Guerrand stifled a smile. "You're very uncharitable, Kirah. Surely they're not that big. Besides, Ingrid Berwick sounds pleasant enough to me."
"Pleasant enough for a sister-in-law, you mean. Lucky for you, Cormac and Rietta deemed you unworthy of the Bucker Princess."
"She's not a princess."
Kirah shrugged. "She acts like one."
Guerrand sighed. "What does Cormac want?"
"Oh, yes." She sniffed. "I was getting to that. He wants to talk to you about how long you're taking with your training as a knight."
"Again?"
"Did you think he would just forget you've spent ten years as a squire?"
Guerrand sighed once more and tossed a small stone into the surf. "I was hoping with all the excitement of Quinn's return and wedding that Cormac might have other things on his mind."
"He'll never be happy about your interest in magic, and he'll never allow you to become a real mage," Kirah said softly, her tone uncharacteristically serious.
Guerrand scowled. "He doesn't even know I still want to be one. Only you do, Kirah." He looked at her intently, almost pleadingly. "It must stay that way."
Kirah nodded her blond head decisively. "We should do it, Rand. We should just run away so that you can become a mage."
Guerrand rubbed his face. "Kirah, you think too fast. You hope too hard."
His sister crossed her arms. "What's going to change then, to end this stalemate of yours and Cormac's? Are you hoping he'll drop dead and you'll inherit everything?"
"No!" Guerrand said too vehemently. "No, of course not," he added more softly. "Besides, I wouldn't get anything, nor would you. Castle DiThon would go to Bram now. He's a good kid, despite his parentage. He deserves it." His voice was distant, his thoughts far beyond the DiThon family lands.
Guerrand ran his hands through his hair in agitation. "Honestly, I don't know what I'm hoping will happen, Kirah. There aren't many options for the second son of a noble family whose fortune is on the decline. I only know what I don't want, and that's to become a warrior."
"Well, you'd better think of something, because Cormac intends to grill you the instant you return home."
"Why now?"
"Why not now?" she asked. "The arrangements with Berwick are complete. If he can get you through your training and out on crusade like Quinn, he'll have one less mouth to feed around here."
Kirah's pale eyebrows lifted as a thought struck her. "Frankly, if you ask me, Rietta brought you to his mind. You know little-miss-my-father-was-a-Knight-of-Solamnia can never stand to have anyone happy around her, least of all her husband. Rietta doesn't like you, you know."
Guerrand snorted. "Thank you. She doesn't like you either."
"Oh, fie," said Kirah with a toss of her pale head. She skipped barefoot along the shore. "Rietta would marry me off tomorrow if she didn't fear that I would do something to ruin her own simpering Honora's chances for a suitable match. I think she suspects I'm the one who puts the frogs in her bed."
"Perhaps you shouldn't giggle every time Rietta mentions it at table," suggested Guerrand. He looked up suddenly, as a breeze, cool and damp and smelling of rain, tickled his nostrils. "The wind's changed." He stared across the water to the south and frowned. "The sky's black. There's a storm brewing." The lanky young man slapped his thighs and stood. "Time to face the lion, I guess."
"What are you going to say?"
Guerrand shrugged. "What I always say-that I'm working as fast as I can, but swordplay and such doesn't come as easily to me as to Quinn."
Lightning suddenly jagged across the southern sky. Guerrand waited three seconds for the accompanying crack of thunder, then grabbed his sister's arm and pulled her after him down the sandy beach. "Come on, Kirah. If we run hard, we can beat the rain."
Guerrand and Kirah raced up the last green, gentle slope just as the first drops of cool rain began to fall. Winded, they strode arm in arm through the open portcullis on the northern curtain wall. At the inner gatehouse, both nodded to the lone guard clothed in well-worn ceremonial garb. Old Wizler, his eyes clouded over with cataracts, gave a toothless smile and waved them through. Loyal, if ineffectual, Wizler had served the DiThon family since before Guerrand was born. During Cormac's rule, staff had been cut back to bare bones. Since these were relatively calm times in Northern Ergoth, there was little need to guard the entrance to the castle.
Just past Wizler's station, in the shadows of the temple to the god Habbakuk, Kirah slipped away from Guerrand's side like a pale, luminous shade. "Good luck, Rand," he heard her whisper. Guerrand knew well her penchant for traversing the castle through the network of tunnels and secret passageways that she'd spent her young life discovering. It was a great measure of her trust that she'd shown a number of them only to him.
Wishing he could slink into one of those dark, musty stone tunnels himself, Guerrand instead set his spine and strode across the inner ward toward the chiseled and sculpted entrance to the rectangular four-story keep. The moment he stepped inside, he felt the old, familiar tightening of muscles in his neck. His senses narrowed in the dark confines of the cold stone walls. A serving woman scurried by with buckets on her shoulders, headed up the broad, sweeping staircase. Squinting furtively in the dim light of the torches, she visibly brightened when she saw who was there.
"Hello, Master Guerrand. How be you today?"
His own smile was warm. "I've had an… interesting day, Juel." Thunder cracked outside. Guerrand looked reflexively toward the wooden door. "But I suspect there are more clouds in my future." His eyes shifted upward to the ceiling. "My brother is waiting for me."
Juel shook her head. She well knew Cormac's stiff nature, and was aware of the conflict between the brothers. Few secrets could be kept from servants. She gave the lord's younger brother a sympathetic look before continuing up the staircase, the heavy load on her shoulders swaying gently in tempo to her steps.
Guerrand was two steps up the staircase when a voice stopped him from behind.
"Befriending the servants again, Uncle Guerrand?"
The muscles in his neck tightened even more. Honora. Cormac and Rietta's eldest child, just three years younger than he. Hand still on the polished wooden rail, he turned to face her. Gods, he thought, how could such an angelic-looking creature sound so vicious? In Guerrand's charitable estimation, his niece seemed to embody the worst of her parent's traits in all areas but appearance. Who would guess that behind her perfect curvaceous figure and raven hair, which glistened even in the dim light of torches, beat the heart of a viper?
"You're mistaking common civility for friendship, Honora," he said calmly. "That's understandable, considering that you're unfamiliar with both concepts."
Honora's vivid green cat-eyes narrowed. "You've been talking to your ragamuffin sister again."
Guerrand snorted. "I'd love to stand here and exchange barbs, Honora, but I'll leave that to my ragamuffin sister. She enjoys it so much more than I. Right now your father would like to discuss something with me." He continued up the stairs.
"You mean Father wants to give you another dressing-down."
Guerrand stopped, but didn't turn around. His hand gripped the railing more tightly. "Tell me, Honora, does your spitefulness come naturally, or is it a symptom of spinsterhood?"
"I am not a spinster!" she shrieked. Guerrand gave a secret little smile at the direct hit to her pride. "My mother is searching for the best match to a Knight of Solamnia. She's already found one for Bram to squire under. But she'll not be satisfied to marry her daughter to just any cavalier, Ergoth's pathetic excuse for knights." She arched a thin brow. "Which, I might add, you haven't managed to become in ten years of trying."