One last memory came across the link. Three men, one carrying a sentinel pup away—my sister, Modrie—as I crawled into the brush to hide my fear and mourning, waiting to die.
I fell back, breaking contact with the sentinel pup, and the texture of a thousand different smells faded from my awareness. I looked at Bolt in disbelief. “What has the Vigil done?”
Chapter 24
Bolt glanced at Rory before giving me a slight shake of his head. “We don’t have time.”
“Take time,” I snapped, biting off my words as I jerked my glove back onto my hand. “Here. Now. Explain to me why delving this oversized dog is so much like delving a man.”
Rory, who had no religious training or context to understand all the implications, stared at me in disbelief.
I waved a hand at the sentinel pup, who had managed to shift just enough in Rory’s lap to watch me with almost human comprehension. Could it understand speech? I didn’t know. Nothing in its head suggested it, but those humanlike memories started from the moment its mother placed her paw on its head. Aer have mercy, a sentinel had invoked the rite of blessing.
“As the king’s reeve, I’m supposed to haul you and the rest of the Vigil before the magistrate. Aer help the Vigil—if they’ve gifted these animals, they should be executed.”
“No one gifted them,” Bolt and Volsk said at the same time.
“Don’t give me that,” I snapped. Spinning on one heel, I walked among the dead, checking the adults and pups to confirm my intuition. I hadn’t noticed before, but every adult and most of the pups bore the same mark. “Look,” I pointed. “Every sentinel has the imprint of a paw on its head.” I found a pup that didn’t. “Except this one. What happens when a sentinel’s gift goes free? Curse you, I killed a man for a crime like this. According to the church, putting a gift into an animal is an abomination. We’re supposed to kill it, not find a healer for it.”
I walked back over to Rory and the pup, knelt down to survey the wound again. It seeped blood and didn’t look any less horrific no matter how often I checked it. “It’s going to die anyway.”
“Not if you tell him to stay still,” Bolt said.
“Do you think it’s going to listen to me?”
He sighed. “That’s not what I meant. Use your gift to put a picture of riding still in his mind.”
“I can do that?”
He nodded. “How do you think the dwimor were made?”
I didn’t want to think about how far I could push the power of domere. “How did they get the gift?” Despite my protests, it hurt to see the shape the pup was in. There was always something about animals in pain, the powerlessness to understand their suffering and the immediacy of it that wrung my heart. In my days as Laidir’s reeve, if I suspected someone of serious crimes, the kind I didn’t tell Gael about, I watched them with their animals, looking for casual cruelty.
“The originals were ennobled,” Volsk said. I turned to face him but he seemed disinclined to add anything more. Bolt didn’t bother to contradict him.
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “Ennobled? The hand of Aer’s son, Iosa, touched them and made them sentient?”
Even to my ears, my laughter sounded harsh, abrasive, but it flowed around and away from Bolt, like water diverting around a boulder in a stream. “I’m not saying Iosa was the one who ennobled them, but why do you think we call them sentinels?” he asked.
“Myths and legends,” I said. “Ooh, there’s the Everwood.” I pointed to the forest stretching away to the northwest. “As long as we’re at it, why don’t we go find one of the Fayit and get him to tell us where his gold is?”
Something warm and wet glided along my hand. I looked down to see the sentinel pup, its eyes filled with intelligence, looking back at me, and the strange draw I’d felt in the presence of its dead parents made sense.
“Actually,” Volsk said, “according to legend it was the first man, Cuman, who held the power to ennoble beasts, in the act of granting them their name. When men first came across the strait to settle the northern continent, the Vigil brought the sentinels with them.”
Custos nodded, as if confirming his explanation.
“What did you see when you delved it?” Bolt asked.
I shrugged. Somehow my hand had ended up on the sentinel’s head, stroking it, and the longing to use my gift rose in me again. “A world defined by scents and three men leaving the clearing. One of them had the other surviving pup in his arms.”
“Did you see their faces?”
