The Wizard

Chapter 17. Tools

“I feel the call of Skai every time we do this,” I muttered. “What about you, Gylf? Don’t you feel it?”

Gylf glanced up. “Yep.”

“You’ve never been there. Not since you were small.”

He did not speak.

“You could’ve come after me. But I suppose you didn’t know where I’d gone. You thought I was dead.”

“Yep.”

“Now I’m back, no nearer Disiri, but nearer Skai than I ever was when I was with her. I just want to keep riding up and up too, closer and closer ‘til I see the castle. I want to unsaddle Cloud there, and fill her manger until the corn runs over. Then I want to go into the hall and show you off, have a drink, and tell good lies about all we did down here.”

“Are we?”

“No. But you’d like Skai. Love it, in fact. It’s all plains and wild hills, and always changing. Look.” Fusing in my saddle, I pointed. “There’s Utgard, black against the stars. See it?”

“Bad.”

“I’m sure. But oh Thyr and Tyr, just look at the size of it! If ever I’ve doubted that our Angrborn are true sons of Bergelmir, I’d believe it now.”

Prompted by my thoughts, Cloud began her descent.

“I swore I wouldn’t use the power I was given there when I came back, but—”

“No?”

“You think I’m using it, don’t you? Whenever we travel like this.”

“Yep.”

“I’m not. This is Cloud’s talent, one of them. If I were to dismount, I’d fall.”

“I don’t,” Gylf panted.

“No, but you can’t ride.” I reined up. “Look over there, the red light. That’s a forge, I’ll be bound, and they’re still working. Why don’t we hear the hammers?”

“I’ll find out.” Gylf loped off. Faint and far, I heard the wind rise; snow stirred at the feet of a group between Gylf and the glow of the charcoal.

When he returned he said, “Man and a girl.”

“At the forge?”

“Yep.”

I nodded. “The men have stopped work to talk to them? They’re probably telling her to get to bed. Kids shouldn’t be up this late.”

“Not much of a fighter.” The slave called Vil declared. “Where’s your stick?” He had been feeling Toug’s arms.

“I haven’t got one,” Toug explained. “I couldn’t carry Etela and a stick, too.”

The slave grunted. His face was thin, but his arms were thick with muscle. The hands that pinched and squeezed Toug felt as hard as iron.

“I should get back to my master,” Toug said.

Without looking at her, another slave addressed Etela. “You goin’ to bed like a good girl?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Your ma’s sleepin’, or she’d been here botherin’ us about you.”

Etela looked doubtful. “Well, I hope.”

Vil said, “We’ve got to make more.”

Toug cleared his throat. “I’ve been wondering about that. What do you make here? Horseshoes?”

“It’s mattocks now,” Vil said. “Want to get the feel of one?”

“Yes, I’d like to find out what they’re like.” Toug sensed that the more eager to stay and talk he appeared, the more willing Logi’s slaves would be that he go.

“Come along,” Vil told him; and indeed Vil’s grip on his arm left him no choice.

The forge was every bit as lofty as the house to which it was attached, dirt-floored and open at the side opposite the house, presumably so that horses could be led into it. There were no lights save the ruddy glow of burning charcoal, but a hundred candles could not have lit it as well.

“Right there,” the slave said. “You like it? How’d you like to swing that all day?”

It was huge. Toug drew his hand back hurriedly. “It’s still hot.”

“Not all that hot.” Effortlessly, the slave picked it up. “Hold out your hands.”

“No,” Toug said.

All three laughed.

“How you goin’ to know how big it is if you don’t feel of it?”

“Your hands are tougher than mine,” Toug said. “If you say it’s big, I’ll take your word for it.”

“Wait. I’ll get you a cold one.” Walking slowly but confidently, Vil went to the back of the forge and returned carrying a mattock whose blade was as long as Etela was tall, and whose handle had not long ago been a considerable tree. Toug took it, but quickly let its head fall to the ground.

“Think you could swing that?”

“He’s real strong, Vil,” Etela declared loyally.

“I’m not,” Toug told her, “and not nearly as strong as your friends here. I wish I were.”

“You come work with us,” Vil said.

“I’m glad I don’t have to. Is Etela’s mother here? I’d like to talk to her.”

“Inside. I’ll take you.” He led Toug and Etela to the back of the forge, past stacks of enormous picks and spades, and opened a door big enough for the largest Angrborn.

