“Bordeall,” said Owain.
“My lord,” said the other, touching the spear shaft to his forehead. His voice was deep and raspy.
“Hearne will be in good hands while we’re gone.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
Another soldier came forward and both men turned in some annoyance.
“My lord Gawinn.”
“Arodilac Bridd,” said Owain. “You would do well to observe the propriety learned under the patience of my sergeants. Did they teach you nothing?”
Arodilac flushed red at the rebuke.
“Forgive me, my lord,” he stammered. “I merely wished—is there no chance of—?”
“None,” said Owain, cutting him off. “You will remain and serve here. Curb your patience, my young cub. Do not be so eager to rush into battle, though likely we’ll see none on our hunt.”
“It isn’t because of my uncle wanting me kept from danger, is it?”
“No,” said Owain, though it had been precisely for that reason. “Bordeall, I’d ask you to see that my household is well. My wife has some womanly fear concerning the foundling we took in. Perhaps send a man by, now and again, to have a word with my doorkeeper and see that the child is well enough.”
“Assuredly, my lord,” said Bordeall. “Might I not make that Arodilac’s duty?”
“Certainly,” said Owain, and looked sharply at the young man, for his mouth was opening. Arodilac shut his mouth with a painful click of teeth and backed away.
“The city is yours.”
“Thank you, my lord. Good hunting.” Bordeall turned away to bellow at the soldiers at the gate. “Present!”
Spears gleamed as they rose in a flourish. With a jingle of harness and the clop of horse hooves on stone, the troop rode out through the gates and onto the road that curved away east, over the bridge and across the river and then down through the long, green reaches of the Rennet valley. The sky was clouding over. It would be raining again soon.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE JUGGLER’S MISTAKE
Nio tightened his cloak around his throat when he stepped out the front door. It was just past twilight and stars winked down from the dark sky. He was late, but it wouldn’t hurt the Juggler to be kept waiting. A cold rain was falling. It had been a strange summer for weather, almost as if the earth was no longer sure of the seasons. He wondered what the fall would bring. An early snow, perhaps. The streets were nearly empty of people, and the only ones he passed hurried along with their heads down, intent on reaching their homes and the warmth and welcome and firelight waiting there.
Once, a long time ago, he had wanted the same kind of life.
Cyrnel. He had loved her—that much he was sure of. But when he tried to recall her face, there was only an impression of beauty and a blur in his memory. He remembered freckles on her arms and a low, laughing voice. She smelled of fresh bread and the sunlight on the wheat fields in the valley east of the Stone Tower in Thule. The school bought their milk and cheese and grain from her father, the farmer. Nio remembered the look of the cheese more clearly than the farmer’s daughter: small, white rounds smelling of caraway. The cook had been stingy with that cheese. Nio almost smiled to himself at the thought.
Perhaps he had wanted to marry her. He would have had a home to hurry back to at night. Someone waiting for him, other than the old ghosts sleeping inside the books in his library. But he had chosen the ghosts. Or perhaps they had chosen him. Some days he wasn’t sure.
It was dark by the time he reached the south market square—an ugly, cramped plaza hemmed in with shops shuttered against the night. The rain had turned into a mist heavy enough to blur the shapes of buildings and the lights shining from windows. The stars and the moon could not be seen at all. It seemed he was alone in the city, for the mist also had the effect of muffling noise. Even his boots on the cobblestones only whispered.
Nio smelled the butcher’s place before he saw it. A cloying scent of offal and blood filled the air, and the mist felt greasy with it. The stones there were stained dark. He turned west and walked down the street called Forraedan. It was narrow enough to be more of an alley than a street. He fancied he could almost stretch out his hands and touch the houses on both sides as he walked. The mist thickened, and close by he heard water dripping.
