The Soul Weaver

CHAPTER 6

Eighteen days after setting out from Prydina, we rolled up to the thick-towered city gates of Montevial, the capital city of Leire, the most powerful city in the world - in the mundane world, that is. Mundane… so those of us with no power of sorcery were called by the Dar’Nethi living in the world of Gondai and its royal city Avonar. The word raised my hackles. These “untalented” people were my friends, acquaintances, and kin. Intelligence, wisdom, and wit flourished here along with our many faults.

Yet the number of my people that knew the truth about the world - about the Lords of Zhev’Na who nourished and fed on our troubles or about the glories of Dar’Nethi magic that held steadfast against that wickedness in a half-ruined world far away - could be counted on one hand. After everything I had learned in the past six years, it felt odd and a bit shameful that my friends, acquaintances, and kin bustled about their concerns in such appalling ignorance.

We arrived in late afternoon, approaching the bridge over the wide, sluggish Dun River beneath a thin, gray, overcast sky that did little to alleviate the sultry heat. The red dragon banners hung limp from their standards, swelling occasionally with a vile-smelling breeze off the river. Just upriver the drain channels in the walls dumped the city’s sewage into the slow-moving water. Ragged hawkers, selling everything from diseased chickens to temple offering jars to remedies for gout and boils, swarmed out of the ramshackle city that had grown up outside the city walls.

The gates were always crowded at the end of the day, but I’d never seen the mess so bad as this. The roadway was mobbed for half a league west of the city, well beyond the stone bridge, the crowding made worse because as many travelers seemed to be leaving the city as entering it. Anxious travelers, shoving, pushing, and shouting at each other. Animals bawled and dragged at their traces.

Two men hurling curses at each other clogged the center of the stone span, knives drawn in some dispute over tangled wagon wheels. We dismounted and elbowed our own path through the bumping and pushing throng, leading the pony cart. Snippets of complaints and furtive, angry, or frightened whispers flew on every side: Won’t let me in; they’ve no record of my cousin… Allowing no one past the gates without references known to the magistrates… Our fruit will rot if we have to take it town to town; those inside the walls will starve… Good riddance to them… Afraid to piss wrong… Vanished, they said, not a hair left behind… Cripples arrested… Who carries proof they live in the city? We just live here…

The levy wagons, of course, disappeared quickly through the gates, but all other travelers were required to join a queue and wait to explain their business to a seated clerk. Those travelers who demonstrated noble connections, royal business, or a full purse moved quickly to the front of the queues. Those the clerk approved were given a pass to admit them to the city. The heavily armed swordsmen flanking the clerk wore the king’s red livery, and more soldiers stood just beyond the portcullis, armed with pikes or drawn swords.

Radele’s blue eyes roamed the crowding beggars, the filthy river, and the squat gate towers and city walls that had been gouged, pitted, and scorched in the years when war touched this close to the heart of Leire. “Vasrin’s hand,” he said, as he shoved away three ragged, giggling urchins who were pawing at my cloak and doing their clumsy best to rifle our pockets. He wiped his hand on his cloak. “What is this place?”

A scuffle broke out just in front of us. A guardsman dragged a portly man from his horse, shouting, “Here’s one! Only one leg, and look at the size of him!”

“Lost my leg in the war is all! Let me go!” The terrified man writhed on his belly as the pikemen surrounded him and a soldier bound his hands. “My daughter lives in the Street of Cloth Merchants… respectable… I’ve served the king… ” A guardsman’s boot smashed into his face, drowning the rest of the man’s protests in bubbling incoherence.

“We’ll find out how respectable you are,” said one of the soldiers dragging him through the gates. The man’s horse was led away.

A young couple was turned away when the clerk noted burn scars on the husband’s face and that he was missing one ear.

Radele took my elbow firmly, keeping his eyes moving and his hand on his sword hilt, as new guards were summoned and formed up around the clerk. He spoke under his breath. “Let us withdraw, my lady. If we must proceed, I’ll conjure a way in after dark. The danger - ”

“Only if we’re turned away,” I said. “Using your talents is too risky. And sneaking in would likely only cause us trouble further on.”

