by Carol Berg
“Let me go!” cried the child in Vallorean. She looked to be eight or nine years old, with stringy hair that might have been straw-colored had it been it clean. “We’ve leave to take bits from the garden. Master said. I’m not stealing.” Tears rolled out of the child’s long-lashed eyes, streaking her grimy cheeks.
“You can keep the vegetables.” The child clutched an onion and a tiny cucumber tightly in her stained apron. “Just tell me who you are. Come on, what’s your name?”
“Kat.”
“Do you live nearby? On the grounds here perhaps?”
The child clamped her mouth shut.
“I promise—I wish you no harm. Was it Professor Ferrante who gave you permission to take things from the garden?”
Kat nodded, her lips quivering. “But he’s dead now.”
“Yes… I know.” My surprise had me stumbling. “Please, Kat, can you tell me what happened here? Where are your mama and papa?”
“Mum’s dead, just like Master.” Kat nodded with a weary acceptance that had no place on the shoulders of a child. “Same ones as killed Master did it.”
“Gracious gods… did… did they kill everyone?”
“Some ran off to the woods. But Mum fell and got tramped on by the horses. She didn’t remember me before she died, nor even her name. I don’t want those men to come back.” Kat gave a big sniff and wiped her face on her sleeve, leaving the sleeve and the face equally smeared. “You’re hurting my arm.”
I loosened my grip, but did not release her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Kat. It’s just that I’m frightened of the wicked men, too. Are you hiding with your papa, then?”
She shook her head. “With Aunt Teriza. She was Chloe’s helper in the kitchen.”
“And the bad men didn’t hurt her?”
“We was gone to market that day. As we come back through the fields, we saw everybody running and screaming. We’ve been hiding in the root cellar all these days for not knowing what else to do. Aunt Teriza’s terrible afraid.”
“Can you take me to your aunt? Or perhaps you could bring her here? You could get more vegetables, and I could talk to her.” I laid my beans and carrots in the child’s apron. “Tell her that my name is Seri and that I’m here with Master Tennice, the professor’s friend.”
“She’s out by the gate.”
“Could you bring her? Will you trust me?”
Kat nodded, and when I let her loose, she sped down the path. In only a few moments, a rumpled, grimy young woman approached timidly, holding the little girl’s shoulders protectively.
“Please, don’t be afraid—Teriza, is it? My name is Seri. I’m a friend of Master Tennice.”
The young woman curtsied abruptly, cast her eyes down, and sat obediently on the bench I indicated, her hand gripping Kat’s.
“Kat, there’s a pot of soup on the stove. Go on and help yourself to all you want.” Brightening considerably, the child ran off, leaving Teriza looking even more uncomfortable. “Kat tells me you were cook’s helper here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And Kat’s mother worked here, too?”
“Yes, ma’am. Nan was chambermaid for ten years, since she was fifteen. She got me the place when it come up.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears.
“I’m so sorry about your sister, Teriza. Kat is lucky to have you to care for her.”
“Kat’s a good child. Nan and I thought she might get on as scullery in a year or so.”
“Teriza, could you tell me of the ones who did these horrible things? Did you see them?”
I needn’t have worried about prying the story out of her. She poured out the tale as if it were burning a hole in her stomach. “It was the awfullest sight, miss. We come through the fields, tripping along smartly, for the day had made out rainy, and Chloe was anxious for the goods for the master’s birthday feast. When we come round the north paddock, we heard screaming so terrible it chilled my blood. I told Kat to get in the root cellar, for the commotion sounded like the war back when I was a girl. I thought maybe the Leiran soldiers had come back again.” She glanced up at me, flushing a deep scarlet.
“I crept up behind the stable, and peeked around, and saw what I hope never to see again in my years on this earth. Chloe and Jasper were running through the stableyard wailing, their eyes orange and bright like you hear about demons’ eyes. Chloe was tearing at her hair like it was burning her head, and it was all down flying wild, and her head was bloody from pulling at it. The two of them ran off into the woods. Then Loris come from the house, crying to Damien, the stable lad, ”Master’s been murdered!“ Damien stopped her and says, ”What do you mean?“ And Loris was crying and said, ”The demons. The demons slit poor Master’s throat“ And right then, two men—horrible men that I couldn’t bear to look on—come out of the house and pointed their fingers at Loris and Damien, and the two of ”em screamed so’s you thought their arms and legs was being pulled off. Then they ran into the woods too, and Damien pulled out his knife and started cutting his flesh to bits as he ran.“
Silent, dignified tears dribbled down Teriza’s smudged cheeks. “All I could think of was to find Nan. Sure enough, she runs out of the house into the yard, wailing like a cat what’s prowling. I was going to run grab her, but I feels Kat up close behind me. I lay on top of the child and shushed up her questions, and in no more time than a fingersnap, four riders come barreling from the front of the house, and they see Nan… and, oh, miss, they just trampled her down. When the riders was gone, we run to Nan, but she looked wild, and said, ”Who are you?“ She didn’t even know her own child or her own sister.” A single sob escaped the young woman’s control.
“Poor Nan.” I put my arm around the girl’s shoulders and released the flood.
