She shook her head and looked miserable. “I don’t know.”
“May I tell you what I think?” Stephen asked.
Winna tossed her hair out of her face. It had been cut short when he met her, but now it was getting pretty long. “Why not?” she said morosely. “You’ve been about as blunt as I can imagine already.”
“I think you saw in that moment that Aspar was missing something. He’s strong and determined and skillful, and he’s smart, in his way. But he doesn’t have a heart, not without you. Without you, he’s just another part of the forest, wandering farther and farther from being human. You brought him back to us.” He paused, retracing the words in his mind. “Does that make any sense?”
Winna’s brow crinkled, but she didn’t say anything. “It’s why the three of us work so well together,” he went on. “He’s the muscle and the knife and the arrow. I have the book knowledge he pretends to disdain, but knows he needs, and you’re sovereign to us both, the thing that ties us all together.”
She snorted. “Swordsman, priest, and crown?”
He blinked. She was referring to the Vadhüan incantation. “Well, it is a very old trinity,” he said. “Even the saints break out in threes, that way—Saint Nod, Saint Oimo, and Saint Loy, for instance.”
“I’m not a queen,” Winna said. “I’m just a girl from Colbaely who’s gone off where she doesn’t belong.”
“That’s not true,” Stephen said.
“Well then where does she fit in?” she asked, jerking her nose toward Leshya.
“She doesn’t,” Stephen said. “She’s another Aspar, that’s what she is, and he won’t get a heart from her, nor she from him.”
“Aspar’s never much wanted a heart,” Winna said. “Maybe what he needs is a woman who’s more like him.”
“Doesn’t matter what he wants,” Stephen said. “Love doesn’t care what’s right, or good, or what anyone wants.”
“I know that all too well,” Winna said.
“Do you feel any better at all?”
“Maybe,” she said. “If I don’t, it’s not for lack of trying. Thank you, Stephen.”
They rode silently after that, and Stephen was glad, because he wasn’t sure he could defend Aspar much longer without breaking faith. He hadn’t lied—everything he’d said was true.
Including, unfortunately, the bit about love not caring what was right, or good, or what anyone wants.
Whitraff was there, but even at a distance it looked dead. The air was chill, yet not a single line of smoke traced the sky. No one was in the streets, and there was no sound that might come from man or woman.
Most of the villages and towns around the King’s Forest weren’t all that old—most, like Colbaely, had sprouted up in the last hundred years. The houses tended to be built of wood and the streets of dirt. Aspar remembered Whitraff as an old town—its narrow avenues were cobbles worn shiny by a hundred generations of boots and buskins. The heart of the town wasn’t large—about thirty houses huddled around the bell-tower square—but there had once been outlying farms to the east and stilt houses along the riverfront that went on for some way. It had always been a pretty lively place, for all of its small size, because it was the only river port south of Ever, which was a good twenty winding leagues downriver.
Now the outliers were ash, but the stone town still stood. Looking down on it from the hill above, Aspar noticed that the bell tower was missing. It was simply gone. In its place—on the mound where the tower had once stood—was the now all-too-familiar sight. A ring of death.
“Sceat,” he muttered.
“We’re too late,” Winna said.
“Far too late,” Leshya said. “This was done months ago, to judge by the burned homesteads.”
Aspar nodded. The dead scattered around the sedos looked to be mostly bone.
“Bad luck, that,” he said, “to build your town on the footprint of a Damned Saint.”
“I don’t see how you can joke about it,” Winna said. “All those people . . . I don’t see how you can joke about it.”
Aspar glanced at her. “I wasn’t joking,” he said softly. Lately it seemed impossible to say the right thing around Winna. “Anyway, maybe it’s not so bad as it looks. Maybe the rest of the townsfolk got away.” He turned to the Sefry. “This is a good position. You and Ehawk keep a watch from up here while we go down to have a look.”
“Suits me,” Leshya said.
They took the road in, and despite his words, it was as he’d feared. No one came out to greet them. The town was as quiet as its twin, Whitraff-of-Shadows, just upstream. Of the people there was no sign.
Aspar dismounted in front of the River Cock, once the busiest tavern in the village.
“You two watch my back,” he told Stephen and Winna. “I’m taking a look in here.”
There wasn’t anyone inside, and there were no bodies, which wasn’t terribly surprising. But he did find that a roast on a spit had been allowed to burn to char, and one of the ale taps had been left open, so all the beer had drained out to form a still-sticky mass on the floor.
He went back out into the square.
“They left in a hurry,” he said. “There’s no blood, or signs of fighting.”
“The monks might have thrown the bodies into the river,” Winna suggested.
“They might have, or they might have gotten away. But here’s what I’m wondering—this river isn’t the busiest around, but someone would have noticed this, and as Leshya said, this must have happened a couple of months ago, maybe even before we fought Desmond Spendlove and his bunch. Why hasn’t anyone cleaned up the bodies? Why hasn’t anyone moved in, or at least sent word downriver?”
“Maybe they did,” Stephen said, “and the praifec kept it to himself.”
“Yah, but rivermen who saw this would talk it all up and down the river. Someone would have come to have a look.”
“You’re thinking the Church left it garrisoned?” Stephen asked.
“I don’t see sign of that, either. Plenty of ale and stores left in the tavern—you’d think a garrison would have tucked into that. Besides, I didn’t see any smoke coming in, and I don’t smell it now. But if it isn’t garrisoned, why hasn’t some passing boatman robbed the tavern?”
“Because no one who’s come here has left,” Winna said.
“Werlic,” Aspar agreed, scanning the buildings.
“Maybe there’s a greffyn here,” Stephen said.
“Maybe,” he conceded. “There was one with the monks back at Grim’s Gallows.” He didn’t mention that it had avoided him.
“I’m going down the waterfront,” he decided. “You two follow and keep me in sight, but not too close. If a greffyn’s been killing boatmen, we ought to find their boats and bodies.”
His boots echoed hollowly as he made his way down the little street that sloped toward the river. Soon enough he made out the wooden docks. Still there. He didn’t see any boats at all. Crouching in the shadow of the last house, he peered intently at the far bank of the river. The trees came right up to the water, and nothing obviously worrisome caught his eye. He glanced back and saw Winna and Stephen, watching him nervously.
He motioned that he was going closer.
A tattered yellow wind-banner fluttered in the breeze, producing nearly the only noise as he approached the planking of the docks. The only birds he heard were quite distant.
Which was odd. Even in an empty town, there ought to be pigeons and housecrows. On the river there should be kingfishers, whirr-plungers, and egrets, even this time of year.
Instead, nothing.
Something caught his eye, then, and he dropped back into a crouch, bow ready, but he couldn’t identify what he’d seen. Something subtle, a weird play of light.
And the scent of autumn in his nostrils that always meant death was near.
Slowly, he began to back up, because he could feel something now, something hiding just beneath the skin of the world.