The Lord of Stariel Page 4

  She’d repeated the mantra so often that it was a shock to find this was the first time she’d truly believed it. A curious lightness filled her as Aunt Sybil glowered and Lady Phoebe grew flustered. My father is dead, and my family have no power over me. They cannot trap me here.

  After the funeral and the Choosing, she would leave, back to her own life. She was dependent on her family for neither shelter nor occupation nor affection now; she’d built those things for herself, and her family had no ability to threaten her by withholding them. And not all of them feel as Aunt Sybil does, she thought, remembering Gregory’s bright eyes and watching her younger sisters, who looked torn between curiosity and the instinct that they ought to share their elders’ displeasure. Perhaps Father’s passing is a chance at a new start for all of us.

  All this ran through her between one breath and the next, and Hetta marvelled that her epiphany wasn’t obvious to the entire room. She felt as if the entire world had shifted, rearranging into a new and brighter shape.

  Taking pity on Aunt Sybil, she eased the conversation away from her profession. She could afford to be magnanimous. After all, in two weeks she would be gone.

  4

  The Funeral

  The day of the funeral dawned dark and oppressive as Hetta’s family assembled into a loose battalion and descended upon the village of Stariel-upon-Starwater. The funeral itself had been planned to an inch, directed mainly by Aunt Sybil, with Lady Phoebe anxiously carrying out her orders. Grandmamma bobbed above it all, although her usual serenity had taken on a sombre edge. Marius looked close to developing a nervous tic.

  As they made their way to the temple, Hetta found herself searching for her cousin Jack. His flame-red locks made him easy to pick out of the crowd of grey-eyed, dark-haired relatives taking up half of the small building. Hetta had seen very little of him since her arrival, as he’d spent most of it out of doors. Jack had probably the strongest land-sense of all the Valstars, and he was probably one of the few genuinely grieving her father’s death. It wasn’t inconceivable that he might seek solace in Stariel. And, a cynical part of Hetta couldn’t help thinking, he probably thought it would increase his chances of being chosen.

  The temple was full to overflowing with those who’d come to see her father into the next world. All the surrounding gentry had put in appearances, along with most of the preeminent tradespeople of Stariel-on-Starwater. Angus and his sisters nodded solemnly to Hetta as she took her place in the front pew, reserved for Lord Valstar’s children and widow.

  Hetta tried to feel something as the druid spoke, but she found her attention so fixed on the great black coffin at the front of the temple that she couldn’t afterwards recall what he said. The illusory lilies looked perfect, cool and white against the dark wood. She focused her magesight and the lilies became ghosts, showing the simple starflowers beneath. How odd, was the thought that kept swimming through her mind. How odd that her father was in that box, to go into the ground, to never stir again. She tried to summon tears, but they didn’t come.

  Marius cried, of course. Hetta had known he would. It didn’t truly speak to the depth of his sentiment; he would’ve cried equally at a stranger’s funeral. Jack didn’t cry, although his expression was stiff, as if he were wound too tightly for tears. Lady Phoebe wept, along with her three children, even Gregory. Aunt Sybil dabbed at her eyes, her expression severe and daring anyone to comment. Most of Hetta’s cousins remained dry-eyed, though their faces were solemn. The children were fractious and sullen, not quite able to absorb the full seriousness of the occasion.

  Hetta concentrated on keeping an appropriately sober expression as she struggled with a mix of emotions she couldn’t readily identify. Was this grief? Her father was dead, and now they would never reconcile. And yet, she’d never thought they would reconcile. Her father’s death hadn’t changed anything on that count at all, and there was a guilty relief in knowing she didn’t have to be weighed down by his disapproval anymore.

  The service took forever, with the line of condolences from the other attendees stretching into infinity. Hetta kept her countenance through sheer force of will, determined that no one would know that she wanted to flee into the hills.

  The storm had not yet broken as they lowered the coffin into the damp earth, but the wind was rising. The mourners gripped their coats firmly about themselves as the icy wind stole fingers inside buttons and under scarves, trailing cold caresses. A gust swept off little Laurel’s hat and carried it up to catch on the branches of one of the graveyard’s trees. Aunt Sybil’s hissed scold at her carelessness sounded unnaturally loud.