As they went through Toug said, “You’re working late.”

“Got to.” The slave closed the door behind them and offered his hand. “Name’s Vil.”

“Toug.” Toug took it, telling himself that any pain he suffered in Vil’s grasp would be pain deserved, that a future knight should be as strong as any smith.

“Stout lad. You might swing a hammer yet.”

Toug thanked him.

Vil’s voice fell. “Got eyes, don’t you?”

Here it was. “Yes,” Toug said. “The Angrborn have never enslaved me. I can see.”

“Tried to fool us.”

“Yes,” Toug repeated. “I should’ve known better.”

“He’s from the castle,” Etela put in.

“One of King Arnthor’s men?”

“I’ve never seen him,” Toug confessed, “but I am.”

“We were his people. All of us.” Vil’s empty sockets stared at something to the left of Toug’s face, and a trifle lower, but his hand found Toug’s shoulder.

“I was born in Glennidam,” Toug told him.

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s smaller than lots of villages.” Toug paused. “We kept the secrets of the Free Companies—gave them food and and beer and anything else they wanted, because they promised to protect us. Sometimes they just took it.”

“You revered us,” a new voice said, “because Disiri was kind to you, offering to hide your children when the Angrborn came.”

“Baki?”

Someone stepped from a dark corner, in form a human woman with hair so red it seemed to glow in the dim light, and now and then leaped like a flame.

“This is a—a friend of mine, Etela.” Toug gulped, drew a deep breath, and plowed on. “She’ll be a friend of yours, too, I’m sure. Baki, this girl is Etela, and I’ve been taking her back to her mother. I’m going to bring her to the castle and feed her if her mother lets me. And this is Vil. He works here, and I’m sure he’s a very good smith. Don’t you like smiths?”

Etela said, “How come she hasn’t got clothes?”

“I’m Baki’s sister, and I love smiths.” She was running her fingers down Vil’s arm. “Smiths as hard as their anvils. Do you make swords, Vil?”

“Not—” His voice cracked. “Not good ones.”

“I can teach you to forge a sword that will cleave the head of the hammer.”

Toug drew Etela to one side. “Where’s your mother?”

“Well, I think she’s in the next room listening.”

“Really? What makes you think so?”

“I just do.”

Toug nodded. “Let’s find out.”

Leaving Uri in Vil’s embrace, they hurried through the kitchen. There was a fireplace in the next room, a little, niggardly fireplace by the standards of the castle Toug had left, but a large one just the same. The coals of a fire smoldered there, and two slave women slept in its ashes.

A third, a white-faced black-haired woman in a dress of black rags, sat bolt upright on a tall stool. In the firelight her wide eyes seemed as dark as sloes.

“That’s Mama,” Etela announced.

Toug cleared his throat. “I’m pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m Squire Toug.”

The seated woman did not move or speak.

“I found Etela in Utgard—in the town, I mean, all alone. Something might have happened to her.”

Not knowing whether the seated woman heard him, he stopped talking; she said nothing.

Etela filled the silence: “Well, something ‘bout did.”

Toug nodded. “So I brought her back. But she was cold and she’s hungry, and if it’s all right with you I’d like to take her to the castle and feed her.”

It seemed to Toug that the angle of the seated woman’s head had altered by a hair.

“To your king?” Toug plowed on. “To King Gilling’s. Maybe I can find some food for her and warmer clothes.”

One hand stirred as the feathers of a dead dove might stir in a draft, and Etela hurried over. The woman seemed to whisper urgently, her whispers punctuated by Etela’s I wills and Yes, Mamas.

Etela returned to Toug. “Well, she says we can, only we better go now ‘n quick.”

Toug agreed. He averted his eyes from the impassioned couple in the kitchen and tried to hurry Etela. Behind them, something had awakened; the timbers of the barnlike house creaked and groaned.

In the smithy two slaves were shaping a mattock, one gripping the red-hot iron with tongs while the other hammered it, sensing its shape (it seemed to Toug) with light taps of the hammer. Toug and Etela dashed past; and if the pair at the anvil heard them, they gave no sign of it.

“What did you mother say to you?” Toug asked when they were trotting down the street.

“Go fast!”

“I know, but what else?”

