In the House of Five Dragons
21. Walls of Jade
“Why does blood shine through from one world to the next? As far as VEIL can tell us, Alterrans have nothing like blood themselves. Could it be something in the blood? Something that our blood holds or represents to them? Or perhaps to us?”
— Huron DuRainne
The next morning, Thainna ate a hurried breakfast, then jogged across the estate to the main house. The young Talon still marveled that she had a breakfast to rush. Would she ever get used to it?
In the atrium, Karl and another guard that she didn’t recognize nodded to her. Thainna paused in the humid green shade of a fan palm.
“I’ve never seen guards in here,” she said. “Is this where Lord Mazrem’s going to be having his meetings?”
“I think so. Bastil told us to keep the atrium under watch all day,” Karl told her. He gestured to some other servants struggling to carry a heavy gilded divan. “It sure looks like they’re setting up for an audience.”
“Do you know when we’re supposed to start?”
“I’m not sure. Bastil hasn’t told us yet.”
Karl stifled a yawn. It was still early. His companion shot him a disparaging look. The Lyncean flushed and stood up straighter.
“They’re only supposed to be short visits,” said Thainna. Karl probably didn’t need to know and likely didn’t care, but Thainna felt so important. A lowly thief making decisions in the Mazrem house, even small ones… it was impossible not to boast a little. “I told Bastil and Lady Mazrem to keep them that way.”
“Hae, Mana Vahn.” Karl appeared suitably impressed.
Thainna nodded and swept out of the atrium. Bastil waited outside the closed door of the bedroom and Gaius Mazrem paced not far away. The Mazrem heir looked a little ill. Should she offer to help him? What could she do? She was spared any awkwardness by Bastil waving her toward the door.
“Go inside. Take care of Captain Mazrem and then make sure he gets to the atrium,” he instructed.
“Hae, sir.”
Satisfied, the steward held the door for Thainna. Rikard and Laurael were already awake. Dressers fussed over Lady Mazrem, winding her in a moon-white tabba embroidered with silver and arranging her curly brown hair into artful waves around her shoulders. Unable to turn her face away from the girl who was applying dark color to her lips, Laurael brought only her eyes to bear on Thainna.
“There you are,” she said. “Make sure my husband is well and then help him dress.”
“Hae, my lady.”
Thainna dodged a man laying out a clean saela and went to Rikard. He was still in bed, balancing a half-full plate of eggs and bread and eating in carefully measured bites. She smiled at him and perched on the edge of the blankets. Someone had even shaved his scraggly beard.
Probably not Rikard himself, Thainna guessed. No one in their right mind would let the man near a razor.
“How’re you feeling?” Thainna asked.
“Good,” Rikard answered. He pointed down to his breakfast and smiled. It lit up his face. “I’ve been eating slow.”
“Keep eating whenever you’re hungry,” she told him. “You’re still far too thin and it’s going to take you more than a couple of days to fill out again.”
“You’re thin, too.”
Thainna wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she instructed Rikard to stand and set about stripping away the old bandages. She examined the stitches in his side. At some point, they would have to come out, wouldn’t they? Not yet, though. Thainna would have to ask Narissa about them later.
“Hae,” Rikard said.
“What?” Thainna lifted her eyes to meet his brown ones. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. You have very green hands.”
“I don’t understand,” Thainna said.
“Small, gentle. The stitches… Hae, they should come out when the cut stays closed on its own. This isn’t my first time. I can tell you when to cut them,” Rikard offered.
“I know my job,” Thainna lied. “I don’t need–”
“You wondered. You wanted to ask Narissa. But I can tell you when they…”
“I didn’t say that!” she hissed quietly.
There were at least a half-dozen other servants in the room and she didn’t want any of them listening.
“I heard you,” Rikard said.
“You… you heard me?” Thainna asked. “You heard me thinking about it?”
“Hae.”
“What? Bloody stones!”
Thainna pulled back and her foot came down on nothing. She had forgotten about the stepped dais that held the bed. The world lurched as Thainna tripped and fell. She thumped down on her backside with a grunt.
Clumsy idiot!
“Are you alright?” asked a nearby dresser. He had Rikard’s black saela draped over his arm, but offered his other hand to Thainna. “What happened?”
“Hae. I just slipped,” she answered hurriedly.
The man stepped back to let Thainna rise again. She looked up at the bed. Rikard Mazrem still stood beside the bed, staring at her with a strangely lost expression. Did he understand her fear? If he could hear her thoughts, he had to understand. But that was impossible, of course!
