Mastiff

  “You think Master Elyot was there? Linnet’s hard man, mayhap?” I asked.

  “I am certain of it.” Farmer reached over and touched Linnet’s shoulder. His Gift sparked around his fingers and vanished. When it was gone, a glowing orange patch showed up on Linnet’s shoulder. It vanished shortly.

  “That’s Elyot’s Gift,” Farmer explained. “He gripped your Linnet’s shoulder.” He wetted his handkerchief with water from a flask secured to his shoulder pack, then wiped his mouth, ears, and hands with it. The glowing yellow stuff that had remained on his skin vanished. He took a deep breath. “Do you know, I believe I’d like to sit.”

  I hesitated. “We were going to learn where Linnet was killed. Track her back from where we found her.”

  Farmer grimaced. “I’ll try it in a moment,” he said. “I just need to collect myself.”

  I remembered seeing a bench along a wall just beyond the first line of barrels. I couldn’t imagine why anyone might want to relax and smell the garbage, but I would not mind moving away from the sight of Linnet’s body.

  “This way,” I told him.

  “Interesting, to watch you at work,” he commented as he hoisted his pack onto one shoulder. “The birds just started coming to you?”

  I nodded. “Ma took me to Granny Fern—my da’s mother. It’s in that side of the family.”

  “Why your gran? Your father didn’t know how?” He thumped himself onto the bench and leaned back against the tower wall behind it, closing his eyes.

  With him not watching me, it was easier to say, “I didn’t know him. He died when I was still in swaddling clothes, Ma said. Granny Fern knew what was needed, even if she didn’t hear the ghosts herself. Listen, if you don’t have to do it, why bother? The dead aren’t the best at conversation.”

  Farmer smiled without opening his eyes. “My da was killed in a market riot. I never had the chance to say goodbye. Learning ways to hear the dead wasn’t just useful when I went to work for the Provost’s Guard.”

  “Did you ever talk with him—your da?” I asked, curious.

  “You know how they are, when the older dead are raised, don’t you?” Farmer asked.

  I nodded. A friend in Lord Gershom’s service had made me go with her to a mage when she wanted to speak to her gran, dead ten years. Then, because Farmer’s eyes were still closed, I said, “Oh, yes.”

  “At least my father remembered he had a son, even if he was foggy on my name. I continued to practice the skill and study of what could be learned from the dead in other ways. Eventually my district commander wrote Gershom about me.” Farmer sighed. “He came to visit. He was the first person who didn’t think it was wrong for someone of my talents to be interested in crimes instead of getting rich.”

  “My lord gets lonesome, too,” I said, leaning forward to scratch Achoo’s ears. “None of his family took after the work like he does.”

  He chuckled. “That’s interesting, because he told me he had a foster daughter who learned whatever he had to teach her as if she’d been born to it.”

  I felt my cheeks turning red. “He did teach me a great deal,” I said in a tone that usually discouraged folk from talking.

  Not Farmer. “He said she’d ended up with the best training Dogs in the city, and then the best partners,” he murmured. He opened his eyes and grinned at me—I was glaring at him by then—and looked over my shoulder. He sat up, the grin vanishing. I turned.

  Five slaves, two of them women from the bath, had come. The bath slave who had told me to go yesterday held a length of folded cloth in her arms. “Didn’t I tell you?” she demanded of me, her eyes blazing. “Your pack goes nosing about, and poor Linnet ends in the muck. She’s there as a warning to the rest of us, Dog. Won’t any of us talk with you more!”

  Farmer got to his feet. “You could be made to talk,” he said. I looked up at him and shivered. Were my eyes like that at times? That pale shade of ice? In that moment I knew his silliness was all a sham, and that the true Farmer was deadly.

  “And will you kill us then, mage?” one of the older slaves, a cove, demanded. His arms were striped with whip scars. “You may as well, for we’ll die if the master finds out we’ve given his secrets to you.”

  The bath slave glared at me. “We’ll bury Linnet. Our own way, the way we’ve always done. You’d best run if you’re to be clean before prayers.”

  They turned and walked into the trash yard.

  “Why did you say that?” I asked Farmer. “You wouldn’t have done it, would you?”

  “If it would have advanced the Hunt, yes,” he told me. “But I’d have made it secret and painless. They couldn’t know that, of course. It’s not hard to do, but how many mages go to that trouble for a slave?” He looked down at his shirtfront and grimaced. “Bollocks, we are filthy. You’d best run to the baths, or however you mean to clean up. We have to meet Tunstall and Lady Sabine very shortly.”

  I set off for the baths at the run, Achoo galloping at my side. I did not look back, not at Farmer, not at the slaves who had found Linnet. It is only now, as I write, that I am grateful that Farmer made me leave before they carried her away.

  The women’s baths were empty. I seized a robe, filled a bucket, and plunged my tunic and breeches into it. I used a cloth and another bucket of water to clean the slime from Achoo. She stood patiently, used to the strange things I do. It did not hurt that she knew I would give her a treat at the end of it. Then I took a quick plunge in the bath myself.

