“I’m not saying yes or no right now, Ceir, but I will think about it,” I promised.
“My thanks for that at least,” the guilden said earnestly.
I froze as Gevan’s coercive voice boomed in my mind, warning that his people at the pass had reported riders approaching the mountains at a gallop.
“Soldierguards?” I farsent sharply.
“Too soon to say, but as there’s only four or five, I doubt it. It’s more likely to be some of the knights, and from the way they’re riding, I’d say they have news.”
“Did you catch that?” I asked Ceirwan breathlessly.
“Of course. But if it is the knights, then why are there only four or five when more than ten rode out?”
18
RESISTING THE URGE to hurry down and wait at the front gate, I told myself it would be some time before the riders arrived and busied myself stoking the fire and closing the shutters. As I did so, I realized that it had started to rain.
The door creaked, and I turned to see Maruman slink into the chamber.
I asked if he knew a bird had been found carrying a message from someone who claimed to be holding Rushton captive.
“Marumanyelloweyes knows many things,” he sent with infuriating ambiguity.
I sighed and slid onto the chair, pulling him onto my lap. “So many people have been killed or lost to me since I first came to Obernewtyn. Cameo and Selmar and Jes. Jik and Matthew and Dragon.”
“I will not leave you,” Maruman sent, and he turned around and around, needling my legs through my clothes before he settled himself.
Touched, I blinked back a scatter of tears and gazed into the fire, trying not to think about the riders approaching, trying not to hope. But it was impossible.
To stop myself, I asked Maruman his impression of Gavyn.
“Adantar is beastspeaker-enthraller—” Maruman began.
“What is ‘adantar’?” I interrupted, having a vague impression it meant something like “joined” or “linked.”
“No funaga words for this word,” he responded tersely.
“Why does Rasial/silvertongue follow Gavynadantar?”
“What she seeks, she sees in the adantar.”
I frowned. “She told me she came up here to seek her dying.”
“Just so,” Maruman sent.
I stared at him. “Are you saying Rasial follows Gavyn because she sees her death in him?”
Maruman sniffed, signaling the topic was closed. Then I remembered the nightmares about Ariel. I described them to Maruman, and his eye flashed. “Marumanyelloweyes knows. Who else overturned wagon? Marumanyelloweyes watches the dreamtrails. Protects ElspethInnle.”
I gaped at him stupidly. “I don’t understand. You … you were in those nightmares?”
“No nightmares. ElspethInnle on dreamtrails,” Maruman sent. “Marumanyelloweyes watches/follows. Protects ElspethInnle.”
I licked dry lips, feeling as if I were slicked in ice. “Are … are you saying that I need protecting because I wasn’t dreaming?” I sent with incredulity. “That Ariel was … is after me in my dreams?”
Maruman closed his eyes. I felt like shaking him, but Gevan sent to tell me the riders were approaching Obernewtyn and suggested I meet him at the front entrance. I slid the old cat unceremoniously onto my seat, ignoring his indignant protests, and got up to put on boots and a shawl, asking Gevan if the riders had been identified.
I was on my way down the halls when Gevan answered. “It is Miryum, and Brydda Llewellyn rides with her.”
“Brydda?” I sent with surprise. “But she can’t have told him about the blackmail note—the knights rode out before it arrived.”
“Good,” Gevan sent. “I want the chance to see Brydda’s reaction when we tell him about the note.”
“I thought you trusted him.” I was walking toward the front hall now, and my senses told me Gevan was waiting in a small chamber off the front entrance hall.
“I trust him not to be the instigator of the kidnapping,” Gevan said. “But if he was aware of it, he could think he was sparing us the worry by keeping it a secret. Remember last year how he didn’t tell us some of the rebels were opposed to an alliance with us until you forced it out of him? He didn’t have a bad motive then, but he was still lying by omission in hopes of resolving the problem himself.”
“Lying about Rushton’s kidnapping would be rather more than a thoughtful attempt to smooth things over,” I said aloud, striding into the antechamber.
