, who plunged off the trail and down the steep, tree-covered side of the mountain.

She sank her butt into the saddle and stayed with him as he dodged trees and leapt over brush. “Just you behave, you old worrywart, you. It’s all right. Nothing’s going to get us but ghosts and ghoulies and other nice things that feed on stupid people who ride in the woods after dark.”

The dark mountainside was too treacherous to allow her to pull him up hard, especially at the pace he was going, so she crooned to him and bumped him lightly with the reins—a request rather than an order.

He sank back on his haunches to slide down a steep bit instead of charging down it, and stopped when the ground leveled some. He took advantage of the loose rein to snatch a bit of grass as if he hadn’t been snorting and charging a minute before.

Aralorn stretched and looked around to catch her bearings. As she did so, she heard something, a murmur that she just barely caught. Sheen’s ears twitched toward the sound as well. Following the direction of the stallion’s ears, she moved him toward the sound. When she could pick up the direction herself, she dismounted and dropped his reins.

She crept closer, moving as slowly as she could so as not to make any noise. Several yards from Sheen, she picked up the smell of a campfire and the residue of magic—it tasted flat and dull: magic shaped by human hands despite the nearness of the Northlands. Probably the remnant of the spell that had startled Sheen into charging down the hill, toward danger, just as any good warhorse would have done.

She followed the sound of men’s voices and the smell of smoke through a thicket of bushes—she had to use a tendril of magic to keep quiet going through that—and around a huge boulder that had tumbled down from a cliff above. Peeking around the side of the boulder, she saw a cave mouth, the walls of the entrance reflecting light from a fire deeper inside.

The voices were louder, but still too far away to be distinguishable.

The wonderful thing about mice, Aralorn reflected as she shifted forms, was that they were everywhere and never looked out of place. A mouse was the first shape she’d ever managed—and she’d since worked hard on a dozen different varieties and their nearest kin. Shrew, vole, field mouse, she could manage any of them. The medium-sized northern-type mouse was just the right mouse to look perfectly at home as she scampered into the cave.

Two men stood by a large pile of goods that ranged from swords to flour, but consisted mainly of tarps and furs. The scent of fear drifted clearly to her rodent-sharp nose from the more massive (at least in bulk) man as he cowered away from the other. He bore the ornate facial tattooing of the merchant’s guild of Hernal, a larger city of Ynstrah, a country that lay several weeks’ travel to the south on the west side of the Anthran Alliance. He was wearing nothing but a nightshirt.

The second man had his back to her. He was tall and slender, but something about the way he moved told her that this man knew how to fight. He wore a hooded cloak that flickered red and gold in the light. Underneath the hood of the cloak he wore a smoothly wrought silver mask in the shape of a stylized face.

Traveling players used such masks when they acted out skits, allowing one player to take on many roles in a single play without confusion to the audience. Usually, these masks were made out of inexpensive materials like clay or wood. She’d never seen one made of silver, not even in high-court productions.

Each mask’s face was formed with a different expression denoting an explicit emotion that mostly bore only a slight resemblance to any expression found on a real face. As a girl from a noble house, Aralorn had spent many a dreary hour memorizing the slight differences between concern and sympathy, weariness and suffering, sorrow and defeat. She found it interesting that the mask this man wore displayed the curled lips and furrowed brow of rage.

In one hand the slender man held a staff made of some kind of very dark wood. On the lower end was the clawed foot of a bird of prey molded in brass, and its outspread talons glowed softly orange in the darkness of the cave as if it had been held in hot coals. The upper end of the staff was encrusted with crystals that lit the cave with their blue-white light.

The staff made it obvious that this man was the mage responsible for the magic that had so startled Sheen. If he had spirited the merchant and his goods from wherever he’d been to here—she assumed the man hadn’t been traveling in his nightshirt—then he was a sorcerer of no little power.

Hmm, she thought, maybe this mouse idea wasn’t such a good one. A powerful mage on alert might find a nearby mouse that wasn’t really a mouse, and he wasn’t likely to be very pleasant about it. Even as she started to back away, the mage looked over his shoulder and gestured impatiently. She didn’t even have time to fight the spell before she was stuffed into a leather bag that smelled strongly of magic.

