In Green's Jungles (17 page)

Fava's hand concealed her smile. "We came in here to talk to you about something entirely different, Incanto, and we were here first."

"I know what you want to talk about," (my voice was not more assured than I felt) "and it is the same thing. You say it's entirely different, but you don't know what I'm talking to Torda here about. Or do you?"

Fava shook her head.

"Torda is a spy," I said, and was careful to look at Fava as I said it. "Inclito has known for some time that there was a spy in his household. He asked me to identify her. I say her because it was clear to both of us that it had to be one of four persons: Decina, Onorifica, Torda, and you, Fava. It's Torda, and she can save us all some time by confessing."

"A spy? I am not!"

Oreb spat, "Bad girl!"

"I imagine everyone here knows your history," I told her, "so there can be no harm in re-hashing it. You came here as a poor relative-a relative only by courtesy. Your mother was supposed to have been a second cousin by marriage, or something like that. Something equally nebulous and impossible to prove. Came here from where?"

Torda shook her head and stared at the floor.

"Not from Blanko, because it wasn't said in that fashion. If you and your family had lived in town, Inclito and his mother-his mother particularly-would have known all about you. You came here from Soldo, and it's obvious who sent you."

"No!"

"You may actually be the sort of step-relative you claim to be. Who cares? The relationship is so tenuous as to be nonexistent anyway. Inclito took you and treated you as well as his daughter. All four of us know why."

I waited for her to speak, but she did not.

"You really are good-looking," I told her, "your profile particularly. Your face is a trifle too narrow, I would say, but it's not at all bad, and you have an admirable figure. When you smile you must be very pretty, and I'm sure you smiled a lot at Inclito, at first. Didn't you?"

She was glaring at me now, eyes blazing. "That has nothing to do with you!"

"Then something went wrong between you. Did he find you with another man? Or did you ridicule his appearance? He isn't a handsome man, and he seems sensitive about it."

Torda's face was set hard. "It's none of your affair. I told you."

Mora said, "He's acting for my father, or thinks he is." Her voice was flat with resignation.

"I would guess that you simply wanted too much. Was it jewels and clothes? Inclito had made a mistake when he treated you as well as he did in the beginning. You may even have tried to get him to marry you, and he doesn't want to remarry. He's hoping to leave everything he's got to his daughter and her husband."

Torda looked at Mora, and her eyes spoke volumes.

"He cast you aside, and you had to become the mere servant you'd been pretending to be. Any normal woman would have left then-"

"I had no place to go!"

Mora sighed. "Nobody here will, if you don't keep your voice down."

I nodded. "Why did you stay? Clearly because Duko Rigoglio would have been displeased. He would want you right here, as long as you could learn-"

"I'm from Novella Citta. I really am." Torda's voice was almost conversational, but a tear crept down her cheek.

I shrugged. "If that's the truth, perhaps I can arrange for your body to be sent there. I'll do what I can. Certainly Blanko won't want you where its own citizens find rest."

"Fish heads?" Oreb inquired.

"Breakfast soon, at least, though I doubt that there will be fish for you. Mora, would you be willing to go to the kitchen and see that Onorifica brings your grandmother's bathwater? Or perhaps even see to it yourself? It would be-"

She shook her head.

"As you like."

I turned back to Torda. "To repeat, it was clear that the spy was one of you four. Inclito suspected Fava and took care to say nothing that a spy might think significant in her presence. It was a reasonable precaution, and he took it; but nothing changed. The Duko seemed to know each plan he hatched. That suggested that Fava was not the spy, but he-and I, when he told me about itremained understandably suspicious of her. She was not related to him, had no discernible family of her own, and had the run of the house. I talked to her and to Mora, hinting that her visit, welcome as it had been, had reached its natural conclusion. Mora wanted her to stay, but she herself readily agreed to leave at once, as you've no doubt heard. That settled it for me-Fava was no spy.

"Mora, how do they kill spies in Blanko? Have you any idea? At home they shoot them, but I've heard that in some places they're torn apart by four horses."

"Hang them, I think."

Fava said, "We burn inhumi. It depends on just what the person's done."

