She nodded vehemently. “He gives me the worst headaches sometimes, and once, in a tantrum, he hurt me so bad I fainted. I woke up to him sobbing his eyes out thinking he’d murdered me. He’s never done that since.”
“Painful for you but a good hard lesson to him not to hurt people just because he can. Well, rest assured he’ll learn to use his abilities properly here. But the coercers who will help you to remember are well trained. A couple of people from my own guild who already know a lot about Herders and the Council will question you. You probably won’t even notice the coercers in your mind.”
Zarak nodded over my shoulder, and I twisted in my seat to see Ceirwan entering the kitchen, holding Gavyn’s hand. Rasial was padding along close behind, and Kella’s owlet was firmly affixed to the lad’s shoulder. Rasial laid herself along a wall in the sunshine as Seely gawked and admired the owlet. The Farseeker guilden farsent privately to me that all Gavyn had needed to do was pet the bird.
“I suppose Kella was relieved?” I said aloud.
“Well, she was an’ she wasn’t. It was a nuisance, but I think she quite enjoyed th’ bird’s devotion to her. When it went so willin’ly to Gavyn, she felt a bit bereft.”
“It might fly off looking for her in a bit,” I said dubiously.
“Not if Gavyn wants it to stay,” Seely said with evident pride.
Just then, Maruman noticed the bird. Hissing, he dug his claws into my shoulder to stand and arch his back. The bird seemed completely oblivious to anything but Gavyn, and Maruman leapt to the ledge and yowled to be let out into the garden. At my request, Zarak manhandled the window open, and the old cat disappeared with an angry twitch of his tail.
“That was Maruman,” I said dryly.
Seely frowned. “He’s the first animal I’ve ever seen who didn’t go to Gavyn.”
“Well, he’s a moody thing at the best of times,” I said dismissively.
Gavyn turned to Ceirwan. “Can we go to the farms now?” he asked. “You said we might if I could get the owl to come with me.”
I laughed. “You should go at once. You might as well enjoy the sweet weather while it lasts.”
Zarak said he would walk down with them, since he had promised a few hours of planting to Alad, and Rasial joined them as well. Watching them all go, it came to me suddenly that we might not see another wintertime safe in the mountains. I was glad when Javo distracted me by bringing a morsel of something to taste. The square cake was dry and not very appealing, and I said so as politely as I could.
Javo laughed, the rolls of fat around his neck wobbling. “You won’t offend me by saying it tastes foul,” he boomed. “This is a meal cake for traveling. We’re trying to come up with a biscuit full of nourishment that is dry enough neither to rot nor get stale on a long journey, and compact enough to take up very little space. This is our first attempt.”
I grimaced. “Well, I’d say you wouldn’t die from living on this, but living won’t be much fun either.”
His laughter was infectious, despite all the things looming over our heads, and I grinned back at him.
As Javo returned to his work, a mental probe blundered against my mindshield without warning, rocking me back on my heels. I sat heavily, my head throbbing. “Calm down and identify yourself,” I sent sharply.
Another clumsy prod followed, but this time I recognized one of the younger Beastspeaking guilders, a girl with coercive Talent named Rori. I sent a probe, which located her in a far field where she had been planting.
“What is it?” I demanded, irritated that courtesy required that I did not simply enter her mind to learn what I wanted.
“I … we’ve found a dead bird, and it’s got a message in the tube on its leg. The others are looking for Alad, but I … we think the bird is one of those the Master of Obernewtyn took with him to the lowlands.”
I swallowed a lump of fear. “What does he say?”
“The note is not from Rushton, Guildmistress. It is about him.” Rori’s mind quivered, and my own control faltered. “It says he’ll die if …” Her mind slipped out of my grasp.
I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached and found her again. “Rori, I want you to bring the bird up to the maze gate. I’ll meet you at the farm end.”
My legs trembled as I hurried to the maze. I felt sick with apprehension. What had happened to Rushton? And who had sent the note? Was it a warning or a threat? How long had the bird been dead, its message undelivered?
