“I didn’t know that the Whinno-hir were shapeshifters,” said Torisen, at a loss for anything else to say.
“Neither did I, at first. They don’t do it often. It does make one wonder, though, about Lord Ardeth’s long relationship with Brithany, Bel’s sister.”
Adiraina took a hasty stride forward, brought up short by her tight underskirt. “Wretched girl, you dare?”
“I dare many things, lady,” said Jame in a level tone. “As well you know. Sometimes right, other times wrong. But I’m good, eventually, at finding out the truth.”
“Yes, by breaking things.”
“If necessary.”
The Ardeth drew herself up. “You are a disgrace to your race and sex.”
Torisen stepped between them. “Stop it. This is a night to honor the dead, not to create more by starting new blood feuds.”
The Ardeth laughed. “Yes, honor them. If you can remember their names.”
Jame had been scanning the attentive ranks. “I can tell you one problem right now: these banners have been rearranged.”
Both twins turned to give the blind matriarch a hard look. She couldn’t have done it herself, Torisen thought, but she might easily have had help. Another piece of Ardeth trickery, more subtle than drugged wine, but then that had been a hasty improvisation, taking advantage of his unexpected return to Gothregor. He was growing very tired indeed of the Women’s World infesting his halls.
“I know some of the names,” said Jame, her attention returning to the banners. “The Knorth Kendar at Tentir have been teaching me. That’s why Harn sent me, I think.” She stopped before Mullen’s banner. “But who is this?”
Torisen told her.
“He came to me in a dream,” she said, distressed, “and asked me to remember him. But I couldn’t. We had never met.” She touched the banner gingerly. “These woven strips of leather . . . is this his actual skin, tanned?”
Torisen had never asked or noticed, which shook him. “The Kendar took his body. They have their own customs.”
She moved on to the white-haired woman. “And this of course is our great-grandmother Kinzi Keen-eyed, the last Knorth Matriarch, your . . . special friend, Ardeth. These . . . I’m not sure. Our grandfather Gerraint Highlord and his consort Telarien?”
“Token banners,” said Adiraina, behind them. “Telarien’s was consumed in the fire here, the night that Gerraint died and his son Ganth became Highlord, to the eventual grief of us all. The same flames consumed both Gerraint’s and Greshan’s bodies, the latter none too soon: he had been five days dead at the time.”
For a moment, Torisen almost thought he saw them: his father facing his grandfather over a bloated corpse clad in gilded leather, lying on a pall-draped catafalque. Lips moved. They were arguing. Behind them, avidly listening, stood a slim, veiled lady in black with stars spangling her skirt and behind her, a man dressed as a servant but with a most peculiar expression.
In a blink, they were gone.
Jame’s breath caught. Had she also seen that brief, strange apparition? She turned away, looking puzzled, and started again.
“Now what?” he demanded irritably.
“Nothing. I thought I saw banners falling, there, along the eastern wall. No, being ripped down, and behind them . . . what?”
Torisen stared at the wall in question. By tradition, the oldest banners hung there, dating back to the Fall, but again fire and rot had destroyed many while someone more recently had scrambled the rest. Several hung crookedly. One slipped sideways even as he watched and slumped to the floor.
The sight shook him, more than he would have believed possible. Worse was the sudden exposure of the keep’s wall beyond. Greshan’s pyre had seared it and laced some of the ancient stones with cracks. One had actually exploded as the air pockets in it expanded. The very foundation of his house undermined, breached . . .
“I told you,” whispered his father’s voice from the depths of his soul, “as my father told me: a dying, failed house we have been, ever since Gerridon betrayed us to the Shadows.”
Torisen stared at the ragged hole where the stone had been, which the banner had masked. Over ages, either the hall had sunk or the ground had risen, probably both, to conceal this damage from the outside. A cold wind breathed out of the dark gap as if out of a toothless mouth . . . Hhhaaaa . . . stinking of earth, and death, and hunger. If he stared long enough, what would he see?
“Nothing,” said Torisen harshly. “Nonsense.” And he went to rehang the fallen tapestry. It was ancient, the survivor of fire and neglect, but only through the tightness of its weave. Its own weight ripped it apart as he lifted it up.
“Try this.” Jame had come up behind him, gingerly holding the tanned hide of Mullen’s banner at arms’ length. “It may be the newest one here, but I think it’s also the strongest.”
When he raised it to the hook, it neatly filled the gap left by the other’s fall, like closing a door against the dark. As he lowered his hands, they brushed against Mullen’s woven ones; he could almost feel the latter move, warm and reassuring, under his touch.
Trust me, my lord.
“That’s better,” Jame said with a sigh of relief as he stepped back; and so it was, never mind why.
She looked around the hall again, back to business. “I don’t recognize Greshan here, in token or otherwise, which isn’t surprising given how Ganth Gray Lord felt about him, and why. We haven’t been fortunate in our uncles, have we?”
Torisen said nothing to that, not knowing what she meant. Besides, she had moved on to another blurred face with strangely anxious eyes. “Negalent Nerves-on-edge, I think, a second, no, a third cousin twice removed, dead on his wedding night of a nosebleed. How embarrassing.”
Threads once sodden with blood seemed to droop in relief.
After that, it became easier to remember names. Other houses no doubt had more elaborate rituals to honor this night—surely Adric did at Omiroth—but here it was only the two of them. Torisen began to relax. How much of his distress had been mere fear of failure? As much as his sister disconcerted him, she had a wry way of taking things in stride that was strangely reassuring.
Paws thundered overhead. Yce bounded down the northwest stair, closely pursued. The wolver pup skittered on dank flagstones and was bowled over by the ounce. When Yce wriggled onto her back, Jorin pinned her and began furiously to groom her creamy chest.
Jame had stopped in front of the death banner of the mild-faced girl who in other ways so closely resembled her.
“What’s Aerulan doing here? The Brandan were supposed to hold her in perpetuity.”
At her sharp tone, ounce and pup looked up, startled, and Torisen’s ease shattered. Only when it was gone did he realize that for the past half hour he had almost been happy.
“Lord Brandan sent her back when I refused to accept the price demanded for her contract,” he said, suddenly on the defensive although not quite sure why. “Our father asked too much. Besides, the poor girl has been dead these thirty years and more, ever since the Massacre. If Brant still loves her so much, hasn’t he earned the right to keep her banner without further grief?”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
Adiraina was suddenly between them. “I forbid you to speak,” she said to Jame, and even Torisen could feel the power behind her words. She was after all not only the Ardeth Matriarch but the leader of the Matriarchs’ Council, and her voice that of the Women’s World.
His sister had gone back a step, but now she stood her ground. On the wall, her fire-cast shadow darkened. Yce fought free of Jorin. The fur along both creatures’ spines rose and they backed away.
“You and your precious secrets,” Jame said softly. “Are they worth your adopted daughter’s sanity?”
“I said, be quiet.”