Son of Avonar

CHAPTER 27

“We must go south of this city, but north and far to the west of your home, to a countryside of rocks and hills and fields. No forest there, no trees.” So Baglos described the way to Tryglevie. “The village has changed its name through the years and is now called Yennet. It is very small and appears on no map, but there is a ruin nearby—it was in a description of the ruin in the professor’s library that I learned of this village. I can tell you no more at present.”

We set off within the hour. I left a message at the ale shop by the west gate, telling Jacopo that we had found a lead and were off to chase it. I also warned him stay clear of Graeme Rowan, who had accused him of treachery. He was my friend. I could not leave him exposed.

Close onto midday, I rode into a village to buy supplies and fill our water flasks, leaving Baglos and D’Natheil waiting under a tree. When I returned, the road was deserted, the dust of my passing the only movement. But mingled with the buzz of locusts came a hiss from a blackberry thicket which led me to a cowering Baglos.

“We were followed,” whispered the foolish Dulcé, as if any watcher would not have noticed me holding back the prickling vines to speak to him. “D’Natheil sensed the enchantment. He has led them south, away from our course, toward your village. We are to proceed on our way, and he’ll meet us tonight west of the river at Fensbridge.”

Baglos and I gave our horses free rein to gallop westward in the dusty heat, crossing the narrow arch of Fensbridge in late afternoon. The sunset had transformed the sluggish, weed-choked Dun into a river of molten gold. On the far side of the river we found a clearing where we could observe the bridge and the roads from the west, as well as the forest track that followed the river’s west bank—the route we ourselves had taken up from Dunfarrie a month before. As we waited for D’Natheil, we built a small fire.

I sat, chin in hand, watching the day’s last travelers straggle in from the western roads and cross the bridge into the town, seeking beds for the night. Without me or the Dulcé to slow him, the Prince should be able to evade any ordinary pursuit. The extraordinary, too, I hoped.

Baglos pulled the Writer’s journal from his pack and sat down beside me. He had said he wanted to study it further, that he hoped to find some insight we had missed. He turned it over in his small hands several times. “Tell me, woman, what happened to the Exiles? You’ve said so little of them. Only that they were hunted and executed. Perhaps if I knew more, I could understand these writings better. Would you tell me of your husband?” His almond eyes glowed in the waning light. He was waiting to consume Karon’s life as he had consumed Ferrante’s maps.

No reason to refuse the Dulcé‘s request—to tell Karon’s stories, to share the past that had spread itself so vividly across my mind’s landscape since D’Natheil had invaded my life. I picked up a long stick and poked it in the fire, rearranging the coals as I cracked open the door of waking memory and peered backward. But a dull ache settled in my stomach and spread quickly to my chest. Even my newfound acceptance—this admission that some greater purpose might have been served by our personal horror— could not ease it. The fire popped, shooting sparks upward into the night. Suddenly nauseated, I threw down the stick and turned my back to the flames. “No, Baglos. Not tonight.” Not ever. Some things were too difficult. I slammed the door shut once more.

Just at dusk a party of hunters, three young nobles decked out in velvet doublets with voluminous sleeves trailing silken ribbons, came dashing down the road toward the bridge. With great whoops and shouts, they paused at our clearing, circling on their quivering mounts. “Hey, you, woman,” shouted a young man with an eagle feather in his cap. “Tell us where is the nearest public house. We have a thirst that is the desert.”

“The desert in summer,” chimed in one of the others.

“The most frightful noontime desert in summer,” drawled a third, prompting the other two to break into giddy laughter entirely out of proportion to the wit displayed.

“Well, goodwife, speak up,” demanded the man with the feather, his excited horse prancing closer to Baglos and me.

“Just over the bridge is a tavern that might suit,” I said. “And I believe you’ll find at least four more between the river and the Montevial road, so you needn’t take a dry step.”

Two of the men dashed off with raucous bellowing, but the man with the feather stayed behind. “Are we not a bit lacking in proper respect, woman? I hear no courtesy of address and see no attitude of humility before your betters.”

Quickly and awkwardly I dipped my knee and cast my eyes to the trampled grass. “My apologies, Your Honor, sir. My eyesight is none too good in the dark time.”

