There followed a moment of muttering before Dav said, “Her? She’s nothing, a puppet. Anyone can do what she does. Besides, I direct these matters, she just takes the credit for it. It’s the damned guild, you know. But that will change. You throw in your lot with me and I can guarantee that—”
By now Kieve had turned and was watching him. He stopped talking and narrowed his eyes at her.
She shook away the final crumbs and slid her hand into the leather glove, flexing her fingers until the glove settled into place like a second skin. Dav looked away. She took the flat map from her pocket and looked at it, squinting a little.
She had updated it two years ago. Her gloved finger traced the line of the road north from Abermorat. The holdings comprised fields, orchards, small farms, some high meadows. Before they reached the fields they would pass through a clutter of low hills, coppices between them, their tops shaved bare by the winds. In one place the hills shouldered close, pinching the road. She tapped the map with her fingertip, figuring distances. Frog prepared the horses and when all was ready she pocketed the map and mounted. Dav took the road ahead of her. He kept the lead until the first crossroads, where he had to stop because he didn’t know which way to go. Kieve guided Traveler around him and took the lead, and he fell behind, glowering. Deep in a pocket, her fingers ticked off paces.
In the mid-afternoon they crested a ridge of hills. Kieve pulled up and the three nudged their horses together.
“Aedin, Baron Kelyn’s son,” Kieve said. Dav grunted, pleased to know the quarry’s name.
She said, “He will spend much of today in the city and rides to reach his home before dark. We will take him in a copse about a league farther along this road. There should be little trouble.”
Dav frowned and shook his head. Kieve waited but he declined to state an opinion.
The wooded hills closed in and the road twisted. She picked her spot with care, riding forward for a while then back. Dav objected, favoring a place further along, but she ignored him. She exchanged her brown cloak for her black one and sent him down the road toward the city, to wait concealed until their quarry had passed. He went with poor grace. Frog waited within the woods on the far side of the trail and a bit further along, where Kieve could keep an eye on him. She hoped Aedin had not bought any goats in the city. He raised a particular breed whose hair was prized for its softness. Kieve was not willing to deal with goats of any description.
The sky was still light when the land-baron’s son and his companions, goatless, came around a turn in the path to see Kieve, in the black cloak of her guild, waiting on Traveler between wings of forest. One of the companions cursed and the other wheeled his horse and dashed back toward the city. Dav, who had come out of the woods behind the travelers, let him go. The land-baron’s son calmed his horse and when the animal had finished stepping, he pushed back his hood. He had a plain, honest, round face behind a small neat beard, and puzzled brown eyes.
“Kieve Rider,” he said. “Do you have business with me?”
She recited the words of the Taking, which were few and stark. She said nothing to answer Aedin’ next question, which was “Why?”
Aedin’s companion shifted in his saddle. Kieve said to him, “You may go.”
Aedin said, “Tell my father. And tell my wife that—that—” He spread his hands. The companion nodded and edged around Kieve and around Frog, and galloped north. Dav rode forward to bind Aedin’s wrists.
“This isn’t necessary,” Aedin said with dignity.
“Quiet,” Dav said. “Give me your hands.”
“Rider,” Aedin said, appealing to her. “You know me, I am an honorable man.”
“It is required,” Kieve said.
Dav bound him. When he was done, the cord dug into the cuffs of his shortcoat and Aedin grimaced. The sky darkened. She took them off the North Road, along paths marked with cryptic symbols on her map and not marked at all along the ground, avoiding the slender possibility that Baron Kelyn might send people out to recapture his son. Dav, in the rear, had cut a bush and dragged it behind his horse, explaining to Frog how adept he was at covering their tracks. Kieve kept her silence. Dav’s elaborate precautions would fool no one. What kept followers from them was the force of Cadoc’s reputation.
The map showed an abandoned hunting lodge half a league away from the Road. The roof was solid and the walls, though gapped and tumbled, would protect them from the worst of the cold. A chest-high stone wall divided the building down the middle, with stalls for the horses on one side and, on the other, a heavy stone table and benches. A rafter had fallen across the room, blocking the fireplace. Dav took his cloak off and circled the beam, inspecting the ceiling before lifting one edge of the timber. His muscles pushed against the fabric of his vest. Grunting, he wrestled it onto the wide stone ledge near the window. The roof shook a little but held.