What if it was already too late?
17
CEIRWAN AND THE others were walking through the maze when I overtook them.
I farsent a brief explanation to the guilden. For the benefit of Seely, I said aloud that I was on my way to retrieve an important message, and hurried on.
By the time I reached the farm gate, young Rori was there, looking apprehensive. The Beastspeaking guildmaster stood beside her, so grim-faced that dread rose up in my throat.
“I’d say it’s two days dead,” he said, holding out the mangled bird. “It looks as if it was hit by an arrow and managed to fly back here, but the poor thing didn’t make it to the coop.”
He sent Rori off to fetch his ward. When we were standing there alone, I asked him bluntly what the message said.
“You’d best read it yourself.” He handed me a tiny roll of parchment that had been dipped in wax to stop the ink on the scribing from being washed off if it rained. I spread it out with shaking fingers and read the tiny crabbed script.
To who may care.
I have your precious Master. If Misfits do not aid the rebels in their fight against the Council, he dies.
The world spun dizzily about me. “Elspeth,” Alad cried, catching me by the arm.
“It could be some sort of h-hoax …,” I stammered.
Alad held out a black twist of hair I could not fail to recognize. “It came with the note, and the bird was Rushton’s. It might be fake, but they wouldn’t dare send it and make demands if Rushton was around to deny it. Unless …”
I shuddered at what he did not say: unless Rushton was dead.
Dead!
“Elspeth …,” Alad murmured worriedly.
I waved him back and waged a short, savage battle with my emotions for control. I won because of the knowledge that if Rushton lived, and I could not bear to think of anything else, then his life might well depend upon my being able to think clearly.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I muttered. “No one but the rebels could want us to join them, but they refused us when we offered ourselves.”
“From Rushton’s earlier note, they had changed their minds,” Alad said. He took my arm and led me firmly toward the main house. “The note says that he will be killed if we don’t help the rebels, but there is no sense of violence or anger in the words so far as I can see. It’s rather an emotionless statement, and for all we know, it’s no more than an empty threat. Maybe they are trying to bluff us to force our hand.”
I lifted the note but could sense no thoughts adhering to it nor any trace of its writer’s personality. That was unusual in itself.
A bluff, Alad had said.
An ugly suspicion reared its head.
Brydda and his closest confidants within the rebel movement knew that Rushton was the Master of Obernewtyn. Brydda and his allies wanted us to join them in their fight against the Council. Brydda had summoned Rushton to ask for our help and had been refused.
Common sense told me that if Rushton had been kidnapped by rebels, Brydda might very well have heard about it, even if he was not the instigator.
I felt sickened by my thoughts, for even entertaining them seemed a kind of ultimate mistrust. Yet nothing else made any sense of the few facts we had.
And if it was true?
No harm might be meant to Rushton, but it would still be a betrayal. Just as Maryon had foreseen.
It was late afternoon before the guildmerge was assembled to discuss the kidnap message. I needed to decide what to do, and I cou
ld not decide alone.
Yet, in the end, all we could agree upon was that we knew too little. “We don’t have information enough to reach any final conclusions,” I said after a long and fruitless debate. “We need to know what happened in Rushton’s meeting with the rebels, and we need to know exactly when he left the coast. Someone will have to travel to Sutrium.”
“I’ll go,” Linnet offered promptly. “I can take one of the other knights with me as backup. We can search for Rushton. He’s bound to be somewhere in the city if the rebels have him. We can also question the rebels about his meeting with them.”
I stifled a mad urge to say I would go myself. “It’s one thing to probe for information, but I don’t want you to make direct contact with the rebels just in case there is some sort of treachery afoot.”
“I don’t like the way you keeping hinting Brydda is a traitor,” Gevan said sternly.
“The message makes it very clear that whoever has Rushton knows where we are. And no one knows that but Brydda,” I said.
“And Reuvan. And the Sadorians. And maybe a couple dozen others, for all we know,” Gevan added.