The rider nudged his horse close enough that I could feel the beast’s warm breath, and then he used the end of his riding crop to lift my chin. His long, straight nose, full lips, and receding chin reminded me of a number of young aristocrats I had known—the type it would be wise to approach with caution. “Why do I think your heart does not support your tongue, goodwife? You need a good beating. Is this your man who cowers so cravenly by the fire?” He rode closer to Baglos, his horse churning dust and ashes into our eyes. “And what’s this? A book? Have our peasants got themselves learning? Here, give it over. Let me see what tract amuses you.” His pale fingers were banded with jewels.

“This is certainly not my husband, sir,” I said, crowding in between Baglos and the horse. How stupid of me to let things get so dangerously out of hand. “He is but my companion in service. Our master’s fallen ill with plague and, as his wife is already dead and needs no service, he sends us to Montevial to serve out our bond in his brother’s house. We left the town just before they sealed the gate. We’re mortally afeared of highwaymen, sir. Perhaps we could join with your party and serve you on the way, so to earn your protection from thieves.”

At the mention of plague, the rider backed away hastily, his voice but a thready echo of his sneering command. “We’ve no need of company or service. Our own servants follow us. You, man, tell your new master to beat this woman twice a day until she has a softer tongue.”

“Aye, lordship,” said Baglos, bowing and touching his forehead as I had told him was the custom when addressing a “better.”

The man spurred his mount viciously and raced away after his friends.

“I did not like him,” said Baglos, gravely, as he watched him go.

“Nor I,” I said with a shivering laugh, vowing to bridle my shrewish tongue.

A short time later, a party of three heavily laden servants plodded into view. They asked after the hunting party, and I directed them across the bridge. Trailing slightly behind them was a lone rider, his head drooped on his chest, his horse walking slowly as if he had all the time in the world. He seemed to melt into the gray light. One had to look twice to make sure he was not some mind’s contrivance of limb and leaf and shadow. Only when his horse meandered into our clearing did I realize he was D’Natheil. The Prince dropped from the saddle.

“We should go at once,” he said, as he drained a waterskin Baglos had ready for him.

“Are you still followed, then?”

D’Natheil wrinkled his brow, glancing over his shoulder toward the junction of the road and the dark path through the trees. “I shook off the two who trailed us from the city.”

“They were Zhid?”

He shrugged. “They were constant, like a hound, but never close enough to identify. I was able to elude their enchantments a short way from your village.”

“But something still worries you.”

“I rode from the village up to your dwelling so I could find my way back to this path. Ever since, I’ve felt someone else following me. But I’m not sure. It’s not so powerful a presence as the two—more like a flea than a hound. And no sorcery. We should go on. I’ll catch him up.”

The damnable sheriff, no doubt. I should have let D’Natheil kill him.

As we struck out west into the trees, the full moon beamed through the overhanging branches, transforming the road into a grillwork of light and shade. We rode fast and without conversation, as if now that the peripheral matters were taken care of, the true urgency of our mission could take hold.

Sometime near midnight, D’Natheil pulled up, motioning Baglos and me to ride on ahead. “The flea,” he said softly, and then he melted into the dappled shadows at the side of the road. The Dulcé and I continued on our way without changing the cadence of our passing. After some quarter of an hour, we heard the brisk clop of hooves on the road behind us. Two horses. We reined in and held wary at the side of the road.

D’Natheil rode into view, leading a riderless horse. He halted beside us, and from a strange, elongated bundle thrown across the saddle in front of him issued a muffled string of curses that would have made Jacopo’s sailor comrades blush. “The flea,” he said, dismounting. He dragged the bundle off the chestnut and set it down on a pair of bare feet that protruded from one end. A tousled head popped out of the other end.

“Paulo!”

Most of the boy was lost in the folds of an enormous cloak. D’Natheil took a firm grip on Paulo’s ear, transforming the boy’s scowl of freckled ferocity into a forlorn wince.

“Ow!”

Much to the consternation of both prisoner and captor, I started laughing, laughter such as only those who have lived at the edge of danger for days on end can produce.

“The most excellent ferocious boy!” said Baglos, and with only a momentary glance of apology at his grim master, broke into a lively chuckling that rang through the moonlit forest.

“Don’t see what’s so blasted funny,” the boy mumbled.

D’Natheil had remained unremittingly somber since seeing the conscript gang. But as the disgruntled Paulo hitched up his oversized garment, a glint of amusement danced about the edges of the Prince’s eyes. And then, as if the spark had touched fuel, he burst into a convulsion of merriment. I had never heard him laugh. Deep and musical, it seemed to come from the same deep-buried reservoir of joy as his rare smile. It might have been the sun piercing the clouds after a year of storms.