“Master’s up,” Etela panted. “If he heard you—”

The rest was lost in an earthshaking roar from behind. Toug turned long enough to catch sight of an Angrborn as wide as he was high, with three arms. Scooping up Etela like a puppy, Toug ran for all he was worth but was jerked off his feet by his cloak. For a moment that seemed an eternity, he struggled to withdraw his arms from the slits and prayed that it would tear and free him. Two more hands closed about his waist.

The Angrborn spoke. (Or might have believed he spoke.) All Toug heard was the voice of a beast, snarls that would have sent the biggest bear that ever walked into panicked flight. He shrieked, and could no more have repeated what he had said afterward—what he had promised Org or any Overcyn who would send Org—than he could have repeated what Logi had said to him.

It was effectual, whatever it was. A black shape left a shadow less dark and took Logi from behind.

Toug was dropped or thrown or both, and struck the snow-covered ground with force enough to leave him stunned. When he had recovered sufficiently to get to his feet, Org and Logi were grappling, Logi with a dagger as long as a sword, and Org with a scaly hand locked on Logi’s wrist. Toug had never seen Org’s face clearly before that moment; he saw it then and would have recoiled in horror if he had not known it for the face of their defender.

“Run!” Etela was tugging his arm.

He shook his head as the point of the dagger crept nearer Org’s throat.

“Run! We gotta run!”

“I’m a knight. I can’t run.” He brushed Etela aside and threw himself at Logi, wrestling with a leg, then heaving at the ankle as a man would struggle to uproot a tree.

Org was struggling too, his free hand raking Logi’s back and side so that blood and flesh rained down. A moment more, and Logi fell. He and Org rolled through snow, and though all Logi’s hands circled Org’s neck, so thick was that bull neck with muscle that Org fought on.

Until Toug drove the sword-long dagger he had snatched up into Logi’s left eye.

Cloud and I might have cantered down to the top of one Utgard’s towers. The thought amused me and for a moment I considered it. Cloud would have been safe there, but a less comfortable spot could scarcely be imagined.

Coming to earth outside the town and riding through it was liable to be dangerous; but I was tempted to do that as well. The safest course was probably to touch ground just beyond the moat and trot through the open gate, around the bailey, and so to the stables I had seen behind the keep. Rejecting that, we cantered a long bowshot above the highest spires, and down to the cobbles.

The rattle of Cloud’s hooves awakened no dutiful groom. I dismounted and went in search of a clean stall. A horse nickered at my step. I found it—the white stallion I had been given in a time that seemed long ago.

The grooms, blind slaves, were sleeping behind the tack room. I woke them with the flat of my sword, filling the place with phantoms they sensed but could not see. When they were cowering in a corner, I addressed them. “There’s not a horse in this stable that has water or corn, save one. That one horse—he belongs to an old friend—has water and corn because I watered and fed him. When I saw the way you’d treated him, I wanted to kill you. I still do.”

They moaned.

“Your king is barricaded in Utgard. Is that right?”

“Y-yes.”

“Thus you have felt yourselves at liberty to do as you wished, and what you wished has been to neglect the animals. Filthy stalls and empty mangers. Horses, mules, and oxen half dead of thirst. I’d pity you if you hadn’t proved that you deserve blindness and worse. I’m going into the keep. You’ll find my mount and my hound outside. Unsaddle my mount and care for her. Feed my hound and see that he has water. Is that understood?”

The slaves muttered assent.

“You’re to clean every stall, and feed and water all the animals. I can’t say how long my business with King Gilling will take. An hour, maybe. Maybe longer. No more than half the night though, and when I come back I’ll check every stall to see if my orders have been carried out.”

Leaving the stable I began the long walk around Utgard to the main entrance; then, finding the broad arch of a sally port sized for Angrborn, I entered its pitch black passage and pounded the iron door.

The archer who opened it looked at me with surprise. “Sir Able! I was expectin’ Squire Toug.”

“You really wanta hear what Mama said?” Etela asked as they hurried through the town.

“Yes,” Toug told her. “I want to ask you about her too. Why she wouldn’t talk to me and some other things.”

“That’s good, ’cause I wanna ask ever so much ‘bout your face ‘n the castle. You’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”

“I’ll try,” Toug promised. He had taken Logi’s dagger and its sheath, and was carrying them over his shoulder.