Seventh house on the left, the Juggler had said. He passed the fourth. The street turned sharply to the right where the fifth house stood, though it was puzzling to make out where one house ended and one began. They were built right up against each other, sharing their walls and a common sweep of roof that loomed overhead. Perhaps he should have been counting doors instead of houses. Fancy a brothel being hidden away in this warren. But then he came to the sixth house and the street ended against a stone wall taller than the houses themselves. A door opened behind him, further back up the street. He turned.
“You’re late,” said the Juggler. The fat man was standing about twenty feet away. A lantern hung from his hand and cast a glow on the wet cobblestones.
“I was reading and lost track of the time.”
“Ah,” said the Juggler. “I’ve never gone in much for reading.”
“There’s no seventh house,” said Nio. His voice was mild. “You did say come to the seventh house, didn’t you?”
“I did,” said the fat man.
“There’s only this wall.”
“Yes,” said the other, nodding. “There’re only six, and then this wall. It’s not a house, as you see. It’s the back wall of a warehouse where an old man makes candles, he and his family. Candles made of grease, boiled in cauldrons and poured into his molds. Nothing to steal inside. Only thousands and thousands of candles. We leave him alone, we do, and in return—well, he’ll use just about anything to make his grease with. Just about anything. We keep ‘em well supplied here. It’s convenient for us.”
“Where’s the man called the Knife?” asked Nio.
“Ah, the Knife,” said the fat man, laying one finger alongside his nose and looking concerned. “Well sir, I says to him, come on out tonight as there’s a gent who wants to talk with you. But he says no, I’ve got better things to do than that—you go tell him I’ll see his gold first before meeting. That’s what he says to me. See now, sir, he’s a difficult lad, the Knife is—always has been, always will. Won’t come to heel when you call him, and even the Silentman knows that.”
“That won’t do. I’m afraid you’ve disappointed me.”
“Aye, and I’m disappointed the same!” said the fat man. He shook his head sadly. “I begged the lad nicely. Just a few minutes’ chat and then you’ll have your gold. But he wouldn’t have none of it. Tell you what we’ll do, sir. Why don’t you hand over your bag of gold and I’ll see the Knife gets it. That’ll put him in a better mood.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
At the words, two shapes materialized out of the darkness behind the Juggler. They were both large men—the sort of brute that Nio had seen in the Goose and Gold. He sighed inwardly. The evening could have been spent in a more pleasant fashion, reading a book in his library and smoking a pipe.
“Tsk,” said the fat man. “We’ll just have to take it from you, then.”
“I don’t think so,” said Nio.
This seemed to please the Juggler. He smiled, his teeth gleaming in the lamplight.
“Then we’ll have to kill you.”
The two men behind the Juggler moved forward. Knives appeared in their hands. The darkness and mist blurred their faces so their eyes were only gouges of shadow and their mouths black holes. Skulls, thought Nio. He sighed again. One of them reached for him, a big, bony hand. Moisture gleamed on the skin, and the lamplight picked out scars across the knuckles.
He whispered a word and time slowed. The air thickened around the two men approaching him so that they swam through it. Their limbs were ponderous and weighted. He stepped to one side. Their eyes could barely follow him. The Juggler stood frozen behind them, hudd
led against the stone wall of the building. The light cast by his lantern seemed to have congealed and turned a yellowish gray. Water dripped from an eave overhead, falling so slowly that he could have plucked them from the air, one by one, like jewels.
The darkness in the street behind the Juggler trembled, and then a wisp of it separated, clotting together to form the shape of the wihht. On unhurried legs, it started forward and reached for the fat man.
“Na, hie aerest,” said Nio. The thing obeyed, veering, and made for the closer of the two other men. Shadow closed on flesh and grew, flaring up like a flame leaping into life, but without light or heat—only darkness that surged with quick movements. A scream cut off into silence. The second man was turning, turning slowly until he saw the shadow reaching for him. His eyes widened, and then he was blotted out in a wave of darkness. Only seconds, perhaps, went by. Nio was not sure, for the spell of slowing still held sway within the confines of the cobblestones and walls and dark, shuttered windows that looked on in silence.
