Inscrutable as a stone in a millpond, he studied her a moment with his head cocked, then yielded before her straight strength to his impulse. ‘Otherwise, Sethvir was most plain, the misery of remorse will later drive you to use this tide pool. In saltwater that will fail to protect you from discovery, you will attempt to send warning of your sisterhood’s doings to the one of my colleagues who might listen.’
On her feet before she could react rationally, Elaira backed at bay against the rocks. Even her lips were white.
As if she had not budged, Traithe continued. ‘Which act would be treason against your Prime Senior’s directive.’ He tipped up his face, sharply and brutally blunt. ‘Unnecessary treason, brave lady,
The rush of waves through sand and stone seemed to consume all the air for the moment while Elaira poised, half on the edge of panicked flight. In the end, she sat because her legs gave out; and because Fellowship sorcerers would hardly stand back and allow the half-brothers to commit a whole kingdom to war without some emphatically sound reason that Koriani intervention of any kind might shortsightedly come to disrupt. In a croak more like the raven’s than human speech, Elaira capitulated. ‘Say your piece.’
‘Well,’ said Traithe. Less solemn in his ways than Asandir, he was smiling. ‘For one thing, you need not warn us of an event that Sethvir already knows. Morriel doesn’t breathe, these days, without some sort of surveillance from Luhaine.’
‘You shouldn’t confide in me,’ Elaira said in a gasp of smothered surprise.
As if she had piqued him with a riddle, Traithe’s brows rose. ‘Morriel’s aware of the fact. It’s a sore point she won’t tell Lirenda, so I doubt she’ll challenge you to make it public.’ He went on, his manner as piquant as any matron sharing gossip at a well. ‘Furthermore, if your Prime has chosen to meddle with Arithon s’Ffalenn…’ The gleam in his eyes hot with mischief, the sorcerer shrugged ruefully. ‘Let’s by all means stay plain. I’m not saying she’s resolved on such an action. But if she should, her pack of conniving seniors will be richly entitled to the consequences.’
‘You imply that Arithon is defended?’ Intrigued despite her better judgement, Elaira edged closer to the fire.
Traithe tucked back a flap of her cloak that the breeze pushed dangerously near the sparks. ‘I’m saying the Teir’s’Ffalenn himself is well able to guard his own interests. ‘ When Elaira looked dubious, he gave back a look that happily embraced shared conspiracy. ‘Fatemaster’s judgement, lady, the Fellowship itself had a tough time trying to shepherd that spirit! Let me tell you what happened once, when Morriel tried a scrying on Arithon.’
His hands stuck out to warm near the fire like any innocuous old man’s, the sorcerer went on to describe in satirical detail exactly what transpired the day the wards over Kieling Tower had been breached during conflict with the Mistwraith.
Traithe gave the telling no embellishment, but used humour and bluntness like scalpels to bare a rotten truth. He spared nothing. Not Lirenda’s furious humility, nor Morriel’s arrogant overconfidence. Least of all did he avoid Arithon’s vicious reaction to the fact that Elaira’s private feelings had been used as a tool for unscrupulous prying.
Choking and spluttering through a mirth just shy of a seizure, Elaira tried and failed to picture Lirenda upended in her own tangled skirts. ‘A worthy prank.’ She caught her breath finally, stung from her laughter by real grief. ‘I’m a game piece.’ She, who most questioned Koriani tenets and practices, had unwittingly become their most indispensable cipher in the course of the coming conflict.
‘Arithon knows that,’ Traithe said, equally serious and plain. ‘He doesn’t like it. Should Morriel cross him again on those grounds, he’s going to hit her back with far more than a harmless warning. Have you access to the histories of the high kings?’
As she nodded, he said, ‘Good. Read them and see what happens when past scions of s’Ffalenn were pressed to embrace open enmity. Make no mistake when I tell you Arithon has inherited all of his line’s rugged loyalty. He’s got Torbrand’s temper too, intact as I’ve ever seen it.’
The scanty bits of fuel had burned now to a scarlet nest of embers. Across a rising puff of smoke, Elaira looked at the sorcerer whose forthcoming nature came and went like broken clouds across sunlight. Traithe had turned reticent again. Though his eyes never shied from her regard, and his kindly air of listener remained intact, his stillness invited her to question him on her own. ‘You’re asking me to trust Arithon’s judgement?’
‘I ask nothing,’ Traithe amended gently. ‘I offer only the observation that Arithon is qualified to defend himself from any Koriani interference that originates through you. And he will do so, never asking your preference on the matter.’
Hands clasped hard beneath her cloak, Elaira chuckled. ‘I see. He breaks none of my vows in the process and therefore I won’t get hurt. Very neat. I shall allow him to act as my protector and endeavour to be the dutiful initiate.’ She gathered her skirts to rise, a lump in her throat brought by surety: that this time, the Fellowship’s intervention had diverted her from breaking Koriani mores. But in fact, the measure was stopgap. Traithe’s concerns had the more firmly grounded her self-knowledge, that the vows of her order were as unsuited to her nature as crown and kingdom were to the music that fate had forced Arithon to stifle.
Which of the pair of them would be first to break, she wondered, as she watched Traithe douse the sparks of their fire with effortless spellcraft. The incoming tide would sweep off the ashes and leave sands smoothed clean of footprints.
Traithe stood and roused his raven, which croaked like a drunk with a hangover and hopped sullenly to its master’s wrist. Never so absorbed by his bird as he appeared, the sorcerer said suddenly, ‘You’re not alone, brave lady. Nor are you entirely Morriel’s plaything. Not since the day you chose to seek out Asandir in Erdane.’
‘Ath,’ said Elaira in a futile effort to bury her anguish behind toughness. ‘Now didn’t I think that one escapade touched off my troubles in the first place?’
The sorcerer returned a look that drilled her through and gave no quarter. ‘Never sell yourself so short!’
‘Take care of him,’ she blurted, in heartfelt reference to the s’Ffalenn prince.
Poised to leave, unobtrusive as the beggar she first had mistaken him for, Traithe reached out and stroked her cheek, as the father she had never known might have done to reassure a cherished daughter. As his hand fell away, she cupped the place he had caressed; and now the tears fell and blinded her.
‘Lady, great heart.’ He sighed gently. ‘The love within you is no shame. And since you fear to ask, I’ll tell you: there is no secret to be kept. The Fellowship stepped back at Etarra because the grace of spirit we know as life lay
