Sharina brought the rack of lamb into what was now the private dining room where her mother served Asera and Meder. The chamber was the storage room most years except during the Sheep Fair, but the extra blankets and crockery were now in use. Wainer, commander of the detachment of Blood Eagles, ate with his men in the common room.
"Someone in the parish must have riding horses!" Asera was saying to Lora in irritated surprise. "I don't insist that my escort be mounted, but surely you don't expect Meder and myself to walk to Carcosa?"
"Please, Your Ladyship," Lora said in a flustered voice. She curtsied, her eyes never meeting those of the nobles to whom she spoke. "It's only drovers and merchants from Carcosa who ride here. We plow with oxen and if we go somewhere it's by our own legs, yes."
Sharina set the platter on the sideboard, shifting the knife, steel, and fork she carried in her right hand along with part of the weight of the dish. Normally Sharina tended bar while Reise carved for guests dining privately, but he'd decided to switch their duties after he'd sized up the sailors thronging the common room for something to drink. Garric helped Reise and brought fresh casks of beer and cider up from the cellar at need.
We didn't expect nobles from Ornifal to appear—sailing, walking or flying, Sharina thought. She was excited to have noble visitors and knew she'd brag for years to come that she, Sharina os-Reise, had served them with her own hands, but her basic attitude was the same as her father's: treat nobles well because it's your duty to do so; take their money; but never mistake them for gods or yourself for a dog. Lora dithered in a combination of pride in the contact and terror that she'd fail to please the great folk.
"What a barbarous place," Asera said, shaking her head. "I suppose we'll have to sail to Carcosa after all."
The room's dozen candles filled all the inn's holders as well as a pair borrowed from Katchin against the promise that he'd be permitted to greet the nobles formally after dinner. Half the lights were tallow dips, not beeswax, and from the way Meder squinted as he picked the last morsels from his flounder he wasn't as impressed by the illumination as locals would have been.
Sharina struck the knife quickly down one side then the other on the steel, straightening the edge to carve. She traded the steel for the fork, only absently aware that Meder had turned and was staring at her. She began to slice the tender meat away from the ribs.
"Asera, look," the young man said. "Look at her!"
Lora took away the fish plates, clattering them onto a corner of the sideboard. She must be flustered; her touch was usually deft and silent.
Sharina deliberately didn't turn from her task. The flush starting to color her cheeks was as much anger as embarrassment. If they were talking about her, then what right did they have to sound as though she was a, a horse herself?
"Girl?" Asera said. "You there—with the knife, for the Lady's sake! Turn around and face me."
"She's my daughter, Your Ladyship," Lora said with another curtsy. She wore a blue and green overskirt of stiffened linen, a garment Sharina had seen only in a storage chest before. It flared when Lora dipped, making her look like a peacock displaying. "Sharina os-Reise. Sharina, curtsy for the lord and lady."
Sharina put down the carving implements and bowed instead, trying to keep disgust for her mother's behavior from her expression. She'd never learned to curtsy properly, despite Lora's attempts to teach her when she was younger. Trying to do so now would be to make a fool of herself.
"Where do you come from, girl?" Meder asked. He'd changed into a doublet of red velvet for the evening; his tawny hair flowed across his shoulders in a contrast that Sharina would have found attractive were his face not quite so tense and white.
"She's my daughter, Your Lordship," Lora repeated as though perhaps the nobles hadn't heard her the first time.
"Do you take us for fools, woman?" Meder snapped. He got to his feet, shoving the chair behind him so roughly that it fell over with a loud crash. The inn's furnishings were all of local craftsmanship, sturdy rather than beautiful. "Just look at her!"
He reached for Sharina, his thumb and forefinger extended with the obvious intention of gripping the girl's chin to adjust her profile for him to inspect. She stepped back, feeling cold all over. Her fingers brushed the handle of the carving knife; she jerked her hand away in horror at the image that flashed into her mind.
"Meder," 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."
"What 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.
"—gray eyes. And your hair is lighter than that of anyone else I've seen in this village."
"What 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?"
"I'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."
"Born 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?"
"Or 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."
"It 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?"
"Without 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."
"But 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.
"Can you tell for certain?" Asera asked her companion. Her gaze never left Sharina.
"Of 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.
"Wait!" Sharina said.
They stared at her. Lora touched her hand.
"Wait," Sharina repeated in a calmer tone. Her voice didn't tremble. "What is it you're going to do?"
"Do?" Asera said. "We're going to determine if the Count and Countess of Haft were your real parents, child."
"And if they were," Meder added as his arm shepherded Sharina toward the door, "then you've a life ahead of you never dreamed by anyone in this miserable sheep pasture!"