The Death of Dulgath (20 page)

“Sir?”

Sherwood jumped at the sound.

“Mister Stow?” Rissa Lyn had followed him across the yard. In both her hands, she held empty buckets.

He must have looked strange, creeping up on the well and staring at it. The expression on her face said as much. She even gave a concerned glance at the well, and then another behind her.

“Is the…ah—has Lady Dulgath concluded her meeting then?” he asked, trying his best to sound sane.

“Yes, sir.”

“No one admitted to it, did they?”

“No, sir.”

“I didn’t think they would.”

“Me neither, sir.”

Sherwood nodded and forced a smile that must have been miserable, judging by the way Rissa Lyn grimaced in return.

“I’m sorry. You’re here to fetch water. Don’t let me get in your way.” He gave a curt nod and started back toward the castle.

“Sir?”

He paused, turning to look at Rissa Lyn standing in the sunlight. She was still grimacing, but not at him. She looked frightened.

“What is it?”

“I know who busted up your things,” the maid said in a whisper, her sight darting toward the castle doors. Then she turned and walked to the well, setting the buckets down and reaching out for the windlass crank.

“Let me help you with that,” Sherwood said, and rushed over to rotate the wheel.

“Thank you, sir. You’re too kind, sir,” Rissa Lyn said loudly. Then, as he began cranking, she whispered, “I was woken by the noise, an awful cracking. I often sleep in the linen storage. It saves me from crossing the yard in the dark.”

She glanced around apprehensively at the old walls. “No one cares ’cause it’s just me who goes in there. So I was just down the hall, you see, and I heard it. I don’t know what I was thinking…going down there, I mean. It sounded like a monster was loose in the castle—crashes, shattering glass, cracks, grunts, and under all of that a muttering like someone was talking to themselves. I honestly don’t know how I found the courage to peer through the crack in the doorway.”

“What did you see?” Already Sherwood had convinced himself that the phantom shadow near the well was some ancient ghost or demon responsible for the destruction of his easel and paints. Rissa Lyn’s answer was both disappointing and depressing.

“Was Lord Fawkes, sir.” She emptied the water from the well’s bucket into one of her own. “He was in the study working up a sweat after taking a real dislike to your painting stand. Hard work, I guess, difficult to break.”

“Did he see you?”

“Oh—no, sir. I just took a peek, and when I saw who it was, I ran back to my cupboard. People think he’s swell and all, but—he scares me.”

Sherwood let the wheel spin, taking the haul back down to the bottom of the well. “Scares me, too.”

This made her smile at him for the first time. “It just wasn’t right for him to do that, not to someone as…well, as nice as you.”

“Thank you, Rissa Lyn.” He started cranking again. “Did you tell Lady Dulgath?”

The smile vanished and that look of fear rushed back. “No, sir.”

“Why not? She was asking for—”

“She was asking for the guilty to step forward. His Lordship wasn’t there. And if he were, he wouldn’t bother.”

“But you could’ve explained about seeing him.”

She shook her head. Rissa Lyn had curly hair that jiggled like leaves on a bush well after she stopped. “He would find out, and who would believe me? He’d just deny it, and then I would be in trouble for lying, even though I wasn’t.” She bit her lip, and he understood.

Sherwood wasn’t making idle conversation about Lord Fawkes being scary. The lord had the brutal aggression of ambitious men. He wouldn’t think twice about crushing or intimidating those he saw as below him.

Sherwood grabbed the well’s bucket this time and filled her other bucket. “You can still tell Lady Dulgath in private. Talk to her like you’re doing with me now. No one but you and she would know what you said.”

The curls shook again. “Me and Her
Ladyship
…we…I don’t speak to her.”

“You’re her handmaiden, right?”

When Sherwood was interested in a noblewoman, he usually worked through her handmaiden. They were the front door to any lady’s heart—or at least her bed. Noblewomen maintained a distinct delineation between servants and gentry, but exceptions were often granted for their personal maids, who were sometimes as close as sisters. This was one of the reasons why he’d always made it a point to say good morning to Rissa Lyn. He’d even brought her pretty shells from his walks on the shore and flowers from the roadside.

Rissa Lyn nodded, but behind her eyes was that same fear.

She’s not afraid of Fawkes. She’s afraid of Lady Dulgath.

“What’s wrong?” He set the haul back on the edge of the well.

“Nothing, sir. Thank you for the help, sir. And please, don’t tell nobody that I was the one who saw His Lordship, sir. I only told you because…I have to go, sir.”

She grabbed up the two buckets and ran off, spilling much of the water as she went.

Sherwood stood in the well niche, watching Rissa Lyn disappear into the dark of the castle. She left an intermittent trail of damp spots.

“She’s hiding something,” a low voice said in his ear.

Sherwood jumped, pushed away, slipped, and fell on the decorative stone that fanned around the base of the well. Over him appeared a man in a long black cloak with the hood drawn up.

“I want to ask you some questions.”

When Sherwood’s heart stopped racing and his ability to breathe returned, he realized he knew who the man was—one of the two who had met Nysa the previous morning.

“Too bad. I don’t want to answer any.” Sherwood got his feet back under himself. “Go away.”

“Your wants aren’t my concern.”

Royce Melborn—at least he thought that was the man’s name—reached menacingly into his cloak.

Sherwood was already preparing his feet to run when the hand came out. He’d expected a dagger. What he saw instead stopped him. The man in the cloak was holding the glass bottle of Beyond the Sea. “I thought…I expected you would’ve destroyed that. Thrown it away or something.” He held out his hand. “Give it back.”

“No,” Melborn said. “You gave it to me.”

