“What will you do with all the lesser lords, then?” Senneth asked. “Gift them their properties outright? Would you want to see Eighteen Houses, instead of Twelve? I am no apologist for the aristocracy, but even I find it hard to say such a phrase. Eighteen Houses. Twenty-four. There is no poetry to either.”
He smiled at her a little absently. “Another kind of title altogether, perhaps,” he said. “We might have both the Twelve Houses and the Twelve Manors. That is pretty enough, don’t you think?”
“Very nice. And can you find a property in each of the twelve regions that the marlords would be willing to give up? And would the lords of these manors be satisfied with their new status, or will they want full parity with the marlords?”
“I haven’t worked it all out yet,” he admitted. “But I believe we might take small steps to change our world, and so perhaps avert a war.”
She lifted her eyes and gave him a hard, comprehensive look. “And do you truly think any measures are sufficient to do that?”
He glanced away, for a long time merely looking out the window. Another gray day, though at least there was no rain to contend with this morning. Then he sighed and shook his head, glancing back at her. His face was sad. “No,” he said. “But I must do everything in my power to try.”
TWO days later, Cammon slipped down to the cottage just in time to eat lunch with Kirra and Senneth. “Justin and Ellynor will be here tomorrow,” he told them.
“Early or late?” Kirra demanded. “Do we have the day to work, or must we finish everything today?”
“I don’t know. If I were you, I’d finish up today.”
“Better finish up by this afternoon,” Senneth reminded her. “You promised Baryn you would attend the dinner tonight.”
Kirra cursed and then laughed. “Well, we’re almost done. Let’s go over now. What have Tayse and the other Riders cooked up?”
“I believe it involves pelting them with flowers and fruit as they ride up to the cottage for the first time, and then creating a great deal of noise outside their bedroom window in the middle of their first night here.”
Kirra grinned. “Everybody loves newlyweds.”
Cammon gulped down his meal and then went off to fence with Tayse, while Kirra and Senneth returned to the house set aside for Justin. It was tiny, a mirror image of the one Senneth shared with Tayse-merely one main room that opened into a small kitchen, with a single door leading to a cramped bedroom. Little more than basic privacy and a place to sit before the fire. But Senneth and Kirra had outfitted it with a new bed and several small storage chests, as well as chairs in the main room and dishes for the kitchen. Rugs on the floor to keep out the chill, curtains at the windows to keep out the curious. They had made Cammon and Donnal haul in wood, which was stacked before the fireplace, and Kirra had filched bread and cheese from the palace kitchen.
“What are those?” Senneth said, pointing at a row of terra-cotta planters holding a wilted assortment of scrubby plants. “Those are ugly.”
“Give me a minute,” Kirra said, and skimmed her hands over the bare, prickly branches. Instantly, the withered leaves turned green; the dried and folded petals were rouged with red.
“Very pretty,” Senneth said. “One would almost think you had the gift of growing things.”
“No-they’re altered, not coaxed,” Kirra said.
Senneth glanced around. “I would start a fire in the grate, but who knows how long it will be before they arrive? But I hate to have them come in to a cold house.” She leaned her hand against the wall, and the temperature in the rooms began to rise. “Perhaps just a little magic in the stone,” she said. “I’ll add another touch of heat before we go to bed.”
Kirra edged toward the door, pausing to survey the entire scene with a look of satisfaction. Warm, colorful, cozy, the front room had a most inviting feel. “Who wouldn’t want to live in such a welcoming place?” she said. “I hope Ellynor is happy here, so far from her family.”
Senneth followed her out the door. “Funny-I’m always happiest when my family is farthest away.”
“And I when I am either setting out to see them or preparing to leave,” Kirra said.
“But then, we’re unnatural.”
“Mystics,” Kirra said darkly. “Never just like everybody else.”
CHAPTER 10
THE formal dinner went well enough, though it was as dull to Senneth as most such events were. The regent and his wife were not in attendance, and consequently Kirra was in high spirits. She spent most of the meal attempting to catch Cammon’s eye and make him laugh, though he tried hard to hang on to his always precarious dignity. The rest of the time she flirted so boldly with the Fortunalt lord seated to her left that he followed her out of the dining room literally begging to see her again.
“Incorrigible,” Senneth murmured to Cammon on her way out the door. “Any news on Justin?”
“Tomorrow morning, I think. Depending on where he spends the night.”
“Come down early to help us greet him.”
“I will.”
Kirra had a similar plan, it turned out, for she and Donnal showed up at Senneth’s cottage a couple hours later. “Feed us, house us,” Kirra said, pushing past Senneth through the door. Donnal at least sent her an apologetic glance as he stepped inside.
“Why don’t you camp outside, like some of the Riders are doing?” Senneth said, leaving the door open suggestively. “See? Tayse and Wen and Coeval and a few others have stationed themselves all around the barracks and halfway to the gate. They have pots and pans and all sorts of noisy items with which to greet our young lovers. Why don’t you stay outside with them?”
“Too cold and nasty,” Kirra said. “It’s going to rain.”
“We’ll sleep on the floor again,” Donnal offered.
Kirra yawned. “You can. If Tayse is outside, I’m sleeping in the bed with Senneth.”
“Not that you were invited.”
“True friends never turn you out, no matter how inconvenient your arrival,” Kirra said, wandering to the kitchen. “Heat some water for me, could you? I want something warm to drink.”
Senneth grumbled some more, but in truth she had expected them and was a little surprised that Cammon hadn’t showed up as well. She poured a mug of cold water, set it to boiling with the touch of her hand, and pointed to the crock containing tea leaves. “But I’m going to bed,” she said. “I want to be up early enough to greet them.”
They all settled in quickly, though Senneth briefly found it strange to have Kirra’s light form beside her instead of Tayse’s darker, heavier one. She and Kirra had shared rooms and beds across half of Gillengaria, and there had been a time Senneth never expected to take a lover, let alone a husband, so it should not seem so foreign not to have him next to her; and yet it was. She and Tayse had not slept apart since their wedding. They had scarcely spent a day apart since they met. Even when he hated her, as he had at first, he had watched over her.
Not that she was in danger, here in the well-guarded confines of the king’s palace, two mystics in her house and almost fifty Riders within call. Not that Tayse could not be at her side in a minute if she should have need of him. Still. The fact that he was not sleeping close enough for her to touch him with her hand made it hard, at first, for her to sleep at all.
Dawn came, pink-and-white as a porcelain doll, and the three of them rose and dressed with practiced efficiency. Through the windows, Senneth could see frost laying a white-gold gilding over the hard earth and the winter vegetation. Tayse and Wen were already astir, striding down from the general direction of the palace, their hands full of copper pots and big wooden spoons. Their breath showed misty in the cold air. A half dozen other Riders had congregated around the small cottage, either leaning against the walls or making themselves comfortable on the ground. They all looked as if they had rested well and been up for hours.