The pennons on the gate towers shifted in a lazy, humid gust, ripe with the stench of the riverside bogs. After a wait that stretched interminably, a guardsman motioned Radele and me to step forward, and I was soon babbling the story of my husband’s death in the war and my desire to find a sponsor for my son among our acquaintances in Montevial. Gerick remained standing by the pony cart at the edge of the crowd.

“And who might you be asking to sponsor the boy?” The clerk flared his nostrils and smoothed his sweat-stained yellow satin waistcoat, as he squinted across the trampled ground at Gerick.

My references to several prominent families by their personal names lifted his eyebrows. “Viscount Magior? Not likely. He’s dead these two years in Iskeran. And Sylvanus Lovatto - Baron Lovatto that would be, I suppose - is retired to the north country. Lord Faverre, now… Ricard Lord Faverre, you say… Tell me, woman, how would the likes of you find yourself on such friendly terms with the commandant of the city guard?”

Radele, standing close to my left shoulder, stiffened, his arm drawing slowly toward the sword on his hip. I stepped on his foot. Epithets for my overplayed hand and curses for the self-important little clerk were the words that came immediately to mind. “Good sir, I’m just a soldier’s wi - ”

“Sheriff Rowan’s man of Dunfarrie, bringing horses for the royal cavalry!” A disturbance rippled the crowd behind us. “Let me through. My master’s sent ten steeds for King Evard.” Paulo slipped easily from the saddle and dropped to the dirt not ten paces from us, his horses forcing both travelers and soldiers aside.

“Sheriff’s man, eh?” said the clerk, inspecting Paulo’s slouched hat and worn countryman’s jacket. Paulo’s bony wrists poked well out of the sleeves. “Where’d you come up with these beasts? Been holding back on our suppliers?”

“Brought ‘em from Valleor, your honor. Sheriff sent me to round up animals from those who’ve no business owning them. I’ve fifty more on the way.” Tennice had written out a false manifest for Paulo before we left Verdillon, and now Paulo shoved the crumpled paper into the clerk’s face.

The clerk jerked his head to a sleek young guard with a thin mustache. As the clerk read the manifest the soldier proceeded down the row, running his hands over the flanks and legs of the well-groomed chestnut at the head of the string and then giving a cursory examination to the rest of the beasts. “Decent stock,” he said, returning to his post at the clerk’s side.

“What’s your name and how many in your party?” said the clerk, pulling out a fresh sheet of paper and beginning to write.

“Just me. Name’s Paulo… ”

As Paulo took the pass and mounted his horse, the vintner’s wagon rolled forward, squeezing into the tight space before the gates, the drover shouting, “We can’t get left out here. A baron’s waiting for our barrels. Why are the gates closing early?”

Murmurs swept through the crowd. Other travelers bulled their way to the front, waving their hands and shouting. “I just heard those not inside the gates before sunset wouldn’t be allowed in at all,” cried a woman. Those in the queue behind me surged forward, yelling, panicked.

Paulo’s knees nudged his horse’s flank, and he led his string through the gates without looking back. The clerk, one cheek twitching and his gaze flicking nervously over my shoulder, motioned the guardsmen to draw close and hold the shouting travelers back.

“Here,” he said, scribbling a pass and shoving it at me. “Take this matter up with the master-at-arms. Secure your son a place with these noble friends of yours within two days or get yourself out of this city. We don’t want strangers here nowatimes. Now move on. Next!”

“Tell me, sir,” I said, “what’s going on - ?” But the harried clerk waved me away and motioned the vintner’s man forward.

Gerick had already drawn the cart up beside the clerk’s table. We didn’t take the time to climb up, but led the pony through the shadowed archway after Paulo.

We had arrived one day early for my meeting with Evard. The timing was perfect, for it gave us a full night to rest and a full day to get news, yet would not keep us long in the uneasy city. We were stopped three times on our way to the street where we were to meet Paulo, our pass examined by soldiers whose hands stayed close to their weapons. The men required us to show our full faces, hands, and even our legs. “Don’t want no more cripples in the city,” they said, snickering at my indignant protest at lifting the hem of my riding skirt.

