Fool's Quest - Страница 115

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He did not like it. I did not care how he felt. I watched his face and saw the moment when he recognized that logic was on my side. He ceased struggling and I left him standing with the horses while I went to speak to Foxglove and Riddle. Shine might have been awake but she was not stirring. Her eyes were slits and she made no comment as I asked Foxglove to create a travois for her to ride on. Foxglove nodded grimly and began to order some to find sturdy branches and others to gather firewood and create a fire so that Shine might have hot food and drink before she was moved, and I conceded that. I took Lant, Riddle, and my few remaining Rousters and began to ride slowly back down the road in the direction from which Shine had come. I chose not to notice that Perseverance trailed behind us, Motley on his shoulder. The boy had witnessed Lant’s revelation. I’d deal with it later. This section of the king’s highway traversed a forested area with some farms and smallholdings. The short winter day would soon fade. I wondered how far she had galloped the brown and how tired he had been to start with. I wanted to hurry. I could not afford to miss the trail.

I broke the Rousters into pairs and sent them ahead of us at a gallop with directions that at every crossroads, two should peel off from the main body and ride down each tributary. If any pair saw anything to indicate that two horses had emerged from the forest onto the road, one should halt near the disturbed snow and the other was to ride back to me immediately. They rode off at a breakneck gallop, perhaps hoping to redeem themselves.

For a time Lant, Riddle, and I rode in silence at a more measured pace, scrutinizing the road to either side. Perseverance, still leading Bee’s horse, had fallen in behind us. I studied the snowy ground to the left side of the trampled road while Riddle watched the right. I thought about Bee. Last night, she had been riding on a horse with Shine. She’d bitten someone, and somehow that had helped free Shine. Why hadn’t she been able to free herself? Again she was snatched away from me, vanished, perhaps through a Skill-pillar. Sadness and despair deepened in me, enhanced by the lingering effects of the elfbark. We watched not just for Shine’s tracks but for anything that might indicate sleighs or a mounted troop of men had passed. Any sign of my little girl. After a time, Riddle observed aloud, “I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t ask.”

I knew his question. “It’s true. Chade is their father.”

“I knew that about Lant, but not the girl. Why did he keep Shine secret?”

“Well, because he is Chade. He never told me that Lant was his son until a few days ago. Though I suppose I should have known it by looking at him.”

Riddle nodded to that. “I think more people at Buckkeep know than Chade suspects. It was fairly obvious in how he treated Lant from the beginning. So why keep Shine a secret?”

I was silent for a pause. Lant asked acidly, “Do you want me to ride ahead so you can gossip about my parentage and my half-sister in privacy?”

I stared at him. “Lant. Riddle is married to my daughter, Skillmistress Nettle. Your cousin. So I think that makes him family.”

Riddle fought the grin on his face. “And actually I’m discussing your father, not you. Chade! I am scandalized!” The grin spread despite his best efforts.

“Chade,” I confirmed and a bark of laughter burst from me, defying my dark spirits. We both laughed aloud and shook our heads.

After a time, Lant asked, “Why did he keep Shine a secret, even from me? He managed to bring me to Buckkeep and let me know he was my father. Why not Shine?”

I spoke heavily and reluctantly. Better he asked these questions now than before witnesses. “He has kept her ignorant and hidden from all others because of dangers both to himself and to her. Her family was not pleased to be saddled with his bastard, and yet they did not mind extorting funds for her keep and education. Funds they apparently did not use for her benefit. He was allowed only sporadic access to her. Her grandparents took care of her at first and were, if not kind, at least not cruel. When they died and she was turned over to her mother and her mother’s husband—”

“I know some of that,” Lant cut in hastily.

Riddle raised an eyebrow at me.

“About as bad as you can imagine,” I told him, and saw him wince.

“What will Chade do with her now, do you suppose?” he asked me.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if he will be mindful enough to recognize her. But I think she would be safest at Buckkeep, given over into Kettricken’s care, perhaps. She has always longed to be at court, and I rather imagine her maternal line will be a bit more cautious about crossing Lord Chade’s will in that now.”

