The Hallowed Hunt c-3

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  In either case, Ingrey was standing with Biast when an unexpected figure exited the Daughter’s court.

  “Ingorry!”

  Prince Jokol waved cheerfully and trod across the pavement past the holy fire’s plinth to where Ingrey waited. The giant islander was shadowed as usual by his faithful Ottovin, and Ingrey wondered if the young man was under instructions from his formidable-sounding sister to make sure her betrothed was returned from his wanderings in good order, or else. Jokol was dressed as before in his somewhat gaudy island garb, but now he had a linen braid dyed bright blue tied around his thick left biceps, mark of a prayer of supplication to the Daughter of Spring.

  “Jokol. What brings you here?”

  “Eh!” The big man shrugged. “Still I try to get my divine I was promised, but they put me off. Today, I try to see the headman, the archdivine, instead of those stupid clerks who always tell me to go away and come back later.”

  “Do you pray for an appointment?” Ingrey nodded to Jokol’s left sleeve.

  Jokol clapped his right hand on the blue braid and laughed. “Perhaps I should! Go over his head, eh.”

  Ingrey would have thought the Son of Autumn to be Jokol’s natural guardian, or perhaps, considering recent events, the Bastard, not that praying to the god of disasters was exactly the safest course. “The Lady of Spring is not your usual Patroness, surely?”

  “Oh, aye! She blesses me much. Today, I pray for poetry.”

  “I thought the Bastard was the god of poetry.”

  “Oh, Him, too, aye, for drinking songs and such. And for those great songs of when the walls come crashing down and all is burning, aye, that make your hairs all stand up, those are fine!” Jokol waved his arms to mime horripilating tragedies suitable for epic verse. “But not today. Today, I mean to make a beautiful song to my beautiful Breiga, to tell her how much I miss her in this stone city.”

  Behind him, Ottovin rolled his eyes. Ingrey took it for silent comment on the sisterly object of the proposed song, not on the song itself. Ingrey was reminded that in addition to being the goddess of female virgins, the Daughter was also associated with youthful learning, civil order, and, yes, lyric poetry.

  Biast was staring up at Jokol, looking impressed despite himself. “Is this by chance the owner of your ice bear, Ingrey?” he inquired.

  Though longing to deny all association with the ice bear, now and forever, Ingrey was reminded of his social duties. “Pardon me, my lord. Allow me to present to you Prince Jokol of Arfrastpekka, and his kinsman Ottovin. Jokol, this is Prince-marshal Biast kin Stagthorne. Son of the hallow king,” he added, in case Jokol needed a touch of native guidance among the perils of Easthome high politics.

  But Jokol was neither ignorant nor overawed. He signed the Five and bowed his head, and Biast returned both greeting and blessing, as confident chieftains of two races neither vassal nor allied, but with some such possibilities hovering in the future, not to be scorned.

  The promising mutual appraisal of the two princes was interrupted by the return of Symark, clutching the arm of a gray-robed acolyte. Having secured a guide to the proliferating hodgepodge of buildings that made up the Temple complex, Biast went to collect his sister from the Mother’s court.

  Jokol, taking the hint, made to bid Ingrey farewell. “I must try harder to see this archdivine fellow. It may take some time, so I should start, eh?”

  “Wait,” said Ingrey. “I’ll tell you who you should see. In a building two streets back, second floor—no, better.” He darted over to pluck a passing boy in Bastard’s whites, a young dedicat of some sort, out of the thin stream of people passing through the central court bound on various errands. “Do you know the way to Learned Lewko’s office?” he demanded of the boy.

  The boy gave him an alarmed nod.

  “Take this lord to him now.” He handed off the dedicat to a bemused Jokol. “Tell him Lord Ingrey sends a complication for his collection.”

  “Will this Lewko help me to see the archdivine?” asked Jokol hopefully.

  “Either that, or he’ll go over Fritine’s head. Threaten to give him Fafa; that will stimulate him on your behalf.” Ingrey grinned; for the god of vile jokes, this practically constituted a prayer, he decided.

  “He is a power in the Temple?”

  Ingrey shrugged. “He is a power of a god who does not wait on clerks, at least.”

