“Good evening, my lord,” called the sheriff heartily. “I see you found my brother’s establishment. Is he doing right by you and yours?”
Carin, looking down from her third-story window, spotted Verek standing at the foot of the inn’s front steps. The sheriff had dismounted near him. The two men shook hands, then walked side by side up the steps and disappeared from view.
That’s right, Theil, Carin thought. She pulled her head in and closed the curtains. Have a drink with the sheriff. Go to dinner with him and Megella. Leave “Alice” the murderess locked in her attic cell, until late tonight when the whole town’s asleep and she can sneak out to—
Someone made a noise at the hall door. It sounded like a shoulder ramming up against the wood, followed by a heel kick.
Carin drew close and pressed her ear to the door-panel. “Who’s there?” she demanded.
“Your dinner, my lady!” chirped a breathless voice.
Good, Carin thought, stepping back. I’m to be fed in captivity, safely caged up here.
She unlocked the door and found the little yellow-haired maid—former bearer of the lent gowns—ready to collapse under the weight of a huge platter of food. The girl was alone, the rest of her flock evidently having flown the coop.
“Here!” Carin exclaimed, grabbing the platter out of the girl’s hands. “Give it here before you drop it.” She staggered a step, then plunked the platter down on a table just inside the door. The weight of it was almost too much for Carin. No wonder it had nearly undone the maid. The yellow-haired girl was hardly bigger than a chickadee.
“Oh, my lady!” the girl gasped from the doorway, holding her sides. “Please don’t tell Master Elsfry that I put that great load into your hands. I never meant to burden you with it.”
The girl paused, catching her breath. Then she stepped back a pace, the better to study Carin’s gown.
“You look lovely, my lady. Master Elsfry said he had it on good authority that you were too unwell to come down to dinner, and so he sends these dishes with his compliments. His guest at the table, Lord Forester, asked me to come straight to him, as soon as I had seen you, and tell him how you are faring.”
The girl half chirped, half giggled. “You should go down and join the gentleman, my lady. He would want to show you off in that gown. Shall I tell his lordship that you are feeling stronger now, and that he is wanted here to escort you down to dinner?”
Carin shook her head. “I am still weak from the scorpion’s poison, and my head aches viciously,” she lied. “Please tell my Lord Ver— my Lord Forester that I am best where I am.”
“As you wish, my lady.” The girl bobbed a curtsy and turned to go.
“One moment.” Carin waved the maid into the room and over to the window. “That spit of land, curving around the harbor”—she pointed to the dark arm that arced through the twilight and out to the glimmering strangleweed—“how far to its end? Is it walkable?”
The girl shook her head. “No, my lady. It’s best to ride. The path’s too rough for a carriage, and too far to easily cover afoot. You’d be half the day at it.”
Or half the night, Carin thought as she thanked the maid and sent her on her way.
The platter from Master Elsfry held a feast, but none of it seafood. The fishers of this coast had no way to ply their trade, not with the strangleweed cutting off their access to the sea.
And out there, Carin suspected, the weed had killed every marine animal that had crossed its path. With a pang, she thought of the designs on the boats’ sails. Had any of those creatures survived? This sea might now be empty of fish, crabs, rays, and dolphins. The thought of the strangleweed wrapped around a dolphin, holding the creature under until it drowned, made Carin’s throat tighten.
In consequence, she did not do justice to the dishes the innkeeper had sent up to tempt her. The potato soup was rich and smooth, the roasted fowl was cooked to juicy perfection, and the greens were as fresh as the sea air that wafted in past the curtains. The blackberries in pastry with cream could have no equal in this world or any other. But Carin ate sparingly, and slowly, only sampling each dish as she stood at the window and peeked past the curtains at the glimmering lights in the distance.
She was just replacing the barely touched bowl of berries when the hall door burst open. Megella breezed in, her face flushed with what Carin suspected was an overindulgence in wine. The woman spared hardly a look for Carin, but exclaimed at the sight of the berries and cream and immediately tucked into them.