“No,” I sighed. “I assume one of them was the dwimor we encountered last night, but the others could have been anyone. The question is, how do we find them?”
“Easy,” Rory said. “Wag can track him.”
“Wag?”
Rory smiled. “He needs a name, and I like the way his tail moves even when the rest of him is really still.”
“‘A righteous man is kind to his animals,’” Bolt said.
I grunted. “A quote from the liturgy? You’re branching out.”
Bolt cocked his head to one side. “I’ve always considered myself an ecumenical sort of fellow.”
I took off my glove. “All right, if we’re going to do this, let’s be about it. Rory, give him to me. I need to figure out how to get an idea into Wag’s head about what needs to happen—otherwise he’s not going to make it to Gylden, intelligent or not.”
Rory bent to murmur into the sentinel pup’s ear. “Go to Willet, Wag. He’s your master and he needs to talk to you.”
I didn’t know if it was Rory’s shift in weight or if the dog really understood him, but Wag rose, shaking, to his feet and stood before me.
“Rory, Volsk,” Bolt called. “Help me bring the bodies into the barn.”
I took off my glove and held my hand above Wag’s head, unsure of just what I intended. I needed to plant an image in his head, a picture of Wag riding on horseback, calm and unmoving, but when I placed my hand on the wiry fur a tidal wave of impression overwhelmed me.
Master! Master! Master!
I pulled my hand away. Wag’s tongue lolled out of his mouth in what must have been the equivalent of a dog smile. “Great,” I muttered. “How am I supposed to get you to understand me if I can’t get you to be quiet?”
Wag pulled his tongue in and dropped his head, looking up at me from beneath his brows. “All right, you understood that, which is a little scary.”
I put my hand back on his head and focused on a picture of Wag riding still and quiet on horseback, repeating the image over and again. Then I took my hand away for a moment and put it back to see if the image remained. It hadn’t. Wag looked up at me, tail thumping despite the wound in his side. “I can’t get this silly dog to remember anything.”
Bolt stopped and looked at me in the midst of carrying one of the dead pups into the barn. For a moment I suspected him of mirroring Wag’s amusement. “You’ve never had children, Willet. It’s a puppy. Its attention span is going to last just until the next distraction. It was the same with Robin when he was a child.”
I shook my head. “The way you talk about him, I thought Robin sprang into being like some mythical god come to life.” As soon as the words left my mouth I gasped, trying to pull them back in. The recent death of Bolt’s son would surely still be an emotional wound no less grievous than Wag’s, and I’d just jabbed a thumb into it with my unthinking jest.
Bolt stared at me for a moment in shock, and then he laughed—not the cynical chuckle that he usually assayed when someone around him had decided to be spectacularly stupid, but an honest laugh. His eyes, however, showed the ripping grief the loss of his son carried, and tears wet his face. He made no move to hide them or wipe them away but just continued to laugh and cry at the same time, until his mirth and pain ran their course. By the time he called my name, I’d long since dropped my gaze out of embarrassment.
“Willet, thank you,” he said. “Robin was a child and a boy and a man like any other, with virt
ues and faults. I do him a disservice if I present him as something other than what he was. Lying in the name of the dead is a foolish custom. Truth be told, from the time he could totter around on his chubby little legs, Robin could be incredibly stubborn, even to his own detriment.” He nodded to the dog in my lap. “Be patient and persistent.”
I put my hand back on the pup, grateful for a chance to move on from the subject of Bolt’s dead son. I concentrated on implanting the idea of riding quietly in Wag’s head until half an hour later it remained.
Bolt stood in front of the barn holding a flaming torch, flanked by Volsk, Custos, and Rory. The urchin’s expression filled with speculation before his gaze flicked over the barn and away, and back again, both drawn and desperate to be elsewhere.
Bolt cocked his arm to throw.
“Stop,” I said.
“We’re kind of in a hurry here.”
