Then there was the matter of Xulai herself. Her people were grieving, the old woman most seriously. She had not been at meals recently, though of course, the others may have taken her food. He decided to make a quick call upon her, which he did, taking the message.
He found Oldwife Gancer much worse than he had feared: pallid, weak, so deeply troubled as to be incapable of caring for herself. He told the women, Precious Wind and Nettie Lean, that he had a message for her to be delivered privately, and they agreed, reluctantly, to leave him alone with her.
“Oldwife Gancer,” he said. “I have a message from Xulai.”
“Who’re you?” she grated.
“Someone Xulai trusted,” he said. “Someone who could receive messages without other people knowing. Can you read, lady?”
“Of course I can read,” she said. “All us folk at Woldsgard were schooled!”
“The message is delicate, be careful with it, don’t tear it.”
She took it in her cupped hand, drawing herself up in surprise, her eyes alight. “Why, it’s one of those pigeon things! Duke Justinian was always sending off those things. Many’s the times I’ve sat in the loft with him and Xulai watching those birds . . .”
She took it from his hand and unrolled it carefully with trembling hands, turning it until it was right-side up. “This isn’t Xulai’s writing.”
“It’s Abasio’s writing,” he said. “The dyer. The man with the wagon.”
She was still reading, her mouth falling open. “Bear? Bear did that? Oh, why would, why . . . he was like a . . . like an uncle to her, or a big brother would have been. Why would he . . .”
“Money most likely,” said Precious Wind from the door. Her voice was bitter. “Sorry to listen, Elder Brother, but I was worried for Oldwife.”
He gestured for her to enter and shut the door behind her. “This message is secret. You must not tell anyone here about it.” He handed the message to Precious Wind. “You see what it says about the abbot.”
Oldwife cried, “That nice old man! He sent such a sweet message telling us to keep up our spirits. Why would he . . .”
Precious Wind looked up from the fragile paper, her face quite still. “I don’t imagine Elder Brother has any certain whys yet, Oldwife, or any certain whos, either. He looks to me like a troubled man who has just learned something that’s upsetting him a good deal. Why would that be, sir?”
He grimaced. “Not having known this was going on, of course. Not knowing for sure even now. And not knowing what to do. Each of us elder brothers and sisters has some departments or offices that we control as far as manpower and material allocations go. The bird loft is one of mine, ostensibly. Actually Brother Winger runs it very cleanly and simply, and I seldom have reason to question anything he does. Now he tells me he’s known of this correspondence for some years! Though he works hard at giving the impression of an unschooled and ignorant man, I have had my doubts about that. I’ve suspected for years he reads everything, but he’s never said a word about it until now. I find what he tells me more troubling than I can say. From what Xulai told us about the duchess, she is a very evil woman. I cannot imagine why the abbot would have anything to do with someone like that, especially since she apparently has evil designs upon the Duke of Wold, who has been a friend of the abbey for decades. Why, this abbey maintains Netherfields. It is this abbey that guards the graves of Wold!”
“Who puts an abbot in power?” asked Precious Wind.
“We all do, all of us, elder brothers and sisters. It is an election.”
“How many of you?”
“A hundred or so, not all of them working here at the abbey, of course.”
“So getting them all together secretly wouldn’t be possible, would it?”
“Getting any ten of them together secretly would be impossible,” he said. “And before I even tried, I’d have to have real evidence, not just a note alleging things. You know, various of us do things in the abbot’s name. Because something is addressed to the abbot, it doesn’t mean he necessarily sees it. If Abasio were to come back here, with the girl, she might know more about it, she could give evidence, but . . . I don’t even know how to reach him.”
“And he wouldn’t bring her back here for anything,” said Oldwife through her teeth. “She wouldn’t be safe here, and that Abasio, he’ll keep her safe. That’s one thing I know is true. He’ll keep her safe. He loves her, that’s why. I saw his face, I did. He loves her. Don’t even know if he knows it yet, but I know it!”