“Insolent vermin… degrading… ” Radele handed me back into the pony cart with such vigor I thought I might spill out the other side. His disgust and annoyance had grown with every step past the walls. Perhaps he was bothered that Paulo was the one who had gotten us through the gates. I had grown up around “men of action” and their tender pride.

“None of this makes sense,” I said as Radele threw himself onto his horse. Gerick clucked to the pony, and we drove on through the winding streets. In truth I was more puzzled than upset. Such searches had never been common in Leire, nor had I ever heard such concern expressed over the number of crippled bodies. Unfortunately our turbulent history had kept us well supplied with mutilated citizens.

“It’s the vanishings,” said the buxom, heavy-jowled woman who rented us rooms, shaking her gray braids and wheezing noisily as she hefted her bulk up a narrow stair. “Folks stolen from their beds. First it was only cripples disappearin‘, as if them as wished all the beggars would go away all these years had their prayers answered.” She opened a scratched door into the tight little garret room, leaned close enough that I could smell her bad teeth, and dropped her voice. “But I’ve heard that some as are not cripples have gone now, too, nobles even. That’s put a stick up everyone’s backside.”

“But if crippled beggars are the ones disappearing, then why treat such people like thieves?”

“I don’t talk about it,” she said, spitting in her left palm and slapping it with her right thumb, as jonglers do to ward off evil. “I’m just telling you this city is an ill-luck place. You’d best go back where you come from.”

I wished I could do exactly that. I felt as if I were being rushed along by the strong currents of a river when I’d only expected to stick my toes in a stream.

While Radele and Gerick took care of the cart and pony and waited for Paulo, I washed my face, combed my hair, put on a fresh tunic, and set out through the dark streets for Evard’s palace, intending to use my pass from the clerk at the city gates to get into the palace grounds. If I could find Racine, a friend who had once worked for Karon at the Royal Antiquities Commission, he might be able to give me reliable news. But after being sent from one of the heavily guarded palace gates to the next, waiting interminably for unhelpful clerks to be summoned, while standing in the blaze of torchlight and watch fire and begging favors from leering soldiers - all to no result - I returned to the inn.

“Six years ago I was able to talk my way into the palace with the flimsiest of stories,” I said, gulping a mug of ale that Paulo had poured for me as soon as I returned to the garret. “Now you can’t step beneath the portcullis without a signed and sealed document from the person you’re supposed to meet.”

The night was well on, and Gerick, Paulo, and I were seated at a small table in the cramped chamber as I reported on my futile venture. Radele sat on the scuffed plank floor beside the door.

“I told my story to three different officials, but they said the master-at-arms won’t see me unless I bring a letter from a family willing to foster Gerick.”

“I could likely get into the palace grounds if you wanted.” Paulo chewed thoughtfully on a strip of jack, the tough, dried meat he favored over every possible sustenance. “Done it before out at Lord Marchant’s castle at Dunfarrie… as a lark. Hopped on a wagon loaded with hides. Rode it through a service gate. Looked real grumbly, like I was hating the idea of unloading the stuff. Jumped off, looked about, helped unload, then walked out. Look stupid enough, and no one asks questions.”

“Appropriate to look stupid, if you’re doing such a stupid thing,” said Radele, still in a brittle humor. “I saw five clever fellows dangling from gallows a few streets from here. Evidently they’d done nothing but walk someplace they’d no cause to be. Madam, for your safety, I recommend we abandon this absurd venture and leave this stinkhole immediately.”

Gerick, who had remained silent throughout my tale, lifted his head and glared at Radele. “What would an arrogant Dar’Nethi peep-thief know of - ?”

“Gerick, mind your tongue!” I disliked rebuking him in front of Radele, but his constant edginess was driving me to distraction. The tension between my son and his bodyguard had become an open sore since the fight with the bandits. No use to let him get caught up in defending Paulo’s honor.

Gerick leaped to his feet, knocking over his chair. He kicked it out of his way and threw open the shutters, letting the steamy air and the noise and stench of the streets into the close room.

