On the Shore, a Wanderer
Chapter Two

"And all hearts were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light."
-George Gordon

* * *

A fortnight after they met, Byron was carefully tearing apart a rose from one of the gardens when Rhys' shadow fell across him. Without looking at the looming Herald Trainee, he waved Rhys to the side. "You're blocking my light."

Rhys shuffled to the side obediently, then crouched down to get a closer look at Byron's work. "Is this for that herb class you're taking?"

"Hmm?" Byron made a careful notation of the length of the petal he had just plucked from the rose, then put flower and pen down. He squinted up at Rhys. "Oh, no," he said. "Although it was inspired by our last lecture. I was curious to see exactly what characteristics were passed down through generations of flowers. I chose roses because the Palace gardeners have excellent records on them."

"Oh." Rhys looked blank. "Why does it matter?"

It was Byron's turn to look blank. It wasn't that the question was unfamiliar; on the contrary, people had been asking him variations on it for years. But he still didn't know how to answer in a way that they would understand. Sometimes he thought that other people didn't understand *anything*. At least Rhys hadn't sounded disdainful, just curious. Byron shrugged. "I just want to know."

Rhys smiled. "That's an excellent reason." He seemed sincere, Byron thought, but he still felt embarrassed.

"It's nothing, really." He closed his notebook, dropped it into his bag, and then swept the bench clear of the remains of the rose. "What brings you here?"

"My feet."

Byron snickered. "You have a base sense of humor, Trainee."

"Hey," Rhys said with wounded innocence, "you're the one who laughed."

"I was brought up in polite society. That means laughing at even bad jokes."

"Well, then, we'll get along just fine," Rhys mused as he stood and offered Byron his hand. "I've always wanted someone to laugh at my bad jokes. I've got a million of them."

Byron groaned theatrically. "I feared that you'd say that. You know, you could always try to use that wasted space in your head for more relevant knowledge."

"A bad joke is *always* relevant," Rhys said with a sniff. "And what would you suggest as being relevant, the petal lengths of roses?"

Byron clutched his hand to his heart and reeled as if struck. "A hit, good sir! I am struck through the core by your masterful aim!" He made a gagging sound, closed his eyes, and collapsed at Rhys' feet. Rhys looked down on him with a peculiar expression on his face.

"So, it seems I've discovered your dark secret, my lord."

Byron opened one eye, and peered at the grey-clad legs in front of him. "I don't *have* a dark secret. I'm really quite boring."

"Nonsense. You have a secret, and I know what it is."

Byron opened the other eye, and rolled to look up. "Well, out with it, man. I'm dying of curiosity here." He gave his best impression of a death rattle to emphasize his point.

"Your dark secret," Rhys thundered and pointed an imperious finger downward, "is that beneath that studious scholar's facade beats the heart of a...bad actor!"

"I am discovered!" Byron rolled away and clutched his face in his hand, the picture of abject despair. "The tragedy! The horror!"

"The utter insincerity," Rhys continued blandly. When Byron grinned at him, he put his hand over his heart. "I swear, your secret is safe with me."

Byron jumped to his feet, and brushed the grass from his knees. "My thanks." The knees of his light blue trousers were now decorated with a few smears of bright green. "Ugh. I can't go to supper like this."

"You eat dinner with the Court?"

Byron looked up at the faint note of censure in his friend's voice. "Usually, yes. Why, does that upset you?"

"No, not really." Rhys said, but his gaze wandered away from Byron, to rest on an inoffensive shrub nearby. "It's just that, well, don't you find them rather shallow?"

Byron took a breath, and tried to consider the question without letting his sudden flash of anger show. "No, not really. They talk about what's important to them. Everyone does." Even the oh-so-pure Heralds, he wanted to add. The few acquaintances he'd made among the other scholars seemed to be constantly needling him about his noble birth, even while the nobles looked down on him for associating with commoners. It hurt to get more of the same from Rhys. "We nobles are necessary to the running of the country, too, you know," he snapped, "it's not all parties and pastries, and we're not all snobs."

"I know, Bree," Rhys tried to placate him, "It's just that they don't seem to *care* about..."

