Chapter 75 #2
Actually, Merik would wager it had been Revan’s own doing that the request regarding buttons had gone unheeded.
He did so love his little unnecessary extras, so here Merik stood with an infernal number of pure silver beads climbing up his torso, a cascade of molten starlight against a blue so dark, it was almost black.
Meanwhile Merik’s collar was high enough to stab into the edges of his jaw.
It rubbed at the scars on his right side.
Merik’s only consolation was that his sister looked as blighted uncomfortable as he was, in her pale gray Nubrevnan Admiralty uniform.
Chandelier light glowed across her and her entourage of vizers, and although she’d met Merik’s gaze across the tiled room several moments ago, she had yet to actually come speak to him.
To be fair, he hadn’t gone to her either.
He and his lone guest, Sky, had been cornered almost immediately upon their arrival by a friend Merik hadn’t expected to see again.
A man who’d been a Cleaved alongside Merik in Poznin, and without whom, Merik never would have escaped the Puppeteer’s control.
It was this man who’d thrust the killing blow into Esme, and he, it turned out, was nothing short of royalty in the northernmost tribes of the Witchlands.
The Northman’s haggard beard was now a finely groomed one with beads and gold ribbon; his furs were dyed blue; a velvet purple cloak draped over one beefy shoulder; and a hammered band of silver rested atop his head.
The hug that the Northman and Merik shared made tears score in Merik’s eyes.
(And also squeezed most of the air from Merik’s lungs.) But alas, the same language barriers that had prevented conversation in Poznin now prevented it on the dance floor.
Sky did her best, but Merik could see her struggling.
Which was why he lifted both hands and said in Svodish, “We’ll be back—and with someone to translate.”
That journey led them across the ballroom, onto a patio, into the ballroom again, and eventually behind the columns to a Wordwitch named Mathew fitz Leaux, who stood with another advisor for the Cartorran Imperial Regent.
Sky instantly began salivating. “He’s a Wordwitch. That’s what that mark on his hand means.”
Merik snorted. He knew blighted well what that Witchmark meant, and he was more than a little relieved to see it there. Merik had already drained his entire socializing quota for the evening; he didn’t think he could manage another search for a translator.
“Of course I can help you and this Northman,” Mathew told Merik in fluid Cartorran.
Then, with no effort at all, he slipped into Arithuanian and said to Sky: “Or better yet, I can teach your advisor here how to do it for herself. Would you like that, Skyvenjetsa? To see the words hovering right before you, even though you’ve never encountered them before? ”
“Gods, yes,” Sky breathed with delight. “I would love that, sir.”
“Excellent. Then let us take a turn about the room, so I may show you some basics.” His gaze slid back to Merik; his words shifted to Nubrevnan. “If that is all right with your minister, of course.”
Sky flung Merik a pleading glance.
“Go on.” Merik laughed. “Just please remember those manners we practiced last week, hye?”
Sky bowed, fist to heart, and with an almost mocking grin, she answered: “Hye, sir. Of course, sir. Right away, sir. I would never forget, sir.”
Which prompted Mathew to grin Merik’s way. “Oh, do not worry, Minister.” He winked. “I have dealt with far less polite pupils than she.”
Pupils? Merik thought as Mathew whisked Sky away. When did we say she was your pupil? But Merik couldn’t chase after to ask—not without abandoning the second Cartorran advisor and revealing poor manners of his own.
Guildmaster Alix smiled at Merik, as if knowing what Merik was thinking. “This is quality needlework, Minister.” He gestured to the complex lines sewn onto Merik’s cuffs. “And such shimmer on that silver thread—it must have cost a fortune.”
“Hye, Guildmaster, it did.” Merik bowed his head. “Except … that is not your title anymore, is it?”
The man’s smile spread wider. “No, you’re right.
I am Guildmaster no longer. My time masquerading as a tailor came to an end shortly after I met you at the last Truce Summit.
Not that I mind being an Imperial Regent’s advisor now.
It is…” A thoughtful pause. Then a twirl of his finely boned hand where a Witchmark used to grace it—but where now there was only pale flesh.
“It is much easier to be oneself than to hide, would you not agree?”
Merik’s gaze sharpened. The question was clearly pronged on purpose, given that it certainly appeared as if Merik was hiding behind this column while all the monarchs, Guildmasters, nobility, merchants, and powerful players of the Witchlands spun and danced, chatted and colluded beyond.
But before Merik could respond as pointedly in kind—I am here because you and Mathew fitz Leaux were hiding before me—the former Silk Guildmaster bowed. It was a respectful bow, not mocking as his words might have been. And in seconds, he and his own beautifully tailored clothes had swished away.
Leaving Merik to tug at his collar and frown at the crowded space beyond the column.
The air at the heart of the ballroom was quickly turning stuffy.
The breeze slipping in through the open glass doors was too sticky to help.
Merik should go back out there. He should talk to Vivia, then track down the Northman again—whose name Merik still hadn’t sorted out (there were a lot of syllables involved)—and do his best to endure the rest of this night without letting the heat and the crowds get to him.
“Oh, who are you fooling?” he muttered, turning his attention to his cuffs. The truth was that he had fled behind this column, and only random chance had placed a Wordwitch back here too.
“Quite the show, isn’t it?” a voice asked.
Merik spun about, only to discover the shadows he’d claimed were changing shape before his eyes. One dark corner in particular was now coalescing into a woman dressed in white—a woman who absolutely had not been there several moments ago.