FitzVigilant took breath to ask a question I knew I wouldn’t want to answer. I was glad to hear a galloping horse and see one of my Rousters headed back toward us. “They must have found something!” I touched my heels to Fleeter and she broke into a grudging trot. Riddle’s horse surged past us and No! I sensed from her. I am Fleeter. I always lead.

Show them! I suggested to her, and she lifted into an effortless gallop. She did not allow her mind to touch mine again, and I did not try to push my way in. I did not want to reestablish any sort of a bond, but I was glad that my misuse of her had not broken her spirit.

Sawyer, one of my Rousters, began shouting before we had even reached him. “We’ve found her trail. I told Reaper to stay off it, but I don’t know how long he can resist.”

“Well done,” I told him.

He wheeled his horse and led the way, despite Fleeter’s disgruntlement at following him. It felt good to be in motion. We reached a section of the road that wound through a denser area of forest. There another Rouster awaited us, standing in the cold beside his restless horse. “Can we follow it now?” he demanded. I did not answer immediately. I flung myself from Fleeter’s back and in a heartbeat Riddle was beside me. I waded into the unbroken snow beside the wallowed trail. “Two horses, one behind the other,” Riddle announced decisively.

“So I read it, too,” I replied. I swung back up into my saddle. “Be wary!” I warned the others. “Shine said some of the mercenaries were still prowling in the area. If you see them, we need to take them alive. I need to talk to them.”

Sawyer gave a tight nod and his partner grunted an assent. A small part of my attention noted that both of them were standing a bit straighter. They exchanged satisfied looks. These two, it seemed, might take a bit of pride in accomplishing a task. Possibly salvageable.

The trail was easy to follow. I focused on that and pushed Fleeter to move as quickly as she could go. The deep snow was trampled but it was not a well-broken path. I kept my head up and watched the encroaching forest for any sign of the mercenaries. Twice Riddle and Lant moved off to inspect other tracks we sighted. Each time they found only deer trails. I wondered if a terrified Shine had only imagined the Chalcedean trackers as she had the ghost in her room.

The forest became denser. Here evergreens towered and laced their branches overhead to steal the afternoon’s graying light from us. The snow was shallower but the trail was still plain. We followed it up a slope, weaving among rocky outcroppings and ducking under leaning trees that had grown at angles among the stones. Under these giants, there was little underbrush.

“Fitz!” Lant called and I pulled Fleeter around, thinking he had seen danger. Instead he leaned down from his mount and brushed snow from stone. “There was a town here once. Or something. Look how straight this stone still runs.”

“He’s right,” Riddle confirmed before I could even speak. “Most of it’s buried in earth as well as snow. But look there. The trees lean in, and it’s narrowed, but that might have been a road at one time.”

“It would make sense,” I said, and turned Fleeter back to the trail. Old structures. In the Mountain Kingdom we had often found standing stones near Elderling ruins.

“I smell old smoke,” Riddle declared, and just then Sawyer cried, “There are more tracks over there, sir. Looks like they’re headed in the same direction we are!”

I threw caution to the wind and urged Fleeter on. She surged up the steep trail in powerful bounds, and suddenly an abandoned camp was before us. Hasty shelters of branches and evergreen boughs surrounded a blackened place where a small campfire had burned. “Stop!” I called to the others. We dismounted and Perseverance stayed with the horses as we moved forward more slowly. I quested with my Wit but felt no others near. If there had been Chalcedeans stalking Shine last night, they were here no longer. I squatted down to peer into a temporary shelter built of pine boughs. Someone had huddled in there. That was all I could tell.

“Fitz,” Riddle said, his voice soft but urgent. He pointed with a gloved hand.

White coat, pale skin, pale hair. Dead. Sprawled on her back in the snow, the only color a bit of blood coming from her mouth. Riddle and I crouched over her, our heads close together. I slid a hand under her neck and lifted. It wasn’t broken.

“That’s a hard grip to get or maintain,” he said. “I’m impressed.”

I nodded. Chade’s daughter. Cup the back of the neck and drive the pinching fingers in hard to crush the windpipe. No air, choking on her own blood. Not the quickest death in the world nor the quietest, but it had done the job.

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