She looked again toward Gadyn. He had replaced his usual robes with a warrior’s garb, the surcoat gorgeously embroidered with the Marubin arms, slit at the sides to reveal padded, quilted body armor that gleamed in the light like velvet. He wore heavy woolen leggings and long brown boots that looked cobbled for elegance rather than utility. Tight black braids framed his face.
Drysi sat before the niche that held her Circles of Infinity. Her minstrel sat at her feet, hand rising and falling against the strings of her instrument. Her mouth opened and stretched and closed again, all of it a dumb show under the roar of the hall. Two castle shadeen flanked Drysi’s chair. Humka stood behind her, hands deep in his sleeves, glowering at the floor. Kieve wondered if, as with Taryn and Isbael, Humka had envisioned a consort’s place on Sterk. Drysi’s other courtiers formed a knot around her, eyes flickering from side to side. Two of them held their hands at their belts, as though grasping absent sword hilts. Expecting Trappers to emerge from the floors, Kieve thought. Fercos was, for a mercy, silent. She came down the last steps and made her way through the vacant aisle between the factions, toward the tables of food.
One of Esylk’s blue-clad men leaned over the boards, loading a plate. He said that his lord sat before the most distant fireplace. Kieve filled a plate under Puwan’s watchful eye. At her nod, Glyn took food for herself and Puwan. They followed the Myned shadi back to Esylk’s side. Beyond her, the lords of Bergdahl, Moel, and Kyst bent over their plates in talk. Kyst straightened to look at Kieve. A small man, as neatly put together as a sword, wide eyes and clear skin. Kieve had expected someone older and dissolute. She bowed to him. He turned back to his companions and she looked away.
“Sit with me, Rider,” Esylk said, patting the bench beside her.
Kieve bent her knee. As she sat, Puwan held out his hand for her plate. Kieve gave it to him.
“And what is this?” Esylk said.
“This is Puwan and Glyn—they are Commander Ilach’s idea. To keep me from being poisoned,” Kieve said. Puwan sat cross-legged at her feet, her plate in his lap. He picked up a spiced bun, frowned at it, and bit it.
“There is some danger of that?”
“I doubt it. You must apologize to your Chancellor for me. I appeared at your door with two soldiers behind me. I think he thought I had come to Take him.”
Esylk nodded. Puwan took a bite of something else and rolled his eyes. Esylk’s lips twitched. “Were I a woman of crass tastes and no refinement,” she murmured, “I would make a comment about a dog.”
“Lady. I appreciate your restraint.”
Puwan swallowed. “You eat horrible stuff,” he said. “I won’t know if I’m poisoned or if it’s supposed to taste like that.”
“With luck, you will not have the time to come to like it,” she said. “May I eat, please?”
He handed her the plate, sipped at her ale, and handed that to her too. Kieve balanced the plate on her knees. Beside her, the Lady Esylk picked through her own food, wiping her fingers on the cloth she had tucked into her belt. The two soldiers leaned together, fingers busy in their plate.
“I didn’t see Leyek in your rooms,” Kieve said.
Esylk’s lips tightened. “No. I have not seen that idiot in two days and my patience is ended. When he returns, I shall lock him up until I can deliver him to his father –who will not deal lightly with him, I can promise.”
Kieve paused with the spiced bun partway to her mouth. “Where is he, do you think?”
“Who can tell?” Esylk said. “In someone’s bed, no doubt. Or gaming privately. They are his two passions and from what I hear he is equally bad at both, and for the same reasons.” She took up a chicken wing. “I am well tired of acting the nursemaid with that boy,” she said. “You have been to the barracks? Is he there?”
Kieve shook her head. “You are not concerned that he may be in the storm?”
“Would you be?” Esylk retorted.
Kieve thought about the Inguruki and bad weather. She shook her head. The memory of the apothecary’s neck came back to her.
“No, lady. But I am concerned, remembering what the lady Drysi said yesterday, about Trappers.”