“She died right there,” the young woman snuffled into my shoulder. “Kat and I took her to a hole down by the stream where they dig out ice in the winter. We put her in, and closed up the hole, and tried to say a prayer for her, though I don’t know my prayers as I should. But then I didn’t know what to do, for I thought of Master murdered, and I’m the only one left to tell. No one’d believe me, and they might think I done it. But Master was fair and honest and I’d never…”
The stretching shadows took on a more ominous cast. I squeezed Teriza’s shoulders as I gazed around the garden uneasily. “Of course you didn’t do it. Master Tennice is ill just now, but we’ll get him well, and he’ll advise you. Until then, you and Kat must stay with us in the house. My friends and I are at least a little protection.”
Teriza straightened her back and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’d be most grateful, ma’am. And most willing to do my duties or whatever might be needful. It’s a blessing to be sure to hear Master Tennice is alive. We didn’t know but what the wicked men got him as well.”
“Good. It’s settled then. All I ask is that you keep private any of our conversation that might seem… strange. If Professor Ferrante trusted you to be discreet, I’m sure we can also.”
“You can trust me, ma’am. I promise.”
None of this made sense. Why were we still unchallenged? If the Zhid had killed Ferrante and the servants so easily… Perhaps D’Natheil’s efforts were indeed shielding us. I considered Maceron and Rowan and the Zhid again, but I still could not get all the puzzle pieces to fit together.
Later, as a more cheerful Teriza washed up the dishes and wiped the table, I asked her again about a part of her tale. Tennice had said something similar and I hadn’t thought to question it. “You said there were four men riding out.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
“Tell me about them. Three of them were priests, is that right?”
“Aye. Three of them wore robes such as priests do. And the Leiran wore a coat.”
“A Leiran?”
“I believed him so, as he spoke only Leiran. Nan was teaching me, for Master had guests as was Leiran, and Nan said everyone in service should speak enough of it to do her duty. H
e wore a dark coat with shiny buttons.”
“Shiny buttons…” I reached into my pocket for the brass button I’d found in Ferrante’s library. Closer examination revealed what I hadn’t noticed before. The design engraved upon the button’s slightly tarnished surface was a dragon—the dragon of Leire.
“What was the Leiran like, Teriza? Did you get a look at him?”
“No, ma’am. They went by so fast. He wasn’t so tall as the priests. Light hair. Looked strong. But I didn’t see his face, as it was raining, and I was so scared.”
Of course, I knew a light-haired Leiran who wore a dark jacket with Leiran dragons on it, someone who had done business with the Zhid once before—Graeme Rowan, the upright sheriff.
It was a great day when Tennice was able to sit up and eat a few shaking spoonfuls of soup for himself. We all made a fuss over him. Even D’Natheil smiled and said he was pleased our patient had improved so fairly.
“How long has it been?” Tennice asked.
“Nine days. We were thinking you were going to sleep until winter,” I said.
“Thank you all. What can I say?”
“Say you’re feeling better.”
He smiled weakly. “No question of that.” He fingered the thick bandage on his side. “I don’t understand how a stupid knife wound could have such effects. Such nightmares. Vile. Strange.”
“Baglos thinks it was Zhid poison. D’Natheil had a wound with similar effects.”
Tennice looked at the Prince strangely. “You helped me a great deal, sir. Took me through the worst of it. It’s difficult to remember exactly how”—his voice faded—“but I thank you.”
D’Natheil tipped his head without speaking.
Kat made Tennice her special charge. She brought him food and clean linen, chattered to him when he was awake, and sat quietly at his side while he slept, solemnly feeling his brow for fever. She scolded him when he was up too long, demanding that D’Natheil or Baglos help him back to his bed, and she held his hand while he went to sleep, “so the master won’t have wicked dreams.” Tennice, for his part, was endlessly charmed and mystified by Kat’s whimsical view of the world.
But with all his progress, I could not predict when Tennice would be well enough to travel. He must have felt my anxiety on the morning I told him of my belief that the path to the Exiles’ Gate was the very same map Karon and I had puzzled over for a year.
“You must be off to get it then.”
“As soon as—”
He laid a finger on my lips. “No. Much as I would like to have the resilience of a twenty-year-old, no amount of wishing will make it so. We had many a discussion of realism at Windham, and I remember a young woman declaring that she could never understand why people refused to see themselves as nature sees them. ”One should rejoice in the wisdom of years,“ she would say, ”for it’s of so much more value than youth’s brute strength.“ ”
“Not fair to bring up a girl’s silly prattle.”
“She was right. While you are off adventuring, I will stay here. Teriza and Kat will spoil me unmercifully. I’ve food, wine, an abundance of books and paper, and immense quantities of ink. How could I lack? When you settle on a destination, leave a message with my father. This latest brush with mortality has convinced me that I must visit him. Once done, I’ll find you again. No god or demon will prevent it.”
CHAPTER 24
“… dead these ten months. Our only boy. I’ve needs to tell my man. Please, Your Worship.”
“Your husband works in the armory, you say?” The guard eyed the black ribbon tied around my sleeve and nodded knowingly. From the number of sleeves with black mourning bands I had seen, everyone in Montevial had lost a son or brother or father in the war.