Right behind Meg came Verek. He, too, looked pleased. Evidently they had both enjoyed their dinners. He sank into a chair and dropped his saddlebags on the floor as he appreciatively ran his gaze over Carin at the window. She did a pirouette for him, showing off the gown that showed off her figure. He murmured something she could not catch over the sounds of Megella slurping berries. But Verek’s eyes communicated his thoughts, the private thoughts he would never fully express in his aunt’s presence.
“You look very well, fìleen,” he said, venturing that much at least, and projecting his voice to carry past his aunt. “Did you eat?”
“Yes,” Carin said, not lying but perhaps stretching the truth. “The food is delicious.”
Verek nodded. “I do not remember the last time I feasted like this. And to converse with so many well-spoken gentlemen around a dinner table—” He paused, tilting his head back as though seeking a memory. “Not since I was a boy and Lord Legary hosted convocations of wysards have I enjoyed such intelligent and far-ranging conversation.”
“On my side of the room,” Megella mumbled with her mouth full, “it was the same. The women of Easthaven are a lively and mettlesome lot.”
“And as fond of spirits as their menfolk are,” Verek said, raising his eyebrows slightly. “I noticed the beer and wine flowing as freely on your side as on mine.”
“All of it excellent, too,” Meg said. She swallowed, then hiccupped. “But do not worry, nephew. I kept your secrets. The ladies of the town had already concluded, with little prodding from me, that Lord Forester is the youngest son of a nobleman, and having inherited no property he is obliged to go abroad to seek his fortune. That explains, in their minds, the lightness of your luggage and the shabbiness of your apparel. Though I must say, Theil,” Meg added, “you came into dinner looking very spruce and smart.”
“Yes, I was noticing,” Carin said, admiring Verek’s neatly trimmed beard and mustache. On Earth, he’d shaved them off completely, using a razor with cleverly enclosed blades that he had found in a bathroom of Carin’s old home. But since their return to Ladrehdin, having left the razor behind on Earth, he had had to let his facial hair grow. Now it was all shaved away again except for a narrow line of mustache and the closely cropped beard that edged his jaw.
“How did you get so neat, clean, and pressed?” Carin asked him. “You never came up to bathe.”
Verek dipped his head, acknowledging her compliments. “As I was returning from stabling the horses, our host informed me that the bathing rooms upstairs are reserved for ladies. He directed me ’round back, to the gentlemen’s bathhouse. There, an old woman took charge of me. She looked like an ancient chicken, but her hands had the strength of a blacksmith’s.”
Verek paused, his face a picture of mild, remembered alarm.
“She scrubbed me,” he went on, “till I thought she would remove my skin. She washed my hair with an herbal concoction that smelled—still smells—like a brothel. She gave me a shave and cut my fingernails.” Verek studied his manicured hands, then ran them down his trousers legs.
“By the time she had finished with me bodily, my clothes were clean, dry, and pressed. They have some sort of bellows arrangement down there by which they keep the fires going for heating the water and they make currents of hot air for drying the laundry. It is all remarkably efficient.”
A tap sounded at the door, as if on cue.
Verek called out “Enter!” and in fluttered three maids bea
ring neatly folded mountains of Megella’s finished washing. The wisewoman directed the maids through to the smaller of the two bedrooms, the chamber Meg had claimed for herself. The larger room where they had been sitting and talking was meant to be Carin’s and Verek’s tonight.
The maids curtsied, delivered their burdens as Megella directed, and, in their wheeling outbound flight, paused to light the lamps. One of the girls also scooped Carin’s dirty clothes off the bathroom floor.
“Stop!” Verek ordered the maid, so sharply that the girl froze in mid-flight.
He turned to Carin, looking a question at her as clearly as if he’d asked it aloud: Have you emptied your pockets?
Carin nodded, first at Verek, then at the maid.
“It’s all right,” she told the girl. “Take them to be washed. They need it.”
The girl gave a little squawk, clutched the grimy bundle to her chest, and flitted away like a house wren that had narrowly escaped a pouncing cat. And Carin had to smile, remembering all the times when only one sharp word from Theil Verek had scared her exactly that badly.
