10. Rain

Chapter 10

Rain

"I'm thinking about trying to steal the Gloombringer's chef," Char announced at breakfast. "She's a wizard. Her stone's song must have some kind of cooking ability. That's the only explanation; her food is magical."

It was hard to deny, after she'd served us the fluffiest, lightest pancakes I'd ever had, covered in bananas, nuts, and a maple sauce that wasn't quite syrup, but even more delicious. It was almost like butterscotch, and I wanted to know how to make it. Even if I was largely hopeless in the kitchen, it didn't mean I couldn't pass the information on to someone else.

"Just wait until we have a peace brokered first, okay?" I sat back in my chair, sighing. "I don't want you stealing his chef to end up getting us all killed."

Tempest raised a brow at me. "You actually think this summit is going to happen?"

I couldn't hold back my flinch at that. Either she knew me too well, or we were too alike. "What, just because the Gloombringer is an ass, the Dawnchaser doesn't seem to want peace, and the Sunrunner still isn't here? "

She held out her palms, facing up, and shrugged, like I'd taken the words right out of her mouth.

I nodded, exhausted already, but there wasn't much I could do to change any of it. "There isn't another option. We need this peace. The whole of the Summerlands depends upon it."

"Dawnchaser brought an assassin to a peace talk," Char pointed out. Clearly, he had not recognized Kit as my brother, or he wouldn't have put it quite that way. Still, it was the truth from everyone else's point of view, including the Dawnchaser himself.

Tempest leaned forward, bracing her elbow on the table and her chin on her fist, and nodded. "Let's talk about that."

Surely she couldn't mean...she didn't want to talk about who Kit Emrys really was, did she?

"About why he'd bring a weapon to a peace talk?" Char asked.

She nodded.

Okay, well that...it was no less charged a discussion, but at least it wasn't actually about Kit.

"Do you think people will capitulate to what he wants if he threatens them enough? Or failing that, do you think he believes they will?" She asked the questions not as though she expected the answers, but pointing out that they were what we were discussing.

If we knew the answers to those questions, we'd be in pretty decent shape dealing with Huxley Dawnchaser, I thought.

Char cocked his head, then nodded slowly. "It is odd, isn't it? The four foundation families of the Summerlands have never been the type to give in to that sort of threat. They don't back down and capitulate. Surely Lord Dawnchaser is intelligent enough to know that. Isn't he?"

He was. I didn't doubt that for a moment. The Dawnchaser wasn't unintelligent. The best monsters never were, and while I didn't trust Kit not to stab me, I did trust him not to lie to me. Not about that.

Plus I already knew that the man had broken a young Titania Gloombringer. I didn't know the circumstances of their falling out, but it had clearly been an important moment for her, since Sim had relayed it.

They hadn't given me that with any of the others. Admittedly, I'd asked them to stop, because it had been too many people at once, too much information to parse. I was going to have to go back and take a look next time I saw them, whether I wanted to or not, because Char and Tempest were right. Knowing more about the Dawnchaser and his motives was my current issue. While Lord Gloombringer was going to be difficult to deal with, I understood him and what mattered to him. I could manage him.

The Dawnchaser was a little harder to figure out.

We dressed and went downstairs together, ready to begin discussions, even if the Sunrunner never showed. That was their choice, and we would have to find a way around the issue if they didn't send someone, but we had time.

Things on Mount Slate weren't critical.

Yet.

They'll get there, though. He's a gloomy bastard, that one , Iri said.

I jerked my head to the side and paused, right there in the foyer. He? Who's he? Who's gloomy, Iri?

I didn't know if she'd have bothered responding, because before she had a chance, there was the very man we'd spent the morning discussing, along with his entourage.

"Littlest Moonstriker," he greeted me, sneering, his nose scrunched, as though there was something insulting about my age or size.

I was indeed the smallest of my siblings, but it wasn't a shameful thing. First of all, my family tended to be ridiculously tall and willowy, and I'd realized early on that being six and a half feet tall like Frost was quite inconvenient. Second, it was a mere physical fact. It wasn't a failing on my part. Why would I ever feel shame for simple facts that I had no control over?

I inclined my head. "Eldest Dawnchaser."

His eyes narrowed, clearly searching the term for an insult I didn't intend. "We didn't have much chance to speak yesterday," he went on after a moment. "Do explain to me why your uncle thought this less important than a speaking engagement at some university in Moonstriker lands."

"It wasn't a matter of importance," I told him. "It was a matter of him having made a promise to speak at a commencement and being unwilling to break that promise."

"So instead of his sister coming, they sent you to sit at the adults' table." Both his son and the woman behind him flinched at the words, so clearly, they were again intended as an insult.

Kit was staring at me with something that looked almost like pleading. If I were more of a pessimist than I was, I might have thought he was hoping I'd pick a fight with the Dawnchaser and give him a chance to challenge me. I still couldn't make myself believe that of my own brother, though. I didn't even know if that was Dawnchaser's intention. Did he want to rile me, and make me say something angry ?

