The Secret Country (26 page)

“I do the King’s will,” he said.

Andrew looked over Fence’s shoulder at Ellen, and at Laura, and at Patrick. Laura felt like a spilled ashtray. Then Andrew looked at Randolph. “Strange company, my lord,” he said.

“ ’Tis strange to thee,” said Randolph.

“Where doth the King await me?” Fence asked Andrew.

Andrew looked at him as if he had forgotten who he was. Then he smiled. “In the Council Chamber,” he said.

“I will attend him with what dispatch I may command,” said Fence.

“Thou wilt come with me.”

“I will not come with you,” said Fence, and shut the door on him. Laura giggled.

“This is not a jest,” said Randolph. “Fence, let me come with you. It is far more likely that there is a trap on the stairs than that the King awaits you in the Council Chamber.”

“He doesn’t even know you’re here,” added Ellen. “Those kids could’ve told—” said Patrick

“Or Claudia,” said Randolph. “Marjorie and her brothers will not speak to the King at banquet, but Claudia—”

“They’ll have told their father,” said Fence.

“Matthew will let you announce yourself when you will.”

“True,” said Fence. He picked up his mug and finished his wine. “Have we a look, then.”

He went to one of the chests Laura and Ellen had not been able to open, and took out of it a round mirror. The wooden frame was carved with a scene that Laura expected even before she recognized it. Fence came to where Randolph still stood with his dagger drawn, and each of them took a side of the mirror. They looked into it, frowning a little.

Laura, with no compunction, came around behind them and peered between them at the mirror. It did not reflect them, or her. It held an empty stone staircase dimly lit with purple light. Fence tilted the mirror a bit. The scene in it swirled in on itself as the purple beast had done, and then swirled out again. It looked the same, except that there was an arrow slit in the wall. It had grown dark outside, and one star shone through the arrow slit.

Fence and Randolph followed the stairs down to the bottom and back up again. Laura grew bored. Ellen put her head on the table and fell asleep. Patrick watched Randolph.

“So,” said Fence, and laid the mirror on Randolph’s chair. “Better you stay here with these.”

“Fence,” said Randolph, shifting his grip upon his dagger, “I beg you to do me the honor of remembering that I am not a fool. Then consider that this Claudia has been by me night and day these three months, and I never divined what she was. Then consider that Andrew is her brother.”

Fence let his breath out. “And what of my spies?”

Laura backed away a few steps.

“They will be safest here,” said Randolph.

Fence rounded on Laura. “Lock the door behind us,” he said to her, fiercely, “and abide till I come, or Randolph, or Benjamin.”

Fence went to the door, Randolph right behind him. Fence looked at him, and shrugged, and stepped aside. Randolph, still holding the dagger, went down the stairs, Fence behind him. Laura, hurrying to shut and bar the door, saw that Fence was not holding up the skirts of his robe; they seemed to be getting out of his way by themselves. Laura pushed the door closed and slid the bolt home.

“Wake Ellen up,” said Patrick as she came back to the table. “I want to know what’s going on.”

They heard a faint sound from the stairway, perhaps the echo of the echo of a voice, and then the clash of metal. Patrick and Laura flung themselves at the door, dragged the bolt free, and pushed the door open.

Laura ducked under Patrick’s arm and ran down the stairs. She got safely around two turns of the spiral, but then she tripped and went rolling around the next. She cracked an elbow on the wall as she went by, scraped both hands in an effort to stop herself, and brought herself up suddenly and painfully against Randolph’s legs. Randolph plucked her off the step as if she were a wet sock, turned them both around, and sat her down at his feet. He still had his dagger out.

Fence was standing two steps down from Laura and Randolph, with his back to them. Both hands were buried in the folds of his robe, end his head was bent. Facing him, two more steps lower, was Claudia. She had a knife in her hand, but she had let the hand fall to her side, and she stared at Fence with eyes so wide and empty that she did not seem to be there at all.

Patrick came clattering around the turn with Ellen behind him. Randolph put his dagger back into its sheath and thrust his arm in front of them to keep them from falling over Laura. Laura risked a glance at his face; the look he gave them was eloquent of many things, all of them unpleasant.