“What has everyone so terrified, Radele? Have you learned any more about these vanishings?”

His movements ever graceful and efficient, Radele rose and poured himself a mug of ale from a pitcher he’d brought upstairs, coolly ignoring Gerick’s flushed complexion and hard mouth. “Everyone’s in a lather, prattling about monsters and apparitions being responsible. That’s why they’re after these deformed sorts.” He glanced at each of us in turn, as if asking if his own report could possibly be true. “The innkeeper says a sorcerer was burned to death last week.”

The color drained from Gerick’s cheeks. My stomach tied itself into a knot.

“A mob did the burning, so they said.” Radele shuddered slightly as he leaned his back against the door and took a long pull at his ale. “Just imagine what they’d do if they had the slightest inkling of real evil. They’d all go bury themselves in caves.”

“There’s more things wrong than that.” Paulo extricated a greasy paper packet from his pocket and pulled another strip of the leathery jack from it, his unhurried sobriety a soothing counter to the rest of us. “A stable lad was telling me about some baron who had to forfeit his land as his soldiers refused to muster for the spring campaign. And the fellow wasn’t the first. Another noble got himself and his family killed by his own men. This fellow says no lord in the kingdom is allowing anyone about him unless he knows their face, and even then he’ll have no more than two together. I don’t know that we’re going to be safe anywhere.”

“Mutiny?” I said, rising from my chair. The night, already filled with unease, took a turn for the worse. Something was profoundly wrong in Leire. Honor, duty to one’s lord and in turn to his, who was, of course, the king, shedding the blood of your lord’s enemies… these things were more sacred to a Leiran soldier than our gods or priests, the very sum of his manhood. No Leiran man I had ever known, no matter what his grievance on any matter, would refuse to take up arms at his lord’s call any more than he would refuse to breathe. Mutiny. My father would have spit blood at the word. “You’re right, Paulo,” I said. “We’re not safe here. We need to be on our way as soon as we can.”

Radele nodded and thumped his empty mug on the table. “We can be off within the hour.”

“Well, not quite so soon as that!” I said, shaking my head in exasperation. “We still have to learn what Evard wants. This just makes it more urgent.”

Radele frowned. “But madam, you just said - ”

“This meeting is not to serve idle curiosity, Radele. Something has turned this kingdom wrong way out and people are blaming sorcerers. There was a time when I would have dismissed such accusations as the usual nonsense, but now… What if there’s something to it? What if the Lords are involved? We need to learn more if we can. I promise we won’t dawdle once we’ve heard what we need to hear.”

Sighing deeply, Radele bowed and pulled open the door. “I think you’ve sorely misjudged your risk, my lady. But, as I can’t persuade you otherwise, I’ll keep watch. Please lock this door tonight.” His footsteps down the passage and the stair soon faded.

“I’d best be off, too,” said Paulo, yawning as he stood and threw his jacket over his shoulder, ready to head for the stables to guard his horses. He paused in the doorway, turning back for a moment, looking at me square on. “Radele’s not wrong about the danger hereabouts, my lady. You wouldn’t think to go to this meeting with the king alone?”

“No. We’ll stay together. And truly, we may be on our way home almost as quickly as Radele wishes. I can’t imagine how Evard expects me to get past the gates at Windham. I don’t know who holds the Gault titles now or even how I’ll find out.”

Paulo hesitated, looking thoughtful, running his long fingers over the tarnished door latch.

“By the way,” I said, “well done at the gates today. We’d likely be there yet, if it weren’t for you. And all the rumors about an early gate-closing… they helped as well. You wouldn’t have seen who started those, would you?”

Paulo’s eyes flicked to Gerick. “I had a bit of help with that part. More than this Dar’Nethi fellow are watching out for you.”

He straightened up and pulled open the door. “And you needn’t worry about getting into Windham tomorrow. Hasn’t been no lord there since the last one was done for.”

“Where did you hear that?”

