HE WAS JUST A SECRET WOLF

Chapter Seventeen: Eight Days in the Mirror City

The first thing Kael learned about Lanternreach was that nobody in it ever lied.

They simply arranged the truth until it said what they wanted.

On the second morning a servant brought him breakfast and mentioned, in passing, that the Matriarch was unwell. On the third, a different servant mentioned that the Matriarch had been seen in the gardens, humming. A baker told him the Lion envoy was riding with a hundred lancers, and a clerk said thirty. A woman selling lantern oil swore the Emperor's daughter was ill and would not come at all. Every one of them smiled, and every heart Kael listened to beat as steadily as a clock.

"It's a sport," Sorrel said, when Kael complained. "Everyone here is trying to find out what you'll do with a rumor. By nightfall each of them will know which you believe."

"And what do I believe?"

"Nothing yet. That's the right answer. Keep it up."

They were not friends again. Kael knew that. But since the night in the archive, Sorrel had stayed at his side where anyone could see him, and he had answered every question put to him, even the ones that made him wince. The messages Ysolde had asked for, the two birds he had sent, the exact wording. It had taken most of a day. When he finished, Kael had sat quietly for a long while and then said only, "Thank you." Sorrel had looked as though he had been struck.

At night, when the palace slept, Kael went down to the lake.

There was a stone landing on the island's western edge, below the last of the terraces, where the lanterns did not reach. The water lay black and still. Far across it, the lights of the mainland winked like a scattering of coins. Here, with nobody watching, he practiced what Edda had taught him.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

The heat rose in his wrist. He let it climb his arm, up to the shoulder, and held it there at the edge of the Change, the way you hold a breath underwater. His spine ached. His vision brightened until he could count the scales on a fish moving beneath the surface. Then he let it fall, slowly, and felt the strength drain out of him like water through sand.

Again. Again. Ten times a night, until his hands shook.

On the fourth night, Sorrel found him there.

"You're getting better," the Fox said, sitting down on the stones a few feet away. "The glow barely showed this time."

"It's still there."

"Hmm. Only if you know to look."

They watched the water for a while. A night bird called from somewhere out on the lake.

"Tell me about her," Kael said.

"Who?"

"Seren. My mother. You said the Matriarch never talked about her, but you lived in that palace for twenty years. Somebody must have said something."

Sorrel was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, it was carefully.

"I was nine when the war ended. I don't remember her. But I remember my father mentioning a queen once, over supper." He rubbed his chin. "He said she was the only person at court who ever asked him a question and then waited for the whole answer. He said it made him nervous."

Kael smiled, despite himself. "That sounds like someone I'd have liked."

"I think you'd have liked her very much." Sorrel glanced at him sideways. "And I think she'd be proud of what you've done. For what it's worth."

"I haven't done anything."

"You've sworn an oath no Wolf king would have dreamed of. You told the most dangerous woman in the Fox lands no, to her face, in her own study." The amber eyes gleamed. "That's something."

Kael did not answer. But he found, a little to his surprise, that his chest felt lighter.

On the fifth day, a man came to see him alone.

He was tall and silver-haired and impeccably dressed, a Fox of perhaps sixty with the kind of smile that has been polished by long use. He introduced himself as Lord Perrin Quill, Chancellor of the Fox Council, and asked, with great courtesy, whether he might have a quiet word in the garden.

Sorrel, who had been lounging against a pillar, straightened at once. "I'll come."

"I'm sure that's not necessary," Quill said pleasantly.

"I'm sure it is."

Quill's smile did not flicker. "As you wish."

The garden lay on an inner terrace, a maze of pale gravel paths between clipped hedges, with a fountain in the center that shot water in perfect silver arcs. Quill walked slowly, hands clasped behind his back, speaking as one might to a trusted nephew.

"I do not wish to alarm you, Highness. But there are those at the Fox court who feel the Matriarch has been less than candid about her intentions."

"Such as?"

"I speak only in general." He plucked a leaf from a hedge. "She has invited the Emperor's daughter to this city, under truce, at the very hour when you are a guest in her palace. A coincidence, perhaps. Or perhaps the Matriarch intends to arrange a meeting." He crushed the leaf between his fingers. "Or an exchange."

Kael kept his face neutral. "You think she'll hand me over."

"I think the Matriarch is a woman of great subtlety, and subtle women keep many doors open." Quill spread his hands. "But there are those of us who would offer you a more straightforward arrangement."

"Go on."

"The Fox Council has long felt that the Matriarch holds too much power. It is an old complaint. If a Wolf king were to take the throne, supported by the Council rather than by any single hand, it would create a more balanced kingdom." He smiled. "The Council would manage trade. The Council would keep the archives. You, Highness, would wear the crown and enjoy the respect of all the clans, free of the tedious business of governing."

Kael stopped walking.

It was almost exactly what Teyr had warned about. A throne without power, and a king whose strings someone else held. The honest part of it was almost funny. Quill had not bothered to dress it up at all.

"And what do I give in return?"

"Merely your signature. On a modest charter. A few clauses concerning trade." The silver eyebrows lifted. "I would be happy to send it round this evening."

"No."

"You have not read it."

"I don't need to." Kael turned to face him. "I made an oath at the Cairn not a month ago. A crown that serves the clans, not one that owns them. I won't put it in the Council's pocket instead of the Emperor's."

"A principled answer." Quill's voice cooled by a degree. "It is a shame principles are so seldom useful."

