She didn’t have time to send for him and request an audience. Neither did she want those in the castle who might report back to John knowing her purpose. She cast one more thought at going to tell Chastity what she was doing. After all, her friend would worry when she didn’t come back.
Two more servants wearing leather gloves and carrying wide-bladed utility knives made her decision for her.
It could not wait.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Adaryn was determined to find some sage for Lady Longstride and answers for herself as she set out to visit a potion maker with whom she occasionally had dealings. The older man had been a friend of her father’s, and she’d known him since childhood.
She rarely left her home, and when she did it was usually to barter for something she or a client needed. Barnabas, on the other hand, was a downright hermit, never leaving his hovel for anything or anyone.
When she arrived at his home, after several hours on the road, she was shocked to find that almost everything in it had been stripped bare, and that a cart out front was laden with trunks and sacks. The old man was huddled over another trunk out back, packing things away in it.
“Barnabas?”
He jumped and turned with a cry, then pressed a hand over his heart.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, before turning back to what he was doing. “Thank goodness,” he muttered.
“Barnabas, what are you up to?
“I’m leaving,” the man said, standing up again. His eyes twitched nervously.
“Leaving? You’ve lived your whole life right here, haven’t moved more than a hundred feet. Where are you going to?”
“I was thinking I’d head to France.”
It seemed so preposterous she almost started to laugh. The cart out front was no laughing matter, though. Three months earlier, when she’d last seen him, he’d owned no such conveyance.
“But why?”
He leaned in. “Look, there is something happening. I’ve felt it, and others have felt it, too. Don’t tell me you haven’t.”
She licked her lips. “Maybe I have, and maybe I haven’t.”
“Whatever is coming, I don’t want to stick around and see it. If you’re smart, you won’t either.”
She glanced at his garden. He had spent so many years cultivating it, and now he was just going to abandon it.
“How is your sage growing?” she asked.
“Sage?” he replied. “Sage is the least of my worries. Although it’s all rotted, as yours surely is. No one’s been able to grow sage in months.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means that there’s an evil poisoning the earth, destroying anything that can possibly stand up to it.”
She took a deep breath. He’d always been prone to exaggeration and a pessimist on top of it all. Still, his words twisted in her mind like something alive.
“If what you say is true, there would be other signs.”
“Are you blind, woman? The signs are all around. Blackbirds litter the fields and blot out the grass. Worms crawl across dry dirt. Half the cows in the land are dry.” His eyes twitched even more rapidly. “Owls have been flying out of the forest and circling people’s houses for weeks. They’ve been flying both night and day. Death is coming, and not just for a few people. It’s coming for everyone. There’s scarce a house in all the region that hasn’t been visited.”
“And how would you know that? You never leave your home.”
“I have friends, friends all over, and they tell me,” he said, “and now I’m telling you. Leave while you can, before the owls hoot outside your door.”
“If an owl comes to me, I’ll not take it as a portent of death. I’ll take it as a visit from cailleach-oidhche…or a sign that the mice are growing too plentiful,” she said scornfully.
“You mock me, Adaryn, but mark my words. You’ll come to a bad end if you stay.”
She sighed, not sure what to think.
“Do you have any dried sage I can buy?”
He barked, a short, hard laugh. “Not a stick. Anyone with any sense is using all they’ve got left over to make wards, cleanse houses, preparing for the worst.”
“Do you know if Alderman has any?”
He shook his head. “He left the region more than a fortnight ago. Picked his garden dry before he left, but I can tell you no sage was growing there, either.”
She blinked in shock, stunned to hear that the old wizard had left, and without stopping in to say a word to her. They had shared a few summer weeks as a young couple not old enough to know a thing about the world and still enjoyed company occasionally. Something was wrong indeed.
“Best tend to your own house and not worry about others’,” Barnabas said, not unkindly. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Take care of yourself, child, for your father’s sake. I’d not like to see you joining him in the grave anytime soon.”
“Be careful around those French,” she said back. “They’re an unfriendly lot.”
He nodded and then turned away, but not before she saw tears in his eyes. Shaken to her core, she began the long journey home.
* * *
It was quiet.
The silence had snuck in, creeping along the walls and windows like a shadow. All of a sudden he realized that the only thing he could hear was the sound of his own breathing. The in and out of air through his lungs rasped along his eardrums, startling him.
The door was shut now, but all afternoon he’d been accompanied by the hustle and the bustle of men and women following his orders, their noise bleeding through the stout wood. Now even those were gone.
He decided to stand, to fling open the portal and find someone, anyone, who might be outside.
“She will have to be handled.”
The voice came from nowhere, freezing him in place. Eyes jerking to and fro, he searched the room. From the black of a shadow beside a cabinet stepped the Sheriff.
The shadow was not big enough to hide a man.
The armored man stood, pale hands clasped before him. His skin and hair almost glowed against the gloom around him. The wide fur collar outlined his angular face, giving it a cruel, aristocratic air.
