He hadn't realized how much time he'd spent in the little sitting room; when he took his leave of Reta, he was appalled. One candlemark to sundown.
Panic stole thought. He could only think of one thing.
Home.
He had to get home, before it was too late. He didn't dare try to Mindtouch Savil from here; that would be as stupid, with Vedric so near, as riding through the gates in full Whites on Yfandes.
He ran across town, dodging through foot and beast traffic, trying to reach the east gate before they closed it for the night. Once closed-he wouldn't get out until morning. He didn't dare cast any kind of spell to get him by, no more than he dared Mindtouch Savil. Vedric would detect spellcasting even faster than the use of a Mind-Gift. And every moment he stayed here was another moment the same disaster that wiped out Tashir's family could move to harm his.
The sun was dropping inexorably toward the horizon; he had a pain in his side, and he was gasping for breath- and still he wasn't more than halfway to his goal. He stumbled against a market-stall; recovered; ran on. He realized with despair that he was not going to make it in time.
And candlemarks could count; could be fatal, given what he knew now.
It was only too possible that Tashir had done exactly what he'd been accused of; that he had been pushed too far by his father's ultimatum, and he had lost his hold temporarily on his Gift and his sanity. It was only too likely that he had unleashed power gone rogue and had destroyed his own home and everything and everyone in it.
Valdir stopped, unable to run any farther; clung to the corner of a building at a cross street, and watched the sun turn to blood, and sink below the horizon.
Taking with it his hope.
Valdir slipped into the Pig and Stick, keeping to the wall and the shadows as much as he could. He managed to get within touching distance of Renfry, and froze there, unmoving, in the shadows behind him.
He prayed that Renfry was about to finish a set, and that he had not just begun one. The tavern was hot, and he was sweating from his run. His side still hurt, and he wanted to cough so badly his chest ached with the effort of holding it back. Sweat ran down his back, and into his eyes. Odor of bread and stew and spilled ale made his stomach cramp up with hunger, and his eyes watered. The lamps flickered, and he gripped the wall behind him, as the room swam before his eyes.
Too long on too little. Oh, gods, keep me going!
Finally Renfry finished, and waved aside requests for more. “Not now, lads,” he said genially. “Not until I wet my throat a bit.''
He turned, and saw Valdir behind him. He started to say something - then took a second, closer look at him, and his eyes grew alarmed.
He picked up the gittern by the neck, and grabbed Valdir's elbow with his free hand. Without a single word, he propelled the unresisting Valdir before him through the door leading to the kitchen.
It was light enough in here, though twice as hot as the tavern common room, what with two fires and the brick bake-oven all roaring at once. A huge table dominated the center of the room; an enormously fat man in a floury, stained apron was pulling fresh loaves out of the oven with a long wooden paddle and putting them to cool on the table. There were two boys at each of the fireplaces, one turning a spit, one watching a kettle. A fifth boy was sitting on a stool right by the door, peeling roots.
Renfry pushed the boy peeling roots off his perch and shoved Valdir down onto it.
“What's wrong?” he said, “And don't tell me it's nothing. You look like somebody seeing a death sentence.”
Valdir just nodded; he'd already concocted a story for Renfry, and one that fit in with what he'd already told the man. “I've -” He finally coughed, rackingly; swallowed. “I've got to get out of here. Now. Tonight.”
Renfry looked at him narrowly. “Wouldn't be that little matter of a song, would it?”
Valdir just looked at him, pleadingly. “If Vedric finds out I'm here,” he whispered truthfully, “he'll probably kill me, You didn't tell me it was Vedric here.”
“Vedric!” Renfry exploded. “Great good gods, boy, you sure don't pick your enemies too carefully! Oh, hell.”
He folded his arms and gazed up at the ceiling, brows knitted together so that they came close to meeting. “Let's see. First off, we got to get your things away from Bel. Huh ... got it!”
