The Fox (31 page)

Vedrid smiled with wistful regret when he finished, the dreams closing in. His eyes rolled and his head drooped, and then he slid to the floor, his breathing slow. If he had not been young and strong—and deeply motivated by his new-found sense of honor—his mind would have slipped away on that dark tide, leaving the physical realm altogether.

“I think the dose was too strong,” Tlen said, scratching his jaw. “Just smelling it is putting me half to sleep.”

“Well, then, you take him, stash him somewhere where he won’t be seen, let ’m sleep it off, then send ’m on his way.”

"What do I tell him?” Tlen rubbed his eyes and yawned.

Neither was used to plotting. Action, now, that was clear. Fighting an enemy you knew was an enemy—that made sense. When the enemy turns out to be wearing your coat, speaking your language—

Hawkeye grimaced. “Tell him it was a loyalty test, and he’s a loyal man, right enough, and to carry on with Evred-Varlaef’s orders, fast. Give him money. He’s not going to blab about what we did, not after all that he told us.”

Tlen opened a hand, his manner uneasy.

“I’ve got to get riding for home,” Hawkeye said. “Don’t know what the weather will do, and I want one week of freedom before my own wedding.” What he was really thinking was,
Wait until my father hears.

Chapter Nineteen

THE First Day of New Year’s Week dawned bitterly cold. The sun arced far in the north, a ball of pale yellow casting long shadows before vanishing altogether behind the ice-topped mountains of the Andahi Pass high above Ala Larkadhe.

Evred-Varlaef rose from the narrow camp bed he’d set in the highest tower room. And while the two scout dogs who’d slept curled up on either side of him stretched, muzzles pointing toward the ceiling, he glanced out the window at the snow-covered city below, then reached for his clothes.

As Evred approached the long curving staircase leading down, he listened. There! Underneath the wind keening around the stone towers, that eerie sound again. It was clearest from the towers; from below, it was hard to make out.

The storm winds skimmed over the icy peaks to rake the little city below, shrieking around the lower buildings, worrying at cracks, drumming at windows, making the sound. Evred paused on the tower stairs, listening for that eerie hum, deep and steady below the wail of the wind. He lost his sense of time in that still tower; as most were gone on liberty or watch, a solitary day stretched ahead.

Inda drops down into the
Vixen
, mind racing as he watches his forces closing with the pirates.

“Put
Death
right through the middle—”

Evred descended the last steps and shouldered open the iron-reinforced door as the dogs raced past him into the small court. Evred followed, tightening his sash as the wind pounced, needling whatever flesh it could find. The scout dogs sniffed, lifted their legs, let out steaming streams.

Dogpiss
. A sudden reminder still hurt.

When the dogs had finished, Evred picked up the waiting wand from its stone shelf, waved it over the yellow stain and the droppings without pausing as he usually did to witness the flicker of magic. He dropped the wand onto the shelf, then hurried with the dogs to the opposite door. They trod through the silent gray stone halls to the mess hall, which was mostly empty; the dogs, well-trained, scampered to the alcove adjacent the kitchen where their food was kept.

Evred glanced skyward. The bells for Convocation were probably ringing right now, bringing the Jarls to the throne room for their yearly oaths.

Where was Aldren-Sierlaef now? Probably still in the south. How long since he’d been home? A year? More? Twenty-five years old, the year heirs were expected to be married, and no word of a royal marriage.

As Evred ate breakfast alone, he considered the reasons his brother must have sent to their father. He had the excuse of war, of defense of the western coast. And the coast still held, though there had been terrible attacks, burnings, looting, according to Sindan’s Runners. Sindan had said recently that the pirates had been seen sailing south in a mass.

Evred put his dishes in the bucket and walked out, footsteps loud in the now empty hall. He wondered if it would be better not to listen to the reports.

Inda signals to Jeje. “I’ll command from
Vixen
.”

Fast
Vixen
under Jeje’s steady, sober hands.

Evred looked down, resting his fingertips on the bony head of the scout dog who paced steadily next to him, claws clicking a counter-rhythm to the ring of Evred’s heels.

Jeje takes an arrow in the forearm—Inda yells for bandages. One of her crew dashes up, pulls the arrow out, and binds the arm with his scarf—Jeje insists she stay at the tiller—Inda divides his attention between the bandaging and the scout rounding
Death
to bear down on the nearest pirate—

At midday Evred brought a stack of reports to the mess hall and finished reading them.

When he laid aside the last he tidied the pile, then let his hands drop. Now what? The rest of the day lay, heavy as the snow, ahead of him.

All right, then. Time for an inspection.

He buttoned his coat tight, pulled on a knit cap, and walked around the quiet castle, the patient dogs shadowing him, pausing only for sniffing.

Evred listened, observed the changing of the watch. Sentries walked steadily, dark silhouettes against the pewter sky. Stable orderly. Horses dozing in the loose boxes.