The mass of shadow receded until there was only the wihht standing there. The two men were gone, although a few damp rags of clothing fluttered to the ground around the wihht’s feet. It turned toward Nio and seemed to smile. He could not rightly tell in the little light there was, but it seemed now that the features of the thing were finer and more human.
“And this other?” it said, voice still hoarse and awkward.
“Bidan,” he said. Wait. He bound it into patience with his will woven into the word. Yet, even though the word and his will held, the wihht walked at his heels as he advanced toward the Juggler. The lantern trembled in the fat man’s hand, his fingers white-knuckled across the handle.
“You chose poorly,” said Nio. The other only stared at him, eyes huge in their sockets. Behind them, the wihht chuckled.
“Though this night has proven disappointing,” continued Nio, “as you have brought no Knife, we must talk, you and I. Perhaps you know nothing I would find valuable, but I must make sure. I hope you understand. Now, where is the Knife?”
But the fat man remained silent, frozen except for the lantern trembling in his clutch and his eyes flickering from Nio’s face to the shadow waiting behind and then back.
“Cweoan,” said Nio. Speak.
“I don’t know, my lord!” stammered the Juggler. His face shone with sweat. “He did a big job some nights back. A real big job! Did it with one of my boys. He owes me money now, but the Guild ain’t paid up yet!”
“What was the job?”
The words came in a rush, but Nio knew the answer already.
“A box lifted from a rich merchant’s house. Just a little box, but it had something valuable in it. It wouldna been so or the Knife wouldna run the job. Usually, those jobs are left to the burglars—and he ain’t a burglar, he’s the bleeding Knife! I saw the box myself, right after it was nicked. The Knife was carrying it when he entered the tunnel underneath the Goose and Gold—the inn where you and me first met.”
Nio said nothing, though it was all he could do not to grind his teeth together.
“The tunnel—it goes to the Silentman’s court,” gabbled the fat man. “Through the labyrinth. Nice place, all old stone, but strange. I hate going there! The Silentman ain’t paid up yet, which means the client ain’t got the goods yet. That’s standard Guild procedure.”
“How many in this Guild of yours know about the box?”
“Er,” gulped the Juggler, his eyes sliding past Nio toward what waited behind him, “prob’ly not many. The Silentman’s real silent ‘bout his jobs an’ clients. That’s why he’s called the Silentman.”
“How many?”
“Um, mebbe four at most. The Knife, the Silentman and his advisor fellow, and me.”
“What of your boy?”
“Oh, well, he was—he was dead by the time the work was finished.”
“Ah,” said Nio. “Broke his neck in a fall, did he?”
“No, no! More a matter of tying up loose ends. Another sign of the importance of the job. No need for flapping lips about. The boy was poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” said Nio. “What do you mean by that? A strange sort of business, this Guild of yours, if it kills off its employees as they work.”
“Just a boy,” babbled the fat man. “Nothing personal. As soon as he came up out of the chimney, handed the box over, the Knife jabbed him full of lianol. Out like a blown candle. He wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
“What?!”
The fat man gurgled like a water fountain, but Nio no longer heard him. Lianol. The poison was lethal. There was no way to reverse it. He had never heard or read of any way possible.
His mind froze. The box. If what he guessed about the box was true—if what he guessed about what was inside the box was true—then that was how the boy had cheated death. Nausea swept over him. The boy had opened the box. The boy had touched what was inside the box. Blood had been drawn.
Nio turned back to the Juggler. His voice shook with rage.
“Who contracted the Guild for this job?”
“I don’t know,” said the fat man.
Behind Nio, the wihht stirred to life and stepped forward. Out of the corner of his eye, Nio could see the pallid face and the light gleaming in the sockets.
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” shrieked the fat man. The lantern fell from his grasp and broke on the cobblestones, sending up a brief flare of flame over the pooled oil. Glass crunched underneath the wihht’s boot and the flame was extinguished.