“Randolph,” said Fence, without turning around.

“Well?” said Randolph.

“This is a most powerful sorcerer.”

Laura felt Randolph stiffen. “If she failed with thee,” he said, “who hath taught her?”

“She herself,” said Fence.

Randolph said something explosive and unintelligible.

“Keep thy dagger to hand,” said Fence, and took hold of Claudia’s wrist.

She did not move. Fence pried the knife out of her hand and held it up to Randolph without looking around. Laura’s eyes winced away from it. It was twisted. The hilt held two red stones and one blue. The colors were quite clear in the dim light.

“And she hath fashioned this,” said Randolph, holding it as if it were sticky.

“We will hope so,” said Fence. “If another did so then we have two of them to deal with.”

Laura knew she should keep quiet, but she was too curious. “What’d you do to her?”

“I entranced her,” said Fence, shortly, in what Laura recognized as an adult I-dare-you-to-make-a-joke-out-of-that voice. She could not think what the joke would be anyway.

It seemed that Randolph could. “And will it endure so long as the spell she held me under?”

“No,” said Fence. “I think we must have Ruth.”

“Ruth?”
said Laura, appalled.

“ ’Twill wait on the ending of her ceremony,” said Randolph, luckily misunderstanding her. Fence, however, finally turned around, and looked at her sharply, as if he wondered what she knew.

“That is still two hours off,” was all he said.

“The interim is ours,” said Randolph.

Fence’s mouth quirked, and then he grinned. “Wherein,” he said, “we may finish the wine, and I may hear from my spies.” Laura and Ellen looked at each other. “And thou, my apprentice,” said Fence to Randolph, “shalt tell me all strange wonders that befell thee.”

“And swear,” said Laura and Ellen, looking at each other and taking the dare, “nowhere lives a woman true, and fair.”

“Go along with you,” said Randolph, pulling Laura’s braids.

“Are we going to
leave
her there?” asked Laura.

“She will be safe,” said Fence. “She has taken the road back, but ’tis a long way out of the simplest of these spells, and I have put that in her way which will make her wonder if ’twere not better she stay where she is.” He sounded a little grim, and quite pleased. Laura looked at his pleasant round face, and shivered.

Randolph looked at him, too, but he did not shiver. “Thou art better suited to these matters than I had thought,” he said.

“Never doubt it,” said Fence. “Now come your ways,” he said to all of them.

They trooped upstairs, laughing. But Laura could not help looking over her shoulder at where the stiff form of Claudia stared. The red stone of her ring caught the purple torchlight and made a color which almost hurt. Laura turned from it and hurried after the others.

CHAPTER 13

TED did not have a pleasant evening. He trailed around after the King, who seemed to be pursuing some plan. The King would look around the bewildering shift of gold and velvet and jeweled daggers and laughing faces and flying hair, until he spotted someone he wanted. Then he would pounce.

He talked to some people about their children, to some about their dogs. He talked to one, whom Ted would dearly have loved to talk to himself, about a sword he was making, and to some about why the falcons were not eating. He asked where the six dozen nails he had ordered from the dwarves had gotten to, and why it would be as bad to oil the hinges of the Old South Door as it would have been to mend the break.

If these had been random conversations Ted might have enjoyed them. But the King so clearly had a list in his mind of what he had to do. Three or four times Ted saw him avoid someone whom he later sought out. Ted tried to amuse himself by deciding why it was important to discuss the goats in the north pasture before one found out about the dwarfish nails, but the music was giving him a headache. He liked loud music, but this was so hollow and shrill that it hurt.

He was also disturbed because they saw nobody he knew. Not only had his sister and his cousins vanished, but Benjamin, having delivered him to the King, disappeared as well, and he could not see Randolph or Matthew or anyone else he recognized. He also felt that he should keep an eye out for Fence and warn him about that staircase.

He was much too harried to be hungry, but it was a relief to sit down and be quiet. The music stopped for dinner. He had to sit on the King’s right, and the King, having finished whatever he had been doing earlier, paid Ted more attention than Ted liked.

