The Complete Chalion

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  “A door in a wall is at once both inside and outside,” said Ingrey slowly. “Half and half, as you are in your very blood, by your father’s grace. And you were wanted, too, though not, I think, by Wencel. Did your ghosts not choose you? Of all who slept and dreamed in the Woods that night?”

  She hesitated, straightened a little. “Yes.”

  “So, then.” Then what? Ingrey’s exhausted brain did not supply an answer. “More matters arose, after the visions. Wencel wants very much to keep me closer, I think. He coaxed me with an offer of a post in his household. More than coaxed. Coerced.”

  She frowned in new worry.

  “Hetwar,” Ingrey continued, “instead of protecting me, wants me to take up the station so as to spy for him. Cumril raised the suspicion that Wencel bears a spirit animal, though the Temple and Hetwar do not yet know how much else he claims to be. I did not tell them. I’m not sure what consequences will spin from that, nor how quickly Wencel’s darker secrets will unravel. Nor how I will be caught up in the tangle. Worse, Biast has taken a fear of his brother-in-law and wants to set me to guard Fara.” Ingrey grimaced.

  “Biast may not be not so far abroad as all that,” said Ijada slowly. “I surely do not want my disasters to be the death of any more Stagthornes.”

  “You don’t see. If I am drawn off to Horseriver, they will take you from my charge, give you over to some other jailer. Maybe shut you up in some other prison, less easy of access. Or of escape.”

  Tension tightened her face. “I must not be…must not be constrained, when it is finished. When it is time to go.”

  “When what is finished?”

  Her hand grasped air in a gesture of frustration. “This. Whatever this is. When the god’s hunt closes in upon what He seeks. Do you not feel it, Ingrey?”

  “Feel, yes, I am feverish with the strain, but I do not see it. Not clear.”

  “What is Wencel about?”

  Ingrey shook his head. “I am less certain all the time that he is about anything, besides defending his old secrets. His mind is so full, he actually seems to have trouble paying attention at moments. Not that this makes him less dangerous. What does he really fear? He cannot, after all, be slain, it would seem.” Execution would not stop the earl. Imprisonment, were Wencel desperate enough, he might escape the same hard way, no matter how deep the dungeon or heavy the guard. It came to Ingrey that he really didn’t want to risk Wencel being imprisoned.

  Ijada’s lips twisted in new puzzlement. “And how has the earl been getting through his funerals, all these centuries, if his soul never goes to the gods?”

  Ingrey paused, considering the lack of rumor, then made a little gesture of negation. “Occupying the body of his own heir, he would usually be in close charge of his own rites. I’m sure he became expert in arranging them to display what he willed. And if he missed a few, well, some men are sundered.”

  The strangeness of it disturbed Ingrey’s imagination anew. What must it have been like for Horseriver to watch his own body being buried, over and over? In a bereavement twisted back on itself, knowing that it was not the father but the son being lost in that hour?

  Ijada nodded, some similar reflection sobering her face. She tapped the tabletop. “If the Temple were brought to attend upon his spell, what might they do?”

  “I’m not sure. Nothing, I think, except by sorcery or miracle.”

  “The gods are already hip deep in this. With very little reference to the Temple.”

  “So it would seem.” Ingrey sighed.

  “So what are we to do?’

  Ingrey rubbed the back of his neck, which ached. “Wait, I think. Still. I will go to Horseriver’s household. And spy, but not only for Hetwar. Maybe I will find something there to make sense of this, some piece yet lacking.”

  “At what danger to yourself?” she fretted.

  Ingrey shrugged.

  She looked dissatisfied. “Something feels horribly unbalanced in this pause.”

  “What pause?” Ingrey snorted. “This unmerciful day has battered me half to bits.”

  Her hands waved in renewed exasperation. “While I have been mewed up in this house!”

  He leaned forward, hesitated for a fraction of fear, and kissed her. She did not retreat. There was no sudden shock this time, no change in his sense of her, but that was only because her steady presence had never faded from their first kiss. He could feel it, a current like a millrace flowing between them. The arousal of his body was muted now in exhaustion, the pleasure of her lips drowned in a desperate uneasiness. She clutched him back not in lust or love, it seemed, but starveling trust: not in his dubious abilities, but in him whole. Wolf and all. His heart heated in wonder. He trembled.