Esylk pressed her lips tight. “The hall is full of these rumors, thanks to Gadyn Marubin. See how they stand away from the tapestries, and cluster in groups where they can watch each other’s backs? And Gadyn...you have seen his clothing? His followers say that because of his holdings in the North, he is far more able to deal with the ‘Trapper threat’ than is Lady Isbael, with all her years in the softness of Koerstadt.” She put a chicken bone on her plate. “Nothing will come of it. As Commander Ilach said, there are no Trappers on Sterk. Are there, Rider?”
“No, lady. There are no Trappers on Sterk. Perhaps this might be shown before Gadyn takes the sword.”
“Gadyn takes the ... a preposterous idea.” Esylk handed her plate to one of her shadeen and brushed crumbs from her skirt. “It would be unfortunate if he did so. For his province and for all the border provinces.” She straightened her shoulders, dismissing the subject. “I’m glad you came to me, Rider. We have matters to discuss.”
Kieve handed her plate to Glyn, who put it under the bench and turned sideways to face the fire.
“To discuss, lady?”
Esylk nodded. “I made you an offer two days ago, when we met in Isbael’s chambers. You must have had a chance to consider it.”
“I have been distracted, Lady,” Kieve said. “You may perhaps have been distracted yourself.”
She moved her head, dismissing this. “Circumstances have changed. Among them is this: I believe that should you petition to join the Explorers, your request may now be granted. Further, it is possible that if I petition the Guild to have you seconded to me that petition will also be granted.” Esylk raised her pale brows and looked at the Rider.
Kieve had not thought about that. She returned Esylk’s look. Jenci had kept her in Cherek, but a new guildmaster would have no reason to do so.
“And if the Guild refuses, lady?” Kieve said.
Esylk brought a small, ornately-worked silver cylinder from a pocket in her skirt. “Look,” she said. She shook a scroll onto her lap and rested her fingers on it.
“It is only a scrap,” she said. “I believe no other like it exists.” She pressed it open.
It was a map, inked onto a piece of linen ragged at its edges. Kieve bent her head to it. Crude triangles framed mountains along the bottom and sides of the map; along the top she saw wavy lines that must mean water. Another spine of mountains moved through the emptiness between the water and the mountains toward the bottom, and where these fell into smaller deltas, someone had inked a circle and, beside it, a word smudged into illegibility.
“I think it is a map of the Ice Fair,” Esylk said. “Leyek’s father told me about it. Trappers gather once a year at the Ice Fair for trade. Just before winter ends, he said. What we see in Cherek comes from there, second or third or fifteenth hand.” She touched the circle with one slender fingertip.
“My lady?”
“I want you to go there for me, and make a map, and bring it back. I want to send my own traders to the Ice Fair.”
For a moment her breath caught. She laid a fingertip on the map. “Is this all we know of its location?” Esylk nodded. Kieve let her finger run along the spine of the inland mountains. “And if the Guild will not let me go?” she said.
“Then my offer stands, despite the Guild. I would be pleased to accept you into my court upon an oath of fealty. And I would be pleased to grant you such lands as you need to maintain yourself. In return, I require only that you ride the outlands for me. It is, after all, what you wish to do.” Esylk let her hands frame the ragged map. “What say you, Kieve?”
It was a staggering offer. It would change her world, change everything. Kieve paused, stilling herself, before shaking her head a little. “Lady, I don’t know. My master is newly dead, murdered. You are generous, but...I can make no decision
until his murderer is found.” She met Esylk’s pale eyes. “Can you ask me again, lady, when that is done?”
“If you insist,” Esylk said, not pleased. She rolled the map and slid it into the silver case. She held the case in her lap. “If Cadoc dies before Jenci’s murderer is found, will you ride Cadoc’s death to Koerstadt and return here?”
The possibility had not occurred to her. She frowned, watching the case between Esylk’s fingers. “I don’t know, Lady. When Cadoc dies, Commander Ilach will be free to investigate. But I don’t know that I would come back. I don’t want to.”
“Perhaps, then, you should devote some time to thought.” Esylk put the case in her pocket and started to rise.
“Lady, a moment.” Kieve shifted on the bench. “The apothecary is dead,” she said. “She saw Jenci on Lord’s Walk. I was just at the cold rooms, where the castle keeps its newly dead.”
Esylk sat back, her hands in her lap. “Dead,” she repeated.
“I believe she was killed,” Kieve said.
