by Bell, Hilari
“Children,” said Michael mildly, “you don’t have to fight. Or at least, not yet. Rupert is following Mistress Meg. Even if he hasn’t caught up with her — rescued her, mayhap — by the time we reach him, ’tis the same trail. Let’s go after them both, and make up our minds what to do once we’ve found them.”
This seemed to be Michael’s day for being right. My anger was already fading, and Kathy cast me a contrite look.
“By the time we reach them, we might even have enough information to make a sensible decision,” Michael went on. “Kathy’s right that if Mistress Merkle is in danger, we must protect her. But Fisk is also right about needing that money for you to get married.”
“Not really,” my beloved said, and my heart skipped a beat before she went on. “All I need to marry Fisk is a willing noble or judicar and ‘consent of my blood-kin.’ I know that’s supposed to be Father, but for legal purposes, Michael’s consent would do.”
Michael, no doubt thinking of his father’s reaction to that scenario, cringed visibly. And the reason I knew what he was thinking was because I cringed too. Though I hope I hid it better. Or he may have cringed because, being unredeemed, he probably couldn’t give legal consent, even for a marriage.
If I could get my hands on the reward, we’d never need to raise that hurtful question.
“Michael’s right,” I said firmly. “We can protect your Meg and get married.”
But I must admit, I did wish Kathy had her priorities better arranged.
That seemed to settle the matt
er, and we were finishing our breakfast when the High Liege made good on his promise and our purse arrived ... though I doubted he’d told Advisor Arnold to deliver it in person.
The advisor, neatly dressed and freshly shaven, had the disgruntled look of a man awakened early by his boss to attend to business he didn’t even approve of.
“I want to make it very clear,” he said, “that the main reason your services are being retained is to keep this from becoming a bigger scandal than it already is. We don’t want the Heir’s ... impetuosity to become known, much less to be the subject of common gossip.”
I thought that ship had already sailed, but he was clutching the clinking purse in a way that told me he wouldn’t give it up till we agreed.
“We understand,” I said. “We’ll be discreet.”
“My understanding,” said my partner, without any consultation at all, “is that his Highness’ first priority is to get his son back.”
“That, of course,” said Arnold. “But discretion is key. No matter who else you may be working for—”
“I work for no one.” Michael sounded somewhat nettled. “I’m a knight errant, in search of adventure and good deeds. To assist the Heir in the safe return of his lady is a deed most worthy of our effort.”
Master Arnold snorted, as sane people tend to when Michael claims a profession that’s several centuries out of date. It’s a reaction we’re both accustomed to, and Michael simply folded his arms and waited till the advisor’s scornful smirk vanished.
“By the two moons. You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“He is,” I said. “Kathy and I are just along for the ride.”
“Well ... then you’ll be even more willing to be discreet. There’s little use in returning Mistress Margaret to her place if scandal erupts around the Heir. You do understand that?”
“We do.” I rose and held out my hand.
He didn’t want to give us the money, but he didn’t have another option. He sniffed disparagingly, dropped the purse into my hand, and departed.
It was pleasantly heavy, and if we found Rupert quickly and brought him home quietly, we might be able to keep most of it. And Mistress Margaret, of course.
“Master Arnold doesn’t seem particularly worried about the Heir,” Michael said. “Much less poor Mistress Meg.”
“In fairness, Rupert doesn’t much like him,” Kathy said. “And Meg, with her education, is kind of an unofficial apprentice for his job. I don’t like him either, but I don’t think he’d kidnap her just to get her out of his way. The High Liege might well rule for another twenty years, and even if Meg wasn’t there, Rupert would probably retire Master Arnold when he takes the throne.”
“Besides,” I said, “my impression is that the last thing Master Arnold wants is to create a big scandal around Mistress Merkle — which is what her kidnapping has done, whether he likes it or not.”
Still, he was the first person we’d met who had any reason to dislike Margaret or Rupert. And where there was one, there would be more. We just had to find them.
We set off only two hours later than we’d planned, and under the circumstances I thought that was doing well. Kathy wore a split skirt, with matching bodice and a plain linen shirt — a modest effect that was spoiled by a straw hat, bright with flowing ribbons, which she swore was the plainest hat she had. She still looked like a well-off lady, but at least she didn’t look like she’d just ridden away from a court hunting party, and she wouldn’t be tripping over petticoats if she had to make a dash for it.
Since we had the Liege’s support, we went to the royal stables to borrow a horse for her. The head groom said that Po... ah, Traveler, had good stamina and an easy gait, perfect for long journeys. He was a leggy chestnut gelding, and he was also good with dogs, which mattered, because I refused to leave True behind on a trip that might go on for weeks.
Seeing the attention these men paid our horses sparked my wits, and I turned to the groom who’d brought them from the stables and pulled out the tip he’d been awaiting ... but I doubled it.
“One question, good sir. What horse did his Highness take when he left the palace? Do you know?”
This caught Kathy’s attention, as well as the groom’s, and she broke off a conversation with Fisk to listen.
“I didn’t saddle him myself, but those who did say he took Champion.”
