Once again, Firekeeper and Blind Seer sat upon the parapet, but this time instead of facing the bay they faced inland. This time, instead of watching the roar and crash of the seemingly endless waters, they watched a receding stream of humanity as most of the wedding guests departed the castle at Silver Whale Cove.

As before, the young woman sat with her arm flung around the neck of the great grey wolf, and those who looked back upon the castle and chance glimpsed the sight shivered in themselves, remembering her bloodied hands and gown, and the rumors that she had attacked an a.s.sa.s.sin with her teeth. The fact that these rumors were true did nothing to stop them from being enhanced.

Despite the numerous persons who had witnessed the attack, more than one forwent the evidence of his or her own eyes in favor of the lurid tales that told how the wolf-woman had ripped out the a.s.sa.s.sin's throat with fangs suddenly as sharp as a wolf's own. Never mind that the man had been taken from the Sphere Chamber alive and walking-albeit somewhat stiffly-under his own power. Enough dead men had been carried away to "prove" the tales.Firekeeper knew something of what was being said and, far from being troubled by it, was amused. Had the tales been told about Blind Seer she would have been infuriated and worried, for the wolf could not speak to defend himself. She, however, could do so and would do so, confident in not only the protection of two kings and their heirs apparent but in her own strength.

Firekeeper, still in her teens and already the slayer of several powerful men, remained rather innocent.

She did not realize how little the strength of a single person mattered against the tides of politics or how little the protection of kings and their heirs might count when fear came alive.

But this afternoon two days after the wedding of Crown Princess Sapphire and Crown Prince Shad, Firekeeper wasn't thinking about fear and its consequences; she was more concerned about the immediate question of who had tried to kill two people she rather liked. She had not had time to meditate on the question in privacy, though she had listened to several heated discussions of the matter. Now, taking advantage of the fact that no one needed her to sit with an invalid or threaten a prisoner or any other of the many tasks that had enlivened these past few days, she took the time to think about what she had learned.

Wolves regularly attacked their rivals in power, so the idea of killing to gain position was neither alien nor repulsive to her. The use of a.s.sa.s.sins she had filed as yet another of the curious tools-like swords and bows-that humans created to make up for their lack of personal armament. What she still had to puzzle through was the subtle strategies involved in killing those who were expected to inherit power rather than those who held the power itself.

It had been explained to her by Derian and Elise that Shad and Sapphire were not only people themselves but emblems of the truce between their nations, that killing them might devastate that truce, that at the very least the confusion and backbiting that had reigned in Hawk Haven in the months before King Tedric had chosen Sapphire as his heir could be expected to begin again, that...

It had all been explained and when explained made sense, but to Firekeeper's way of thinking, which was still rather direct and inclined toward personal violence when frustrated, the sense was in violation of everything she wanted to believe about how things should be run. The human way of doing things seemed far too complicated and had a tendency to end in foul actions like wars.

"Of course," she said to Blind Seer when her thoughts had led her this far, "in the wolf way a wise old One like King Tedric would fall prey to the first young pup with spring-hot blood. That would be a pity."

"True," the wolf replied, "for as I see it where wolves need strength and hunt-wisdom in their Ones, humans need something else, a type of wisdom that touches on things other than whether the prey can be safely taken."

Firekeeper mulled over this for a time. "You're right, but humans wouldn't need that different wisdom if they weren't always biting at each other. Once wolves decide who are the Ones and where each is placed within the pack, then they are wolves together. Humans don't seem to understand that they are a people."

"I think," Blind Seer replied, narrowing his blue eyes against a sudden gust of wind, "that is because they are not. Even wolves challenge each other when one pack crosses the territory of another."

Firekeeper sighed and said in the tone of one making an admission much against her will, "You are refusing to let me make simple and comfortable generalizations, dear heart. As much as it tastes of gall in my mouth, I must admit you are right."

The wolf huffed out his flanks in a deep laugh, which the woman shared, but, even as she shared BlindSeer's laughter, Firekeeper wondered if he could understand how much her desire to see the wolf way as a better way than that followed by the humans came from her deep desire to continue believing as she had until that previous spring-that she was a wolf.