  Jokol pursed his lips, then nodded, brightening. “Very good! I thank you, Ingorry!” He trudged off after the boy, trailed by the dubious Ottovin.

  Ingrey thought he heard someone laughing in his ear, but it wasn’t Symark, who stood looking on somewhat blankly. A trick of the court’s acoustics, perhaps. Ingrey shook his head to clear it, then pulled himself to an attitude of grave attention as Biast returned with the ladies.

  Biast, after a glance around the court, gave Ingrey a peculiar stare, uncertain and searching. It occurred to Ingrey that the last time all of this party had been present in this place was two days ago, for Boleso’s funeral. Was Biast wondering whether to believe in Ingrey’s claimed shaman-miracle of cleansing his late brother’s soul? Or—almost more disturbing—belief accepted, was he wondering what further consequences must flow from it?

  In any case, the gray-robed acolyte led them around the temple into the maze of buildings housing clerks and works of the various holy orders. Some structures were new and purpose-built, but most were old and reassigned. They passed between two noisy and busy, if slightly dilapidated, former kin mansions, one now a foundling hospital run by the Bastard’s Order, the other the Mother’s infirmary, its colonnades echoing with the steps of physicians and green-clad acolytes, its tranquil gardens sheltering recovering patients and their attendants.

  In the next street over they came to a large edifice, three stories high and built of the same yellow stone as Hetwar’s palace, dedicated to the libraries and council rooms of the Father’s Order. A winding staircase circled a spacious hall and brought them at length to a hushed, wood-paneled chamber.

  The inquiries were already under way, it seemed, for a pair of retainers Ingrey thought he recognized from Boar’s Head were just shouldering back out the door, looking daunted but relieved. They recognized the prince-marshal and princess and hastened to get out of their way, signing sketchy gestures of respect. Biast managed a return nod of polite acknowledgment, although Fara’s neck stayed stiff, pride starched with mortification. Fara caught her breath in a little snort like a startled mare when the first person they encountered on the other side of the door was Boleso’s housemaster, Rider Ulkra. Ulkra bowed, looking at least equally queasy.

  A long table stretched across the head of the room, and five men sat along it with their backs to the draped windows. Two wore the gray-and-black robes and red shoulder braids of divines of the Father’s Order, and the other three wore the chains of office marking judges of the King’s Bench. At a small table to one side, a scribe sat with her quills and inks and papers. Other benches lined the walls. Near the scribe, on the bench on the far side of the room, another divine sat, a gangling fellow with untidy graying black hair that seemed to echo his robes. His red shoulder braid had a gold cord running through it, the mark of a senior scholar of jurisprudence. A counselor to the counselors?

  The judges all rose and made obeisance to the prince-marshal and courtesies to the princess; a couple of dedicat-servants were sent scurrying to secure padded chairs for the Stagthorne haunches. While this was going on, Ingrey circled in on Ulkra, who swallowed nervously but returned his greeting.

  “Have you been questioned yet?” Ingrey inquired politely.

  “I was to be next.”

  Ingrey lowered his voice. “And do you plan to tell the truth, or lie?”

  Ulkra licked his lips. “What would Lord Hetwar desire of me, do you suppose?”

  Did he still think Ingrey was Hetwar’s man? So was Ulkra exceptionally shrewd, or just behindhand on capital gossip? “If I were you, I should be more worried about what
Hetwar’s future master desires.” He nodded toward Prince Biast, and Ulkra followed his glance, warily. “He is young now, but he won’t stay that way for long.”

  “One would think,” Ulkra angled, speaking almost under his breath, “he would desire to shield his sister from reproach and censure.”

  “Would one?” said Ingrey vaguely. “Let’s find out.” He beckoned to Biast, who trod over curiously.

  “Yes, Ingrey?”

  “My lord. Rider Ulkra here cannot decide if you would wish him to tell the exact truth, or shade it to spare your sister chagrin. What that says about your reputation, I must leave you to decide.”

  “Sh, Ingrey!” whispered Ulkra in furious embarrassment, with a fearful glance over his shoulder at the table down the room.