He slipped out into the taproom and returned within a few moments. “I just paid that little sneak brat of the cook's to pinch your things. If he can't nip 'em, nobody can. Now - how much coin you got?”
Valdir turned out his purse. There wasn't much. Renfry counted it carefully. “Tel!” he shouted into the chaos of the kitchen. “How much day-old bread and stuff can I get you to part with for twenty coppers? Be generous, the boy has to run for it.”
The massive cook blundered over to their side of the big central worktable, peered at Valdir, and then at the tiny heap of coin. “Huh. Apples is cheap right now; got some with bad spots. All right fer the road, no good t' store. Bread, uh - got some I was gonna use fer stuffin'. Let ye have it all. Got some cheese w' mold all through. Mold won' hurt ye, just looks like hell an' tastes mighty sharp; people round about here don't care for sharp cheese. Skinny runt like you, hold ye least a fortnight.”
Renfry gave Valdir a look brimming with satisfaction. “That'll get you across the Border, easy, and there's a Harvestfest going on over there right now. Boy with a voice like yours that can't get coin at a Harvestfest don't deserve t' call himself a minstrel.”
“Hey, 'Fry!” An insolent urchin slid in under Renfry's elbow, Valdir's pack and blanket in one hand, his lute in the other. “These whatcha lookin' fer?”
Valdir snatched the lute out of the child's hand and held it to his chest, his eyes going moist. “Oh, gods - Renfry, I - “
I never dared hope for this much help from him. Never even prayed for it.
“Don't you cry on me!” Renfry growled, cuffing his ear. “Just getting my competition out of town, I told you. Tel, here - pack up the boy's food.” He scraped everything but two small silver pieces off the table and poured them into the cook's hand. The handful of copper bits vanished into a pocket of the stained apron, and a hand rivaling Bel's for size and strength took the pack. “Now, listen careful, because I'm only going to tell you this once. You go down to the west gate. I know it's the wrong way, just circle around the city walls once you get outside. You ask for Asra. You got that?”
“Asra,” Valdir repeated, nodding. “West gate.”
“You tell him Renfry sent you, and you give him one silver. That's his standard bribe to let folks out after dark, and don't let him tell you different. Then when you get to the Border, you give the other to our lads. That'll get you past them. Valdemar folk don't give a hang about who crosses to their side, so long as you don't look like a fighter or a trader. Fighter they'd question, trader they'd tax. You got that?”
“One silver to Asra at the west gate, one to the Border Guards.”
“Good lad.” Renfry nodded approvingly. “Now belt that blanket around you under your cloak; you're going to need it, it's cold out there. When you get 'round the walls, you take the east road as far as the second farm on the right tonight. You stop there. There's a haybarn right on the road and the old boy that owns it don't give a hang if people sleep there so long as they don't build fires. After that, you're on your own.”
Valdir was pulling his threadbare cloak on over the blanket when the cook returned with his pack bursting at the seams. He tucked the two tiny coins into his now-empty purse, slung pack over one shoulder and lute over the other, and turned to Renfry, trying to think of some way to thank him.
Renfry took one look at his eyes, and softened. “Damn. Wish you could have stayed a while,” he said gruffly, and suddenly pulled Valdir into a quick, rough embrace. “Now get out of here, before Bel comes looking for you.”
Vanyel made the best meal he'd had in a fortnight of half a loaf, the cheese, and a couple of apples. Yfandes got
the rest.
:Funny, how you seem to be able to find friends in the most unexpected places,: she mused. :Sometimes I wonder...:
“Friends? What are you talking about?” he asked her, cinching the blanket pad in place, and pulling himself up on her back. “Gods.” He clung there for a moment, as another wave of disorientation washed over him.
:Never mind. Are you all right?:
“I'll be fine. Just low on resources, and worn out.” Anxiety cramped his stomach a moment. He wouldn't have stopped long enough to eat if he hadn't found his legs giving out as he circled around the city to his meeting place with Yfandes. The shadows under the trees seemed sinister. The wind in the near-naked branches moaned as if in pain. He had to get back -
- but the old man was one of those that died. The thought kept nagging at him. He must have loved that old man, given his reaction to Jervis. That wasn't feigned. I can't believe that he would have killed the only person he trusted, even in a fit of uncontrolled rage and fear.
