The Master of Heathcrest Hall (38 page)

Only that was not the case. Rather, all eyes were locked on the witness who sat upon the rostrum. And Ivy realized it was not to
her
that Lord Davarry had been referring. It was the witch in Torland. Her face hot, she leaned forward in her chair again.

“Please take your time answering the question, Sir Quent,” Lord Davarry said pleasantly. “And I am sure I do not need to remind you that you are under oath.”

Ivy held her breath. From her seat behind the High Speaker, Lady Shayde looked down with what appeared a keen interest.

“Over the years, in the course of my work, I have had occasion to interact with many suspected witches,” Mr. Quent said at last.

“I am sure you have,” Lord Davarry replied. “Tell me, what is your impression of them? How do you regard them?”

“I should say I regard them … with much sadness.”

Lord Davarry had been pacing back and forth, but now suddenly stopped. “Sadness? You speak as if you have a great sympathy for them. But I am puzzled. For are not these sibyls a threat to our nation?”

Mr. Quent shifted in his chair. “It is not always by their choice that this is so.”

“Not by their choice?” the questioner said, and now his voice rose, taking on an angry timbre. “What do you mean by that? Surely it was the choice of the witch in Torland to induce the Old Trees to lash out. Just as it was her choice to come to the edge of the Wyrdwood when you called to her. And speaking of the matter, what is the current status of the witch? Does she remain in custody of the state?”

Mr. Quent’s cheeks were visibly flushed. It was from the heat in the Hall, no doubt, yet it had the effect of making him look nervous. “The law does not permit me to reveal the whereabouts of those detained by the Inquiry.”

“And I am sure you are a man who understands the importance of obeying the law, Sir Quent, but that is not what I asked.” Lord Davarry’s voice rose, growing more forceful yet. “I did not ask where she was. I asked if she was in the custody of the state. Surely you can tell us
that
.”

Mr. Quent drew in a breath. “No, she is no longer in the custody of the Crown.”

More gasps and murmurs sounded throughout the Hall.

“No longer in the Crown’s custody?” Lord Davarry shook his head. “But how can that be?”

“She was released.”

“Released? But who would ever release her?”

Ivy clutched the edge of her chair, wishing in desperation he would not answer. But she knew he would, and so he did.

“I did. I released her.”

“You released her?” Lord Davarry exclaimed, then resumed his pacing on the rostrum, rapidly now. “But this is very grave news, Sir Quent. This was the woman who caused the Wyrdwood to rise up in Torland, the sibyl who caused the deaths of countless men, and who aided the cause of rebels. And yet you let her go? Why—why would you do such a thing?”

Ivy shut her eyes, for they burned too fiercely to keep open. For a long moment there was no answer. Then at last Mr. Quent spoke; and though his voice had grown lower in volume even as his questioner’s had increased, still his every word reached the farthest benches.

“Because I gave her my word.”

A terrible silence ensued. The very air in the Hall seemed to strain, as if anxious to carry what words would be spoken next. Ivy opened her eyes. On the rostrum, Mr. Quent seemed to have shrunk in his chair; his shoulders were rounded, his face gray. Lord Davarry looked down at him with an expression that bespoke not shock but triumph.

“You gave her your word?” he said at last. “So you are saying that you struck a deal with the witch—that you bargained with a known criminal and traitor to the realm. Do you deny this fact, Sir Quent? And may I remind you once more, you are under oath.”

Mr. Quent looked up, and though his face remained pale, there was a firm set to his jaw. “I did what was best for Altania.”

“That was not my question!” Lord Davarry declaimed. “Speak the truth, Sir Quent—did you bargain with a witch?”

For a moment, Mr. Quent seemed frozen in his chair. Then his brown eyes turned, looking up toward the gallery. Toward Ivy. For a moment, their gazes met. And in his, Ivy saw a grim resolution.

No!
she wanted to cry out, but she could not draw a breath.

“I made an agreement with her,” Mr. Quent said, “that if the Risings ceased—if she could bring about their immediate end—that I would not hinder her from leaving the grove of Old Trees I found her in. She upheld her end of the matter. And so I did mine.”

Lord Davarry gave a satisfied nod, then he turned to face the High Speaker’s podium. “You may release the witness,” he said. “I have no further questions.”

But his words, as well as the clatter of the High Speaker’s gavel closing the session, could hardly be heard for the sudden tumult that erupted in the Hall. Everywhere lords were rising to their feet and speaking with one another. Many gazes turned toward Mr. Quent, but no one approached him as he departed the podium, save the ushers whose duty it was to accompany guests from the Hall. But even they seemed to keep their distance as Mr. Quent walked up the aisle toward the gilded doors.

“Traitor!” someone in the throng shouted.

But Mr. Quent did not pause in his step. He kept his head high as he went, his expression solemn.

Ivy lurched up from her chair, and she noticed that no one seemed interested in speaking with her now. Instead, the other observers all hurried from the gallery. Ivy gripped the balustrade, for fear she might tumble over it, and looked down to see if she could glimpse Mr. Rafferdy. That he would not look at her husband with the same shock or scorn as others now did, she was certain.

But she could not pick him out in the chaos of black robes. Nor did she see Lady Shayde anywhere. Only various lords milling about, and her husband departing stiffly through the open doors.

Ivy went to the stairs, and this time she was not distressed when others drew away from her, but rather glad, for she was able to hurry down the stairs, and so meet her husband. She went to him, and put her arm through his. To her astonishment, she could feel him trembling.

“I am sorry, Ivoleyn,” he said, his voice gruff, so that only she might hear.