I nodded. "You were eliminated, as I said. That left Decina, Onorifica, and Torda here. Torda was clearly a rejected lover, so the answer was plain enough. I took time to inquire about the other two just the same. Decina has been working for Inclito and his mother since Mora was small; moreover, she rarely leaves her kitchen. I eliminated her, as any sensible person would. Onorifica's family lives nearby, and she isn't intelligent enough unless she's a superb dissembler."

I returned to Torda. "If you don't confess, you'll still be tried before the Corpo and executed. It's not the way I'd deal with this if I had a choice, but this isn't my house and Blanko isn't my town. What have you to say?"

"I didn't!" And then, in a whisper, "I love him."

"Poor girl!"

"Yes, Oreb. But a wealthy one if she could have made him believe it. Torda, I can only say that you have a strange way of showing it. If you confess-now-I'll do my utmost to see that there is no trial and no execution."

She shook her head violently.

"I hesitate to speak for him, but I believe that Inclito will as well. He'd prefer to keep your past relationship a secret, surely. Will you confess?"

"I didn't do it!"

I drew a deep breath and let it out. "Then there's no more to be done. Mora, will you tell your father we must see him as soon as he's up and dressed?"

"No." She spoke to Fava. "Go tell the other one about Grandmother's water."

I shook my head, and Fava said, "Really, Mora, I-"

"I mean it. Go now."

Fava stood, nodded, and left us, closing the door behind her. As I watched her go, I had to marvel at the perfection of the illusion. To my eyes (if not to Oreb's) she was a girl of thirteen or fourteen, rather small, with light brown hair that I knew must be a wig.

"Bad thing! Fish heads?" Oreb tugged at a lock of my own.

"No, breakfast isn't ready yet. Onorifica would have come around to tell us, I feel sure."

Mora began, "I am-"

I cut her off. "I know. First let me send Torda away."

Mora shook her head. "I am the spy. It was me."

"As you wish," I told her, and spoke to Torda. "Mora's been spying on her father for Duko Rigoglio. I accused you in the hope of making her confess. Do you understand?"

"It will…" Her face was stricken. "This will kill him."

"It will if he finds out, perhaps. A few minutes ago you said you loved him. Do you intend to tell him?"

She shook her head.

"Then perhaps you do. Will you tell your father, Mora?"

"No," Mora said. "I couldn't."

"In that case, neither will I. If we three can keep a secret, there's no reason it shouldn't be kept."

Mora began to speak, but I raised my hand to silence her. "Before you say anything about Fava-it may be we've seen the last of her. Do you realize that? It was why I didn't want you to send her away."

"I hope she's gone. That would make it easier." Mora slumped in her chair.

"Harder, I believe, and certainly less satisfying. She recruited you, isn't that right?"

After a lengthy pause, Mora nodded.

Torda said, "Then Fava is really the Duko's spy?"

"She is-or was-one of two," I said. "She got Mora to cooperate with her, and I imagine that Fava herself carried their reports back to Soldo."

Fava opened the door as I was speaking. "I did, and I got Mora to tell me things, that's all. I never said anything to her about spying, or telling the Duko. No matter what she's told you, that's all it was."

"That is all I ever thought it was. But after a time she must have realized what she'd been doing. If she hadn't before Inclito told her he thought there was a spy in the house, she certainly must have after that. Nevertheless, she didn't want you to leave."

Mora nodded.

"And she must have been very much afraid that you'd find a way to tell her father after you left-a letter to be found in your room or something of that sort. Most of you can't write, but you can, I know. Since you've been going to palaestra with Mora, it's not surprising."

Mora said, "She wouldn't have."

"She'll say she wouldn't have if you ask her now, I feel quite sure." I watched Fava resume her seat on my bed. "What was it the Duko gave you, Fava? Silver and gold? Cards with which to repair a lander? Not food, you seem to have had no difficulty getting that for yourself."

She shook her head.

"What was it, then?"

"I won't tell you!"

"Yes, you will." I strove to sound ruthless. "I'm giving you a chance to leave alive, but I'll withdraw it if I must."

Sullen silence.