“‘Bout Org, too. Will you answer ‘bout him?”

“If I know the answer.”

“All right, after Master was dead, you ‘n Org talked. Only I was scared to get close. What’d you say?”

“He wanted to know if it was all right for him to feed from your master’s body,” Toug explained. “I said it was, but he’d have to look out for the Angrborn because they would kill him if they saw him. He said he’d take it someplace and hide it, and that way he could come back later and have some more. I said that was fine.”

“He’s not with us no more?”

Toug shrugged. “I don’t see how he could be.”

“S’pose somebody wants to hurt us?”

“I’ll do what I can. I have this now.” He indicated Logi’s dagger. “So we’re better off than we were. I got one of these before. It wasn’t nearly as nice as this, and when my horse finally got to Utgard I stuck that one under the bed and forgot it. I won’t forget this, ever.”

“It’s awfully big,” Etela said practically.

“It’s too big for me to hold right,” Toug admitted, “but I think this handle’s bone, maybe from one of the Angrborn or just from a big animal. Whichever, I ought to be able to cut it down and sand it smooth. It’ll take work, but it’ll be worth it. Now tell me, what did your mother say to you?”

“All of it? There’s lots.”

Toug nodded. “Yes, everything.”

“Well, she said to go to the castle with you, only not to come back ever at all. To do whatever I had to, to stay with you. ’Cause you were my own kind of folks ‘n the closer I got to my own kind the better it was going to be for me. She said get cleaned up ‘n get pretty clothes if I could, ‘n be extra nice ‘n maybe you’d let me stay. Only if you said I had to go, don’t do it, hide ‘til you forgot.”

“I won’t make you go back,” Toug declared.

“Well, all of you is what she meant.”

When Toug had walked a score of paces, he asked, “What about her? Shouldn’t we try to get her out, if we can?”

“She said don’t come back for her, she’s dead anyway.” Hopelessness crept into Etela’s voice. “It’s how she talks. Well, I mean when she does, ’cause sometimes she don’t talk at all, not even to me. Only Vil will take care of her, he always does, ‘n Gif and Alca will too.”

“Is Vil your father?”

Etela shook her head. “My papa’s dead. Only Vil likes Mama ‘n me, ‘n takes care when he can.”

“Logi’s dead too,” Toug remarked thoughtfully.

“Uh-huh.”

“I was wondering what would happen to your mother and the other people he owned.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

Toug considered the matter for a minute or two, then pointed. “Look! That’s the bridge over the moat. See it?”

“We’ll be safe in there?”

“Safer than we are out here. What else did your mother say? You said there was a lot.”

“Well, I forget. Be nice to you ‘n make people like me, ‘n go south where people like us come from, ‘n tell ‘bout the manticores ‘n marigolds.”

“About what?”

“The manticores ‘n marigolds, only I don’t know what they are. Mama used to talk ‘bout them.”

“What did she say about them?”

“I don’t know. What are they?”

“You’ve got to remember something.” Toug insisted. “What did she say?”

“On dresses, I guess, ‘n a scarf. Mostly she’d just say the words. Manticores ‘n marigolds, manticores ‘n marigolds, like that. Don’t you know what they are?”

“Marigold’s a kind of flower,” Toug said slowly, “yellow and really pretty. I don’t know what a manticore is.”

Unchallenged, they strode over the snow, across the bridge and through the gate. Etela halted for a moment to look up at Utgard, vast as a mountain and black against the chill stars of winter. “Well, I knew it was real, real big, only I didn’t know it was as big as this.”

“It’s easy to get lost in,” Toug told her. “You’ve got to be careful ‘til you know your way around.”

“Uh-huh.”

“My sister’s got a room way up high. Maybe you could sleep with her. I’ll ask.”

“With you,” Etela declared firmly,” ’cause Mama said.”

“We’ll see. Maybe you could help me take care of Mani. I’m supposed to do that, too, but like when I’m gone. Like now. Somebody ought to be taking care of him and nobody is, unless the witch will do it.”

“A witch?”

Toug nodded. “Her name’s Huld, and she’s a ghost besides being a witch. I don’t know if ghosts take care of anybody, really.”

“There was a ghost where Mama used to live,” Etela declared. “Only he was real scary ‘n he took care of the house but not people. Mama said he didn’t like anybody much ‘n there were a whole lot he hated. I don’t want to hear ‘bout this witch ’cause I’ll be scared tonight anyhow.”

