But she kept her questions bottled up inside as she always had, because her mother had told her to trust her instincts, and instinct told her not to speak of such things. On the surface it was all ordinary, dull, dry facts and ancient history, and so many gowns she would need an entire train of pack mules to carry them all.
Late the second day, as Merris dressed for dinner, Mistress Patrizia entered without knocking as she always did, and dismissed the maid. Merris looked at her in what she hoped was innocent surprise. “Mistress! What a pleasure to see you at this hour. Will you be joining us for dinner?”
“That would not be proper,” Mistress Patrizia said. She was a tall, thin, forbidding person at the best of times. Tonight she was ramrod-stiff. “I have a gift for you from our Lady.”
Merris’ brows went up. Such gifts were not uncommon, but usually it was a messenger from Darkwall who delivered them. As far as she knew, no such messenger had come.
As if in answer to her unspoken question, Mistress Patrizia said, “I have kept this at our Lady’s behest. It is a small thing, but she values it. She would be most pleased if you would wear it.”
She raised her hands. There was a small wooden box in them, such as jewels were kept in.
Merris took it slowly and opened it with fingers that for some reason wanted to tremble. She had had gifts like this before, but only on birthdays.
It was a pendant on a silver chain, a drop of dark amber in a spiral of silver. It felt warm in her hand and strangely alive, and the flecks in it seemed almost to move, swirling slowly around one another inside their prison of waxy stone.
It was a beautiful thing, but strange. The other gifts had been much more mundane: a book, a gown, a tutor. This made Merris’ skin prickle.
She made herself smile and be as polite as she had been trained to be, speaking words of thanks that she was not at all sure she meant. Mistress Patrizia watched her with peculiar fixity. She was supposed to wear the thing, that was clear.
She let Mistress Patrizia fasten the chain around her neck, trying hard not to shudder when the stone touched her skin. She resolved to get rid of it as soon as she was out of sight.
She had a moment of breathless fear that Mistress Patrizia would decide to go to dinner after all, but she was much too proper a servant. Merris stopped in the passageway to the dining hall, fumbling with the clasp. Her hands were shaking and the clasp was stiff. It would not come off.
She almost gave up and let it be, but her peculiar revulsion was growing stronger rather than weaker. She gritted her teeth and pulled hard. The chain broke. She thrust the stone into the pocket of her sleeve, where a lady might keep small and discreetly useful items.
Amber was as light almost as air, but this weighed her down out of all proportion to its size. Merris stopped thinking and acted. She turned aside to the garderobe and let the thing fall out of her sleeve into the odorous darkness. If and when she was asked, she could answer honestly that she had lost the pendant.
She took a deep breath, barely even gagging on the effluvium of the privy, and went to dinner with a lighter heart.
After dinner, at last, Merris had an hour to herself. Her maids were still at their own dinner, and her tutors were wherever they disappeared to when their duty to their Lady was done. She shed her voluminous skirts in favor of much more practical ones. With no one to stop her, she ventured out of her rooms.
It was a bright night, warm and moonlit. The garden her mother had made, that her father had kept up in Beatrice’s memory, was in full and fragrant bloom. Merris went on past it to the stables.
Companions had somewhat different needs than horses, according to the stories, but Forgotten Keep’s stables seemed to suit them well enough. Their stall doors were open so that they could come and go, and they were well bedded in clean straw, with full mangers and fresh water drawn from the Keep’s deep clear well.
The younger Herald was perched on a stool between the two stalls, cleaning bridles. They were ordinary bridles, belonging to the Keep’s horses; not the lovely, bitless ones ornamented with silver bells that she had seen on the Companions. Merris squatted beside him and reached for one of the many scraps of leather that he had spread around him, and started working soap into it with her fingers.
He stared at her as if he did not know what to make of her. A long white head came between them, followed by a massive white body.
Companions were not nearly as ethereal in person as they were in legend. They were broad-boned, heavy-set creatures with substantial heads . . . and silver hooves and clear blue eyes and manes and tails like white silk. Merris looked up at that deceptively horselike face and sighed.
“Selena says,” said the Herald, “that no, our life is not for you—but what you have ahead of you is just as remarkable.”
“I know that,” Merris said—a little sadly, because even in Forgotten Keep, a girl could dream of being Chosen. She reached up. The Companion lowered a soft nose into her palm and blew warm breath on it.
“She also says,” the Herald said, “that you don’t have much time. Whatever you do, don’t wear the pendant.”
Merris felt her eyes go round. There were all too many questions she could ask, but most of them were too foolish to bother with. She said, “Tell her I dropped it down the garderobe.”
“Things of that nature have a way of not staying dropped.”
Merris wondered if that was the Herald speaking, or the Companion speaking through him. Not that it mattered particularly. “What are you really here for?” she asked.
She peered around the Companion’s head. The Herald lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Isak took sick on the road. Your Keep was the closest place that was likely to have a Healer.”
He was telling the truth, as far as it went. Merris could tell. Still, she said, “I don’t believe in accidents.”
“Neither do I,” the Herald said. “Is it true what they say? You’re heir to Darkwall?”
She nodded.
He frowned. “You’re nothing like what I would expect.”
“What, pretentious? Full of myself? Too far above it all to sit in a stable aisle, cleaning bridles?”
He laughed, then flushed. “Well, that. And . . . well. Darkwall.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”
“No,” said Merris. “Tell me what you mean.”
His head shook again. The Companion pawed, then butted him, knocking him off his stool. He lay in the aisle and glared. “I can’t say that!”
The Companion shook its—her—mane and snorted wetly, not quite into his face.
He shoved her head aside and scrambled to his feet, still glaring. “Selena says,” he said, biting off the words, “that I should say, ‘You don’t look like something that would rule Darkwall. You’re too, well, clean.’ ”
“And that means?”
“I’m not even sure what it means,” he said angrily, but his anger did not seem to be directed at Merris. “It’s rumors, that’s all. Stories and a few poorly rhymed ballads. Darkwall isn’t just called that because it’s built on a black cliff. It has a bad reputation.”
“Why?” Merris demanded. “What do you know?”
“If the heir to Darkwall doesn’t know it,” he said, “maybe there’s nothing to know.”