She wasn’t so much talking to me as putting feelings into words.
“There’s a road down front, Garrett. Less than half a mile away. Its other end is TunFaire, Karenta, the world. I haven’t been past the front gate since I was fourteen.”
“How old are you now?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Who’s holding you here?”
“Nobody but me. I’m afraid. Everything I imagine I want is out there. And I’m afraid to go see it. When I was fourteen, Cook took me to the city for the summer fair. I wanted so badly to go. It’s the only time I’ve ever been off the estate. It terrified me.”
Odd. Most beautiful women don’t have much trouble coping because they’ve had attention all their lives.
“I know my future. And it frightens me, too.”
I looked at her, thinking she meant Wayne. I’d be disturbed, too, if I were the object of such plans.
“I’ll stay here, in the heart of my fortress, and turn into a crazy old woman while the house crumbles around me and Cook. I’ll never find nerve enough to hire the workmen to put it right. Strangers scare me.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“It has to. My destiny was laid down the week I was born. If my mother had survived . . . But she probably wouldn’t have changed things. She was a strange woman herself, from what I hear. Daughter of a firelord and a stormwarden, raised in an environment almost as cold as mine, betrothed to my father by arrangement between his parents and hers. They never met before their wedding day. My father loved her, though. What happened really hurt him. He never mentions her. He won’t talk about her. But he has her picture in his bedroom. Sometimes he just lies there and stares at it for hours.”
What do you say when somebody tells you something like that? You can’t kiss it and make it better. Not much you can do. Or say. I said, “I’m going to take a walk. Why don’t you get a wrap and come along?”
“How cold is it?”
“Not too bad.” Winter was just blustering and fussing, bluffing, too cowardly to jump in there and bully the world. Which was fine with me. Winter isn’t my favorite season.
“All right.” She pushed away from the rail and walked to the stairs, down, headed for her own suite. I tagged along, which was fine till we neared her door. Then she got nervous. She didn’t want me inside.
Fine. For now her fortress would remain inviolate. I retreated halfway down the hall.
If I’d had doubts about her lack of social skills, they disappeared when she returned in less than a minute. I’ve never known a woman who didn’t spend half an hour changing her shoes. She’d done that and had donned a very sensible, military-type winter coat that, surprisingly, was flattering because it centered attention on her face. And that face made me wince because such beauty was shut up here, wasted. Such beauty, like a great painting, should be out for all to appreciate.
We went downstairs and through that hall between the Stantnor forebears, all of whom noted our passing with grave disapproval. So did Wayne, who maybe thought I was trying to beat his time.
It wasn’t as mild as I’d promised. The wind had picked up since Saucerhead’s departure. It had a good bite but Jennifer didn’t notice. We descended the steps. I set course along the path that Chain, Peters, Tyler and I had taken last night.
I asked, “Would you like to see the city? If you could do it without too much discomfort?” I had in mind turning Saucerhead loose on her. He has a knack for making women comfortable—though his taste runs to gals about five feet short.
“It’s too late. If you’re trying to save me.”
I didn’t say anything to that. My attention was on last night’s trail.
“I saw something strange today,” Jennifer said, shifting subject radically. “A man I don’t know. I went up where you found me looking for him, but he wasn’t there anymore.”
Morley. Had to be. “Maybe my blonde’s boyfriend.”
She glanced at me sharply, the first time she’d looked up since we’d left the house. “Are you making fun of me?”
“No. Of a situation, maybe. I see a woman, over and over. Nobody else sees her. At least, nobody admits she’s there. But now you’re seeing ghosts, too.”
“I saw him, Garrett.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“But you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t believe or disbelieve. The first rule of my business is keep an open mind.” The second is remember that everybody lies to you.
That seemed to satisfy her. She didn’t speak again for a while.
We came to the place where Tyler died. Tyler wasn’t there. Neither was the draug. I walked around trying to discover what had happened. I couldn’t. I hoped Peters and the others had collected them. I’d have to find out.
The wind was biting, the grass was brown, the sky was gray, and the brooding Stantnor place loomed like a thunderhead of despair. I glanced at the orchard, all those bare arms reaching for the sky. Spring would come for the trees but not for the Stantnors.
“Do you dance?” I asked. Maybe we could force gaiety into the place at swords’ points.
She managed a joke. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
“Hey! We’re making headway. Next thing you’ll be smiling.”
She didn’t respond for half a minute, then bushwhacked me again. “I’m a virgin, Garrett.”
Not exactly a surprise. It figured. But why tell me?
“The other day when you caught me in your stuff, I thought you were the man who would change that. But you aren’t, are you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Peters warned me—”
“That I have a reputation? Maybe. But the way this is, it wouldn’t be right. It has to be right, Jennifer.” Carefully, carefully, Garrett. Hell hath no fury, and all that. “You shouldn’t want to do it just because you don’t want to be a virgin. You should do it because that’s what you want to do. Because you’re with someone special and you want to share something special.”
“I can get preached at by Cook.”