  With the robe tight around me and my wrung-out clothes in the now-empty bucket, we ran up the stairs. “You’d think, if they wished to be so careful of their ladies’ virtue, they’d build a door straight between the bath and where the ladies are kept,” I grumbled to Achoo as we waited for the hall to clear of servants with burdens. Once all were gone, I raced for the ladies’ solar.

  I closed the door behind us and turned to an interesting sight. The young ladies, gowned in pale colors, their hair veiled for morning prayers, were gathered around a chair. Lady Sabine sat there, dressed for the day in maroon tunic and brown breeches, her face intent as she spoke to them softly. Those closest to her gripped her shoulders and arms, as if their touch could make her tale clearer.

  “She wept,” I heard Sabine tell them in a voice filled with intensity. “She seized my hands and her tears bedewed my fingers, her mother’s tears. ‘You are young and unmarried,’ she said to me, ‘you cannot know a mother’s heart. Still, you are a woman, despite your coarse trade. I know there is tenderness in you. I know you have sweetness in your soul.’ ” Sabine hung her head.

  One or two of the silly gixies gasped. Another sobbed outright.

  “How could I deny her?” Sabine asked, her voice throbbing with pain. “ ‘My lady,’ I said, ‘I will do what I can.’ ‘No,’ she cried, ‘swear to me, swear by the Gentle Mother that you will let nothing keep you from your Hunt! Swear that no power in this world will hold you from finding my dear lad! Swear that you will lead your fellow Hunters!’ ” Sabine looked up at an invisible horizon, her eyes blazing. She was better than any Player I had ever seen. “And I swore it! ‘My lady,’ I told her, ‘there is naught that will keep me! Your lad’s name is writ on my heart, and I swear, each noble soul I encounter on the way will know of my search! I vow with all my soul, I will find your young baron and bring him home to you!’ ”

  I fled into the chamber Sabine and I had shared before I ruined it all by laughing. I was not certain why she had enacted this madness for the young ladies, but she plainly had her reasons. She had been careful to keep up the tale that we searched for an older lad, the son of a noble, which was the important thing.

  Pounce lounged on the countess’s desk, stretched out comfortably. If being a knight ever wears on her, she can make a living as a Player, he remarked. I am sorry about Linnet, Beka.

  My amusement evaporated. “Me, too,” I said, putting my bucket on the floor. I searched out one of my spare uniforms from my packs and dressed.
“I wish I knew who’d done it. I’d make them sorry, so I would.”

  You have bigger chores ahead, Pounce told me.

  The door opened to admit Sabine. She made certain it was closed before she blew out a chestful of air and said, “Well! I’ll soon know if that pays off!” She looked into the bucket I’d set on the floor. “I have no idea of how to dry this if we’re riding today,” she murmured. “I believe the countess will object if we hang it over her chairs.” Then she rested a hand on my arm, gently. “Beka, what’s wrong? Is it Holborn?” I looked up at her, horrified, and she explained, “It was your face when you came into the outer room. You looked as if you were grieving.”

  I wondered if the name Holborn would always fill me with guilt. “No, no, my lady. I’ll explain later.”

  She nodded and draped my wet things over the window ledges, remarking that the countess was not likely to come here before prayers and breakfast. I finished cleaning up and the four of us left the room. Only the Butterfly Puppies and the cats remained in the ladies’ solar, curled up on chairs and cushions. The little dogs wagged their tails, but only one tried to follow us outside. Pounce turned and said sommat to it. I don’t know he said, but I can usually tell when Pounce is speaking by the way he holds his ears and tail. The dog yipped and didn’t follow us outside.

  “Why did you scare him off?” Sabine asked as we walked down the hall. “He was just being friendly.”

  He didn’t want to follow. He had a warning for us, Pounce said. He said the men outside the doors last night had bad thoughts about us. That Butterfly Puppy is wasted on these people.

  “We can’t bring another animal on a Hunt,” I said, alarmed. “Particularly not a special-bred noble one!”

  I will think of something, Pounce replied. You need not worry.

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” I told Sabine and Achoo. I’ve known for years that Pounce has affairs of his own, and I’m always sure that one day I will get caught up in them. I have plenty of work of my own to do.

  A gong was struck somewhere on the castle grounds, ringing out three times with a pause, three times with a pause, and three times more. Once we got to the lower levels, people walked by us, mostly servants, headed to the great hall. We slipped into the back hall and around, coming out near the kitchen privies.

  By then the yards behind the kitchens were empty, save for chickens pecking in the dust. The herb gardens were on the far side of the coops and privies, so I did not have to see the garbage barrels at all. The gardens were large and well tended, guarded by a rail fence. Tunstall and Farmer were already there, Farmer perched on a seat made from half a barrel, Tunstall on a fence rail. Without a word, Farmer pointed at the ground in front of them. He’d drawn a circle in the dust with some sort of powder. I lifted Achoo over it.

  Once all of us were inside—I would have loved to know how Farmer had made the circle around Tunstall and the fence rail with no break in the circle—Farmer whispered a word I did not understand. For a moment all the world around us turned white. Then the whiteness vanished. We could see the gardens clearly.