To believe otherwise was unsettling; more than unsettling, it left her uneasy, prey to nightmares in which fires and almost-forgotten faces played too great a role. Only when she calmed herself with the repeated refrain that no matter her shape and what others might call her she-Firekeeper-was a wolf did those uncomfortable memories (for when she was asleep she knew them to be memories) leave her alone.

Moreover, and this was something that Firekeeper had hardly admitted even to herself, as she watched her friends and acquaintances dance their courtship dances she wondered at how indifferent she was to human ideas of beauty and suitability. It never occurred to her that she was young to have such feelings, since by wolf years-even those longer years lived by the Royal Wolves of which Blind Seer was one-she was quite mature.

Firekeeper had always seen herself as a pup to the wolves of greater strength, stealth, and speed, but now among humans she could judge herself-never seeing the incongruity of using those same qualities as her basis for judgment-as a great wise One. Even a man in armor and bearing a sword might fall before her-as she had proven when she had battled Prince Newell, the traitor of Hawk Haven. Conveniently, she chose to overlook how severely wounded she had been in that battle and how had it been a battle fought wolf to wolf some third challenger would have finished her before she might howl her victory before the pack.

Saying nothing of this confusion of thoughts, many hardly shaped into words, Firekeeper merely hugged Blind Seer harder and said as she had so often said before: "I will never understand humans."

Blind Seer, though not quite four years old, was already wise enough to know that nothing he could say would be a suitable reply to that statement. He thought, however, that as long as Firekeeper continued to think thusly, she would indeed never understand humans.

"Why," Firekeeper said, raising a question she had meant to ask for some time but had continually put off in the chaos of the preceding two days, "did you howl me warning during the wedding?"

"I caught a scent upon the wind," the wolf replied directly, "a scent of one who might have borne you or the others ill-will."

He did stop speaking then, dangling the information just out of her reach as he might have a bone.

Wolves, like humans, were fond of teasing.

"Who?" asked Firekeeper, tugging the short fur behind one of his ears in mock threat.

Had they been somewhere less precarious than on the edge of a castle parapet, doubtless the wolf would have pounced her and they would have wrestled for a while until one or the other won temporary dominance. Blind Seer, however, was not one to risk himself or his beloved packmate for a game. He surrendered graciously, folding down his ears to protect them from further pinching.

"It was the scent of the woman they now call Queen Valora," Blind Seer replied, "she whom they called Gustin IV when we first met her. The scent came to me over the waters as I sat out on the parapet over the bay where we had sat that first day."

Firekeeper sat up so suddenly that her balance might have been threatened if it had not been schooled bysleeping in the treetops on many a lazy afternoon.

"Valora! Was she in the castle?"

"I don't think so," the wolf said, "for her scent was faint and mixed with the salt scent of the waters. When I looked out, I saw many ships. I think she was there on one of them, out on the waters, waiting to see if the killers did their work."

"But you never scented her inside the castle?"

"No fresh scent," the wolf a.s.sented, "and I have checked as we have gone hither and yon these past days. Her scent lingers in a few accustomed places, but it is all old and dead."

Firekeeper's first impulse had been to leap down from the parapet and head inside to seek out someone-perhaps King Tedric-and tell him what she had learned. However, between the motion and the thought she paused.

Derian now believed that Firekeeper could understand what Blind Seer said to her, but he had long experience of her company. Also, though he might not realize it, there were times that he himself came close to having ears to hear such speech. His hearing was best with horses and their ilk, but even that came closer to an uncanny understanding of their needs and motives rather than spoken words.

Derian's special perceptiveness, however, was more a handicap than an advantage in Firekeeper's current dilemma. He alone seemed to realize how clearly she understood Blind Seer. Elise seemed willing to grant the wolf greater than usual intelligence and perceptivity. Most of the rest of Firekeeper's human circle simply took comfort in their belief that the feral woman had greater than usual control over her unusual pet.

"Someone," Firekeeper said, pausing with one leg on either side of the parapet on which she had been sitting, "should be told what you scented, but who would believe us?"

"Derian," the wolf replied, some of her own doubt in the cant of his ears, "might believe us, but could he get anyone else to believe?"

"And what good would that belief do us?" Firekeeper added. "You yourself say that Queen Valora didn't come into the castle. Perhaps she merely wished to observe the festivities from a distance. Humans often like to look upon what gives them pain-consider Doc's mooning over Elise."

