The prior asked the servant to get a small box from the hidden compartment in the top of his armoire and take it to Precious Wind. Ask her to come see him.
The servant left with the box, and no one came to replace him.
The prior thought furiously. He tried to get out of bed and couldn’t. His legs folded under him. He vomited blood all over himself. He felt a hideous pain. Both his men and the duchess had killed easily, often, but none of them had ever mentioned causing pain. As he passed from screaming to throat-blocked silence, from agonized thrashing to excruciating immobility, it seemed impossible to him that he was alone in this room and no one came to offer him any of the drugs that he knew, he knew, could be given for pain.
He opened his eyes, at the last, to see Wordswell standing at the foot of the bed, regarding him with solemn sorrow not unmixed with satisfaction, and he knew the omission had not been accidental. If it had been the abbot standing there, he would not have allowed his prior to suffer this torment. The abbot was too kind. But the abbot didn’t know. The prior had made sure the abbot didn’t know . . . about a lot of things.
On the road west of Benjobz Inn, the troop from the abbey cantered down the road, not so fast it would lose the wagons that followed, not so slowly as to bore the armored men who took every opportunity to scour the nearby forest for the brigands who might be there. Oldwife Gancer and Nettie shared the wagon, driven by Bartelmy. Each of the menfolk wore one of the gay scarves Xulai had knitted for them, the fringed ends trailing over their shoulders. They were going home. Of them all, only two deeply mourned the fact that Xulai would not be there when they arrived: Oldwife, for a near daughter lost; Bartelmy, for a near sweetheart, ever dreamed of, never really gained.
On the road south of the abbey, Precious Wind drove her little carriage at a great pace, the wolves keeping even with her inside the shade of the forest. Sewn into her garments were the contents of the box the prior had sent to her, the gems that had made up virtually all of the treasure Justinian had sent. She had been surprised. Considering that the prior had had the treasure for some time, he had used remarkably little of it. He hadn’t even thought to ask the return of his receipt.
On the road to Merhaven, a group of travelers had come to a pleasant meadow between the road and the shining crimson surface of Red Lake, some distance to the west. The lake received a good deal of its water as runoff from red clay country, giving it its name. The travelers had set up their usual evening encampment, little tents, little wagons, a few campfires with kettles hung above them. Off to one side two brothers had built their own stingy fire, cleared their own patch of ground on which to erect their own two-man tent against the wet, if any.
“I wish I had some idea of what’s happening back at the abbey,” said Chippy to his bearded older brother. “Don’t you . . . Bram?”
“Hearing nothing is sometimes better than hearing bad news,” said the older man, the one scratching at his beard. Though it had been growing for days, he wasn’t used to it yet and it itched him continuously. They had traveled with a considerable train of folks headed south along the main road to Elsmere, lagging at the rear of the procession, not so far back as to look separate from it, not so close as to involve them in unnecessary conversation. Occasionally they would move aside for a faster-moving horse, an abbey messenger or some post rider in a hurry. They’d passed a number of posts on their way. Blue always whinnied at the corrals and received a whinny in return. Chippy’s horse was more laconic, and their mule brayed only when he didn’t get the oats or horse biscuit he expected. Along the way, Chippy and Bram had managed to get hold of the necessaries to make horse biscuits almost as well accepted as those the Horsemaster had made back in Woldsgard, though there were a couple of herbs that no one seemed to know of.
They had come far enough south and far enough down the mountains that late autumn was still with them rather than the winter that had taken the highlands around the abbey. There had been no more snow, only a few light rains. When the group stopped each night to make camp, there was still plenty of edible grass for the horses and mules. The group was large and well armed enough to discourage any wandering bands of ruffians. They did have some elderly folk, however, and some women who weren’t accustomed to travel, so they made slow time on the road. Dawdling, Chippy called it. Safe, said Bram. Better slow and easy, part of a sizeable group rather than quick and easy prey, part of nothing.
There had been nothing remarkable about the journey except that Chippy had several times produced another of the strange little orbs, each time without the pain the first one had caused, each time discovered in the morning in the blankets he had been wrapped in. He had sewn them into the undershift as they were found, not bothering to mention the fact.