  “Anyone who looks, or listens, will see and hear only the normal sounds,” Farmer told us. “They won’t see us. I think I got Master Elyot’s measure last night to build the spell to keep him out, and Count Dewin’s mage. I hope so, since I’m going to need to do so with every spell I use after this until the Hunt is done.”

  Sabine nudged Farmer with her shoulder so he would share the keg seat with her. Someone had placed a wooden crate for me to use. “You think that Elyot is part of it, then?” Sabine asked.

  “Assuredly,” replied Farmer. “I got him to show off a little last night for the count’s mage and me. I recognized Elyot’s magic. It was part of the trap we set off at the graves down the road. And he helped to murder a young slave girl last night, leaving his essence behind.”

  “Has he recognized your power?” Tunstall asked. He looked worried. I certainly felt worried.

  “Not from me showing off,” Farmer said with his looby grin. “I was too drunk.”

  “You weren’t—” Tunstall began.

  I couldn’t help myself. “Of course he wasn’t,” I interrupted. “Can’t you tell when he’s acting the crackbrain?” I glared at Farmer. “What did you do, vanish the wine from your cup?”

  Farmer’s grin grew even bigger. “She’s so clever,” he told Tunstall as my lady chuckled. “I want to marry her when I grow to be a man.” He looked at me, and the grin turned into a proper smile. “I vanished it just as if I drank it. Created the spell myself, when I learned too many fellow mages were not to be trusted. I place the spell just inside my lips, where no one looks for it.”

  “Elyot’s being part of it—if that’s so, then Graeme and all Aspen Vale is in it, too,” Sabine told us. “Graeme doesn’t move without his brother’s advice.”

  “We’re getting things all muddled now. Let’s go one at a time,” Tunstall said, rightfully. “Cooper, you start.”

  I opened my memory palace for all I’d done yesterday evening and this morning and made my report, though not word for word as I have written it up here. Sabine looked away when I told them of Linnet’s fate. Tunstall’s face went bleak. They did brighten when I told them, thanks to Linnet’s spirit, we knew part of the caravan, with the prince and the mage I called Viper, was on its way to Frasrlund. If we could catch up, if we got word to my lord, it might be we could exact vengeance for Linnet.

  Sabine’s report came after mine. “I was trapped as Prince Baird’s companion throughout supper,” she told us. “I’d hoped to slip away after, but Countess Aeldra and her ladies caught me and subjected me to a thorough quizzing on the life of a lady knight. They also pried quite a lot on my travels with the three of you, which they seemed to think—though gods forbid they should say it!—are one long orgy.” She saw Tunstall turn his head, and said forcefully, “Mattes, don’t spit!”

  “Truly, don’t spit,” Farmer said mildly. “You might blot out part of the circle.”

  “I turned the discussion a bit when I asked Aeldra how she could soil her hands with slave commerce,” Sabine told us, her brown eyes wicked. “She gave me a great deal of scummer about slaves deserving their position or the gods would not have placed them there. She claimed we’ve been at peace with our eastern, western, and southern neighbors for so long because no one wants to lose the benefits of the current trade—no, Mattes, don’t smile, she truly did. She thinks only crude and unmanageable stock comes of war. Seemingly Queensgrace deals only in the most select stock, sold to those who tend their slaves as such expensive property deserves.”

  Farmer snorted.

  “She showed me their account book,” Sabine told him quietly. “They have financial links to some of the noblest families in the realm. Several of them have known resentments with regard to the Crown. I noticed purchases and sales between those houses all taking place this year.”

  “They use the trade to communicate,” Tunstall said as I was thinking it. “To plan.”

  “Perhaps even to move weapons and fighters closer to the capital,” my lady told him. “Groten and Disart made purchases this year, as have Palinet and Blythdin.”

  “This is supposition,” Farmer said, frowning. He caught my look and explained, “Guesswork. From the word suppose.” He didn’t even seem to find me stupid because I didn’t know the word. “I could try to talk with the lady privately, but I would not want to be caught. We don’t need to draw attention.”

  “And we can’t be diverted from our Hunt,” Tunstall said. “We pass this information on to my lord. Was there aught else, my lady?”

  Sabine’s mouth went thin. “A lot of meaningless noise,” she said. “A great many silly hens putting their beaks in dust instead of grain.”

  “You mean they wanted to know why you were with me,” Tunstall said.

  “It was naught,” Sabine insisted. “The kind of babble women talk when they are out of the center of events.” She loo
ked at the plants of the garden, or appeared to. “There is another thing, though you all may think me foolish for bringing it up.”

  “You are never foolish, Sabine,” I told her. “Or if you are, it’s over what’s there to be foolish about.”

  She nodded without looking at me. “It’s Prince Baird,” she said. “He’s not himself. I’ve been to enough engagements with him, social things. I know what he’s like. It doesn’t matter if you’re someone’s chaperone with a face to frighten bogles, he will flirt as if he’s besotted with you. He laughs, he jokes. There are reasons he’s the most popular guest at all the Corus parties. He makes anyone feel lovely and cheerful.”