Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands (42 page)

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Authors: David B. Coe

BOOK: Rules of Ascension: Book One of Winds of the Forelands
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Grinsa stood abruptly, his cheeks reddening. “How dare you! I have risked my life for you every day since leaving the Revel! And now you presume to judge me for something you couldn’t possibly understand?” He turned on his heel and started toward the shrine’s door. “Find your own way back into the Order of Ascension!” the man said, not bothering to look back. “I’m through with you!”
Tavis stood utterly still, baffled by the vehemence of the Qirsi’s reaction. Just as Grinsa reached the door, however, he called the man’s name.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t … I shouldn’t have said what I did.”
Grinsa just stood there, his hand on the door handle, his back still to the boy.
“Please. I need you. I … I can’t convince any of them alone.”
“No,” Grinsa said, turning to face him. “You can’t. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll stop acting like a spoiled child.”
Tavis had to bite back a retort. He wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in this way. But then again, he had been forced to endure much that was new recently, and compared with most of it, this was a trifle.
“You’re right. This has been a difficult time for me. I’m not used to depending on someone the way I have to depend on you right now. I don’t particularly like it.”
The Qirsi pursed his lips for a moment, then nodded. “I can understand that.”
“You were telling me what I gained from facing Brienne,” Tavis said, trying to coax Grinsa back into the shrine. “I think I need to hear that. It would do me some good.”
“No more of your abuse?”
“I promise.”
Grinsa stood at the door for another moment, as if he still wished to leave. Finally he released the door handle and walked slowly back toward the altar. “I was going to say that though your encounter with Brienne may not have given you enough proof to change Aindreas’s mind, it did give you something. For one thing, I
know you’re innocent now, as does the prioress.” He hesitated, eyeing Tavis closely. “And now you’re sure of it as well, which is more than you could say yesterday, isn’t it?”
The young lord felt his mouth drop open. How could the gleaner have known?
“Am I right?” the man asked.
Tavis nodded.
“I thought so. Even if we can’t go to Aindreas right now,” the Qirsi went on, “we’re better off than we were before. You need to be patient, my lord, difficult as that may seem.”
“But if you and the prioress can’t convince the duke, who will?”
“A good question,” the Qirsi said, his concern written on his pale features.
But in that moment Tavis knew the answer to his own question. Perhaps seeing Brienne had given him what he needed after all.
“The murderer,” he said, the word echoing loudly off the shrine’s ceiling.
Grinsa looked at him with surprise. “What?”
“If we can find the murderer, Aindreas will have to believe us.”
“Will he?” the gleaner asked, raising an eyebrow. “Do you plan to bring the man to him alive? Because a corpse will prove nothing. And even if he is alive, how do you plan to wring a confession from him?”
“But I know who killed her!” Tavis said, feeling hope slip away again. “I saw his face! I recognized him! That has to count for something.”
“In the end I’m sure it will. But again, this may not be the time. Patience, Tavis. That’s what will get you through this.”
He shook his head. “No! Not with this. She showed me his face. She told me to find him. ‘Prove your innocence and save the kingdom.’ That’s what she said.”
“And that’s what we’ll do. But right now we don’t even know where he is. He must have left Kentigern days ago.”
“So we’ll find him!”
“How, Tavis? As far as everyone else in the Forelands is concerned, he’s a musician. No one knows to look for him. You, on the other hand, are a fugitive.”
Tavis shook his head again, though not so violently this time. “He planned this very well, didn’t he?”
“He didn’t plan it alone. I know that offers little comfort, but it’s true. You weren’t undone by one man, but rather by a vast conspiracy. Defeating it will take time.”
“How do you know this?”
“I don’t for certain, but it makes sense. Far more sense than the idea of Brienne’s murderer working alone. I believe the night we took you from the dungeon you heard me tell the first minister that I had killed a man in Kentigern Wood. I’m fairly certain that he was an associate of Brienne’s murderer. And before I killed him, he told me he had been hired by a Qirsi woman I knew from the Revel.”
Something he heard in Grinsa’s voice as the Qirsi spoke of this woman made Tavis think that there was more to her than he was saying.
“Was she a Weaver, too?” he asked.
The man looked at him sharply, but his answer, when it came, was surprisingly subdued. “No, she wasn’t a Weaver.”
Tavis considered asking more, but quickly thought better of it.
“We can talk about this another time,” the Qirsi said. “Right now I need to make some arrangements.”
“What for?”
“Our departure. We’re leaving Kentigern later today. I have to speak with the merchant who’ll be helping us.”
“What should I do?”
Grinsa shrugged. “Get something to eat. Rest. Whatever you choose. Just be ready to leave by the ringing of the prior’s bells.”
The boy nodded, then watched as the gleaner turned from him a second time and left the shrine. He had never had much use for the Qirsi. In that way, as in so many others, he was his father’s son. But he found some comfort in the knowledge that Grinsa would be with him for a time, and he felt certain that he had never before met a Qirsi like this man.
Grinsa’s friend, it turned out, was Qirsi as well, a cloth merchant headed for Tremain. His cart, which he steered to the sanctuary’s rear entrance, was piled several fourspans high with large, folded sheets of broadcloth and buckram. Two large farm horses were harnessed to the wagon, one of them white, the other grey and black.
“You’re to hide among the sheets,” Grinsa explained, somewhat unnecessarily. “Hewson says you’ll be better off under the broadcloth.
The buckram is too stiff; the gate guards will be more likely to spot you.”
“Seems to me they’re going to anyway,” Tavis said, eyeing the cart doubtfully.