As he led her to the sally port through which he had left Utgard, Toug reflected that he had been frightened, and often badly frightened, ever since Able had forced him to accompany him into the forest. Always afraid, save for one or two occasions on which he had been too tired to feel fear or anything else.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he told Etela.

“What doesn’t?”

“Being afraid all the time. Being afraid ought to be a special thing. You should be afraid just once in a while. Or maybe never. You used to sleep in that Angrborn’s house, didn’t you? With your mother?”

“Uh-huh. Every night.”

“That would scare me. Weren’t you afraid?”

“Huh-uh, it was just regular. It was where we lived.”

“So I’m going to stop being scared, or try to. If somebody kills me, they kill me, and it will be all over. Only they’re not going to make me scared all the time.”

In the pitch darkness of the entrance, Etela whispered, “Weren’t you scared when you killed Master?”

“Afterwards I was, but when it happened I was trying to do everything too fast—get this sword, and not get rolled on.” With the pommel of the dagger he had taken from Logi, Toug tapped the iron door, three knocks followed by two.

Those two were followed by the grating of the bar, and a muffled grunt as the lone archer struggled with a weight that any of the Angrborn could have moved without difficulty.

The door swung back and Arn said, “There you are, Squire. Sir Able wants to speak to you right away.”

Ulfa opened the king’s door, and for a moment we stood staring. At last I said, “I know you, and you know me.”

She shook her head. “What’s your name, sir? I—I’d like to hear you say it.”

“I’m called Sir Able of the High Heart.”

She curtsied. “Your servant is Ulfa. Your servant is the wife of your servant Pouk.”

“You made a shirt for me once.”

“And trousers, and followed after you when you and your dog, with Toug my father, wiped out a Free Company.”

I nodded. “I have to speak to you and Pouk when I have more time. Is he here?”

“I’ll get him, sir,” she said, and slipped past me.

The king’s bedchamber seemed as vast as the Grotto of the Griffin, cavernous, its ceiling (painted with scenes of war and feasting) lost in the air overhead, its bureaus and chests, its tables and chairs like cottages. In its center, on a black-figured crimson carpet larger than many a meadow, the bed under which Toug had conferred with Baki and Mani seemed small until one saw the slaves waiting there, women whose heads were well below the surface of the bed, so that they had to mount ladders to serve the king, and walk upon the blankets that covered him, blankets over a sheet that might have served as the mainsail of the Western Trader.

Beside that bed, Beel stood upon the tapestried seat of a gilt chain and spoke with Gilling, who sat nearly upright, propped with immense pillows. Beel looked around at me in surprise, and I halted and bowed. “My Lord.”

“He’s here,” Beel told Gilling. “I’d don’t know how that’s possible, but here he is.”

Feebly, Gilling raised a hand. “Sir Able. Approach.”

I did, climbing to a rung of the chair and from there to the seat upon which Beel stood.

“How kind to us are our ancestors,” Gilling muttered. “They favor us, their unworthy son. Schildstarr came, now you. The queen—do you know our queen?”

“I have that honor, Your Majesty. It was Queen Idnn who sent me to you.”

“She was here but a moment ago. A lovely girl.”

I supposed that Gilling had been dreaming. “A beautiful woman indeed, Your Majesty. You’re to be envied.”

“She’s consulted the stars.” Gilling sighed. “She divines with stars and cards and by the flight of birds, for she is wise as well as beautiful. Sir Able will save us. Sir Able, she said, would come tonight. You are Sir Able?”

“I am, Your Majesty.”

“There is no other?”

“No other known to me, Your Majesty.”

“Nor to me,” Beel said.

“It was you who slew our Borderers?”

“Had I known them for yours, Your Majesty—”

Gilling’s huge, pale hand waved them away. “Forgiven. Pardoned. We’re beset by rebels.”

“So I have heard, Your Majesty.”

“Thus we say...” Gilling fell silent. His eyes closed, and for a time that seemed terribly long there was no sound in that vast chamber save the whispers of the slaves, a soft soughing like willows in a summer breeze.

“Beel...”

“I am here, Your Majesty.”

“You said he was far away. So did Thiazi.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I thought it true. I have no doubt Lord Thiazi thought it true as well.”

