“You speak of the blood demons?” Tel-Banion cut in.
Moon nodded. “True, it was a man of your Tribe who told Sky Tree the tale, now I remember. You know of this then.”
“We know.” The Cold Lake Tribesmen exchanged glances. “But if it is a demon you seek . . .”
“As we have said, he leaves footprints and rides horses. If he is a demon, he at least wears the body of a man,” Parno said.
“How can we know what such a man is thinking?”
“Gundaron of Valdomar has made a study of the killings in our land.” Dhulyn turned to Gun.
“Usually a person kills for specific reason: for gain, in revenge, in defense, for love or hate, or for honor.” Gun inclined his head in a short bow to their hosts. Gun’s manners had become more polished since she and Parno had seen him last, Dhulyn thought. Now that he had recovered from the ordeal of the Path, he sounded like a Scholar of twice his age and experience.
Though Gun had experienced some things no other Scholar could.
“Even those whose minds have been touched by some illness, even they have reasons that make sense to them, however much it appears irrational to us. But this killer . . .” Gun shook his head. “This killer seems to have chosen people who were . . . available, for want of a better word. Lone travelers with little or no escort. Young people—or in one case a married person who had gone to meet a lover.”
“Ice Hawk was no such stray person,” Moon Watcher pointed out.
“And in no other case was there an attempt made to cover up the killing.”
“As if,” Parno suggested, “the killer needed Ice Hawk dead but could not stop himself from killing in his preferred fashion.”
“And then tried to disguise the deed, so that we would not associate it with him,” Moon Watcher said.
“I agree,” Dhulyn said. “The setting of the fire shows that Ice Hawk was himself the intended victim, killed as himself and not because the killer came upon him unaware.”
“Would the trader have particular reason to kill this Ice Hawk?” Mar’s voice was quiet, but this was the first time she’d spoken since they’d returned to the camp from the horse lines. Trust the little Dove to keep her eye on the trader.
Moon Watcher shook his head. “I cannot believe this. We are seriously talking about Bekluth Allain, someone I’ve known almost the whole of my life, to commit such an act . .. .”
Dhulyn saw the merest glimmer of an idea. “Which is precisely why Ice Hawk never mentioned him,” she said. “We described the killing, we asked who had been near what you call the Doorway of the Sun at the times we knew about. Of course Ice Hawk never mentioned Bekluth Allain—a man you have known for many years, and certainly a man Ice Hawk had known his whole life. It would not occur to Ice Hawk that the atrocity I described could have anything to do with a man so well known to all. A fair man, an honest man, a charming man, accepted by all the Tribes.”
The three young men of the Cold Lake Tribe looked stricken, but not, Dhulyn thought, as if they did not believe her. No, they seemed more to be wondering if they might themselves have made the same mistake that Ice Hawk had evidently made, given the same circumstances. The Watcher brothers looked at each other in their now familiar silent communion.
“We live with the Marked, with those soulless ones, and we have never seen or heard of such a thing as you described to us.” Moon Watcher’s voice was rough, as if the nature of his thoughts had somehow affected his throat.
“Perhaps they are not so broken, not so soulless as you have believed,” Dhulyn said. “Perhaps, after all, there is something worse.”
Parno cleared his throat. “May we return to the subject more directly at hand?” he said. “Do we agree that the trader Bekluth Allain may be the killer?” He looked at the faces around him, so similar in coloring, all marked somewhere with a ghost eye. “We know the day the killer passed through the Path of the Sun. We know that either he eluded Ice Hawk entirely or that he was someone so well known to him that the boy did not consider him a possibility. The trader certainly falls into that category.”
Parno paused and waited for the slow signs of agreement.
“He drew attention to that himself,” Dhulyn said, remembering. “When we first spoke with him, he asked who had been at the Door, pointing out that whoever was there would have seen and recognized him had he been there himself.”
“But would that not show him innocent?” Tel-Banion was still trying to push the whole idea away from him.