Never mind. The important thing was to take this knowledge back, now - before it was too late. Before the same thing could happen at Forst Reach. It still might not have been Tashir who killed the Remoerdis Family, but he dared not take that chance.
“All right, 'Fandes,” he said aloud. “Let's get out of here.”
And she leaped out onto the moon - flooded road.
Eleven
If Vanyel had dared to Gate so close to Vedric Mavelan he would have. But he didn't; he didn't dare alert him to the fact that a mage powerful enough to Gate had been within the city. If the Mavelans were somehow behind the disaster after all, he would be a fool to alert his quarry. So he and Yfandes pounded into Forst Reach just after dawn-
To find everything as peaceful as when they'd left.
:I told you,: Yfandes said, in a maddeningly reasonable tone of mind-voice as she pulled into a tired walk. :I told you if anything had gone wrong we'd have felt it, the way we felt the first surge. Didn't I tell you?:
Visions of slaughter and mayhem melted, taking with them the fear that had strengthened and supported him. When they got to the stable, Vanyel just slid wearily off her back, vowing not to say a word.
Because if he did, he'd take her head off. He hated it when she said, “I told you so.”
And he did not want to get into a fight with her, didn't even want to have words with her; she didn't deserve it.
Much.
He hurt; he ached all over, and he was half numb with cold. His legs trembled a little as he walked beside her into the stable, his boots and her hooves echoing hollowly on the wooden floor. He managed to get her stall open, and he spent as much time as he could leaning against something while he groomed her. There was, thank the gods, hay and water already waiting.
“Get some rest,” he told her, fatigue dulling his mind and slurring his words. “I'm going to do the same.”
He didn't remember how he got to his room; all he really remembered was leaving Medren's lute by the door, stripping his filthy rags off and dropping them on the floor as he staggered to his bed, and falling into the bed. Literally falling; his legs gave out at that point. He held onto consciousness just long enough to pull off the patched breeches and his boots, drag the blankets over himself and wrap them around his chilled, numb body; as soon as he stopped shivering, he was asleep, and oblivious to the world. At that point, Tashir could have replicated the massacre in Highjorune, and he'd have slept right through it.
He woke about mid-afternoon, still tired, but no worse than when he'd first arrived home. The filthy rags he'd worn were gone. Evidently one of the servants had come in and picked up after him, and it was a measure of his exhaustion that he not only hadn't woken, he hadn't even heard the intruder. He was not pleased with himself; carelessness like that could get him killed all too easily under other circumstances.
On the other hand, it means I'm obviously nowhere near as jumpy as I was, which is all to the good.
The first order of business was food and a bath, and stopping by the kitchen on the way to the bathhouse solved both at the same time.
But the next order of business - and one that made him wolf down the first decent meal he'd had in a fortnight practically untasted, and while he bathed - was a long talk with Jervis and Savil.
“The boy's staying so close to Jervis you'd think he'd been grafted there,” Savil said. Vanyel followed her out to the salle as the late afternoon sunlight gilded everything with a mellowing glow. “It's been entirely quiet, ke'chara. Not so much as a murmur out of the boy, or a single plate gone skyward.” She looked at him quizzically, with a touch of worry. “To see you practically flying back, and in this state - I wish you'd tell me what's going on.”
Vanyel shook his head, and his hair fell annoyingly into his eyes again. He hadn't had a chance to get it cut; it was a lot longer than he was used to wearing it, and he wasn't sure if he ought to find the time to do something about it or not. He raked it back with his fingers and suppressed his flash of annoyance at it. “I will, as soon as I have both you and Jervis together. I don't want to have to repeat myself, and I want to hear both of your opinions at the same time. It's - some of what I found out is terrifying, and none of it is pretty. And I don't know what to make of it.”
