“You have no right to do this, Kuraion! We will be killed. Just because I am a servant doesn’t mean I should die for nothing.”
She was surprised by his vehemence and his selfishness. “I couldn’t do it unless someone came with me.” That seemed obvious to her and it should have to him as well, now that he’d been given time to digest it. What did he want, an apology? “The poor king needs our help—he’s a king, Eril.” The servant gave her a look that in different circumstances she would have reported to her mother. Pelaya was shocked—old Eril, silly old Eril, acting as though he hated her!
“Anyway,” she said, a little flustered. “It won’t take long. We’ll be back before supper. And you’ll be able to tell the gods you did a good deed when you say your prayers tonight.”
Judging by the noise he made in reply, Eril did not seem to find much consolation in the thought.
Although there were still many people on the grounds of the palace and in the stronghold, mostly servants and soldiers, it quickly became clear to Pelaya that Olin Eddon wasn’t one of them. His cell was empty, the door standing open.
“But where is he?” she asked. She had come so far and taken so many risks for nothing!
“Gone, Mistress,” said one of the soldiers who had gathered to watch this unusual performance. “The lord protector had him moved somewhere.”
“Where? Tell me, please!” She brandished her forged letter. “My father is Count Perivos!”
“We know, Mistress,” said the soldier. “But we still can’t tell you because we don’t know. The lord protector’s Rams took him somewhere. You’ll have to find out from him.”
“You talk too much,” another soldier told him. “She shouldn’t be here—it’s dangerous. Can you imagine anything happens? It’ll be our heads on the block, won’t it?”
She led Eril out of the stronghold and across Echoing Mall toward Kossope House, ignoring his complaints. If the servants were still in their dormitories, especially the darkhaired laundry girl, perhaps they’d know where Olin was. Servants, Pelaya had discovered, usually knew everything important that happened in a great house.
As the echoes of distant cannon echoed along the colonnade, Pelaya saw that whether the laundry women were here or not, many other servants had remained, although they did not look very happy. In fact, many of them seemed to glare at her as though it were somehow her fault they’d been left behind. She was glad Eril had his sword. Pelaya could almost imagine these abandoned servants, if left here long enough, turning entirely wild, like the dogs that roamed the city midden heaps and cemeteries after dark.
“The one I want to talk to is in here,” Pelaya said, pointing toward the large building on the far side of the palace complex. “Poor thing, she has such a long way to walk each day.”
Eril muttered something but Pelaya could not make it out.
When they reached the dormitory they found that the residents were guarding it themselves: three strong-looking young women with laundry-poles stood before the door, and they gave Eril a very stern look before letting him accompany Pelaya inside.
To her delight and relief they found the laundry girl almost immediately, sitting morosely on her bed as though waiting for a cannonball to crash through the roof and kill her. To Pelaya’s shock, the dark-haired girl not only wasn’t pleased to have a highborn visitor, she seemed frightened of Eril. “Follows me!” she said, pointing. “He follows!”
Eril scowled. “She never saw me, Kuraion. I’m sure she didn’t. Someone told her.”
“He followed you because I needed to know where you lived,” Pelaya said gently. “He’s my servant. I had to find you quietly, when King Olin wanted to speak to you. Now, where is Olin? Do you know? He’s been taken out of the stronghold.”
The girl looked at her in blank misery, as if Olin’s whereabouts were of no particular interest compared to her own problems, whatever those might be. Pelaya scowled. How could she converse usefully with a laundry maid who could barely speak her language? “I need to find him. Find him. I’m looking for him.”
The girl’s face changed—something like hope flowered. “Help find?”
“Yes!” Finally, sense had been made. “Yes, help find.”
The girl jumped up and took Pelaya’s hand, shocking the count’s daughter more than a little, but before she could protest she was being dragged across the dormitory. It was not Olin that the brown-haired girl led Pelaya to, but another laundrywoman, a friendly, round-featured girl named Yazi who seemed meant to translate. The new girl’s command of Hierosoline was not much better, but after many stops and starts it finally became clear that the brown-haired girl hadn’t agreed to help find Olin, she herself wanted help finding her mute brother, who had been missing since the middle of the night.
“He not go,” she said over and over, but clearly he had.
“No, we have to find Olin, King Olin,” Pelaya told her. “I’ll ask my father to send someone to help you find your brother.”
The Xandian girl looked shocked, as though she could not have imagined anyone would say no to her request.
“Haven’t we had enough of this, Kuraion?” said Eril. “You have dragged me across the city for nothing, risking both our lives. Are we now going to have to search for a runaway child as well?”
“No, of course not, but...” Before Pelaya could finish, someone else joined the small crowd of women that had gathered around the brown-haired girl and her round friend. This new arrival was considerably older than the others, her face disfigured by what looked like a bad burn.
“Oh, thank the Great Mother!” this old woman said when she saw them all, then leaned against the wall, gasping hoarsely for breath. “I...I...was frightened I wouldn’t...find you.” She looked at Pelaya, surprised. “Your Ladyship. Forgive me.”
Pelaya just barely nodded a greeting, irritated by yet another interruption. Eril was right—they needed to get back to Landsman’s Market.
“What is it, Losa?” asked the round-faced girl, Yazi.
“The boy who can’t talk, the little brother! He is up in the counting house tower and very...” She waved her hands, trying to find the words. “Angry, sad, I don’t know. He won’t come down.”
“Pigeon?” Qinnitan sat forward. “He not...hurt?”
“I don’t think hurt, no,” said Losa. “He is just hiding in that tower, the old broken one near the seawall. I think the... cannons? I think the cannons scare him. He wants his sister.”
“We’ll come, too,” said Yazi. “He likes me.”
“No!” said Losa. “He is very scared, the boy. He almost falls when I come. Up very high. If he sees people he doesn’t know so well...” She shook her head, unable or unwilling to come up with the words for such a dire prospect. “Just his sister.”
The dark-haired laundry girl did not appear to grasp everything said, but she smiled—it did little to hide the anxiousness in her face—and said something in her own tongue to the girl Yazi. For a moment Pelaya wondered if she should go with them to help—Olin had taken an interest in this girl, after all—but she could think of too many reasons why she should not let herself get further involved.
After the old, scarred woman had led the brown-haired girl out, Pelaya began to move toward the front of Kossope House. “It’s good she’s found her brother,” she said, smiling at the other laundry women. “Family is so important. Now I must go back to mine. May the gods protect you all.”