Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [115]
Nor had Phryne gone to visit her grandmother or been invited—or summoned—to do so since the remarriage. It was as if their family ties had been so thoroughly severed that there was no point in even considering an effort at rebinding them. She accepted that she was as much to blame for this as her grandmother, since she had made virtually no effort to correct the situation, but whenever she had thought of trying to do so she had always come up with an excuse for putting it off to another time.
Now, it appeared, that other time was here.
The message was delivered as such messages always were—by one of the oldsters who still clustered about Mistral Belloruus like suitors. All of them were men of dubious origins and even more dubious purpose. Everything they did seemed to revolve around her grandmother. Phryne seldom saw any of them except when they were delivering her grandmother’s messages. Such messages were frequent and always couched as admonitions to which she was advised to pay heed. They arrived at odd times and never included even a suggestion that a visit might be nice. But the oldsters were the same, some four or five of them in all—she could never remember which—and the messages were always handwritten on stationery inscribed with her grandmother’s name.
This one was no different:
To Phryne Amarantyne:
Please attend on me this midday at my home.
Come alone. Give notice to no one of this meeting.
Be discreet. Be prompt.
Mistral Belloruus
She did not use exclamation points, but she might as well have. Phryne could practically hear the emphasis her voice would have put on her words had she been present to speak them. The oldster conveying the message stayed long enough to be sure that Phryne had read it through and then, without waiting for a reply, he departed. Apparently it was assumed that once she knew what was required, she would act appropriately.
Phryne dawdled a bit that morning, trying out various scenarios for what she imagined might take place at this unexpected meeting. The one that made the most sense revolved around her grandmother’s curiosity over why she was working with Isoeld. Mistral Belloruus knew well enough that Phryne did not care for her stepmother, and that there was no good reason evident that she would suddenly agree to work with her. Given this sudden change of heart, her grandmother might have deduced that something important had happened.
Or maybe she had simply decided it was time for her granddaughter to visit her.
Or maybe anything.
Phryne decided to dress for the occasion, choosing feminine, loose-fitting clothes of which she knew her grandmother would approve. She picked flowers from the garden, arranged them in a basket, added fresh apples, and with only minutes to spare set out.
It was a short walk down a main road diverging off into smaller byways, then into worn paths, and finally into trails that wound through the forest trees until they disappeared and you couldn’t find your way unless you knew exactly where you were going. Her grandmother did not encourage visitors of any sort, limiting such to those with whom she was familiar. In most cases, even those weren’t welcome without having either received a prior invitation or provided acceptable notice of an intended visit.
Her grandmother lived in a large cottage east and south of the main city in woods dedicated to her personal usage and jealously guarded against encroachment. Phryne wasn’t sure who did the guarding, since all she had ever seen back there were the oldsters, but she had a feeling that it wouldn’t be wise to try to find out. It was rumored that Mistral Belloruus had use of magic. Since Phryne hadn’t visited for months, she couldn’t really know if anyone was doing the guarding these days. It had been enough to know that her feisty grandmother was alive and well and still dispensing unsolicited advice to her granddaughter.
Still, she felt a certain pleasure in making this visit, knowing that by the time she left she not only would have made some sort of amends