“I accept that,” Ritsu said. “I hope you do find her, then.”
Deinol shook his head in exasperation. “Now we share our motivations with him? Perhaps you and I are losing our grip on things, Seth.”
* * *
Deinol slept easily enough that night, but Seth couldn’t blame him—he’d been shouldering most of the watch in the evenings past. It suited him just fine, anyway; he’d been wanting to talk to Ritsu.
Their companion was hunched up under a tree, his arms wrapped around his knees. He was staring off into the depths of the forest, but Seth didn’t think he was looking at anything in particular. “Are you really sure you want to stay with us?” he asked.
Ritsu nodded. “It’s for the best.”
Well, that didn’t really explain anything. “Why is it best?”
Ritsu turned to look at him. “I feel as if … I’ve been able to think more clearly about things lately. I think it helps to have someone to talk them over with—like when I used to talk to Sebastian.” His smile was melancholy. “Not my father, though—it was never easy to talk to my father.”
Seth sat down next to him. “What was Sebastian like? If he looked like me, he can’t have been Aurnian, right?”
“He wasn’t,” Ritsu agreed. “He had been born in Lanvaldis, but he lived in Reglay until he was ten. Then he came to Kaiferi with his father, and they settled down there. I could walk to his house from mine in less than a quarter of an hour.” He pressed the pad of his thumb against his mouth. “Sebastian was—well, he acted more like your friend than like you, to be honest. He always wanted to be friends with everyone, but he could be proud. And they mocked him sometimes, because he was a foreigner and because they knew he shared a name with a villain in your people’s history.”
Seth nodded. “Sebastian Valens.”
“Yes, that’s the one. The reason there aren’t knights anymore.” He smiled. “The Sebastian I knew could never forgive his namesake for that. But we’ve never had knights, only shinrian, so he thought maybe he could be that instead. And that was all my father ever wanted for me to be, so we tried to help each other, to hone our skills together.” His shoulders drooped. “But Sebastian had already learned to fight with a longsword back in Reglay, and you have to wield a tsunshin to become a shinrian. He got his father to buy him one, and he was always practicing with it, but…” He sighed. “I used to think to myself that he would never be good enough to become a shinrian, but I never told him that. I knew that would hurt him more than anything else I could say.”
Seth picked at the grass. “And did he ever become one?”
Ritsu slumped forward. “No. He never did.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “And now Aurnis itself is gone. I don’t think it means anything to be a shinrian anymore.”
“Did you ever become one?” Seth asked.
Ritsu looked at him as if the question were strange. “No, I … I never even had a match. I was probably better than he was—I won more bouts against him than I lost—but I don’t know that I was ever good enough to become a shinrian either.”
“Oh,” Seth said. “I thought the people from that village were impressed with your skills—I’m fairly certain they said something about it when we first met you.” It was true he’d never seen Ritsu fight, though, and doubtless none of the villagers had either—all they’d had to go on was the body of the man Ritsu had killed.
Ritsu himself seemed troubled by Seth’s words, and he hesitated before he answered. “I suppose … I suppose my skills have improved, since the days when I sparred with Sebastian. They must have.”
They must have? What did that mean? “What happened to Sebastian?” he asked Ritsu. “Where is he now?”
If he had thought Ritsu seemed distressed before, it was nothing to how he looked now. He crumpled in on himself, dropping his chin to rest on his knees. “I don’t want to think about that,” he said, as close to stern as Seth had ever heard him.
Deinol would have asked, Why not? But Ritsu’s tone had brooked no argument. “All right,” Seth said. “Sorry.” When Ritsu didn’t say anything more, he added, “But if you don’t want to be by yourself, then … after we find Seren, let’s look for whatever it is you want. Whether it’s Sebastian, or this swordsman who defeated you, or anything. You won’t ever sort things out if you don’t try, will you?”
Ritsu sat up straighter, tilting his head to one side. “Is that … all right?”
