The Lost Heiress Page 3

  She laughed. “We know about that. He’s after you.”

  “Is he?” Raffi was alarmed.

  “Some of our spies have reported that he’s sent men out, asking questions. You should be careful.”

  “I intend to be,” Galen said drily. “Did you hear how Raffi climbed up the wall of his tower?”

  She giggled. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  “Neither did I,” Raffi muttered, remembering the terror of the swinging rope, his raw hands.

  Carys was silent a moment. Then she looked up, her eyes bright. “I’ve got some information you’ll find . . . interesting. It’s highly secret.” Her glance flickered to Rocallion.

  He caught it, and stood up. “Your packs are hidden in an old well out near here. I’ll get them for you.”

  When he had gone she got up and checked the door, then came back and crouched. Excitement was streaming from her; Raffi could almost see it, and he struggled up in the straw, his skin tingling.

  “Listen,” she said. “Last month, up in the hills, an old woman was being questioned.”

  “Questioned?” Galen looked at her grimly.

  “I can’t help their methods. In any case, she suddenly came out with some amazing information, probably to save herself. She told them she once worked in the Emperor’s palace. When the Emperor was killed at the fall of Tasceron, the young man next to him, whose body was too badly burned to be sure about, was assumed to have been his son. According to the old woman, this wasn’t so. The son, the Prince, escaped. He lived for many years in hiding in a village named Carno. He married, and seven years ago he had a child. The old woman lived with them. Her name was Marta. No one else knew who they were. But then a Watchpatrol came for slave laborers for the mines at Far Reach. They took the parents, and the old woman, though she was no good to them. No one seems to know what happened to the child.”

  “And the Prince?” Galen said.

  “Dead. We checked.”

  They were silent. Then Raffi breathed out slowly. “So the Emperor had a grandchild.”

  Galen pondered, his eyes glinting. “This is excellent news, Carys, if it’s true . . . Boy or girl?”

  “That was one thing she wouldn’t say.”

  “A new Emperor!” Galen stood up and limped around in excitement. “It’s a miracle! And it fits. When the Makers come back everything will be restored.”

  “You’re still sure they’re coming?” Carys asked quietly.

  “You were there. You heard them.”

  She shook her head, rueful. “I heard something. A voice. But look, Galen, if you want this Interrex of yours—”

  “What did you say?” The keeper whirled around, staring at her, his eyes black. In the shadows his face was suddenly hooked and sharp. The Crow’s face.

  “I said Interrex. It’s Braylwin’s joke. It’s from your Book.”

  He glanced at Raffi. “Once again.”

  Carys frowned. “What do you mean, again?”

  “It was the Word. On Flainsnight. The word the Makers sent.”

  For a moment she looked at Galen so still and strangely that he felt something flame up in her, some doubt or anger. Then she said bleakly, “Well, anyway, if you want this Interrex you’d better find him fast. Or her. Because we’re already looking.”

  “We?”

  “The Watch. And the reward is big, believe me.”

  Galen came close to her, suddenly. “Leave the Watch, Carys! Come with us.”

  “I’ve told you I won’t. You could be all wrong, Galen. Mistaken about everything.”

  He smiled coldly. “Was the Crow wrong? When you saw the House of Trees break into leaf, when you heard a voice from the stars, was all that a mistake? You know it wasn’t.”

  The silence was bitter.

  Then, abruptly, the door banged open and Rocallion backed in, two packs in his arms and Galen’s stick thrust through his belt. A gust of leaf-dust swirled in with him.

  Carys stood up. “I’ve told you. You must do what you want about it. If the Watch find the child they’ll kill it, that’s for sure.” Then she laughed at them, eyes bright. “I’m not really with the Watch, Galen. I’m for myself, I told you that. There are things I want to find out, and being on the inside is the best way. Braylwin’s lazy; he spends every winter in the Tower of Song, and I want to go with him, because that’s where all the Watch records are kept. I need to know who I am. Where I came from. But you must find the Interrex. That word was for you.”

  She was at the door, but she stopped when Raffi blurted out, “You haven’t told us how you’ve been.”