Alterrans live off of our memories and emotions, don’t they? Rikard spent thirty years with them. What if he picked up a few tricks after all that time?
Thainna brushed off her tabba and mounted the stairs again. Without meeting Rikard’s eyes, she found a new roll of bandages in her satchel and used the knife to cut them to length. She tried not to think, to keep her mind blank, but it was nearly impossible. Gods only knew what would happen if Rikard discovered any one of her lies! She would have to find some excuse to get out of the room, to get away…
Sped by panic, Thainna’s blood rushed in her ears, drowning out the noise of the crowded room. She almost screamed and fell again when she felt Rikard’s hand on her wrist. Her fingers tightened convulsively around the canister of salve. The knight held her, eyes afire.
“Stop!” he hissed.
Every inch of Thainna’s body tensed to run, just like that first night in the Rows. Rikard Mazrem knew she was lying and he was about to tear her apart, to rip her into bloody flinders with a single command to the Alterra. Or make her vanish like the Fiori in Njorn pass…! Or maybe kill her with his own hands, like he had tried to do to Karl! Thainna squeaked in breathless terror.
“Stop,” Rikard gasped again, tightening his grip on Thainna’s wrist. His expression was not one of anger, but pain. “Stop! You are too sharp… too frightened. Stop, it breaks. It hurts!”
What? Did her fear actually hurt Rikard? An idea suddenly took hold, a sort of understanding as tenebrous as smoke. “Was that what you were talking about the other day, in the terrestrium? You said something about weapons in Alterra. Fear undoing bravery or something. Is this what you meant? Fear… hurts you?”
“One of a hundred blades, but among the sharpest.”
Rikard sounded half-excited at her understanding, but her earlier dread was obviously still making itself felt… to both of them. The knight rubbed his temple hard enough to leave red marks on the skin, as though his finger had been dipped in paint. He released Thainna’s wrist.
“I’m sorry, Captain Mazrem,” she said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to… to fear you.”
“There was a…”
Rikard didn’t seem to know how to put his thoughts — or maybe hers — into words. But before Rikard could try again, his dresser approached the bed and cleared his throat.
“Lord Mazrem, time is running down.” He held out the saela. “Foster, are you finished?”
Rikard looked helplessly at Thainna. She nodded to the dresser. “I’m about done here. Just let me tie off this bandage and then we’ll get Captain Mazrem ready. Do you have a comb?”
The dresser produced a bone comb from the pocket of his tabba and handed it to Thainna. When she had secured the last bandage, she went to work tugging the night’s tangles from Rikard’s hair.
Like most Carcaen men, his black hair was perfectly straight and quite rigid. Combing it was an easy task and done in minutes. Much nicer than her own wavy red mess, Thainna thought. Even clean as it was now, the stuff always seemed as ratted as a bird’s nest. She focused on the playful jealousy, hoping that Rikard found it less painful than fear… and that it masked her many lies.
While Rikard’s dresser helped him button his saela and pull on his high, polished black leather boots, Thainna slipped the carved ivory comb into a pocket of her tabba. A middle-aged Ruan man came through the door, balancing a crystal goblet of wine on a silver tray. After he had delivered it to Lady Mazrem, Thainna caught his attention.
“Is Bastil still waiting outside?” she asked.
“No, he’s gone with Lord Mazrem. Lord Gaius Mazrem, I mean. They went to meet today’s first guest.”
“Do you know who that is?”
“Master Alexander Ferro, the historian.”
Thainna thanked him and turned away. She waited quietly in one corner until the others were done fussing over Lord and Lady Mazrem.
It was too much to think about, too much to take in. Everyone knew that Rikard Mazrem was special. Selfless and honorable. A true hero. Well, a traumatized and intensely scarred hero, Thainna corrected herself. Only with an effort did she keep herself from thinking crazy.
Did anyone else know about Rikard’s… ability yet? None of the servants, Thainna was certain, or else someone would surely have gossiped that their master could hear thoughts. Rikard’s words were hard to make sense of at the best of times. His own family seemed more interested in keeping him quiet than listening to what he had to say or learning what he could do.
She would have to notify the House of Five Dragons. This was exactly the kind of thing that the Crest wanted to know. Thainna wasn’t sure how it could be useful in controlling Rikard Mazrem. In fact, it would more than likely make the job impossible.
But if she could manage to do it, Thainna could only imagine the uses of a man who could hear thoughts as plainly as if they had been spoken.
