The city had not merely accumulated, as do most cities; it had been designed. Streets lined with well-built shops and houses and stores radiated from the center of the city, joined by circular roads that spiraled inward from the four city gates. Four simultaneous processions, one entering at each point of the compass, could, and frequently did, wind their way toward the castle at the center. The castle was not a walled fortress but an architectural triumph surrounded by a paved mosaic plaza, decked with towering spires, with stained glass windows that jeweled the refracted light, with enormous bronze-sheathed doors hammered into images of Ghastain and Huold and all the mighty warriors of past times. Inside were marble floors and columns; walls hung with tapestries; furniture made of rare, fragrant woods imported in some former time, before the Sea King had stopped the ships from the east. Windows reached from floor to ceiling, flooding the rooms with light. At night, velvet curtains were drawn across them to keep out the chill. Stoves were built into the walls, and when the weather turned cold, their isinglass windows glowed with heat. All was warm in Ghastain, all were well fed in Ghastain, all were well clothed in Ghastain, all were at the service of the king. And the queen.
On this day, however, the queen was not satisfied with the service she was receiving. Her chamberlain, Chamfray, was seriously ill, and the physicians who served the king could not tell her what it was he suffered from.
“He has no fever, Your Majesty. He has no sign of illness beyond this weakness he complains off. His skin, his heart, his lungs, all appear normal. The weakness may be subjective rather than real. We have no way to test it.”
“The weakness is real,” she snapped. “I do have ways to test it. He drops things. He stumbles. He gets dizzy.”
“He is an elderly man, Your Majesty. The symptoms you describe are those of age. Age is not an illness. It is . . . simply inescapable.”
Mirami did not believe it was inescapable. She had learned as much from the Old Dark Man. She took certain drugs herself, created them herself from the sources she had been taught to use. She had given those same drugs to Chamfray. The Old Dark Man had told her the drugs were good only for the one they were designed for originally. She had not believed him at the time, but now she was concerned. She wished she had his books. Alicia had said there were no books in the Old Dark House when she went there. What could he have done with them? The secret to the drugs had been in the books; she had seen the books, seen him referring to the books when he gave her the drugs for the first time. “Only for you, lovely,” he had said. “Only because you are so beautiful.”
Mirami was well aware she had been created to be beautiful. She had often thought on the matter of beauty. What was it? Why was it? Why did one person think another beautiful, while a second person did not? Why did one person admire a view, a building, a costume, while another did not? Alicia was beautiful and she, too, had been created to be that way.
Well, Chamfray was not beautiful, but he was useful. She depended upon him. He knew everyone, all their secrets, where they were vulnerable, where pressure could be applied. He remembered everything that had ever happened to anyone. He collected stories as porcupines are said to collect fruit: he rolled in it and it stuck to him! As yet, she had found no one who could take his place. Hulix hadn’t the brain. Alicia was too . . . shut in. Closed. Though she knew Alicia was clever, very clever, she couldn’t tell what Alicia was thinking, and how could someone be trusted when one didn’t know what they were thinking? Rancitor was still a boy. He was thirty-one now, but he might always be a boy. He wasn’t interested in anything but women and hunting and leading parades. He loved to lead parades in full armor on any one of his huge horses. He loved to lead dances, especially in costume. He loved to lead young women off to bed. As his mother, she had had to dispose of some of them when her son had finished with them, daughters of influential people! A terrible accident, people had said when a body was found. She had fallen off a cliff. She had drowned. She had been trampled by horses.
Rancitor’s tastes were odd. She wondered where he had picked up such habits. None of the men Mirami had known had had such leanings. She had forbidden him to take women from the court. She had explained the dangers. A milkmaid, fine. A farmer’s daughter, fine. A servant girl, fine. Nobodies, do what you will, a bit of gold will quiet the families. But people of influence? No. She needed such people as friends. Or would soon enough, when King Gahls died.
She went to Chamfray’s room. He was lying down on a low couch near a window that looked out upon the plaza and the fountains. Men were sweeping the leaves that had blown in overnight. The day was mild and pleasant.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked with real concern.
Chamfray considered the question, moving his limbs as though testing symptoms. “Not better. No, not really. I think it’s some kind of passing thing, you know, something I’ve eaten, probably. We had that shellfish last week, remember, from Ragnibar Fjord.”
“Mussels from the coast. They were packed in ice. Hulix sent them. He said he had enjoyed them.”
“Perhaps they came a bit too far. Or the ice was bad. I’ve heard that if ice freezes from contaminated water, the ice itself is bad.”
“Contaminated?”
“Something bad in it. Something that died or was rotten. Where did Hulix get ice?”
“There are high mountains near Kamfelsgard where the ice never melts. People go up and cut great chunks of it with a saw, wrap them in straw, and haul them down the mountain. They put it in a special house at Kamfels Court, a kind of deep cellar where it stays cool, then they use it all summer to keep things cold.”
