Lord of the Isles by David Drake

the carving knife; she jerked her hand away in horror at the image that flashed into her mind.
    â€œMeder,” the procurator warned. She stood up also, lifting one of the pewter candlesticks from the table. “If she is …”
    The young man froze, backed a step, and then to Sharina’s utter amazement bowed to her. “I apologize, mistress,” he said. “In my excitement I behaved in an uncivilized fashion. It won’t happen again.”
    â€œWhat my companion was pointing out … Sharina, is it?” Asera said. “Is that you don’t look anything like either the maid here or your father. You’re tall, you have—”
    She moved the candle closer to Sharina’s face.
    â€œâ€”gray eyes. And your hair is lighter than that of anyone else I’ve seen in this village.”
    â€œWhat you look like, in fact,” Meder said with controlled delight, “is an Ornifal noble. An Ornifal noble like the late Count Niard. I ask you again: Where do you come from?”
    â€œI’m from here!” Sharina said. “I was born here!”
    Lora put a hand on hers to calm her. In a voice with more dignity than anything else she’d shown since the noble guests
arrived, Lora said, “My children were born in Carcosa, Your Lordship, where Reise and I were in service in the palace. But we’ve lived in this hamlet for all our lives since they were born, lacking the few days we took to travel here.”
    â€œBorn when?” Asera said. She remained motionless, but the focus of her body made Sharina think of a cat poised to leap. “Born seventeen years, five months, and three days ago, woman?”
    â€œOr it might have been four days,” Meder said with a minute frown. “If a daughter rather than a son, then perhaps four. The sun was on the cusp.”
    â€œIt might have been,” Lora echoed slowly. “About that time, perhaps. But Sharina is my daughter.”
    Asera looked sharply at her companion. “You said the storm was unnatural. Could it have been meant to bring us here instead of to harm us?”
    â€œWithout my magic—” Meder started hotly. He blinked, fully considering the storm in the light of Sharina’s presence here . “I thought it was hostile. I fought with all my strength and it still was on the edge of overwhelming us. If I hadn’t been aboard, the ship wouldn’t have survived.”
    â€œBut you were aboard,” Asera said. She replaced the candlestick on the table and fastidiously flicked a spatter of wax from the back of her hand. She and Meder acted as if they were alone with the furniture. “And without the storm blowing us south of the Passage, we’d be searching in Carcosa for traces of something that wasn’t there.”
    Meder and the procurator turned their appraisal again onto Sharina. Lora stepped in front of her, either out of protective instinct or in a claim of ownership. Asera’s mouth tightened in something that could have become either a frown or a sneer; Lora shrank away.
    â€œCan you tell for certain?” Asera asked her companion. Her gaze never left Sharina.
    â€œOf course,” Meder said, irritated at a question whose answer was so obvious to him. “I have the tools I’ll need in my room. We’ll carry out the rite there.”

    The nobles were lodged in her parents’ quarters: the procurator in Reise’s room, Meder in Lora’s side of the upstairs suite. For now Sharina and her mother were squeezed into the girl’s corner garret, while Reise had his son’s room and Garric slept in the stables.
    Asera nodded. “Come along then, child,” she said to Sharina in a not-unfriendly voice, rather as though she were speaking to a favorite dog. She gestured and started for the door.
    â€œWait!” Sharina said.
    They stared at her. Lora touched her hand.
    â€œWait,” Sharina repeated in a calmer