As the door shut behind the maid, Carin turned back to Verek.
“It’s safe,” she assured him. “I’ll show you, later, where I’ve hidden it.”
He sat back in his chair, visibly relaxing. “Good. I barely had time to slip my own crystal into my saddlebags before my chicken-necked scrubwoman was stripping me bare.”
“While that woman had you tubbed and lathered, was she disposed to talk?” Megella asked.
Verek nodded. “Very much so. She shared items of news that my companions at the dinner table later corroborated. I learned that the strangleweed has come down from the north.”
“The north?” Carin muttered. “From Ruain?”
“I think it highly likely,” Verek said. “But we will not confirm that until we arrive there. The land of my birth is, of course, unknown to anyone in these parts. If they think of the north at all, they believe it to be an untamed, uninhabited wilderness. They’ve no notion that the citizens of my province live settled lives, farming and fishing and trading, much as Easthaven’s residents do.”
Verek’s words reminded Carin what Master Welwyn had said:
“Theil’s lands are the last wysards’ stronghold in Ladrehdin. But it’s as if a spell of omission hangs over the province. Those who come and go from Ruain carry no tales away with them.”
“So you don’t know for sure,” Carin said. “You can’t be certain the weed has invaded Ruain.”
Verek tipped his head. “I believe we may safely assume that it has. Where else would the woodsprite have come to ground? The artifacts you were forced to leave behind on the creature’s world were all crafted in Ruain. Logically, those objects would bring the sprite into my domain, if the creature succeeded in using them to build bridges for itself and its accomplices.”
“You believe the wood-goblin brought the strangleweed with it?” Megella asked.
He nodded. “The evidence supports my supposition. All whom I have spoken with say the weed has been spreading southward. In the ocean”—Verek pointed, indicating the sea that sparkled in the night outside the window—“it has multiplied and thickened to an alarming extent. On land, however, the stuff has had slower going.”
Verek paused, thoughtfully stroking his freshly cropped beard.
“Though we witnessed great weedy mats suffocating the scrubland,” he continued, “the people here find the inland variety of devil’s-guts relatively simple to destroy. They do not go near it but they have devised methods for isolating the stuff, clearing the surrounding land of all native vegetation and thus cutting the weed off from sustenance. The weed will not survive if it cannot wrap itself around other living creatures. It prefers the support of plants, but as we have seen it will also sustain itself, temporarily, on the flesh of animals. After it has strangled all life from its hosts, however, it dies if it cannot find new victims.”
“You said ‘the inland variety,’” Carin slowly repeated, trying to absorb everything Verek was saying. “Do you mean there’s more than one kind of strangleweed?”
Theil started to answer, but Megella interposed, sounding increasingly businesslike as the effects of the table wine wore off.
“Every gardener in Easthaven swears there are two separate varieties,” Meg said. “This evening, when I told my dinner companions that they could cure the bleeding disease with a sauce of strangleweed, I was asked, ‘Which weed?’ When I expressed my wonder at the question, my companions assured me that a distinction must be drawn.”
Megella tapped her forefinger on the table. “I am told, my ducks, that the difference is thus: In the waterweed the leaves are tiny, but flat and relatively broad, like little paddles. Those of the inland weed are longer, narrower, like leaves of grass. Until today, we had met only with the inland stuff.”
Verek nodded. “The gentlemen who dined with me—among their number were the sheriff, our host his brother, and the owner of a fishing fleet—those three imparted much the same information. When I told them we had fought our way through a weed-choked scrubland, barely avoiding strangulation, and when I spoke of our relief upon entering a great swath of fire-cleansed land—not mentioning, of course, that I knew who had set that fire—they were of one opinion: It must have been the inland variety of weed going up in smoke that had forced the aquatic type out of their harbor.”
As Theil continued, his eyes locked with Carin’s. “The sheriff said, ‘Burn one weed to smother the other,’ and all agreed. They plan—and I do not believe this was merely the beer talking—they plan to head out tomorrow to ‘harvest’ inland weed, trundle it along the spit that rims the harbor, and set it afire, intending that the smoke should fully clear the blockage at the harbor mouth.”
