Suddenly she was silent, listening, head cocked to one side. She mouthed "keep talking" at Gerik, then slipped off her boots. Three long-legged strides took her to the door. With one hand she jerked it open, with the other she jerked the listener outside into the chamber.
It was Gerik's sister Rubina.
She was well grown for a girl of not yet twelve, and would probably be taller than her sister Eskaia when she reached womanhood. Right now, however, she was as helpless as a kitten in Bertsa Wylum's grip. Wylum might be past forty, but she had come to the manor from a sergeancy under Floria Desbarres, and had fought in more campaigns than Gerik had years.
"How long were you listening?" Gerik asked his sister, to keep Wylum from erupting like a geyser.
"Awhile," Rubina said. She met her brother's eyes glower for glower. "I must have made a noise when I heard the part about the geese. It was other children, friends of Milnoran's. Pel Orvot caught him poaching on the fish pond and threw a stone at him. It hit and cut his forehead. Milnoran's, I mean."
"I doubt that Pel Orvot could throw a stone in a circle like the plains riders," Wylum said, obviously holding in laughter. "I also doubt that you should be spying on your brother's meetings with me."
"If he isn't bedding you, and you're just talking about war, why shouldn't I know?" Rubina said.
This time Gerik had the rare pleasure of actually seeing Bertsa Wylum lose her self-command. She laughed until she had to put her head in her hands to keep the tears from streaming down her cheeks.
By then, Rubina was addressing her brother. "I don't know about doing the spying myself, but I know about Pel Orvot's geese because I listen to the other children. They listen to their friends. Everything said to one child spreads all over the manor in a day or two."
Gerik frowned, "So you'd use your friends as spies without their knowing it?" he asked sternly.
"That's the best way. A spy who doesn't know that she's a spy can't tell anybody anything if she's caught."
"You know that could-you could lose friends, that way," Gerik said. Rubina was so longheaded in so many ways that it was sometimes hard to remember she was not yet a woman. All three children of Tirabot Manor had grown up with friends ranging from the swineherd's daughter to the steward's five nephews. Rubina was now offering to throw all this away.
"You are offering this, to help defend the manor?" Wylum said.
"Of course. I haven't quarreled with anybody. Yet," Rubina added. "It's never a really honorable thing to do. So I wouldn't do it unless it was going to be life or death for us. I thought you would know how matters stand, and what is honorable when they are at their worst." This last sentence took in both Gerik and the guard captain.
"May the gods spare us the need for you to sacrifice friendships on the altar of necessity," Wylum said. Gerik had been trying to put a similar thought into words, but realized that he had been hopelessly outmatched in eloquence. He merely nodded, then rose and gave Rubina a brotherly hug.
"Thank you for offering," he said. "Meanwhile, don't be listening at my door again. People might see you, then think you knew secrets. Our enemies would-"
"Try to carry me off and torture me for the secrets?" Rubina said. "If you gave me that dagger Mother won't let me have, I could be sure they wouldn't learn anything."
Gerik knew that Rubina was in dead earnest, and swore to strangle Bertsa Wylum if she so much as smiled. Instead the guard captain reached down into her boot and pulled out a dwarf-bladed dagger with leather bindings on the hilt that had a Kagonesti flavor.
"Try this one for its fit in your hand," she said, handing the dagger hilt-first to Rubina. "A friend of mine about your size left it to me, after she died."
"In battle?" Rubina asked.
"Yes. And if you're so curious about battles, I'll tell you a few tales. But only if you practice with this dagger for ten days. Your oath on it?"
Rubina swore by a number of gods, including some that Gerik did not approve of her knowing about. Then she departed, with more ceremony but no less speed than at her entrance.
"Warrior blood runs true," Wylum muttered. Gerik pretended not to have heard her.
"Is there anything else today, good sir?" the woman asked. It was a title that they had adopted for Gerik because she refused to use his given name and he refused to be called "lord."
"No." Gerik looked at the water clock in the corner of his chamber. That and the shadows on the floor told him twilight was near. "I am dining with Lady-with our guest Ellysta tonight, in her chamber," he said.
Something suspiciously like a cough escaped Wylum. "At her invitation?"
"At her invitation. Brought by Serafina and Shumeen," he added, remembering his father's words about being completely honest with his captains.
This time Wylum laughed. "Has Serafina ever-? No, I won't ask. You would be honor-bound not to tell."
If the question was what Gerik thought it was, the answer would have been "no." The wife of his father's old comrade was not yet thirty, and a very handsome woman. But she had never cast any encouraging looks his way and he would have been honor-bound not to even acknowledge them if she had, let alone talk about it afterward.
Besides, he was not such an innocent in the matter of women as Bertsa Wylum seemed to think. But if he tried to persuade her of that, they would be arguing over the ale until well past the time that Ellysta expected him in her chamber!
It had to be getting dark outside, Horimpsot Elderdrake thought. He'd been crouched here in the rafters by the chimney more than long enough for that.
Not long enough to hear what he wanted to hear, though.
None of these bumbling, drunken fools would say a word about being ghost-riders, or hiring them, or knowing who they were or who hired them! None of them!
Oh, they talked all around the ghost-riding, and one of them said something about children who could be frightened into telling tales by haunting their elders' farms. That made Elderdrake say things that would have singed the man's beard down to the jawbone if the kender had been a wizard. He tried to put the man's face firmly into his mind, but it kept getting confused with five or six other men with stubbly brown beards, red faces, and bald spots on their heads.
He’d begun to have the feeling that kender had as much trouble telling humans apart as humans did with kender.
He also began to feel a bit more warmth along his back and at the seat of his breeches than was comfortable. Warmth that hadn't been there just a little while back, and they hadn't built up the fire enough to make that much of a difference-
"Yeeoooohhhh!"
Elderdrake screeched in surprise and pain. Sparks flying through gaps in the ancient chimney had set fire to the thatch of the roof, the straw in the loft, and his own coat and breeches!
He swung on the rafters until he thumped back and his bullocks hit hard against the underside of the roof. That look care of the fire on Elderdrake's clothes.
It also served to spread it to dry, hitherto untouched thatch, and to draw the gaze of every man below who hadn't already looked up when the kender's screech tore at their ears.
Fortunately for both sides, no one had a bow within easy reach. Archery within the old farmhouse would probably have ended the life of both Elderdrake and several of the men. Everybody instead drew knives or scrambled for longer blades in scabbards hung comfortably well aside by men with serious drinking to do.
While the men were scrambling, Horimpsot Elderdrake was running.
He ran out the open door, turned hard to the left in case arrows, spears, or throwing knives were following him out the door, then remembered something he'd forgotten. To the left was a steep slope, dropping to the edge of the forest.