A thought occurred to me like a burst of lightning on a dark night. “I don’t want coin as a reward, but there is something I would ask.…”
“Of course,” the gypsy said, his eyes flashing with triumphant cynicism.
“I want you to tell me all about Twentyfamilies gypsies and halfbreeds,” I said. “I want you to tell me how you came to the Land and everything you can remember about where you came from before that. And I want you to paint that mark you wear on my arm and tell me what it means and how you came to use it.”
The man looked at me in blank astonishment. “Only Twentyfamilies bear that mark.…”
Maire prodded his arm. “She knows that, fool. Can’t you see she means to pass herself off as one?”
The man’s eyes widened in disbelief. Then he gave me a narrow stare. “You would play a dangerous game, girl. Do you know that Twentyfamilies are by lore permitted to kill impostors?”
“How should anyone know me for an impostor with such marks and these clothes?”
He smiled. “I would know.”
I ignored that. “There is another thing. I also want to know about ‘swallow.’ ”
His brows shot up. “Who told you of Swallow? Did Iriny speak his name in her delirium?”
So Swallow was a person. I had not expected that. I ignored the question, because answering it would reveal the extent of my ignorance. Instead, I gave them both a challenging look. “Do you agree with my conditions?”
After a long tense moment, the man gave an unsmiling nod.
The old woman touched my hand. “Bring her safe to us and you shall have what you want. Better still, you shall meet Swallow if you wish it.”
The man made a negating gesture, then shrugged. “So be it. But do not bring Iriny here when you come.”
“Where, then?”
He frowned in thought. “Sometimes the best way to hide a leaf is in a forest. Do you know the main gypsy green?”
I nodded.
“Bring her there, then. That is where we will wait for you.”
I nodded and walked away down a lane without a backward glance. As soon as I was out of their sight, I threw a full coercive cloak about me and sent a farsense probe to detect anyone who followed.
Only then did I dare to relax and allow myself to feel relieved at having all but completed my appointed task.
With some effort, for I was not yet much recovered, I farsought Matthew using an attuned probe. It located him at the safe house, and I felt a surge of relief. Perhaps the streak of bad luck that had dogged us since leaving Obernewtyn was over.
17
I ARRIVED BACK at the safe house to see the rebel Reuvan mounting a tan mare. I was taken aback to recognize the horse as one that had come to Obernewtyn for refuge the previous wintertime.
“Greetings, ElspethInnle,” the mare sent, her dark-flecked eyes solemn.
“Greetings, Halda,” I responded, concealing my surprise.
Ever since Brydda’s beloved mount, Sallah, had chosen to remain with him after he set her free, animals would occasionally come to Obernewtyn claiming that Sallah had sent them and asking for Avra, mistress of the Beastguild. Most would remain only a short time, supposedly to be trained to live in the wild, before going out into the vast mountain wilderness.
Alad, the Beastspeaking guildmaster, was convinced that some were trained in a different sort of survival and sent back to Sallah. He believed she was the leader of a lowland arm of the Beastguild and a sort of animal network of spies, organizing their own rescues or sabotages.
I had thought this unlikely, but seeing Halda made me wonder, for she had been one of the equines who supposedly had gone into the wild.
Reuvan had not noticed my approach, so I coughed to get his attention. When he turned, the flesh was bloodless beneath his tan.
“What is it?” I demanded, wondering if there was ever to be a moment in Sutrium unmarred by disaster.
“Idris is missing,” he answered in a hoarse voice. “Brydda sent me to see if he had come here.”
“Was he sent here?”
The seaman shook his head and took up the rein. “I must go. There are other places he might have gone if he was injured. Brydda asked me to try them all.”
“Can I help?” I asked.
Reuvan appeared not to hear me. He lifted his hand in a distracted farewell gesture and urged Halda on.
I hurried upstairs and into the kitchen.
“Where have you been?” Kella cried, jumping to her feet.
Matthew rose, too, his face pale and set. “Idris …”
I nodded wearily. “I know. I’ve just spoken to Reuvan. Did he ask you to farseek Idris?”
“It would ha’ done no good fer him to ask me to farseek anyone here. Too many minds an’ too much holocaust tainting.”
“But he would not realize that,” I said impatiently. “I suppose he was too distracted. I’ll try.”
I shaped a probe to Idris’s mind-set, but since I had never farsought him before, I did not know his exact mind signature, which meant it was not a strongly defined probe. Forced to compete with the miasmic static rising from the sea and the river, and from various areas of the city, I had no great hopes of locating him.
I opened my eyes and shook my head. “I didn’t find him, but I’m still weak from the business this afternoon.” In fact, though I did not say it, I felt as if all my energy were being siphoned away through some secret channel. I forced myself to concentrate.
“Did Reuvan say how Idris disappeared?”
“Apparently, he dinna come back two nights ago from some errand he had been sent on,” Matthew said.
This puzzled me. Reuvan had seemed dreadfully upset considering Idris had been missing so short a time.
“Greetings, ElspethInnle,” Maruman sent.