He colored a little. “All those years when you lived at Dunfarrie, and Sheriff took you to the Petitioner’s Rite… he listened to all the talk about you, and then he’d come back and grouse about how high and mighty you were. I was only a nub back then, hanging about the sheriff where I had no cause to be, but I heard a lot of things. King Evard had the place knocked down and burnt.”

The night passed uneasily. The thought of Evard destroying Windham had me alternately seething and weeping. Rain drizzled mournfully as midnight tolled from the palace clock tower. At least Gerick had finally succumbed to sleep. No nightmares, either. Even a drunken commotion outside in the street didn’t stir him.

About the time blackness yielded to faint gray, someone tapped on the door. “It’s Paulo, ma’am.” I cracked open the door and peered into the gloom. A straw poked out of Paulo’s tousled hair. “Radele asks that you please come to the stable, ma’am. Quiet-like, he says.”

I threw on my cloak and followed him, leaving Gerick curled on the floor. He hadn’t so much as changed position.

The innyard was pooled and pocketed with muddy rainwater. Servants stepped gingerly through the mud, carrying slops jars and water jugs, while boys with soaked leggings staggered toward the kitchens hauling heavy coal hods. Wagon wheels splattered through the muddy streets beyond the fence. Though the gray morning already rang with jangling harness, clattering pots, and orders yelled at the legions of kitchen maids, the stable was dim and quiet when we shut the door behind us. Gerick’s Jasyr nickered softly as we walked past him and Paulo fondled his ears. A mouse skittered past my foot. We found Radele in the farthest corner stall sitting atop a pile of straw in the near dark.

“What is it, Radele?” I said.

As Radele jumped to his feet, the straw seemed to shift. The Dar’Nethi swept the straw aside to reveal a strongly built man in ill-fitting clothes huddled in the dirt. Only after a startled moment did I notice the ropes binding his hands and feet. The man strained against his bonds, twisting around so that he could glare up at me. A purple bruise covered half his forehead, and the unintelligible words trapped by the rag tied around his mouth could be nothing polite.

“When I left your bedchamber last night, I met this fellow skulking about in the passage. Not someone I wanted nearby, so I ran him off. But then, on my rounds this morning, wasn’t he in the stableyard telling another fellow that he’d heard some treasonous gossip that was going to make his fortune if he could just locate a constable to tell? And this time he carried quite an ugly introduction.”

Radele presented me with a long, curved dagger. “His friend seemed to have an antipathy for constables and ran away, so I used the opportunity to snag this one. I wasn’t sure what to do with him. We should probably dispatch the villain, but I thought perhaps a corpse or another disappearance might draw more attention than whatever he might babble.”

Horrified at the thought of our careless conversation last evening - sneaking into the palace, my low opinions of the king, the upcoming meeting, sorcery - I couldn’t think what to do. If the man had heard any of it… “No, of course, we can’t kill him,” I said, shaking off my urge to do that very thing. I’d never faced this particular dilemma before. Danger had always come from my enemies, not balding, inept thieves. “We just want him to keep quiet.”

“Pay him, maybe?” said Paulo, scratching his head.

I pulled my cloak tighter. “We don’t have much to offer. And bribes are unreliable. Too easily overbid.”

Straining grunts and growls had the veins in the man’s beefy neck bulging. His eyes blazed in the dusty light.

“But silencing is easily done.” Radele cocked his head thoughtfully.

“We should question - ”

The teasing, unmistakable telltale of enchantment filled the air, as Radele laid his hand over the captive man’s eyes and murmured a few words. The man’s struggles grew feeble and then ceased; his wordless protests fell silent. When Radele removed his hand, the stranger’s eyes no longer burned, but wandered over the stall, the straw, and our faces with equal disinterest. Radele motioned us to step back as he untied his prisoner and dragged the fellow to his feet - a big man, dressed in the kersey tunic and shapeless trousers of a common laborer.

“My grandfather taught me this,” said Radele, straightening the man’s tangled clothes and nudging him toward the stable door. “It’s designed especially for those who have dangerous mouths.”