She tried once to shift back into her human shape, but nothing happened. He’d trapped her, and until she figured a way out, she was stuck.

“How much, merchant?” the mage asked in Rethian. His voice was distorted with a strange accent—or maybe it was just the leather bag.

“Fourteen kiben.” The merchant, too, spoke good Rethian, but his voice was hoarse and trembling. Still, Aralorn noticed, the price he’d quoted was at least twice what the items were worth, unless there was something extremely valuable among them.

“Six.” The magician’s voice may have had an odd slur to it, but it was still effective in striking terror into the heart of the merchant—who squeaked in a most unmanly fashion. Aralorn had the feeling that it wouldn’t take much to achieve that result.

“Six, I accept,” he gasped. There was the sound of money changing hands, then a distinctive pop and an immense surge of magic, which Aralorn decided signaled that the merchant had been sent back to wherever he’d come from in the first place.

There was a moment’s pause, then a third person’s voice spoke.

“It worked.” He sounded as if he hadn’t expected it to. He also sounded young and aristocratic, probably because Myr was both.

She hadn’t planned on finding him quite so soon, not a half day’s ride from the inn. It was too convenient. Had Ren known that something was going on here? Was that why he’d sent her out to the backside of nowhere? She might have to take back months of heartfelt curses if that was so.

“Hopefully our mutual enemy will not think to question all of the merchants traveling in Reth.” There was something about the tone of the magician’s voice that was familiar, but the odd accent kept throwing her. She should be able to figure out what kind of an accent it was, she knew languages—which was why Ren had pulled her out of the rank and file in the first place.

“He wouldn’t learn much even if he did. The merchant doesn’t know where you brought him to.”

The magician grunted. “He knows that it was in the north because of the cold. He knows that it was in the mountains because of the cave. That is more than we can afford to have the ae’Magi know.”

Myr gave no vocal reply; but he must have nodded, because when he spoke again, it was on a different topic. “What was that you grabbed off the floor?”

“Ah yes. Just a . . . spy. Small but effective nonetheless.” Was that amusement she picked up in his tone?

The bag was opened, and she found herself hanging by her tail for the perusal of the two men. She twisted around and bit the hand that held her, hard. The mage laughed, but moved his hand so that she sat comfortably on his palm.

“My lord, may I present to you the Lady Aralorn, sometime spy of Sianim.”

She was so shocked she almost fell off her perch. How did he know who she was? It wasn’t as if she were one of the famous generals that everyone knew. In fact, as a spy, she’d worked pretty hard to keep her name out of the spotlight. And no one, no one knew that Aralorn could become a mouse.

Then it hit her. Without the additional muffling of the bag she recognized the voice. It was altered through the mask, a human throat, and that odd accent—but she knew it anyway. No one else could have that particularly macabre timbre. It was Wolf.

“So”—Myr’s voice was quiet—“Sianim spies on me now.” Aralorn turned her attention to Myr. In the short time since she’d seen him, he’d aged years. He was thinner, his mouth held taut, and his eyes belonged to the harsh old warrior who had been his grandfather instead of the boy she’d met. He wore clothing that a rough trapper or a traveling merchant might wear, patched here and there with neat stitches.

Deciding that the mouse was no longer useful—and it was easier to talk as a human—Aralorn jumped nimbly off her perch and resumed her normal shape, which was not the one that he would recognize. “No, my lord,” she answered. “Or at least that wasn’t my assignment. Sianim has spies on everyone. In fact, this is a rather fortunate meeting; I was looking for you to tell you that the ae’Magi’s messengers have reported your fit of madness to all the nearby townsfolk.” She spoke slowly and formally to give him a chance to adjust to her altered state.

Rethians were not less prejudiced against shapeshifters, just more likely to admit their existence. Since her mother’s people lived in the northern mountains of Reth and paid tribute yearly to the King of Reth in the form of exquisite tapestries and well-crafted tools delivered in the night by unseen persons, the Rethians had a tougher time dismissing them as hearsay.

