Bernard frowned. "And where is the other?"
In answer, Doroga reached into his sling pouch and drew out a battered old leather backpack. He tossed it into Bernard"s lap.
Amara felt Bernard"s entire body go rigidly tense as he stared down at the pack.
"Great furies," Bernard whispered. "Tavi."
Chapter 5
Whirls of dust from the collapse filled the inside of Isanaholt"s stables, and made the sunshine slipping here and there through the roof into soft, golden rods of light. Isana stared at the enormous crossbeam in the steadholt"s stables. It had broken and fallen without any warning whatsoever a moment after she had entered the barn to distribute feed to the animals. If she had been facing the wrong way, or if she had been any slower, she would be lying dead under it with the crushed and bloodied bodies of a pair of luckless hens instead of shaking with startled terror.
Her first thought was of her holders. Had any of them been in the barn, or the loft? Furies forbid, had any of the children been playing there? Isana reached out for her fury, and with Rill"s help created a crafting that slid through the air of the barn-but the barn was empty.
Which was probably the point, she thought, suddenly struck with a possible explanation for the accident. She stood up, shaking still, and went to the fallen beam, examining it.
One end of the beam was broken, snapped off with ragged spikes and splinters of wood standing out from it. The other end was far smoother, almost as clean as if it had been trimmed with a mill-saw. But no blade had done it. The wood was crumbling and dusty, as if it had been attacked by an army of termites. A furycrafting, Isana thought. A deliberate furycrafting.
Not an accident. Not an accident at all.
Someone had tried to kill her.
Isana suddenly became more intensely aware of the fact that she was alone in the stables. Most of the holders were out in the fields by now-they had only a few more days to plow and sew, and the herders had their hands full with keeping track of mating cycles, a.s.sisting in the delivery of the new lambs, calves, kids, and a pair of gargant digs. Even the kitchens, the nearest building to the stables, were empty at the moment, while the steadholt women working there took time for a meal of their own in the central hall.
In short, it was unlikely that anyone heard the beam fall-and even more unlikely that they could hear her should she call for them. For a moment, Isana wished desperately that her brother still lived at the steadholt. But Bernard didn"t. She would have to look out for herself.
She took a deep, steadying breath and stole a couple of steps to a wall where a pitchfork hung by a hook set into a beam. She took the tool down, straining to be silent, willing Rill"s presence to continue sweeping through the barn. The furycrafting was hardly precise-and even if there was a murderer lurking nearby, if he was a man of enough detachment, he might not have enough of a sense of emotion for Rill to detect. But it was better than nothing.
Woodcrafters could, when they needed to, exert the power of their furies to hide their presence from other"s eyes, if enough vegetable matter was nearby to use as material. At the behest of a woodcrafter, trees would shift their shadows, gra.s.s would twist and bend to conceal, and all manner of subtle illusions of light and shadow could hide them from even skilled, wary eyes. And the barn was almost ankle deep in the rushes laid to help keep it warm during the winter.
Isana remained in place for several silent moments, waiting for any sign of another"s presence. Patience could only help her-it would not be long before the steadholt began to fill with holders returning from the fields for their midday meal. Her attacker, if he was here, would already have come for her if he thought her vulnerable. The worst thing she could do would be to lose her head and run headlong into a less subtle attack.
Outside, the beat of running hooves approached the steadholt, and someone rode a horse in through the gates. The animal chafed and stamped for a moment, then a young man"s voice called, "h.e.l.lo, the steadholt! Holder Isana?"
Isana held her breath for a moment, then let it out slowly, relaxing a little. Someone had come. She lowered the pitchfork and took a step toward the door she had entered.
There was a small, thumping sound behind her, and a rounded pebble bounced once and then fell into the straw. Rill suddenly warned her of a wave of panic coming from immediately behind her.
Isana turned, raising the pitchfork by instinct, and only barely saw the vague outline of someone in the half-shadowed barn. There was a flash of steel, a hot sensation on one of her hips, and she felt the tines of the pitchfork bite hard into living flesh. She choked out a scream of terror and challenge and drove the pitchfork hard forward, throwing the weight of her entire body behind it. She drove the attacker back against the heavy door of one of the horse stalls, and she felt in exquisite detail the sudden burst of pain, surprise, and naked fear that came from her attacker.
The tines bit hard into the wooden door, and her attacker"s crafting of concealment wavered and vanished.