Savil brooded on that. “I thought you were going to find answers over there.”
“I did,” he replied, deeply troubled. “But the answers I found only gave me more questions.”
Jervis was alone in the workroom of the salle. Which might be the first piece of good luck I've had in a while, Vanyel thought with reluctance. Jervis' eyebrows went up when he saw the expression on Vanyel's face, but he didn't move from his chair; he only put down the vam-brace he'd been repairing, and waited for them to settle themselves.
“You're back, hmm?” the armsmaster said quietly. “From the look of you, I don't know as I'm going to like what you're going to tell me.”
Vanyel shut the door carefully behind Savil; he would have preferred to stand, but he was just too tired. He compromised by perching on a tall stool, and then looked from Jervis to his aunt and back again, at a real loss as to how to broach the whole subject.
“Did you find out who put fear in the boy?” Jervis prompted.
That's about as good a place to start as any. Vanyel took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said, and began his tale.
Jervis and Savil heard him out in complete silence, hardly even breathing. Savil's face was expressionless; Jervis, though, looked ready to call somebody out. Vanyel, for starters.
“That's it,” Vanyel finished, starting to slump with weariness, his shoulders aching with tension. “That's what I found out. And you have to admit, the answers I got certainly fit the symptoms.”
“Dammit Van,” Jervis said tightly, plainly holding his temper in check, “I am bloody well tempted to call you a damned liar to your face!”
“Why?” Vanyel asked bluntly, too weary for diplomacy.
Jervis colored, and growled. “Because that's nothing like the things Tashir's been telling me! The way he tells it -”
“Wait a minute! Do you mean Tashir's been talking about his family to you?”
“He trusts me! Can't the boy trust somebody other than you?”
Vanyel told himself that Jervis was only reacting much the way he would if the boy were in his protection, and managed to cool his rising temper. “Why don't you begin at the beginning, and tell me what you heard?”
What emerged was nothing less than a fantasy, if what Vanyel had learned was true. In his long talks with Jervis (and it seemed that there had been several), Tashir had painted a perfect, idyllic family for himself, one in which the members were forced by circumstance and enemies to present a very different face to the outside world than the one they showed each other. His mother, for instance; Tashir depicted her as the long-suffering plaything of her Mavelan relatives. According to him, once she discovered Deveran's kindness, she took a stand firmly by the side of her wedded lord, b
ut played the part of the discarded, unwanted spouse so as to give the Mavelans no reason to think she could be used against Lineas and its ruler.
And according to Tashir's tale, Deveran was not the bitter, half-impotent dancer on the line between Baires threat and Lineas politics. He was supposedly a stern but kindly patriarch of the Linean throne. Deveran, so Tashir had told Jervis, had only disinherited him under pressure from his people. No, there was never any question in Deveran's mind as to who Tashir's father was. No, there had never been a fight, never been anything other than a small misunderstanding that they had settled that very night.
Fiction, first to last.
“That doesn't even square with what the boy told me!”
Vanyel retorted, disgusted with the game the youngster seemed to be playing. “He told me that his father hated him - that knocking him to the ground that night was only out of the ordinary because Deveran hadn't knocked him about much in public before!”
“Hell!” Jervis replied, his face flushing. “The boy was half - crazed an' scared outa his wits.”
“All the more reason that he should have told me the truth - he didn't have time to make up some tale!”
Jervis started to protest, and Vanyel raised his voice to interrupt him. “And the part about the fight wasn't just from Tashir, it was from Herald Lores!”
“A fathead,” Savil put in reluctantly, “but an honest fathead.”
Jervis lunged to his feet. “An' how much of this is 'cause you want that boy's tail?” he snarled, hands knotting into fists at his sides.
Vanyel went hot, then cold. “If that's what you think, I see no point in any further discussion. Think what you like - do what you like - but obstruct me, and I'll haul you off to Lissa in manacles.”
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