Folktales warned villagers to stay out of the forests at night, or they would be fodder of the shapeshifters or other green-magic users who might still be lurking in the impenetrable depths of the trees. Given the antagonism that the shapeshifters felt toward invading humans, Aralorn was afraid that the stories might not have it all wrong. But the royal family tended not to be as wary, probably the result of the yearly tribute they received—and the fact that they lived in southern Reth, far from any possible outpost of shapeshifters.

Myr glanced at the mage, who nodded and spoke. “That she means you no harm, I will vouch for.” The slurred quality was not a product of the muffling of the pouch; if anything it was stronger than it had been. Maybe it was the mask.

“She has a gift for languages,” Wolf continued. “I need someone to help me in my research. If she is not occupied with other things, it would do no harm to bring her to camp with us. She can fight, and the gods know we have need of fighters. Also, she stands in danger from the ae’Magi if he should discover who it was that spied on him.”

“You spied on the Archmage?” Myr raised an eyebrow at her.

Aralorn shrugged. “It wasn’t my favorite assignment, but definitely one of the more interesting.” She let her face shift quickly to the one he’d seen in the ae’Magi’s castle, then went back to normal.

Myr looked a little sick—watching someone’s face move around could do that—then he blinked a couple of times. Finally, he smiled. “Yes, I see. Welcome, then, Lady. I invite you to join our small camp.”

Myr gave a short bow of his head, which she appreciated as exactly the correct height for a male sovereign to give in polite invitation or acceptance to a female who was neither his subject nor fellow royalty.

She in her turn, dressed in the clothes of the dead son of the innkeeper, gave him the exact curtsy she would have given him as her father’s daughter. Rethian nobility overdid manners, so she knew he’d catch the subtle difference.

He did. “Who are you?”

She gave him an apologetic smile as she pulled at the uncomfortably tight front of the tunic. “Lady Aralorn of Lambshold, at your service.”

“One of Henrick’s daughters.” Myr’s voice carried a hint of incredulity.

Aralorn nodded, smiling apologetically. “I know, I don’t look much like him, do I? He didn’t think so either. I was quite a disappointment to him.” She rolled up the sleeves until she could see her hands again.

“No, that’s not what I mean,” said Myr. “I’ve seen you in court—a long time ago. You’re his oldest child?”

She laughed. “You must have been all of ten. I’m the oldest daughter, but I have a brother a year older than I am. We two are the illegitimate get of youthful folly. My older brother’s mother was a household maid, and my mother was a shapeshifter who seduced poor Father in the nearby woods. With fourteen of us, I can see where you could have trouble keeping us straight. My siblings are all copies of our father, rather unfortunate for my sisters, but my brothers are all considered quite handsome.”

She startled a laugh out of Myr at her descriptions of her family. Her sisters were all quite beautiful, golden like their father—and like their father, they overtopped most men by a good handspan.

“How did you end up in Sianim?”

She tilted her head, thinking about how best to frame a reply. “I am too much my father’s daughter to be content with sewing a dress or learning how to converse. He taught me swordplay with my brothers because I asked him. When it came time for me to go to court, it was obvious to both him and me that as a Lady I was hopeless. He gave me his own horse and sent me on my way.”

It had been a lot more complicated than that, but that had been the heart of the matter. The rest of it wouldn’t matter to the King of Reth. As she talked, she worked at rolling up her pant legs. Finally, she cut the bottom off with her dagger. There was nothing to be done for the boots.

“Somehow that sounds like the Lyon of Lambshold. He’s the only man I know who is unconventional enough to do that.” Myr shook his head.

Straightening up to her unimpressive height, Aralorn continued, “He said, if memory serves, that if no one had the nerve to laugh in his face when he was addressed as the ‘Lyon of Lambshold,’ no one would say anything about an absent daughter.”

“If you are through talking, it might be best if we left for camp.” The harsh voice was distracted, and Wolf’s eyes focused on some distant point.

“Someone coming?” Myr changed in an instant from courtier to warrior.

Wolf grunted, then said, “Not here, but near enough that we ought to move out. So much magic was bound to attract attention.”

Aralorn left them to their packing and ducked through the trees to grab her horse. As she checked the girth, she muttered to Sheen, “I wonder what mischief our friend Wolf has been up to?”