“I don’t care where you go,” Deinol said. “I’ve had too much to do with you already. Just give him to me.”
This time she did shift Seth into Deinol’s arms, and stood up. His blood had soaked into her clothes. She started to walk away, but Deinol called after her. “Almasy, tell me one thing.”
She half turned to him, warily. “What?”
He hardly cared anymore, but he had to ask—otherwise what was the point of all this? “Why did you do it?” he said. “Why give it to her?”
She didn’t look surprised, or ask who he was talking about—but then, she hadn’t asked how they’d found her either, or what they’d intended. She didn’t precisely look at him, but she did speak. “Because she asked me to.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Isn’t it?” That crooked smile of hers was hardly even sardonic this time, just sad. “Because she is the only person who ever cared whether I lived or died.” She glanced down at Seth, the first time Deinol had seen her actually look at him. “Except for him, I suppose.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Deinol carried him up the hill, to where the trees thinned out and there was only a single sycamore, a handful of still-green seeds scattered in its shade. He was so light in Deinol’s arms that it was scarcely an effort, but that didn’t matter—he’d have carried him the length of the Curse if he needed to. If it would have changed anything.
Getting the shovel had been the worst part—having to leave him there while he struggled the rest of the way to Saltmoor. He didn’t want to lug Seth about where everyone in the village could see him, but he’d been terrified that something would get at him while he was gone, that some wolf would drag him off or some crow would start pecking at his eyes. He had made the journey there and back as quickly as he could, stopping only to pick up the sword he’d dropped before he followed the cut trees back to the path. He had thought they’d regard him with suspicion—what sort of man stumbled into a village asking desperately for a shovel?—but they hadn’t even looked surprised. “Her ladyship’s messenger told us you’d be coming,” one of them said to him. “We’re to give you whatever you need.”
It took Deinol a moment to realize whom she meant. “A shovel,” he repeated. “Just a shovel. That’s all.”
He had to look at Seth again when he first started digging, so he’d know how long and wide to make it. Even when he was sure it was deep enough, he kept digging for a while anyway, because once he stopped, he had to do the next part. He wore himself out eventually, and let the shovel drop. Then he knelt beside Seth in the shade of the tree, gathered him into his arms again. It occurred to him that perhaps he should’ve asked for something to use as a shroud—or didn’t they do that out here? But he didn’t want to go back again, and it wasn’t as if the thing would actually protect Seth anyway.
He laid him down as gently as he could, then perched at the edge of the hole, wondering how he could bring himself to do the rest. How could you heap dirt on a friend’s face? How could you leave him on a nameless hill in a strange land, while you walked away?
How had he ever allowed things to get this far? What had he been thinking? That he’d bring a defenseless boy along with him to chase down someone who had the skills to kill him and the disregard to actually do it, and … what, it would turn out all right somehow? He’d find Almasy, she’d miraculously refrain from killing him on sight, and he’d suddenly know what he wanted from her? No. It had never really been about her at all, had it? He’d been as much a captive to the word adventure as Roger ever was—that and the idea of accomplishing something without Lucius’s help, of proving he didn’t need him or anyone else to come to his rescue. He’d mucked that up in particular, hadn’t he?
Gods, what would he say to Roger—how could he tell him about Seth? How could he tell Lucius, who had as good as ordered him not to go? How, above all, could he tell Morgan, who had given up her own freedom so Seth could escape?
What was he supposed to do now? What next step could there be after this?
He watched Seth’s face, still and expressionless, his golden hair matted against the dirt. You were supposed to say something at times like this, he knew that. But how could he sum up Seth’s life for him? Wouldn’t that be as good as admitting it was over?
“Seth, I’m sorry.” They were the same words Almasy had used. They still didn’t seem to mean anything.
He stood up, finally, and picked up the shovel. He didn’t set it down again until the hole was entirely filled in, the last handful of dirt packed into place. And then he sat under the tree, drew his knees to his chest, and did nothing for a very long time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
When it was up to him, Dent always chose to take his patrol through the orchard. It suited everyone: Lady Margraine could trust him not to eat or steal the apples, and Dent could do whatever pondering he had to do in peace, with only the birds and the rustling of leaves to disturb him. Sometimes he stayed there even when he had no post to man, calling back to the birds in their own tongues. But he was not whistling when Gravis found him there, when he could put it off no longer—his face was stern, his brows drawn together. Gravis’s stomach churned at the sight of him—of all the men he ever wanted to fight with, Denton Halley was the last by far.
“Dent…” he started, and paused until he thought of the rest. “I hear you’re in the grip of some displeasure.”
Dent laughed, but Gravis had heard him laugh enough times to know this one was a pale imitation. “Did your little rat tell you that?”
Gravis blinked at the epithet—if Dent was talking about Kern, he didn’t understand where it had come from. Kern was a handsome young man, with nothing of the rat in his face at all, and Gravis had only ever found him to be honest and direct. But whom else could Dent have meant, if not Kern?
“We’ve been friends for a long time,” he said at last, deciding to ignore it. “If I’ve done something to make you angry with me—”
“Aye, Gravis, you have, all right?” Dent half turned away, wrinkling his nose as if the words were distasteful to him. “I’m sorry, but you have, and I can’t help it.”