Gevan nodded. “Truespoken, but let’s wait and see, shall we? They should be here any minute.”
I went to lean on the mantelpiece, where Gevan had lit a fire in the hearth, and told him what I had just learned about a traitor among the rebels.
He looked at me sideways. “Let’s see what Brydda has to say before we tell him anything.”
We both stiffened at the sound of horses and hurried to open the heavy front doors. Through the rain-swept darkness, I saw Brydda dismounting from his white mare, Sallah. Miryum and the coercer-knight Orys were on the ground already, as was Brydda’s right-hand man, Reuvan. But Straaka stayed on horseback, shouting over the rain that he would go with the horses down to the farms.
“We’ve a fire blazing. You can dry out while we talk,” Gevan said by way of greeting, closing the main doors behind us.
“Elspeth.” Brydda smiled, taking my hands. “I’m glad to see you again.” Looking up into his kind brown eyes, his long molasses curls and beard all dripping wet, I felt like howling.
Instead I swallowed hard and said, “I’m truly glad to see you, too, Brydda, but I wish it was under happier circumstances.”
“You’ve still had no news of Rushton, then?”
Gevan interrupted smoothly to deflect the question, hustling us all into the antechamber and suggesting everyone remove their wet top clothes and drape them about to dry.
“I’ve farsent Ceirwan,” I said. “He will be here soon with food, and we’ve got water heating for baths and chambers made up for you to sleep in.”
“I won’t say no to food, but we won’t be staying the night,” Brydda said. “Reuvan and I rode out as soon as Jakoby told me Rushton hadn’t got back to Obernewtyn. We decided to ask after him all along the main road. This afternoon, we walked into a roadside tavern a few hours below Guanette, and who should we see but Miryum and a couple of her knights drinking and playing darts.”
“We were probing the crowd for news of Rushton …,” Miryum said, then hesitated. I sensed Gevan warning her coercively to say nothing of Maryon’s futuretelling, if she had not done so already.
“I suppose she told you we got a bird he sent after leaving Sutrium?” I said.
“I was there when he released it from the outskirts of Sutrium. He rode off safe and well after that. He should have been back well before your moon fair, by my reckoning.”
“So far, we’re found no one who even saw him coming up the road,” Miryum said.
“Nor did we, but if he rode at night, it’s possible he’d go unnoticed,” Reuvan said.
“There was no reason for him to be so furtive,” I protested.
“Unless something happened at the meeting he had with the rebels to make him so,” the Coercer guildmaster interposed blandly.
Brydda shrugged. “I can’t think what. We invited the Misfits to join us in the rebellion, and Rushton declined.”
“Why did you decide to ask us to join you after everything that has happened?” Gevan asked. “I can’t believe Malik changed his mind about us.”
“Well, he didn’t, that’s true. But since Malik has no more say than anyone else, he was outvoted.”
“Malik was glad we refused, then?” Gevan asked.
“Yes, though he claimed it was a deadly insult that Misfits would refuse anything to ‘true humans.’ His words,” Brydda added wryly, twisting his lips as if he had tasted something unpleasant.
“What about the other rebels?” Gevan asked. “Were the
y angry that we would not join them?”
“Not so much that as plain bewildered,” the big rebel admitted. “They could not understand why you would refuse when you’d tried so hard to join us before.” His expression grew serious. “You are wondering if any of the rebels went after Rushton on the road because he spurned our offer of alliance?”
“Isn’t it a reasonable assumption, since he seems to have disappeared right after the meeting, and no one but your people and ours knew where he was?” Gevan countered.
“You are assuming he was attacked by someone who knew who he was, but there are those on the road to whom a jack would seem a good target. But I can see why you might wonder about the rebels, and I admit to wanting to make sure none of them are involved myself. That’s why I want to get back as soon as possible.” The big rebel looked at me from under his lashes, and I caught his unsaid thought quite clearly.