Carin shook her head. “It won’t work.”
“No, I do not think it will,” Verek said softly. “They will be risking their lives, attempting to ‘harvest’ the parasite. They will be risking the safety of the town, bringing it here. Up to now, they have kept their distance from the inland weed, and I believe they should continue to do so.”
“Yes,” Carin said. “Even if they manage to haul the stuff here—and it would take lots of weed to make enough smoke to smother all of that”—she jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the masses of waterweed beyond the harbor—“even if they get the weed here without it choking them and overrunning their town, they won’t have the right kind of fire for burning it.”
“Exactly,” Verek said, nodding.
Before he could say more, Megella cut in.
“My ducks, whatever you are planning, I do not wish to know. Tonight, I will pretend to be only a sightseer who has come to the seacoast for a holiday. Tomorrow I may have regrets, and a splitting head from the wine, but tonight I am going to throw open the window in the next room and sleep soundly, with the sea breeze cooling my brow. It has been a long time since I indulged myself in any such fashion as that.”
The wisewoman arranged her shawls, plucking at them with sharp, quick movements. “You may call me selfish, but I do not wish to spoil my sleep with worries about the two of you. Before I retire, however, I have one other bit of news to pass along. I think it will be of great interest to you both.”
“What is it, Aunt?” Verek prodded as the woman paused and looked long from one to the other of them, studying their faces.
Megella snorted. “You are very kind to claim me as your kin, nephew of mine,” she said. “Be assured, not a soul in this town believes we are related, not even by marriage. They do not say it to my face, but I can tell they think I am your old nurse, or perhaps your onetime governess. They look at my shapeless shawls, my sagging flesh, my grizzled hair, and they can see no connection between us.
“‘She is but a peasant woman,’ they think. ‘Lord Forester is clearly a man of high birth, but he has saddled himself with a frail young bride and a frumpy old servant. What an affectionate nature the man must have, to call that old h
ag his ‘aunt’ when she so clearly is not.’”
Verek started to laugh.
Carin glanced at him, and he must have read something in her face—something dangerous?—for he quickly ceased his chuckling.
In the silence that followed, Carin stomped away from the window and planted herself in front of Megella. She was so angry, she shook.
“How dare they!” Carin growled through gritted teeth. “How dare they call you an old hag. And if anybody in this place thinks I’m frail, I will call down death upon them all and prove that I am not.”
“Oh, widgeon,” Megella murmured.
The woman’s struggle for composure was clear to see. The harder Meg tried to appear unruffled, the more flustered she became.
Had you let yourself forget, Megella? Don’t! Carin thought. Don’t ever forget what happens to those whose offend “Alice.”
“Widgeon,” Meg repeated in a strained voice, “pay me no mind. I was telling a story and I exaggerated for effect.”
The woman swallowed and seemed to need a moment to find her voice again. When she got it back, she went on more crisply:
“You may be assured—perfectly well assured—that no one said you were frail. When the sheriff saw you in the wagon, you were groggy from the numbwort. And when we were shown up to our rooms, you still looked green in the gills, there is no denying. But the little maid who brought you your dinner spent the rest of the evening chirping that she’d seen a goddess under the rafters.”
Megella glanced across at Verek, as though appealing to him for help. When he remained silent, however, she turned back to Carin.
“The maid is certain that Lord Forester’s ‘Alice’ is a deity of the sea. Eyes of green, skin like the porcelain shell of a cowrie, hair that shines with the colors of the sunrise over the harbor. Frail? You? It is perfectly ridiculous, widgeon.
“And how stupid and thoughtless of me to speak so glibly regarding your, um, indisposition of the morning. My only excuse is that I drank too much. Perhaps I was trying to forget what happened today.”
“I can’t forget it!” Carin cried. “I can’t get it out of my mind. A man turned to a heap of sand. And then I incinerated even his dust. It’s like he never existed. That’s the most horrible thing I have ever seen—and almost the most monstrous act I have ever committed.”
The Wisewoman (Waterspell 3) Page 19