“Ah. Well it was probably the ice. An ice bear probably peed on that particular bit.”
She regarded him with something very like fondness. He wasn’t a handsome man. Too large a nose, too heavy a jaw, and terribly ungainly. But he was as dependable as the sunrise, and she admired him. The thing she most admired was that he never showed emotion about anything. It was so much easier to deal with life if one didn’t have to consider emotions. Of course, Alicia was like that, too, except for her rages. Perhaps it was a useful way to be.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked. He always wanted to know what she was thinking, what she was planning.
“Alicia. I can never tell what she’s doing or going to do next. I know she’s full of anger at the world, always has been. She was born that way. Sometimes I think the Old Dark Man made a mistake with her; there’s too much of him in her.”
Chamfray made an amused sound. “Some of me, too.”
“Some of you, some of me, some of him. Alicia doesn’t know that, though, so be sure not to—”
“I never talk to Alicia about anything. She prefers it that way,” Chamfray said.
“So do I. She gets very strange ideas. She seems to be cooperating in the family business, just as one would expect, but then she goes off on these strange tangents about totally insignificant things. Now she’s all upset over the fact there are a few Tingawan people up at the abbey. As though it mattered!”
“The princess was Tingawan.”
“Yes, she was. And what difference does that make? We own Kamfels and Altamont, we almost own the abbey, and the Thousand Islands are a thousand miles away.”
“More than that.”
She threw up her hands. “Exactly. At this time of our lives, Tingawa has nothing to do with us or our plans or anything else. It will be years before we turn to Tingawa!”
Chamfray stretched his lips in what passed as a smile. “Yes, Mirami, at least that.”
“Well then, let the silly little Tingawan girl do her soul-carrying duties, let her servants take her home, and let us get on with our business!” She heard her voice rising and stopped, hand to throat, listening.
“We’re quite alone here,” he said. “The way the doors are arranged, no one can hear from the hallway or from below us in the plaza. Are you really concerned about Alicia?”
“It’s just tha
t I can never tell what she’s thinking. She’s like the Old Dark Man. I could never tell with him, either. I still can’t understand why it took so long for that Tingawan woman to die. Not that it mattered. It didn’t set anything back. We’re not ready to do without, you know, yet.” She never spoke the name of the king. It would not do to be overheard discussing the king, particularly doing without the king, and what one did in private, one might do without thinking in public. She and Chamfray made it a practice not to mention him by name at all.
Chamfray mused, “Tingawans are skilled physicians. The princess probably had excellent care, strengthening care. Exactly what did Alicia use to kill her?”
“I never asked. She gets pettish if I ask. She says she knows what she’s doing.”
“She did use poison?”
“Of course. That’s what the Old Dark Man taught me to use, and he taught her as well. He told me he would, when I left there. ‘You’ll have a daughter,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach her what she needs to know.’ I suppose he did, though she never went there. I think she lied about not finding any books at all. I think he left books for her in the Old Dark House. He said it was always wise to be elsewhere when people sickened and died, and poison was the surest way to do that. He had a wealth of knowledge, the Old Dark Man.”
“I wonder that he died at all, even at his age. How did it happen?”
“It’s odd you should ask. I was trying to think earlier today when it was I knew he had died, what the sequence of events was. When Alicia was just a baby, he told me he was leaving possession of Altamont to me; he wrote to me saying so. He never mentioned it again. Then after Hulix was born, when Alicia was about eight—I remember, because that’s when I killed Falyrion and Alicia turned odd—some travelers came through with the news that the Old Dark House was empty, that the Old Dark Man was gone. I went there. It was closed, locked. He had never given me a key. No one was seeing to the castle itself, but the farmers were still farming, the stockmen still raising their cattle; everything was going on as before. They told me everything was being managed by an agent who worked for the Port Lords in Wellsport. The Sea King hadn’t yet completely shut down the shipping, but the Port Lords were already looking about for other ways to earn a living. They said they had no instructions regarding my taking the place. None at all. Well, I had his letter telling me the place was mine, but after looking at that dreadful, gray, dead pile of stone, I decided not to bother with it. You and I had other things going on, as you remember.”
“So you don’t really know that your Old Dark Man is dead.”
“What else? He was already ancient, and he’s gone. When Rancitor spoke to the king, when the king had Alicia made duchess and gave her title to the place, the people in Wellsport gave her the keys and told her to take over. She was still very young, fourteen, I think. She didn’t go there for several years. She wouldn’t have gone at all if the Old Dark Man had still been alive.”
“Did you ever wonder about him?”
“Wonder how?”
“When you speak of him, he seems to be a very strange, almost unearthly kind of creature, and I find myself wondering if he was really human. Do you think he was?”
She stiffened, her face suffused with blood. “I saw him, Chamfray. I saw quite enough of him, head to toe, uncovered. He was just like all other men. Taller, that’s all. Very dark skinned, not brown, more a dark gray, but just like every other man. All men are more or less alike!”