“Then tell me how, so that I may amend it,” Gravis said. “I am not so haughty yet that I will not stand to be corrected by my friends.”
Dent grimaced. “You won’t like it.”
“No doubt. But tell me all the same.”
Dent let out his breath in one big huff, pacing a circle beneath the trees. “The little rat is only part of it, but he’s the best example. Why do you think he acts the way he does?”
“What way do you mean?”
“He’s proud,” Dent said, “and he’s insolent. He’s disrespectful.”
Was he serious? “Are—are we talking about Kern?”
“Aye, who else?”
“But Kern is—he’s always been the most polite and earnest—”
“Aye, to you, Gravis. But you are not his master, whatever he may think. You are a servant in these halls, just as he is, and nothing more.”
“I have never claimed nor wished to be anything else,” Gravis protested. He could not have said, before, how he had expected Dent to rebuke him, but he’d never have guessed it would be for a lack of forbearance.
“Then why do you not act like it? The things you say to her ladyship—”
“Dent, I don’t always agree with her,” Gravis said, holding out his hands. “If she’d wanted someone who never had an opinion of his own, she was free to have me replaced.”
“It goes beyond that.” He kept pacing his slow circles, his footsteps nearly noiseless in the grass. “No one ever said you had to love her, but when you treat her with contempt in front of your subordinates, you invite them to do the same, and it is not their place. It does not speak well of them, Gravis, or of you. She laughs at your censure because she does not care what you think of her, but I do. Ever since she was a child, you’ve had this … this antipathy toward her. It isn’t natural.�
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“And has she been natural?” Gravis asked. “What about her was ever as a child should be? If she had shown her father but the love most men bear their dogs—”
“What, he wouldn’t have opened up her back that day?” Gravis could not answer that. He remembered too well the scene that had awaited him when he’d returned to Stonespire, the sight of Lord Caius with that bloody whip tangled around his fingers. He had sat with it for hours, the servants said, until the dried blood had plastered it to his skin. “I buried my grudge against Lord Caius long ago,” Dent continued. “You should do the same with her.”
Have you buried it? Gravis wondered. Have you really? “Is that all?”
“No. Just the tip of it, I’m afraid.” Dent sighed, scratching the back of his neck. “I looked over the recruitment lists.”
That was yet another surprise. “The recruitment lists? What’s wrong with them? I’ve met her ladyship’s demands—I’ve exceeded her demands.”
“Aye, that’s just it.” Dent’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “I always knew you as a cautious fellow, Gravis—zealous, certainly, in your way, but cautious. But these new additions—nearly eighty on the city guard in the past month alone—”
The alarm that had been smoldering in Gravis all day suddenly sparked full into being, and it was all he could do not to yell what? at Dent like a slack-jawed imbecile. “Eighty … eighty city guardsmen would be—”
“Sorely helpful, I’m sure, but that’s only if they can be trusted. I’ve looked over your records, Gravis, and I don’t know these men. Maybe you do, and I trust you, I do, but these boys come to Stonespire from some two-cart village up north—some of them have never even seen a city. If you mean to bring eighty new faces here all at once, and even a third of them are like the rat—”
It was so strange. Panic was clamoring inside him fit to split his skull, yet his jaw stayed relaxed, his fingers loose at his sides. “I see,” he heard himself say. “Well, I take your point. I’ll review the Stonespire list—can’t hurt to give it an additional looking-over. Perhaps I was a bit hasty with some of the appointments.”
Dent smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes—had Gravis given something away after all? “A bit late for that, isn’t it? Aren’t they coming soon? You didn’t mark it on the lists, but I’ve been hearing tomorrow or the day after.”
Great gods. Gravis willed his face not to move. “Can it really be so soon? Time’s quite gotten away from me, it seems. Now that I hear you say it, I—I wish I’d done it differently.…” He shook his head. “I can always send some of them back out to the nearby towns if I find they’re not fit for the city. Either way, I will review them, with all thoroughness.”
Dent finally gave a true smile. “I’d appreciate it if you would. I’d certainly be able to rest easier.”
“Good.” It was not good at all. “Now I must leave you, I’m afraid.”
Dent was looking at him strangely, but he could hardly be blamed for that. “Gravis, is something amiss?”
“I don’t believe so.” Another lie. “I merely need to ask her ladyship something. Will you excuse me?”
Gods knew how he was able to extricate himself from the conversation without sprinting from the orchard, yet somehow he managed it. As soon as he was out of Dent’s sight, he made immediately for the barracks. The grandiosely titled records room was little more than a large closet filled with bound sheaves of paper, but at least he had insisted it stay organized, and he had no trouble finding the record book that held the Stonespire lists.
Because Esthrades had no standing army, in times of peace it relied upon volunteers to the militia, and established guardsmen were sent all over the country to select and train would-be recruits. Their judgment was deemed sufficient where the defense of smaller villages was concerned, but city guardsmen had to be chosen by Gravis himself before they could be assigned to positions within Stonespire’s walls. The result was an admittedly smaller group than they might otherwise have had, but smaller numbers were infinitely preferable to allowing anyone who wished it to call himself the purveyor of her ladyship’s justice.