  “Under suspicion.” She kicked the straw absently. “I put in a report about Tasceron. It was a masterpiece of lies—you’d have loved it, Raffi. But someone must guess I’m holding back. I was hauled off surveillance and assigned to this Braylwin. For the time being I’m stuck with him. He’s as sly as they come. And odious.”

  “Be careful,” Raffi muttered.

  She nodded.

  Galen gave Rocallion a hurried blessing; the young man knelt hastily in the straw.

  “Go back with her,” Galen told him. Then, turning to Carys, he said, “Get him into the house. I don’t want him in trouble for this, Carys. He’s done nothing but save our lives.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Rocallion shook Galen’s hand, then Raffi’s. “Good luck, keepers,” he said.

  “And you,” Galen answered. “Both of you.”

  From the door Carys gave them a strange look. “I’ll survive. But if you find this child, Galen, will you let me know? Will you trust me enough to tell me where it is? You’ll need the Watch kept away.”

  For a moment he stared at her darkly. Then he said, “You’ll hear from me, Carys.”

  4

  It is impossible for the agent to be overcunning, or have too little conscience.

  Rule of the Watch

  BRAYLWIN POURED half a flaskful of Rocallion’s best wine into a glass and sipped it, licking every drop from his lips. As Carys came in, his hand hovered over the dish of spiced chicken, picking out a succulent piece.

  “Well?”

  She went over to the fire and stared down angrily into the flames, leaning her forehead on the chimney-piece. “You’re scum, Braylwin. Odious, stinking scum.”

  He smiled an oily smile. “Ah, poor Carys. How hard she takes it! And not even to have any reward at the end of it—because all that will be mine. Anyway, it was your idea.” He spat a bone elegantly to one side and mopped his lips. “Tell Uncle all about it.”

  “Galen’s gone. And the boy.”

  “You got them past the guard?”

  “Only too easily.”

  “And they had no idea I knew about them? None at all, Carys?”

  She twisted, glaring at him. “Not from me. But Galen’s . . . Well, he’s got ways of knowing. I can’t be sure.”

  “Mmm. Well, it will have to do. Because if I thought you were playing your little tricks on me, sweetie, your uncle would be annoyed. Very annoyed.”

  She hated him. At that moment, staring down at his sleek skullcap, she longed to put a crossbow bolt through him, and was shocked at herself. Gripping her fists, she kept her voice calm. “I told them about the Interrex—all the information we had. I’m not sure it’ll work. He won’t know where to look any more than you.”

  “He won’t. But keepers have ways of finding things out. It’s said they talk to trees.” He giggled.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said savagely, “they do.”

  The small, sharp eyes fixed on her. “Ah, I’d forgotten you know all about them. One day, Carys, I’ll find out exactly what did go on in Tasceron.” He scratched his cheek and selected another piece of meat. She watched him, cold with fury, his fur-trimmed coat and the tiny black skullcap he wore to keep warm. “They’ll find the Interrex for us. What keeper could resist it?” He licked his thumb. “And as you say, it saves us doing any of the work. We get them, and the chi
ld, and a nice fat sack of gold. Or at least I do. Probably promotion too.”

  “What about me?”

  He wagged a greasy finger at her. “You get away with your life, sweetheart. And Uncle doesn’t tell about that business at Carner’s Haven.”

  She turned back to the fire, knowing he was smirking behind her. “Galen is worth ten of you,” she snarled.

  “He is, is he? That remark is enough to get you two years patrolling ice. Or worse. If you play games with the Watch, Carys, you pay the price.” She heard him clink his glass thoughtfully. “Does it hurt so much to betray them—the keeper, the boy, the cat-creature? Perhaps it does. Long ago I might have felt the same.”

  “I doubt it.”

  He glanced over. “High and mighty. But underneath, you and I are just the same, Carys.”

  Suddenly her disgust was too much. She turned and stalked past him, slamming the door, pushing two of Rocallion’s house-girls aside. Upstairs, in the small room she’d taken for herself, she flung the crossbow down and herself after it, onto the bed.

  How could she have brought herself to this? Been so stupid?

  Rolling over, she stared up at the ceiling, thinking back to Carner’s Haven.