Without so much as a word or a glance, the man stumbled away, straw sticking up from his rumpled hair and clothes as if he were a scarecrow come to life. Paulo and I followed as far as the stable door, watching as the man walked into the busy lane and halted uncertainly. A woman bumped into him. He staggered, but stayed upright. And then a wagon narrowly missed knocking him flat. Soon he was being brushed from one place to another like a splinter of driftwood floating on the tide.

“What have you done, Radele?” I said, uneasy. “We should have questioned him, found out what he heard, what he was after… ”

Radele stood at my shoulder, arms crossed, his face sober. “It would have taken us three days to sort out his lies. This is much better. Your secrets will be quite safe. Unless he can recite a list of names he has no possible reason to know, he’ll be able to tell no one anything about what he’s heard. And you needn’t trouble yourself about him. He’ll remember how to eat and drink, just not much beyond that. My family is very good at these things.”

“Shit,” said Paulo, quietly.

In slightly less earthy terms, I echoed his sentiments.

“We must leave this city, madam,” said Radele. “You’ve seen the risk.”

“We’ll set out for Verdillon the moment my meeting with King Evard is done. And, Radele, I thank you again for protecting us, but what you did here… I can’t think the Prince would approve.”

“Your safety is imperative. The Prince was most emphatic.”

“But in this world some things are not permissible for even the best of reasons. Some things are not right in any world.”

Radele dropped his hands to his sides with an exasperated sigh.

Leaving Montevial and its poisonous atmosphere behind us felt like walking out of prison. We abandoned our disguises. Paulo had sold the pony trap and his extra horses, and we rode our own mounts through the southern gates of the city in early afternoon. Only after a wide detour did we circle northward toward Windham. The shadows were long when we first caught sight of the towers rising above the leafy sea of its vast parkland. A host of chittering blackbirds heralded our approach from the spreading beech and lime trees that lined the road.

Windham’s graceful towers symbolized everything joyous in my girlhood. For a girl of seventeen, they had represented the stimulating company and unending entertainment so at odds with sober Comigor. For a naive young woman of one and twenty, romantic encounters with Martin’s mysterious and charming protégé. For a worldly matron of five and twenty, a haven of friendship, the one place Karon and I could go where there need be no secrecy, no deceit, and no fear. Windham had been the most beautiful place I knew, welcoming the wide vistas of the world through its tall windows, just as its master welcomed the vast landscape of ideas into his great heart. How my cousin would have relished our strange adventures.

A little way into the park, just beyond iron gates that hung bent and broken from rusted hinges, sat a brick gatehouse where the housekeeper and head grounds-keeper had once lived. Though its windows and doors gaped, its wood trim had splintered and peeled bare of paint, and vines had overgrown the front stoop and garden wall, the shell of the gatehouse remained intact. We halted at the weedy semicircle of the carriage park just in front of it.

“If everything looks safe enough when Radele returns from his reconnoiter, he and Gerick will remain hidden here,” I told the three of them. “I want Paulo patrolling outside the walls. The king will have attendants and bodyguards, but I would expect them to be a small number and remain in the courtyard in front of the main house when he enters the garden. Anything beyond that, and I want to know about it.”

“There’s fresh tracks all over,” said Paulo. “A number of people have been here today.”

“I’d expect nothing less,” I said. “And very likely ten spies along the road watched us ride in. But if he brings in a large party, or if they move to surround the house and gardens, or do anything that looks remotely suspicious, before, during, or after the king’s arrival, Paulo, you’re to warn Radele. And, Radele, you will get Gerick away, using whatever means necessary.”

“But, madam - ”

“You have no other duty.”

Radele jerked his head irritably and rode away.

“One of us should be with you,” said Gerick, the first speech beyond single-word responses he’d offered us all day. “You’ve said again and again that the king is a treacherous villain. Tennice has told me - ”

“Yes, Evard is a despicable bastard, but he’ll not touch me. I know this seems illogical. He’s had a thousand opportunities to do so over all these years, but he promised Tomas he wouldn’t, and, whatever else he may be, Evard keeps to his word. He loved Tomas like a brother; I witnessed his grief when he heard Tomas was dead. Truly I’d not have been afraid to confront him in his own palace today. But on no other matter do I trust him. It’s you must stay out of sight.”

