Soul of the Fire (69 page)

Fitch had to wipe tears from his eyes as he and Morley rushed down the halls of the estate. They went as fast as they could without running, remembering what Dalton Campbell told them about trying to act normal. When they saw guards, they quickly changed their route to avoid being seen up close. From a distance, Fitch was just a messenger and Morley an estate worker.

But if they saw any guards, and the guards tried to stop them, then they would have to bolt. Fortunately, the ruckus of the feast covered the sound of their feet on the wood floors.

Fitch had an idea that might help them escape. Without explaining, he pulled Morley’s sleeve, urging him to follow. Fitch turned them to the stairwell. They took the steps two at a time down to the lower floor.

Fitch made two turns and in short order found the room he wanted. It was deserted. Carrying a lamp, they both slipped inside and shut the door.

“
Fitch, are you crazy, shutting us in here? We could be halfway to Fairfield by now.”

Fitch licked his lips. “Who are they looking for, Morley?”

“
Us!”

“
No, I mean, from the way they’re thinking, who are they looking for. A messenger, and a kitchen scullion, right?”

Morley scratched his head as he kept looking at the door. “I guess.”

“
Well, this is the estate supply room—where they keep some of the livery. Before a seamstress fitted me up with my uniform, I got one from down here to wear till she was done with mine.”

“
Well, if you got your uniform, then what are we doing—”

“
Take off your clothes.”

“
Why?”

Fitch growled in frustration. “Morley, they’re looking for a messenger and a scullion. If you put on a messenger’s outfit, then we’ll be two messengers.”

Morley’s eyebrows went up. “Oh. That’s a good idea.”

In a rush Morley stripped out of his filthy scullion clothes. Fitch held out the lamp as he searched the shelves for outfits of messengers for the Minister’s aide. He tossed Morley some dark brown trousers.

“
Do these fit?”

Morley stepped into the legs and pulled them up. “Good enough.”

Fitch pulled out a white shirt with ruffled collar. “How about this?”

Fitch watched as Morley tried to button it. It was too small to fit over Morley’s broad shoulders.

“
Fold it back up,” Fitch said as he searched for another.

Morley tossed the shirt aside. “Why bother?”

“
Pick it up and fold it back up. You want us to get caught? I don’t want it to look like we was down here. If they don’t know someone took clothes, then we can get away better.”

“
Oh,” Morley said. He plucked up the shirt and started folding with his big hands.

Fitch handed him another that was only just a little too big. In short order Fitch found a sleeved doublet quilted with an interlocking cornucopia design. The edges were trimmed with the distinctive brown and black braided-wheat banding of Dalton Campbell’s messengers.

Morley poked his arms through the sleeves. It fit fine.

“
How do I look?”

Fitch held up the lamp. He let out a low whistle. His friend was built a lot stouter than Fitch. In the messenger uniform Morley looked almost noble. Fitch never thought of his friend as good-looking, but now he was a sight.

“
Morley, you look better than Rowley does.”

Morley grinned. “Really?” The grin vanished. “Let’s get out of here.”

Fitch pointed. “Boots. You need boots, or you’ll look foolish. Here, put on these stockings or you’ll get blisters.”

Morley hauled up the stockings and then sat on the floor while he matched up boot soles with the bottom of his foot until he found a pair that fit. Fitch told him to pick up all his old clothes so no one would know they had been there and taken an outfit, if they even discovered it missing—there was a lot of livery stored in the room and it wasn’t orderly enough to tell if one outfit was gone.

When they heard boots in the hall, Fitch blew out the lamp. He and Morley stood frozen in the dark. They were too terrified to breathe. The boots came closer. Fitch wanted to run, but if they did they would have to run out the door, and that was where the men were.

Men. He realized it was boots from two men. Guards. Guards making their rounds.

Once again, Fitch felt panic at the idea of being put to death before a jeering crowd. Sweat trickled down his back.

The door opened.

Fitch could see the man, standing with his hand on the doorknob, outlined in the dim light from the hall. He could see the sword at the man’s hip.

Fitch and Morley were back a ways in the room, in an aisle between shelves. The long rectangle of light from the doorway fell across the floor and came almost right up to Fitch’s boots. He held his breath. He dared not move a muscle.

Maybe, he thought, the guard, his eyes accustomed to the light, didn’t see the two of them standing there in dark.

The guard closed the door and walked on with his fellow, who was opening other doors in the hall. The sound of footsteps receded into the distance.

“
Fitch,” Morley said in a shaky whisper, “I’d be needing to relieve myself something awful. Can we get out of here? Please?”

Fitch had to force his voice to return. “Sure.”

He made for where he remembered seeing the door in the pitch blackness. The light of the empty hall was a welcoming sight. The two of them hurried on to the nearest way out, the service entrance not far from the brewer’s room. Along their way they dumped Morley’s old clothes in the rag bin near the service dock.

They heard the old brewer singing a drunken song. Morley wanted to stop and lift something to drink. Fitch licked his lips as he considered Morley’s idea. It sounded good to him, too. He surely would like a drink right then.

“
No,” he finally whispered. “I’d not like to be put to death for a drink. We have plenty of money. We can buy a drink later. I don’t want to be here a second longer than necessary.”