Aras sat forward. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but does whoever wrote that note really know where we are? After all, a homing bird flies to its roost, so whoever released it knew the message would find us, whether or not they knew our whereabouts. And any rebel would have known the bird was a homer by its leg capsule.”
“The note called Rushton the Master of Obernewtyn,” Alad said.
“It didn’t,” Aras said shyly. “It only said ‘your Master.’ And since the rebels knew Rushton as the leader of the Misfits, the note might simply mean that.”
“Truespoken.” Gevan gave the young ward a look of approval that made her blush with pleasure.
Jak nodded. “In any case, it doesn’t change the fact that whoever wrote the note wants us to work with the rebels. And that puts us right back to wondering who it is and whether the threats against Rushton are real.”
The others exchanged dismayed glances, and I sensed our thoughts roiling around in the air about us like an invisible thunderstorm.
“I think we must act as if they are real,” Angina said. “Rushton’s captors must believe that we take them seriously.”
“We should organize a meeting with the rebels,” Gevan said. “That’s what we’d do if we meant to obey, and indeed, it’s the only way we can show that we accept the terms of the note.”
“We ought to send a note requesting a meeting,” Garth suggested. “One without any specific information or mention of the kidnapping. If Linnet leaves it at a drop in Sutrium, it will take time for Brydda to get the note and respond to it. In the meantime, she will have had the chance to nose around.”
Merret spoke up next. “What if the meeting took place in Sawlney during the bonding celebrations?”
“I don’t think it is a good idea to draw rebel attention to your magi,” I said.
“The magi need not be involved in the meeting,” Gevan offered. “But it might be the perfect location, given the influx of moon-fair visitors. Sutrium is so much of a rat trap these days, I’m sure the rebels won’t object. You’d have to come in Rushton’s stead of course, Elspeth. You can ride to meet me there, and the two of us can represent Obernewtyn. If there is treachery afoot, we should be able to sniff it out between us.”
Gevan gave me a hard look, and I pulled myself together. “Very well. I will compose a note to Brydda immediately. Linnet, choose a companion from your knights and prepare to leave for Sutrium before the sun sets.”
Later that evening, I went to the dining hall, deciding I had best let everyone see I was not falling to pieces.
I made a point of talking and looking purposeful and determined, though in truth my will felt as insubstantial as smoke in the wind. Unexpectedly, I found myself comforted by the bustle. It reminded me of all that Obernewtyn meant to Rushton. No matter what happened to him, I knew he would want me to put Obernewtyn’s welfare first. In a funny way, by trying to reassure the others, I ended up feeling stronger.
Javo, Alad, and their people were discussing provisions, and I eavesdropped shamelessly, glad of the distraction. They already knew from usual winter planning how much food would be needed to take us through thaw to first harvest if we were to withdraw to the caves higher in the mountains. They seemed to feel that, with strict rationing, we would manage well enough. But they foresaw trouble if the siege continued beyond thaw, because there would be no way to restock.
The meeting moved on to the more vexing problem of provisioning an exodus to Sador.
“I wish I’d thought to ask Jakoby a bit more about the route,” Alad grumbled.
Lina tapped his arm and said thoughtfully, “You know, Guildmaster, I’ve been thinking. If people only thought we’d left the mountains, there would be no one searching for us. There’d be no siege.”
“No, but someone would take over Obernewtyn, and that would be the same as being sieged, since we couldn’t return,” Javo said.
Lina looked crestfallen, and Alad said gruffly that they ought to stick to the matter at hand. Talk veered back to bags of dry grain versus prepared ration cakes, but I was struck by what Lina had said. I realized with some excitement that she might have hit upon the perfect compromise between two difficult solutions. To remain, yet make it seem we had gone. The only trouble was that Javo was right; Obernewtyn was too grand a prize not to be claimed by someone.