  Biast looked taken aback. He said cautiously, “I promised Fara that none would shame her here, but certainly no man should violate his oath of truthsaying before the judges and the gods.”

  “You set the path for your future court starting even now, prince. If you discourage men from speaking unpalatable truths in front of you, I trust you will develop your skill for sifting through pretty lies, for you will spend the rest of your reign, however short, wading in them.” Ingrey let his mild tone suggest that it was a matter of utter indifference to him which Biast chose; Ingrey would manage just the same.

  Biast’s lips twisted. “What was it Hetwar said of you? That you defy whom you choose?”

  “Whom I please. I please Hetwar best so. But then, Hetwar is no man’s fool.”

  “Verily.” Biast’s eyes narrowed; then he surprised and gratified Ingrey altogether by turning to Ulkra, and saying shortly, “Tell the exact truth.” He inhaled, and added on a sigh, “I’ll deal with Fara as I must.”

  Ulkra, eyes wide, bowed and backed away, presumably before Ingrey could wind him into further coils. The chairs arrived; Ingrey gave Biast a slight, sincere bow, rather ironically returned, and took his place on the rear bench where he could watch the whole room, and the door.

  A futile speculation crossed his mind: if Boleso had possessed a friend with the backbone to stand up to him at critical junctures, would he still have turned onto the crooked roads that had led to his death? Boleso had always been the most difficult of the princely brood. Maybe nothing would have saved him, at the end.

  After a short, whispered consultation among the judges, Ulkra was called up to take his oath and answer the inquirers. Ulkra stood before them with his hands clenched behind his stout back, feet apart, taking some refuge in the soldierlike pose. The questions were to the point; the panel had already, it appeared, acquired some grasp of the outline of events at Boar’s Head.

  As nearly as Ingrey could discern, Ulkra did tell the exact truth of the chain of deeds that had led to Boleso’s death, insofar as he was eyewitness. He did not leave out the leopard, nor his suspicions about Boleso’s earlier “dabblings,” though he managed to cloak his own complicity of silence under protestations of the loyalty and discretion due from a senior servant. No, he had not suspected that Boleso’s body servant was the illicit sorcerer Cumril. (So, the judges had heard of Cumril’s existence—from Lewko?) At one point, the scholarly divine on the side bench silently passed a note across to one of the judges, who read it and followed up with a couple of especially penetrating and shrewd questions of the housemaster.

  The unsubtle ugliness of Ijada’s sacrifice at Boleso’s bedroom door came through clearly enough to Ingrey’s ear, despite Ulkra’s self-serving phrasing of it. By the stiffening of Fara’s features, this was the first fully objective account she had heard of the consequences at Boar’s Head after she had abandoned her maiden-in-waiting there. She did not weep in whatever shame she swallowed, but her face might have been carved in wood. Good.

  When Ulkra was dismissed, to flee from the chamber as swiftly as he decently could, Fara was called up. Ingrey, playing the courtier, made of helping her from her chair the chance to breathe in her ear, “I will know if you lie.”

  Her eyes shifted to him, coldly. “Should I care?” she murmured back.

  “Would you really want to put such a weapon in my hand, lady?”

  She hesitated. “No.”

  “Good. You begin to think like a princess.”

  Her gaze grew startled as he squeezed her arm in encouragement before letting her go. And then, for a moment, thoughtful, as though a new road had opened up before her not previously perceived.

  The judges kept their questions to her brief and courteous, as befit equally law and prudence. The truth she spoke was, like Ulkra’s, softened in her own excuse, and the motivation of her jealousy largely left out, which Ingrey thought all to the good. But the most critical elements in his view—that the demand had come from Boleso, been accepted without consultation by Fara, and that Ijada was no seductress nor cheerful volunteer—seemed plain enough, between the lines. Fara was released with diplomatic thanks by the panel; her eyes squeezed shut in bleak relief as she turned away.