“No, no!” sobbed the Juggler. He shrank away and covered his face with his hands.
“I believe you,” said Nio.
“You do?” faltered the fat man, peeping at him from between his fingers.
“Yes. By the way, it’s nothing personal, but this will probably hurt a great deal.”
Nio turned and stalked away down the dark street.
The boy was all that mattered now. Only the boy. But he would make the Guild and its client pay dearly for what they had done. First the boy, then he would see to everything else. Everything! He ground his teeth together in fury. He had been so close. The boy had been within his hands. He could have snapped his filthy little neck. The wihht would find him. It would find him, sniffing its way through the city until it caught the scent.
Behind Nio, a scream choked into a sort of bubbling noise, and then a sigh. The clouds in the sky had frayed away sometime in the last hour, and the moon stared down, pale and white and disapproving.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THE FARROWS
The Farrows had pitched camp within the shelter of a hollow containing a spring, a rarity on the plain of Scarpe. Groundwater was scarce on the plain. Creeks and rivers were nonexistent, apart from the Rennet River bordering the plain’s southern edge. About a dozen wagons were drawn up in a semicircle near the spring, and a temporary corral had been put together for the colts. The older horses never wandered far; such was the bond between Farrow and horse.
There were upward of fifty Farrows, and they ranged the gamut from tiny Morn, the four-month-old grandnephew of Cullan Farrow, the patriarch of the clan, to old Sula Farrow, Cullan’s widowed mother. Uncles, aunts, cousins, young, and old. The Farrows took their brides from all four corners of Tormay, and every hue of skin and hair could be found within their family, though the thin, hawkish face and gray eyes were seen everywhere.
The duke’s party stayed with the Farrows for two days, even though this meant they would be late for the beginning of the Autumn Fair in Hearne. The duchess had words with her husband about this, but he was unrepentant, as there was nothing he loved more than talking horses with old Cullan Farrow. Though he was wise enough not to say this to her.
“My dear,” said the duke, “there are two or three colts I’ll have to see put through their paces. Cullan bought them in Harlech—bought them, of course—stealing a horse in Harlech! Why, you might as well cut your own throat on the spot. Best bloodlines in all Tormay. A
positive gold mine for breeding.”
“Imagine that,” said his wife.
But she knew a lost cause when she saw one and contented herself with sitting in the shade of one of the wagons—for the Farrows had promptly cleared out of one their nicer covered wagons for the duke and duchess—where she spent hours knitting.
“It’s not that I mind,” she said to Levoreth. “It does seem to have taken Hennen’s mind off the Blys. There’s something restful about the Scarpe, the way the wind billows the grasses. It’s like the waves on the sea. Even with these Farrows popping up everywhere like dandelions, it’s peaceful here—which can never be said about a city like Hearne.” And here she glared good-naturedly at several children who were peeping around the wagon wheel. They giggled and scampered away.
“However, I can’t allow your uncle to have his way whenever he wants.”
“Of course not,” said Levoreth, smiling.
“You’re laughing at me.”
“Yes.”
Cullan Farrow was a tall man and as lean and hard as a polished oak spear. His hair was white and cropped close to his skull. His eyes were gray, as cold and hard as a winter sky in Harlech. But he smiled easily, and then the gray warmed well enough.
“Botrell has a nice pair of colts now,” he said to the duke. They stood at the edge of the camp, smoking their pipes and watching several yearlings being put through their paces.
“Foaled off of Riverrun’s dam, no?” said the duke.
“Aye, so you’ve heard then.”
“The traders have been talking of that line getting good hunters for him.”
Cullan nodded.
“There’s good blood there, and the newest colts should be proof if they’re broken well. Botrell’s got some wise lads in his stable.”
They were both silent for a moment. The boys on the yearlings called cheerfully to each other as they galloped across the green sward. Sparrows dove and swooped overhead.
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