Page 69 of Beneath the Haunting Sea
Talia hadn’t seen him all day. She was the first to arrive in the dining room, still thinking about the boat in the hidden cove, trying to figure out what she should do first. The boat needed repair—she wouldn’t know how much until she dug it out of the sand. Somehow, she had to figure out how to evenfindRahn’s Hall—it wasn’t like it’d be markedin ink on a map. And in the event she actually made it, she’d need some kind of plan to dive into the sea and pull her mother out from among the dead.
It sounded like nonsense, when she thought about it like that, and yet—
She knew it wasn’t.
Blaive breezed in a few moments later with a smile on her face, settling into her chair in a pouf of powder-pink skirts. Wen came in just after, his spectaclespinched tight on his nose, ink spattered all over his hands and even a few black stains on his shirt. He smiled at Talia and she smiled back, her guilt at the things she wasn’t telling him gnawing deep.
“Caiden’s not coming,” Blaive explained smoothly to no one in particular, as the maids brought in dinner. “He’s upstairs with the Baron.”
“Oh?” Talia wondered faintly if Caiden was talking tohim about the betrothal. Not that it mattered anymore, really—she would be gone by the spring. She swallowed past the lump in her throat.
“I saw the Baron myself this morning,” Blaive continued, unfolding her napkin on her lap. “We had quite a chat over tea.” Wen frowned, clearly more in tune with this conversation than Talia. “What did you chat about?”
Her smile deepened to dangerous dimensions.“Responsibility. Contracts. Propriety. Honoring one’s commitments.”
“What did you do?” said Talia.
Blaive locked eyes with her. “I simply pointed out a few things going on under the Baron’s nose that he was unaware of.”
“Such as?” Talia prodded, grinding her jaw.
Blaive gave a dimpled smile. “The particulars aren’t important.” She saluted Talia with her wine glass.
Caiden wasn’t at breakfasteither.
Sausages and porridge and dried winter pears were spread out on the table, with hot tea and cider. Exhausted, Talia barely touched any of it. She’d been up late reading, trying to gather as much information as she could about Rahn’s Hall. But it wasn’t like there were any charts helpfully pointing the way. Just stories, and not very many of them at that.
Blaive sat, primly stirring creamand sugar into her porridge, her fitted orange gown a bold splash of color in the dull room. Flames danced hot on the hearth, living echoes of her brilliance.
Wen sat scratching at a piece of music paper, the tea at his elbow untouched.
“What are you doing?” Talia asked him, tired of silence and loath to speak to Blaive.
He glanced up at her briefly then back at his music. “Working on my symphony.It comes in bits and pieces, and if I don’t write it down immediately, I can’t get it back again. It’s been exploding in my mind since … since the other day.”
Since the mirror room, Talia thought, and suppressed a shudder. She watched the quick movement of his pen across the paper and wondered what horrible thing he’d seen in the last mirror that hadn’t happened yet.
“Caiden’s out riding, incase anyone wanted to know,” said Blaive, smugness rolling off of her in waves. “He left quite early this morning.”
Talia sipped her tea without tasting it. She shouldn’t care about Caiden’s whereabouts, not with everything else that was going on, but she did. “Do you know where he went?”
Blaive shrugged her pretty, orange-clad shoulders, a smile playing about her lips. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
Wen’s pen scribbled rapidly over his paper, black notes marching up and down the staff lines. Talia wondered what it sounded like in his head.
“I suppose,” said Blaive, her tone overbright, “we’ll just have to wait and ask him when he comes back.”
Talia went riding after breakfast, ostensibly to exercise Ahdairon—she was really just hoping to find Caiden. The air was freezing despite her warmcloak, but at least it wasn’t snowing.
He was nowhere to be seen. His absence and Blaive’s flippancy gnawed at her. She rode along the empty shoreline for a while, music whispering to her from the waves, and she felt incredibly guilty. Her mother was waiting for her, tortured endlessly by a malicious goddess, while she worried about aboy.
And yet, she couldn’t shake him from her head.
Twohours later, she shut Ahdairon back into the stable, Avial’s stall still empty. Where had Caiden gone? What was Blaive not telling her?
She had a cup of tea in the parlor and tried to read a book titledThe Words of the Gods,but she couldn’t concentrate, sentences blurring uselessly before her eyes. Her thoughts jumped from her mother to Caiden and back again, and at last she snapped the bookshut in frustration. She stood outside the music room, listening as Wen pounded out a haunted counterpoint on his raina, wondering what he would say if he knew what she was planning. She paced around the cold garden, peering through the wrought iron gate at the uneasy sea, its unearthly music tangling with Wen’s melodies.
But Caiden still didn’t come back.