  It had been the first time she’d seen the Watch take children, and it had shaken her. The patrol had ridden down to the village early, Braylwin on his new green-painted horse, but somehow the villagers had had warning. The place was in total confusion. All the children under ten were in hiding, the men yelling threats and the women screeching with anger and fear. “Search the place!” he’d roared, and she’d been the one to go into the barn in the last field and see the little girl wriggling halfway out of the straw.

  Thumping the mattress, Carys got up and went to the window, tugging it open. Leaf-dust drifted against her lips.

  Carefully she remembered that moment. The girl had been about four or five, crying, her face contorted with terror. The mother had burst out of hiding between them.

  “For God’s sake,” she’d breathed. “Let her go! Let us go!”

  It was only then Carys had realized the crossbow had been loaded and aimed; she’d lowered it abruptly, astonished.

  Why had she let them escape? Even now she wasn’t sure. Was it that the little girl with the brown hair might have been herself, all those years ago? Had she cried when the Watch took her? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember her mother or father, her village, anything before the grim stone rooms and snowy courtyards of Watchtower 547, Marn Mountain. Maybe that was why she’d lifted the baby and pushed her hurriedly through a gap in the back wall to the mother outside. Thinking about it made her feel uneasy, even now. Galen would have been pleased. Why did it matter what Galen thought?

  She looked up unhappily for the moons, but they were lost behind cloud; pale strange edges and nebulous glimmers. It would have been all right, but when she had turned around Braylwin had been standing inside the barn door, looking at her. He’d seen enough; she’d known instantly that he would use it against her. All he’d said was, “Oh, sweetheart!” in that mock-surprised, stupid way he had. But he’d seen.

  All he had to do was report it.

  Things were tricky enough already. They’d certainly have her in for questioning, and she knew too much. The House of Trees, the Order’s safe house in Tasceron, that Galen was the Crow, they’d get all that out of her—she dared not let them question her. Moodily she stared at the windowsill and cursed Galen to the Pit for letting her remember it all. Braylwin had her in his power, and how he loved it. Carys do this, Carys do that, all the worst work, the wretched endless reports. She was sick of it.

  And then he had found the awen-beads.

  His fat hand had picked them delicately from around the candles and she’d recognized them with a cold stab of dread. She knew Braylwin would tear the house apart to find a keeper. It had been her plan to let Raffi and Galen go and urge them to find the Interrex—the only thing she could think of on the spot.

  But Braylwin had liked it. It was clever, and meant no work for him. He was lazy. That was one weakness she could use.

  Perhaps she should have told Galen. Warned him. Or maybe not. He had to find this child in any case, and when he did . . . Well, she’d worry about that when it happened. At least they were free.

  Out in the cold night Agramon loomed suddenly from behind a cloud, outlining the dusty buildings and the fields beyond, their hedgerows dark and spiny, the trees branching against pale sky.

  It had been good to see them both again. Raffi looked a bit taller. Where were they now, she wondered, out in that leaf-littered land? Where would they go?

  For a brief, bitter second she wished she was with them, that she was walking down the muddy lanes away from here, away from the Watch, laughing with Raffi. Then, fiercely, she banged the window shut and turned her back on it.

  Braylwin was going to the Tower of Song.

  And she was going with him.

  Games of Chance

  5

  Flain’s anger made the sky shudder. Stars fell; the new seas boiled.

  Before them all, Kest swore he would make no more creatures; he abjured his poisons and philters and alchemies. But his heart was full of resentment. And he lied.

  Book of the Seven Moons

  THE HEDGEROWS WERE RIPE with berries, swelling russet and red in the long five-month autumn of Anara. As he walked, Raffi picked handfuls, eating some and tossing the rest into a small sack on his back. Far ahead, Galen leaned impatiently on a field-gate.

  Tall fireweed blazed scarlet; the leaves of hawthorn and elder and strail clogged the ruts, and from somewhere not far off the smell of smoke drifted—a stubble field burning, or from the chimney of a house. Raffi pulled a maggot from a fat blackberry and tossed it aside, into a patch of withering white-lady that glinted with dew.