“Do you think the abbot was alone or a part of this conspiracy, I mean, here in the abbey?” asked Precious Wind. “Or someone else, using his name?”
He shook his head. “Who knows? I don’t keep track of him, who he sees, who he talks to most. I know almost everything goes through the prior.”
“Maybe she promised him Netherfields,” Precious Wind offered.
“The abbey already has Netherfields, or will, when the duke passes on. I have the documents on file! He willed Netherfields to us years ago!”
Precious Wind put her hand upon his shoulder. “Then maybe she promised him the duke would pass on sooner. Sir, forgive me, but you seem out of your depth here. I have some knowledge of conspiracies and their ilk. Will you let me help you? Will you let it go for now and do nothing?”
“I was going to send someone to that tower, to see if there were copies of messages or originals from the Old Dark House . . .”
“You know what tower it is?”
“I’m assuming it’s the closest one, northwest of here at the crest of the slope. There’s a fairly well-used track through the woods near there. We cut timber in that area, though we don’t go all the way to the crest as that is Altamont land.”
“Well, let it wait for now. Xulai served as a representative of the Tingawan ambassador and his daughter. In a sense, I, too, have that representation. I have a duty both to him and to the Duke of Wold. Since Bear and Xulai are both gone, I need to consult with our embassy and with Prince Orez about what we should do next.
“I have been given a location within a day or so of the abbey where I can meet a person associated with our embassy, or more properly, a person who knows a person associated with our embassy. I’m going to go ask for advice. I’m fairly sure I’ll be told to stay here, awaiting further events, but there may be some useful suggestions or information. It may be suggested that we simply go on to Merhaven, since Xulai knew that was our eventual destination. On my way back, I’ll check the tower myself.
“So, until I return, please, don’t do anything at all! There may be some innocent explanation and bothering the elders may prove unnecessary. By the way, how does one go about making an appointment with the abbot?”
“Oh, you’d go through the prior’s office. Everything goes through the prior. Messages, requests, orders, all that. Our dear abbot would work himself to death if the prior didn’t take some of the load away.” Wordswell gave her a look that was half-gratitude and half-confusion, his habitual mode of thought betraying that even yet he had not considered the full implications of what they had been saying. He pressed her hand in departure.
That night, amid the crowd after supper, she saw the prior and asked him if he could arrange an appointment with the abbot.
“I’m leaving the abbey for four or five days. When something like Xulai’s disappearance happens, I have a protocol to follow as a representative of the ambassador, and I don’t want anyone to worry over my absence or misinterpret it.”
“A protocol?” mused the prior. “Is it anything we can help you with?”
“No, Elder Brother. I am merely required to report things like this in person.”
“I can offer our birds . . .”
“You have no birds to reach the person I must meet. In fact, I do not know the person’s name. I know only that I have been told to go to a certain place where someone will recognize me and they will tell me where to go from there.”
“Somewhere a few days
from here. Now that is curious.”
“Isn’t it! My people seem sometimes to make a fetish of—what should one call it? I hate to call it secrecy. ‘Discretion’ is perhaps the better term. They believe that important things should be discussed quietly by those who need to make important decisions rather than by a hundred voices in as many different places. It does give us less to talk about.” She smiled at him, her most winning smile, practiced until it looked totally genuine.
“Well, if that is all it is, I can tell the abbot you’re going.”
“Protocol again, Elder Brother. I am required to tell him myself. I will have to tell my contact that I, personally, have told the abbot of Wilderbrook Abbey that I have gone and for what reason. In that way, we maintain a chain of information. The abbot will know I have gone; I will know that he knows because I have told him face-to-face; my contact will know because I have told him I have done so; the person my contact informs will know that all this has been done because I will tell him, face-to-face; and so on. We are not allowed to say, ‘But I told so-and-so to tell someone else.’ No offense meant, Elder Brother.”