Somehow, his anguish had the effect of strengthening her. Her mind grew clear, and she tightened her grip upon him, steadying him. It was time to leave this place.

“Do not be sorry, Alasdare,” she said. “You must never be sorry for what you did.”

“No, it is for what will come that I am sorry.”

It seemed he wanted to say more, but if so he could not find the words. Ivy took her husband’s arm, leading the way from the Hall of Magnates. And there was more than one person who, upon feeling the gaze of her green eyes, hurriedly stepped out of their way.

E
LDYN HURRIED through the streets of the Old City. The afternoon had been brilliant and warm when he left, but then the sun took a sudden lurch to the west, and now the daylight was faltering. He considered turning around and heading back to the theater, for there was to be a performance at moonrise that evening. But he was nearly to Coronet Street; he might as well finish what he had set out to do.

He walked the last few blocks at a brisk clip, and soon reached the office of
The Swift Arrow
. Fresh bales of newspapers had just been delivered from the printing house, and were being offloaded from a wagon even as he arrived. Eldyn could have simply waited for a boy to come down Durrow Street hawking broadsheets, but he was anxious to see the latest impression he had sold. It was, he had thought when he created it, particularly vivid.

Eldyn paid his penny and got one of the first copies off the stack. He walked a short ways away, then leaned against the wall of the building and unfolded the broadsheet. They had printed the impression on the front page this time, for such a macabre image could only cause people to be curious about the article that accompanied it.

Even in the fading daylight, each detail was rendered so crisply that the objects depicted in the impression seemed to float above the surface of the page at varying distances, imparting a sensation
of depth. The scene showed the gallows in the desolate square before Barrowgate. Three empty nooses hung from the gibbet, while atop perched the black silhouette of a crow, as if waiting patiently for the ropes to be put to use.

This alone might have made for an interesting image, but it was the figure in the foreground that had caught Eldyn’s eye that day, and which had altered the perspective of the scene. A young boy, perhaps six or seven, knelt on the cobbles before the gallows, his hair a tousled mop, and his bare knees dirty. He was playing with a bundle of sticks. Was he making an innocent game of them—or was he building his own miniature gibbet?

Eldyn couldn’t say. Yet it was that very question the scene begged, and which made it so interesting. Living in such times, witnessing such things, could any child remain innocent? Certainly the hanging Eldyn’s father had taken him to see as a child had affected him deeply. He supposed it was the memory of that day that had caused him to stop when he saw the boy playing before the gallows.

The resulting impression was not so sensational and violent as the one he had made of the terrible events at Covenant Cross last quarter month. Nor did it involve a famous personage, like the images he had crafted of Princess Layle departing the graveyard or, more recently, walking down the steps of the cathedral. Yet he had thought this one was perhaps his best work yet.

The editor of
The Swift Arrow
had agreed when Eldyn handed him the engraving plate.

“Our circulation has increased measurably of late,” he had said as he counted out several gold regals. “I trust you will not consider selling your work to any other publication, Mr. Garritt.”

Eldyn had assured him he would not, then pocketed the coins. There was a part of him that could not help feeling it was wrong to profit from such awful events. Yet it was important for people to know what had really happened that day.

While illusionists could create anything they wished out of light, it was not so with impressions. As Perren had said, an illusionist
could only make an impression of something he had actually witnessed himself. Nor was this simply because the mind could not invent things in sufficient detail; after all, Eldyn could create very detailed figures upon the stage. Rather, it was the impression rosin itself. Somehow it knew whether the image it was being shaped into was true or not.

Eldyn had learned this for himself recently. In his room above the theater, he had coated a plate with rosin, then had held it in both hands as he pictured Dercy’s face. He had concentrated with all his might, imagining every line, every familiar angle. Why shouldn’t it work? he had reasoned. After all, he had gazed upon that face many times.

But when the green flash happened, it was dim. Then, after he coated the plate with ink and pressed it against a piece of paper, the resulting image was blurred and indistinct. He could make out only the barest shadow of a face in the smudges of ink. It wasn’t enough to simply imagine how Dercy looked. He would have had to call to mind a specific scene with Dercy in it, one that had happened just recently. Which meant it was impossible Eldyn could make an impression of him now.

As painful as this realization was, it was because impressions could only be true that they could also sell broadsheets and command high prices. The impression Eldyn had made of the scene in Covenant Cross was remarkable not just for its clarity, but because it proved beyond doubt that the university men had not been rushing forward to attack the soldiers, as some early reports had claimed, but rather had been falling back when the redcrests fired upon them.

Which meant, by selling his impressions to the broadsheets, he wasn’t just making a profit from awful happenings. He was doing something of worth. At least, that was what he told himself. Yet there were times when he could not help thinking that he should be putting his abilities to a different use. Though what that might be, he could not say.

The shadows along the street were lengthening; it was time to
get back to the theater. Eldyn folded the broadsheet as he stepped into the street.

And just as quickly stepped back. He raised the broadsheet before his face. He considered gathering the thickening shadows, wrapping them around himself, but resisted the urge. After all, another illusionist would be liable to notice the trick.

Cautiously, Eldyn peered around the edge of his broadsheet. A plump, bespectacled young man was walking from the door of
The Swift Arrow
. He held a small, square bundle wrapped in paper, and there was a sour expression on his round face.

Eldyn quickly ducked back behind the newspaper before Perren could see him. An encounter with the other young man was the last thing he wished—not now, after his impression had just been published, and when it was clear Perren had failed to sell his own. For what else could the square bundle in his hand be, or the cause of the dyspeptic look on his face?