Esylk frowned a little. Firelight gleamed along the arcs of her pale eyebrows. “And do you know at whose behest...but of course we know.” She looked down at her hands, then put them apart and rose. “You will be careful,” she said.
Kieve rose too, and went to one knee. Esylk stood for a moment, as though she would say more, before joining the Lords of Bergdahl and Moel and Kyst who sat with their cups in their hands and heads together.
Glyn took their plates away. Puwan had found a piece of wood by the hearth to carve. Kieve stretched her legs toward the fire. She wondered if it was only a coincidence that both Esylk and Cairun were willing to help her out of Cherek, then pushed the thought aside. Their motives, for whatever cause, were different. She could see the ragged map printed on the darkness behind her eyelids. At the autumn solstice, when the ground had frozen and travel was easy, the tribe’s hunters gathered their furs and went north, to barter with the coastal tribes in the middle of a glacier, in the heart of the ice.
If she mapped the way there, others would follow. Cherans would follow. Maps open doors.
She opened her eyes, forcing the thoughts away. There would be time, later.
Beyond the Ice Fair, the Inguruki said, glaciers fell in thundering islands into a cold northern sea.
Across the hall, Gadyn’s land-barons lounged about his chair while he talked, his hands and arms moving. Adwyr’s servant Anfri stood among them. Baron Rive stood behind Gadyn’s shoulder, hands in his sleeves, nodding and watching the other lords. Kieve wondered if Gadyn had used Jenci’s murder as an excuse to petition for the return of his locked weapons. Surely not Cadoc, not even Adwyr would grant it.
The guild representatives clustered together some distance away, bright and solemn in their robes of office. She glanced at Taryn as he looked up from talk to look at her. They gazed at each other before he broke away to respond to one of Isbael’s adherents. There were more land-barons clustered around Taryn than there were around Gadyn. Kieve wondered if Drysi’s Circles of Infinity had anything to say about that. He was a good manager, a careful steward. Isbael undoubtedly appreciated that. She turned her face away. The Hall smelled old and stale and close and ugly.
She put her hands in her pockets. She touched the small wooden box, the twist of paper with his guild token and, under these, the necklet Pyrs had made and given her. Something poked her finger. She pulled out the sliver of bone she had found in Jenci’s cloak and turned it over, looking at it.
It was perhaps three inches long and a quarter inch thick at one end, tapering to a blunt point. The tip was blackened and left dark smudges on her fingers. The rest of the bone was uniformly dark yellow, the color of age. It must have splintered from a larger bone long, long ago.
Sometimes the Inguruki carried pieces of bone with them, to keep the dead fresh in memory. Once the scavengers were done, if anything was left a small bone might be taken; to take anything more was to steal what belonged to Bear. Kieve pulled a length of moss from one of the logs beside the hearth and wrapped the splinter, wondering why Jenci would carry such a thing, and who he had loved enough to so remember.
Puwan was carving an image of the Mother, moon-faced and heavy-bellied. Kieve put the bone splinter in her pocket and sent him for a mug of beer, and braced her boot heels against the hearth.
The wound in the apothecary’s neck had been made with a shayka. Only three people on Sterk were likely to have one: Isbael, who collected Trapper baubles, and Esylk, who traded with the Inguruki, and Leyek, who was one. Of the three, only two might know how to use it; of those two, only one was stupid enough to do so.
Puwan brought back her mug and wiped the foam of his tasting from his moustache.
She had sent Leyek to Cairun. Cairun had sent the boy to Gadyn Marubin, who had put him to use. He would be where Gadyn Marubin wanted him to be. She had no idea where.
Glyn had gone to use a garderobe and now came around the sides of the hall to them. Kieve caught her eye as she approached and she lengthened her stride.
“It’s news,” she said.
“Cadoc?”
She shook her head and crouched before Kieve. Puwan dropped down beside her. “It’s Aedin,” she said, “who was Baron Kelyn’s son. He is dead.” The level of noise in the hall dropped as the word spread. Glyn said, under her breath, “There, you see, the guard goes to tell Gadyn.”
