They gathered up twigs and fallen branches for a fire and sat around it
among the stones and memories of the island. The night enclosed them quickly;
the moon, a luminous eye, watched their fire with them, turning the
complicated channels, the coils and threads of water, a silver that the god
Severen had never thought to claim. Dame Scotia shared her wine with them,
passing a camp cup around, as well as nuts and olives, smoked fish and
chocolate. Pierce, leaning against one of the little standing stones, watched
the stars form and hang among the tree branches like strange, fairy tale
fruit. His thoughts reeled backward through the past amazing days, the scant
weeks since he had left Cape Mistbegotten. A face appeared among the stars,
long rippling hair, eyes the gray-green of her name.
“Tavis Malory,” he heard Scotia say from the shadows. “Yes. The depraved
knight who could not stay out of trouble and was in jail when he wrote the
history of the first Wyvernhold king. Part of the land my father holds along
the northern marches was once his. At least it was until Tavis had to sell it
to pay compensation for one of his despicable crimes. His grandsons managed to
buy back the land. They tried to restore his reputation, too, saying that his
enemies betrayed and maligned him. But it was a tough sell. Everyone liked the
other version of his life better. He did write a fine book, though.” She
leaned forward to prod the fire, and Pierce saw her profile, strong and
graceful, the shining braid down her back now, loosed from its coils.
“We don’t often see you at court,” Leith commented.
“I’m with my father most of the year, helping him care for the land,
especially when he’s in Severluna himself, supporting parliamentary issues
affecting the north. Water usage, fish habitats, that sort of thing. This
time, when the king called the Assembly, my father had to send me alone. He
sprained his back swinging a broadsword with too much enthusiasm for his age,
and he can’t travel easily yet.”
“So you’re questing,” Val said. “Like the rest of us. Do you know where
you’re going?”
“Not entirely.”
Val nodded, reaching out to stir the flames. “Following your heart.”
In the sudden flare of firelight, Pierce saw her eyes widen with surprise,
then swiftly fall. She turned, reaching into the shadows for more wood. Pierce
’s thoughts drifted again, this time back to the Kingfisher Inn, with its odd
ceremony that seemed, at the time, as old as the stone at his back. What
strange urge had that been, to steal the ritual knife, take it all the way to
Severluna to end up coring a nonexistent apple on a field full of trained
knights? Had the fish fry suffered because of him? he wondered. The wolf man,
Merle, had known Pierce had it. Take it to Severluna, he had said in that
hovel of a bar on the waterfront. See what you can do with it.
He had gone; he had seen. He had found his brother with it, then his father.
Now he was ready to give it back. Was that the end of it?
His brother and his father were stirring, rising. He stood up as well, feeling
as pleasantly drunk with moonlight as with wine. Dame Scotia rifled through
one of her packs and produced a flashlight, which they promised to leave for
her at the other end of the bridge.
“What if the knights come back here?” Pierce asked uneasily.
“They won’t cross that bridge in the dark. And I’ll be gone at dawn.”
They left her beside the fire under a watchful moon. Pierce glanced back at
her before he turned onto the trail. She had risen also, and was standing at
the edge of the cliff, looking out at the dark that defined itself best, to
the human eye, by what it was not.
Light flared from a different night in the corner of Pierce’s eye. He turned
his head and froze at the reflection of fire in a pair of unexpected eyes.
Something big, he sensed, just beyond the light. Something wild, powerful,
undefined.
He opened his mouth to warn, then saw those eyes again, their human shape and
expression, in his head, in memory. He breathed again, relieved by the thought
of a closer, more dangerous guardian for the solitary knight than the
wandering moon.
“Pierce,” his father called from the dark ahead.
He nodded a greeting to the wolf and turned again to the path.
23
Carrie, veering around knights at any hour and on every corner of Chimera Bay,
was hardly surprised, on one of her Stillwater lunch days, to see a darkly
clad figure walk into the restaurant door ahead of her. It was too early for
lunch, but Todd Stillwater rarely bothered with CLOSED signs. People would
know, he told Carrie, and mostly that worked, though he didn’t explain how.
Carrie, causing the knight to turn as she followed him in, saw the expression
on his face of someone amazed that he had actually found his way through a
door.
Then she recognized the face.
That red hair, those vivid, blue-green eyes—there was a name attached to the
face in some cluttered drawer or file holder in her head. He was frowning at
her, recognizing her as well, but in the wrong context. She should, she
remembered, have been carrying sheets instead of fresh basil and oregano from
the Farmer’s Market.
“Carrie?” she offered helpfully, and he nodded quickly.
“Yes. The Kingfisher Inn. I’m Pierce Oliver.”
He looked older, she thought, than just a week or three. He had seen things,
learned things, done something, at least, to be wearing that uniform.
“Did you get yourself knighted?” she asked with astonishment.
“No.” The thought made him smile ruefully. “The only weapon I’m good with
is the knife I stole. I plan to give it back,” he added quickly.
“That’s what my dad said. That it would bring you back.”
“Really? Merle said that?”
“He did.”