“I
threw
it at you.”

“Gave, threw—same thing.”

“No, it’s not.” He reached for the vial, but Melborn snatched it away.

“Better be the same thing because otherwise sending it my way could be interpreted as assaulting a constable. That’s a serious offense.”

“You’re not a constable.”

“I have a writ. Do you want to see it?”

“Have you forgotten I was there when you were presented to Lady Dulgath? I know you’re not a constable. Any writ you have is a forgery.”

“I don’t need a writ to get answers. I have better ways to extract information. Let’s go up to your room where we can speak in private.”

“No!”

Royce smiled and tossed the bottle of pigment high into the air. It spun, glinting in the sun.

Sherwood gasped as it came hurtling back down. He expected a brilliant burst of blue on the stone at their feet, but Melborn snatched it out of the air.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk?” Melborn asked, and motioned as if he were about to throw it again.

“Don’t! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“Yes, I do.”

“Do you even know what you’re holding?”

“This?” Melborn looked at the bottle, turning it back and forth. “This is Ultramarine, commonly known as Beyond the Sea, a pigment made from pulverizing the semiprecious stone lapis lazuli into a powder. It’s ideal for dyeing cloth or mixing with egg yolks to make tempera for painting.”

Sherwood stared openmouthed for a moment. “I actually use oil.”

“What kind?”

“Walnut.”

“Try linseed sometime.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Used to be in the business.”

“
You
were a painter?”

Melborn shook his hood. “Illegal imports. Beyond the Sea is one of the exclusive trade items brought in through the Vandon Supply Company—a pretty way of saying it’s pirated. This stuff goes for one hundred gold tenents an ounce. What is this?” Melborn held up the bottle to his ear and shook it. “Two, two-and-a-half ounces?”

“Three. Unless you’ve poured some out.”

“Nope, all still here.” Melborn began tossing the bottle back and forth between his hands. “Sure you don’t want to invite me to your room for some tea and cookies?”

“I don’t have either, but…” Sherwood’s stomach lurched with each toss. “Are you saying you’ll give that back if I cooperate?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Okay.”

“And one more thing.”

Sherwood cringed, knowing the offer was too good to be true. “What?”

“I want an apology for throwing it at me. That wasn’t very nice.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There, doesn’t that make you feel better?” Melborn stepped past him and led the way back across the yard.

Sherwood realized that the dark clouds had retreated a bit. That bottle—if he did get it back—would save his career and possibly his life. As much as he would loathe doing it, he could sell it in Mehan and use the coin to replace at least some of what was lost. There would be enough to get him painting again. Sherwood wouldn’t be able to take any noble commissions, not without his precious blue pigment, but merchants liked portraits, too.

As he watched Melborn’s cloak whip behind him, and the man slipped into the shadows of the porch, Sherwood was reminded of the thing in the shadows. The thing that wasn’t quite human. He’d found his ghost.

Chapter Eleven
Brecken Moor

Scarlett Dodge led Hadrian up the trail that corkscrewed around the balding hill. They were a few miles outside the village on the far side of the river—the
bad side
, as Pastor Payne called it. Didn’t seem bad to Hadrian.

Down by the mill, where a big waterwheel turned, Scarlett had taken him across an arching stone bridge that was about as picturesque as they came. The rushing river churned below, its deep green waters frothing between sun-bleached boulders. A small mountain rose from the edge of the far bank. The river had cut a gash through it, revealing iron-rich layers of stone. There were no homes on the far side, no mills, no tilled fields, and everything was uphill. The little trail they followed had worn the roots of nearby trees, polishing them until the wood shone. Where the path passed over rocks—which was often—the surface of the stone was buffed as smooth as finished marble.

The path started in a thick canopy of cottonwood and hawthorn. As they ascended, it graduated to birch and juniper. Farther up, the trail widened when they reached a world of fir, aspen, and pine. The “bad side” of the river had an enchanting, mythic quality. Moss and lichen covered the rocks, some of which were the size of two-story houses. They looked to have been dropped and forgotten by neglectful giants.

“It’s beautiful here,” Hadrian said.

“It is,” Scarlett agreed, striding up the trail with all the stamina of a mountain goat.

“Some of the rocks are shaped like faces,” he observed. This was the sort of comment that made Royce cringe, and Hadrian expected the same reaction from Scarlett.

Instead, she nodded and smiled. “People used to believe stones like these were alive, you know? Trees, too—they believed everything had spirits. People worshiped river gods, the sun, the moon, and the four winds.”

“Is that what the monks think, that there are spirits everywhere?”

“No, but that’s what our ancestors thought. Ages and ages ago, long before the empire, people lived in scattered villages like—well, like Brecken Dale, and every one of them had its own personal god. They worshiped a statue of him
or her
, and even took it with them when they charged into battles. There were hundreds of spirits and demons back then. But all that changed, starting here.”

“Starting here? What happened?” Hadrian asked, but Scarlett had scampered ahead and disappeared around a bend of cliff. Catching up, he discovered they had reached the top.

An open, rocky slope, covered in sedge, matt buckwheat, and forget-me-nots, spread out before him. He stood above the tree line, and below lay the world. Hadrian felt as though he could see into infinity. Green-blue ridges of forested hills ran south toward bluer, rocky mountains, and beyond those were white peaks. A cloud was caught between two ridges, a tuft of milkweed trapped in a cleft. Far below, the village was merely a smudge and the river only a shining ribbon wriggling through the green. To the east, and what looked to be just below their feet, the silver waves of the ocean shimmered. But what astounded him the most was the clear, blue sky threatening to engulf him. “Whoa.”