I could not keep my eyes from him, for somewhere in the resonance of his good humor was a note which made my blood burn as it had not in ages of the world. Thus even as I enjoyed the mournful resignation on Paulo’s dirty face, I mocked myself for “widow’s lust.” I laughed until tears came.

“Oh, Paulo,” I said, once I could articulate a word. “What in the stars are you doing here?”

“Nothin‘ better to be at,” he said sullenly.

“Than running away from home again and chasing us into the wilderness? Surely there are a thousand things better for you to be about. Your gram will be frantic.”

“She’s dead.”

“Oh, no!” And so did the world swallow up our good humor.

“Put away one too many a tankard while I was off to Grenatte. Dead drunk she was. Then just dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as her, I guess.”

“Who’s to care for you, then?”

“Don’t nobody want to. Well, Sheriff had said— But he’s gone off and not come back. Dirk Crowley said as Loopy Lucy might take me, but I didn’t want no part of an old crow like her. I can do for myself.” D’Natheil had released the boy’s ear, and Paulo squirmed a bit to untwist the voluminous cloak. “Gasso said he’d trade me this horse for my two silver pieces and whatever was in Gram’s room, and I thought that was fine, so’s I took the deal and rode up to your place. Thought I could watch it for you till Sheriff come back. Didn’t steal nothin‘. Just ate what was goin” to rot. And today I saw this’n come through and look about.“ He jerked his head toward D’Natheil.

“And you decided to follow him?”

“Nothin‘ better to be at. He’s a sight more interesting than Loopy Lucy. Got a sword and all.”

“You were welcome to the food. Was everything all right at the cottage?”

“Right enough. Those men—the priests what scragged the highwaymen—they searched right through it, but didn’t take nothin‘ as I could see.”

“You saw the three priests search the cottage?”… they were up at your place… The echo of Graeme Rowan’s report sent a shiver through me.

“They left it all careful like, so’s you couldn’t tell nobody had been there.”

“So they came to my house straight from Grenatte, then?”

“Nope.” He hesitated for a moment. “Went to the village first.”

“To Dunfarrie? Whatever for?”

“Talked to somebody. Askin‘ about you… who you were and where’d you come from and was anyone with you.”

“How did they find my cottage, Paulo? It’s very important. How did they know where to go?”

The boy dug a toe into the dirt and kept his eyes away from me. “Somebody told ‘em where it was when they first come from Grenatte. Somebody took ”em up there.“ With every answer, the words came slower and quieter. ”It was the same person what told ’em everything about you, and about the Prince, and about where you’d gone with him— off to Valleor.“ The boy kicked a rock so hard it flew into the trees, flushing out three deer who leaped across the road through the moonlight.

I laid my hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Paulo, sometimes we can be mistaken about people, and it hurts very much when we find out they’re not as honorable as we believed. But the truth is important, especially when lives depend on knowing whom we can trust. Was it a friend of yours that told them?”

Paulo nodded, and he mumbled so softly I almost could not hear him. “Jacopo done it. Sheriff said they must’ve made him.”

No. That wasn’t right. Rowan was the betrayer, not Jacopo. The sheriff had met the Zhid in Grenatte, talked and laughed with them. They said he’d been of great service. And there was the button, of course, and Teriza’s story of the Leiran in the dark jacket with shiny buttons, his pursuit through the forest, his presence in Yurevan…

“Who told them?” I grabbed Paulo’s chin and forced him to look me in the eye, daring him to say it again, ready to yell at him that he was misguided at best, a tool of evildoers at worst, refusing to credit him, even as my heart and soul understood that he spoke truth.

“It was Jacopo.” The boy’s gaze did not waver, as if he knew that his best testimony was himself. His thin, freckled face displayed only sorrow and simple truth, forcing me to accept how dreadfully I had erred.

I had determinedly ignored ten years of observation that demonstrated nothing but Rowan’s unremitting honesty. No strength of evidence had convinced me of his guilt—I could have come up with a hundred different explanations of buttons and light-haired Leirans. But I had listened only to my personal humiliation and seen only the hateful emblem on his coat. Even his “threat” to be wary of Paulo’s and Jacopo’s life was certainly a willfully misinterpreted warning.