“I’ve done this before, young master,” the merchant said from atop his seat. He spoke with a thick Wethy accent, and with his pipe held tight between his teeth, Tavis could barely make out what he was saying. “Curl yourself up on your side and keep still, and I promise you’ll have no trouble.”
Several clerics helped them remove most of the broadcloth sheets, leaving just a thin layer over the wooden bed of the cart. The merchant then folded a number of sheets and placed them in such a way that they created a hollow in which Tavis was to lie. The boy began to nod, finally understanding how the deception was to work. From the sides and back, the pile of broadcloth would look perfectly normal. On the fourth side, the one hidden from view by the pile of buckram, there would be a narrow opening, through which Tavis would be able to breathe.
“Convinced now?” the merchant asked, regarding him with a sly smile.
Tavis had to laugh. “Yes.”
“Good. Then climb on. I want to be moving before long.”
The young lord turned to Meriel, who was already watching him.
“Many thanks, Mother Prioress. Whether I’m king someday or not, I will repay this debt.”
“You owe me no debt, Lord Tavis. If anyone deserves your thanks it’s Grinsa. And perhaps, Bian as well.”
He glanced briefly at the Qirsi before nodding to Meriel. Then he climbed onto the cart and lay down on the broadcloth as the merchant had instructed. A moment later, the clerics began to pile the sheets on top of him again.
It took some time, and even with the folded sheets bearing some of the burden, he soon felt the weight of the cloth bearing down on him. He began to grow hot, and lying in the darkness, he had to keep himself from succumbing to panic. He found it difficult to breathe, though he could tell that some fresh air was reaching him.
It’s better than the dungeon,
he told himself again and again. He could hear nothing, and when the cart suddenly lurched forward, it set his heart racing.
“You could have warned me!” he shouted, knowing they couldn’t hear him.
The cart bounced and rocked for what seemed a long time, until Tavis wondered if he’d be sick to his stomach. Just then, however, the cart stopped. An instant later, Tavis heard Grinsa calling his name.
“Yes,” he shouted back. “Where are we?”
“We’re a short distance from the east gate. I wanted to see if you were all right before we met up with Aindreas’s men.”
“The east gate? That’s all?”
“Yes, why?”
“Demons and fire,” he muttered. Maybe it wasn’t that much better than the dungeon after all.
“Never mind. I’m fine. Just get on with it.”
“Very well.”
In a few seconds the cart started moving again, only to stop again several moments later, no doubt at the gate. Tavis lay perfectly still, breathing in silent shallow breaths and straining his ears to hear what the guards were saying to Grinsa and the merchant. For quite a while he didn’t hear anything. But then he heard several voices, Grinsa’s among them. They must have been standing right next to the pile of broadcloth. He began to shake so fiercely that he feared the whole pile had to be moving. Eventually though, the voices moved away. Still the cart did not move and Tavis lay there for what seemed an eternity, waiting and wondering what the guards were doing.
At last the cart began to roll forward once more and Tavis closed his eyes, more grateful than he could have imagined for the jouncing, rocking motion of the wagon.
After that he lost track of the time. He might even have fallen asleep. It was hard to tell in the unchanging darkness and warmth of his strange bed. At some point, though, he realized that the cart had stopped and that he heard voices again.
“Tavis!” Grinsa was calling.
The weight of the cloth seemed to be lessening.
“I’m all right!” he called. “Why have we stopped?”
Suddenly the entire pile was lifted off him. Grinsa and the merchant were standing on the cart, tilting up the broadcloth.
“Don’t just lay there, boy!” Hewson said through gritted teeth. “Get out so we can put this blasted cloth down!”
Tavis rolled out from under the pile. His muscles were sore again—they always seemed to be these days. He wondered if Aindreas had injured him more permanently than Grinsa had let on.
Night had fallen and they were in Kentigern Wood. Aside from a small oil lamp one of the Qirsi had lit and placed on the ground, there was little light by which to see. Ilias hung low in the western sky, a thin sliver of red peeking through the trees and marking the start of the waxing. Panya would not be up tonight at all.
“Where are we?” Tavis asked, as the two Qirsi let the cloth drop back down onto the cart.
“We’ve come a league or so from Kentigern,” Grinsa said. “We should be safe here for the night.”
“Do I have to get back under there tomorrow?” He wasn’t sure he wanted an answer, but he couldn’t keep from asking.
Hewson shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt.”
Grinsa must have seen Tavis’s expression, because he began to laugh. “I think that depends on whether you’re sitting in front of the cloth or lying beneath it.”
Tavis gestured toward his clothes, which Meriel had given him. They were simple and stained, like those of a common laborer. “No one’s going to recognize me in these,” he said. “They’ll just think I’m an apprentice.”
The merchant chuckled. “I doubt that. You have the look of a court boy. It doesn’t much matter what you’re wearing.”
The boy looked at Grinsa, pleading with his eyes.
“We can dirty his clothes and face a bit,” the Weaver said. “That might help.”
Hewson shook his head. “It’s not likely to fool Kentigern’s men if we run into them. You’re just a gleaner, Grinsa. If we have to run, it’ll be me calling up the mists.”
Once again, Tavis cast a look at Grinsa, who glared at him, keeping him silent. Hewson might have been a friend, but apparently he knew nothing of Grinsa’s other powers.
“I don’t think we’re likely to meet Aindreas’s men out here,” Grinsa said, facing the merchant again. “If we were on the road to Curgh perhaps, but they have no reason to look for Tavis on the road to Tremain.”
Hewson waved his hand, as if losing interest in the conversation. “Fine. Do what you will. Just don’t blame me when we end up with ropes around our necks.”
He walked off, mumbling something about finding wood for a fire.
“He doesn’t know?” Tavis asked.
Grinsa started pulling sacks of food from a small chest beneath the cart seat. “No, he doesn’t.”

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