"Maybe. But I'd rather lose with mine than win without them."

For a moment, the polished mask slipped, and something sharper looked out. Then the smile returned.

"I will not press you," Quill said. "But think on it. The Matriarch's friendship has a way of expiring just when you need it most." He inclined his head. "Good day, Highness."

He walked away along the gravel path, hands behind his back. Kael watched him go. Quill's heartbeat had never wavered once, not through any of it. It was the heartbeat of a man who had told so many lies that they had stopped feeling like lies.

"Well," said Sorrel, appearing from behind the hedge, where he had evidently been listening. "That was educational."

"Is he right? About your mother?"

"I don't know." The Fox looked troubled. "He's right that she keeps doors open. He's right that the timing is strange. But Quill has hated her for twenty years, and he'd say the sky was green if it undermined her."

"So I can't trust either of them."

"Welcome to the Fox court." Sorrel's mouth twisted. "Nobody here is on your side. Some are simply on a side that happens to cross yours."

The raven came that night.

It was a small grey bird, ragged and exhausted, and it landed on the sill of their chamber window with a thud and a croak. Sorrel took the message from its leg, unrolled the slip of paper, and held it up to the lamp.

"It's for you. In Teyr's hand."

Kael had sent word to Hollowroot four days ago, openly, with Sorrel looking on. He had asked a single question: Who held the western ford the morning of the Greenwater?

He read the reply twice.

Highness,

I have spent four days in the old records and in conversation with the three living veterans of the western picket. The roll for that morning was kept by a quartermaster who died at the Greenwater. It no longer exists. But memory is more durable than parchment.

The western ford was held by thirty pickets of the Queen's Own, under Captain Jorund Hale. All died in the Lion charge, save two. A sergeant named Mace, and a scout called Dessa. Neither was seen again. Mace's family insist he was killed in the retreat. Dessa left a young daughter, whose whereabouts I do not know.

It occurs to me that thirty is a large number to lose without a single account of how the arrow flew. Someone must have seen. Someone must have said. I think that someone's silence has been bought, or earned.

There is one more thing. When I mentioned the matter in council, Captain Brannoch rose and demanded that I stop. He called it a Lion lie. He asked me twice to burn the letter before sending. I find his certainty interesting, since I told him nothing of what the Matriarch said, only that you had asked about the ford.

I make no accusation. I record only that the question troubles him more than it should.

Edda sends her love, and says to eat properly. Varra says to stay alive. I say to be careful whom you trust.

Teyr

Kael lowered the paper.

"Brannoch," Sorrel murmured. "The war-captain. The one who wanted you to Change in the middle of the hall."

"He carried his dead brothers out of that river." Kael said it quietly. "He wept when he said it."

"Grief and guilt wear the same face sometimes."

"Don't." He folded the letter with fingers that did not feel entirely steady. "I don't know that. I'm not going to accuse a man because he got angry when a boy asked a question."

"I'm not asking you to accuse him. Only to remember it."

"I'll remember it." Kael pressed the paper into his palm. "Two missing pickets. A sergeant and a scout. And the daughter."

"The daughter of a scout who might have fired an arrow at her own people." Sorrel's mouth was a thin line. "That's a lot of weight for a child to carry."

"She'd be about my age."

"Yes." The Fox hesitated. "Maybe she doesn't even know."

The word reached them two mornings later, in the form of a baker with flour on his apron and an unusual tremor in his smile.

"They're on the plain, my lord," he told Sorrel, who had gone down to the kitchens for bread and returned with a great deal more than that. "A column of gold and blue, coming down the east road. They've been sighted from the watchtowers."

"How many?"

"Thirty lancers, they say. And a wagon." He wiped his hands. "And a lady at the front. A very young lady, on a grey horse."

Kael set down his cup.

"They're early," he said. "She was supposed to arrive in two days."

"She's riding hard. I wouldn't be surprised if she meant to be early." Sorrel studied his face. "Kael. You're gripping that table very hard."

He was. He let go. The wood had left white marks on his palm.

"I'm all right."

"You're not. But that's fine." The Fox put a hand on his shoulder, briefly, awkwardly, and took it away again. "You've faced hunters and hounds and a Bear who punched you ten times. A girl on a horse isn't going to be the end of you."

"She's the Emperor's daughter."

"So you keep saying." Sorrel smiled a little. "She also pulled down a gallows and read a treaty in a Bear vault. I'd say that's two points in her favor."

"It doesn't change what her father did."

"No," Sorrel agreed. "But she isn't her father. That much, at least, I've learned from knowing my mother."

Kael looked out the window.

Far to the east, across the grey lake and the green flat plain, a thin line of gold and blue was creeping toward the causeway, tiny and bright as a thread of embroidered silk. At the head of it, too far to see, rode a girl he had never met, who had asked the right questions in the wrong places and had somehow, without knowing it, begun to matter more to him than he could explain.

His wrist had begun to burn.

Not hot, not the wild, rising heat of the Change. Only a faint, steady warmth, like a hand held near a fire, and in the glass of the window the mark glowed silver against his skin.

He stared at it.

It had never done that before. Not for fear, not for anger. It had only ever answered to rage and danger.

"Sorrel," he said quietly. "Have you ever heard of the mark reacting to a person?"

The Fox followed his gaze. For the first time since Kael had known him, he had no joke ready.

"No," Sorrel said slowly. "But I think I'd better ask my mother."