Feulecharo, apprentice to Duke Walen, just winked. He was a stocky fellow, with wild brown hair that resisted all attempts to control it save those employing shears. He was polishing a pair of boots while the rest of us tucked into our evening meal, in a tent on the Prospect Plain, one day into the 455th Circuition. On this first rest stop it was traditional for the senior pages and apprentices to dine together. Feulecharo had been allowed to join us by his master, but he was being punished for one of his regular misdemeanours with extra work, hence the boots, and a set of rustily ancient ceremonial armour he was supposed to polish before we set off the next day.
"What sort of plan?" I insisted. "What can the Duke want with the Doctor?"
"Let's just say he's suspicious," Feulecharo said, tapping his nose with a polishing brush.
"Of what?"
"My master is suspicious, too," Unoure said, breaking a piece of bread in half and smearing some gravy round his plate.
"How very true," drawled Epline, page to Guard Commander Adlain.
"Well, he is," Unoure insisted sullenly.
"Still testing out his new ideas on you, is he, Unoure?" one of the other pages called. He turned to the others. "We saw Unoure in the baths once-"
"Aye, it would be the once!"
"What year was that?"
"We did," continued the page, "and you should see the lad's scars! I tell you, Nolieti is a perfect beast to him!"
"He teaches me everything!" Unoure said, standing up, his eyes bright with tears.
"Shut up, Unoure," Jollisce said. "Don't let this rabble bait you so." Slight but elegantly fair, and older than most of us, Jollisce was page to Duke Ormin, who was the Doctor's employer after the Mifeli trading family and before the King commandeered her services. Unoure sat down again, muttering under his breath. "What plans, Feulecharo?" Jollisce asked.
"Never mind," Feulecharo said. He started whistling and began to pay uncharacteristically close attention to the boots he was polishing, and soon started to talk to them, as though trying to persuade them to clean themselves.
"That boy is intolerable," Jollisce said, and took up a pitcher of the watered wine which was the strongest drink we were allowed.
A little after supper, Jollisce and I wandered along one edge of the camp. Hills stretched ahead of us and on both sides. Behind us, past the lip of the Prospect Plain, Xamis was still slowly setting in a fiery riot of colour, somewhere far beyond the near-circle of Crater Lake, falling over the round edge of sea.
Clouds, caught half in Xamis's dying light and half in the late morning glare of Seigen, were lit with gold on one side, and red, ochre, vermilion, orange, scarlet… a wide wilderness of colours. We walked amongst the settling animals as each was quieted. Some — the hauls, mostly had a bag over their heads. The better mounts had elegant eye-muffs while the best had their own travelling stables and lesser beasts merely warranted a blindfold made of whatever rag came to hand. One by one they folded themselves to the ground and prepared to sleep. Jollisce and I walked among them, Jollisce smoking a long pipe. He was my oldest and best friend, from the time when I had briefly been in the service of the Duke before being sent to Haspide.
"Probably it's nothing," he said. "Feulecharo likes to listen to himself talk, and he likes to pretend he knows something everybody else doesn't. I wouldn't worry about it, but if you think you ought to report it to your mistress, then of course you must do so."
"Hmm," I said. I recall (looking back on that earlier self from this more mature vantage point) that I was not sure what to do. Duke Walen was a powerful man, and a schemer. He was not the sort of man somebody like the Doctor could afford to have as an enemy, and yet I had to think of my own, real Master, as well as my Mistress. Should I tell neither of them? Or one — if so, which? Or both?
"Listen," Jollisce said, stopping and turning to me (and it seemed to me he'd waited until there was nobody else around before he divulged this last piece of intelligence). "If it's any help, I have heard that Walen might have sent somebody to Equatorial Cuskery."
"Cuskery?"
"Yes, do you know of it?"
"Sort of. It's a port, isn't it?"
"Port, city-state, Sea Company sanctuary, lair of sea monsters if you believe some people… but the point is, it's about the furthest north people come in any numbers from the Southern lands, and they supposedly have quite a number of embassies and legations there."
"Yes?"
"Well, apparently one of Duke Walen's men has been sent to Cuskery to look for somebody from Drezen."
"From Drezen!" I said, then lowered my voice as Jollisce frowned and looked about us, over the sleeping bodies of the great animals. "But… why?"
"I can't imagine," Jollisce said.
"How long does it take to get to Cuskery?"
"It takes nearly a year to get there. The journey is somewhat quicker coming back, they say." He shrugged. "The winds."
"That's a long way to send somebody," I said, wondering.
"I know," Jollisce said. He sucked on his pipe. "My man assumed it was some trade thing. You know, people are always expecting to make their fortunes from spices or potions or new fruits or something, if they can get stuff past the Sea Companies and avoid the storms, but, well, my master came by some information that indicated Walen's fellow was looking for just one person."
"Oh."
"Hmm." Jollisce stood and faced the Xamis-set, his face made ruddy by the glow of flame-coloured cloud in the west. "Good sunset," he said, drawing deep on his pipe.
"Very," I agreed, not really looking.
"Best ones were just around the time the Empire fell, of course. Didn't you think?"
"Hmm? Oh yes, naturally."
"Providence's recompense for the sky falling in on us," Jollisce mused, frowning into the bowl of his pipe.
"Hmm. Yes." Who to tell? I thought. Who to tell…
Master, the Doctor attended the King in his tent each day during the Circuition from Haspide to Yvenir because our monarch was afflicted with an aching back.
The Doctor sat on the side of the bed King Quience lay upon. "If it's really that sore, sir, you should rest it, -she told him.
"Rest?" the King said, turning over on to his front. "How can I rest? This is the Circuition, you idiot. If I rest so does everybody else, and then by the time we get to the Summer Palace it'll be time to come back again."
"Well," the Doctor said, pulling the King's shift up out of his riding breeches to expose his broad, muscled back. "You might lie on your back in a carriage, sir."
"That would hurt too," he said into his pillow.
"It might hurt a little, sir, but it would quickly become better. Sitting on a mount will only make it worse."
"Those carts, they sway all over the place and the wheels bang down into holes and ruts. These roads are much worse than they were last year, I'm sure. Wiester?"
"Sir?" the fat chamberlain said, quickly stepping out of the shadows to the King's side.
"Have somebody find out whose responsibility this bit of road is. Are the appropriate taxes being collected? If they are, are they being spent on it and if not where are they going?"
"At once, sir." Wiester bustled off, leaving the tent.
"You can't trust Dukes to levy taxes properly, Vosill," the King sighed. "At any rate, you can't trust their tax collectors. They have too damn much authority. Far too many tax collectors have bought themselves baronies for my liking."
"Indeed, Sir," the Doctor said.
"Yes. I've been thinking I might set up some sort of more… town- or city-sized, umm…"