Fool's Quest - Страница 45

“Thank you.” What else does one say when a boy promises his life and loyalty? I closed my heart to the storm of emotions his words woke in me and spoke soothingly. “Continue telling me what happened, Perseverance.”

“I mean it, sir.” A boy’s tender feelings that such an offer might be disdained as childishness rode in his words.

“I know you do.” I spoke severely. “And right now, I am holding you to it. I need what you are doing now. I need to know every bit of what you know. Keep talking.”

And so I heard of how he had gone to his lessons the next day, and my daughter had been there. He spoke of his conversation with Bee and how she had told him what I’d done. She’d been proud of me. Proud. I glanced at Lant as the lad spoke. His face was a mixture of emotions. Did he remember snatches of that day, scrubbed clean of Shun’s presence? But as Perseverance began to tell of the sounds they had heard and how Lant had gone to see what they were, the scribe began shaking his head again. I gave him a look and he stopped.

So I learned that Revel had spent the last moments of his life trying to save the Withywoods children. Truly, I’d never given the man the credit he deserved. And as the tale wound on, I heard of my Bee hiding the children where she had believed they would be safe, only to be deprived of that safety herself. Perseverance told me of the slaughter he’d seen in the stables, slain men sprawled with their throats cut as they did their daily chores, his own father and grandfather among them, and of stepping over bodies to saddle Priss, and the wild ride he and Bee had made in the hope of getting help.

His detailed account of the attack ended with the arrow. He had come to consciousness only in time to see them leaving with Bee. He had returned to the manor, to the stables still on fire and the folk he had known all his life denying that he had ever existed. I stopped him there. He had begun to shake as he spoke of it. “That’s enough. Let it go for now, Perseverance. I know the truth of your words. Now, I want you to think, but not speak, of the people you saw. Think about each one of them, and when you are ready tell me about them, one at a time.” This, I had been taught by Chade, was the best way to gain information from one who had not been trained to report as I had. A question such as Was he tall? or Was he bearded? could carry the untrained mind to imagining something that had not been there.

He was silent as I bandaged his shoulder. It was infected, but no worse than such wounds always were. When I had finished, I helped him with his shirt and then brought him food and another jot of brandy. “Drink that first. Down in a gulp. Then you can eat while you talk to me.”

He took the brandy down, gasped and choked even more than he had on the first two, and quickly took a piece of bread to clear the taste from his mouth. I waited. He was as close to drunk as I wanted him, his thoughts wide and unguarded. And he told me what I would expect a stable boy to notice. White horses, with peculiar flat saddles, and big horses suited for men who might wear chain mail. Saddles on the big horses that sounded almost Chalcedean in design.

They spoke a foreign tongue. I asked no question, but he told me of a man on a horse who shouted, “Krintzen, krintzen!” over and over.

Kar inte jhen. Chalcedean for “sit down.”

Chalcedeans in Buck. A raiding force? One that had crossed Shoaks Duchy and Farrow to raid an isolated manor in Buck? Why? To steal my daughter? It made no sense. Not until he told me that a pleasant-faced woman was with them, seeking a pale boy or young man. Then I knew what they had come seeking. The Unexpected Son, the child whom the Fool’s messenger had urged me to find and protect. I still had no idea who or where that lad might be, but the puzzle began to make sense. Hostages to exchange. Who better to take than the daughter of the house and a noble lady?

When he spoke of how markedly pale some of the younger invaders were, the ones who wielded no weapons but aided those who did, when he spoke of their light hair and pale eyes and their pale garments, my blood ran cold. Were these the messenger’s pursuers? Of course they were. She had said she was being hunted. The Fool’s wild warnings were suddenly solid and real. These pale folk must be Servants from Clerres. As the Fool had warned me, the Servants had been tracking the messenger. And following him as well? Would they want to recover the Fool as well as find this Unexpected Son? Did they think I had found and concealed him at Withywoods and so sought him there? But what were they doing with Chalcedeans? Were they mercenaries in their hire? How had they come so far and deep into Buck Duchy without being reported to anyone? There was a regular patrol that rode the king’s highways, mostly to discourage highwaymen, but also to take reports of unusual events. A troop of horse of that size, ridden by obvious foreigners, would certainly have been reported to them. If people remembered seeing them.