John put his feet on the floor, sitting up in his chair.
“I’ve handled her just fine.”
“No, you shut her up.”
“That’s not handled enough for you? What would you like me to do, cut her tongue out?”
The Sheriff raised an eyebrow. “You have no sophistication, always reaching for the quickest way.”
“If that little girl is going to be a problem,” John said, “I would rather just be done with her.”
“That little girl has lived in this castle nearly her entire life, while you have been here for mere days. If you harm her, it will not go unmarked, and there will be repercussions. This island has its protectors.” Pale fingers stroked the collar, running through the long fur flecked with tiny sparks of blue. “Our first asset will be knowledge. Find out everything you can about her.”
“She’s my niece.”
The Sheriff’s eyes blazed. “I did not ask for what you already know. Find out the things you don’t know.”
“To what purpose?”
“There is something about her that smells strange to me.”
Prince John furrowed his brow, and then nodded. “I’ll call for records, and question the staff.” He returned his attention to the table in front of him. His hands shuffled parchments, moving them into a pile.
Without warning, the Sheriff was there beside him. John didn’t jump, but inside his skin he twitched.
“What is this?” The Sheriff’s finger pinned a parchment to the table top. The tone of his voice drew the prince short. His mouth moved, but he had no words, unsure of how to respond.
“Did you have these out when your niece was here?” the Sheriff pressed. The words were a hiss, a slip of steel on sheath. “Out in the open, where she could read them? What sort of fool are you?”
“She couldn’t read them!” Prince John protested. The Sheriff removed his finger and John fumbled the pages more, trying to shove them together, to make them smaller. The parchment fought him, sheets sticking to each other and crumpling, or slipping and flying from his hands. “None of them have been translated. Some are a struggle even for my mind.”
“Leave them be!” the Sheriff roared. John froze, hands in mid-clutch. In a flash of dull sheen off ebon armor the Sheriff snatched one of the loose pages. He stared at it, eyes darting. As the seconds ticked by his face darkened, taking on the color of aged bone instead of corpse white. His lip curled, revealing teeth gone sharp. His eyes rolled black, flicking up to pin John in his seat.
“This is a binding.”
Prince John gulped, the noise loud in his ears, sounding like a bucket dropped in an empty well. His mind scrambled.
“I thought it might be needed, with the culmination of our plans.”
“This puny enchantment would accomplish nothing. It wouldn’t even cause a blink.”
“It’s Enochian.”
“And?”
“I thought…”
“You thought consorting with the enemy might save your arse.” The Sheriff leaned down, bringing his face close to John’s. “The only thing you can do, little prince, is remain loyal to me. We are bound together, and that is the only binding that should concern you. Break faith in our arrangement at any time, and there will be nowhere in this world you can hide that I will not find you.”
“How dare you?” John responded. “You need me.” Hatred flashed through his chest at the weak mewl his voice had become.
“I need you to provide information about young Marian.” The Sheriff straightened. “Everything depends upon you doing as you are told. Obedience brings reward. Anything short of that…” The Sheriff shrugged, leaving the threat unspoken, and all the worse for it.
“We want the same thing,” John insisted. “I swear it on my soul.”
“You did that back in Ireland.”
The prince fell silent, desperate to change the subject. “What are we going to do about the girl?”
The Sheriff said nothing, simply touched his fingers to the fur collar around his neck and blew air from his lips. The push of his breath made the long, black hair wave and trill. Two eyes opened between his long, pale fingers, glowing yellow and feral. The collar shifted, unwinding itself from the Sheriff’s throat.
As John watched with eyes grown wide, legs with claw-tipped paws broke free from the dark shape and pulled it up to stand, where it shook and stretched, expanding with each movement until an animal that may have been a cat, may have been a dog, and may have been something else altogether, crouched on the Sheriff’s shoulder. The Sheriff turned his face toward it and it lowered a triangular head.
“Find and watch her,” the Sheriff murmured. The animal peered at him, comprehension clear in its eyes. It batted his face with a paw, and leapt into the shadow from which its master had stepped.
The Sheriff waved his hand in a motion that John recognized. It had been diagrammed in an ancient Egyptian text for which he’d traded two pounds of gold and two pounds of black goat flesh. His eyes burned as he followed the twisting fingers, and began to water uncontrollably.
When his vision cleared, he could hear the servants shuffling past outside the door.
And he was alone in the room.
* * *
The stone was cool under its feet, much cooler than its home. It slinked down the hallway, moving through the ever-present shadow at the base of the wall. Windows were high. The light only dipped so low.
Fat ankles passed by. They puffed out of leather shoes too small for the feet and became stout calves that rose up into a skirt. Tempted it was to swipe out, to let out the tang of the blood trapped in those swollen joints.
It kept moving. It would obey.
The girl. The one that smelled of innocence and lean flesh. The one with narrow ankles. Her it would find.
It stayed near the inside wall, where her smell soaked into the stone. She crackled in its nose.