Dhulyn found herself nodding. “It could be,” she acknowledged. “But the fact that he was not being hunted will have told him already that he had not been named. And—” Dhulyn held up a finger, an idea just having occurred to her. “He would not have needed to kill Ice Hawk when he first came through the Door, since he would have no way of knowing we were just behind him, ready to accuse.” A sudden cold landed in Dhulyn’s belly. “Once we told him, however, he would know that Ice Hawk could denounce him at any time.”
“You are saying that he went back and killed the boy after we spoke to him. After we told him that the boy could be a danger to him.” Parno’s voice showed the same sense of cold despair that Dhulyn felt herself.
“He had a horse that came from your world, so at the very least, he has had some contact with the killer,” offered Moon Watcher. “For that alone he should be found and questioned.”
“I think we can also say that he deliberately endangered your friends by sending them to us and advising them to confess the Mark.” Josh-Chevrie was nodding now.
“But surely we have explained that? Surely we cannot hold that against him?” Tel-Banion said.
“A moment.” Dhulyn turned to Mar. “Did you tell him you were looking for us?”
“Yes,” Mar said. “Oh, we may not have mentioned you by name, but we said Mercenary Brothers, and he certainly knew who we were talking about.”
Dhulyn looked around at the Tribesmen. “Bekluth Allain certainly knew we were not with the Cold Lake People, and yet that is where he sent our friends.”
Now even Tel-Banion was nodding. “Nor are we the closest to the Door, not in this season.”
“So Bekluth Allain deliberately misled them,” Josh-Chevrie agreed.
“At the very least, he has questions to answer.” Moon Watcher stood. “We will try a cloud reading, so the next Espadryni who meets Bekluth Allain will hold him for us.”
The others were getting to their feet as well. “I thought only the Singers could do that,” Dhulyn said to the Watcher brother.
“It is true that only Singers can send complicated messages through the clouds, but my brother and I together can send simple ones. ‘Look for the trader,’ ‘hold him for us.’ We can manage that much, but it takes both my brother and me to do it.”
While the Watcher brothers went to find a good spot for cloud speaking, the others kept on talking, turning over and over again their thoughts, ideas, and speculations as to why, if Bekluth Allain was not whole, no one had seen this, as if even now they had trouble believing it.
“How could our Singers not have seen something in him?” a Horseman would say. And the others would brighten.
“Is it because he is a man?” another would suggest, and then the light would fade as they turned to look at Gun.
“You say you saw him at the orobeast trap?” Josh asked Dhulyn, the first time, she noted, that he had addressed her directly.
“He said he was going to find your people—by the way, is your main camp in some unusual or unexpected spot? Have you moved recently?” The looks on their faces were all the answer she needed. “Another lie.” She nodded. “We’ll have to go back to the trap and track him from there.”
“Um, I can do better than that.” Gun had been quiet for so long that several of the Espadryni jumped a little on hearing his voice. Dhulyn found herself smiling her wolf’s smile. The boy had color, his eyes were bright.
“I can Find him.”
Twenty-two
A LARIA PRESSED HER head against Sunflower’s shoulder and breathed in. The familiar scent of hay, of the grain mash, the good, half-bitter smell of the horse’s sweat and the faint aroma of the dung underlying all. Alaria closed her eyes against the sting of tears. Home. The horse smelled like home.
Somehow it was only this morning that she had fully realized that she would never see her home again—that if she didn’t lay down her tiles very carefully, she might not even see the next moon. Servants had come in to help her bathe, to help her dress, and to serve her breakfast. All the things that Cleona would have enjoyed so much. Alaria swallowed the sob that threatened to leave her throat, straightened her shoulders, and stroked the mare’s neck where her forehead had been.
Horses were sensitive, foaling queens even more so, and she must not let her own emotions transfer themselves to Sunflower.
Epion had asked her to dine with him the evening before, but her nerve had failed her. She’d pleaded a headache—a real one as it happened—and stayed in the rooms they had given her. Her own things, her clothing and personal belongings, had been brought there by the lady pages. Epion had sent her a flowery note by means of the Steward of Keys, offering to send the Healer, but Alaria had thanked them and said no.