The old cat was curled on a blanket beside the hearth. I went to kneel beside him and warmed my hands at the fire. “I am tired,” I sent.
He turned one flaring yellow eye to me, and for a fleeting moment, there was a mindless emptiness in it. Then his gaze sharpened. “You are tired because your body heals its hurts. This is a place/barud where there is much hurting. No matter. Soon we will leave.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Soon we/you will go far away. Very far …” His eye was cloudy again. I felt a surge of alarm at the thought that the old cat was on the verge of another fit of madness. Yet he had recently returned from a period of wandering madness, and the attacks did not usually happen in such quick succession. Perhaps he was simply tired. Lud knew that could make you a little mad.
“I/Maruman am weary,” the cat sent as if to confirm my thoughts. “The H’rayka searches in the dreamtrails of ElspethInnle, and I have fought many battles to guard the way.”
Abruptly, I was wide awake.
“Maruman, who/what is H’rayka?”
“H’rayka is the one who brings destruction,” the cat sent.
I felt a rush of pure terror. Atthis had told me that if I did not find the weaponmachines and disable them, another human, whose fate path twinned my own, would locate and activate them, raining a new doom on the world. She had called this person “the Destroyer.”
And now Maruman said a Destroyer was searching my dreams.
I had never considered that the Destroyer might be someone I would have to confront. I had seen our search for the weaponmachines as a sort of parallel race. Surely Atthis would have warned me if this person was hunting me.
Another possibility occurred to me. What if Maruman was trying to tell me that the Destroyer had begun searching not for me but for the weaponmachines? This seemed far more likely.
Suddenly I was more angry than scared. If the Destroyer was searching for the weaponmachines, why was I wasting time in Sutrium?
Why hadn’t Atthis called me?
“The oldOne called,” Maruman answered my despairing thought. “You do her bidding here in barud-li.”
I stared at him. “I do t
he bidding of Maryon/tallone.”
“Maryon/tallone hears the ashling of the oldOne/speaks the oldOne’s words to Innle.”
I struggled to stay calm. “Are you … are you saying Atthis sent a dream to Maryon to make me come to Sutrium?”
“A path forms itself like snow in the high valley of the barud,” Maruman sent dreamily. “First there is this piece of coldwhite and that piece, and they are alone and nothing. But soon they join and cover the earth.”
The obliqueness of his answer exasperated me, for past experience told me this was his way of indicating that he was sick of a subject. Any further questions would be met with increasingly obscure answers.
The old cat gave me a sly look, then curled to sleep.
I tried reading his subconscious thoughts but could not penetrate the drifting mists of distortion.
I sat back on my heels and stared into the fire.
Could it be true that Atthis has sent Maryon’s visions? If so, then the need to return the gypsy to her people must be somehow connected to my secret quest to find and destroy the weaponmachines. Or perhaps the return of the gypsy had been nothing more than an excuse to get me to Sutrium. Yet the deadline Maryon had given fitted with the Twentyfamilies’ departure, and I had learned, at least in part, what Swallow meant.
But why even bother to send messages through the futureteller instead of speaking to my mind directly? I had sworn to heed Atthis’s direction, so it could not be through fear that I would refuse to obey.
Yet there was a precedent. The first time Atthis summoned me had been through Maruman’s mind. In any case, if Maruman spoke the truth, I had no more cause to fret at leaving Obernewtyn or fear I would somehow miss a summons.
It struck me suddenly that rather than spending my time worrying about my destined quest, I should simply live and trust in the fates to bring me where I was needed.
I stared into the flames with a feeling of having perceived a tremendous truth.
For a moment, in spite of weariness and concern over Idris and the rebel alliance, I felt a sense of clarity and purpose such as I had not experienced since standing on the high peaks of the Agyllian Ken. It seemed that simply by existing, I fulfilled the purpose of my life.
“There is blood on your shirt,” Kella said, sounding startled.
“Some louts in the market whipped me,” I said.
“Let me see,” she commanded.
I flapped my hand for her to leave me be. “It has already been cleaned and treated—by a gypsy herb lorist.”
In a tired way, I enjoyed the amazement on their faces. I let them speculate a moment before telling them what had happened—leaving out the gypsy’s kiss. It shamed me to think of it. Nor did I complicate matters by telling them about the triple Guanette bird design or the mysterious Swallow.
But what I did tell them was enough to have them all agog.
“When will ye take her to them?” Matthew asked.
“When Kella says it is safe for her to travel. After that business with Dragon in the market, all the eyes in every rat hole and cranny of the city will be peeled for gypsies, so even if she was able to move now, I’d wait a day or so. Unfortunately, neither of us will be able to move about too easily, Matthew, and certainly not together.”
“Iriny,” Kella said. “Strange to give her a name after so long. She is sleeping naturally now, and her wounds have begun to knit nicely.”
I nodded and looked around. “Where is Dragon?”
“Sleeping still,” Kella said. “It’s not surprising. You must have had to hit her hard to knock her out right through her shield. I didn’t even know that was possible.”
The stair door slammed and Domick came in. Kella recounted the day’s events to him, but the coercer seemed more concerned about Idris than anything else.