Thainna looked across the bedroom at Rikard. He had finished with his clothes and stood now behind his wife, kissing the back of her graceful neck. Two of the dressers stood to the side, giggling at the display of affection and whispering behind their hands. The man who had been helping Rikard a moment before stood beside Thainna, shaking his head.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“Nothing, mana,” he said a little too quickly. After a moment of watching Rikard and his wife, he took a step closer to Thainna and leaned down to speak softly into her ear. “Lady Laurael doesn’t look very interested, does she?”
“Interested in what?”
The other servant waggled his brows in a way that Thainna guessed was supposed to be suggestive, but looked so silly that she burst into laughter. He rolled his eyes and found somewhere else to await his dismissal.
He was right, though. Laurael smiled perfunctorily at her husband’s attention and then told him to stop so the girls could finish her hair. He did so obediently. Thainna had never considered herself a romantic, but Rikard stared after his wife with such obvious adoration that it made her heart wobble in her chest like a faltering top. And it was a look Laurael Mazrem didn’t return. Did Rikard notice? He heard thoughts, just like an Alterran. He had to know. Didn’t he?
When the girls finished affixing a pair of mother-of-pearl pins in Lady Mazrem’s hair, she stood and took Rikard’s arm. They were the picture of regal nobility, poised and perfect.
“We’ve kept Master Ferro waiting long enough,” Laurael announced and gestured to the many servants occupying the large bedroom. “Have a meal ready in three hours.”
Lady Mazrem escorted her husband into the atrium. Thainna followed at a respectful distance. A full dozen guards awaited them in the atrium, half VEIL knights in black Star Court armor, the others in the green uniforms of household guards. They all saluted Rikard’s entrance. A serious-faced man with gray-peppered hair stood, too, and bowed deeply. Gaius was already in the atrium, slouched in a carved chair and looking bored.
With a tug at Rikard’s arm, Lady and Lord Mazrem seated themselves on the divan, surrounded by exotic flowers like bright butterflies pinned in place. Thainna stood uncertainly until Karl broke away from the other guards and came to her rescue.
“Over here,” Karl told her, and led Thainna to a wooden chair behind Rikard’s.
Thainna smiled her thanks to Karl and sat. He returned to the ranks of his fellows.
“My lord, this is Alexander Ferro,” Laurael said, speaking just loud enough to be heard over the creak of leather and the rushing of the atrium’s burbling stream. “He’s the preeminent scholar and historian on the empire’s founding, including your own exploits at Njorn Pass.”
“It is truly an honor to meet you, Lord-Captain Mazrem,” said the man with the white-streaked hair. Ferro wore it long, much like Rikard himself. It was a young man’s style and looked out of place on the aged historian. “Your sacrifice has quite literally crafted the world into its current form.”
“You’re a scholar?” asked Rikard. “Why do you want to talk to me? I’m a soldier. I didn’t even learn to fly the words… to read until I was eight.”
Ferro hesitated before answering. “Captain Mazrem, there are a thousand rumors about your epic sacrifice. May I ask after the truth of them?”
Rikard cocked his head and then looked at Laurael. She just raised her brows at him, so he turned to Thainna.
She couldn’t think why he might be asking her permission, but she shrugged. Rikard turned back to Ferro.
“Hae, I will try. Time has passed, though, and truths are so brittle,” he said.
Ferro was clearly unsure what this meant, but was too polite to say so. He wasn’t too polite, however, to bombard the VEIL captain with questions. Perhaps not thousands, but close.
Thainna’s interest quickly faded. The historian was obsessed with details, from verifying maps of Njorn Pass to the names of those who had died there, how and when. Rikard struggled to answer as best he could.
As morning turned into afternoon, Ferro’s questions became more difficult to answer. He wanted to know the exact details of Rikard’s deal with the Alterra. Not only what the open contract entailed, but how he even managed to do it.
“It’s been a matter of some interest and debate.” Ferro held a waxed board in the crook of his arms. Several others were stacked up beside him, already covered in extensive notes. “I’ve interviewed a number of VEIL knights and commanders, including your own squire, Saul Darius, but no one has been able to offer much more than speculation.”
“I drew a circle of blood in the snow. I stood inside and scored it once to get their snap-finger… their attention. Then I wrote.”
“What exactly did you write, Captain Mazrem? DuRainne has postulated that it wasn’t actually an open call, that you were simply pressed for time and failed to finish writing out your pact.” Ferro’s tone made it clear what he thought of his fellow scholar’s ridiculous theory.
Rikard sat silently for a long time. “Save them. Stop the Fiori. That was what I wrote,” he said at last. “I made no contract. There was no time and I didn’t care.”