“Aye, sir. Journeyman, he is. Honored to serve the king. And our Tevano was a legionnaire—no conscript.” I moaned and pulled my apron up to cover my face, lest the young guardsman look too close and unmask my charade. One of his fellows, an older man with a thick red beard, had been staring at me from his post on the far side of the squat palace gate towers.
“All right. Go on then. But straight to the armory and straight out again.”
I dipped my knee and hurried through the dim passage under the gate defenses, taking care to avert my face from the red-bearded guard as I passed. Perhaps it had been foolish to enter the same gate Karon and I had used almost every day for two years.
Once across the outer ward, I angled away from the direction of the armory and headed for the workrooms Karon had taken over for the Antiquities Commission. For the first time in ten years, I approached the palace of the kings of Leire with anticipation rather than dread. Even the flying red banners that told me Evard was in residence could not slow my steps as I sped down the brick-paved roadway that separated the palace proper from the stone monoliths that were the royal storehouses.
The next task was to discover if anyone I knew was still employed at the Antiquities Commission. Everyone who had worked for Karon had respected and liked him, but they would have had to undergo the “purification” mandated at the trial, an expensive and humiliating ritual, so I couldn’t summon much confidence that I would find someone familiar, much less sympathetic and unafraid. Matters looked even worse when I crossed a graveled yard to the Commission workrooms and found them occupied by a noisy, sweating army of leatherworkers.
“What’s your business?” asked a bearded workman, dropping a daunting roll of hides about three paces from where I stood gawking in dismay. From this dark, stifling den of hammering, cutting, and stitching would come the mountains of saddlery, harness, and boots needed for the warriors who had carried Evard’s war into Iskeran.
“I was to bring a message to the secretary at the Antiquities Commission,” I said. “And I didn’t think to ask where it was. Last time I had to deliver something, this was the place.”
“It’s been a while since you’ve carried a message then, girl, or you’ve got fair lost along your way. I’ve worked here eight years.”
“Where is it moved then? My mistress will beat me sure if I don’t deliver my message.”
“Antiquities, you say?” The man scratched his greasy beard. “Don’t sound familiar.” His expression was vague. He had no idea what I was talking about.
“They work with old things dragged in from everywhere: statues, tablets, armor, tools, boxes, things used to decorate tombs, and such like.”
“Oh. Like loot from the war?”
“Yes. Yes, exactly that.”
“Maybe it’s those fellows down to the pit.”
“The pit?”
“Yeah. That’s what we call it. Buried like moles, they are. Round behind this building you’ll find a cellar stair. Go down, and in, and down some more, and give a shout. Those moles might be the ones you’re looking for”—he gave me a good-natured, gap-toothed leer—“unless you decide you like us fellows better, up here where you can see and get a breath of air at the same time.”
I smiled at the sweating man. “Not today. But if I find the man I’m looking for, you’ve saved my goose, and I’ll not forget it.”
“Good enough.” The man hoisted his smelly bundle onto his broad shoulders and staggered into the noisy workshop.
When I found the cellar stair in the weed-choked alleyway behind the leatherworks, the steps were littered with leaves and twigs and chunks of broken paving, and the door at the bottom of the stair looked as if its hinges had been rusted shut since the Rebellion. I made my way carefully down the crumbling stair, wrenched open the heavy door, and stepped inside.
I felt hollow and sick at the sight of the dark and deserted passage. No demons here, I thought, but wasn’t sure I believed it. The only sound besides the empty reflection of my steps was a quiet, regular tapping from the far end of the sloping way. I tiptoed past gaping blacknesses toward the source of the noise. A weak pool of lamplight spilled from a doorway on my left. The tapping stopped, and I peered cautiously through the opening.
&
nbsp; A dark-haired man was bent over a table littered with tools and dust and broken chips of stone. The rest of the small room was crowded with stacks of crates and old books, heaps of rolled manuscripts, and shelves crammed with bottles and jars and rags, paint pots and boxes of every size and shape. A mangled oil painting lay on the floor beside a carved wooden horse that must be at least eight hundred years old. From Iskeran, I knew. Horses were sacred to the Isker gods. The man raised a small hammer and began tapping at something on the work table.
“Excuse me,” I said.
The man jerked around, dropping his hammer with a clatter. He was small and dark-skinned with black, curly hair just beginning to show signs of gray. His nose, mouth, and chin came to a point in such a fashion as to be vaguely reminiscent of a rat.
“Racine!”
The man squinted at me, frowning. “Who’s there? Step into the light, if you please. I can’t see in the dark, though those who ration lamp oil must think it so.”
I stepped into the room and had the disconcerting experience of having someone collapse in a dead faint at the sight of me. Someday, I thought, as I sniffed Racine’s pots and jars to see if one contained water or wine, someone will greet me with an ordinary, “Hello, Seri, how are you today?” I satisfied myself that the contents of a fat green jug were not toxic and proceeded to dump them in Racine’s face. I sat down beside him on the floor while he sputtered and shook his head like a pup, propping himself against the foot of his table.