Rory had finally settled on a single point of focus, a spot of the Everwood, waiting. “It won’t take that long to teach Rory the antidon. Aer knows he’ll probably need it again.”
Rory turned to me his brows arched in disbelief. “It’s not enough that you’re turning me into a growler, you want to make me wear a robe, yah?”
I nodded. “If you’re going to be part of this, you’ll have to be both.” I pointed to Bolt. “He’s a guard, but he works for the church, so, yes, he’s a growler in a robe, if you want to put it that way. But this is about respect. Even in the urchins, you honored your dead.”
Rory took a moment, but he nodded all the same. He still didn’t look thrilled about reciting part of the liturgy, but he didn’t try to assault me with his fake accent either.
I nodded to Bolt, who threw the torch onto the hay and wood piled around the bodies of the men and sentinels. “Repeat as much of this as you can. We’ll work on this, and the rest of it as well.”
“Forasmuch as it pleases Aer to receive the souls of the departed we therefore commit their ashes to the earth, time without end, knowing . . .”
Surprisingly, Rory hung in and recited the entire thing, watching while the flames licked their way across the wood piled within and then jumped to the boards of the barn itself, the ends blackening before puffs of fire burst forth from the smoke.
“Wag will have to ride with you,” Bolt said to me as we finished. We’d put food and water into Wag until he seemed satisfied and packed the rest onto my horse.
Rory’s hand found the dog’s head, and Wag leaned into it weakly as he scratched behind his ears. “Why can’t he ride with me?”
Bolt shook his head. “You’re a Vigil guard. You have a job to do.”
Rory shrugged. “You keep telling me I’m just an apprentice. ‘Try not to cut yourself with your sword, boy.’ You say it all the time.”
“And I’m right,” Bolt said, “but you’re the only one of us who can see a dwimor clearly.”
“Oh,” Rory said, “I forgot.”
“You can’t afford to forget, not ever,” Bolt said. “Don’t let the last few days give you the wrong impression. We’re called the Vigil because we keep watch. Very little of our lives are spent fighting. ‘Soldiering is nine parts boredom and one part terror,’” he quoted.
“That’s the truth of it,” I added. “Even during wartime.”
Rory’s mouth pulled to one side. “I can’t believe I signed up for this.”
“You were tricked,” Bolt said. “I told you about the interesting parts first and never got around to mentioning the rest.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps I forgot. I’m getting old, and my memory isn’t what it used to be.”
I pointed to Volsk. “What about him?”
Bolt shook his head.
“His part in this is done,” I said.
“You want to set him loose?” Bolt asked. “Do you not remember what happened the last time he was left to his own devices? We almost got killed.”
I looked around the clearing and at the forest. “I don’t see any threats here.”
“I’d still rather have him where I can keep an eye on him.”
Volsk nodded. “I would rather stay in your company.”
Bolt didn’t look pleased to have the former Vigil apprentice agree with him.
“If I am found alone,” Volsk said, “I will certainly be thrown back in prison.”
“That’s inevitable,” Bolt growled, “and well-deserved.”
Volsk shrugged. “All the more reason to delay it as long as possible.”
“I have an alternative that might keep you out of prison, at least for a while,” I said. “Do you have pen and parchment?”
He nodded.
“Perfect. I’m going to draft a letter to the orders that might just keep you free.” He cocked his head at me. “You’re going to take Custos to Aille. Show him the Vigil library.” I glanced at my librarian friend, and his eyes widened with apparent joy.
Volsk nodded, his dark eyes filled with suspicion. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you offering me my freedom?”
“Because Custos can’t get there on his own, and no one else is available. But understand this. . . . ” I leaned forward to point at his chest. “I’m making his safety your responsibility. If anything happens to him, you’ll wish one of the sentinels had gotten hold of you instead of me.”
It sounded good, but I could tell my threat didn’t really impress him. Bolt must have seen it to. He stepped up to Volsk until their noses were less than a hand apart. “I like the librarian. I consider him to be a friend.” Then he turned away.