The best answer was to turn it into a tainted ruin again. That, after all, would tally with the last official report. Of course, we no longer had Dragon’s ability to create massive illusions, but all the coercers working together could make sections of Obernewtyn appear ruinous, while strategic parts could be damaged to prevent access to intact sections.
If we could manage that, and convince anyone searching for us that we had left the mountains, we could avoid any sort of confrontation and return to Obernewtyn when wintertime cut off the pass. I was sure Jakoby would help us by spreading the rumor that we had come to the desert lands.
A hand descended onto my shoulder, and I started violently.
“I’m sorry, Guildmistress,” Tomash said. “Ceirwan said you might like to know what came out of my talk with Seely. But I can just give you my notes later, if you’d prefer.”
“No, sit,” I said, waving him to the seat opposite.
“I’m sorry about Rushton,” he said with such graceful simplicity that my eyes blurred.
“I’m sorry, too, but I don’t want to speak of it now. Tell me what you learned from Seely.”
“The main thing is that the Council seem to know the Land is on the verge of an uprising, because there is at least one traitor among the rebels.”
I felt a thrill of dismay. “The Council must know about us, if they know what the rebels know.”
“It’s hard to be sure. Most of Seely’s memories revolve around the west coast, so I’d say the traitors are there. In which case they’re less likely to know in detail what Brydda and his people know of us. But I think we can assume that the Council is aware that Talented Misfits, disguised as halfbreed gypsies, offered their help to the rebels and were refused, since all the rebels know that much. And they probably know better than we do what took place at that meeting Brydda had with Rushton in Sutrium.”
“How much of this did you get out of Seely’s mind?”
“She had a lot of overheard scraps of information that were meaningless to her and meaningless in themselves, but they fitted with other scraps we already knew. I’m just giving you the bones of it, of course. Another interesting tidbit is that Cassell and Serba are bonding out of genuine love. It seems the two of them are working brilliantly together, much to the Council’s chagrin.”
“The Council know even that, yet they wait like spiders for a fly to shiver their web,” I murmured.
“One other thing: there have been unofficial meetings between soldierguards and Herders on the west coast … the so
rt that happen at odd hours in peculiar places.”
Immediately, I thought of my nightmares. “Did you find anything in her mind about Ariel?”
“I didn’t, and you can be sure I looked as soon as the Faction came up.”
Relieved, I said, “We know a lot of soldierguards are in the pay of the Faction. I wonder, if it came to it, which side would they choose?”
“Whichever they judged to be the winning side, I expect,” Tomash said.
“These meetings occur only on the west coast?”
“They’re the only ones Seely knows about, and Wila has no knowledge of similar meetings this side of the Suggredoon. She’s going to talk to Seely tomorrow, so she might learn something further. I’ll write up my notes and let you have them tomorrow.”
“It would be interesting to know if the rebels are aware that they have traitors in their midst,” I murmured to myself as he got to his feet.
“I was thinking that’s probably why they changed their mind about wanting us with them,” Tomash said mildly as he departed.
I stared after him, certain that he was right. If the rebels knew they were being betrayed, who better than us to scry out their traitors?
Deciding that I had made enough of a display of confidence to withdraw, I got to my feet. Ceirwan caught up with me as I reached the door of my turret chamber.
“Freya wants to go wi’ th’ magi to th’ lowlands,” he puffed, having sprinted up the stairs after me.
“Gevan will decide who is to accompany him,” I said.
“I ken that, but if ye tell him, he’ll take Freya. An’ I think ye should. She wants to help find Rushton, an’ though she’s no coercer, she kens his mind. I was thinkin’ that she an’ I could go with Kella to Sutrium,” he said, flushing. “Freya an’ I can look for Rushton while Kella tries to get through to Domick.”
I frowned. I didn’t like the idea of anyone going to Sutrium with things in such an ambiguous state, but on the other hand, a young man escorting his betrothed and her cousin to the city would be a far less provocative cover than a young woman traveling alone. And maybe it would be just as well, given that we had no idea how Kella would react upon reuniting with her bondmate.
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