“Gran,” he whispered, holding it in one hand before his lips. “Gran, do you hear me? Be careful of the fire. I had a dream. Are you all right, Gran?”
It grew cold in his hands, cold as the room around him.
And everything was still, everything but the fire crackling in the other room.
He shut his eyes tight, and saw flames and felt the pain of the burn on his clenched hand.
His stomach hurt with fear. Shivers took his limbs. For a moment he thought of slipping down to the stable and escaping onto the road to find Paisi, going home where they both belonged. But he had given Paisi the only horse easy to reach, and the gate wardens would stop him this time. He was trapped, and all he could hear in the world was the crackle and snap of the fire, while the amulet stayed cold in his fingers.
There was one way to know. There was a thing Gran did, when she needed to foretell for a neighbor or, once, for Lord Crissand, when he came to her cottage at night and in secret.
The Guelesfort was still and hushed, with no one to see him. He could do it: he knew what Gran had done. If Gran wouldn’t listen to him by way of the amulet, then the amulet itself might gain her attention… if she was all right. There was that dread, dire chance that the dreams hadn’t come from Gran. There was the chance they had come from the tower in Henas’amef.
And if that was so, if dreams from that place had reached them, disturbed their sleep and sent Paisi out into danger on the roads, then it was possible he could tell Gran that, and if he did—then Gran would be able to deal with it. Gran would go into town and tell Lord Crissand, was likeliest, who would realize what his mother was up to and put a firm stop to it.
He just had to be quick, and do it now, if he was going to do it, and clean up before he ever heard a stir of servants in the halls.
He needed a string—the cord from a shirt tie served for that. He had the washing bowl. He had clean water from the pitcher. He had oil, from the little bottle they had on the dressing table, for chapped hands and cold-stung faces. He had a candle and a writing quill, which was the feather that would disturb the water.
He hung the amulet from the string, a bond between himself and Gran, so the Seeing would go where he wished. He threaded the feather through a knot in the string and held the string so the tip, hanging down, just touched the oiled water in the bowl. He waited while the draft in the room breathed warmth on the feather, and it trembled as it just touched the water, only slightly disturbing the film of oil.
On that watery surface he looked for his vision, and if he looked at the curls of oil just so he tried to convince himself he could see a fence, and a cottage, and a chimney, that beloved, crooked chimney, perfectly safe.
“Gran?” he said, and his breath disturbed the feather, and made new ripples on the oiled water.
He tried to see her. He tried to see her sleeping—or sick in her bed if that was the case. He tried to make his voice reach her dreams.
“Gran? Paisi is coming home. Paisi is on the road tonight, safe with some traders. We’re both well. Oh, Gran, be careful of fires. Be ever so careful. I had a dream that worries me…”
He heard a step in the other room. He looked up and saw a shadow between him and the fire: Aewyn’s serving-maid, with a tray in her hands.
She saw him. Her hands flew up to her mouth. The whole tray crashed to the floor, in a ruin of pottery.
He seized the cord, took the basin up to try to pretend it was something else. A flood of oiled water slopped out over his arms, down his body, and the maid squeaked and ran back the way she had come, leaving tray and all.
He clutched the amulet fast and took the bowl, to dispose it back on the washstand, his floor awash in spilled water, spilled oil, and spilled porridge.
Aewyn’s maid, the one the guards had teased, had been bringing him breakfast.
He tried to mop the oily water off himself. He went to the fire and tried to blot himself dry, but the oil clung, and would stain when it dried, like deadly sin. Word of that sin was running down the halls by now, unstoppable, on the lips of the one servant who was devout Quinalt.
CHAPTER TWO
i
THE WHOLE FAMILY WAS ASSEMBLED, ALONG WITH THE LESSER LORDS AND Officers who lived in the Guelesfort, down in the lower hall, with all the candles lit. Some of the lords who had the grand houses about the square had come in, to walk in the procession with their banner-bearers and their households. The crowd grew. Still there was no Otter, and Aewyn fretted, standing at the foot of the grand stairway, positioned so that he could see and signal Otter the moment he appeared on that stairway.
He had sent the girl with breakfast, to be sure, for one thing, that Otter didn’t oversleep. And he knew above all other things that Otter was shy of the maids and would have hastened her right out after she delivered it. It had been a little joke, a prank on Otter and on the maid alike: he knew it would send a fine blush to Otter’s face if he was caught abed, and the maid would set down the breakfast and run like a deer. But it had a practical reason, too. One of the men might have lingered, asked for Paisi and asked more questions—so the maid had been the best choice.
But it was the verge of dawn, Otter still hadn’t come down, while the family was all bundled up against the cold and much too hot, standing and waiting. Everyone was preparing to leave, and it was surely only Otter who kept his father waiting this long. Aewyn fretted in silence while the lords talked together in the solemn, irritable way people did on Fast Day. No one was in a particularly good mood, having been awake an hour or so ago, in the dark, to get something on their stomachs. Now breakfast and tempers were wearing thin in the anticipation of a day of no food, no comfort, and dreary sermons about sin and damnation.
Oh, he wished now that he hadn’t been so clever, that he’d just taken Otter’s breakfast down the hall himself and let his servants and guards fuss about it. The maid was a skittish fool as well as a prude. Everyone knew that. She was not only scared of men, she was scared of Amefin folk, scared of everyone who wasn’t Guelen. It was even possible she’d never taken the breakfast there at all and that Otter was still asleep in his bed, with no one to wake him. If that was the case, he swore he would have her beaten.
“Where is he?” his father walked near to ask him.
“I don’t know, sire,” Aewyn said faintly. “He should have been here. I sent my maid with breakfast, to wake him. Shall I go up and find out?”
“We have to leave now. We have no choice,” his father said, vexed, then turned and dispatched one of his own bodyguard upstairs on the spot, with orders to rouse Otter.
No choice. No choice, now, and no Otter with the family, Aewyn thought, as his father waved a hand and set the whole processional moving toward the doors. And it was the worst outcome: his father’s men were apt to ask close questions, particularly if they did find Otter abed, and Otter wasa godless Amefin, in the reckoning of all too many Guelenfolk. This morning was to be Otter’s chance, his moment to make his best appearance before all the people, nobles and commons, to be written in the book and quietly mend so many things that had been wrong as long as they had been alive.
It was Otter’s chance, and if he didn’t come down the stairs in the next few moments, it was worse than a missed chance: it was a disrespect to the Quinaltine and to the family and most of all to their father… only the family knew it, of course, at this point, but that meant the family servants and guards knew it, and thatmeant kitchen staff was going to find it out by noon, and half of Guelemara was going to know it by nightfall.
The great doors opened on the dark. Lantern-bearers went downstairs and out first. The snow fell in a fine sleet outside, hazing the lanterns and the torches, as a wave of cold gusted in at them. A priest and two acolytes met them at the doors—doubtless they had been freezing quietly for the last half hour. The priest walked ahead, chanting about sins and atonement and ringing a bell, the acolytes swinging censers, which glowed with inner fire.