I wrote my letter, addressed it to the order heads—including the kings and queens, for good measure—and explained Custos, the task Lady Bronwyn had laid upon him, and the necessity of Volsk’s protection.
After a solemn good-bye and my promises that we would see him soon, Custos mounted and turned his horse to leave. Volsk reined his horse next to me, without a word took the letter, and rode away, never looking back.
“He might just abandon Custos and disappear, you know,” Bolt said.
“I don’t think so. It’s more likely he’ll work himself to death trying to earn his redemption. I just hope he doesn’t take Custos or anybody else down with him.”
I mounted Dest and Bolt handed Wag to me. I settled him in front and he straddled my horse, his legs hanging down each side. The wound in his side still bled, staining the cloth we’d wrapped around it. It was a simple proposition, really—could we get him to a healer before he died of blood loss?
The trees that loomed over us as we entered the Everwood had nothing in common with the twisted oak and ash trees that comprised the Darkwater, the verdant green of these leaves as different from the forbidden forest’s oily black as day was from night. That knowledge did nothing to suppress the chill that crept over me as we passed from sun to shadow.
“Are you all right?” Bolt asked me.
“I’m not a fan of forests. Bad things happen to me in them.”
Rory laughed. “Bad things happen to you everywhere, Willet, yah?”
I nodded. “I thought war had taught me just how bad things could get. That was before I spent a night in the Darkwater.”
“Well, there’s nothing in the Everwood,” Bolt said, “except an abandoned village about halfway to Gylden.” We left the burning farmstead behind us and rode deeper into the gloom.
Chapter 25
After a day and a half of riding through the forest along game tracks up and down the folds of the rolling hills, we came to the deserted village of Idel. Wag rode in front of me, and though he remained quiet and slept most of the time, he still took food and water.
But I worried. I regularly found myself bending over the pup to sniff the air above the boiled linen we’d used to bandage his wound, waiting for the sickly-sweet smell that meant the injury had fouled. I tried not to think of how Rory would react or the look in Wag’s eyes when we put him to the sword.
Bolt slowed, eyeing a wall of ivy before he di
smounted to wade through thigh-high grass to chop at the vines with his sword. The verdant green fell away to reveal gray stones and crumbling mortar of an abandoned building.
“This is it,” he said. “We can stop here for the night. Gylden is almost a full day’s ride west, but that’s just as well.” He gave me a brief nod. “Duke Orlan’s holding is probably not the best place to be seen during the day, for several reasons.”
The only saving grace was that I was quite sure the Duke was still in Bunard with the rest of the noble court.
He sighed, and on any other person I would have said his gaze grew wistful. “I didn’t think the forest would take it back so quickly.”
“What happened?” Rory asked.
Bolt’s mouth pulled to one side. “Nothing unusual. It was a prospecting town, and after the river panned out, most of the people left. The few who remained tried farming, but it’s too far north and the soil was too rocky. Throw in conscription for one of the wars with Owmead and a fever and, there you have it, the perfect mix of circumstances to kill a village.” He cast a glance overhead. “No rain tonight, but I’d still rather have a roof, such as it is, over my head.” He pointed to a broad expanse of high grass. “There’s a church at the end of the lane.”
The sanctuary stood open to the sky, but one of the small outbuildings still held its covering, the roof somehow still in place despite the ravages of time, inattention, and weather
As we set up camp, a strange abstraction came over me, a division within my mind that spoke of equal parts fear and wonder. It had been ten years since I’d let nightfall come upon me in any woods. Since that fateful time in the Darkwater, I’d avoided forests and even gave the wooded gardens within the city a wide berth after sunset.
Long, nearly horizontal shadows interrupted by beams of yellow made it plain I would have to swallow my fear and endure a night in the Everwood. I held out my hands, surprised that they didn’t tremble. At the same time, something about the village whispered to me, speaking some sense of peace in its abandonment, as though the people who’d built it had served their purpose and were rightfully gone.
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