Long ago when they were children, Tris had dared night runs to the kitchens to get the herbs he needed to bind up the bruises and cuts Jared inflicted. Though he was only eight years Kait's senior, he was her self-appointed guardian since the day she was born. Maybe he had been stirred by how small and lonely she had looked in the nursemaid's arms. Or perhaps it was Tris's fear that a baby would prove a more amusing target for Jared's cruel humor than the ill-fated cats and dogs that disappeared from the nursery with distressing regularity.
They stuck together, and he frequently took the brunt of Jared's tempers for her. Jared drove off one nursemaid after another with his outbursts. As Kait got older, she and Tris found safety in banding together against Jared, able to make him back off when they no longer made such an easy mark.
"Father's got to listen soon," Kait said wistfully, breaking into his thoughts.
Tris shook his head. "Not yet he won't," he said. "He won't hear a word I say, even though he and Jared argue more and more. Some days, I think they argue about saying 'good morning.'"
Kait sighed, and the bird on her gauntlet fidgeted. "Maybe mother—?"
Again, Tris indicated the negative. "Every time she tries to say something, father accuses her of favoring her children over Jared. I don't think he's ever quite gotten over Eldra's death," he added. Jared's mother died giving birth to Bricen's firstborn, and it took the king nearly ten years to find the will to wed again, a decade in which young prince Jared had little supervision and less correction as his father retreated into despair.
"Mother won't even bring it up anymore," Tris added. "She just tries to keep you out of his way."
"Uh oh," Kait whispered under her breath. "More trouble." Tris followed her gaze across the crowded greatroom, to the red-robed figure that stood in the hall's entrance. A hush fell over the room. Clad in the flowing blood-colored robes of a Fireclan mage, Foor Arontala, Jared's chief advisor, made his way through the crowd. The throng parted in front of him in a desperate haste to get out of his way, yet the fine-boned, porcelain-pale face that peered from beneath a heavy hood and long dark hair did not even acknowledge their presence.
"I hate him," Kait whispered in a voice that only Tris and Soterius could hear. "I wish grandmother were here. She'd squash him like a flea," she added, with a little stamping motion for good measure.
"Grandmother's gone," Tris replied tonelessly, thinking of his unsuccessful attempt to contact Bava K'aa's spirit earlier in the evening. He moved to tell Kait what had happened, and then, out of long habit, stopped. Bava K'aa always kept his training such an elaborate secret that even now, he was unwilling to put it into words.
"I wish your father had been quicker to bring a new mage of his own to Shekerishet," Soterius added in a whisper. "Even a granny witch would be better than that," he said with carefully shielded distaste.
Foor Arontala passed among the hushed party-goers as if he did not notice their existence, gliding with preternatural smoothness through the crowd to exit on the other side of the hall, but it took several minutes before the revelry began again, and even longer before it began to sound wholehearted.
"Crone take him," Tris swore under his breath.
"He looks like She already has," Kait giggled.
Soterius took it upon himself to lighten the mood. "Do I have to remind both of you that there's a party going on?" he reprimanded with mock sternness. "Carroway's been telling tales for most of a candlemark over there," he said, gesturing, "and you've missed it."
"Is he still there?" Kait said with sudden interest. "Is there room?"
"Let's go find out," Tris said, hoping that the diversion would break his heavy mood.
Carroway, Margolan's master bard, sat in the center of a rapt audience. It was evident by the press of partygoers around him that the storyteller was building to the climax of his tale.
Carroway leaned forward, recounting the adventure from the time of Tris's great, great grandfather's rule in a hushed voice that forced his listeners to lean closer. "The Eastmark raiders pressed on, cutting their way toward the palace. Valiant men tried and failed to push them back, but still the raiders came. The palace gates were in sight! Blood ran ankle-deep on the stones and all around, the moans of the dying cried for justice." As Carroway spoke, he leaned to the side and casually lit two gray candles.
"King Hotten fought with all his might as all around him, swords clashed and the battle raged. Twice, assassins closed around him. Twice, hurled daggers nearly found their mark." With lazy grace, Carroway's arm snapped up and thunk, thunk, two daggers appeared from nowhere, thudding into the woodwork behind the rearmost listener. The children screamed, then giggled at Carroway's sleight of hand.
"But the weary defenders had no more troops to spare," Carroway went on. "Now it was the eve of the Feast of the Departed—Haunts as we call it—when spirits walk most boldly among us. They say that on Haunts, the spirits can make themselves solid if they choose, and cast illusions so real that mortals cannot sense or feel the deception until—" he paused, and a well-timed small poof and a puff of smoke appeared by sleight of hand, "—everything so solid the night before vanishes with the morning. Knowing this, King Hotten begged his mage to do anything that would stop the invaders. The mage was nearly spent himself, and he knew that summoning a major spell would probably be his death, but he harnessed all the power he possessed and called out to the spirit of the land itself, to the Avenger Goddess, and to the souls of the dead. And with his dying breath, the fog began to change.
"From the blood-soaked stones, a mist began to rise. At first, it hovered above the street, swirling around the raiders' legs, but it grew higher and denser, until it reached the horses' bridles. Soon, it was a howling wind, and as the terrified raiders watched, it took on faces and shapes, distorted by the tempest. And on that feast night so long ago, the spirits chose to take on form, to manifest themselves completely, to seem as real and solid as you or me." A thin fog was rising from Carroway's candles, swirling along the floor of the castle, sending its tendrils among the listeners who startled as they noticed it and stared at Carroway, eyes wide. As they watched, the thin veil of smoke formed itself into the figures of the story, phantom wisps in the shapes of rearing horses and fleeting ghosts.
"The spirits of Shekerishet rose to defend it from the raiders, by the power of the dead and the will of every valiant fighter who ever died to defend king and kingdom. A howl rose above the wind, the shrieks and warning wails of the rising ghosts; and the fog was so thick that it separated the attackers from each other." Carroway's wrist flicked and two small pellets scattered from his hand, screeching and wailing as they hit the hard floor. His audience jumped out of their seats, wide-eyed with fright.
"Confounded and terrified, the attackers ran," Carroway went on. In his gray bard's robes, dimly lit by the flickering torches, he looked like something out of legend. "The wall of spirits drove them back, onto the waiting blades of the Margolan army. The ghostly guardians of the palace pushed back the enemy, pursuing the raiders until they scattered beyond the gates," he said, stretching out his hand. His audience shrieked in good-natured fright as the smoke rose at Carroway's command, shaping itself into a man-sized apparition of a skeletal fighter, poised to draw his sword from the scabbard that hung against his bony leg.
"They say that the ghosts still protect Shekerishet," Carroway said with a grin. "They say that the spirits of the castle defend it from intruders and will let no harm come to those within. They say that the curse of King Hotten's mage still carries power, and that every king's mage since then has added to it with his dying breath."