Singer From the Sea

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Was the night before no better, Your Grace?”

  “Worse, if anything.” She turned to her coachman, who was unloading luggage from the boot. “What was the name of the place, Yarnson?”

  “Wohsack, Your Grace.”

  “Wohsack. Indeed. And woe I had there. Well, I know this place, and it is far better. I am too tired to talk to you now, Aufors. Join me for dinner, about sunset, and we will enlighten one another.”

  As they did, in the Duchess’s rooms, at a table laid before the fire, where, said the Duchess, it was most likely safe to talk for she had refused the first room the innkeeper had offered and picked one out for herself. She heard Aufors’s tale while she ate, shaking her head gravely when he had finished.

  “And he actually told you to marry the girl.”

  “I’ve said so three times, Your Grace.”

  “Call me Alicia, Aufors. When we are alone, you can do that without offending the gentry.”

  “As Your Grace wishes, Alicia. Not that I mind offending the gentry. I have mightily offended a couple of them lately.”

  She leaned forward and began striking her glass with a spoon, making a tinkling sound as she whispered into his ear:

  “And now you want me to tell you where she is?”

  “Why else would I be here?” he whispered in return.

  “Why, to help me, as I have helped Genevieve.”

  He dropped his fork onto his plate with a clatter. “Help … I’m sorry Your—Alicia. I didn’t know you needed help.”

  She wiped her lips delicately, saying in an ironic tone, even as she put a finger before her lips, “Oh, but the Marshal must have told you my daughter has disappeared.”

  “He did not! Nor did anyone at your house, when I went looking for you four days ago!”

  The Duchess smiled bleakly. “Well, she has disappeared. I am on my way to Ruckward County, where my son-in-law lives. To fetch my granddaughter.” Now she shushed him in earnest, leaning to his ear once again.

  “But surely … surely you will want someone to search for your daughter,” he murmured softly.

  “Yes,” she murmured softly. “And no.”

  He regarded her closely for a long, silent moment. “You know where she is,” he said with his lips alone.

  She read his lips, then stared past him, out the window, where the sky above the mountains shone purple with evening. She rose, drew him to his feet. “Let us wander out onto the terrace and watch the stars coming out.”

  One of the windows opened upon the terrace, and once there, they leaned upon the balustrade as she said softly, “I say to you that I know where a former servant of mine, a girl named Bessany Blodden, is staying. She has a new baby with her, and I would much like Bessany to be escorted from where she is currently to Merdune, far, far east of here.”

  “She has left her husband?” Aufors murmured. “She is … afraid?”

  “Oh, one could say that, certainly.”

  “Your Grace … Alicia, I would volunteer for this duty in a moment if it were not for Genevieve. But she … she is my first concern.”

  The Duchess smiled, genuinely amused. “Well, Aufors, my young friend, if you will consent to escort Bessany Blodden where she is going, you will find the one you seek, and I cannot think of any other way you will do so.”

  Aufors said, “You want this … Bessany taken where Genevieve is.”

  “How perceptive! Yes, I want Bessany and her baby taken where Imogene is.”

  “And you don’t want to do it yourself?”

  “I am too much observed. As you are, but you are better equipped to elude the ones following you, Colonel. There are at least three of them. Meantime, I have no objections to my pursuers following me to County Ruckward. They will find nothing of interest there.”

  Aufors nodded. “Well then, how do we do this thing?”

  “You do it,” she whispered, leaning toward him, and pushing a tightly folded little paper into his hand. “And do not cavil at the hoops you must leap through, Aufors. They are there for Genevieve’s protection. And my own. And yours.”

  “But Alicia, why did …”

  “Hush! Ask me no whys. It is better if you remain ignorant of whys. Just go, and do not let this note fall into anyone else’s possession.”

  He read the paper when he returned to his own room. It did not tell him where Genevieve was. It did tell him where Bessany Blodden and her baby were. Also, it gave him the name of an inn along the Potcherwater that he and Bessany should visit, along with the name of the cook at that inn. Presumably, the cook knew something that would assist them.