Berena Attin, the Steward of Keys, had been stiff and formal with her, not at all the warmly friendly person she’d seemed to be when Alaria had arrived with Cleona. Alaria had seen some of that same stiffness in others of the palace staff.
Alaria leaned against Sunflower’s water trough and wrapped her arms around herself. She’d known almost immediately why Berena Attin no longer smiled. The woman must be loyal to Falcos and was probably thinking the less of Alaria for deserting him. And the horrible thing was, Alaria had to go on letting Berena think so. That had not occurred to her. When she and Falcos had talked this over, she’d been thinking in terms of tricking Epion; she’d forgotten that she wouldn’t know who to trust, who she could confide in, any more than Falcos could. She hadn’t realized how much it would hurt to have these people believe what she needed Epion to believe.
I’m not marrying Epion, she thought, forcing her breathing to slow, her shoulder and neck muscles to relax. No matter what happened. Falcos was still alive, and there was still much that could be done. Berena Attin couldn’t be the only person here loyal to Falcos, though it was hard to think how a woman who could not leave the palace proper could be of any real use. But Dav-Ingahm, the Steward of Walls, where was he?
There was a part of Alaria that had wanted to stay in the blue suite. She felt safe there, even knowing that the guards were there to keep her in. But instead she’d sent a page to ask Epion for permission to visit the queens, showing him that she made no move without his knowledge and consent. If she was going to be any use to Falcos, she had to convince Epion at the very least that she was playing her part, that she could be trusted. And for now that meant leaving the suite, however much she might have preferred to lock the door again and stay behind it. She’d also known that if she gave in to her fear now, she might never be able to leave, and those rooms, instead of a refuge, would become a prison.
The two guards who had accompanied her to the stables this morning were different from the ones who had stayed with her overnight, but Alaria had noticed that while they wore the palace colors of black tunics with purple sleeves, none of them had the crest that marked them for the Tarkin’s personal guard. She passed fewer people in the upper corridors of the wing of the palace that housed the Tarkin’s actual residence than she’d remembered seeing before. Where were the servants bringing hot water, or ganje, or even breakfasts, to the rooms on the upper floors? Even the lower levels, the public audience and meeting rooms, the suites allotted to minor nobles, the rooms of upper servants—often the same people—the clerks’ offices, the kitchens, and the dining hall itself where many of the servants slept as well as ate—all these seemed half-deserted.
And many of the people who had been attending to their duties had passed her with their eyes down, though a few had shown her sympathetic faces before bowing and letting her pass with her guards in tow. And once or twice she’d seen knots of pages and servants in the distance that broke up as soon as they saw her, with her guards, approaching. But there also seemed to be a few who were already saying things like “mad Falcos,” and only occasionally “poor mad Falcos.”
Alaria let herself out of the horse stall, latched the gate shut, and leaned her arms on the top of the low wall that formed the enclosure. After a flick of an ear in her direction, Sunflower went back to searching for overlooked oats in her feedbox. Who, who among all these, could be trusted?
Alaria sighed and looked toward the door. The guards were there, one outside and one in. She badly wanted to go out into the courtyard and see if she could make out which of the square stone towers that rose above this level housed the rooms Falcos was in. She took another deep breath, releasing it slowly. Best not to think of that right now. Best not to wonder if he was even still alive. She thought she knew enough about how Epion’s mind worked to understand that Falcos might be found dead at any moment—in his prison suite, or even at the bottom of the tower, if Epion still wanted his death to look like a suicide.
I should have stayed with him, she thought, a wave of cold passing through her like a winter’s wind. But would her presence really have made it harder to murder Falcos? Wouldn’t her staying just have meant that she would be killed too? Wasn’t that why Falcos had wanted her to leave? She rubbed her arms, trying to feel warmer. She could only hope the day wouldn’t come that she wished she’d stayed.