“He’s not dead,” I said flatly.
“It is a possibility, if he was waylaid by robbers,” Brydda said.
“Tell him,” Gevan sent to me.
I nodded and took a deep breath. “Brydda, you might as well know that we have had news of Rushton since Miryum left.”
Brydda stared at me. “Of Rushton? From whom?”
“From whoever is holding him captive.”
The big rebel looked stunned, as did Miryum and Orys.
“Captive?” Miryum muttered as if she didn’t understand the word.
“A note came with Rushton’s second bird. You will remember he carried two?” Brydda nodded impatiently. “There was no identification on the note. It said only that Rushton was being held and would die if Misfits didn’t aid the rebels.”
Brydda looked completely taken aback.
“You can see why we suspect it must be rebels who have him,” Gevan said.
Brydda ran blunt fingers through his curls. “I see that it seems so, but it makes no sense, truly. For Rushton to have been kidnapped so efficiently, with no one seeing anything, a plan would have to have been organized well in advance of the meeting. But why would anyone have bothered, since none there imagined that Rushton would refuse us?”
“But who other than a rebel would want Misfits as part of the rebellion?” I asked.
There were footsteps outside the room, forestalling Brydda’s response. Ceirwan entered with Merret, both of them carrying steaming clove-scented jugs of mead, platters of bread and cheese, and cold slabs of pie. Their entry broke the tension that had been growing between us. When we were all settled about, sipping hot, spiced mead, Brydda spoke about what had led the rebels to offer an alliance to us.
“You impressed people far more deeply than even they realized at the time. They had not really thought about the cost of winning the rebellion before. After returning from Sador, they started looking at what they really wanted. Rather than revenge or power, most wanted simply to live in peace. In our meetings, the rebel leaders began talking seriously of how to keep the death toll down, and we spoke of preserving the structures that govern the cities while removing the corrupt Council and Faction network. Plans were made to introduce a popular vote to establish leaders in each town, and someone suggested a sort of law-keeping force that the town leaders could draw on at need. We thought the force could be made up of men and women for some period of their lives, rather than of a constant body, because all that law-keeping can warp a mind after a while so they can’t draw the line between keeping the law and oppression. Another suggestion was drawing up a charter of laws so that the people of the Land could have the chance to modify or at least discuss them before they came into force. It’ll be up to us rebels to keep things running and peaceful until everything is in place, of course, but we now see ourselves as a sort of interim peacekeeping body, rather than ultimate rulers.”
“I can’t see Malik being pleased by the idea of communal decision making,” Gevan said.
“He isn’t, and he wasn’t the only one to oppose a lot of the new ideas, but the majority of us feel the same, and our numbers were enough to carry the vote. I daresay it riles Malik that, despite his win in the Battlegames, only his cronies wanted him running anything.”
“What did Rushton say when he refused your offer?” Merret asked.
Brydda drank a deep mouthful of ale, then said, “He told us that Misfits couldn’t be part of any war, because it meant consenting to the violence and abetting it even if you did none of the bloodletting. He said you’d seen your true nature in the Battlegames and had made an oath not to go against it.”
“Would that be enough to provoke foul play?” Gevan asked.
“Malik or his cronies would be malicious enough to hurt Rushton for daring to refuse us, but there would be no gain whatever for him in this kidnapping. As to the others, I just can’t see that any of them would be dishonorable enough to do it,” Brydda said.
“Perhaps dishonor would be seen as a small price to pay for finding out who is betraying your secrets to the Council,” I said coolly. “It might be considered a lesser evil than the knowledge that on the eve of your uprising, every step you take will be anticipated and thwarted by your enemies. Isn’t that the real reason the rebels decided to ask us to join them? Your need to flush out your betrayers?”
Brydda set his empty mug aside carefully before responding. “So you know about the traitors.”
I said nothing, and neither did anyone else.