  Gravely, Aufors memorized what was on the paper before he burned it.

  SIXTEEN

  Absences of Women

  SHORTLY AFTER AUFORS’S DEPARTURE, A ROYAL MESSENger called upon the Marshal. The man bore a large red envelope heavy with seals and a dangling superfluity of gold ribbons. It contained the notice of a ministerial meeting, the agenda of that meeting, and background information on the issues. Two important matters were to be considered: Firstly, the need to increase P’naki imports from Mahahm; secondly, the question of changing the age at which noble young women would be expected to marry.

  Also included in the packet was a letter from the Lord Paramount telling the Marshal what position he was expected to support. The Lord Paramount approved the lowering of the official marriage age for young women, inasmuch as the actual marriage age was much closer to twenty-two than thirty. His Majesty also approved of the attempt to increase the supply of P’Naki.

  The Marshal read through the material he had been given and found it lacking in basic data. He went to the archives and dug out many facts which supported the Lord Paramount’s position, which made the Marshal feel both proud and useful. He readied himself for the meeting with considerable care, as he might have done for a strategy session with his officers in time of battle, though his naive belief that this preparation was warranted was supported only by his total ignorance concerning the Council of Ministers.

  The actual event enlightened him. The brief agenda was barely mentioned before the ministers were off in full cry over something else entirely. Women were disappearing from rural areas of Dania; daughters, some of them, but also a few youngish wives, mostly commoner women, but a few noble women as well. Tranquish, Duke of Dania, charged his colleagues in Merdune and Barfezi with harboring abductors in their respective provinces. Neither Lome Vestik-Vanserdel, Duke of Barfezi, nor Gardagger Bellser-Bar, Duke of Merdune, were present, but their spokesmen were, along with allies and interested persons, and when the council of ministers adjourned for lunch some hours later, neither the question of P’Naki nor the matter of marriage age had even been mentioned. Though the Marshal kept a wary eye on Efiscapel Gormus, said Gormus said nothing at all but yawn and scratch himself at intervals.

  “What is all this?” growled the Marshal to Prince Thumsort, who served as minister for his own home county of Tansay.

  “Tranquish thinks it’s either Merdune or Barfezi taking his women. Merdune and Barfezi think it’s Tanquish himself. I think the women probably ran off on their own. Women are like sheep, one jumps a fence, all the rest must jump it too.”

  Though this remark cut very close to the bone, the Marshal chose to ignore it. “Why would anyone want Danian girls?” he asked. “As I recall, the mountain nobility tend to loud voices, hefty bodies, and chapped faces.”

  “Marshal, don’t try to make sense of it. Every time we meet, some of the commoner ministers bring up this business of their womenfolk running off. They usually accuse a neighboring province, either of harboring malefactors or of being in complicity. About once every five years, the ministers set up an investigative committee, and when they look into it, it turns out the women ran off to the city, or they eloped with someone, or they were pregnant by someone Papa didn’t approve of.”

  “When will we get to business?” growled the Marshal, wishing to end this discussion of women running off. �
�I don’t intend to waste another half-day on this nonsense.”

  “Get to business?” Prince Thumsort asked, eyebrows raised in surprise. “Oh, you mean the agenda? We won’t. We never do.”

  “But we need more P’naki!”

  “Oh, His Majesty has that well underway. While the ministers argue, he goes right ahead, you know. He says it gives the people a sense of taking part without noticeably slowing down the necessities of government. Eventually, they’ll decide it’s best, and a day or so later the Lord Paramount will announce it’s done. That gives them participation and gives him a reputation for efficiency.”

  “And lowering the age of marriage?” asked the Marshal, his own eyebrows almost at his hairline.

  “The Tribunal has already decided that question. Including it on the agenda was just a way of informing the public. Our young men are so urgent that girls aren’t waiting until they’re thirty, so why make a fetish of that age, ah?” The Prince winked and smiled, a secretive sort of smile.