Seth sighed. “Well, it’s all right with me, but I don’t know what Deinol will say. If you help us with Seren, though, how can he say no? It’s not as if we know what we’re doing so very much more than you do.”
It was dark, but he could still see Ritsu’s smile clearly. He looked shyly hopeful, like a child reaching out to take a proffered gift. “That’s … good,” he said. “I think … I would like that.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Stonespire Hall had been quiet all day—it was the seventh day, when the throne rested from its judgments, and for the marquise that meant retreating to her study with a tome or several, as it always did. But Gravis had been restless all morning, as if some task he’d left undone were niggling at the back of his mind, waiting to be remembered. Such moods were not entirely uncommon for him, but when it hadn’t abated as noon approached, he gave up and went to look for Dent. They disagreed about more than a few matters, but Denton Halley, though a few years younger, had been a guard at Stonespire Hall even longer than Gravis had, and a steadfast friend through much of that time. There was no one living he trusted more, and he knew that Dent would take him seriously, no matter how nebulous his concerns.
It was odd not to find Dent waiting for him in the corridor behind the kitchens—they’d passed the time between their patrols there since they were young men together—and nearly as strange to find Almasy there instead, slicing up a blood apple with her favorite knife. She was standing, leaning against the wall—Gravis had long since learned that she preferred not to show her back to anyone if she could help it—and the knife moved so smoothly it hardly made a sound, biting into the apple as if sliding through water.
She annoyed him especially today, for reasons he could only half explain. “Don’t you have some errand or other to get to?”
She barely looked up. “If I did, Gravis, I would be doing it, not idling here. But you know that.”
He watched her slice off a few more pieces, chewing and swallowing each one before she made the next cut. She brought the knife perilously close to her lips every time she took a bite, but Gravis didn’t doubt she could have done it with her eyes closed. He gritted his teeth. “Did you displace Dent?”
That surprised her. “Dent? I haven’t seen him.”
“It’s his custom to wait for me here.”
She shrugged. “Well, I didn’t send him away. There’s nothing stopping you from finding him, if you can’t wait that long to share gossip.”
“Some of us do prefer to rely on our friends, aye.” He scowled. “I don’t suppose you’d know about that, would you?”
Almasy took the question calmly. “No, I don’t suppose I would. I don’t think I’ve ever had a friend.” If there was any regret in her words, Gravis couldn’t find it.
“You have a creditor, though, I suppose,” he said. “You never told me that before.”
“That’s right,” Almasy said, and he thought she stabbed the apple with a bit more force. “I never told you, because I am not required to tell you whatever you may wish to know, simply because you ask it.”
That reminded him of King Kelken’s retainer, how he had scorned Elgar’s questions back in the yard at Mist’s Edge. But Almasy had answered him docilely enough, because Lady Margraine had told her to. For all her professed love of freedom, she always did whatever Lady Margraine told her to.
He shook his head. “You make no sense.”
“I do not care whether you understand me, Gravis.”
Dammit, he would make her concede something—“You’re a
hypocrite.”
She did savage the apple with that cut; there was no doubt of it. “No more than you are.”
“Than I am?”
“That’s what I said.” She looked up, then, pausing in her task to give him her full attention. “I’ve seen more men like you than I can count—as self-satisfied as you are blind, forever puffed up with the certainty that you are so very righteous. Your justice, as you call it, is as arbitrary as a lightning strike, but no one will ever make you see that. You will wallow in ignorance until you die, all the while thinking yourself the most enlightened of men.”
Gravis was not even precisely angry at that, not yet. What had he said to bring all that out of her? “I was not speaking to you of justice.”
“No, not at this moment. At this moment you were speaking of hypocrisy—but only of mine. When it comes to your own, you do not wish to hear of it. On the other hand, if we were to talk of the ways I am unjust, I am sure I would find you quite enthusiastic.”