  Stariel took its former lord back with such a lack of ceremony that it hardly seemed like magic at all when the grave simply drew closed over the coffin. Hetta stared at the spot where the earth had moved for a long moment, reaching out to Stariel with her land-sense—as she was sure every Valstar was doing at that moment. Stariel wasn’t truly capable of human emotions—it was too large and too enduring for such things—but Hetta thought she detected something akin to loss.

  The wake withered into the afternoon. Angus made a point of seeking her out, but she was by that point so occupied with maintaining her façade that she barely took in his words. His expression creased towards concern as Hetta excused herself. The impending doom promised by the weather made everyone eager to take their leave early, and it wasn’t yet three o’clock when the Valstars saw the last of them off and were free to return to the house.

  No one spoke much on the drive back. Hetta shared a horse-drawn carriage with her cousin Jack and her two half-sisters. Lady Phoebe had been so much overcome that Marius had awkwardly taken her in hand, and he and Gregory had bundled her and Aunt Sybil into Father’s recently purchased kineticar. Hetta was guiltily grateful not to have to deal with her stepmother’s nerves. The rest of their relatives were, thankfully, not Hetta’s problem to transport. From what she saw, Wyn had the logistics well under control.

  She slipped out of the house almost as soon as they arrived, still unsure what she was feeling, and wandered into the gardens. The last flowers of summer had long since been clipped away, and no gardeners disturbed her solitude as she made her way down to the edges of Starwater. Today the rising wind had stirred the waters of the great lake, and it reflected the mood of the sky above. Thunderclouds gathered in the distance, and between the dark waters and the browning bracken of the surrounding hills, the world was painted in shades of purple.

  Henry Valstar, head of the great Valstar family, Lord of Stariel, Defender of Starwater, First of His Name, Father of Marius, Henrietta, Gregory, Alexandra, and Laurel, was dead. This fact finally hit Hetta, with a kind of curious physicality, knocking the air from her lungs.

  A memory stirred for the first time in years: large hands helping her onto the back of her first pony. Horsemanship was one of the only activities in which Hetta both excelled and of which her father approved. She remembered his gruff pride when she’d shown no fear of large horsey teeth, and how he’d described her as ‘pluck to the backbone’. It was one of the few uncomplicated memories she had of her father. She hadn’t allowed herself to recall it for years.

  She sighed, expelling tension along with air. Enough brooding. She turned away from the dark waters and made her way back to the house. More time had passed with her contemplating Starwater than she’d realised. In the deepening gloom, she caught a flash of moon-white hair on the uppermost turret of the house: Wyn. As she drew closer, she picked out more than one figure and identified Marius and her cousin Jack as well. She frowned. What were they doing up there? Marius spotted her and waved to her, inviting her to join them.

  5

  Wine and Thunder

  Full dark had fallen by the time she climbed the stairs up the highest of Stariel’s three towers. As she neared the door at the top, she heard low voices. On a still night, voices carried in the outside air, but tonight the wind was enough to muffle the words into meaninglessness.

 
; She emerged to find Marius, Wyn, and her cousin Jack sprawled against the tower wall, each clutching a large mug. Several bottles of wine lay between them. Marius gave her a silent salute, and the three of them shuffled to make space. Wyn handed her a fourth mug and she took it.

  “Yes, please,” she said with a sigh as Wyn held up the bottle and raised an eyebrow. He filled her mug with a hand that was perfectly steady, although he apparently needed to focus rather intently on the task. His hand brushed hers as he handed it over and their eyes met. She blushed. She hadn’t spoken to him since that encounter in the greenhouse—easy enough to justify in the chaos of the funeral arrangements, but still smacking of cowardice. He was still her friend, wasn’t he, regardless of this new and disconcerting pull of attraction?