“Sorry. Just trying to tell you how I think. You’re a lovely woman. One of the most beautiful I’ve ever met. The kind men like me only dream about. I’d take you up on it in a second, if I was a guy who could just use a woman and discard her like a gnawed bone, and not care how much she hurts.”
That seemed to help.
Believe me, all that analysis and nimble-footing had me real nervous, prancing around a lot of mixed feelings.
“I think I understand. It’s actually kind of nice.”
“That’s me. Mr. Nice Guy. Talk myself out of the winner’s circle every time.”
She gave me a look.
“Sorry. You’re not used to my brand of wit.”
I was following the backtrails of the draugs slowly now, climbing a gentle slope toward the family cemetery. Jennifer seemed too preoccupied to notice. After we’d walked another fifty yards, she stopped. “Would you do one thing for me?”
“Sure. Even what we were talking about, if it ever becomes right.”
Strained little smile. “Touch me.”
“Huh?” I was back into my trick bag of brilliant repartee.
“Touch me.”
What the hell? I reached out, touched her shoulder. She raised her hand, grabbed mine, moved it to her cheek. I rested my fingers there gently. She had the silkiest skin I’d ever touched.
She started shaking. I mean shaking bad. Tears filled her eyes. She turned away, embarrassed or frightened. After a while she turned back and we started walking again. As we reached the low rail fence around the cemetery, she said, “That was almost as much.”
“What?”
“Nobody ever touched me before. Ever. Not since I was old enough to remember. Cook did, I guess, when I had to be changed and burped and all those things you do with babies.”
I stopped dead, faced that grim old mansion. No wonder it was so goddamned bleak. I face
d her. “Come here.”
“What?”
“Just come here.” When she stepped closer, I pulled her into a hug. She went as rigid as an iron post. I held her a moment, then turned loose. “Maybe it’s not too late to start. Everybody’s got to touch sometime. You’re not human if you don’t.” I understand what she wanted when she wanted to stop being a virgin. Sex had nothing to do with it. She might not realize it consciously but she thought sex was the price she had to pay for what she needed.
How many times has Morley told me I’m a sucker for cripples and strays? More than I like to remember. And he’s right—if you call wanting to ease pain being a sucker.
I stepped over the cemetery fence, held her hand as she followed. She caught the hem of her dress, which wasn’t exactly designed for a stroll in the country. She cursed softly. I helped her keep her balance while she worked it loose, looking around as she did so. My gaze fell on a tombstone less aged than most, as simple a marker as there was there. Just a small slab of granite with a name: Eleanor Stantnor. Not even a date.
Jennifer stepped over to it. “My mother.”
That was all? That was the resting place of the woman whose death had warped so many lives and turned the Stantnor place into the house of graydom? I would’ve thought he’d built her a temple . . . Of course. The house had become her mausoleum, her memorial. The house of broken dreams.
Jennifer shuddered and moved closer. I put my arm around her. We had a biting cold wind, a gray day, and a graveyard. I needed to be close to somebody, too.
I said, “I’ve reconsidered. Somewhat. Spend the night with me tonight.” I didn’t explain. I didn’t say anything more. She didn’t say anything, either, neither in protest, shock, or accusation. She stiffened just the slightest, the only sign she’d heard me.
It was an impulse, almost, kicked up by that part of me that hates to see people hurting.
Maybe there’s such a thing as karma. Our good deeds get their reward. A small thing, but if I’d overcome that impulse, I’d probably be dead.
24
We stood looking at the tombstone. I asked, “Do you know much about your mother?”
“Only what I told you, which is all Cook ever told me. Father won’t say anything. He fired everybody after she died, except Cook. There wasn’t anyone else to tell me.”
“What about your grandparents?”
“I don’t know anything about them. My grandfather Stantnor died when I was a baby. My grandmother Stantnor went when my father was a boy. I don’t know who they were on my mother’s side except that they were a stormwarden and a firelord. Cook won’t tell me who they were. I think something bad happened to them and she doesn’t want me to know.”
Ting! A little bell rang inside my head.
A favorite pastime of our ruling class is plotting to snatch the throne. Though we haven’t lately, sometimes we go through periods when we change kings like underwear. We had three in one year, once.
There’d been a big brouhaha when I was eight, maybe seven. About the time Jennifer had been born. An assassination attempt had gone awry and had been so blackhearted at its core that the would-be victim had gotten so righteously pissed off, he’d made a clean sweep. Not a bit of forgive-and-forget. Necks got stretched. Heads and bodies went their separate ways. Arms and legs got hauled around the kingdom and buried individually beneath crossroads. Great estates got confiscated. It hadn’t been a good time to be related to the conspirators, however remotely.
From my neighborhood it had been great fun, watching the ruling class chase its tail and get it caught in a door. Or some such mixed metaphor. When those things come up, everybody on the outside hopes that crowd will wipe themselves out. But they never do. They just select out the least competent schemers.
Shouldn’t be hard to find out who her grandparents had been. “Would you want to know?” I asked. “Is it important to you?”