Morley nodded reluctantly. They rushed out the service doors and out onto the dock. Fitch leading, they hurried on down the steps—the steps Claudine had come up the first time he and Morley had their talk with her. If only she’d listened to them, and done as Fitch warned her.

“
Aren’t we going to get any of our things?” Morley asked.

Fitch stopped and looked at his friend standing in the light coming from the estate windows.

“
You got anything worth dying for?”

Morley scratched his ear. “Well, no, I guess not. Just a nice carved stick game my pa gave me. I guess I don’t have much else but some of my other clothes, and they’re just rags, really. This outfit is better than any of them—even my assembly clothes.”

Penance assembly. Fitch realized with a sense of joy they would never have to go to penance assembly again.

“
Well, I don’t have anything worth taking, either. I got a few coppers left in my trunk, but that’s nothing compared to what we’re carrying now. I say we get to Fairfield and buy some horses.”

Morley made a face. “You know how to ride a horse?”

Fitch looked around to make sure there weren’t any guards about. He gave Morley a gentle shove to get them moving.

“
No, but I reckon we’ll learn fast enough.”

“
I reckon,” Morley said. “But let’s buy gentle horses.”

As they made the road, they both looked back over their shoulders at the estate for the last time.

“
I’m glad to be away from there,” Morley said. “Especially after what happened in there today. I’ll be glad not to have to go into that kitchen again.”

Fitch frowned over at his friend. “What are you talking about?”

“
You didn’t hear?”

“
Hear what? I was off in Fairfield delivering messages.”

Morley grasped Fitch’s arm and brought them to a panting halt. “About the fire? You didn’t hear about the fire?”

“
Fire?” Fitch was baffled. “What are you talking about?”

“
Down in the kitchen. Earlier today. Something went crazy wrong with the ovens and the hearth—the whole thing.”

“
Wrong? Like what?”

Morley lifted his arms up as he made a roaring sound with the spit in his throat. His arms spread, apparently to imitate flames expanding outward. “It just flared up something awful. Burned the bread. Got so hot it split a cauldron.”

“
No,” Fitch said in astonishment. “Did anyone get hurt?”

A fiendish grin spread on Morley’s face. “Gillie got burned real bad.” With an elbow he jabbed Fitch in the ribs. “She was making a sauce when the fire went crazy. She got her ugly prune face burned up. Her hair was afire and everything.”

Morley laughed with the satisfaction of one who had waited years for recompense. “She probably won’t live, they say. But at least as long as she lives, she’ll be in a horrible of pain.”

Fitch had mixed feelings. He felt no sympathy for Gillie, but still …

“
Morley, you shouldn’t be glad an Ander got hurt. That just shows our hateful Haken ways.”

Morley made a scornful face and they started out again. They ran the entire way, diving into the fields three times when a carriage came along the road. They hid in the wheat, or the sorghum, depending on which side offered the most cover. There they lay and caught their breath until the carriage passed.

In a way, Fitch found the experience of running away more a liberation than a frightful flight. Away from the estate he felt less fear of getting caught. At night, anyway.

“
I think we should hide in the day,” he said to Morley. “In the beginning at least. Hide in the day somewhere safe as we go along, and where we can see if anyone is coming. We can travel at night so people won’t see us, or if they do, won’t be able to see who we are.”

“
But what if someone finds us in the day when we’re sleeping?”

“
We’ll have to stand watches. Just like soldiers do. One of us stands watch while the other gets sleep.”

Morley seemed to find Fitch’s logic a marvelous thing. “I never thought of that.”

They slowed to a walk as they neared the streets of Fairfield. There, they knew how to disappear as effectively as they did in the fields when a carriage came along the road.

“
We can get some horses,” Fitch said, “and still make some distance tonight.”

Morley thought a minute. “How we going to get out of Anderith? Master Campbell said there are places where it don’t matter that we’re Haken. But how we going to get past the army at the border with the Dominie Dirtch?”

Fitch gave the shoulder of Morley’s doublet a tug. “We’re messengers. Remember?”

“
So?”

“
So, we say we have official business.”

“
Messengers have official business outside of Anderith?”

Fitch gave that some thought. “Well, who’s to say we don’t? If we say we have urgent business they can’t keep us until they send word back. That would take too long.”

“
They might ask to see the message.”

“
We can’t be showing secret messages to them, now can we? We’ll just say it’s a secret mission to another land we can’t name with an important message they aren’t allowed to see.”

Morley grinned. “I think this is going to work. I think we’re going to get away.”

“
You bet we are.”

Morley pulled Fitch to a halt. “Fitch, where are we going to go? Do you got any idea about that part of it?”

This time it was Fitch who grinned.

Beata squinted in the bright sun as she set down her bag. She wiped her windblown hair back from her eyes. Since she couldn’t read she couldn’t tell what the sign above the towering gate said, but there was a number before it: twenty-three. She knew numbers, so she knew she’d found the place.

She stared at the word after the number, trying to remember it so she might someday recognize it for the word it was, but trying to make sense of it was impossible. It just seemed incomprehensible marks carved in a piece of wood. Chicken scratchings made no less sense. She couldn’t remember a chicken scratching; she couldn’t understand how people remembered the seeming indecipherable marks that made up words, but they did.