“When did Reuvan say he was seen last?” he demanded.
“Last night. Or mayhap yestermorn,” Matthew said.
“He has only been missing a day and a half,” I pointed out as the coercer began to pace back and forth. “Surely this is a little soon for everyone to be panicking.”
“Did ye try farseekin’ him?” Domick demanded.
“I did, but I could not find him. It was an unfocused probe, though, and there’s a lot of static in the city; he could be in a blank spot. Or he might just be sleeping. You know it is much harder to find a sleeping mind even with an attuned probe.”
“He might also be dead,” Domick murmured.
I glared at him. “Do you take pleasure in being so miserable and hopeless?”
His hard eyes met mine. “In suggesting Idris is dead, I offer hope. If he is not, he may very well wish he were.”
“Wh-what?” Kella gasped faintly.
“None of you seems to have grasped what Idris’s disappearance may mean,” Domick said. “If someone has him and questions him, he will be made to tell all he knows.…”
“The safe house,” Kella whispered, lifting a hand to her lips. “He knows where it is and all about us.”
“He knows everything about Brydda and the rebels, too,” Domick reminded us brusquely.
I groaned, seeing more than that. “Lud save us. He knows about Obernewtyn!”
“He’d nivver give us away,” Matthew said stoutly.
Domick turned a bleak look on the Farseeker ward, and suddenly they seemed decades apart in age.
“You don’t have any idea, do you? Faced with a skilled torturer, you or I, even Rushton, would tell all. And Idris is a boy. Make no mistakes—if those who have him want information, he will tell them everything he knows.”
18
AFTER A HEATED discussion, we decided not to abandon the safe house immediately but to wait until first light in the hope that Idris would be found. At the coercer’s urging, we spent the night packing Kella’s precious store of herbs and her healing implements into woven boxes.
When we were almost finished, Kella went to wake Dragon so that she could apply the skin dye. After the incident at the market, we dared not let her remain undisguised.
Domick took out a city map, which showed the location of the nearest green.
“I wish you would reconsider,” he said.
“I wish you would stop suggesting it,” I snapped.
The coercer wanted us to go directly to Obernewtyn to alert Rushton and evacuate the valley. I had argued against doing anything so drastic before we had clarified exactly what the rebels knew of Idris’s disappearance. After all, Reuvan had not suggested there was any danger to us or to the safe house.
Kella pointed out that he might have been too distraught to think of warning us. “He seemed almost dazed when he left the safe house.”
I was sure that Brydda would have sent someone to warn us if there was any need and had said so, arguing that we could lose ourselves quickly and easily in the morning bustle of traders moving into their places at the markets. If we stole away in the night, someone was certain to report it. We had agreed to go to the nearest green, where we would wait and watch. If there was no raid on the safe house, we would return to it after a while; if there was a raid or any suspicious activity at all, Matthew would ride at once to warn Obernewtyn, and the rest of us would follow in the rig.
“You must go back to Obernewtyn, too, if the safe house is lost to us,” Domick told Kella as she rinsed dye from her fingers.
“What about you?”
“I will stay at an inn as Mika.”
“I will stay with you,” she said stubbornly.
“Mika has no bondmate, and I don’t want you connected with him in case something goes wrong and he has to disappear.”
Kella blinked hard at his peremptory tone, then turned away to pull the last of her dried herbs down from the wall racks. His words reminded me of something else.
“Domick, didn’t your last report mention people just vanishing without a trace in Sutrium?”
The coercer nodded.
“Maybe, whatever happened to those other people
is what happened to Idris. And since those disappearances have nothing to do with the Council, then surely we need not fear—”
“We don’t know that the Council has anything to do with them,” Domick interrupted.
“But your report—”
“Contained conjecture as well as facts. I simply said that I had heard nothing to make me think the Council was behind the disappearances. But I don’t hear everything that goes on, and sometimes the very fact that I have not means only that people have been warned to hold their tongues.” He shrugged. “There are so many factions within the Council and the soldierguard ranks, all with their own plots, and if I have learned one thing in the time I have spent here, it is that sooner or later, everything is linked to everything else.”
There was something profound in his words, which struck a note of response in me, but it was swamped by a wrenching weariness.
“You remember when we went to see Brydda the first night you got here?” Domick went on. “Reuvan came in and spoke of Salamander.”
I nodded. “You said he has something to do with the slave trade.”
“He is its leader. Salamander buys the people who disappear, and the increase in disappearances corresponds with an increase in the demand for slaves.”
“Buying them from whom?”
“The rumor is that the disappearances are the work of an organization that specializes in kidnapping or removing people for a price. I think it is likely that Salamander set it up to ensure his supply. No one in the slave trade knows what he looks like, because he is fanatical about keeping his face and identity secret. He delegates like a king to a whole herd of people and rarely appears in person. When he does, there is almost no prior warning. It has long been rumored that he is a Councilman or some other high official. No doubt he is well aware that the mystery surrounding his identity creates an atmosphere of terror and suspicion and keeps his people silent and obedient.”
“I dinna know th’ slave trade had a leader,” Matthew said.