The Crown of Dalemark (16 page)

Help! thought Maewen. Why didn't Wend
tell
me?

“It's—it's always very alarming when he does,” she said.

“That's the Undying for you,” said Mitt. “What did he say?”

How can he be so matter-of-fact? Maewen wondered. Even for two hundred years ago. But she remembered what Navis had told her. Mitt knew what he was talking about. “He said I ought to have the Adon's gifts,” she said. She wanted to ask Mitt if he thought the voice was really the One's, but Noreth seemed to have told him already that it was, so she could hardly do that. Instead she said, “If this is Orilsway, Aberath is only a little way to the north. I can go and get the ring from there tomorrow.”

Mitt laughed. It was a hacking, unhappy noise. “You'll be lucky! They'd cut your throat on the spot, girl. I know. I
know
that Countess.”

Maewen began, “But—” Then she saw that Mitt, once again, probably knew what he was talking about. Two hundred years before she was born, people really did cut throats. Earls could get away with it then. She changed her objection to “But I need that ring. What should I do?”

“I'll get it for you,” said Mitt. It seemed obvious to him that this was what Noreth was angling for. And it ought to be child's play. “I was looking at that ring only two days ago,” he explained. “I know just where it is. If I go off now, I can sneak in while it's dark and pick it up with no one any the wiser.”

“But you're saddlesore,” Maewen protested. “And your horse isn't fresh.”

“Teach that horse a lesson,” Mitt said blithely. “And I'm not that bad. I was just having a moan.”

He was lying a bit about the soreness. Ouch! Flaming Ammet! he thought as he mounted the surprised and reluctant Countess-horse. But he kept his mouth shut. Noreth's face, which he could see as a pale, anxious oval, was lifted toward him from beside the hummock he had used to mount. She was worrying, anyway. As he set off beside the half-seen waystone that marked the road to Aberath, he thought that she would have to give over this habit she seemed to have of worrying about everyone. She'd go off her head with it if she got to be Queen.

The green road, as they all seemed to be, was level and smooth and surprisingly easy to follow in the dark. The Undying did a good job, Mitt thought, if it was them who made the roads. And he was pleased to find that after years of indoors work, he had not lost the knack he had learned as a fisher lad of finding his way in the night. You did it the way they said bats did, mostly. Sort of by feel. Whenever the road turned, he could feel the air pressing off the bigger bulks of rock, and he knew to veer left or right, even when he could not see the pale grayishness of the track. The Countess-horse, to be fair to it, had the same knack, when it consented to go.

It made quite a fuss at first. After a mile of head tossing, loitering, and pretending to go lame, and hearty cursing from Mitt, it chose to surprise him by consenting to go. They thudded on at a fair pace. Mitt, in order not to think of the trouble he might be in if he got caught at the mansion, tried to work out why he was going off to get this ring for Noreth.

It might have belonged to the Adon, but whatever Alk said, Mitt was fairly sure it was just a ring. The Northerners could believe in these things if it made them happy, but Mitt had been brought up by the practical Hobin, making guns for a living in Holand, and he knew that the only virtue that ever got into a piece of metal was fine, careful workmanship.

Right. That was the ring. Did he believe the One wanted Noreth to have it?

Mitt had a little more difficulty here. He had never met this One the Northerners made so much of. Or had he? Mitt narrowed his eyes into the mild wind of the night as he remembered finding the golden statue and that great deep voice crying,
“There!”
That had surely not been Noreth shouting. Well, keep an open mind there. But would the greatest of the Undying be that bothered about a ring?

You could say it was Mitt himself bothering. If he took this ring, it would prove to the Countess that Mitt was not her hired murderer. That could be true. But it was fairly clear to Mitt that he was riding through the night like this simply because Noreth thought she needed the ring. That nervous, freckly look of hers made you want to do things for her. So you did them. And then trusted to Navis to get them all out of the consequences, Mitt added to himself as he came out beside the waystone above Aberath.

The Countess-horse knew where they were. It slithered gladly down the raked track to the town. Mitt was almost sorry for its disappointment when he dragged it over to the woods beyond the first fields and—to its incredulity—left it tied to a tree. It made its feeling plain, quite loudly, and several other horses answered it from stables in the town.

“Shut
up
!” Mitt told it. “Be quiet or
I'll
bite
you
for a change!”

He ran away round the fields toward the cliff. Reproachful horse noises followed him for a minute and then stopped with a sigh Mitt could hear even at that distance. He grinned and ran with long strides. His legs ached from being wrapped round a horse so long and it was good to stretch them in spite of his soreness. He supposed he had vinegar to thank that he could run at all. He only stopped running when he was looking down at the pale heaving sea. There he paused to speak to the Undying he did know.

