Alaria smiled, watching the child run off. She barely remembered her own father as a handsome face, a warm laugh, and gentle hands. He’d had the charge of running her mother’s household, but he’d died when Alaria was a little girl, and her mother had hired a woman to be housekeeper and clerk. Alaria was brought back to the present by the sound of her own name.
“So far as the Steward of Keys knows, Princess Alaria has no official duties this afternoon,” the page Cara said, panting slightly from her run. “Berena Attin says she’d be hard-pressed to know what official duties she could have before she becomes Tarkina.” A silence fell. Alaria tried to keep her face from showing what she actually thought about that eventuality, at least as it involved Epion.
“Well, then, this would be the time then for our little tour, before the princess becomes distracted by other matters. It would take your mind off things, my lady.” Delos turned to address her directly. “Set your mind at rest, is what I thought, as to what you’ll have to deal with in the future, if you follow me.”
Alaria’s smiled stiffened. Delos had no gift for intrigue, she thought. The rats that were undoubtedly in this as in every other stable, no matter how well looked after, could probably follow him, understanding that there was something he wanted to show her and that this afternoon would be the perfect time.
“How can I resist,” she said, giving the old man a genuine smile.
Alaria did not get away from the head table of the dining room quite as quickly as she would have liked. Epion had been there, carefully not sitting in the Tarkin’s seat but in his own usual seat one chair to the right. They’d had Falcos’ empty seat between them, and that was a convenient excuse not to exchange more than the necessary civilities. Epion enquired as to her health and how she had slept, and he scattered a few polite enquires as to whether she enjoyed certain of the dishes. Alaria asked for, and received, his gracious permission to tour the stables and barns, whereupon she was left to herself. She couldn’t be sure, but there seemed to be more guards in blue wearing the single purple sleeve that marked them as Epion’s than there had been before—and again, no one with the Tarkin’s crest on their tunics. Many of Epion’s guards found the need to consult with their lord during the meal.
Every time one of them approached the table, she tried to react naturally, and not as if she expected each and every one of them to suddenly point at her—or bring news she was afraid to hear.
She was finished long before everyone else at the table, pushing a piece of honeyed pastry back and forth on her plate and hoping that Epion wouldn’t notice and offer to have the pages bring her something else. Alaria had always envied the head table for being served first, the few times she had been at court, but she now realized it meant you were also finished first, and that you couldn’t leave without everyone in the room noticing it and wondering where you were going.
So she waited, smiling at those who caught her eye, until Epion stood. She waited for a count of three before standing herself, which earned her a dazzling smile. By letting him rise first, she’d treated him, Alaria realized with a sinking stomach, as though he were the Tarkin.
Let it not be an omen, she thought.
Alaria had no difficulty with the two guards who were now with her. These again were new, but she thought they must have been briefed by their brethren. It seemed that after not even two days of watching and following, the guards assigned to her were already getting bored. Epion had granted his leave for her to go on a tour of the stables and yards, and apparently these two men saw no reason to accompany her into every barn and shed, since Delos Egoyin himself would be with her.
They began in the cow barns, and, as she had expected, the old stableman led her, talking volubly all the way, through to the back where this building, like the horse stables, shared a wall with the palace.
“Would you like to see the lofts?” he asked, with his hand on the ladder. “I’m afraid there’s only the ladder,” he added, “no staircase.”
“I wouldn’t expect one.” Delos stepped aside to allow Alaria to go up the ladder first. Having some experience with barns and stables, she had changed from the gown laid out for her in the morning into her Arderon riding clothes. Though she’d been told the hay harvest had not been a good one in Menoin that year, the loft was nevertheless piled as high as Alaria could reach.
“Is every barn as full as this one?” she asked. Considering how few were the animals in the Tarkin’s barns, perhaps some distribution could be made to the people.
“Ah, no, my lady, not exactly. It’s just that we found it easier to consolidate what we had, if you see what I mean. Easier to keep track of, easier to distribute.”