The big rebel sighed and leaned back into his seat. “It’s true that knowing there are traitors among us was one of the reasons the subject of an alliance with your people arose again. But if you had not made such an impact during the Battlegames, no one would have suggested it.” He smiled disarmingly. “You are annoyed because I did not speak of the traitors. I understand that, but the only way we are surviving right now is by telling no one anything other than what they absolutely need to know. It has become a habit.”
“Don’t you think the need to find your traitors puts Rushton’s kidnapping in another light?” Gevan asked.
“Maybe you see it as a good enough reason to bury would-be allies. I don’t,” Brydda said. “Besides, think of it. If the kidnapping was committed to make sure the traitors are caught, you would almost certainly unearth the kidnapper when you were scrying out the traitors.”
“But who did it, if not the rebels?” Merret asked. “You are the only ones who will benefit if we do what that blackmail note demands.”
Brydda ran his hands over his head. “That is a cursed good point, but I don’t know the answer. But I refuse to see us benefit from this—I would not accept a forced alliance. We will turn the Land on its head to find Rushton. If rebels have him, I swear I will sniff it out.”
“Like you have sniffed out the traitors in your own ranks?” I asked with more bitterness than I intended.
“What would you have me do, Elspeth?” Brydda asked with a flash of weary irritation. “I did not kidnap Rushton, nor am I trying to take advantage of this situation, despite the needs of my own people.”
I took a deep breath before answering. “I’m sorry. Search as you said, and so will we. But in the meantime, help us make it seem that we will obey the kidnapper. We meant to organize a meeting with you as a display of obedience. When you get back to Sutrium, you’ll find a message from us asking for a meeting with the rebels in Sawlney.”
“Why Sawlney?”
“A moon fair and Councilman Alum’s bonding ceremony for his daughter will take place there in just over a sevenday. There will be a lot of coming and going, and it will be easy for our people and yours to converge there without anyone wondering why.”
Brydda tugged at his beard in a familiar gesture. “The rebel leaders are due to meet soon anyway. I’ll simply name Sawlney as the venue. Malik won’t object since it’s Brocade’s territory, and you can just turn up. I’ll announce you then and there. That will be safest.”
“I appreciate your trying to protect us,” I said, “but the whole point is to let the kidnapper k
now that we’re doing what he wants.”
Brydda pondered that. “Very well, I’ll mention your desire to meet and make sure the news gets passed around, but I don’t think you need feel too frightened that the kidnapper will do anything suddenly, since he can’t know if you will obey or not until the rebellion is in progress. He will want to keep his hostage safe in the meantime.”
There was little more than that to say, and since Brydda still refused to stay the night, he and Reuvan decided to visit the farms to see Brydda’s parents. I walked with them, for the rain had stopped.
The air felt damp, and the ground squelched underfoot as we wound our way through the sodden greenthorn. Not wanting to talk any more of Rushton, I sought some less painful topic and asked if he was disappointed with the Sadorians’ decision to send only a token force to aid them.
“We were, of course, but since it was always uncertain how many the Sadorians would send, we had not got used to counting on them.” A smile ghosted over his face, lit by the lantern he carried. “You know Bruna remained in Sutrium when her mother left this morning?”
“I didn’t. I suppose she is staying with Bodera?”
“She is, and again she is playing merry hell with poor Dardelan. To look at his face, you can see he’s neatly and uncomfortably balanced between longing for peace and plain longing.”
“He cares for her, then?”
“It’s obvious to everyone but Bruna. He has sense enough not to give her the knowledge, for she’s the sort to use it as a whip on him. He treats her with perfect courtesy even when she behaves like a spoiled brat.”
“And how is Bodera?”
The rebel sighed. “Some days are bad, and others are worse. Very few of his days can be called good anymore, sadly. It must be hard to die so slowly. He does not want to die while he is needed, but I think he is utterly weary of his existence. It’s my belief that he means to live until the rebellion is won, and with his will, he might do just that.”
The Rebellion Page 62