“And then the Alterra… took you?” Ferro asked. “It’s now known that you didn’t die, that they pulled you through the veil into their world in order to fight in some kind of Alterran civil war. What happened? How did they take you? Where in Alterra did you come through? What was it like? What’s their war about?”
“It took great mountains… effort to bring me out of Terra. A… a hand. Hardbright, Flickerdim, Crave, Saidmost and Dropheavy. They told me that my men were safe, that the Fiori warriors were gone and that I owed them a lifetime of service in return for the effort they had expended. Lives for lives. They needed me. And so I fought for them.”
“A lifetime? What exactly does that mean?” Ferro asked, fascinated. He leaned further forward with every question and was now bent nearly double over his writing board. “How long is a lifetime?”
“How long a life? A Terran time, spindling-span for sixty years… Saidmost called any more ambitious, greedy for a man or meaning to live too long…” Rikard rubbed his jaw as though it pained him.
“Sixty years?” Ferro asked. “It’s been a long while since you left us, Captain Mazrem, but only half of that. Why are you back now?”
“It is… They sent me back before my time,” Rikard said.
Her position made it hard for Thainna to see his face, but the knight’s voice sounded strained.
“The war is painted… it goes badly. We’re losing. The Shatter come closer every day. Deepwell, Hardbright and Redling are gone. Crave has fallen to stillness, to flat things with no color. Dropheavy split against an empty door… and… Flickerdim calls to us. They are so many. The Uprising falters…! They will break between us…”
Laurael shot Thainna a warning look. She stepped forward before Ferro could respond to Rikard’s rising shout.
“I’m sorry, Master Ferro, but we have to stop. Captain Mazrem is still troubled,” Thainna said as calmly as she could. She could almost feel Rikard behind her, blazing like out-of-control fire.
Ferro took in her blue foster’s dress and bowed his head. “Of course, mana. I don’t want to overtax Captain Mazrem. May I ask one final question?”
Thainna glanced at Laurael once more, who shook her head minutely. Why didn’t she just say it herself? Politics, probably. Lady Mazrem didn’t want to be the one who had to tell a respected historian to leave. Thainna turned back to Ferro.
“I’m sorry, no. Lord-Captain Mazrem’s health must be our first priority,” she said with all the authority she could summon. “I’m afraid we’re done here.”
Ferro didn’t look pleased, but he stood, gathered up his writing boards and bowed to his hosts.
“Thank you for entertaining my questions, Captain Mazrem,” he said. “Do you think that the Alterra returned you to Terra to spare your life? Or was it something else? You said that the Alterra are losing the war–”
“Damn it, Ferro! I said no,” Thainna snapped. “Get out!”
Her sudden anger surprised even Thainna, and she was not the only one. The attendant VEIL knights and Mazrem guards dropped hands to their swords. The historian glared at Thainna, but allowed himself to be escorted from the atrium. As soon as Ferro vanished from sight, Lady Mazrem was on her feet and grabbing Thainna by the arm. Her long, painted nails bit into Thainna’s bicep.
“You will never strike such a tone with a guest in this house again! Do you understand?” she hissed.
Thainna squirmed. “Ouch! Hae! Hae, my lady!”
Laurael released Thainna’s arm and snapped her fingers at Karl, who was watching their exchange with a carefully neutral expression on his face.
“Go and catch Master Ferro. Keep him until I can make a proper apology,” she commanded.
Karl bowed and ran off after the departing historian. Thainna rubbed her smarting arm while Lady Mazrem spoke with Gaius, who had come when his mother beckoned him over. They spoke together in quiet, urgent voices for a moment, then Laurael looked at Rikard.
“Are you well enough, my lord?” she asked him.
When Rikard nodded, she took Gaius’ hand and proceeded from the atrium at a stately pace.
Thainna investigated her wounds. No bruises and even the pink crescents left by Lady Mazrem’s nails were fading. Still, it hurt. Her stupid outburst certainly had not been worth the reprisal. Luckily, Lady Mazrem had chosen to correct Thainna instead of dismiss her. Thainna did not want to think about what the Crest might have done if she had lost the job.
What he would have done to Thain. She felt as though she was going to be sick.
“Why didn’t you want me to talk to him?”
Thainna turned. Rikard stood right beside her, frowning suspiciously. She had not heard him approach. It was still early afternoon and the day already seemed far too long. Thainna didn’t have the patience for this madman or his questions.
“I thought I was following your wife’s orders,” she said shortly. “Badly, I guess. Sorry.”
Thainna turned on her heels and stomped out of the atrium.
