“Of course!” There were not so many horses in the stables that two could go missing undetected, and not so many hands that the thief could long remain unknown. Stupid Rap! “So he was found out and ran away!”
“And he must have taken refuge with the goblins,” her aunt agreed. “I don’t know why he followed you south, dear. Perhaps he hoped to spin you some fantastic story…”
“Perhaps. That must be it.” Young men did tend to behave oddly at that age, she knew. That was when the bad apples showed up—she had heard plenty of stories at Kinvale and been given plenty warnings. Oh, Rap! “It wasn’t a wraith, was it?”
When a soul came before the Gods for weighing, the Evil was canceled out by the Good, and the balance went to join the Good, and live evermore as part of the Good. But in bad souls the residue was evil, and the Evil might reject it, to leave it wandering as a wraith, haunting the night.
Kade started. “Oh, I think it—he—was alive.”
“And Rap wasn’t evil!” Yet if he’d descended to selling horses in bars, what else might he had done before he died? Inos shivered.
“I don’t think it was a wraith,” Kade said firmly. “I don’t think wraiths would smell that bad!”
Inos managed to chuckle and nod. She was relieved to find that she agreed. It had been Rap. Rap alive.
She glanced around. The soldiers were recovering and restoring order, but there was no one close to the coach. Not even Andor… “Aunt, how did Yggingi know about Father? Why was he waiting at Kinvale when Andor arrived? This must have been planned!”
Kade flinched. “It was my fault, my dear.”
“Yours?”
“Yes. I let slip to Ekka that I was worried about your father’s health. Chancellor Yaltauri was supposed to send me bulletins. He didn’t.”
“Then Ekka’s behind this?” Now Inos began to understand.
“I fear so.”
“So when—if—Father dies…”
“The proconsul will proclaim the duke as king, I think. I have been very foolish, darling. I did not see—”
Inos pecked a kiss on her cheek. “But it was not Andor?'.”
“No! I don’t think so.”
“I trust Andor!” Inos said firmly. “Don’t you?”
“I…” Just for an instant Kade hesitated, and then she smiled. “You’re asking me to choose between him and that very smelly boy?”
Inos laughed and hugged her. Invisible birds burst into glorious inaudible symphonies of song—no one had betrayed her except the odious dowager duchess! Kade had been foolish, but not evil. Andor was innocent—Inos would doubt him no more. Seeing Rap again beside him had somehow shown her how vastly inferior any other man must be. Andor, oh, Andor!
5
A wolf, a goblin, and a faun who had farsight—there had never been any danger that the troopers would find them.
After an hour or so, the expedition moved off along the mountain trail. Inos and her aunt were riding, and the coach had been left where it was. Inos’s mount was staying very close to Andor’s, but Rap could not tell at that distance whether or not it was secured there by a tether. He could not have summoned it anyway, because he did not know which horse it was. Andor might not know that; but, in any case, Rap had already discarded that plan as being too dangerous for Inos. It would also bring the whole imp army after him, and obviously his fantastic story was not going to be believed.
In thick woods on the hill above the road, he used his farsight to watch them all go. He was soaking wet and miserable, hunched on the ground, savagely digging holes in the moss with a stick—jab… jab… Fleabag was sleeping, but he alone of the three of them heard the hooves through the muffling timber. He lifted his head to listen. Little Chicken was sitting on a fallen log, elbows on knees, waiting as patiently as the trees themselves.
Jab… jab…
Rain was dribbling down Rap’s neck, and he perversely left his hood down and let it. Almost he wished that the meeting had not happened, that he had missed Inos and gone on to lose himself in the Impire. But unlikely things happened to those who knew words of power—so Andor had taught him. And there was only this one pass through the mountains.
Spurned! Jab!
Rejected, even by Inos!
Jab!
But Andor had a word of power and he would be believed over anyone else. Trust was his talent.
Jab! The stick broke.
Rap rose to his feet.
“Now we do what?” Little Chicken asked.
Rap sighed. “You still my trash, goblin?”
This show of caution seemed to amuse the burly young woodsman. He nodded.
Despairingly Rap thought of the hard weeks ahead.
“Now we run back,” he said, “back to Krasnegar.”
EIGHT
Casement high
Damsel met
1
Even to Krasnegar, spring came eventually. The hills were white and uninhabited yet, and the causeway still poulticed with crumpled ice floes and drifts, but brave men had trodden a footpath across it already, and a few more weeks would see the horses and cattle staggering back to the mainland.
There was no moon. Pale auroras danced in the sky like giant ghosts as Rap and Little Chicken emerged from one of the shore cottages, yawning and shivering in the dregs of sleep. A man could barely see his feet in that uncertain glimmer.
Rap took a few deep breaths of the frigid air, welcoming the familiar salty tang of the sea and the distant crackling of the tide wrestling ice. Then he turned to his companion. He had made this offer at the end of the forest, but he would try once more.
“I release you, Little Chicken. You have paid any debt you owe me many times over. Go back to your people.”
“I am your trash,” said the stubborn whisper from the darkness. “I look after you.”
“You can’t help me here! I am in grave danger, but you cannot help, and you will be in danger, also. Go, with my gratitude.”
“I look after you. Later I kill you.”
So the Gods had still not given the signal. Rap shrugged unseen. “You may have to be quick, if you want to be the first. Come on, then.”
He began to run. When they reached the causeway itself, though, he was forced down to a walk, steering entirely with his farsight, and at times Little Chicken had to hold his shoulder to stay with him in a heavy, dense dark-like blankets. They were halfway across before Rap remembered bears. This was a bad time for them, but now he had so much trust in his farsight that he was certain none lurked in the vicinity.
It had been a bad winter. Below the ice there had been much damage to the stonework, although no one else could have known.
Somewhere behind them in the moors, the imp army was camped. Rap had stayed a couple of days ahead of it all the way, and the journey had been far, far worse than his trip south. While the cold had been less severe, the snow had been deeper and stickier, the winds stronger. Worse yet, Rap and Little Chicken had traveled as heralds of disaster, croaking ravens prophesying war. The imps had burned every goblin village within reach of the road. Had the warnings not flown ahead of them, they would undoubtedly have massacred the inhabitants, also. The people of the first village had died, all of them, from patriarch to newborn. Inos' journey back to her homeland had been marked by pillars of smoke, by women and children fleeing out into the wasteland, by precious foodstocks pillaged, by unprovoked and unnecessary rampage. The leader of the imps, the one with the fancy helmet, was certainly an utter madman. What he sought to gain, Rap could not guess, nor why Inos had allowed it. He could only assume that she had been powerless to stop the destruction.