It was Frog who made his way across the room, looking both nervous and important, his face bright red behind his scraggle of whiskers. The hall had fallen to silence. Frog knelt to Gadyn and spoke to him. Gadyn nodded and rose.
Kieve saw Aedin in her mind, hands bound, calming his horse as they came through Penitence. She slammed doors on the image as Gadyn nodded and rose.
“Glyn,” Kieve said. “How did it happen?”
She shrugged. “It was in the warrens—how does it ever happen, there?”
Gadyn took his time crossing the hall, walking past groups of land-barons, looking about him to the right and left and leaving behind him bent knees and uncertain faces. He paused to stare at the barons surrounding Taryn before he mounted the dais.
“So ever to traitors,” he said. In the quiet that followed he sat not in his father’s chair, but in the one beside it. He had a modicum of sense left, Kieve thought. The crowd in the hall broke into speech. Gadyn’s gaze sought her out across the room. She stared back until one of his sycophants said something to him and he could, without losing face, turn to address the man. Kieve gestured to her bodyguards and slipped out of the hall.
* * * *
They had come to the promenade at the very top of the castle, its roof composed of the overhanging rock itself. Kieve leaned against the balusters; the wind lifted a little and settled itself again.
They had stopped in Jenci’s room on the way up. The honor guard clustered around the woodstove, having abandoned the inner room to the cold. A seminarian stood with them, making noise with his rattle. When Kieve entered he shook it harder and picked up the pace of his chant. Esylk had paid for his prayers, he told her. Jenci’s body lay frosted in the other room, undisturbed. A soldier asked whether Kieve would not prefer the body taken to the cold rooms but she brushed the question aside, unwilling to consign Jenci to the depths of Sterk. The soldier reported that the body had received visitors throughout the morning, folk come to goggle in the guise of paying their respects. As Kieve turned to go, the seminarian held out his free hand. It was traditional to show respect for the dead by buying a prayer, and Jenci had been nothing if not traditional. Kieve hesitated, then gave him a quarter-stiver. It disappeared into his robes.
A distant light outlined the horizon, the boundary of the storm. As she watched the light widened.
Gadyn had killed Jenci. If not with his own hands, then at his directive. The person he used, the tool, had wounded the guildmaster and blinded him and dumped him on Lord’s Walk to be eaten by the storm.
Below the promenade, servants moved along the
walks that ran from roof to roof, spreading ash behind them as though they built a dark spider web. The ash would work its way through the castle, staining the floors, rasping underfoot, smearing into the white snow to turn it grey, but for now the dark lines were neat and unbroken. She pulled the cloak’s hood closer around her cheeks.
Only the most talented of Inguruki hunters used shaykas. Far easier and safer to kill an animal at a distance than to risk the closeness they required.
“Rider,” Glyn called. “It’s cold here.” She and Puwan had taken shelter in a doorway. Kieve ignored her.
Leyek must have had a shayka. Unlikely to be his, since he said he had lost something of his father’s, gaming with Cairun; Kieve doubted that the boy himself had the patience or the knowledge to have earned the weapon on his own. Kieve had sent him to Cairun. Cairun had sent him to Gadyn. Gadyn had used him to kill the apothecary. It was a clear, coherent train of thought. Master Quarren, who taught logic along with concentration, would be proud of her. Save that this clear, logical train of thought led nowhere: it did not tell her where Leyek was.
She paced away from the balusters. The shadeen came forward but retreated when she turned at the end of the promenade and paced back.
Gadyn would hide Leyek. He needed a Trapper on Sterk, to blame for Jenci’s murder. Of course, the Trapper need not be alive. Better if he were not. Much better. But Gadyn did not kill with his own hands. So he would have turned to the hands that murdered Jenci.
Stupid people, Master Quarren had said, lack the ability to change their patterns. A solution successful once is successful for all time.
The world entered a moment of silence, into which the answer appeared as clearly as if spoken.
Kieve ran from the promenade. The shadeen ran after her, boots ringing on the stairs and echoing through stone corridors.
She pounded on Esylk’s door until the Chancellor jerked it open, saw her and her companions, and paled again. She pushed him aside and said to the shadi behind him, “I know where Leyek is. On Lord’s Walk. Puwan will take you there.”
Mapping Winter Page 31