He wasn"t young enough to be called a youth, but not yet old enough to be considered a man, either. He seemed to be at that most dangerous of ages, where strength, skill, and confidence met naivete and idealism; when young men skilled at the crafts of violence could be manipulated into employing those skills with brutal efficiency-and without questions.
The a.s.sa.s.sin stared at her for a moment, eyes wide, his face already pale. His sword arm twitched, and he lost his grip on the weapon, an odd blade slightly curved rather than the more typical gladius gladius. He pushed at the tines of the pitchfork, but his fingers had no strength in them. One of the steel tines had severed a blood vessel in his belly, she judged, some part of her mind operating with clinical detachment. It was the only thing that could have incapacitated him so quickly. Otherwise, he would have been able to strike her again with the sword, even though wounded.
But the rest of her felt like wailing in sheer anguish. Isana"s link to Rill was too open and too strong to set aside easily. All of what her attacker felt flowed into her thoughts and perceptions with a simple, agonizing clarity. She felt him, the screaming pain of his injuries, the sense of panic and despair as he realized what had happened, and that he had no way to avoid his fate.
She felt him as his fear and pain faded to a sense of dim, puzzled surprise, quiet regret, and a vast and heavy weariness. Panicked, she withdrew her senses from the young man, her thoughts screaming at Rill to break the connection with the young killer. She all but sobbed with relief as the sensations of his emotion faded from her own, and she looked him in the face.
The young man looked up at her for a moment. He had eyes the color of walnuts and a small scar over his left eyebrow.
His body sagged, the weight pulling the tines of the pitchfork free of the door. Then his head lolled forward and a little to one side. His eyes went still. Isana shivered and watched him die. When he had, she pulled on the pitchfork. It wouldn"t come out, and she had to brace one foot against the young man"s chest to get enough leverage to withdraw the pitchfork. When it finally came free, lazy streams of blood coursed down from the holes in the corpse"s belly. The corpse fell to its side, and its glazed eyes stared up at Isana.
She had killed the young man. She had killed him. He was no older than Tavi.
It was too much. She fell to her knees, and her belly lost control of its contents. She found herself staring down at the floor of the stables, shuddering, while waves of disgust and loathing and fear washed over her.
Footsteps entered the stables, but they meant nothing to her. Isana lowered herself to her side once her stomach had ceased its rebellion. She lay there with her eyes closed, while holders entered the stables, sure of only one thing: If she hadn"t killed the man, he would certainly have killed her.
Someone with the resources to hire a professional killer wanted her dead.
She closed her eyes, too weary to do more, and was content to ignore the others around her and let oblivion ease her anguish and terror.
Chapter 6
"How long has she been down?" rumbled a deep, male voice. Her brother, Isana thought. Bernard.
The next voice was old and quavered slightly. Isana recognized old beldame Bitte"s quiet confidence. "Since just before midday."
"She looks pale," said another male voice, this one higher, less resonant. "Are you sure she"s all right?"
Bernard answered, "As sure as I can be, Aric. There are no wounds on her." He let out a slow breath. "It looks like she might have collapsed, pushing her crafting too hard. I"ve seen her work herself into the ground before."
"It might also be a reaction to the struggle," Amara said. "Shock."
Bernard grunted agreement. "Green legionares legionares do that after their first battle, sometimes. Great furies know it"s a terrible thing to kill a man." Isana felt her brother"s broad, warm hand on her hair. He smelled like sweating horses, leather, and road dust, and his voice was quietly anguished. "Poor "Sana. Is there anything more we can do for her?" do that after their first battle, sometimes. Great furies know it"s a terrible thing to kill a man." Isana felt her brother"s broad, warm hand on her hair. He smelled like sweating horses, leather, and road dust, and his voice was quietly anguished. "Poor "Sana. Is there anything more we can do for her?"
Isana took a deep breath and made an effort to speak, though it came out at hardly more than a whisper. "Begin with washing your hands, little brother. They smell."
Bernard let out a glad cry, and she was immediately half-crushed in one of his bear hugs.
"I may need my spine unbroken, Bernard," she rasped, but she felt herself smiling as she did.
He laid her back down on the bed immediately, carefully restraining his strength. "Sorry, Isana."
She laid her hand on his arm and smiled up at him. "Honestly. It"s all right."