Lord Andrew sat on the King’s left, and Matthew sat next to Andrew, and Conrad next to Ted; they all courteously refrained from interrupting the King’s conversation with his son. Andrew was plainly listening to it, but Ted was not sure that an interruption from Andrew would have been much relief anyway. Conrad was arguing about recorder music with the man beside him, and Matthew talked earnestly to a thin young woman with yellow braids and a scarred forehead. There was no help there.

Having remarked on all the earlier conversations and asked after Ted’s studies, and noticed that Ted was not eating, the King looked as if something had dawned on him.

“Thy duties sit ill on thee at festival,” he said. “But I release thee now. Thou shalt dance as thou wilt after dinner.”

“Dance?” said Ted, horrified. That was no escape.

“Thou wilt not?”

“No, sir; thank you, but no.”

The King raised his eyebrows in a way that made Ted wish he were elsewhere. “I wager thou’lt dance after midnight.”

“Sir?”

“Not then neither?”

“Sir, I’d rather not at all.” Surely shy Edward didn’t like dancing. He was probably terrified of girls.

The King put a finger on the tip of Ted’s nose; this was so bizarre that it was not even embarrassing. “Spite not thy face,” said the King, lightly enough, but Ted felt sure that he had been given a warning, without having the remotest idea of what he had been warned against.

The King turned to Andrew and asked after his sister, and Ted tried to figure out the silverware so he could eat. Normally in High Castle you used your dagger and your fingers, and there were wooden spoons for soup or porridge. But this table was set with enough silver for a family of four at each plate. That the handles of the utensils were all made in the shapes of animals’ heads did not make up for there being so many utensils.

He managed to feed himself fairly well by watching what Matthew served himself and how he ate it, and doing likewise. He had begun by copying the yellow-haired woman, but she kept serving herself things he didn’t like.

Ted was watching Matthew dismember some complicated shellfish and talk to Conrad at the same time, when Matthew dropped his fork with a clatter and straightened, looking with some alarm down toward the other end of the table. As Ted looked that way, he caught with the corner of his eye the expression on the face of the yellow-haired woman. It was ferocious.

The cause of all this was a dark and slender woman in a red dress. She came rapidly up Ted’s side of the table; Ted thought she moved like an otter. She was beautiful, but she looked murderous. The closer she got, the less Ted liked her. She looked important, but he did not recognize her. She passed behind Ted’s chair with a flurry that lifted the damp hair on his neck, and stood at the King’s elbow.

“Sire,” she said. Ted wondered if she had a sore throat.

The King looked at her as if he had not expected her and didn’t want her. “Lady Claudia?” he said.

“Sire, Fence has returned.”

Ted shot out of his chair, jarring the table and spilling his wine. Matthew had half risen, his face exultant, but when Ted’s wine slopped into his plate he sat down abruptly. The yellow-haired woman said something quiet but urgent into his ear, and Matthew tried to give Ted a quelling frown. Ted beamed at him. He could not help it. If Fence had come home on schedule, maybe everything would still be all right.

The King, too, looked as if he thought everything would be all right. He got carefully to his feet, and his look at Claudia became more gracious. “I thank you, child,” he said. “Where is he? He shall not face this crowd; I will go to meet him.”

Claudia appeared distressed and reluctant, but Ted thought that she did not mean it. She was not much like an otter after all; she was grim, not playful.

“Sire,” she said, “Fence and my lord Randolph have gone to Fence’s chambers.”

Ted hated the way she said “my lord Randolph.” She sounded as if he belonged to her and as if he had somehow done her an injury. If she had the right to talk about Randolph like that, thought Ted, I’d know who she was.

The King frowned. “Sent he greetings, then?”

“Sire, he did not speak to me nor I to him. I did see him enter and greet Randolph and depart.” She shrugged.

So how’d you know where they were going? thought Ted. The yellow-haired woman still looked ferocious, and Ted was beginning to feel the same way.

The King’s brows drew together. Before he could speak, Andrew appeared at his other elbow. Ted had not even seen him get up, and was startled.

“Shall I fetch him out, my lord?” said Andrew.