“What does Champion look like?” I pressed on. “Is he a horse people might notice for some reason, like Tipple here?”
The groom grinned, but it was Kathy who answered. “Champion is Rupert’s favorite mount — and he’s a snow white stallion, who turns heads everywhere he goes. He’ll be a lot more memorable than Rupert, or Meg, or that coach.”
The chestnut’s other name, which Kathy told us was Posy, was explained not half an hour out of the city when we came across a patch of small white flowers. Neither Chant nor Tipple gave them a glance, but Posy shied and baulked, snorting nervously at the innocent blossoms. After Fisk and I had ridden past, Kathy convinced him to follow, but he pranced and rolled his eyes as if the road was lined with hissing snakes.
“No one knows why he does it,” my sister told us. “He’s palace raised, and he’s been like this about flowers since he was a foal. Not all flowers, just these white ones. The best guess is that he may have been stung when he was grazing near them. Or he may just have a phobia.”
“I’ve known men who have issues with flowers.” Fisk wasn’t quite laughing, though his face was bright with amusement. “But usually not till they’ve forgotten some significant occasion, and been forced to apologize too often. I trust you wouldn’t need a bouquet every night for two weeks, would you dear?”
“I trust you’re not going to forget important occasions.”
’Twas good to see Fisk and Kathy over their spat — and it hadn’t lasted long, for they both wanted to marry even if they might quarrel about the means. But a touch of constraint had lingered as we finished packing, and since neither of them was wont to hold a grudge that left me wondering what it was that lay unresolved between them.
But I defy anyone to remain angry or glum while setting off on an adventure on a bright summer morning. Birds chirped and chattered in the bushes and True loped through the fields in his own great quest for the elusive and wondrous rabbit.
We drew near the border in the early afternoon. I thought that once they’d turned back Captain Varner’s troop, H
alverham’s men might well have gone home, but when we reached the border, half a dozen men in green and brown livery were lounging on the grass beside the road.
“Your aunt’s a widow,” Fisk told Kathy as we approached. “Your mother wants you to stay with her, to be sure—”
“I can make up details as well as you can,” said Kathy. “Stop fidgeting.”
One of the guardsmen rose and strolled into the road, asking about our business in Halverham. But before Kathy got out more than a handful of words, he’d stopped listening and stepped aside. He wished her a good journey as she passed.
“I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” Fisk said as we rode on. “They were told to stop the High Liege’s troops, not random travelers. Though that raises the question of how they knew the High Liege was going to send a troop in the first place.”
’Twas a question that hadn’t occurred to me, but ’twas not hard to account for.
“If Baron Halverham’s people, a sheriff mayhap, reported Rupert’s presence in his fief, ’twould be easy for him to guess that a troop might follow.”
“Or someone at court might have sent a message and tipped him off,” Kathy added. “This tax thing has been going on for months, and a lot of people are taking sides.”
“Maybe,” said Fisk.
But none of us were really satisfied with these explanations.
We stopped to make inquires in the first village the road passed through, and since Rupert had passed through only two days ago, the offer of a few copper roundels soon produced several people who’d “never seen the like of that white stud, sir. A destrier, like your big fellow here, perfect conformation, and his mane and tail flowing almost to the ground. Fair glowed he did...”
Rupert was still on the main road when he left the village, so we went on to the next town where we got much the same result, and so on all the way through Halverham. We even found the inn where he’d finally stopped to sleep.
“But he left at first light,” the groom who’d saddled his horse told us, in exchange for a generous tip. “Looking fair worried, and saying he was losing too much time. He asked me about that coach he was tracking, but I hadn’t seen it.”
There were several hours of daylight left, and Kathy swore she wasn’t too tired, so we went on to the next town before we stopped at an inn. We were still some distance from the Duram border, which we passed at some point next morning without even knowing it, for there were no guards. Duram was a larger fief than Halverham, and since we were delayed by having to find someone who’d seen Rupert in every town, it took us the better part of two days to cross it and go into Medding.
By close questioning, Fisk found that we were gaining on Rupert, who was now a bit more than a day and a half ahead of us. We couldn’t tell if he was gaining or losing ground on the coach he followed, but we did find enough people who’d told him about that coach to learn that it carried a “poor sick lady” and her brother, with a driver and two men riding escort.
“So they must be carrying more than just a lady,” one man remarked. “You don’t need a cashbox escort to drive safely in Baron Medding’s fief.”
Kathy was rather quiet, even after Fisk pointed out that the only reason to drag a coach across the countryside is because there’s someone in it, and I knew she fretted for her friend. Which made it all the more worrisome when she started turning to gaze back down the road behind us.
“I know that look,” Fisk said, after the fourth time she’d twisted in the saddle. “You’ve got the warning Gift, don’t you? I don’t suppose yours works more reliably than Michael’s?”
The warning Gift can tell you that someone is following you. Or that an aunt is thinking about marrying you off to her best friend’s daughter. It can tell you there’s a letter carrier trying to track you down, but not warn you about assassins on your trail.
Some folk perceive it as an itch on the back of the neck, but for me ’tis a tightness in the back of the mind, a sense that something predatory has you in its sights ... which come to think of it, is a very fair description of my aunt Gwendolyn.