Gravis hesitated. “I cannot claim to know your private opinions on the matter,” he said, “but as long as you follow Lady Margraine the way you have, agreeing to her every command … She cares nothing for justice, she admits that herself. How can you be her creature and be just?”
She smiled at that, that ever-sardonic smile. “I can’t, of course. I never said I was. No one is truly just, Gravis—the very idea is only an illusion.”
“That is a lie.” The words came out more forcefully than he’d intended, but he had not spoken amiss. “Lord Caius cared for justice, if ever a monarch did—if ever a man did. I served him for more than twenty-five years—I know that to be true.”
“Caius Margraine,” Almasy spat, “was even more blind than you, and twice as self-righteous. I have seen more of the world than you ever will, and everywhere it is the same. The laws of men exist to protect the innocent—but what is an innocent? Peaceful subjects are innocent, until they protest. Children are innocent, but not if they steal.” She shook her head. “It is a game, nothing more. Today your ruler grants you his protection, and tomorrow it is taken away because you dared to suffer, to starve, to ask too many questions. I have never, never seen anything that I would call justice.”
His tongue felt clumsy in his mouth, but he could not let her go unanswered. “So if justice doesn’t exist, you might as well serve someone who never tried to find it in the first place?”
“She makes it easy enough,” Almasy said. “She does not fill my ears with hypocrisies or excuses. She tells me what were best done, and makes no apology for the nature of it.” She glanced down at her knife. “And a weapon must be used, or it will rust. I would rather be of use here than anywhere else.”
“You can’t tell me that’s all,” Gravis insisted. “You can’t. You get something out of this; I just have to find it. Just because you have no contract and no gold, that means nothing. You hide your own self-interest behind that mask of nonchalance, as if everything that happens is just the same to you, but I know better. She has some hold over you that you cannot break.” He clenched his fist. “Do you have some score of your own to settle, some vengeance you cannot take without her help? Does she protect you from the consequences of some crime you committed wherever you came from? What is it, Almasy? Is it just her cunt?”
Almasy must have dropped the apple, but she moved so quickly that he did not even see it. Though her strength could not equal his, she slammed into him with such force that he staggered backward, hitting the opposite wall hard enough to wind him. He had wondered, many times, if it was possible to make Almasy not just irritated but truly angry. He need never ask that question again.
Her knife was pointed right at the center of his left eye, the hand that held it trembling. Gravis did not dare try to push her away; the slightest wrong movement could have her slitting his eye open far more easily than any apple. “You have just made two significant mistakes,” Almasy said, sounding almost as breathless as he felt. “You have suggested, in my hearing, both that your mistress is a whore, and that I require one.” Her fingers tightened against the knife’s hilt. “I will not allow you to make either mistake again.”
Gravis’s only comfort was that the blade was pointed at his eye, and not at his throat. It was not, he admitted, so very reassuring. “You won’t do me any harm,” he said, and tried to believe it. “You know her ladyship prefers me alive.”
“If she were here,” Almasy said, “she would no doubt order me to stop. And I would, of course, obey.” She paused. “She is not here.”
“And when she finds out?”
Almasy was too angry to shrug with her usual nonchalance; her shoulder jerked stiffly, as if the muscle had convulsed. “Which of us do you think is easier replaced, Gravis, me or you?”
Before he could reply or she could continue, someone cleared his throat to Gravis’s right, and he and Almasy both twitched, trying to look at the interloper without fully taking their eyes off each other. It was Kern, trying unsuccessfully to cloak his obvious alarm in a suitable amount of deference. “Ah—I don’t mean to—ah—interrupt—but—you see—there’s been a—”
Almasy finally relented, stepping back and letting her arm drop. Gravis stepped away from the wall, resisting the urge to rub his shoulder. Not in front of Kern.
The young man kept hovering uncertainly at his elbow, and Gravis turned to him, trying to keep any lingering irritation out of his voice. “What is it, Kern? There’s no need to stand on ceremony.”