  She drew back and smoothed his hair from his brow, half-smiling, half-worried. “Have you eaten?” she asked practically.

  “Not lately.”

  “You look so tired. Perhaps you should.”

  “Hetwar said the same.”

  “Then it is so.” She rose. “I will order the kitchen to bestir itself for you.”

  He pressed the back of her hand to his throbbing forehead, before reluctantly releasing her.

  Halfway to the door, she looked over her shoulder, and said, “Ingrey…”

  “Hm?” He lifted his head from where it had sunk down upon his arms crossed on the table.

  “If Wencel is truly some mystical hallow king, and you are truly his heir…what does that make you?”

  Terrified, mostly. “Nothing good.”

  “Huh.” She shook her head and went out.

  INGREY SLEPT LATER THAN HE’D INTENDED THE NEXT MORNING, and his new orders arrived earlier than he’d expected, by the hand of Gesca.

  Still adjusting the jerkin and knife belt he’d just donned, Ingrey descended the staircase to meet his erstwhile lieutenant in the entry hall. Gesca lowered his voice to Ingrey’s ear as the porter shuffled out the door to the kitchen, calling for his boy.

  “You are to report to Earl Horseriver.”

  “Already? That was fast. What of my prisoner?”

  “I am to take your place as house warden.”

  Ingrey stiffened. “In whose name? Hetwar’s or Horseriver’s?”

  “Hetwar’s, and the archdivine’s.”

  “Do they plan to move her elsewhere?”

  “No one has told me yet.”

  Ingrey’s eyes narrowed, studying the nervous lieutenant. “And whom did you report to after Hetwar’s meeting, last night?”

  “Why should I have reported to anyone?”

  With a casual step that fooled no one, Ingrey backed the man to the wall, leaning on his braced arm and turning to trap Gesca’s gaze. “You may as well admit you went to Horseriver. If Wencel means me to serve him as I served Hetwar, I will be deep in his councils before long.”

  Gesca’s lips parted, but he only shook his head.

  “No good, Gesca. I knew of your letters to him.” It was another shot in the almost-dark, but by the lieutenant’s jerk, it hit the target.

  “How did you—I thought there was no harm in it! He was Lord Hetwar’s own ally! I just thought I was doing a favor for m’lord’s friend.”

  “Suitably recompensed, one feels certain.”

  “Well… I am not a rich man. And the earl is not a nip-purse.” Gesca’s brows drew down in new wariness. “How did you know? I’d swear you never saw.”

  “By Wencel’s so-timely arrival at Middletown. Among other things.”

  “Oh.” Gesca’s shoulders slumped, and he grimaced.

  So was Gesca unhappy to have been lured into disloyalty to Hetwar, or merely unhappy to have been caught at it? “Slipping down the slope, are you? It makes a man as vulnerable to give favors as to take them. I seldom do either, therefore.” Ingrey smiled his most wolfish, the better to uphold the illusion of his invulnerability in Gesca’s mind.

  Gesca’s voice went small. “Are you going to turn me in?”

  “Have I accused you yet
?”

  “That’s not an answer. Not from you.”

  “True.” Ingrey sighed. “If you were to confess yourself to Hetwar, instead of waiting for an accusation, you’d be more likely to earn a reprimand than a dismissal. Hetwar cares less for perfect honesty from his men, than that he understands precisely the limits of their guile. It’s a comforting certainty of a kind, I suppose.”

  “And what of your limits, then? What comfort does he find in them?”

  “We keep each other alert.” Ingrey looked Gesca over. “Well, there could be worse wardens.”

  “Aye, and worse-looking wards.”

  Ingrey dropped his tone of edgy banter in favor of a much purer menace. “You will treat Lady Ijada with the strictest courtesy while she is in your charge, Gesca. Or the wrath of Hetwar, the Temple, Horseriver, and the gods combined will be the least of your worries.”