He mused, managing with some effort to achieve the appearance of someone truly intrigued by a new idea. “Not allowed. Well, indeed! Remarkable. When I think how many times I have told someone to tell someone else to do something that needs doing, and that person claims never to have heard a word about it! A chain of information. What a very good idea!” He turned away, smiling secretly to himself. His chief work in the abbey, as he saw it, was to make sure that the abbot did not know nine-tenths of what went on and that no chain of information ever connected to himself.
It turned out the abbot was available. Precious Wind spent three minutes with him, explaining what she had called the chain of information.
“Four or five days,” he said, nodding. “Well, I hope you have an enjoyable ride and get some help. I’m very disturbed by this whole matter.” He was, in fact, even more disturbed by the “chain of information” idea, which Precious Wind had somehow managed to explain two or three times during a very brief meeting. It had made him realize, quite suddenly, that most of what he knew about the abbey came to him from others, and this had led him to a related, very disturbing thought: What I know about my abbey is told to me by others, or perhaps it is not told to me by others when it should be! What is there that I do not know?
“If I had been the abbot,” Precious Wind informed Oldwife, “I think I’d have been more interested in knowing who was to be told that someone rather important to Tingawa had been abducted from my abbey. I got the impression he was very distracted about something else.”
Early next morning, she packed a few things in her saddlebags, tied on several anonymous bundles, put her bow and half a dozen arrows in their case, picked the liveliest of the Wold horses from the stables, and went out into the yard. She made a slight detour along the stable where the abbey horses were kept and noted the uniform sets of tack and saddles outside the stalls. Most of the abbey’s horses, she imagined, were with the troops, wherever they were stationed, but still there were a few hundred riding animals and as many heavy horses to haul wagons. When she arrived at the gate, she bid the guards good morning and asked what the procedure was for using an abbey horse.
“Some elder brother or sister signs the chit, and that’s it,” she was told.
She rode out to the road that led toward Benjobz Inn. Since the inn was at least four days’ ride away and she had said she’d be back in more or less that time, since she had made people as suspicious of her journey as possible, she felt it likely she would be followed. Someone would want to know who in the wild forest and valleys north of the abbey was getting information from this Tingawan woman. Evading followers would be no problem. Secretly finding out what they had been told to do might be more difficult.
Midafternoon, having stopped along the way no more than was necessary, she started searching the road for fresh hoofprints. About a mile farther on she found a well-traveled track coming in from the left and fresh hoof marks continuing north. All those would hide the fact that she was leaving the road. She took her own horse off to the right, then went back to erase the few prints that might have interested followers. Leading the horse across the grasses, she went back into the forest to find a lookout, a fairly comfortable branch halfway up a large nut tree that gave her a view some miles back the way she had come. She shared the nuts and some fruit from her saddlebags with a tribe of squirrels, staying aloft long enough to make her think she might have misjudged the situation. She was about to climb down when she saw three horsemen coming far more briskly than necessary this late in the day. As they topped a hill, the foremost among them galloped ahead, reined in, and stood tall in his stirrups to see as far ahead as he could. At the distance it was hard to be sure, but the tack and saddles looked very much like those issued by the abbey.
Well and well, she thought. If those aren’t followers they are giving a very fair impression of such. She climbed down, stood quietly beside her horse, which was busy dining on grass, and waited until hooves had passed and faded into silence down the road before she returned to the road herself.
She stayed well behind until dark, then stopped and walked on along the roadside, leading the horse, looking for a campfire. Considering the fresh hoofprints she had found, they might have found someone else’s camp where they could stop. Or, she hoped, they might have given up that idea and built one of their own.
Not much later she saw the fire in a sheltered dell off to the left. She picketed the horse between two trees near two huge stones—a landmark she could not miss even in the dark—before making her way toward the flame. She slipped among the trees until she found one to stand behind where she could see three men and three unsaddled horses tied to a picket line near a campfire.
The trees were good cover; she could get close enough to hear.