“Ah, no, Captain, it’s not that. It’s—” He looked at Almasy, and Gravis suddenly understood his hesitation—she was the one he had to speak with. “Um, Almasy, you see … there’s this.” He handed her a folded parchment. “A messenger brought it to Stonespire, so I had it sent to her ladyship, but she just said to give it to you and have you take care of it. So…”
In the time it had taken him to stammer out those sentences, Almasy had already read the parchment once. She looked over it again while he lapsed into silence, and finally refolded it and nodded. “Very well. If she asks, you may tell her ladyship I have gone to see to it.” She bent down to pick something up—the remains of her apple, Gravis realized. Then she turned on her heel without so much as a backward glance, and certainly without a sign that she viewed their conversation as in any way unfinished.
Kern swallowed, then spoke up. “Ah, good—good luck with the hunt,” he called. Almasy gave no indication that she had heard.
“The hunt?” Gravis asked Kern, half distracted.
Kern shrugged. “What else is she ever called upon to do?”
“Then you don’t know where she’s going?”
“Ah, it’s not for me to read her ladyship’s letters, Captain.…”
“Is the messenger still here?”
“I’m afraid not.” He hesitated. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine,” Gravis lied. “I’ve one more question for you—have you seen Dent anywhere?”
“Guardsman Halley?” Kern frowned. “I’ve seen him, but…”
“Well?”
“He did not … look as if he wished to be disturbed. I think he was, well, put out about something. It stood out to me because—”
“Because Dent’s never put out about something,” Gravis finished. “I know.”
It was impossible to lay hands on what precisely was not right, because everything was not right—everyone was acting strange. Almasy, who seemed made out of stone most days, had flown into a rage; Dent, the most cheerful man he’d ever known, was nursing some grudge; Kern, as far as he could tell, had done his best to treat Almasy with actual friendliness.… Even Lady Margraine, he realized, was acting oddly. She usually gave Almasy orders directly—what was so important up there in her study that she couldn’t leave it for a handful of minutes?
Separately or together, these oddities portended ill; all his instincts were telling him that much. But how would the misfortune happen, and from where?
* * *
They found the Inn of the Russet Hound easily enough, though the young woman who pointed it out to them giggled as she did so—which, as Deinol said, did not inspire the greatest confidence as to what sort of place it was. The innkeeper giggled too, until they asked after Horace Greenfield. Then she pouted instead.
“Oh dear,” she said, tilting her head so her curls dangled. “I’m afraid you’ve just missed them. Horace and the boys were here a couple of hours ago, but they’ve since cleared off. I’m as surprised as you must be—day before last he told me he’d be staying out the week.”
Deinol frowned. “I see,” he said. “Do you know where they went?”
She looked perplexed. “Why—home, I’m sure.”
“Home?”
“Aye, you didn’t think they all lived here, did you? Aren’t you one of the boys?”
“We’re … new acquaintances,” Deinol said. “We don’t know Horace, but we met a friend of his along the way who assured us we could, ah, join in.”
It must have been the right thing to say, because her smile returned. “Always room for more, eh? Well, you’ll not find a merrier band of revelers this side of Stonespire, I’ll tell you that much. If their wives only knew what they got up to … but it’s part of my job not to tell ’em, of course.”
“Of course,” Deinol agreed, smiling hesitantly. “But I’m no one’s wife, so…”
She laughed. “You agreed to come on a revel without knowing the nature of it? You must be an easygoing sort indeed. It’s only that there’s no fun to be had in those tidy little towns in the shadow of Stonespire. It can be hard on some men, that’s all. So every now and then they gather up here, where we’re not quite so straitlaced, and they can do as they please.”
“Well, I’m certainly used to doing as I please,” Deinol said, “so I’m sorry I missed them. Will they not be back for some time?”
She nodded. “That’s usually the way of it. They come all together, and when they leave, they all scatter back to their own little villages.”
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