  Gesca flinched under his glower. “Give over, Ingrey. I am no monster!”

  “But I am,” Ingrey breathed. “Clear?”

  Gesca scarcely dared inhale. “Very.”

  “Good.” Ingrey stepped away, and though he had in fact not touched him, Gesca slumped like a man released from a throttling grip, patting his throat as if to probe for bruises. Or tooth marks.

  Ingrey scuffed back upstairs to roust Tesko to pack his meager belongings again for transfer to Horseriver’s mansion. He reviewed his last night’s meeting with Hetwar and its probable effect, as filtered through Gesca’s memory and wits, on Horseriver. As long as Ingrey was not so stupid as to pretend to conceal it from the earl, he doubted Horseriver would be much disturbed by the assignment to spy on him. And the earl would surely have gleaned from Gesca the fact that Ingrey had kept the darkest of his secrets. On the whole, Gesca’s little betrayal of trust might prove more useful than not, Ingrey decided.

  As Tesko tottered off down the stairs under a load of his master’s gear, Ingrey mounted the next flight and rapped on Ijada’s door. He was pleased to hear the bolt scrape back before the door opened to reveal the woman warden’s suspicious eye.

  “Lady Ijada, if you please.”

  Ijada shouldered past the woman into the little upstairs hall, her expression grave and questioning.

  Ingrey ducked his head at her. “I am called away to Earl Horseriver’s already. Gesca will be taking my place as your keeper, for a time.”

  She brightened at the familiar name. “That’s not so bad, then.”

  “Perhaps. I’ll try to come back and speak with you if I find, um, better understandings of things.”

  She nodded. Her expression was more thoughtful than panicked, though what she was thinking, Ingrey could scarcely guess. She possessed no more answers than he did, but he admired her talent for finding very uncomfortable questions. He suspected he would be in want of it shortly.

  He clasped her hands, in lieu of the good-bye kiss they could not make under watchful eyes. The strange current that seemed to flow between them still lingered, in that grip. “I will know if they move you.”

  She nodded again, releasing him. “I’ll be listening for you, too.”

  He managed a ghost of a bow and tore himself away.

  INGREY REPEATED HIS UPHILL WALK OF YESTERDAY THROUGH Kingstown, trailed this time by a puffing Tesko burdened with his belongings. Horseriver’s porter was plainly expecting them, for they were shown at once to Ingrey’s new room. It was no narrow servant’s stall under the eaves, but a gracious chamber on the third floor appointed for highborn guests, with an alcove for Tesko. Leaving his servant to arrange his scant wardrobe, Ingrey left to explore the mansion. He wondered if Horseriver would expect him to clear the rest of his possessions from Hetwar’s palace, and what the earl would construe if he did not.

  Passing a sitting room on the second floor, its moldings gracefully carved in birch wood, Ingrey glanced in to see Fara and one of her ladies. The matronly lady sat bent over some sewing; Fara stood with her hand upon the drape, staring pensively out the window, strained features silvered by the morning light. Her rather rectangular face was pale, her body short and solid in her drab dress; she would be stout in old age, Ingrey thought. Her head turned at some creak or clink from Ingrey, and her dark eyes widened in recognition.

  “Lord Ingrey—is it?”

  “Princess.” Ingrey essayed a sketchy salute, his hand to his heart recalling, but not quite completing, a sign of the Five.

  She looked him over, frowning. “Biast told me last night you were to enter my husband’s service.”

  “And, ah…yours?”

  “Yes. He told me that.” She glanced at her attendant. “Leave us. Leave open the door.” The woman rose, curtseyed, and slipped out past Ingrey; Fara beckoned him within.

  She looked up at him in wary speculation as he came to the window. Her voice was low. “My brother said you would protect me.”

  Keeping his tone neutral and equally quiet, Ingrey said, “Do you feel in need of protection?”

  She made an uncertain gesture. “Biast said a dire suspicion has fallen upon Wencel. What do you think of it?”

  “Can you not tell if it is so, lady?”

  She shook her head, not exactly in negation, and raised her long chin. “Can not you?”