Their current campground was observed, to the amusement of its inhabitants, by two enormous eyes that peered at them from above a ridge of mountains west of them, beyond the lake. These were the two pinnacles of Frog Eye Mountain, two sheer, polished stone surfaces that shone with reflected light and were capped with forested ridges that much resembled eyelids. Their attention was drawn, however, to movement on the road, far below them, where an indiscriminate black dot had become a dot with legs and then a dot with arms as well. The rider had familiar characteristics.
Chippy sighed. “That’s Bear, isn’t it?”
“Looks very much like him.”
“He won’t know you. You look completely different with a beard, specially a black one.”
“Unfortunately, you haven’t grown a beard.”
“I think I can if I set my mind to it,” Chippy said. “I’ve been worried we might run into him. I hoped he’d gone on to Merhaven and taken a boat from there, but here he is coming back. I’m going behind a bush.”
Chippy actually went behind several bushes, as people who were traveling occasionally had to do, taking out the little folding shovel with some ostentation just in case someone looked back. There was no need at the moment, for the only digging Chippy/Xulai was doing was deep into him/herself. The hair follicles were there. Everyone had them. On women they usually made a soft, invisible down, but with proper concentration . . . though not too much, because the others had seen her clean shaven this morning, every morning. She considered having all the hair on her head fall out but decided against it. If it took this much effort to grow stubble, how long would it take her to grow her hair back?
When Chippy returned to his brother, Bram looked at him and nodded. “Not bad. Your hair’s a lot darker than mine. You look a villain. Like Black Mike.”
“Black Mike’s a nice man. You always said so.”
“You might lengthen the mustache just a little, especially at the corners of your mouth. You have a very . . .” He stopped, censored what he had been going to say, substituting, “distinctive mouth.” He went back to staring at the approaching rider.
Chippy concentrated on his whiskers. “Better?”
“I don’t think he’d know you. If he sees you. I’d recommend going in the tent.”
The horse approaching was within hailing distance, close enough to see that Bear was frowning and angry.
“I wonder what he’s upset about now?” murmured Bram.
“He was going to take a boat to Tingawa. My guess is he couldn’t find one.”
The self-appointed caravan leaders had ridden off onto a level bit of grassland and begun to arrange themselves and their wagons for the night. Bram and Chippy, as was their custom, took themselves and their horses off to one side, not far, unsaddled the horses, and took the packs off the mule, letting the animals roll and scratch before giving them their ration of oats. Meantime they pitched their own little tent. Fisher, who rode in Chippy’s cloak pocket during the days’ travel, went through the tent and out the other end. There were small dirt hills a bit farther into the field. That meant burrowers, which meant fresh meat, and Fisher was of a mind to find his own rations and stay out of Bear’s way.
Bear had talked with this one
for a time, then that one, then made the rounds of the others in the group. Before long he came stalking over to Bram, Chippy having made himself scarce in the tent.
“Where from?”demanded Bear.
“Us? My brother’n me?” said Bram in quite a deep, unfamiliar voice.
“Yeah. Got any news from anyplace?”
“None I know of. Came from a place east of Ghastain, know where that is?”
“I do. Up on the highlands. You come past Benjobz?”
“Yeah. Din stop. Got no money to be payin’ inns.”
“Where headed?”
“Where the rest of ’em’s headed. Elsmere, then down t’Merhaven. Got a cousin there name Rabbik needs help carpenterin’. No work where we was.”
“There’s armor coming up this road.”
“From where?” Bram asked, leaving his mouth open to swallow the answer, looking purposefully half-witted.
“Abbey troops. I met dispatch riders coming ahead of the troops. They say they went almost all the way to Woldsgard, then got called home. All a mistake.”
“Well, tha’s armies,” said Bram. “My pa says left foot never knows what right foot’s doin’ in a army.”
“It’s light yet,” said Bear with annoyance. “Think I’ll make a bit more distance before I give it up tonight. Went all the way to Merhaven to get a ship. They got a ship. Will they let me take the ship? No, they will not! Ship’s reserved for a certain person. They won’t let me use it unless I’m with the certain person, so I got to go all the way back to the abbey and see if they’ve found her.”
“Was she lost?”