Barely hearing the man’s words, Alaria nodded, examining the wall in front of her. Was this where the secret passage came out in the stables? Would she be able to access that network and somehow free Falcos? She heard Delos move behind her and started to turn.
A hand clamped down on her mouth, and a knife appeared at her throat.
The three riders appeared out of nowhere and were upon him before Bekluth could change direction. He congratulated himself that his luck had held as usual, however, since he was the better part of a day’s ride away from his hiding place. He could tell right away that he’d been seen, and to change direction now would only make it obvious that he was trying to avoid them. So he stopped and waited for them, waving greetings, just as he normally would. That had been one of the first things his mother had taught him. Do the things that people expect whenever they’re looking, and they won’t notice anything else.
When they came close enough for Bekluth to recognize their Salt Desert hair braiding, he relaxed even further. The Salt Deserts were the most numerous of the Espadryni Tribes, and he traded more with them than with the other two. They were all inclined to like and trust him, of course, he’d seen to that, but the Salt Deserts liked and trusted him more.
“Greetings, trader.”
“I greet you. Fox-Bane, is it not?” Bekluth focused his most engaging smile on the leader of the small band. “How are those arrow heads I traded you last Harvest Moon?”
“I have lost one.” As Bekluth expected, however, the other man smiled back.
“Then we are very well met, very well met indeed.” Bekluth dismounted and, letting the reins of the horse fall to the ground, went to the pack on the smaller horse. In the end he’d had to use the remaining horse from the other side, the guard’s horse, much as he would have preferred not to. But neither of the other two horses was capable of carrying him, though they were not quite as bad as the one he’d had to dispose of. He’d taken the better of the two, with a lightened pack.
As he expected, Fox-Bane also dismounted and joined him.
“This horse is almost done,” the man said, passing his hand over the beast’s neck and feeling down its right foreleg. “What have you been doing, trader, running races?” The other two Horsemen laughed.
“Is it not well then?” Bekluth asked innocently. “I just got him from the Cold Lake People a few days ago.”
“It is not a Cold Lake mount,” one of the other men said, edging his own horse closer and pointing. “Look there at its mark. That’s a Long Trees horse.”
All three men looked at him. Bekluth affected disgust, shaking his head with his lips pressed together.
“Well,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “it appears I am not as canny a trader as I thought.” Just as he planned, the Horsemen laughed at him, and the tension disappeared.
“Perhaps I will trade you for new arrow heads, then,” Fox-Bane said, “since your skill is so bad at the moment—though I warn you, I have no half-dead horse to offer you.” They all laughed again, and Bekluth forced himself to join in.
“Fox-Bane, you forget we have a message,” one of the other men, still on his horse, said.
“I forget nothing.” Fox-Bane’s tone was sharp. “And you would do well not to forget who bested you the last time you spoke out of tur
n.”
For a moment it seemed the other man would challenge, but then he gave a slightly sardonic bow, and the moment passed. Just as well, Bekluth thought, these idiots were always fighting over nothing.
“There is a message for you, trader.” His authority established, Fox-Bane turned back to Bekluth. “You are being looked for, sir. There has been a cloud message asking that any who find you should accompany you to where the Long Trees People await you.”
Bekluth’s mind worked furiously. The Long Trees People. In all the years that he had been dealing with the Espadryni, he had never been sent for. This could be bad, very bad.
“Happily,” he said aloud. “Do you know why I am wanted?” Three of them, all armed, though none of them had anything in their hands at the moment. Bekluth closed his hand on one of the knives he had hidden in his trade pack. Could even he kill Fox-Bane fast enough to deal with the other two before they armed themselves, or, worse, rode off?
“The cloud message did not say,” Fox-Bane said. “Only that you were needed.” Bekluth released the blade and drew out his hand with the small pouch of steel arrow heads in it.
“Perhaps the Long Trees People have also been losing their good hunting points,” suggested the man who had spoken before.