“Alhammitt,” he said. “Old Ammet. Do you hear me? I'd be much obliged if you and Libby Beer could keep an eye on me in the mansion. If I get caught there, quite a few people are going to be in trouble.”

There was no sign from the glimmering sea, but Mitt felt better as he hurried along the clifftop to the place where all the children regularly scrambled round the wall. He nipped round, quietly and carefully, and there he was out in the space by Alk's shed. It was so easy Mitt could hardly believe it.

It went on being easy. Mitt slithered in among the buildings of the mansion, from well-known spot to well-known spot, and not a person moved or a sound disturbed the place except for the faint crunch of his own feet when he crossed the gravel court in front of the library. There were one or two dim lights in some of the upper windows. Otherwise he would have thought the place was empty. It reminded him of times in Holand when he sneaked into strange places with a forbidden message. In fact, it was too much like that. The mansion did not feel like anywhere he had ever lived anymore. Nor was it now, he thought ruefully, as his feet carefully inched through the dark archway and met the flight of stairs up to the library.

At the top his hand met the door and found the handle. Gently, gently, he turned the great latch ring and pushed the door open on the woody, booky mustiness inside. It was so dark in there that he realized he was going to have to find the glass case where the ring was by memory and feel. But since he was going to have to break the glass and someone might hear, he shut the door behind him as gently as he had opened it. He took a step into the room.

Cree-eak
.

“Flaming Ammet!” Mitt muttered. “Wish I'd remembered how
noisy
this dratted floor was!”

Light came on, blindingly, with a metal clapping sound.

9

Mitt did not even feel despair. He felt dead. He was caught, as he had always known he would be one of these days. He simply stood, blinking to see through the light, wondering if it was only the Countess lying in wait for him or Earl Keril as well.

The light was a dark lantern standing on the selfsame case he had intended to rob. When Mitt tore his eyes sideways from it, he could see the bilious visage of the Adon's portrait, still on its easel. Beside that, in a big dark wood chair, Alk was sitting, bulky and blinking. Either the light had blinded him, too, or he had been asleep—asleep was most likely, because Alk yawned before he spoke.

“I told you,” he said, “not to do anything stupid until you'd talked to me. Did you shut the door?”

Mitt nodded.

“Then come over here,” said Alk.

Mitt went, still without any word to say, over several miles of violently creaking floor, until he was beside the table and the glass case, and in front of Alk's chair. Alk put out a beefy hand and carefully closed down the iron shutter of the lantern until the library was nothing but shadows all round them.

“Now stand over there,” Alk said, pointing the other beefy hand.

Mitt moved, regretfully, away from the table and the glass case, and stood at the edge of the pool of light, beside the easel. Alk was alone, but this was no comfort. Mitt knew very well how quick and strong Alk was. Alk had put him where it was impossible for Mitt to get to the door before Alk did.

“Doing a bit of studying tonight,” Alk remarked, yawning again. “Or so I told my Countess. I had a bit of a conversation with her, like I told you I would, and I wasn't pleased with what she had to say at all. To put it bluntly, as soon as Keril was out of the way, we had words—which is not a thing we've ever had before.” He blinked at Mitt, as sleepy and glum and grim as Mitt had ever seen him. “What do you think about that? You being the cause of those words.”

Mitt cleared his throat, which had somehow closed solid. “I'm sorry.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Alk. “So then I had a think. And it seemed to me that in your shoes I'd be trying ways to wriggle out of the bind they'd got you in. Am I right?”

Mitt cleared his throat again. His voice still came out hoarse and desperate. “I'm not doing any killing!”

“So I should hope!” said Alk. “But I'm glad to hear you say it. What's she like, this Noreth?”

“Freckly,” said Mitt. “Full of life. I took her for a boy at first. She's all right. She's got her head screwed on more than you'd expect, considering.”

“Has she, now?” said Alk. “Then what's she up to, riding the King's Road with you for a follower? That doesn't sound too clever to me. There's more earls around than Keril and my Countess who'll want to put a stop to that.”

“I know. Put like that, it sounds right daft.” But daft though it was, Mitt found himself defending Noreth. “She cares about people, and she's got some good ideas. People will come to her. And she
has
got a claim.”

“As to that,” Alk said, “so have a lot of people got a claim. She's saying she descends from the Adon over beside you and his second wife, Manaliabrid—right? Now I've been reading up again on all that.”

His big hand made a gesture, down by the lantern and the glass case it stood on. There was a spread of books there, several of them open, others with markers in. One of the markers was a shoehorn; another was a six-inch nail. Typical of Alk. Mitt would have grinned at any other time.