Bear flushed. “In a manner of speaking. She may be back by now. Maybe. Or if she’s not, her friend’ll be there. The friend would be all right. They’d let her have the ship. She’s from Tingawa. That’s who the ship is for, either of the women from Tingawa, but not me!” He belched an ugly gust of laughter. “I’m from Tingawa but oh, no, not me.”
“Good luck,” said Bram. “Hope you find ’em.”
“Oh, I’ll find ’em.”
When the retreating horseman had gone over a hill, Chippy crawled from the tent. “No need for the whiskers,” he said. “But I know how to do it now. I can do it quicker next time. Fisher’s hunting his dinner.”
The older brother was staring after the retreating horseman. “He’s looking for Precious Wind. That worries me a little.”
“I don’t think we need to worry about Precious Wind,” Chippy said sadly. “I’m just sorry for Bear. He was . . . he really was a good man. If they’d let him alone, he still would be.”
Chapter 8
Merhaven and the Sea
When Precious Wind rode south from the abbey, she kept in mind the direction and placement of the three ruins where Abasio might have hidden his wagon. When the first appeared, a group of half-collapsed buildings off to her right, she at once discarded them as a possibility. The area was too clearly visible from the abbey walls. Looking back, she could see individual guards moving back and forth atop that gray mass, stopping occasionally to use their distance glasses. Seeing people use them always made her wonder why it was that some things had survived from the Before Time while others had totally disappeared. Even in this barbaric place and time, Precious Wind reflected, people made glass and ground lenses, though the ones made in Norland were poor compared to those made in Tingawa. Glassmaking had survived, smelting ores and working metal had survived, though many alloys recorded in the histories were now almost impossible to make. Electronics were no more. Architecture had retreated to a time far more ancient than the centuries just before the Big Kill. No building reached higher now than the towers of the abbey: stone could not be piled on stone interminably, not even with so many flying buttresses that the buildings seemed half-air. Abasio had spoken of much higher towers far to the east, now half-drowned, but Precious Wind had never seen such things.
Her second possible location was identified only by an overgrown road leading away to the right, but the piles of rotted wood and rubbish at its end could have concealed nothing larger than a mouse’s nest. Only the arrangement of the piles in vaguely rectangular shapes spoke of their having been a dwelling, a barn, perhaps a cowshed or stables.
The third possibility noted on the map was to the left along a straight section of the roadway, the only straight section for some miles. When she came to it, she noted the outcroppings of red stone on her left, like a dotted line, and when the road eventually veered to the right, she knew she had missed the ruin shown on the map. She turned the hop-skip, went back almost to the start of the straight stretch, and let the horses stand while she walked along the edge of the forest. If she had not known the wagon must be there she would not have found it as readily. The wagon, with all its paraphernalia, was inside the three-walled wreckage of a house, the drooping roof covering it from the sky, chopped limbs and small trees camouflaging the gap where the front wall had once been. The horse had simply walked through the open side and out the back door, leaving the wagon sitting under the roof, composedly untroubled, its pots and vats tied down, its window and door neatly closed and locked.
Now what? She was looking for a thing she had seen only once, years ago, when she had taken it from the hands of its keepers to wrap both the thing and its sheaf of instructions to be placed among Xu-i-lok’s court dresses: a stiff blue packet holding a gadget about the size of a hen’s egg. Where would Abasio have hidden it? She picked the lock on the door and went in, examining everything carefully and in great detail.
At the back of the wagon, a bed stretched all the way from side to side, long enough for a tall man, wide enough for two sleepers. Either Abasio and Xulai had slept together or Abasio had made a bed on the narrow floor. Precious Wind considered the implications of this, finding a slight embarrassment in the presumption. The relationship between the two was, in one sense, none of her affair. In another sense it was of overwhelming importance and interest to an enormous number of living people and would have been to a greater number long dead. She set the matter aside. If there was nothing one could do to affect a situation, it wasted energy to think about it.
The outside edge of the bed had legs that folded flat beneath it; the back edge was hinged against the wall. When the front side was tilted down, the mattress was held in place by straps. Flat against the wall above the bed was a hinged worktable, and when it was folded down, it revealed a window. The bed, slanted down as it was, left space beneath the table for the worker’s legs. Precious Wind smiled with real enjoyment at the ingenuity. The workmanship spoke of a craftsman’s hands coupled with a nimble, sagacious mind. He had been the son of a farmer’s daughter, she had been told, and his father had been a leader of men—not a particularly evil man by the standards of his time and place, certainly not a good man, but an intelligent one.