Aedin sat on the ledge near the fireplace, bound hands slack between his knees, staring at the floor. Kieve groomed Traveler and watched across the wall as Frog cleaned out the chimney and laid and lit a fire. He spitted the chicken Balor had packed and laid the spit into the notches set in a corner of the fireplace. He put a pot of water to boil above the fire and, when it did, shook tea into it and set it on the hob to stay warm. Dav supervised. Kieve finished with the horse just as Frog put the food on the table.
“You had best come now, Rider,” Dav said loudly. “We won’t keep it warm for you, you know.”
She came around the wall and ducked under the rafter, taking her time. Dav sat, knees wide, and surrounded his dinner with his elbows. Kieve gestured Aedin to the table. He raised his bound hands to her but she shook her head. For a while the lodge was silent except for the crackle of fire and the scrape of pots on stone.
“My father’s steward knows about the goats,” Aedin said, after he had eaten. “I promised a flock to a man in the city, come spring. After the kids are old enough. We negotiated a price.”
“Shut up about your goats,” Dav said. “We don’t want to hear about your goats.” He elbowed Frog and grinned.
Aedin frowned. “It’s all I know, the goats,” he said to Kieve. “There’s a market for the cloth in Koerstadt but I sell most of it in Teneleh Province. They have to come to me for their yarn—the goats can’t live there, it’s too warm. I mean, they can live, but the hair isn’t as fine. So the cloth...” He shrugged.
“I said, shut up,” Dav growled.
Kieve said his name. He glowered and stood away from the table. Frog gathered up the dirty pots and took them outside to clean them.
“I don’t understand this,” Aedin said. “I have nothing to do with politics. What are politics to me? I don’t care who takes the sword.”
“I think your father does,” Kieve said and left the table. It was the only answer that made sense, that Aedin of the goats and fine soft cloth would be Taken in retaliation for his father’s shifted allegiance. As a hostage, perhaps, but more importantly as an object lesson to the other land-barons. She pushed the thought away and went to settle Traveler, who did not need it.
After a while Aedin came to the wall and leaned over it, watching her work. Dav had gone outside to relieve himself and Frog stood at the door. He puffed out his chest, arms akimbo, unsure whether to look outside for a troop of angry relatives and retainers, or inside to a devious prisoner.
“He’s afraid of dying,” Aedin said in a quiet voice. Kieve didn’t look at him. “My father, I mean. It started last spring, his talk about the Flail of Truth and what happens after death, after we go to the Mountain.”
She picked through the horse’s mane.
“When the lord took sick...” There was a moment of quiet. “When Cadoc took sick, my father told me it was the lord’s sins festering inside him. That it was justice for—for you, and the network, and the ferrets. It proved that Cadoc was evil, and all those around him were evil. That’s why he left Sterk, he said.” He was silent. Kieve looked at him. “But Cadoc—he only
took people who talked, not families. Only the people who...”
Kieve bent to the horse again. It wasn’t Cadoc, she thought.
“Rider?” He shuffled his feet. “Since it’s not my fault, it’s not because of me, do you think that you could—I might—since I didn’t do anything...”
She shook her head. Aedin looked away.
The fire burned to embers. The built-in stone benches doubled as sleeping ledges. Dav had spread his blankets out nearest the hearth. Kieve gestured Aedin to a place on the other side and settled herself nearby. Frog took the first watch. She pulled her hood over her face, welcoming the darkness, and tried to sleep. Frog stirred a little. A frozen bough cracked and she heard the distant trickle of water under a crust of ice.
* * * *
She had two choices for a route back, three if she counted the North Road itself. She chose the longest of them, hoping the journey would take enough time for Cadoc to die. If he did and she were not there to promise her oath to anybody, would Gadyn still take the sword? She shut the thought away, uneasy with where it led.