"In a little while, I'm going to have to speak with Torda in private, because I want her to tell me a private matter. Yours is not. You must tell all three of us right now, Mora particularly."

"Torda too?"

"Yes, I think so. It's a bit late to leave Torda out."

I turned and glanced at the window. The Short Sun was rising, illuminating Inclito's broad fields and fat cattle. (Today I watched him stoop and pick up a clod of black earth, which is just now being plowed for winter wheat.) Gesturing, I said to Mora, "All that will be yours someday-no doubt he's told you. Yours, and your husband's."

"Good place!" Oreb assured us, and Mora nodded mutely.

"How did the Duko pay you, Fava, for the information you brought him? What did he give you?"

"Nothing!" She hesitated. "Jewelry, mostly. Jewelry and cards. I gave them away or threw them away."

"I can imagine-gold is heavy stuff. Since you didn't want the Duko's jewels or his cards, what did you want? You must have wanted something."

She shook her head. "Nothing."

"I know, you see, or at least I think I do; and I'll tell Mora if you don't. It will sound far worse from me."

"You know everything, don't you!"

"Certainly I don't know as much as I need to. I intend to consult the gods again, if I can persuade Mora's father to give me a lamb-"

"No cut!"

"Not you, silly bird. If Inclito will let me have a lamb or something of the kind to sacrifice, I'd like to consult the Outsider. Him, particularly, and perhaps the Mother, the Vanished People's sea goddess, though as far as I know the war brewing here has no connection with the sea."

"Then you'll pretend the gods told you," Fava declared.

"Certainly not. The gods won't tell people who do that sort of thing anything."

"We've been waiting for it," Mora explained listlessly. "Some kind of magic or enchantment. We were afraid, but we wanted to see it."

I nodded, and admitted that when I was her age I would have felt the same way.

Fava said, "Do we still want to talk to him about what we came to see him about, Mora? It will sound inane after all this."

"I don't care," Mora told her. "If you want to."

"Then I won't."

"I think we need to finish talking about your spying first," I said. "Mora will feel better when that's over, and so will I. While you were out of the room, I said that if the three of us-Mora, Torda, and I-could keep a secret, there was no reason for anybody else to know. Can you think of one?"

"Not if you can't."

"I can't. You're an intelligent young woman. Can you summarize everything you've told the Duko for me? Briefly, we haven't a lot of time."

"I think so. First there was the ammunition problem. Blanko had a lot of slug guns left over after the last war, but not much ammunition for them. Inclito was able to buy some in Aspis, and he got people from there to come here and show our people how to make it, so now there's a shop making ammunition in Blanko, and the town buys it from them as fast as they can turn it out.

"Then there was a lot of talk about fortifying. Some people wanted to make the town wall thicker and higher, and build more towers, but where was the money coming from? Naturally Inclito was against all that, and so were all the other farmers. He wanted to use the money, or as much as there was, to hire troopers who'd protect everybody, and that was the way it was decided after the farmers said they were going to start taking their produce someplace else."

Mora put in, "My father went around to a lot of the neighbors to get them to do that, and got some of them to go around like he was."

"I see."

"And I told him about you," Fava continued, "after you came here the first night. Inclito thinks you're a man called Silk he read about-"

"Good Silk," Oreb assured us.

"In some book. Only I don't think the people in books are ever really real."

"Nor do I," I told her.

"And that was the last one, two nights ago. I said you were supposed to be this very powerful witch who'd cast spells on him and Soldo so Blanko would win, and I thought there might even be some truth in it. That was because of the story you told us the first night. Then you told that other one tonight, and you got inside mine and started changing things. I told Mora this morning, and she said we should just go and see you and ask how you did it, as friends. I said you were her friend, not mine, but if she wanted to I'd come along."

"He's going to let you go," Mora told her. "He could get Papa to kill you twice over. You couldn't have a better friend than that."

"Yes, I could. I do."

"Before we talk about stories-"

From my shoulder Oreb repeated, "Talk, talk."

"Before we discuss those, I have a few questions about your reports, Fava. How many times have you gone to Soldo to talk to Duko Rigoglio?"