  “The presence of a blood-companion such as mine is not what defiles a man; it is what he does with it. Or so I must believe. My dispensation tacitly concedes the same. Have you suspected nothing uncanny of your husband, in all this time?”

  Her thick black brows drew down in deeper unhappiness over this not-quite-answer. “No…yes. I don’t know. He was strange from the start, but I thought him merely moody. I tried to lighten his spirit, and sometimes, sometimes it seemed to work, but always he fell back into his blackness again. I prayed to the Mother for guidance, and, and more—I tried to be a good wife, as the Temple teaches us.” Her voice quavered, but did not break. Her frown darkened. “Then he brought that girl in.”

  “Lady Ijada? Did not you like her—at first?”

  “Oh, at first—!” She gave an angry little shrug of her shoulders. “At first, I suppose. But Wencel…attended to her.”

  “And what was her response to this regard of his? Did you tax her about it?”

  “She pretended to laugh. I didn’t laugh. I watched him, watching her—I had never seen him so much as look twice at another woman since we wed, or before for that matter, but he looked at her.”

  Ingrey composed a question that would lead to Fara’s version of the events at Boar’s Head, though it scarcely seemed needful. No searing intellect here, no subtle guile, no eerie powers, just a hurt bewilderment. There seemed to be no uncanny tracks lingering upon her, either; Wencel did not choose to bespell his wife, it seemed. Why not?

  But Fara’s mind was circling in another direction. “Biast’s accusation…” she murmured. Her gaze upon Ingrey sharpened. “It could be so, I suppose. I can tell nothing by looking at you, after all. If you really hide a wolf within, it is as invisible as any other man’s sins. It would explain…much.” She drew breath, and demanded abruptly, “How did you get your dispensation?”

  His brows went up. “I suppose I had a particularly charitable Temple inquirer. He was sorry for a sick orphan. At length, I gave some proof of control of my affliction that seemed to satisfy my examiners. Not enough to give a castlemastership into my young hands, of course. Later—later, Hetwar supported me.”

  “If Wencel controls his beast so well that even I cannot tell he carries it, is that not proof enough to gain a like pardon?” she asked, a plaintive note leaking into her voice.

  Ingrey moistened his lips. “You would have to ask the archdivine. It is no decision of mine.” Was Fara thinking in terms of protecting and preserving her husband? Could Wencel slip through a Temple examination such as the one that had vacillated so long over Ingrey’s case? Horseriver had so much more to conceal, but also, it seemed, more power to bring to bear on the task. If he desired. Perhaps he would be driven, through the destruction of h
is old concealments now in progress, to attempt some such ploy.

  In fact, one would think the task would claim all his attention. He pursues something else. Intently. What?

  For whatever private reasons, Fara clearly found the accusation that Wencel possessed a spirit beast to be alarmingly believable, once presented to her imagination. She had the look of a woman fitting together some long-worked puzzle, the last pieces falling into place faster and faster. Frightened, yes, both of and for her husband, and for herself.

  “Why not ask Wencel these questions yourself?” said Ingrey.

  “He did not come to me last night.” She rubbed her face, and her eyes. The hard friction might be supposed to account for their reddening. “He doesn’t, much, lately. Biast said to say nothing to him, but I do not know…”

  “Wencel already knows he is privately accused. You would betray no one’s secret by trying him.”

  She stared timidly at him. “Are you so much in his confidence already, then?”

  “I am his closest living cousin.” Temporarily. “Wencel’s need for kinship has no nearer source of satisfaction, in this crisis.” So to speak.

  Her hands wrung each other. “I shall be glad of you, then.”

  That remains to be seen. Unfortunately, he could not very well express his low opinion of her betrayal of her handmaiden and simultaneously expect to cultivate her confidences. He stiffened, his senses attuned to an approaching presence even before the sound of a light step wafted from the corridor and a throat was cleared in the doorway.

  “Lord Ingrey,” said Wencel, in a cordial voice. “They told me you had arrived.”

  Ingrey made his little sketch bow. “My lord Horseriver.”

  “I trust you have found your new chambers to your liking?”

  “Yes, thank you. Tesko thinks we rise in the world.”