  With Fara leading the way, her two senior ladies-in-waiting told the truth as well, including a few side incidents not witnessed by Fara that were even more damaging to Boleso. Biast looked decidedly unhappy, but made no move to interfere with the testimony; though there was no doubt the judges were very conscious of the prince-marshal’s presence and expressions. The scholarly divine, Ingrey noticed, also sent sharp if covert glances Biast’s way. If Biast had chosen to cast the right frowns, snort, or shift at the key moments, might he have shaped the questions? Distorted them in his late brother’s favor? Perhaps; but instead he listened in guarded neutrality, as befit a man seeking truth before all other aims. Ingrey hoped that the idea of a blood-price might now be sounding better to him.

  Shuffling echoed in the room as the party rose to leave. Ingrey directed the page to go in pursuit of his twin and bring around the princess’s palfrey; the boy bobbed a bow, and replied, “Yes, Lord Ingrey!” in his high, clear voice before scampering out. The scholarly divine’s head swiveled; he stared at Ingrey, frowning, then went to bend over the shoulder of one of the empaneled divines and murmur in his ear. Brows rising, the judge nodded, cast a glance Ingrey’s way, and murmured back. He then raised his hand and his voice, and called, “Lord Ingrey! Would you stay a moment?”

  Despite the polite tone, it was clearly a command, not query or invitation. Ingrey returned a nod and stood attentively. Biast, shepherding his sister out the door, frowned in frustration, apparently torn between assuaging Fara’s anxiety to escape and his own desire to hear what was wanted of the wolf-lord now.

  “I will catch you up, my lord,” said Ingrey to him. Biast, with an expression that plainly said they would speak together later, nodded and followed his sister out.

  Ingrey took up a stance before the judges’ table reminiscent of Ulkra’s, and waited, concealing extreme unease. He had not expected to be questioned today, or possibly at all.

  The scholarly divine stood behind his colleague and folded his arms, shoulders hunched and face outthrust in his concentration upon Ingrey. With his beaklike nose and receding chin, he resembled a stork wading in the shallows, intent upon some fish or frog concealed below the water’s surface. “I understand, Lord Ingrey, that you had an experience at Prince Boleso’s funeral very pertinent to these proceedings.”

  This man had to have spoken with Lewko. How much had the Bastard’s divine conveyed to the Father’s scholar? The two orders were not usually noted for their mutual cooperation. “I fainted from the heat. Anything else is not such testimony as is admissible in a trial, I thought.”

  The man’s lips pursed, and to Ingrey’s surprise, he nodded in approval. But then said, “This is not a trial. It is an inquiry. You will observe I have not requested your oath.”

  Was that of some arcane legal significance? From the slight nods of a couple of the judges, apparently so. The scribe, for one thing, had set aside her quill and showed no sign of taking it up again, although she was staring at Ingrey in some
fascination. It seemed they were speaking, at the moment, off the record. Given the company, Ingrey was not sure this was any aid to him.

  “Have you ever fainted from heat before?” asked one of the King’s Bench judges.

  “Well… no.”

  “Please describe your vision,” said the scholarly divine.

  Ingrey blinked, once, slowly. If he refused to speak, how much pressure would they bring to bear? They would likely place him under oath; and then both speaking and silence would have potentially more dire consequences. Better this way. “I found myself, Lady Ijada, and Prince Boleso’s sundered soul all together in a… place. A boundless place. I could see through Prince Boleso’s torso. It was full of the spirits of dead animals, tumbling over each other in chaos and pain. The Lord of Autumn appeared.” Ingrey moistened his lips and kept his voice dead level. “The god requested me to call the animal spirits out of Boleso. Lady Ijada endorsed the request. I did so. The god took up Boleso’s soul and went away. I woke up on the temple floor.” There, not too bad; as truthful as any madman and with quite a number of complications left out.

  “How?” asked the divine curiously. “How did you call them out?”

  “It was but a dream, Learned. One does not expect things to make sense in a dream.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “I was… given a voice.” No need to say how, or by whom, was there?

  “The weirding voice? As the voice you used on the rampant ice bear two days before?”

  A couple of heads along the panel came up at that.

  Damn. “I have heard it called that.”

  “Could you use it again?”

  It was all Ingrey could do not to use it right now; paralyze this roomful of men and escape. Or else squeeze his strangely diffuse wolf into a tight little invisible ball under his heart. Fool, they cannot see it anyway. “I do not know.”