This route ran through a valley where, in the summer, sheep grazed in the meadows bordering a stream. She had the lead, Aedin behind her, Dav and Frog at the rear. Dav’s voice rose and fell, a constant buzzing interrupted by his own laughter. She tried to block out the sound. Aedin gripped his pommel and stared at the neck of his horse. She thought about Baron Kelyn and about Cadoc’s locked cabinet. Over the years she had heard that it contained the heads of enemies, the bones of discarded mistresses, that it contained nothing at all. If anyone guessed that it held the ferrets’ dirty secrets, they did not say so aloud. It would not factor into Dalmorat’s succession, not overtly. Whoever took the sword would take the cabinet, but only after the old man’s death.
She shook her head, angry at her thoughts, and looked around. Snow lay in the shadows beneath trees and along the north side of large rocks, old but white and untouched in this distant valley. The small stream was solid ice.
Kieve had conducted Takings six times in the past four years, three guild members and three land-barons or their kin. Aedin was the seventh. Cadoc’s Rider always brought the warrant. Anonymous escort, anonymous ferrets, anonymous torturers inside Sterk. As far as the people of the province knew, only two people were identified with the network: Lord Cadoc and his Rider, his tool.
They stopped at noon to water the horses and feed themselves, at the granite outcrop marking the farthest end of Kelyn’s land. Aedin kept silent. This was familiar, the shock that descended sometimes on the ferrets’ victims. Dav continued his tutoring and wooing of Frog, sotto voce and well out of Kieve’s line of sight. She leaned against the stone, feeling its coldness seep through the warmth of her cloak, and chewed her share of the bread. She thought of Taryn, of music and wine in the warmth of the Crescent Bathhouse, and cursed herself for a fool. She thought of the Lady Isbael, present even in her absence, and cursed again. Aedin said he needed to relieve himself, but Dav ignored him. Kieve took him around the rock and, when it became necessary, undid his clothes and held him and, afterwards, fastened his clothes up again. At her signal Frog helped Aedin to mount.
Dalmorat’s land-barons had been an unruly lot. Forty-seven years ago they rose against Cadoc’s uncle, left him headless in the Morat, and gave the sword to Cadoc. She didn’t know if they could do it again, or if in the long years of Cadoc’s power they had lost the will to exercise their own. Forty-seven years ago there had not been a network of ferrets, or a cabinet full of ugly secrets. No one could rule a province without the land-barons’ support but, she thought, no one said the support had to be willing.
Dav’s voice rose and fell and rose again. Occasionally Frog replied. Aedin remained silent. Her stomach ached.
They came back through the city in mid-afternoon. North Road bustled with householders and, in the center of town, with guild speakers and merchants and the curious. This time Kieve wore her black cloak, her badge bright against it, but the guards pulled their hoods far forward so that shadows hid their faces. Aedin rode between them, bound hands clasped around his pommel. The people pushed back against the buildings, hushed and staring.
When they came to Penitence Aedin stiffened and his horse, trained to his master’s body, danced a little. Dav jerked down on the reins and growled. Aedin ignored him, staring at the pillars and blocks and the empty gallows. The bondslave must have died, for the cage had been taken down. Dav produced a stream of admonitions as they moved onto the quay. Kieve caught a constable’s eye and nodded toward Sterk. He shook his head once. Cadoc still lived.
Dav had an audience this morning, a complement of provisioners with casks of ale and baskets piled with roots. He made sure they heard him order Aedin this way and that, and make obscure predictions of his fate.
“Kieve Rider, this is hard enough,” Aedin said as they waited to board. He nodded toward the people staring at him and at Dav, blustering and belligerent.
Kieve opened her cloak and, taking a fold of it, put it across Aedin’s shoulders, taking him under the cloak and her protection. Aedin drew in his breath. Dav, seeing it, reddened and shut his mouth. Kieve twitched her cloak back and closed it. Dav’s eyes slitted as he turned away.
When they went aboard Aedin followed her to the bow. There being no audience for him there, Dav stayed aft, whispering to Frog.
“I have said nothing, not against Lord Cadoc,” Aedin said. “I am not stupid, Rider. You know that.”