Instead, I shrugged. "It had to happen sooner or later. The elder generation takes a step back and lets the people who will have their job in the future step forward and prove themselves. If he had been the one to come, I daresay Uncle Cove would have been equally happy to speak to you or your child."

"Son," Dawnchaser corrected. "My son is my heir. Is that what you are, then? The official Moonstriker heir?"

I smiled at him. "I'm sure you're well aware that there is no official Moonstriker heir, Lord Dawnchaser."

He smiled a strange, sly smile. "Now now, young Moonstriker. Everyone in all the Summerlands knows that your mother favors you as heir."

I smiled back. "Unfortunately for Mother, that isn't really up to her. It's up to Iri. I'm sure you understand, being the head of a foundation family. Your stone could ignore whatever heir you wanted, and choose their own."

Kit's enormous round eyes and Dawnchaser's clenched jaw made me realize that had been the wrong response. What I didn't understand was...why?

Florian Dawnchaser, on the other hand, looked intrigued. "Really? The stone could just refuse to bond with me?"

"They are sentient," I said, nodding. "I'm sure you've experienced a bonding already, yes?"

He nodded. "I—I have."

"So you know that the relationship is just that: a relationship. You can't share a song with a stone who won't speak to you. To say nothing to the resonance required to get that far. Sometimes a person simply can't hear a stone's song, no matter what either of them want."

Florian stared off into space, nodding, thinking .

"Perhaps that's how it works in Moonstriker lands," the Dawnchaser said, voice strained and angry. "But Soz will bond who I tell them to bond. There will be no random passing of the family honor to whomever happens to be there."

Florian flinched back, bowing his head, and Kit was glaring at me, lips pursed and eyes narrowed, clearly willing me to shut my damned mouth. Still, it was difficult, because the man was wrong, pure and simple. Did he not know it? Did he think that he could will facts to stop being true just because he didn't like them? Was he trying to force his family stone to accept his son, and not...what had Kit said?

Ask Florian about his sister sometime.

I glanced at Kit again and thought he might actually reach out and slap me if I did it right then. Or possibly, he'd challenge me to a duel on Huxley Dawnchaser's command, and kill me.

So no asking about what Dawnchaser's nightmare scenario was, since clearly, it could end in my death. Still, I couldn't resist just a little needling. "Interesting. We don't think of the family honor as being tied to our songs in Moonstriker lands."

Kit, damn him, snorted.

The Dawnchaser raised a brow at him, a clear query.

He shrugged, as though the answer didn't matter to him, and suddenly, Sim was feeding me information about my own brother. A vision of a preteen Kit holding up a sparkling clear stone, smiling at it. Across from him was Mother, angrier than I'd ever seen her, telling him that the family honor wouldn't accept a fucking diamond. What kind of awful excuse for a stone was that? He was to take it back where he'd found it immediately and never speak of it again .

I swallowed hard, staring at him.

I'd had no idea. Well, some small idea, perhaps. I knew she hadn't been happy. But I hadn't known she'd been so awful to him about it.

"There's a reason the Moonstriker family doesn't allow diamonds in their palace, isn't there?" he asked, aiming the question at Huxley, but clearly intending it for me. He lifted his hand to his throat, where his diamond hung, attached to a thin leather cord.

"Indeed," the Dawnchaser agreed. "Every family has opinions about worthy stones and worthy people. Ours are simply different from yours."

"So they are," I agreed. Then I turned to look at Kit. "For whatever it might be worth, that opinion of diamonds belongs to my mother alone. When she retires, that particular requirement will go with her."

"Now little Moonstriker, are you trying to steal my vassal?" And just like that, the Dawnchaser was all smiles and snide superiority again.

I smiled and shook my head. "Hardly. Duelists aren't allowed in Moonstriker lands, and I don't see that changing, no matter who is in charge. We aren't interested in violence for its own sake."

"Alas, poor Kit, you'll never be welcome in the frozen north. I know you so longed to attend one of their vaunted colleges."

It was my turn to go haughtily superior. "Didn't you send your son to a Moonstriker college, Lord Dawnchaser? They are the best schools in the world. And I didn't say Mr. Emrys wasn't welcome in Moonstriker lands. That only stands for as long as he's working as a duelist. "

He turned up his nose. "I hardly think he's going to change his career just to be allowed into Moonstriker lands."

I shrugged as though it didn't matter to me. "And that would be his choice, of course. I just didn't want Moonstriker interests to be misrepresented. Precision and facts are important."

Him, Sim , I told my stone in my head, remembering the discussion over breakfast. I need to know more about him.

Sim seemed hesitant for a moment, then sent me an image of myself, staring at a plate with Lima beans on it.

I don't like him either. Do you...not want to read him?

More hesitation.

It's okay. You don't have to. I'd never make you.

An image of myself, sitting alone in my rooms.

Later. They wanted to wait until I was alone. And possibly sitting down. Oh, this was going to be lovely.

Of course , I agreed easily. Whatever you want.

They were my partner, after all, not my slave. I held no illusions that I owned Sim or Iri. You couldn't own a friend.