Something about his last question had disturbed her, so he waited for a time before asking, “And you haven’t had any reason to go there since?”
She took a deep breath. “No. As I said: it’s an ugly, uncomfortable pile of stone. The cellars were full of spiders and rats. The rooms were piled with books and ancient papers. As a child, I lived in the little gatehouse. I had a nursemaid, then a governess. I had a tutor. I even had a riding master. It was warm in the little house. It was clean. The food was good. Every time I went into the Old Dark House, I spent the whole time either shivering or rat catching. No, I’ve not been back there since Alicia went there.” Of course, she hadn’t spent the whole time shivering or rat catching. There were other things the Old Dark Man had required that had been far worse than shivering or rat catching. “Why do you ask?”
He shrugged. “Alicia was always fussy about things. She was quite willing to kill any servant girl who didn’t do the dusting properly, so I was just wondering how she could bear to live there, if it is as you say.”
“She has no doubt cleaned it up. She may even have redone the inside of it. It wasn’t dilapidated, just terribly dirty and uncomfortable. Altamont has plenty of income. Alicia may even have left the Port Lords in control and be living off the income from the farms and herds. Most of the produce is sold in the fiefdoms along the coast anyhow, and if I had the place, that’s the way I’d have done it.”
They said nothing more that day. The next day, Chamfray was worse, and worse yet the day after that. A week later he died. The doctors asked if they could cut him, to find out what had killed him. Mirami told them yes, for she wanted to know. They told her it looked as though he had melted inside. They had no idea what could have caused it, nor did she. None of her poisons did any such thing. The doctors said some fungi had spores that became liquescent in the same way; perhaps he had eaten something contaminated by a fungus. Mirami was too upset to ask whether such fungi grew upon mountains where ice was cut.
A bird brought a message from the abbey to the Old Dark House. It contained the material Alicia had asked for, and she made the proper use of it, sending the resultant little capsule to the abbey just the way she had sent the same kind of capsule to Ghastain. A long time ago she’d found out where the bird towers at the abbey were, quite close enough to the abbot’s quarters.
Later that day, she received a message from her mother asking her to come to Ghastain. Mirami was feeling lonely, as her old friend Chamfray had died. Before Alicia rejoined her mother, however, she had one thing to take care of. Since she intended to deal with Jenger eventually, she needed to have the seeker device start looking for him. The hairs she had kept in her bedroom would provide the material. Wherever Jenger’s particular code was found, the machine would show it as a red light on a map. The map was huge. It covered the entire continent. Alicia had no idea where the Old Dark Man could have found such a map, but she did know the farther away Jenger was, the longer it would take for the seeker to find him. If she set the seeker in motion before going to Ghastain, it would have her answer by the time she returned.
Since the Old Dark Man had gone, she had used the fatal cloud on three victims: the princess, Chamfray, and the abbot. She had one prepared for Jenger. It was in her little cubby, ready to use when she found him. Now she would create two more. Another one of Jenger, for the seeker to use in finding him. And on mature consideration—that was a phrase the Old Dark Man had often used, “on mature consideration”—one tube would go with her to Ghastain. She had collected the material for this one in Kamfels years ago, after her father died . . . had been killed! Just to keep her accounts balanced with Mirami.
When Solo Winger received a bird from the Old Dark House carrying a message tube that was a bit different from the usual ones, he did not open it. He had been warned to watch very carefully for anything from that source. He waited for a proper time and took it to the quarters of the person he continued to call the Tingy-away woman. She took it into her hand, looked at it closely, and nodded.
“I’ll take care of it, Brother Winger. Believe me, it will do none of us any harm. By the way, if the abbey needed to be out of touch for a while with either of these places, the Old Dark House or Vulture Tower, what would be the best way?”
He thought about it. “The bes’ way’d be some fool kid cleanin’ after the birds leavin’ cages open, so alla House anna Tower birds got out an wen’ home. They c’d sen’ here, but abbey cudn’t sen back. And they cudn’t sen’ much ’cause I keep a count. I know zackly
where my birds is. House’s got two, Tower’s got none, Ghastain’s got three.”
Precious Wind looked him squarely in the eye and repeated words the prior had used: “I don’t suppose an illiterate simpleton like Solo Winger could arrange for that to happen?”
Solo Winger grinned only inwardly as he replied with perfect enunciation: “Oh, anyone as stupid as I might get awkwardly inebriated and commit some unconscionable impropriety. God knows, all total ignoramuses are known to be completely irresponsible.”
Later that night, Precious Wind placed the little capsule on the stone floor outside the prior’s door. Through that door she could hear the snorts and snores of a man deeply asleep. She stepped on it, crushing it, closely observing the wisp of fog that came from the crumbled thing. It swirled, swirled again, and promptly went under the door. Precious Wind smiled to herself. So much for sending three assassins after me, old man. Tingawa is a very old country. It has forgotten more about assassination than you blundering Norlander conspirators will ever learn.