The wind off the frozen river was cold. She pulled her hood forward and pressed it closed over her throat.
“If—” he hesitated. “If he dies, will they let me go?”
“I don’t know,” she said. The ferry settled into the final run to Sterk.
The wind picked up a little more as they came through the lands before the castle. The man’s horse skittered again at the gate, then they were through and she sat motionless as Endres received him and took him away. Aedin did not look back.
She left Traveler at the Lords Stables with Lud and walked back through the wards. She took the steps up the back of the curtain wall and to the bartizan where the watching shadeen turned their backs to her, as they did each time she returned from a Taking. She went through the stone to the ruined watch niche on the far side of Sterk. Away to the west, where she could not see it, the sun was setting. The clouds to the east stained red first, then pale orange against a blue-black sky. Kieve watched them.
Daenet found her there well after dark. He carried a stubby candle shielded in a small chimney and hummed a bit as he came. Kieve had closed her eyes some time back and now she closed them again, listening to the brush of his cloak against the rock walls.
“I thought you might be here,” he said. He grunted a little and when he spoke again his voice was close by. He smelled of apato. “You could at least keep a bench here, or clear the stones away. I shall be well corrugated in a moment.” A rustling. “I have brought a loaf and meat. And apato, of course. Will you have some?”
“Go away,” she said.
“What, after this heroic journey, and in the dark?” She heard the top come off the apato bottle, and a gurgle. “Do you do this every time he sends you out? Or is it disappointment in love? Or both?”
“Go away,” she said through clenched teeth.
“No. I may not know much about your Lord, but I am an expert at disappointment in love. The castle’s gossips are anything but slow.” The bottle clicked as he set it down on the stones. “I am also an expert at Kyst. Aren’t you anxious for any information I have? Since you’ll be Kyst’s Rider in a matter of days, if not before? I’d think you’d be achingly eager to talk to me, Kieve Outlander.”
“I don’t want your post,” she said. “I want to be alone. Go away, Daenet. By all that’s precious to you, please, just go away.”
“What, in the name of all I am about to lose? I don’t think so, Kieve. I think I have a right to this.” After a moment, he added, “Do you suppose they’
ll let me stay in the Guild, after Jenci sacks me from Kyst? When we oath to the Guild, the Guild oaths to us too, doesn’t it? To take us to its bosom as though we were children of its own corporate flesh, to guide and protect and nurture and all that resounding horse shit they told us when our apprenticeship was over. So they can’t very well kick me out, can they?”
She didn’t reply.
“No,” he continued. “I suspect they’ll find a place for me. Perhaps as an assistant in a chapterhouse in, say, Bergdahl. That’s far enough from the center of the world. Or the Guildmaster might decide to keep me under closer supervision, right in Koerstadt itself. What work do you think he’d make for me in Koerstadt, Kieve Outlander? Is there any job demeaning enough in the Koerstadt Guild Hall? A porter, perhaps? No, wait, I know, I could be the Rider in command of the slop jars. That should satisfy even Master Jenci, don’t you think?”
The apato bottle gurgled again. “Funny,” Daenet’s slurred voice said. “Here we are, you desperate to get out and me desperate to stay in. Would you like to trade cloaks? Perhaps we can fool them into believing that you are me, and I am you, and...”
“Daenet,” she said, lips tight. “Daenet, can’t you just shut up?”
“I can’t, can I?” he said. “Sometimes words are the only things left to me. Lovely, changeable, impossible, unreliable words. The only things that still belong to me.”
“You’re drunk and maudlin.”
“Does that make this any less true?” He put his hand on her shoulder and pulled her around. The tiny light from the candle barely lit his face.
“Tell me this, Kieve Rider, whose fine sensibilities are so bruised at doing her Lord’s bidding. Tell me this: if you were sent to Take me, Daenet—would you?”
She tried to pull away. He pulled her back.
“Where’s the line, Kieve? You are oathed to the Guild, and under that is your oath to your Lord. If your Lord requires that you go against the Guild’s teachings, you are within your rights to deny him. Is this so?” When she did not answer, he shook her. “Is this so?”
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