Safi grinned. “Sorry to sneak up on you. Don’t be mad at Alix for hiding me. I didn’t want to talk to anyone before I could find you. And gods, it took you so long to finally make it back here. I was on the verge of sending Alix to track you down.”
Merik’s mouth hung open like a fish. He knew it did, but he couldn’t seem to reel it shut.
All he could do was take in the workmanlike cut of Safi’s gown.
The silken gray breeches that slid out from a knee-length skirt.
The fine black boots that reached to her mid-calf.
She looked dressed for a fight, not a party.
“I … I have been trying to find you for weeks,” Merik sputtered at last. “I sent letters and spies and even Aurora, but I heard nothing. Where have you been?”
Safi had the decency to wince. “I’m sorry. I did send a letter.”
“Hye, and all it said was, Thank you for saving me. Twice. Yours, Safi.”
Her wince melted away, a familiar defiance flashing in her storm-blue eyes. “Was that not enough?”
Merik scoffed. “No, Domna, it was not enough. It sounded so final, I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Why? Did my uncle not explain our plans at the Summit lunch today? How the mantle of the Cahr Awen will now be an apprenticed position that ensures magic is never again abused by humanity?” She tapped impatiently at the symbols on her bodice. “I’m wearing this ridiculous outfit to make the point.”
“Your uncle explained everything.” A fresh surge of temper sparked inside Merik’s chest. “But that still left me with weeks of wondering.”
A capitulating grunt. Then Safi sashayed a step closer.
Another step and another until she was right up to Merik and could flick lazily at one of his many absurd buttons.
Her hands, Merik noted, were scarred in the same way that his face and chest were.
But Safi’s were newer scars, still red and angry where his had begun to haze.
She wasn’t ashamed of her marks.
Merik envied her that.
“If I didn’t know better,” she said with a tip of her head, “I would think you were worried about me, Prince.”
He snorted. His attention shot back to her face—which had plenty of its own scars, from blades and sparks and icy winds in a storm he’d tried to protect her from.
“Of course I was worried, Safi. The last time I saw you was the Great Collapse. For all I knew, you’d written that letter and then flung yourself into the mouth of a sea fox. ”
“Yes.” Safi walked her fingers up his buttons. “That does sound like something I would do.”
Merik’s temper kicked up another level, and this time, a slight wind kicked with it. Just a twirl of hot air to flip around them. To tug at Safi’s skirts and spray her short hair from her face.
“Well, if it’s any consolation,” she continued, “you’re going to be seeing quite a lot of me. In fact I was hoping you might be the first, Merik.”
He swallowed. “First … what?” She was very near—and those blue eyes of hers were as choppy and unpredictable as the sea.
“The first place we visit, of course. The Cahr Awen must travel across the Witchlands to ensure magic is never drained or misused. Are you sure my uncle explained all of this at the luncheon?”
Merik swallowed again. His winds were well and truly coiling now, while his chest ached with the need to …
to do something other than simply stand here while she toyed with his buttons and skimmed her hands down, down, toward the silken belt at his waist. “Your uncle did indeed say all of this, but…” Focus, Merik.
“But he made no mention of your first stop.”
“Well, that’s because I only just decided it would be Poznin.” Safi’s grin turned almost triumphant.
And Merik caught both her wrists. She had reached his belt, and that was quite far enough. “Then I suppose that makes you as impulsive as ever.”
“You like it.”
“Noden hang me, but I do.”
“Then I think you will be especially pleased by the music that’s about to begin.”
He frowned, confusion whittling into the shadows. It whittled into his magic too, cooling his temper like a wind.
That’s not your temper, you dolt. It’s your magic responding to a woman. Kullen had told Merik that on the Jana, and blighted if Safi wasn’t currently realizing the same thing. Or at least, that was what the challenge on her face suggested.
Then Merik heard the throbbing strains of an opening movement, followed by the first stamping of heels on marble. And he felt as Safi’s fingers moved from his buttons to his shoulders, where they could tap and trickle against him like rain against a ship’s sail.
“The four-step,” he tried to say, although his voice came out rough as the Nihar coastline.
“Hye,” she agreed. “I thought we could dance it for old times’ sake, and … perhaps for new ones, too.”
Merik didn’t reply. His body told him there was too much danger in the ballroom—for his temper, for his sanity, for his safety. Because if he danced with the light-bringer, then all of the Witchlands would see his scars beneath the glowing chandeliers.
And all would know how much he had changed since he’d last been here.
But then, Merik supposed Safiya fon Hasstrel was as transformed as he was, if not more so. If she could face them all with that gleam in her blue eyes, then surely he could do the same.
Which was why Merik let Safi pull him toward the ballroom’s heart. Why, as he felt the bay’s humid breeze reach for his magic—and as dignitaries of all colors and sizes and creeds cleared away to watch them—he let himself take the starting position before Safi.
It’s why he also let himself laugh. Because he recalled how he’d begun this dance with her the last time. With arrogance and competition and yes, genuine temper. I don’t move, Domna. People move for me.
How childish; how absurd—and how childish, how absurd for Merik to keep hiding behind that column. Trust Safi, though, to bring out this other side of him.
Moonlight and chandeliers caressed her golden skin and gleaming hair, just as they had months ago. But this time, instead of people murmuring, Do you see with whom Prince Merik dances? it was: Do you see with whom the light-bringer dances?
Safi smiled at Merik.
Merik smiled at her.
The music shifted; the storm began; and together, they danced for all of the Witchlands to see.