Blind Seer sighed agreement. In this, at least, he was willing to a.s.sent that humans were incomprehensible, even by one who wished to comprehend them.

"Still," Firekeeper said reluctantly after a further pause, "I should at least tell Derian. It is possible that Queen Valora knew of the a.s.sa.s.sins-perhaps they were even her tools-and hoped to come into the castle when the killing was done."

Without further discussion, they left their vantage point. Some of the departing guests, looking upward and seeing the vanishing blur of grey fur and brown leather, hastened their paces without conscious volition, glad to be leaving a place where wolves and wild women walked unchecked and unchallenged.

Derian Carter set down the quill with which he was writing a letter to his parents when Firekeeper and Blind Seer walked into his room unannounced. The young woman's expression was lit from within with a strange intensity, an intensity he fancied he saw mirrored in the gaze of the blue-eyed wolf.

"You alone, Fox Hair?" Firekeeper asked.The query was no mere politeness, Derian realized. Blind Seer was sniffing as if to catch any intruder's scent, and Firekeeper moved to check behind the window hangings.

"I am," Derian a.s.sured her, "though I might not have been. You really should learn to knock. I could have been entertaining."

Firekeeper wrinkled her brow for a moment. "Oh, you mean you could be with someone I shouldn't see you with like the kitchen maid at West Keep, right?"

She grinned wickedly and Derian was reminded of his younger sister, Damita. He glared at Firekeeper as he might have at Dami under similar circ.u.mstances. He hadn't been aware that his charge, then barely capable of speaking simple phrases and seemingly caught up in a flood of new experiences, had been aware of that harmless flirtation.

Firekeeper's expression became suddenly grave.

"You are alone, Derian. I... we... have something very serious to talk to you."

"Tell," he corrected mechanically. "Yes, I'm alone and if you shut the door securely no one should be able to overhear us."

Firekeeper took him at his word, checking the door and even sliding the bolt shut so that no one else would walk in unannounced.

Frankly curious now, Derian waited while she settled herself on the carpet before the fire and rested her arm on Blind Seer's back.

"You remember," Firekeeper began, "how on the morning of the wedding, during the wedding, Blind Seer howled."

"Certainly," Derian replied. "I thought he was sulking because he hadn't been invited."

Firekeeper shook her head, her solemnity unbroken though usually she would have returned some teasingly defensive remark.

"No, he no sulk. He trying to tell me something, to warn me to be careful, that he smelled something he didn't like."

"Go on," Derian prompted when she paused.

"What he smelled was..."

Again Firekeeper paused.

"Go on."

"He smelled Queen Valora."

Though the words were out, Firekeeper did not relax. Indeed, she stiffened further as if expecting her account to be challenged. Given that she was saying she was reporting for a wolf, Derian could understand her defensiveness. Still, he'd seen too much of the sympathy-of the apparent communication between the two-to automatically dismiss what she said as fancy.

"Where did he smell Queen Valora?" Derian asked, deciding that this was the safest question."Out on the water, out on the bay," Firekeeper said. "The wind was coming from that direction," she added as if this was crowning proof.

Derian felt himself starting to frown and struggled to keep his expression neutral.

"As I recall," he said, thinking aloud, "there were a good number of boats out there."

"Many," agreed Firekeeper, who still had trouble with numbers higher than ten. "I see them while I get dressed. Elise say later than many want to come to wedding but cannot and so go to water to watch building as if watching building was watching wedding."

She looked as if she found this idea rather incredible, but was willing to countenance that Elise understood humans better than she did.

"I remember something similar," Derian agreed, "and you are saying that Blind Seer caught and recognized one scent among so many at such a distance?"

Firekeeper nodded stubbornly.

"He say so. He could do so."

"But he caught no other scent?"

The wolf huffed out through his nose-a rather disdainful snort. Firekeeper replied (fleetingly Derian wondered if "translated" might not be a better term), "He say he smell many other scents but no other one that is so very important not to say maybe dangerous. He cry warning to me so that I be on guard."

"Why would he think that Queen Valora would bear you any grudge?"

Firekeeper looked impatient for the first time. "Not me, Fox Hair, no, but she bear this grudge-a fat, heavy one, I think-for King Allister and King Tedric and many others. If it is going to rain, more than one gets wet."