There had been some mumbling as she approached. She arrived in time to hear a speech from a hulking man, weighty in the arms and shoulders, barefaced but with a heavy mop of black hair. “So, Jun, whut I dunget is wat’s the dif we killer r’not. Ol Pry Eye, he wans rid of her, alri’. Why we got to fine sumplace to keep her livin’?”
“He says she knows stuff. Mebbe he needs to talk to her. So we find ’er, we grab ’er, we haul ’er off someplace, I dunno where, tie ’er to a tree, mebbe. We come ever couple days ’n’ feed ’er. Prior, he says it won’ take but a day, mebbe two, an’ he’ll com ast questions.”
The one called Jun was taller than the others. When he turned his head, she saw his face profiled against the light. Knobby nose, thin lips, scant brows, long light hair pulled back and tied with a thin band of something, maybe a thong of leather. She would know him again.
The youngest one spoke. “Didy say we cudd’n have some fun wit’er?” He was only a spotty-faced youth, but he had that same knobby nose and thin lips. Jun’s son, perhaps? Or nephew? Definitely at the age when women’s bodies occupied a very large share of male mental capacity, if one were not a Tingawan.
“Shut, Jamis,” said Jun. “We do whut the prior says. He pays us better’n most. He allus has. When he says kill’m, we kill’m. When he sez no, thas whutty means, is no. When he gives a man gold, that man stays bought! If he don’t stay bought, he’s usual dead inna day or so.”
“But you tole me I cud kill the nex wun! I wuz jus—”
“I said mebbe an’ I know what you wuz jus. You’re s’pose to be hep, n’that means you do zackly whut I say do when I say do and you don’ kill nobody ’less I say so.”
Precious Wind slipped back into the trees to think it over. She had hoped Bear could not have been implicated in the business of Xulai’s abduction because he had not had time to meet anyone who could have, in the words of the trio by the fire, made him “stay bought.” Bear had not needed to meet anyone, however. The “anyone” had met him. The prior. The prior who took all the abbot’s messages, all his letters, who screened those who saw him a
nd those who didn’t. When had he turned Bear around? Bear hadn’t mentioned questioning the prior himself about the money Justinian had sent, but that did not mean Bear had not done so! He might well have done so that first night. Before Xulai had explained about Mirami to the abbot the next morning. Was that the real reason for Bear’s annoyance at Xulai during that meeting? Anyone conspiring with Mirami or her people would not want her history so concisely spelled out.
Now she faced an ethical dilemma: what should one do about three men who killed other people when paid to do so? It would be far better if they were no longer available to the gentleman who had sent them, but it would also be better if that gentleman did not know what had happened to them. Oh, no. If they turned up dead, that would look very odd to the gentleman. Almost suspicious. Far better if it didn’t work out that way.
She sat quietly, waiting until the fire burned down, until the blanket-wrapped bundles made only sleeping noises, then slipped silently into their camp carrying a single tightly sealed vial. Each man had a water flask. One by one, she uncorked them, dropped in a pinch of powder from the vial, then restored the corks. The men had no other water with them. In the morning, or even during the night, they would drink water from their flasks. The thin man would wake first. Then the bulky one. The young one last. Boys his age slept long.
The herb she had used was called Y’kwem, a small, inconspicuous trailing plant with minuscule yellow blossoms. It grew in a few places in the Ten Thousand Islands and nowhere else that she knew of. Ingesting the powdered root had the effect of reinforcing personal characteristics. The peaceful became more passive. The kindly became saints. The amusing became hilarious. The killer became a slaughterer. The herbalist who had taught Precious Wind had said, “Those who drink Y’kwem become wagons without brakes, laden with stone, each at the top of his personal hill.” The word “kwem” meant “halter” or “brake” or “restraint.” The prefix meant simply “without.” No chain, no barrier, nothing in the way. Free to do as their own natures dictated. Heedless children were sometimes referred to as y’kwem.