  “Then what in deepsea does he need the ministers for?”

  “Need us?” He bridled, ducking his head into a wealth of chins, grinning widely. “Well of course not, Marshal. He doesn’t need us. We’re just part of the cover, don’t you know?”

  The Marshal did not understand all these winks and sidles, and his ignorance was explicit in the volume of his, “I don’t know, no!”

  And suddenly Prince Thumbsort gave him a different sort of look, one full of surprise and apprehension, as though he had perhaps said something thoughtless, unwise, even dangerous. “Heh, heh, heh,” he chuckled. “Just joking, of course. The Lord Paramount needs all of us, Marshal. Of course he does.”

  “Not a nice joke, not at all,” the Marshal rumbled. “Why, he told me himself he needed me here.”

  “As he does,” Prince Thumsort soothed. “As he most certainly does. You especially, Lord Marshal.”

  Aufors bought a horse in Reusel-on-mere and rode westward along the road that marked the county border between Wantresse and Southmarsh counties. The day was fine, crisp but not overly cold; the reeds in the marshes south of him glittered with frost while the stubble fields of Wantresse were full of birds, scavenging for the odd beakful of grain missed by earlier gleaners. Fifty miles along the road he would find a post house, where he would spend the night, and another fifty miles would bring him to a small village where Wantresse stopped and Evermire began. Bessany Blodden and her child would be found another half-day’s ride farther on.

  By riding harder and longer, Aufors could have shortened the trip, but men who ride hard and fast are usually on a mission, for themselves or some other, and Aufors had decided it would be safer to appear unhurried, unworried, unconcerned, which would give him time to figure out, first, how to get rid of the rider or riders who stayed just out of view back on the road, and second, how he would transport a woman and infant back toward Merdune. A full day of riding into the wind gave him no idea about the former but a sensible notion about the latter. Sailing up the Potcherwater at this season would be a good deal easier than riding horseback. He had been well funded by the Duchess, so passage would be no problem. The wind was steady from the northwest. The Potcherwater was placid and deep from Wellsport all the way to County Gide; he knew Barfezi well from the Potcher War; and the river would take him to the very town where the inn stood, the one where the cook would, presumably, tell him where to find Genevieve.

  Once this had been decided, he turned his mind to the other thing. All in all, he thought he might lose his follower by simple misdirection. Any followers were in search of Genevieve, not Aufors. Therefore, if the rider or riders thought Genevieve was known to be in a particular place, he or they might stop following Aufors and go on to that place. He made a little plan, then let his mind drift onto other things: to the research he had done in the archives, to the unexpected amiability of Prince Delganor, to the things that Duchess Alicia knew but didn’t say, to the possible reasons her daughter had had for running away from her husband. He strongly suspected that all these happenings were linked, but he could not find any common factor among them.

  About noon, he saw three riders approaching from the west, whipping their horses as they came. When they saw him, they pulled up their lathered mounts, one among them shouting, “Hey, you there, have you seen anybody on this road this morning?”

  Aufors eased himself in the saddle. “Yes. Several.”

  “Who?” cried the first man. “Who’ve you seen?”

  Aufors shook his head, smiling slightly. “I have no idea. I don’t know the people hereabout.”

  “Come,” cried the first, rather angrily. “Men, women, what?”

  Aufors took a deep breath. “Four men, several miles back, with a flock of sheep. A whole clutch of people and children threshing grain with oxen. That’s on the Wantresse side. On the Southmarsh side, I saw several young fellows hunting ducks.”

  “Did you see a woman with a baby?”

  Aufors allowed himself a ponder on this subject, finding it possible to answer with complete truth. “I don’t think I’ve seen a woman since I left the Reusel. There may have been women with babies at the threshing, but I don’t remember seeing any.”