“That’s all I remember, sir.” The boy looked drained. And suddenly appeared as tired as I felt. I doubted that he had been sleeping well.

I sorted the information I had and tried to find sense in it. They would have taken Bee and Shun as hostages. They would want the Unexpected Son in trade for them. I did not have him, but I did have the Fool. Could I use him as bait to lure them in? Did he have the strength to agree to such a gambit?

And then my logic fell into discordant pieces. If Bee was a hostage, their power was in dangling her before me, not vanishing without a trace and clouding the memories of those they left behind. Unless they had a stronghold close by, a secure place from which to negotiate. What would I do in their place? Take the hostages to the Chalcedean border or the seacoast? Negotiate from there, demand that we bring the Unexpected Son there? Perhaps. “Eat some food. I’ll be back in a moment.” I turned and pointed a finger at Lant. “Stay there. I want to talk to you.”

He didn’t say a word.

As I walked down the corridor to the chamber that had been Bee’s nursery, the enormity of the disaster suddenly swept through me. I staggered to one side and caught myself on the wall. I stood for a moment, my vision black at the edges. Then with a surge I slashed at my weakness, damning it for daring to overcome me just when I most needed to be calm and rational. Emotion must be contained until I had all the information I needed with which to plan a course of action. Now was not the time to hate myself or give in to useless wishes for what I should have, might have, could have done. There was only the now, and I must be keen and remorseless if I was to find and follow their trail. I entered the nursery. Here, at least, no one had bothered to toss furniture and search for plunder. Perhaps no one had hidden here, perhaps the room had been missed. Why couldn’t Bee have hidden here and been safe? Useless question.

I found cushions and a blanket and went back to my study. I threw them down on the hearth, refusing to feel anything about Molly’s pretty things so roughly used. I pointed at them. “Perseverance. After you’ve eaten, rest there. Try to sleep. If you recall anything more, no matter how trivial it might seem, I want to hear it.”

“Sir,” he said. He put his attention back on the food, hunching over it like a half-starved hound. He’d probably been unable to eat much the last few days. Now he would eat and then he’d be able to sleep. I looked at him for a moment. Fatherless, unknown to his mother, and I was the only one in his world who remembered his name. Mine now, sworn to me. First vassal for the bastard prince. So fitting, somehow.

I seized my chair, dragged it across the room, and sat down facing Lant. I’d moved so close that he had to sit up straight to avoid his sprawled legs tangling with mine as I sat down. “It’s your turn. Tell me everything you remember from the time I cut the dog’s throat.”

He stared at me and then licked his lips. “We had gone to town. And a man was cruel to his dog, so you knocked him down and gave the dog a quick death.”

“Why had we gone to town, Lant?”

I watched his face, saw his mind skip and jump, finding what he was allowed to recall. “To get some more tablets for my students.”

I nodded. “Then we went to the inn to eat. And both Riddle and I left in a hurry. Why?”

He swallowed. “You didn’t say.”

I nodded again. I moved toward him, not with my body, but first with my Wit, sensing him as another living creature, and then with my Skill. I did not know if I could push into his mind, but I suspected someone had. I recalled a brief conversation I’d had with Chade. He’d asked me if I thought the Skill could be used to make a man forget something. I’d told him I didn’t want to consider ever using the magic that way. Both times I’d seen it done had been disastrous for me. When my father, Chivalry, had made the Skillmaster Galen forget how much he hated him, the man had turned his hatred for my father onto his son. The irony was that Galen had used the magic in a similar way on me. He’d invaded my mind and left me “misted,” as Verity had put it. Galen had used his Skill to convince me that I had little talent for the magic. Even after my king had done his best to clear the clouds from my mind, I’d never had full confidence in my abilities again. I’d always wondered if that forced forgetting had been what made my Skill-magic so erratic.

I didn’t want to invade the man’s mind. But my repeated questioning of Dixon had not given me any information and had pushed him into a seizure. I couldn’t risk that with Lant. From what Perseverance had told me, Lant had taken that stab wound when he’d been held captive with the others in the carriageway. Did that mean he’d tried to fight them? Perhaps that was where I should begin.