He turned to the most recent page, and saw immediately what had so concerned Dent. He had not exaggerated—Gravis counted seventy-eight names in the past four weeks alone. He was used to giving his consent to half that number—and he was not aware that he had done any differently in the recent past. In point of fact, what with the parley at Mist’s Edge, he had been unable to evaluate new recruits, or to review the lists at all, and he had been worried he might end up short of his usual numbers. It seemed the opposite was true, but how?
It wasn’t right, and no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to make it right. When could these names have been added, and who had added them? True, he did not always literally write the names in himself—after his evaluations were done, he was accustomed to hand off the names to some other guardsman or scribe to ink into the book. But no one would have simply signed on new men without consulting him. They might have asked Lady Margraine, he supposed, but why? Recruiting was the one task she had left entirely to his judgment, and there wasn’t a soldier in Stonespire who wouldn’t know that. No. Either he had found those men himself, which he hadn’t, or else someone else had added them with his permission, which no one had asked for. Yet here were the names, standing starkly out against the parchment as if they were accusing him.
He ran through the list again and again, as if repeated checks might make the discrepancy that gnawed at him suddenly disappear. He stared at every name, trying fruitlessly to assign a face to each, to determine which he had approved and which he had no memory of. Finally he slammed the book shut almost in a fury and turned away from it. He knew what had happened. He knew. There was only one possibility, and one sure way to convince himself of it. He left the book alone and headed for the stairs. He had not lied to Dent about one thing: he did have a question for her ladyship.
He found Lady Margraine bent over her desk as usual, paging through whatever new tome had caught her fancy. Or maybe it was an old one; Gravis had no idea. He cleared his throat, not truly expecting it would actually get him sufficient attention; when Lady Margraine had her eye on a book, even the fury of the gods could not turn it aside.
Sure enough, she did not look at him. “Gravis, I am occupied at the moment. What?”
Gravis curled and uncurled his fingers, pondering the phrasing of his answer before he gave it. “I merely wanted to know if you expected Almasy to return shortly or not.”
She drew her finger idly down the margin of the page. “Return from where?”
“From wherever it is you sent her.”
“I didn’t send Seren anywhere.” She did look up, then, slightly. “Why, is she gone?”
Gravis hesitated; a clammy feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. “Well … perhaps not. I may have … misunderstood.”
She waved him off. “You must have; it’s not like her to go traveling for her own amusement. Seek her out if you like; someone must have seen her.”
Gravis bowed, but it was not Almasy he left to seek.
He found Kern making his way down the western corridor, and hurried to catch up with him. “I need to speak to you,” he said as they drew shoulder to shoulder. “At once.”
Kern nodded, as amiable as ever, but then he bit his lip. “I do need to report to the wall, sir—it’s my turn up there with Gregg until nightfall.”
“That will be fine,” Gravis said. “We can talk as well there.”
When the very first Daven Margraine had laid claim to the land on which they now stood, there had been nothing on the hill but the blood apple orchard and the ancient tower that had given Stonespire Hall its name, and nothing in its shadow but the tiniest of villages. The new Lord Margraine had built his seat around the tower, using it as a backbone, but the hill was too small and too steep to accommodate the construction of any great castle. No doubt this had not seemed a problem at the time—Daven Margraine ha
d only ever been intended to be a minor lord, Stonespire Hall a minor lord’s seat. But though the city of Stonespire was free to grow as its successive line of rulers had expanded their influence further and further, the hall had remained largely the same—beautiful, in its way, but a castle of sand when compared with the fortresses at Mist’s Edge and Eldren Cael, or Valyanrend’s majestic Citadel.
There was one benefit to Stonespire’s location, however—the hill was sheer on three sides, and you could only make your way to the gates up a wide but steep path cut into the fourth side. It was at the top of that path that the rampart they called “the wall” was built. Strictly speaking, it was three walls: one that slanted out from Stonespire’s left side, one mirroring it on the opposite side, and one wall that connected them, running across the path to the hall. There was a portcullis in the middle, and a guard tower atop the ramparts at both points where the three walls converged, but the hall could boast no defenses more elaborate than that.
It was to one of the guard towers that Gravis led Kern, only to find Gregg already there. “You may retire,” Gravis told him. “I have something to discuss with Kern, so I’ll take your watch with him today. You may wait in the great hall until I send for you.”
Dent would have questioned him, as would Kern. Gravis himself would have questioned it, if his superior had ordered such a thing. But Gravis had never known Gregg to question an order in all their years together, not unless he wanted to make sure he’d heard it right. He had, apparently, because he nodded, and marched back down off the wall.
Gravis watched him from the arrow slit, making sure he returned inside the hall instead of loitering about. Then, when he had decided they were about as alone as they could expect to be, he looked to Kern.
He looked to him, but he could not speak, and finally Kern himself spoke up. “Yes, what is it, Captain?” He gazed so guilelessly back at Gravis, eyes wide and quizzical, his eyebrows lifting gently.
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