"How would you know?" Byron cut him off with a slash of his hand. "It's not like any of the Heralds really try to get to know us, or try to understand things from *our* position. You judge us, just because we're not as eager to get killed as you are. You're...you're always just meddling without regard for the dignity of our station." Byron heard what he was saying, and froze in shock. He didn't mean it; in fact, he'd been parroting one of his cousins, a woman that he normally found repugnant. He went to apologize, but the look on Rhys' face stopped the words in his throat.

"Meddling? Heralds don't meddle, we help!" Rhys snatched up his bag, his cheeks aflame with color. "Fine, then, *my lord*, this Herald will stop *meddling* in your affairs. I wouldn't want to bruise the dignity of your station!" He spun around on his toe, and marched out of the garden, his back straight and stiff.

"No, Rhys, wait! I didn't mean..." Rhys was gone. What had he done? He hadn't meant it...but Rhys shouldn't have started that tired old line, either. Byron let the slow burn of anger cover over the shame around his heart. Maybe Rhys had just been looking for a reason to end their friendship. What had he expected Byron to do, just turn on the people he'd known since he was a baby just because the high-and-mighty Herald didn't approve of them? "Well," Byron said to the empty garden, "if he doesn't want to be around me, that's just fine. I don't need him, anyway."

He clutched his bag, and left the garden by the exit opposite to the one that Rhys had taken. Maybe he'd go see what the other Blues were doing.

* * *

As it happened, the other Blues--the noble-born ones at least--were gathering for an outing into the city. Although they were surprised to see Byron, no one would deny him entrance to their group; the Beckworth estate was powerful, and Lord Beckworth had even been a Counselor until the death of his wife. Defiantly, Byron sought out the small clique that followed Bestor, son of Lord Hobbwaite. They were notorious for their disdain for lesser mortals.

Bestor welcomed him with a calculating glitter in his dark grey eyes. "Well-met, Byron. Strange to see you here."

Byron bowed to Bestor and his male cronies, then gallantly kissed the perfumed fingers of the ladies. Lingering anger made him say airily, "I heard of the outing, and could think of no place with company so scintillating or amusing."

Bestor clapped him on the back, just a shade too heartily to be sincere. "Excellent! We're planning to go see Madam Silverveil, as soon as we shake off the rest of these wet saddle blankets."

"Madam who?"

Elsabetta, a court beauty who had always gone out of her way to speak to Byron, fluttered her eyelashes at him. "Oh, have you not heard of her? It is said that she's a Hawkbrother mystic. They say that she can speak to the dead."

Byron straightened. "She can what?"

Bestor threw his arm around Byron's shoulders as the others regaled him with improbable stories of the Madam's exploits and powers. "It's total nonsense, of course," he said in bored tones, "but it should be worth an hour's diversion. Hey, Bree, you're the scholar, maybe you can tell us how she does it."

"Maybe I can." Despite the company, Byron felt the stirrings of hungry curiosity within him. Was it possible to speak to the dead? He had to find out. "So, let's go."

"Sure thing."

"Oh," he said casually as the group started trooping into the city, "Bestor?"

"Yeah?"

"My name's Byron. Don't call me Bree."

The others threw him strange looks, but Bestor just smiled a hard little smile, and said, "Whatever you say, Byron."

* * *

Madam Silverveil's parlor was certainly foreign-looking enough, Byron thought as a rather scruffy butler showed them in, but the lady herself no more matched the description of Hawkbrothers from his books than he did. She was willow-thin and had applied liberal coatings of powder to her already pale skin. Perhaps she thought it made her look ethereal, but Byron was more reminded of uncooked dough. He quashed the uncharitable thoughts as he took a seat on one of the huge satin pillows that were strewn about. There were no chairs, just a low table of cherry wood that separated the clients from Madam Silverveil and a profusion of tapestries and rugs in soothing, pastel colors.

The Madam studied the well-dressed group from behind the veil she wore, which was indeed silver. When she spoke, her voice was pitched to sound as if she were speaking from the bottom of the well. "Welcome, petitioners," she intoned, "I, and the sacred wisdom of the Spirits Beyond, are at your service."