“This is Sir Able? He is really here?”

“He is, Your Majesty. He’s standing at my shoulder.”

“Come, Sir Able. Approach. Do you fear our touch?”

“No, Your Majesty.” I stepped from the chair to the bed, finding it firmer than I expected.

Gilling’s hand found me, and Gilling’s eyes opened. “Helmet, mail, and sword. Have you a shield, Sir Able?”

“Yes, Your Majesty, and my lance, bow, and quiver, too. I can fetch them if Your Majesty wants to see them.”

Beel said, “A forest-green shield, Your Majesty, with a black dragon on it.”

“They said you were far, Sir Able. Only this afternoon we were told you were remote.”

“I was, Your Majesty.”

“How came you so quickly, Sir Able?”

“I have a good mount, Your Majesty.”

“My queen told me you would come. She is wiser than Beel, though Beel is a good friend. She’s wiser even than Thiazi. She read it in the stars.”

“It’s at her request I come,” I said carefully. “Duke Marder is coming also, with two stout knights, Sir Woddet and Sir Leort, and a hundred men.”

“Will you serve us, Sir Able?”

“I’ll help you if I can, Your Majesty, for her sake and Lord Beel’s.”

Beel himself touched my arm. “Your Majesty, there is someone else here with whom we should speak before we three take counsel further. If your strength does not permit it, Sir Able and I can question him and report to you.”

“We will let you talk,” Gilling told him, “but we will hear him. Who is it?”

“Sir Svon’s squire, Your Majesty. Thinking Sir Able still far away, I sent him out to scout the town for us.”

“Toug?” I looked toward the door and saw him waiting there with a ragged girl, standing between Pouk and Ulfa.

Beel said loudly, “Come, Squire, I must present you.”

Hesitantly, Toug advanced; the girl would have followed him, but Ulfa held her back.

With a hand up from me, he climbed the chair to stand on its seat next to Beel.

“Your Majesty, this young man is Squire Toug. He is the squire of Sir Svon. Sir Svon is the younger of the knights who accompanied me.” In a whisper Beel added, “One knee!,” and Toug knelt.

“You left this castle to spy out my foes, young man?” Gilling’s voice was almost kind.

“To look for scaling ladders, Your Majesty, or battering rams. Anything like that. That was what Lord Beel said to do, and find out who had them.”

Beel nodded. “Those were my instructions, Your Majesty. What did you find, Toug?”

“Neither of those, Your Lordship.” At a slight gesture from Beel, Toug rose. “But they were making mattocks and shovels. Digging tools. They had a lot already, and from what I heard they were going to make a lot more.”

Gilling’s sigh was very nearly a groan. “Common tools for slaves, for farm labor. You found nothing.”

I turned to Toug. “I’m not so sure. You said they had a lot already. What’s a lot? A dozen? Twenty?”

Toug considered. “I’d say sixty or seventy shovels and thirty or forty picks. They were making mattocks when I was there. That’s a thing like a pick, only a wide blade.”

“We know what they are,” Beel told him.

“There were eight or ten of those, and they were making another one when I was there, and—and, Your Majesty...”

Gilling’s eyes opened, looking overlarge in spite of his vast pallid forehead and enormous nose. “What?”

“They weren’t for slaves. They were way too big.”

“They’re going to undermine us!” Beel exclaimed.

Gilling’s head rolled from side to side. “Their slaves would do that. They’ll heap up earth and stones.” His eyes closed again. “So we carried Aegri’s isle.”

Greatly daring, Toug said, “We could go out and get them, Your Majesty. Nobody’s guarding us.”

Gilling did not respond, and Toug turned to me. “Carry them back in here, or burn them.”

I shook my head. “My Lord, I must confer with you. I realize how late it is, but we must talk and I must go. If I had more time, I’d talk to people separately—to Toug here, my servant Pouk, and Ulfa. To this Schildstarr, Lord Thiazi, and you. There isn’t time. Let’s get them together, if they’ll come. Then I’ll have to leave.”

Beel nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

“Ulfa and Pouk are here already,” Toug said. “So is Etela. Maybe you should see her too.”

“Is that the girl?”

Toug nodded, and Beel said, “We’re all here already, in that case, save for Schildstarr and Lord Thiazi. See whether they’ll leave their beds for us, Squire.”