Two young stable pages came chasing each other down the ladder from the haylofts, their whoops and laughter stopping abruptly when they saw her standing at Sunflower’s stall. The guard was suddenly beside her, sword drawn.
“Pardon, my lady, oh, please, we didn’t know you were here.” Eyes round, looking from her to the guard’s blade, they paled even further, stumbling over their apologies and edging away to get a clearer shot at the open door. Mindful that anyone, even children, might be a source of news and help, Alaria forced herself to laugh and hold out her hands to the two young pages. And surely these were too young to be suspect.
“Are you the ones who have been taking such good care of my queens?” And in response to their nods, Alaria added, hoping her smile didn’t look as false as it felt, “Then I must send you a special pastry from the Tarkin’s kitchen. Which kind do you like best?”
Careful negotiation established that it was already too late in the year for strawberries, and the two pages settled for plums.
“You may go back to your duties. I will see that the pastries are sent.”
“One for each of us—what?” said the blue-eyed page when the other elbowed her in the ribs. “The princess said.”
Alaria laughed. “Yes, one each, don’t worry. Now, before you go, find me Delos Egoyin; tell him I wish to speak with him.”
“I hope you’re not leaving the princess alone, you two.” Delos Egoyin arrived in minutes, drying his hands on an old bit of blanket. “Only the other day a guard was attacked, actually attacked, here in my stables. I ask you, with the Tarkin gone mad, poor boy, is there anything left for the gods to visit on us?” Delos shook his head.
“Come to see your queens, have you, my lady?” he continued. He was smiling now, but Alaria thought she could see a shadow behind his eyes just the same. His fondness for Falcos had seemed genuine, Alaria thought. Did he believe the rumors and accusations that Epion was busy circulating, or did Delos, like Alaria herself, merely play a part, hoping that circumstances would favor their side once more?
“Sunflower seems to be in fine shape,” she said. The mare thrust her head over the gate and snuffled Alaria’s hair, knowing, in the way that horses do, that she was being spoken of.
“The others are just as fine, and their foals as well. Perhaps you’d like to see?” He led her back through the barn to the inner section where mare
s with foals were kept. This time the guard, Alaria noticed, did not follow. He probably knew there was no escape through here. The three queens were set next to each other in separate stalls along the wall of undressed stone, which was actually the outer wall of the palace grounds, with nothing but air behind it. It was quieter here, and darker, though shutters had been left open on the roof to let in air and light.
“Tomorrow or the next day I’d like to move these ladies out of doors,” Delos was saying. He and Alaria were leaning their elbows on the top of the enclosure. They were almost the same height, Delos stooped not from age but from the necessities of his work. “I was waiting for Sunflower to foal first, to keep them together, but it looks as though she might have other ideas.”
“Where is the paddock you are thinking of?” Grateful for the distraction, Alaria was trying to remember where she had seen open-air paddocks for the royal horses.
“Ah, well now, I’ll show you right now, if you wish. But I have another plan in mind. How would it be if you came this afternoon, after the midday meal, and I’ll give you a complete tour of the whole yard, horse stables, barns, hawk mews, dog kennels, everything, so you’ll be better able to make plans for the breeding of the new herd.”
There was something in the way Delos’ eyed her that told Alaria this invitation was important, more important than an inspection of what one day might—or might not—become her responsibility.
“I’d love it,” Alaria said, her heart already lifting at the prospect of possible action. Then the memory of the part she was playing came back to her. “But let me ask leave of Lord Epion,” she said. “There may be other duties that require my presence.”
“Cara!” Delos called, and then jumped as the blue-eyed page appeared out of nowhere. “Caids, girl! Don’t sneak up on a man like that!”
Cara grinned, shrugging up one shoulder. “It’s my job to be ready, to jump when you call, and you’ve always told me to do my job well.”
“At least let me know you’re there, for the Caids’ sake; you’ve taken years off me, child, years. Now go to the Steward of Keys and find out what duties Princess Alaria has for this afternoon.”
Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno Page 40