“It’s not important. It wouldn’t change my life. I don’t know if I care anymore.” After some silence, “I used to dream about them when I was little. They were going to come take me home to their palace. I was really a princess. They’d sent me and my mother here to hide us from their enemies, only something happened. Maybe they’d forgotten where they’d hidden us. I don’t know. I never figured out why they never came. I just pretended that they would, someday.”
A common childhood mind game. But, “It could be true, Jennifer. Things were unsettled politically in those days. It’s possible the marriage was arranged to put your mother out of harm’s way. With your grandparents dead, your father might have been the only one left who knew who your mother was.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I was young but I remember those days. Some people tried to kill the King. They blew it. He went crazy. A lot of people died, including some who had nothing to do with the plot.” Sometimes you tell the white lie. Wouldn’t hurt to leave her the option of believing her grandparents had been innocents caught in the storm.
She laughed without humor. “Wouldn’t that be something? If my kid’s daydreams were true?”
“Do you still not care?” I could find out about her grandparents without doing much but poke through some old records. Worth the effort if it would brighten her life.
“I think I do care.”
“I’ll find out, then.” I started moving again. She followed, caught up in her thoughts, paying no attention, while I got back onto the trail of the draugs. We were almost to the road before she realized we were still headed away from the house. She might not have noticed then if we hadn’t gotten into some cockleburs.
“Where are you going?” She sounded almost panicky. There was a touch of wildness in her eyes. She looked around like she’d suddenly wakened in enemy territory. Only the peaks of the house were visible above the hummock where the cemetery lay. Once we reached the road, those would be out of sight.
“I’m backtracking the thing that came to the house last night.” I was backtracking all three, really. There were three trails smashed through the weeds. But there were no return trails. That left me a little uneasy. We’d only disposed of two. “I think it came from the swamp that’s supposed to be up ahead there.”
“No. I want to go back.” She looked around like she expected something to jump out at us. And maybe something could. Those draugs hadn’t behaved like story draugs. Who was to say they weren’t immune to daylight? And I wasn’t equipped to handle them. It hadn’t occurred to me to bring any heavy weaponry.
Still, I wasn’t particularly nervous. Without the dark to mask them, they couldn’t sneak up on us.
“Nothing to worry about. We’ll be all right.”
“I’m going back. If you want to go out there . . . ” She said “out there” like I was headed for another world. “If you want, you go ahead.”
“You win. You seen one swamp, you’ve seen them all. And I got a plenty good look in the islands.”
She’d already started walking. I had to trot to catch up. She looked relieved. “It’s almost lunchtime, anyway.”
It was. And I still had to find Morley and rehearse him for Saucerhead’s return. “I should thank you. I’ve missed so many meals, I’m light-headed.”
We went straight to the kitchen. We ate. The others eyed us curiously. Everyone knew we’d gone for a walk. Each invested that with his own special significance. Nobody mentioned it, though Wayne looked like he had a few words he wanted to say.
As Peters was about to leave I asked, “Where can I catch you later?”
“The stable. I’m trying to catch up for Snake.” He didn’t look pleased. That kind of work wouldn’t thrill me, either.
“I’ll be out. Need to ask you something.”
He nodded and went his way. I ingratiated myself by helping Cook for a while. She didn’t say much with Jennifer there, fumbling around. Cook never said much with a third party present. Made me wonder.
I hoped Jennifer wasn’t going to attach herself permanentl
y. But it did seem that way.
I’d just been kind to a stray. But pups run to where the kindness is. My own fault. A sucker, as Morley says.
I had to see him soon or adjust my scheme for the afternoon. I told Cook I’d be back to help later, then headed upstairs, hoping Morley would be in my suite. Jennifer tagged along till it was obvious where I was headed. Then she chickened out. Afraid of a guy with my reputation.
I said good-bye and kept a straight face till I’d let myself in.
No Morley. No sign of Morley. Curious.
It made me uneasy. Morley is an odd bird but he’d make an effort to stay in touch.
I had a bad moment imagining him dead in some hidden place, ambushed. Not a pleasant thought, a friend getting offed for helping with something that wasn’t his concern. But Morley was too much a pro to get taken that way. The mistakes he makes aren’t those kind. When he buys it, it will be because an irate husband appears unexpectedly while he’s in no position to react.
I took a quick guess at how long it would be till Saucerhead returned, decided I’d have to manage without Morley. Black Pete would have to carry the load.
I shrugged into my coat and headed for the stable, making sure my telltales were in position.
I kept an eye out for my blonde sweetheart, but the only person I saw was Kaid on the fourth-floor balcony west scoping out how to haunt the place after his own death.
Kaid was close to the old man. I ought to spend some time with him. He might give me a lead on who might want the General out.
25
I shoved my head into the stables, didn’t spot Peters. A couple of horses grinned at me like they thought their hour had come. “Think what you want,” I told them. “Plot and plan and scheme. I’ve got an arrangement. The General can pay me in horseflesh. Horses that aggravate me are going to end up at the tannery.”
I don’t know why I said that. Pure bull, of course. They wouldn’t believe it, anyway. Wish I understood why horses bring out the silliness in me.