"I see," Derian answered rather lamely.

He was trying to decide what to do with this peculiar information. Could he expect anyone to believe that a wolf-no matter how impressively large-could have isolated one scent from so many and at such a distance?

He realized with a start that he hadn't even considered that most would doubt that Firekeeper could understand Blind Seer's report or that the wolf had the intelligence to positively identify the scent of a woman he had only seen at a distance. At least he a.s.sumed that Blind Seer had never been close to Queen Valora. Who knew where he and Firekeeper had been during their nighttime rambles?

One thing at a time.

"Firekeeper," he said, "what do you want me to do with this information?"

"I think," she said uncertainly, "that someone should know, especially since the killer slaves come to the wedding."

Derian nodded. "Did you have anyone in mind?"Firekeeper grinned triumphantly. "I tell you!"

Unable to help himself, Derian laughed. "You minx! Now it's my problem! Is that what you're saying?"

Firekeeper sobered. "I wish I feel it that simple. Maybe it nothing. Maybe Blind Seer smell wrong..."

The wolf huffed.

"Maybe," Firekeeper continued giving him a hug, "maybe Queen Valora just watching the wedding like others. Maybe she not know killers is there. Maybe, though, she know and wait to find if her den is empty and waiting for her to come back."

Derian drummed his fingers on the table.

"No one knows who sent those slaves," he said, "but it does stand to reason that if certain parties sent them they wouldn't have been content just to create chaos and then step back. Now *some might have-Stonehold, maybe, or even Waterland. I understand that Waterland is wondering if the current shift in power means that Bright Bay isn't going to be able to rival them in naval power anymore. They might have wanted to make certain that would be so.

"And maybe," he continued, "Queen Valora decided to take advantage of having all her enemies in one place to make a strike. Even if no one was killed, she'd have made them nervous and nervous people make mistakes."

He made a sweeping gesture toward the window through which the retreating parties of former guests were still visible.

"Look at that. Think of the rumors they'll spread, of the doubt and fear and uncertainty." He rubbed his eyes. "My dad collects rumors, you know, from the travelers who hire horses and carriages from his stables. Rumors do a lot more than people think. Given time, they might even end up doing as much harm as if the prince and princess had really been killed."

Firekeeper nodded. "So I think, though only not so much. What should we do? Do we keep this, just us three, or do we tell someone?"

Derian felt quite acutely how young he was and a certain unfair desire to lay this responsibility on older shoulders.

"King Tedric," he said, "doesn't leave for Hawk Haven until tomorrow or the day after. He wanted to make certain that he could honestly report that Sapphire was out of danger. Let me see if I can get an appointment with him.

"It might not be possible," he cautioned, when Firekeeper leapt to her feet in sudden enthusiasm for his plan. "I only said I'd try."

But three hours later, Derian, Firekeeper, and Blind Seer were admitted into the king's presence.

The king wasn't alone, but then neither of the kings, nor the queens, nor any of the princes or princesses had been alone since the a.s.sa.s.sins' attack. Now that the first shock of that attack was over, Derian had heard there was some grumbling from the younger parties, but he doubted that there would ever be any from King Tedric.

At seventy-five, the old king had given the last forty-seven years of his life to ruling the kingdom he had inherited from his father, King Chalmer. Reportedly once imperious and even arrogant, Tedric hadchanged with the years-not softened, but mellowed, and like an aged wood, he was stronger for the seasoning.

Derian was this king's youngest counselor and though he had grown somewhat comfortable with attending large meetings and even speaking out when needed, he was still acutely aware whenever he met with the king in smaller gatherings that he was young enough to be the great man's grandson.

Rising from his deep bow, Derian gave a briefer but still polite bow to the king's guard, Sir Dirkin Eastbranch, and took the seat the king indicated to him. Firekeeper sat, as was her custom, on the floor beside Blind Seer. The wolf did not lounge as he had in Derian's room, but sat bolt upright, so his head was far higher than the woman's.

It said much about both the king and his guard that neither showed even a reflex trace of nervousness at the wolf's presence.

"Well, Derian Carter," the king said, coming to the point without any waste of time. "What is this you felt so urgently that I needed to hear about?"