Forward of bed and table, cupboards lined the sidewalls, every one of them full of the tools, supplies, and implements that were, she supposed, essential either to the dyer’s art or to Abasio’s survival. A tiny, double-walled stove was built into the cupboards on the side opposite the door, with spaces open at the bottom to allow cool air to flow in, be warmed, rise upward and out a vent above. Atop the stove was an iron kettle, its base fitting snugly into a recess so that it would not slide or tip. The smokestack was carefully held by metal brackets away from the surrounding wood. Every detail spoke of care, and time, and thought. She herself could have lived in this wagon quite comfortably. The only thing she would have done to improve it for herself would have been to add books and a musical instrument, for there was no sign of either books or music, though Abasio had seemed familiar with both. Perhaps he sang to himself.
The roof and floor were made up of full-length tongued planks laid lengthwise, front to back. She saw the only exception when she kicked the mat that lay just inside the door. In that one place, above the right front wheel, a short piece had been inserted. Before she trifled with it, she went outside and crawled under the wagon. As she ha
d thought likely, the wagon was double floored, for these boards ran from side to side. It was probably double roofed as well, with the cupboards on the side walls fulfilling the same insulating function, keeping out winter’s cold and holding the heat from the little stove. Back inside, she found a sharp chisel in one of the cupboards and pried until the short section shrieked out of its place, revealing a floor stuffed with straw. When she probed into it, carefully, with a knife blade, she found the bundle she had wrapped in Tingawa, years ago.
Precious Wind bowed her head to let sudden and unexpected tears fall onto the thing she held. She let them flow. Inevitably, some days were harder than others. The ones when nothing much happened could be harder than days in which every moment was spent in conflict and confusion. Being at war kept her from remembering. When threats came from every side, one stayed on perpetual alert, one assessed, one decided, acted, moved on, over and over. Zagit-gaot and rakit-gaot, senders and doers of evil, had given her little time to mourn for Xu-i-lok. Her kinswoman. Her nariba-ama, treasured sister. They had grown up together. When Xu-i-lok knew she was dying, it was Precious Wind she had asked for. It was into Precious Wind’s protection she had given Xulai, and thereafter Precious Wind had been Xulai’s protector, guide, watcher, teacher, mother, aunt, older sister. Oldwife had helped, of course, fulfilling a grandma’s role, and Xu-i-lok herself had done what she could with what strength she had. No one had guessed she had enough to last as long as she did. Perhaps Precious Wind had helped her live that long, for Xulai. Perhaps Xulai herself had helped, more than she knew. Xulai. Xu-i-lok’s child. Lok-i-xan’s granddaughter.
Precious Wind had sworn protection for Xulai, not merely privately, as she had been asked to do, but officially, at the temple, with Lok-i-xan sitting cross legged on the witness bench. In Tingawa, oaths were taken seriously. One might be killed trying to fulfill an oath, there was no disgrace in that, but being forsworn while still alive and able to fight was a disgrace to one’s clan, a disgrace washed out, if at all, only by one’s own blood. The validity of an oath was a matter for the priesthood. If an oath maker was brought in, still alive but crippled past movement or intention, the priests could declare the oath fulfilled, or they could refuse to do so, thereby moving the oath onto the family of the oath-bound. Precious Wind had never thought of breaking her oath to Xu-i-lok, and she was still bound by it. Additionally, privately, Precious Wind had sworn vengeance, no oath necessary, and there was much of that yet to do. She had also laid a mirror curse upon Alicia, upon Mirami, to reflect the evil they did back upon them. So far as she knew, the duchess was as yet untouched, her mother was as yet untouched. Mirror curses were not magical or supernatural in any way. They were merely statements of intention, communicated to the universe: This person has done great evil. Let evil return upon them. If they hunger, do not feed them. If they are drowning, let them drown. If they thirst, let them go dry. Though the duchess and her mother had not yet been repaid, so far they had been robbed of their prey! Xulai was in hiding. Justinian had gone so quickly they could not track him.