“Oh, for Hoiran’s sake, Ringil. Act your age.”
Their voices were rising again. Ringil made an effort.
“Listen Mother, Kaad hates me for what I am. There’s no way to change that. And he’s up to his eyes in whatever’s going on inside Etterkal. Sooner or later, we would have collided. And to be honest with you I’d rather that happened face-to-face than that I had to walk about waiting for a knife in the back instead.”
“So you say. But this is not helping to find Sherin.”
“Perhaps you have an alternative strategy?”
And to that, as he well knew, Ishil had no reply.
LATER, IN THE LIBRARY, HE WROTE BY CANDLELIGHT, FOLDED AND SEALED the parchment, and addressed it to Shalak. The boy came to find him, stood twitchily in the gloom outside the fall of the candle’s glow. Ringil handed him the letter.
“I don’t suppose you read, do you?”
The boy chortled. “No, my lord. That’s for clerks.”
“Yes, and couriers sometimes.” Ringil sighed. “Very well. You see this? It says Shalak Kalarn. Shalak. You can remember that?”
“Of course, my lord. Shalak.”
“He doesn’t open early, but he lives above the shop. There’s a stairway at the back, you reach it through an alley on the right. Go at first light, wake him up if necessary. He’s got to find someone for me, and it may take him the day.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Ringil considered the boy. He was a sketch in untried eagerness, sharp-featured and not yet grown into his adolescent’s frame. The arms and shoulders lacked muscle, he stood awkwardly, but you could see he was going to be tall. Ringil supposed that in a couple of years he’d be fetching enough in a lanky, street-smart sort of fashion.
“How old are you, Deri?”
“Thirteen, sir. Fourteen next spring.”
“Quite young to be in service in the Glades.”
“Yes, sir. My father’s a stable manager at Alannor House. I was recommended.” A quick jag of pride. “Youngest retainer on the whole Eskiath estate, sir.”
Ringil smiled at the boast. “Not quite.”
“No, I am, my lord. Swear to it.”
Ringil’s smile leached away. He didn’t like being lied to. “There’s a girl down in the kitchens who’s not much more than half your age, Deri.”
“No, sir. Can’t be, I’m the youngest.” Still buoyed up on the pride, maybe, Deri grinned. “I know all the kitchen girls, sir. No one that young down there.”
Ringil sat up abruptly, let his arm drop onto the table. Flat thump of the impact—the inkpot and sealing wax jumped with it. The boy flinched. Shadows from the eddied candle flame scuttled over the walls of books.
“Deri, you keep this up, you’re going to make me angry. I saw this girl with my own eyes. This morning, early, first thing. She served me tea in the lower kitchen. She was tending the cauldron fires.”
Silence stiffened in the library gloom. Deri’s lower lip worked, his eyes flickered about like small, trapped animals. Ringil looked at him, knew the truth when he saw it, and suddenly, out of nowhere, he felt a cold hand walk up his spine and into the roots of his hair. His gaze slipped, off the boy’s face and past his shoulder, into the darkened corner of the room where the shadows from the candle seemed to have settled.
“You don’t know this girl?” he asked quietly.
Deri hung his head, mumbled something inaudible.
“Speak up.” The chill put a hard, jumpy edge on his voice.
“I . . . said I’m sorry, my lord. Didn’t mean to gainsay you, nothing like that. Just, I’ve never seen a girl so young working in this house.” Deri stumbled over words in his haste to get them out. “Maybe it’s, I mean, ’course, you must be right, my lord, and I’m wrong. ’Course. Just never seen her, that’s all. That’s all I meant.”
“So maybe she’s just new, and you’ve missed meeting her.”
Deri swallowed. “That’s it, my lord. Exactly. Must have.”
The look in his eyes denied every word.
Ringil nodded, firm and a little exaggerated, as if to a suddenly acquired audience beyond the ring of candlelight.
“All right, Deri. You can go. First light to Ekelim, remember.”
“Yes, my lord.” The boy shot out of the door, as if tugged on string.
Ringil gave it another moment, then looked elaborately around the shadowed chamber and settled himself back into his chair.
“I could use another flagon of tea,” he said loudly, into the empty air.
No response. But memory of the conversation with his mother in the kitchens draped itself over the nape of his neck like folds of cold, damp linen.
Not in front of the servants, eh?
What’s that supposed to mean?
And the girl, no longer there. Materializing once more, only when Ishil was gone and he was alone.
Could you not creep up on me like that, please.
He waited, frowning and watching the almost imperceptible tremor of shadows across the spines of books on the shelves around him. Then, finally, he mastered the crawling sensation on the nape of his neck, leaned swiftly forward, and blew out the candle. He sat in the parchment-odored darkness, and listened to himself breathe.
“I’m waiting,” he said.
But the girl, if she was listening, did not come.
Nor, at this juncture, did anything else.
CHAPTER 12
Faileh Rakan’s find:
A tangled muss of graying chestnut hair, face lined with hardship more than age, and frightened eyes that tracked the Throne Eternal uniforms as they prowled about her or stood and examined their weapons as if they might soon need use. Her hands were scabbed and scraped and still bled in a couple of places, coarse contrast with a worked gold band on one of her fingers. Her lips had cracked during her privation; now they trembled with half-voiced mutterings, and she cradled her own right arm in the left as if it were a nursing infant. Her clothing stank.
“She’s not injured,” said Rakan bluntly. “It’s some kind of shock.”
“You don’t say.”
They had her draped in a horse blanket and seated on a double-folded tent groundsheet in the angle of two shattered low stone walls, pretty much all that was left of a harbor storage shed smashed apart by whatever energies had gotten loose during the attack. The timbers remaining at the least wrecked corner were charred back to angled, black stumps above the woman’s head—Archeth thought involuntarily of a gallows. The ghost-reek of burning still hung in the air. She glanced around reflexively.
“Where’s the invigilator?”
“His holiness has retired to camp,” Rakan said tonelessly. He nodded up the slope of emptied buildings and rubble piles. “In the main market square with the rest of the men. He left before we found her, said it was important that he go to pray for us. It is getting dark, of course.”
It was elaborately done, in true Yhelteth fashion. The captain’s dark, crop-bearded face stayed inexpressive as tanned leather. There was just the hint of creasing in the lines around the jet eyes to match the momentary contempt in the last few syllables he’d spoken.
Archeth took it and ran with it, met Rakan’s eyes and nodded. “Then let’s keep him up there. No sense in disturbing his prayers for something like this, right? I can ask any questions we need answering right here.”
“We’ve already tried questioning her, milady.” The captain leaned in closer, as if to demonstrate something, and the ragged woman flinched back. “Not getting any sense out of her at all. Tried to feed her, too, but she’ll only take water. I guess we could—”
“Thank you, Captain. I think I’ll take it from here.”
Rakan shrugged. “Suit yourself, milady. I need to get a picket organized for the camp, just in case we have visitors tonight. I’ll leave you a couple of men. Bring her up to camp when you’re done, we’ll try to feed her again.” He nodded up past the charred timberwork at the sky. “Best if you don’t take too long. Like the invigilator said, going to be dark soon.”