Gerick looked very young in that moment, too much worry creasing his slender face. What kind of mother was I to bring him into such risk? I brushed his smooth cheek. “Be alert, dear one. Stay safe, and we’ll see our road more clearly.”

Half an hour later, Radele returned from his survey of the gardens. Having reassured me that no one lurked anywhere on the grounds, Radele tethered our horses behind the gatehouse and took up a position in a tree where he could watch both the gates and the gatehouse.

The sun dropped behind the forested hills. Gerick watched from the hollow doorway of the gatehouse as Paulo waved and rode back through the gate the way we’d come, and I walked up the carriage road through the tunnel of trees. Shorter footpaths led from the gatehouse to the main house and gardens, but I was still a bit early, and I wanted to approach the house from the front.

At the point where the road emerged from the trees and skirted a wide, open lawn gone to weeds, I got my first look at the ruin of the main house. Every window was broken. The south wing, all the guest bedrooms and the great ballroom, lay in charred rubble. The north wing, including the drawing room where Karon and I had wed in the light of five hundred candles, looked as if a ram had been used to cave in one wall.

Astonishing that Evard would pick his murdered rival’s house for us to meet. Did he think I would feel safe in a place so familiar? More likely it was a pointed reminder of his power. Whatever his motive, the ruined house only served to remind me of everything I despised about Evard, a shallow, arrogant, ambitious man who had destroyed Martin and his friends because he was not fit to be one of them.

As the last glow of red dulled to gray in the west, I circled the skeletal house and strolled into the back gardens. The plantings had gone wild, of course, only the hardiest left to compete with thistles, brambles, and encroaching forest. I could find no remnant of the rose garden, and all the ponds and streams were dry. Surprisingly, the arched bridge remained intact, overlooking a choked oval of knee-high weeds where a reflecting pond should have been. Only a few birds and a lonely frog mourning the loss of his lily pads disturbed the quiet dusk.

A warm breeze riffled my hair as I waited. Not a long wait. My every sense was on the alert, so I heard the muffled hoofbeats long before the solitary rider reached the edge of the gardens. A horse nickered softly. Light steps crunched on the gravel, only to hesitate next to a wild mass of honeysuckle that had overgrown the path. Through the tangled shrubbery glimmered the faint beams of a lantern.

“Straight through. Angle right. The gardeners have been sorely lax. You’ll have to mention it to the lord.” My voice sounded harsh against the subtleties of the evening. Despite my resolution to be open-minded, I couldn’t hide my bitterness at the desolation this man had wrought.

The newcomer pushed through the branches until I could make out a shadowy figure at the far end of the arched bridge. Odd… Evard was never as tall as my brother, only average in height, much to his youthful disgust, but this person was not even as tall as me.

“Who’s there?” I said, retreating a few steps. “Speak or I’ll be away from here before you can blink.”

I listened until I thought my ears must crack and whipped my eyes from side to side, searching the gloomy plantings for any sign of stalkers, but I sensed no one else about. The figure moved closer, and I backed away.

“Wait. Don’t go!”

A woman! Her voice was low and mellow, yet bore such authority that my feet stopped moving of their own accord. My eyes stopped their suspicious search and riveted themselves to the slight form that followed the lantern beams up the arching span.

“The conditions of this meeting are not changed,” she said. “You’ve agreed to it, and I’ve endangered myself and others to come here. You cannot leave.”

She wore a lightweight cloak of the deepest sapphire, its full hood draped gracefully about her face, keeping it in deep shadow.

I walked to the foot of the bridge. “But the person I agreed to meet - ”

“Is unavailable tonight. I speak for him.”

“I cannot believe he would permit anyone to speak for him, especially… ”

“Especially a woman?” She set her lantern on the stone parapet. “Perhaps you don’t know him as well as you think you do, even after such long acquaintance. And, of course, you don’t know me at all.” With slender, pale hands, adorned with a single, slim band of sapphires that gleamed in the lamplight, she lowered her hood. On her brow she wore a gold circlet, graven with a dragon and a lily - the crest of the Queen of Leire.