  “How did you all escape?” Hetta asked, since it was clear enough why they were here. The four of them together drinking on the highest tower woke memories of the years before she’d left. They were an odd combination, but they had also been four teenagers of similar ages living in the same house, miles from anywhere.

  Marius shrugged. “Most of our lot are camped out in the hall.” ‘Our lot’ being the older set of cousins. “The girls are in bed. Phoebe took to hers with a headache. I left before Aunt Sybil could corner me.” He shot a sideways glance at his cousin to see how he took this slight on his mother.

  Jack laughed and clonked his glass against Marius’s. “And I said I was off for a drink. They assumed I meant the village pub. But I met Marius at the door to the wine cellar, and it seemed the best idea was to slink up here where we wouldn’t be heard.”

  “And you?” Hetta turned to Wyn, amused. He’d dropped much of the formal manner he adopted around the older members of the family or the other servants, which pleased her.

  He gave a wry smile. “I’m off duty now, so I have no thrilling tales of avoidance to tell you.” His russet eyes glinted in amusement, deep and almost black in the dusk. “But I also possess the key to the wine cellar.”

  “You’re an excellent fellow,” Jack agreed, patting Wyn’s shoulder. He wasn’t intoxicated, but it was clear he’d drunk enough to make him affably expansive to all men. It was one of the things Hetta liked about Jack when compared to her father. Lord Valstar was a mean drunk.

  Hetta laughed. “Are we pilfering from the stores, then? It almost makes me feel sixteen again.” She drank deeply, and her eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you commandeered the Millyard?” She peered into the ruby liquid with reverence.

  “Seemed the occasion for it,” Marius said.

  “Uncle would’ve appreciated it,” Jack said, grief sliding over his face, the flicker of a fish surfacing briefly.

  Hetta considered this. “You’re probably right. He would hardly want to be associated with an inferior beverage.”

  “Besides,” said Marius, “the wine’ll belong to one of us soon enough.” He gestured between himself and Jack, and Jack gave an awkward grin.

  Oh, Marius. She knew her brother was merely using the wine as an excuse to speak the thought that must have been burning in him for years, and never more so than tonight. He would make peace with it, eventually, if he wasn’t chosen, but he couldn’t do that until the matter was settled one way or the other.

  “Where’s Gregory?” Hetta suddenly remembered that she had another brother to account for. But he hadn’t been of appropriate drinking age when she’d left home. “You said the children had gone to bed, but surely that doesn’t include him, unless he’s a very different seventeen-year-old to the ones I am familiar with.” And he should be here, part of this smaller, more intimate subset of the vast Valstar family.

  Jack shrugged. “No idea.”

  Marius frowned. “He must have snuck out as well. He wasn’t down with the others, and he wasn’t in his room when I went past before. I’ve wondered lately if he’s hiding something.”

  Jack clapped Marius on the shoulder.

  “Probably a lass from the village.” He didn’t seem to think there was anything to be concerned about in Gregory’s absence.

  Marius was unconvinced. “Not on the night of his father’s funeral, surely?”

  Jack grew a tad defensive. “Nothing more natural—might have wanted consoling.”

  “I think he would have mentioned a ‘lass from the village’, as you call it.”

  But Jack shook his head. “That age, the last thing a man wants is his brother interfering with his affairs.”

  They suddenly remembered Hetta’s presence. Both turned to her, twin abashed expressions awakening a scrap of family resemblance between them. They did not ordinarily look much alike: Jack was stocky and solid as a mastiff; Marius had Father’s gaunt good looks mixed with a greyhound nervousness all his own.

  “Begging your pardon, Hetta,” Jack said after a beat. “It’s not the sort of thing to speak of in front of a lady.”

  “Yes, because I’m such a lady. Please don’t treat me like an innocent,” Hetta said, amused but also irked. “The possibility of Gregory flirting with one of the village girls neither surprises nor distresses me.” For a second, she fought the overwhelming temptation to shock them with a few pithy words concerning the breadth of her own experience, but she resisted with an effort. Like Gregory, she didn’t want her relatives to either know of or interfere with her affairs. “I’ll admit to sharing Marius’s doubts about the timing, but it seems excessive to send out a search party. He’s grown enough to dictate his own movements, I suppose.”