  “Come on, boy,” Galen growled.

  They were two days’ walk from Rocallion’s manor, and deep in the network of tracks and lanes called the Meres. This was flat, marshy country, wet underfoot, the rich grasses sprouting from saturated peat. All day the two of them had squelched through it, Galen morose, brooding, striding relentlessly for hours and then sitting silent while the mists and fen fogs gathered around him.

  Picking a last berry, Raffi walked down the lane. The day was waning. Fog was thickening on the fields; in a copse on the horizon, woses chattered. Galen stared out grimly at the wood. “Hear it?”

  Raffi nodded bitterly. He’d hoped they’d spend the night under those trees, but not now. Woses were filthy and noisy, and savage in packs.

  “We’ll keep moving,” the keeper said.

  The fog gathered, swirling out of ditches and dykes. As they trudged on farther it closed in, and they lost sight of what was behind, pushing through a rich bruised smell of berries and hawthorn, the wet branches swinging back into their faces, stumbling in hidden ruts and puddles.

  Halfway up a long slow climb, Galen stopped. He turned his head. “Listen.”

  Glad of a rest, Raffi hitched his pack up, breathing hard. A bat squeaked in the twilight just above him.

  And then he heard it: the slow, wet clopping of a horse’s hooves. It was behind them, coming up the hill.

  Galen turned, the drops of fen fog glinting in his black hair. On each side the hedge was dim, spiny, unbreakable.

  “Quick!” he breathed.

  They climbed hastily up through the mist, moving in a strange luminous grayness. One of the moons must be out—Cyrax, perhaps—and her pearl-pale shimmer blurred the haze.

  As he hurried, Raffi sent a sense-line back, feeling the hot breath of the horse, the sweaty strength of it, the heaviness of its rider.

  Then Galen grabbed his arm, tugging him into the fog. Bushes loomed up and at their base a hole, wormed by some animal. Even as he fell on his stomach and wriggled in, Raffi knew they were taking a risk, and he tore his coat recklessly off the thorns. The hedge cracked and snapped; he breathed prayers of silence at
it, apologies, feeling the trees’ reluctant, displeased hush.

  With a hiss of pain Galen was in too. He raised his hand and Raffi saw, with a shiver of fear, that a Kest-claw clung to him. Galen flung it off and stamped on it, over and over. Blood ran between his fingers.

  “It’s bitten you!”

  “I’ll live. I’ve had it before.” But Raffi knew this was bad. A Kest-claw bit deep, poisoning the blood, sending dizziness and sickness, sometimes for days. It could kill.

  Galen wrapped the wound tight, crouching.

  Hooves thumped close on the track. From here, deep in leaves, his ear next to the ground, Raffi felt the heavy thump in his head like a pulse. A harness jangled. The horse blew and whickered and a man coughed.

  Carefully Raffi parted the leaves. He saw the horse’s legs. It had stopped.

  There was no doubt it could smell them both, hear them too. Galen was still; Raffi knew he had sent a thoughtline out to the beast, was soothing it, speaking words of comfort to it. Inching to one side, he saw the rider.

  A man, muffled in coats and a hood. Difficult to see; a misty figure, its head turning to look around, until a wraith of fog drifted away and the moon glimmered suddenly on armor, a heavy crossbow.

  The man turned. Raffi glimpsed eyes, beard, wet hair.

  Then the horse clopped on, vanishing strangely into the mist.

  For a long time they crouched, hearing it toil up the invisible hill, until the harness creak faded into silence, and only the smell of its droppings hung on the air.

  Galen leaned back. “Well, well.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you recognize him?”

  Raffi scrambled around. “No. Who?”

  “Godric. Remember him? One of Alberic’s men.”

  A drop of dew slid into Raffi’s ear; chilled, he shook it out. “Alberic!”

  “Who else?” Galen eased his legs out, flattening nettles. “I’m not that surprised. Carys warned us. And when a thief-lord screams out that he’ll kill you, he usually means it. He must have men out on all the roads. They’ll ask in every village too. We’ll have to go twice as carefully. And we’ll have to get to the Sekoi before they do.”