He climbed slowly up the ice-white tower stairs.

Evred paused at a narrow window, watching the drill down below. Clash, stamp, shout—breath clouding—the sounds echoed up the frozen stone walls.

Everything as it should be. He considered that “should be.” Ala Larkadhe—poised between Iasca Leror, Olara, and Idayago—now his city.

His? There had been four assassination attempts so far. The castle was riddled with old tunnels and passages. No one had the time to search them all out. So the scout dogs roamed freely, sniffing doors, ears cocked.

Evred smiled down at the one pacing beside him now. He liked their company, though it made extra work for his staff, having to wand halls and corners.

He hoped Hawkeye had made it safely home, then thought of Jasid Tlen, who also wouldn’t be either home or at Convocation: he and Senelayec were probably holed up somewhere along the north coast, if the storm had hit on that side of the mountains, until they could finish their patrol to Ghael and back again.

Evred thought about that ride along the northern coast. The way people stopped in the fields and stared, their faces stony. The towns quiet when they entered, the inns closed. Now he knew why—not that that fixed anything.

As he paced downward, he thought,
I can send proclamations of the truth to be read in every city, I can demand witnesses to every supposed murder outside of that one near the Ghael Hills—but will any of it kill the rumors?

The answer was: not likely. People believed the rumors because they wanted to believe them.

Only in the harbors did they find a semblance of welcome, partly because they helped defend them, but also because harbor people seemed to pay scarce heed to politics, governments, and rumors from the other side of Idayago. Their lives were bound up in tides and ships.

Evred reached the landing. Next would be the ancient archive room, its great, carved double doors closed and locked with some kind of magic that made your fingers ache, like ice held too long, if you touched them.

Inda scans. Jeje aft on the
Vixen
, purple wool hat turning this way and that as she leans into the tiller, watching always for signals from Dasta and Fox commanding
Cocodu
and
Death
—

Evred rounded the corner—and the archive doors stood open.

He stopped, then took a step backward, wondering if he was seeing another magical defense, something more lethal. All that he’d been able to find out was that the palace, mostly empty since his grandfather brought this area into Iasca Leror fifty years ago, had this unimaginably ancient archive behind carved doors that was not tended by the previous family, but by the morvende.

Morvende! Yet another rumor, a different kind? Stories about the mysterious cave dwellers filled most histories, but Hadand, who had read more ancient history than he, had told him that the most recent records insisted the morvende lived either on Drael or under the mountains near Sartor. None on Halia, and they never interacted with “sunsider” humans.

He took a tentative step, one hand out. The dog sniffed at the threshold, wagged its tail slightly. The animal did not seem to sense danger, but perhaps a dog wouldn’t be alert to magical threat.

“Enter.”

The voice was soft, low, the word spoken in heavily accented Iascan.

Evred walked in, his footsteps unnaturally loud on the glistening white flooring. The round room smelled of dust and ancient paper with a fresh, astringent overlay of steeped summer herbs. Expected were the shelves and shelves of very old hand-bound books and ribbon-tied scrolls. Unexpected was the short figure in white, with white hair, who stood by the fireplace, reaching for a steaming pan.

Jeje hauls on the tiller, the Fisher brothers haul the sail around, and the
Vixen
slants in a tight circle. The sail is loosened and the scout slows as it crosses beneath the pirate bowsprit.

A glance out of pale eyes, so pale the color was indeterminate. Evred’s astonished gaze moved from detail to detail as the person—female, he realized, seeing the slight swell of breasts, the outward curve of hips under the white robe—poured the steaming water into a bowl made of deep blue glass. The hands were hands, not twigs, though the talons were really talons, long, curved, sharp—like dog or cat claws growing on thin human fingers. He glanced down to see if she had taloned toenails but the robe hid her feet.

The face was a human face. Her thin skin was pale as milk with a faint blue tracery of veins below the smooth surface, her hair fine as cobwebs, so white it was almost blue. Her age was impossible to guess; there were no lines or wrinkles, but then people who lived for untold generations away from wind and sun would not show age as others did.

A stronger scent of pungent herbs pervaded the round chamber.

“So long shut up, this place always makes me sneeze,” the morvende said in a singsong-accented Sartoran. “Unless I sweeten the air.” She muttered a word, made a gesture, and the doors closed behind Evred. He perceived a faint scintillation on the edge of his vision as a clean breeze ruffled through the room.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am she who tends the archives here. It is my charge to examine the records and to recopy any that age has made brittle. It is I who placed protective magic on the doors. You have tried to enter.”

He didn’t ask how she knew. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“When I have time to myself I like to read.”

She pressed her hands together. “I know who you are,” she said. “You are the grandson of the conqueror who rode through killing those who had lived here for many years. And he descended from those who took this land you call Iasca Leror from the people who lived there.”

Evred said nothing.