“Just so long as they have no more poor horses to trade me,” Bekluth said, shaking his head with a rueful smile. “Come, I was just about to stop and have my meal in comfort. Will you not join me?”
“Only a man of fields and towns would need to sit on the ground to eat,” Fox-Bane said. But the other two were already dismounting.
“May I ask one of you to build a fire?” Bekluth said. “I have a new five-spice tea I would like you to try, and I take so long to make a good fire . . .” As he’d suspected, the opportunity to show off was hard to resist, and while the three Horsemen argued about the best kindling materials, Bekluth returned not to his trader’s pack but to the saddlebags on his horse. His hand brushed his special knives, but he passed them by after only a moment’s hesitation. Undoubtedly at least one of these men needed opening—there were very few people without enough darkness inside them that some needed to be let out. But he had no time. He could not take the chance that this summons meant him ill.
When the five-spice powder had had its effect, Bekluth transferred his pack to Fox-Bane’s horse and rode away. He must get to the Door of the Sun, he thought. He regretted leaving Dhulyn Wolfshead. Regretted it more than he could say. But it was time for the trader Bekluth Allain to disappear.
“Perhaps he is not Marked after all.”
“Don’t be silly, Tel, he’d know whether he was Marked or not. Wouldn’t he?” Josh-Chevrie was scratching at the healed arrow wound in his forearm. Parno caught the young man’s eye, tapped his own forearm and shook his head. Josh shrugged and grinned, but he stopped scratching.
Though Parno had overheard the exchange, the two Tribesmen had been speaking quietly enough that they had not disturbed the group gathered around Gundaron. Dhulyn, Mar, and Gun sat cross-legged on the ground, with the Watcher brothers seated just outside their small circle. Gun was shaking his head, rubbing at his eyes, and Mar put her hand on his arm. Parno moved closer and squatted beside Dhulyn.
“I can Find, I tell you, my Mark’s back, I just can’t Find him.”
“Where’s my second-best bowstring?” Dhulyn asked.
“That won’t work,” Mar pointed out. “We’ve both seen you pack often enough that I could probably tell you where it is.”
“Where is the mate to this?” Moon Watcher took a silver ring banded with thin gold wire from his left ear and handed it to Gun. The Finder closed his hand on the earring, closed his eyes tight, and pressed his lips together.
“Your son is wearing it,” Gun said without opening his eyes.
Dhulyn looked at Moon Watcher with raised eyebrows. The man nodded, his eyes fixed on Gun’s hand. When the boy offered him back his earring, he hesitated before taking it.
The Cold Lake Tribesmen, who had gathered near to listen to the exchange, flicked glances at each other, and two of them moved casually farther away, as if they were afraid Gun would Find something in them without being asked. Parno would have laughed if the matter at hand were not so serious.
And if it wouldn’t have led to a time-wasting challenge to satisfy someone’s honor.
“That’s easy,” Gun was saying. “Even a untrained Finder can find the mate to a pair of objects if he’s got one in his hand. I’m trying to Find a person I don’t know, someone I met just once.”
“But it was not so long ago,” Dhulyn pointed out in her mildest tone.
“I know, but I was sick then, and now I just can’t seem to concentrate.”
Mar scrubbed at her face with her hands. “It’s the bowl,” she said. “If we had the bowl here Gun could do it.”
“It’s not your fault, Mar,” Gun started to say when Dhulyn raised her hand.
“Wait. The little Dove is nevertheless thinking in the right direction—I intend no pun. Before you had the use of Mar’s scrying bowl, did you not use books as tools to concentrate your mind?”
Gun turned to Dhulyn, reaching out his hand. “You’ve got a book with you?” But at the look on her face Gun let his hand fall to his lap.
“I’m afraid I don’t. But you have writing tools, do you not? And paper of some kind?”
Mar put her hand on her belt pouch but froze with the flap halfway open. “Gun, where is the other folding knife?”
