Of course, she might not be anything of the sort. Sorcerers have spent the entire long march of history meddling with everything from humans to mice. If the stories coming out of Norvalk can be believed, there’s an entire race of tall, feathered humanoids gradually creeping out the jungle. They can speak, they’re handy with tools, and they claim they’ve spent the last ten thousand years waiting for someone called the Longfather to return to his mountain fortress and take them all to Paradise.
I suspect they’ve got a much longer wait than even their own history suggests.
Whatever she was, I still couldn’t put Buttercup at the center of any clandestine surveying of the Werewilk place.
People only survey for two reasons.
To draw up boundaries, usually preparatory to a land sale or as the result of a squabble over lines and fences.
That had been my first thought.
But there was another reason.
I rose splashing, got water everywhere and didn’t care. I found a towel and dried off and then found the notes I’d taken at last night’s meal.
I’d drawn a crude map of the stakes, and the dates they were found.
I sat down, found a pencil and made new scribbles of my own.
“Damn.”
It still didn’t make any sense.
My crude map already included the approximate boundaries of the Werewilk estate, which gobbled up vast tracts of the surrounding forest.
The stakes were nowhere near the legal lines. Of course, the only ones I had drawn were the ones the staff had found, and they’d hardly canvassed the entire Werewilk estate. But even so, by drawing lines through the rows of stakes, I could see that none of the lines bore any relation to the property borders.
But, by squinting just right and nudging a few of the locations a bit here or there, they did seem to suggest a single long line, from which other shorter lines branched off.
Or not. I realized I was jumping to conclusions again, and I stamped back into the bathroom and mopped up my mess with the towel and was nearly dressed when Gertriss knocked.
“Coffee, black, in a small keg.”
I grunted and opened the door.
She had coffee and biscuits on a tray. There were chunks of ham stuffed in the biscuits.
“I should give you a raise.”
Gertriss breezed past me.
“You can’t afford to.” She sat the tray down on a dresser. I gulped coffee.
“So who do we pester first today?”
“First, we find Scatter and Lank, about the bounty on the stakes.”
“Done. They came in while I was pouring your coffee. Tore out of here before the cup was full. They’re probably halfway to Rannit right now grabbing up any piece of lumber small enough to carry.”
I laughed. “Good work. So now, we corner Singh and Milton.”
“You want me there for that?”
“The more the merrier.” I gobbled the last biscuit and washed it down with coffee. I’d bathed in hot water and enjoyed a rich man’s breakfast.
“Time to get to work.”
Finding Singh and Milton wasn’t hard.
Getting Singh to talk, though. That was a different story.
Milton takes his morning meal in his room, alone with Lady Werewilk and Singh. Lady Werewilk was gone by the time Gertriss and I knocked on the door. I was glad. I wanted some privacy for this conversation.
Singh let us in without a word. He shut the door behind us and then padded without a sound back to the small plain table at which Milton Werewilk sat.
Milton was chewing. His mouth was open. He was losing most of his breakfast down the front of his chin. Singh sat, reached out and closed Milton’s mouth.
The man kept chewing.
Not everyone who fought in the War and lived is able to share in the victory.
I pulled out a chair for Gertriss and then seated myself. I was where I wanted to be, across from Singh.
Singh was seventy years old, I guessed. Maybe seventy-five. He’d always been a small man, but never a weak one. The years had melted away most of his muscle, but not all of it. Where other men his age might be flirting with frailty Singh just looked like he’d had the fat baked out of him, leaving behind gnarled muscles that still knotted and flexed beneath skin the texture and shade of well-worn leather.
He moved like a ghost too. He’d glided across that floor, pulled back his chair without a scrape. He even handled his fork without allowing it to clink or scrape on the plate.
Sometimes I like to start by stating the obvious.
“So you’re Singh.”
He wiped Milton’s chin clean and nodded. He wasn’t looking at me.
“Look. We both know you’ve got better things to do that talk to me. So I’ll make it quick. The surveyor’s stakes. Do you have any idea who’s laying them, or why?”
“None.”
I’d expected nothing but a shake of the head. His voice was as quiet as the rest of him.
“The banshee. Were you aware of it before now?”
“No. Swallow.”
Singh spoke the last to Milton, who obeyed. Singh put oats on a spoon and held it to Milton’s lips.
“Eat.”
Milton obliged. I saw Gertriss shiver.
“You understand I’m not accusing you of anything, Mr. Singh. I’m not here to cause you any grief. I’ll be gone as soon as I can give Lady Werewilk some answers.”
Singh looked at me, finally, while Milton chewed.
“If I knew anything that could help my Lady, I would tell this thing to you.”
He had a ghost of an accent, one I couldn’t place.
“It doesn’t have to be something you know,” I said. “It can be something you suspect. Something that just doesn’t feel right. Something that stands out as odd for no reason at all you can see. Anything, Mr. Singh. You live here. I’m just passing through.”
“Swallow.”
Milton swallowed. Singh shook his head and said something that wasn’t in Kingdom.
“It is an expression from my homeland,” he explained, before I could ask. “Literally, it means no one envies the man who must drain the lake with his mouth.”
I sighed. “If you think of anything, anything at all, find me, please.” I rose. My chair made a scrape and a bump. Singh looked away, back to Milton Werewilk, who had begun to drool.
Gertriss rose too. She was staring at Milton and trying not to let her face show her feelings.
We left in a hurry. Gertriss shut the door behind us without any sound.
The House below was full of noise. People were talking and laughing and shouting.
We left the silence behind us and headed down the stairs.
“So that got us nowhere.”
“We’re not nowhere. We’re draining a lake a mouthful at a time.”
We were sitting outside House Werewilk, on the front steps. Squirrels chattered and scampered in the shaded weeds. People further out were making a fair amount of noise while engaging in agriculture. Hard work sounds comforting and quaint as long as I’m nowhere near it.
Gertriss had her elbows on hers knees and her chin on her fists. She didn’t look the least bit happy. Something she’d seen up in Milton’s room had disturbed her. I’d decided to wait and let her bring it up. Given the Hog tendency to blurt things out with a minimum of internal brewing, I didn’t think I’d have to wait long.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something?”
“We are. We’re waiting for the lads to drop bundles of surveyor’s markers at our feet. We’re waiting for a baker or a carpenter to come sidling up, prepared to whisper secrets in our ever-attentive ears. We’re actually quite busy, if you look at things from the right perspective.”
Gertriss made the same grumpy snorting noise Mama makes when I disparage her magical bird-carcasses.
“But if it’ll make you feel better, there is something you can do.” I found the folded list that named every member of the household and unfolded it on my knee.