It went downhill from there. Byron sat through the increasingly bizarre performance with barely concealed impatience. Tables rattled, disembodied voices spoke in nonsense tongues, and fortunes were told. No one but Byron seemed to notice, or care, that half of what Silverveil said could be easily discovered from careful observation, and the other half was unverifiable or so vague that whoever she was speaking to had to connect the dots for themselves. Even Bestor had fallen under her spell, although in *his* case, it was probably the revealing outfit and blatant flattery that was distracting him.

The session finally ended, and Byron sprang to his feet with unseemly haste. The entire evening had been a waste; he would have been better off studying...or tracking down Rhys and apologizing. As he turned to walk out, however, a slender hand fell onto his wrist, and Silverveil said, "My lord, might I have a minute of your time? Alone?"

Bestor threw him a glare of pure envy, and Byron blushed. He longed to simply shake off the woman's hand, but he'd had too many ettiquette classes to do it, quite. "I'm afraid that I must be off. Curfew..."

"It will only take a moment, my lord." She drew him away from the door, and his ears burned as he heard the buzz of the departing nobles. Silverveil pulled him out of the parlor, and into a smaller room. This room was almost barren of decoration, except for the ceiling-height bookshelves against each wall. They were stuffed with books and scrolls. Some of the spines were engraved with languages that Byron had never seen.

"Where are we?"

"My smaller study," Silverveil said, and she reached up to unhook her veil. When he saw what lay beneath the silver mesh, his eyes widened. Both of her cheeks were marred with deep scars, three on each side. Her eyes were an ordinary brown, but they appeared to catch the light in a fascinating way, as if there were sparks buried deep within.

"How..how did it happen?"

"Slavers. My parents were killed when I was very young, and the slavers marked me so that they could find me wherever I ran. So, you see, I know your pain, losing your mother so young."

Byron recoiled, and manners or no, decided he would bear her touch no longer. He shook off the slender hand that held his wrist. "You don't know anything about me."

"Don't I?" She smiled at him with lips that glistened red, like blood. "The outer parlor is merely an act, a show to appease those without the minds to uncover the true secrets. They," she waved a lazy hand towards the door, "don't want *truth*. They want pretty lies. It is a test, to see who is a true seeker. You passed, Byron of Beckworth."

"A true seeker," he repeated, tasting the phrase. "Of what? What do you want of me?"

"Nothing that you don't want to give. Why did you come tonight?"

"My friends were coming, and I thought I'd..."

"Lies!" She slashed her hand through the air across his face, curled as if to claw at his eyes. He flinched away, wondering for the first time if he were sharing the room with not a charlatan, but a madwoman. "If you do not wish to answer my questions, say so. But do not *lie* to me. The truth is polluted by lies."

He stared at her. She appeared to be totally focused on him, waiting for his answer. It was an unusual sensation. Generally, people only listened to him with half an ear. Often, they were looking for the nearest exit. Even with Rhys, he'd always been conscious of the Companion's greater hold on his Chosen. Total attention, he realized, was very pleasant. "I wanted to see if you could do it."

"Do what?"

"Speak to the dead."

Silverveil snorted, and stalked away from him. The hiss of silk and lace filled the air as she moved to the nearest bookcase. She caressed the dark leather spines of the books, her back to him. "Anyone can speak to the dead. We do it everyday. *Speaking* is not the problem. Listening...now that is the problem."

"But you can't, can you? You can't hear them." It was almost a plea.

"No." The word was flat, but somehow he could hear the pain that lay beneath it. "But sometimes, I'm so close that the taste of the other world fills my mouth. I need help to find the way across. I need..." she whirled, and her eyes caught and held his. "I need you, Byron. We can find the way together, I *know* it. I've seen it."

"Seen it?" She didn't answer, only smiled. He shivered. "It may not be possible, you know. There may be no way to do it."

"Do you really think that it's impossible?"

He swallowed. Nothing was impossible, if you had the right information. "No."

"And would you walk away from this? I have books and myths and stories of cultures you'll never see. The clue is somewhere in here...will you abandon the search for the truth behind death?"

He thought of his mother, lying still and cold in her eternal rest. He thought of a childish promise made long ago. He thought of a whole world just out reach, with secrets and mysteries known by none but the gods.

"No," he said in a voice barely above a whisper, and as the light in her eyes flared with triumph, Byron felt the feet of his destiny leave one path, and set upon another.