Grinning, Gun shut his eyes once more. “In a leather satchel, in a . . .” he paused, and reached out with his hand as if to grab something that Parno could not see. “In some ruins, four or five hundred spans south, southwest of here.”
Moon Watcher was nodding. “It is an evil place, and brings bad luck,” he said. “There are areas of the plains that are hard and shiny like a glazed cup. If there are ruins there, we have never seen them. None of the Espadryni go there.”
“Which makes it the perfect place for the trader to hide.” Now it was Dhulyn who began to get up, and Dhulyn who was stopped, halfway to her feet, by Gun’s raised hand.
“He’s not there, though. The folding knife is, but not Bekluth Allain.”
Dhulyn blew out a breath and sat back down. “Then show me your blank pages,” she said to Mar. The little Dove quickly sorted out half a dozen pieces of parchment and a dozen more of paper, in various sizes. Dhulyn shuffled through them and picked out one piece of paper, handing the others back and accepting the thin leather-covered board that served as a portable writing surface.
“Parno, will you be my desk?”
First giving her his best bow, Parno knelt in front of Dhulyn, positioning himself so that she could use his back as a table. Mar handed Dhulyn a pen and knelt to one side, near Parno’s head, with the ink pot.
“Careful with that,” he warned her. “My badge needs no modification.”
The girl smiled back, but it was the thinnest smile Parno had ever seen from her.
“Now,” said Dhulyn, dipping the end of the pen neatly into the ink. “Start reciting your book.”
“My book?”
“The book you have memorized, my Dove—you have a book memorized, don’t you?”
“Air and Fire,” she said, nodding. “In a small Holding,” Mar paused to allow Dhulyn to write.
“No, my little Dove, just recite,” Dhulyn said. “Regular reading speed.”
Out of the corner of his eye Parno saw Mar’s face clear as she nodded and began again. “In a small Holding to the north, whose name I do not recall . . .” The girl’s frown faded as she continued, her lips even taking on the slight curve of a smile. Parno could just feel the motions of Dhulyn writing, conveyed through the pressure and minute shiftings of the board on his back.
“That should be enough,” Dhulyn said, leaning away far enough that Parno could stand up.
“Here.” Dhulyn handed the sheet of paper to Gun. “Do you need anyone to hold it for you
? Act as a desk?”
Gun’s face cleared as he saw what Dhulyn had handed him. “I couldn’t understand what you were doing,” he said. “This should work.” He sat once more cross-legged, laying the paper down flat in front of him. He began reading, his eyes flicking back and forth across the page.
“What did you do?” Parno asked. He shifted to one side, trying to get a look at the paper without disturbing Gun.
“I wrote down Mar’s recitation in the Scholar’s code, the short form of writing that all Scholars are taught. Mar forgot that I know it also.”
Parno felt a smile cross his face as he nodded. Dhulyn had spent a year in a Scholars’ Library while she was deciding that it was to the Mercenary Brothers that she really belonged.
“That one sheet of paper is at least four regular pages,” Dhulyn explained. “It should be enough to allow Gun to concentrate—shhh.”
“Shush yourself,” Parno said, under his breath. Gun had looked up from his reading.
“I know where he is.”
Twenty-three
“IF YOU SCREAM, I’ll cut your throat, and you’ll be dead before your guard can get here. Do you understand?” It was just a whisper, from a voice Alaria could not recognize.
The whisperer’s right hand held her mouth closed and pulled her head up and to the right, exposing her throat to the cold metal. Slowly, Alaria reached up and patted the whisperer’s right forearm. She was afraid to nod, afraid to move her head at all. Anyone who had been trained with the sword knew that a blade pressed to the skin won’t cut, but a blade drawn across skin . . .
“Gently, Dav. Julen says the lady’s with the Tarkin, she’s on our side.”
The hand holding her mouth relaxed, but the left hand, the blade hand, stayed where it was. “Let her explain then, why she’s out here, and our Tarkin’s in the north tower.”
Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno Page 41