“I’m not sure,” Kathy said now. “I do feel like there’s something behind us, but ’tis not like I can tell you how far or who or why. It could even be the Merkles, thinking about us tracking Meg.”
“It’s probably that,” Fisk agreed. But the next time we stopped to water the horses, he found the sword I keep wrapped in my bedroll on Chant’s rump, and pulled the hilt out of the blankets so I could draw it swiftly.
The next fief after Medding was another small one, and the only thing of note as we passed through it was that the plastered-over brick of the plains was interspersed with buildings made in part, or even completely out of wood. From there Rupert turned west into Lander, and Kathy told us Lord Lander was also involved in this tax dispute with the Liege.
The Rippon River flowed out of the western mountains, and Rippon Town was the biggest city we’d seen since we set out, trading timber and ore from the mountains for furs from the north and foodstuffs from the south and east. ’Twas not as big as Tallowsport, which Fisk and I had come to know all too well, but ’twas larger than Crown City, and it might be time consuming to track Rupert through it.
We found the place he’d ridden into town, which was where we rode in, but a few blocks after that we lost his trail.
“I bet he stopped asking about the coach,” Fisk said. “This town’s too big, and there’s too much traffic on this road, for anyone to remember it.”
“Then what would he do?” Kathy asked. “He won’t give up. Not on Meg.”
“What I’d do,” said Fisk. “He’d go to all the coaching inns, and see if they changed horses here.”
We’d already found one town where they’d done so, roughly a day’s journey back, so the timing would be about right, but checking every inn would take a lot of time...
Once this kind of decision had been up to me — Fisk might have argued. In fact, he nagged for days when he disagreed with me, and carped thereafter. But the decisions had been mine. However, Fisk was now my partner, not my squire. And besides, if I acceded to his decision now, some time in the future, when it might matter more, ’twould be his turn to yield to me.
The matter was clinched when Kathy pointed out that if we split up, each asking at inns in different areas, we could cover the town more quickly than Rupert, and might gain some time.
After so many days in the saddle we were ready to walk, and in town a horse is usually more trouble than it’s worth. We found an inn and stabled our horses, leaving the dog there as well. True is a great companion riding through the countryside, but in a town his company is less desirable.
Then, over a very late luncheon and with many questions to our waiter, we divided up the town. Kathy was assigned to visit the expensive coaching inns in the respectable part of town, by Fisk and my unanimous consent. We wrangled a bit over who should take the inns on the river road, and who would go to the cheaper inns on the outskirts of the slums, but Fisk won the point by claiming that he knew how to talk to criminals and I didn’t. I consoled myself with the knowledge that river docks could also be a rough neighborhood ... but they really weren’t.
In fact, once I reached the river, I lost some time watching the trade that was the lifeblood of this town. The river was large enough, but while barges departed from its far end to go downstream, there were no boats on the upstream side. This was because every few minutes a raft of logs, bound together with ropes, drifted down on the current. As soon as the men in the lookout towers perched along the bank spotted one, slender skiffs rowed out and their handlers latched long lines onto the ropes that bound the raft together. Then an ox-turned winch towed the huge dripping mass to shore, whereupon a swarm of men pulled the raft apart, and loaded the logs onto drays to be taken to the saw pits.
I now understood why all the buildings in this town were made of wood. In the area Kathy was searching, where shutters and window boxes would be painted in br
ight colors, the effect might be pretty. Down by the docks, everything was gray with weathering or dark with pitch. ’Twould have looked most drab, were it not for the sunlight sparking on the water, and the chaos and energy of a town at work.
Inns along the river were fewer than on the main roads. Once a few coins had loosened folks’ tongues, and they’d told me they’d seen no sign of Rupert or a coach with a crest scratched off its door, I took to asking them where the next inn might be and how to get there swiftly.
’Twas that “swiftly” bit that led me into trouble, for I took the wrong alley between two warehouses and found myself at a dead end. When I turned to make my way back to the street, a man was walking toward me.
My first thought was that he didn’t look like a sawyer, or any of the men working at the docks. He wore riding boots and a broad brimmed hat, though it had no plumes or other adornment. His gaze fixed on me in a way that made the back of my neck prickle in primitive warning, but he addressed me politely.
“Master Sevenson? Master Michael Sevenson?”
“I am,” I said. “May I ask how you know my name?”
“Forgive me, sir,” he said, ignoring my question. “But I have to be certain. May I see one of your wrists?”
If this was a messenger sent after us by the High Liege, ’twould account for the riding clothes, his weathered skin and the fine lines around his eyes — though he wasn’t much older than I. He was slim, but he had the broad shoulders and muscular wrists of a man who spent time in the saddle. And if the Liege’s message was private or sensitive, then making certain of my identity made sense.
So I suppressed my desire to refuse, pulling up my left sleeve and using my right hand and my teeth to untie one of the leather bands I use to cover the tattoos that mark me unredeemed.
At first I had disdained to conceal them, for despite the sentence the judicars laid on me when I refused to pay my debt to the law, I had done right.