It moved faster.
* * *
“Your Highness.” The boy bowed so deeply she feared his hair would brush through the dirty hay. He straightened, looking at her feet instead of her eyes. “How may I serve you today?”
Marian glanced around the stable. She loved riding, and came here often to try different horses, depending on her mood. Today people moved with purpose from one end to the other. It was noisy in the long barn. Of course, there was always a sound of horses, and of people talking and laughing.
This was different.
The clamor inside the stable had a brittle edge to it. Head cocked to the side, she tried to figure out what was unusual. Looking down the line of stalls, she noted that about half were occupied, each with a horse hanging its head over the gate. Ears flat, the majestic beasts nickered and neighed at each other. Hooves clopped and bodies bashed against the walls as stable hands moved from one to the other with sugar cubes and apples, using them to try to calm the beasts.
Her nose filled with a harsh, bitter smell of fire and dust. Glancing up she found traces of smoke curling along the thatch roof.
“Highness?” the boy said again.
“I’m sorry.” She smiled down at him. “I need a horse.”
The stable boy looked around, eyes wide.
“Um…”
“Do not worry,” she said. “I can see that things are not normal here today.”
“It is an odd one, Highness,” he agreed.
“Then let us follow the simple course,” she suggested. “Go to Merryweather’s stall and bridle her, but don’t bother with a saddle. I’ll take her from there in a few moments.”
He nodded, touching two fingers to his forehead in salute, and moved off to do as she bid.
Moving over to the tack room, she entered and locked the door. Briskly she moved to the locker where her riding gear was stored, including a small stack of clothing. Opening the wooden door she was greeted by a waft of cedar and horse sweat. She needed to wash her kit, but it would have to wait.
Glancing back at the door to make sure she’d bolted it, she shimmied out of her castle gown, letting the simple cotton shift fall to the ground. Kicking off her sandals as she unfastened her undergarment, she found herself unencumbered. The air in the tack room was warm, but she still felt a chill. She shook it off, telling herself that it was just in her mind, an aftereffect of being naked.
She looked again, and found the door still bolted.
Pulling a linen shirt off the top of the stack of clothes, she jerked it over her body. It lay close to her skin, soft from dozens of washing, and hung to mid-thigh. Snatching up her trousers, she slipped them over her legs, the wool stiff from her last ride and scratchy across the slick scars that criss-crossed her shins, calves, and thighs. She tucked in the shirt and buckled her belt. Next came the leather jerkin that supported her spine during a ride, and covered her breasts for modesty’s sake, holding them steady for comfort. Finally she slipped her feet into matching well-worn boots that made her ready to ride.
* * *
Dirt did not hold the girl scent like the stone. And the hated sun hung overhead. It darted around the open door, so fast it was a blur as it streaked under the tapestry being carried by the solid men who smelled like dust and sour milk. Their smell helped it separate the girl from the dirt until it found her trail.
She crossed the courtyard. It circled, keeping low around the flowers and bushes as it chased the smell left behind.
* * *
Exiting the tack room, she lost no time and went straight to Merryweather’s stall at the end of the stable. Inside she found the small chestnut mare with a leather bridle in place and the stable boy holding the reins.
On sight of her, the horse pushed forward, nuzzling her face along Marian’s shoulder and neck. She smiled and stroked the sleek muscles along the creature’s withers. Merry
weather was firm and solid, full of power despite her smaller stature. Marian loved her, always stopping at the stall to give the gentle creature a treat of carrot or apple, choosing her most of the times she rode.
“You are sure no saddle for you today?” the boy asked.
She shook her head. “Not for my girl. We ride better without a barrier.”
“Then she is ready for you, Highness.” The stable boy bowed his head again.
She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. He wasn’t much younger than her, perhaps five years separating them. She was tall for a girl, and he hadn’t reached that bone-stretching growth spurt boys seem to get, so he was shorter than her by more than two handspans. It made him look younger than he was. That and his wide brown eyes.
“What is your name?”
“Murther, ma’am.”
“Good name. It’s distinctive.”
He blushed. “Thank you, Highness.”
“Murther, I need something more from you today.”
“If I am able, I will.”
“I would not ask you to lie, but if you are not asked directly, I would prefer you to not speak of me here today. No mention of it as gossip or news.”
Murther passed his fingers over his lips, indicating that they were sealed.
* * *
The warm smell of rat urine filled its nose. A rat had crossed this space moments before it arrived. The scent made it waver, tempting it to track and kill and eat. Instead it coiled its body tighter, drawing deeper into the shadow, and flicked its eyes up to watch.
The horse lived here.
The girl had taken the horse.
The girl would return here.
It would wait.
* * *
Marian and Merryweather broke free of the forest’s shadow on a ridge above the Church Road. The sun washed over her, bathing the world in bright yellow and warming her immediately. Underneath her legs, the horse shook and snorted, also feeling the effect of the high summer sun.
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