  The three muttered together, then the questioner turned to Aufors. “You’d have noticed this one. Long red hair and a pretty face.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t notice anyone like that. Who is it that’s missing?”

  “The Earl Ruckward’s wife. And his infant daughter. They were thought drowned, but someone told the Earl his wife had been seen here, on the Wantresse road.”

  “Taken, you think?” asked Aufors, his mouth open. “Abducted?”

  “Why should you think that?”

  “Well, stands to reason a young woman with a child, an infant, wouldn’t be traveling alone. And if her husband doesn’t know where she is, then chances are she was abducted. There’s a frightful lot of it going on, I’ve heard.”

  “Where? Where is it going on?”

  “Well,” Aufors eased himself and again adopted his pondering expression. “All during this trip I’ve heard there was a great deal of abducting going on in Nighshore county in Sealand. And in Dania, both.” The last of which was certainly true. People at the inns were talking of little else.

  The three before him looked at one another in puzzlement. “Nobody said we should look for her there. Just said ask if she’d been seen, along here.”

  “Not by me, I’m afraid,” Aufors responded. “I’ll keep my eyes open for her, however.”

  “If you see her, send word to the Earl. He’s staying at Poolwich, at the Elver’s Wife.” And the three rode on eastward, galloping furiously.

  Aufors gave silent thanks for the encounter, which had warned him to stay clear of Poolwich. Also, if the men took all the talk of abductions seriously, it could well deflect the search. Meantime, he would definitely plan to sail up the Potcherwater, preferably on some old tub that no one would look at twice.

  Before arriving at the post house, he put a stone in the horse’s hoof and then, when he stopped, complained loudly about the horse being lame and the necessity of giving it a day’s rest on the morrow. At supper, he was accosted again by searchers, as well as by a single rider who had come in some time after Aufors himself. All claimed to be hunting Earl Solven’s wife. Aufors pretended to get quite drunk with them after dinner, saying he didn’t care about Earl Solven’s wife for he was on his way to a wife of his own, who was waiting for him at Poolwich.

  “So why’re you on this road?” demanded the single rider. “The Reusel road would have taken you there easier.”

  “Oh, don’t I know that,” moaned Aufors. “But I work for the Marshal, and he has me running messages to Fens-bridge, near the Ramspize, to do with all these Danian cowherders coming across the border. Well, I’ll do that first, then go on down to Poolwich along the coast road.” He took another large swallow and muttered, “That is, I will when my horse gets over being lame
! If the damned beast ever does!”

  On the morning, while Aufors watched from behind his window curtain, the single rider went off the way he had come in company with two others who had been in the post house the night before. Within minutes, Aufors was off as well, though in the opposite direction. At the inn where he stopped that night, he met yet another group, and it was there he learned that the Earl Ruckward had posted a reward of fifty royals for the return of his wife. No wonder every man with a horse was out galloping the roads. Fifty royals was a year’s income for many of them.

  Early on the following morning, he left the inn and rode westward again, this time for only a few miles, turning southward on a narrow track that wound among the low hills above the coastal fens of Southmarsh. The road was all but deserted. He saw a swineherd with his beasts mid-morning, and not another person or animal the rest of the day. At midafternoon, he came upon a croft crouched low at the foot of a hill, and behind it a copse of low woods and a stone dolmen like two hooded figures peering seaward, precisely as his directions had specified. An old woman came out to greet him as he came down the lane, stopping him with a hand on the horse’s nose and a glare from fierce old eyes.

  “And what would you be wanting, young man? There’s naught here to interest a young man who’s up to any good.”

  “Well,” murmured Aufors, “this young man comes from the mother of a certain one. And that mother wants this certain one and her baby taken safe into Merdune. And it’s best we go soon as can be, for there’s riders everywhere along the main roads, and it’ll be a short time before they’re sifting along these little lanes, like ants after sugar.”

  “Riders?” she asked, wonderingly.

  “Someone’s offered a large reward, old woman. One that might tempt even you.”