"Well," said Bitte, her tone crisp. She was a tiny old woman, white-haired and hunched but with more wits than most, and she had been an inst.i.tution in the Valley for years before the First Battle of Calderon had ever taken place, much less the more recent events. She stood up and made shooing motions. "Out, everyone, out. You all need to eat, and I daresay Isana could use a few moments of privacy."
Isana smiled gratefully at Bitte, then told Bernard, "I"ll come down in a few moments."
"Are you sure you should-" he began.
She lifted a hand, and said, more steadily, "I"ll be fine. I"m starving."
All right," Bernard relented, and retreated before Bitte like an indulgent bull from a herding dog. "But let"s eat in the study," he said. "We have some things to discuss."
Isana frowned. "Of course, then. I"ll be right there."
They left, and Isana took a few moments to pull her thoughts together while she freshened up. Her stomach twisted in revulsion as she saw the blood on her skirts and tunic, and she got out of the clothes as quickly as she possibly could, throwing them into the room"s fire. It was wasteful, but she knew she couldn"t have put them on again. Not after seeing the darkness close in on the young man"s eyes.
She tore her thoughts away from that moment and stripped her underclothing off as well, changing into clean garments. She took her long, dark hair down from its braid, idly noting still more strands of grey. There was a small dressing mirror upon a chest of drawers, and she regarded herself in it thoughtfully as she brushed out her hair. More grey, but to look at her one would not know her age, of course. She was slim (far too much so, by fashionable standards), and her features were still those of a girl only a bit more than twenty years of age-less than half of the years she had actually lived. If she lived to be Bitte"s age, she might look as old as a woman in her midthirties, but for the grey hairs, which she refused to dye into darkness. Perhaps that was because between her too-thin body, and the apparent youth gifted to watercrafters, the grey hairs were the only things that marked her as a woman rather than a girl. They were a dubious badge of honor for what she had suffered and lost in her years, but they were all she had.
She left her hair down, rather than braiding it again, and frowned at herself in the mirror. Taking dinner in the study instead of the hall? It must mean that Bernard-or more likely Amara-was concerned about what might be overheard. Which meant that she had come with some kind of word from the Crown.
Isana"s stomach twisted again, this time in anxiety. The killer in the barn had arrived with quite improbable timing. What were the odds that such a thing would happen only hours before the Crown"s messenger arrived in the Valley? It seemed that the two could hardly be unrelated.
Which begged the question-who had sent the killer after her? The enemies of the Crown?
Or Gaius himself.
The thought was not as ridiculous as others might think, given what she knew. Isana had met Gaius and felt his presence. She knew that he was a man of steel and stone, with the will to rule, to deceive and, when necessary, to kill to protect his position and his people. He would not hesitate to order her slain should she become a threat to him. And for all that he knew, she might be one one.
She shivered, and pushed her worries down, forcing herself to wrap her fears with thoughts of confidence and strength. She"d been keeping secrets for twenty years, and she knew how to play the game as well as any in the Realm. As much as she liked Amara, and as much as she liked seeing that she made Isana"s brother happy, Amara was a Cursor and loyal to the Crown.
She could not be trusted.
The stone halls of the steadholt would be cold as the evening blanketed the valley, so she drew a heavy shawl of dark red about her shoulders to add to the deep blue dress, donned her slippers, and moved quietly through the hallways to Bernardholt-no, to Isanaholt"s Isanaholt"s study. To study. To her her study. study.
The room was not a large one, and this deep in the stone walls of the steadholt there were no windows. Two tables filled up most of the s.p.a.ce, and a slateboard and shelves filled the walls. In the winter, when there was more time than could be filled with work, the children of the steadholt learned their basic arithmetic, studied records of furycrafting for guidance in the use of their own furies, and learned to do at least a little reading. Now, Bernard, Amara, and Aric, the Valley"s youngest Steadholder, occupied one table, which was laid out with the evening meal.
Isana slipped in quietly and shut the door behind her. "Good evening. I"m sorry I wasn"t on hand to greet you properly, Your Excellencies, Steadholder."
"Nonsense," Aric said, rising and smiling at her. "Good evening, Isana."
Bernard rose as well, and they waited for Isana to sit down before they did themselves.
They ate in quiet conversation for a while, chatting about little of consequence, until the meal was finished. "You"ve hardly spoken at all, Aric," Isana said, as they pushed plates aside and sat sipping at cups of hot tea. "How did you and yours weather the winter?"