  Jack looked surprised and gave a short laugh. “You’re the first female I’ve heard say as much.”

  Hetta took this as more of a reflection on his mother and older sister than on womankind in general and chose not to be offended.

  “Well,” Wyn said out of the silence that had fallen. “It seems a timely moment to bring out these.” With that, he rummaged for a tin lying beside him and offered the contents around, revealing half a dozen cheese scones. He looked at them a little sadly. “They’d be better warm.” He turned mournful eyes to Hetta.

  She gave him a long, steady look. What game was he playing here? But she took the tin from him and focused her will. As a stage illusionist, she more often had call for fake fire than the real kind, but that wasn’t her only gift. Pyromancy was a rare talent, frequently confused with the much more common technomancy, which worked on quite different principles of energy transfer but could produce superficially similar results. Hetta had no technomancy, which she’d often thought was a pity, because it was quite a lucrative profession nowadays, powering everything from boilers to kineticars. Hetta couldn’t store energy for later use, like a technomancer could do with the right materials, but she could do basic in-the-moment heating spells. She let the barest flicker of fire pass through her, heating the tin, and cradled it in her hands, welcoming the warmth. Then she shook her head at her own foolishness, put the tin aside, and summoned a ball of flame to spin in her palm. She couldn’t put it down, lest it turn to real fire and she lose control over it, but it produced heat quite nicely. She thought wistfully of cold nights spent talking to Bradfield, the theatre director, on the roof of the Sun Theatre.

  “Are you sure you don’t have any technomancy?” Wyn said, though the question was a rhetorical one as he knew very well she didn’t. He gave a theatrical sigh. “The boilerstones weren’t charged properly last time they came back from the apprentice we use. He’ll be a long time earning his mastery at such a rate. It seems a shame to have a trained master in the house and not be able to make use of her.”

  Was he deliberately reminding the others of Hetta’s achievements? Master wasn’t a rank conferred on just any mage. She wasn’t sure if it would work or if Jack would share too much of her father’s disapproval. Still, she responded in the same light tone Wyn had adopted.

  “Sadly, no. Fire and illusion are my twin gifts. Which I’m thankful for at this moment, for I’ve no desire to be bullied into fixing household appliances for you, scoundrel!”

  After a
few slow blinks, Jack shrugged and held out his hands towards the ball of flame, letting it warm his fingers. “This is still fair useful,” he commented.

  “If only we’d had this when the main chimney cracked last year,” Marius agreed. “On Wintersol, no less, and snow everywhere. We had to wear ten layers just to open the presents, and we couldn’t get it fixed for over a week.”

  “And it cost an arm and a leg,” Jack muttered darkly. Hetta wondered how he knew that. It said a great deal about his access to the estate’s accounts. Marius didn’t react to the remark, but then it wouldn’t exactly surprise him that Father had been preparing Jack to take over management of the estate.

  “Do you remember that ancient monstrosity of a dressing gown Grandmamma wore?” Marius said.

  The talk turned to pleasant reminiscences, occasionally sliced with thin moments of poignancy, as the late Lord Henry could hardly fail to make an appearance in these. Like Stariel itself, life here revolved around the lord. Hetta listened with something between pain and resignation. She didn’t regret her choices, but she felt excluded nonetheless.

  Wyn met her eyes and his expression warmed. “Do you remember, Hetta, when you had me serve tea in a dress because I lost a wager to you?”

  A slow smiled dawned as she dredged up the memory of a younger Wyn unloading a tea tray with immense dignity. “You looked well in it, if I recall correctly.”

  Marius overheard the comment and interjected. “I don’t remember that.” He considered Wyn narrowly. “And I’m fairly certain I would.” Even leaning against the tower wall and casually holding a wine-filled mug, Wyn still retained a slight air of neatly pressed butleriness. It had to be some innate feature of waistcoats and starch, because the Wyn she’d known had never been particularly concerned with propriety, at his core.