Black dawn (23 page)

Laundress touched the top of the shaggy blond
head
as
if she were touching an angel.

"Urn, can I talk to her?
Cady?"
Maggie asked,
blinking fast and clearing her throat.

Laundress looked at her sharply. "No. You won't
be able to wake her up. I had to give her strong
medicine to fight off what
they'd
given her. You
know how the potion works."

Maggie shook her head. "What potion?"

"They gave her
calamus
and
bloodwort
-and
other things. It was a truth potion."

"You mean they wanted to get information out
of her?"

Laundress only dignified that with a bare nod for
an answer.

"But I wonder why?" Maggie looked at Jeanne,
who shrugged.

"She's a witch from Outside. Maybe they thought
she knew something."

Maggie considered another minute,
then
gave it
up. She would just have to ask Cady when Cady
was awake.

"There was another reason I wanted to see you,"
she said to Laundress, who was now briskly cleaning up the room.
"Actually, a couple of reasons.
I
wanted to ask you about this."

She reached inside her slave tunic and pulled out
the photo of Miles that she'd taken from her jacket
last night.

"Have you seen him?"

Laundress took the picture between a callused
thumb and forefinger and looked at it warily.
"Wonderfully small painting," she said.

"It's called a photograph. It's not exactly
painted." Maggie was watching the woman's face,
afraid to hope.

There was no sign of recognition. "He's related to
you," Laundress said, holding the photo to Maggie.

"He's my brother. From Outside, you know? And
his girlfriend was Sylvia Weald. He disappeared last week."

"Witch Sylvia!" a cracked, shaky voice said.

Maggie looked up fast. There was an old woman
in the doorway, a tiny, wizened creature with thin white hair and a face exactly like one of the
driedapple
dolls Maggie had seen at fairs.

"This is Old Mender," Jeanne said. "She sews up
torn clothes, you know? And she's the other heal
ing woman."

"So this is the Deliverer," the cracked voice said, and the woman shuffled closer, peering at Maggie.
"She looks like an ordinary girl, until you
see
the eyes."

Maggie blinked.
^-
Oh-thanks
,
^-
she said. Secretly
she thought that Old Mender herself looked more
like a witch than anyone she'd ever seen in her life.
But there was bright intelligence in the old
wom
-.
an's
birdlike gaze and her little smile was sweet.

"Witch Sylvia came to the castle a week ago," she
told Maggie, her head on one side. "She didn't have
any boy with her, but she was talking about a boy.
My grand-nephew Currier heard her. She was tell
ing Prince Delos how she'd chosen a human for a
plaything, and she'd tried to bring him to the castle
for
Samhain
. But the boy did something-turned
on her somehow. And so she had to punish him,
and that had delayed her."

Maggie's heart was beating in her ears. "Punish
him," she began, and then she said, "What's
Samhain
?"

"Halloween," Jeanne said. "The witches here nor
mally have a big celebration at midnight."

Halloween.
All right.
Maggie's mind was whirring
desperately, ticking over this new information. So
now she knew for certain that Sylvia
had
gone
Ink
ing
on Halloween with Miles, just as she'd told the
sheriffs and rangers. Or maybe they'd been driving,
if Jeanne's story about a mysterious pass that only
Night People could see was true. But anyway they'd
been coming here, to the
Dark
Kingdom
. And
something had delayed them. Miles had done
something that made Sylvia terribly angry and changed her mind about taking him to the castle.

And made her
...
punish him.
In some way that
Maggie wasn't supposed to be able to guess.

Maybe she just killed him after all, Maggie
thought, with an awful sinking in her stomach. She
could have shoved him off a cliff easily. Whatever
she did, he never made it here-right?

"So there isn't any human boy in the dungeon or
anything?" she asked, looking at Laundress and
then Mender. But she knew the answer before they
shook their heads.

Nobody recognizes him. He can't be here.

Maggie felt her shoulders slump. But although
she was discouraged and heartsick, she wasn't de
feated. What she felt instead was a hard little burn
ing like a coal in her chest. She wanted more than
ever to grab Sylvia and shake the truth out of her.

At the very least, if nothing else, I'm going to find
out how he died.
Because that's important.

Funny how it didn't seem impossible anymore
that Miles was dead. Maggie had learned a lot since coming to this valley. People got hurt and died and
had other awful things happen to them, and that
was that. The ones left alive had to find some way
of going on.

But not of forgetting.

"You said you had two reasons for coming to see
me," Laundress prompted. She was standing with her big hands on her hips, her gaunt body erect
and looking just slightly impatient. "Have you come
up with a plan, Deliverer?"

"Well-sort of.
Not exactly
a plan
so much
as
well
, I guess it's a plan." Maggie floundered, trying
to explain herself. The truth was that she'd come
up with the most basic plan of all.

To go see
Delos
.

That was it.
The simplest, most direct solution.
She was going to get him alone and talk to him.
Use the weird connection between them if she had
to. Pound some sort of understanding into his
thick head.

And put her life on the line to back up her words.

Jeanne thought the slaves were going to be killed
when Hunter
Redfern
and
Delos
made their deal. Maggie was a slave now. If the other slaves were
killed, Maggie would be with them.

And you're betting that he'll
care,
a nasty little
voice in her brain whispered. But you don't really
know that. He keeps threatening to kill you himself.

He specifically warned you not to come to the
castle.

Well, anyway, we're going to find out, Maggie told the little voice. And if I can't convince him, I'll
have to do something more violent.

"I need to get into the castle," she said to Laun
dress. "Not just into the kitchen, you know, but the
other rooms-wherever I might be able to find
Prince Delos alone."

"Alone? You won't find him alone anywhere but
his bedchamber."

"Well, then, I have to go there."

Laundress was watching her narrowly. "Is it as
sassination you've got in mind?
Because I know
someone who has a piece of wood."

"It
... ."
Maggie stopped and took a breath. "I really hope it isn't going to come to that. But
maybe I'd better take the wood, just in case."

And you'd better hope for a miracle, the nasty
voice in her mind said. Because how else are you
going to overpower him?