Aric frowned. "I"m afraid that"s why I"m here. I..." He flushed a little. "Well. To be honest, I"m having a problem, and I wanted to consult with you before I bothered Count Bernard with it."
Bernard frowned. "For fury"s sake, Aric. I"m still the same man I was two years ago, t.i.tle or no. You shouldn"t worry about bothering me when it"s hold business."
"No sir," Aric said. "I won"t, Your Excellency, sir."
"Good."
The young man promptly turned to Isana, and said, "There have been some problems, and I"m concerned that I may need the Count"s help."
Amara covered her mouth with her hand until she could camouflage the smile behind a cup as she drank. Bernard settled back with a tolerant smile, but Isana felt something else from him-a sudden stab of anxiety.
Aric poured a bit more wine into his cup and settled back from the table. He was a spare man, all arms and legs, and still too young to have the heavier, more muscular build of maturity. For all of that, he was considered to be uncommonly intelligent, and in the past two years had worked hard enough on the two steadholts under his authority to separate himself entirely from what was now generally considered to be an unfortunate blood relation with his late father, Kord.
"Something"s been hunting on the eastern steadholt," he said in a serious tone. "We were missing nearly a third of the cattle we had to turn out to wild forage over the winter, and we a.s.sumed that they"d been taken by thanadents or even a herdbane. But we"ve lost two more cows from our enclosed pastures since we"ve brought them in."
Isana frowned. "You mean they"ve been killed?"
"I mean they"ve been lost," Aric said. "At night, they were in the pasture. In the morning they weren"t. No tracks. No blood. No corpses. Just gone."
Isana felt her eyebrows lift. "That"s... odd. Cattle thieves?"
"I thought so," Aric said. "I took two of my woodcrafters, and we went into the hills to track down whoever it was. We searched for their camp, and we found it." Aric took a large swallow of wine. "It looked like there might have been as many as twenty men there, but they were gone. The fires were out, but there was a spit of burnt meat sitting over one of them. There were clothes, weapons, bedrolls and tools lying out as if they"d all gotten up and walked away without taking anything with them."
Bernard"s frown deepened, and Aric turned earnestly to face him.
"It was... wrong wrong, sir. It was frightening. I don"t know how else to describe it to you, but it made the hair on our necks stand up. And dark was coming on, so I took my men and headed back for the steadholt as quickly as we could." His face grew a little more pale. "One of them, Grimard-you remember him, sir, the man with the scar over his nose?"
"Yes. Attican legionare legionare, I think, retired out here with his cousin. I saw him cut down a pair of Wolf warriors at Second Garrison."
"That"s him," Aric said. "He didn"t make it back to the steadholt."
"Why?" Isana asked. "What happened?"
Aric shook his head. "We were strung out in a line, with me in the middle. He wasn"t five yards away. One minute he was there, but when I turned around to look a moment later, he was gone. Just... gone, sir. No sound. No tracks. No sign of him." Aric looked down. "I got scared, and I ran. I shouldn"t have done that."
"Crows, boy," Bernard said, still frowning. "Of course course you should have done that. That would have scared the hairs right off my head." you should have done that. That would have scared the hairs right off my head."
Aric looked up at him and down again, shame still on his features. "I don"t know what to tell Grimard"s wife. We"re hoping he"s still alive, sir, but..." Aric shook his head. "But I don"t think he is. We aren"t dealing with bandits, or Marat. I don"t have a reason why. It"s just..."
"Instinct," Bernard rumbled. "Never discount it, lad. When did this happen?"
"Last night. I"ve ordered the children kept in the steadholt walls, and that no one should leave in groups of less than four. I left first thing morning to speak with Isana."
Bernard exhaled slowly and glanced at Amara. The Cursor nodded, stood up, and went to the door. Isana heard her whisper something while she touched the wood of the door, and her ears pained her briefly, then popped.
"We should be able to speak freely now," Amara said.
"Speak freely about what?" Aric asked.
"About something I learned from Doroga this morning," Bernard said. "He says that there is some manner of creature he called a vord. That it was dwelling in the Wax Forest, and that something happened that caused it to leave its home." Isana frowned, listening as Bernard told the rest of what Doroga had confided to him regarding the creature.
"I don"t know, sir," Aric said, his voice dubious. "I"ve never heard of anything like this. A blood-drinking shapeshifter? We would have heard of such a thing, wouldn"t we?"