Everything was so clear, now I was forced to look: the night of our feast in the meadow, the night the Seeking of the Zhid had come upon us like a summer hurricane. Jacopo’s leg had been hurting him, and I could imagine him sitting and smoking a pipe on one of the stone fences between the edge of the forest and Dunfarrie. Away from the trees. Away from the house. It was on the next morning that he’d changed his mind about warning Graeme Rowan. He had denied the reality of our experiences on the ridge and insisted on knowing who I was going to see, even wanting the name—questions to which he had no need for answers. How had he known I was in Montevial? How had he come to be in the Street of the Cloth Merchants? I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could hide the truth again, but all I saw was Jacopo’s old sea coat, dark blue with brass buttons—the jacket he’d worn every day since he’d come home from the sea.

D’Natheil led us to a clearing a safe distance from the road, and as we settled in for the rest of the night, I remembered the message I had sent to Jacopo earlier in the day. Not only had I revealed our departure from Montevial, but I had told him that Rowan had accused him of connection with the murderers. Would the Zhid have any use for Jacopo if he’d been discovered? Would they allow Rowan to roam freely with his knowledge of their wickedness? My detestable pride had likely murdered Jacopo and Rowan together.

Over our tea and bacon the next morning, Paulo, not Jacopo, was the first topic of conversation. Baglos told the boy that we had no use for him, and so he should take himself somewhere else.

I wouldn’t hear of it. Fear and self-reproach and hard earth had made for a long restless night, leaving me snappish and out of patience. “We must either take him back to Dunfarrie where there are people who will see to his welfare, or we must keep him with us. A boy on the road alone…” While a mournful Paulo saddled the horses and strapped our loaded packs on them, I explained to D’Natheil and Baglos what happened to children who had no one to care what happened to them. An indenture agreement would be signed by a local magistrate, and it would stipulate that the child was to be given his keep in exchange for his labor until he turned sixteen. In other words, it was free labor for as long as you could squeeze out a day’s work, and, as the master had no interest in the children after age sixteen, he could starve them or give them tasks that would cripple them. Most were dead by sixteen. A less than perfect boy like Paulo would have no chance at all.

“We’ve no time to take him back to his village,” said Baglos. “We must find the Gate.”

“No. Going back would be very dangerous.” I wasn’t yet ready to explain the extent of my rock-headed stupidity.

“Then the boy must stay with us,” said D’Natheil simply, leaving Baglos with no argument and me relieved.

When I told Paulo that he was to accompany us on our travels until such time as we could return him to Dunfarrie, he stood at least a hand’s breadth taller. “But you’ll have to earn your keep,” I said, “and obey any one of us without question.”

“Whatever you want, miss. I promise.”

“This won’t be the safest road, but you’ve shown yourself resourceful in the past, and we’ll expect nothing less of you now. And most importantly, you’ll hear and see many things you can’t tell anyone, now or ever. Our lives and yours will depend on your silence. I think you know what I mean. Are you willing?”

Paulo grinned and ducked his head, probably the nearest he’d ever come to saying thank you.

“To start,” I said, “I think you’ll have to care for the horses. Baglos dislikes it very much, and I know you’re good at it.”

While I told Baglos what I’d said to Paulo, the boy flung his arms about the neck of my little roan and buried his face in the beast’s ruddy coat. Perhaps some good had resulted from all this.

* * *

By the time we were two days on the road to Tryglevie, the four animals were fast friends with Paulo. They nosed his neck and his pockets and his thin brown hands at every opportunity, and he had but to click his tongue and they stood ready for whatever he wished of them. I soon came to believe the boy was able to read the beasts’ minds as clearly as any J’Ettanne. On the third morning of the journey, as the boy gave me a leg up, I grumbled that the roan didn’t seem to be learning my commands very well. Paulo asked why I didn’t use my horse’s name, as that would make him listen better. When I said that I didn’t know the beast’s name and hadn’t had the time to think of one, the boy stared at me in scornful disbelief. “Name’s Firethorn,” he said. “Don’t know why you never figured it out.”

“And what of the Prince’s horse?”

“He don’t want a name just yet. He’s thinkin‘ on it.” I wasn’t sure whether Paulo meant D’Natheil or the horse. “The other one, now, he’s Polestar.” Appropriate for the horse of the Guide.

“And yours?”

Paulo flushed and gently stroked his horse’s neck. “Molly. She’s naught but a broke-down mare, you know. Just right for me.”

We rode onward into the west.