But Bey’s words only reminded Mags of what he was going to have to do at dawn. “Not much to discuss,” he said, dully, sitting back down again and rubbing his leg and hand to get the prickles out. “I gotta give myself up. You know that, I know that, and there’s not much anybody can do about it. Well, I’d appreciate it if you’d come with me so you can keep ’em from trying to hang one of those spirit-holders around my neck. But—”
“Not so fast, my cousin,” Bey interrupted, with a gesture of negation. He sat down next to Mags. “Speak quietly. I would not like to waken your friends until we have a plan, you and I. I said, we have a great deal to discuss. I am
certainly
not going to let you walk out to those . . . toads. They would not heed me, for I am not the heir yet, and they would most
certainly
hang one of the Ancestor Stones about your neck, aye, and dose you with the herbs until you purged yourself of everything useful to me!” He scowled. “You will do me no good if your Blessing is destroyed by such handling. So I am here to keep you out of their hands.”
“Wh—what?” Mags could hardly believe what he was hearing.
“When I left you, I went outside of the caves for the first time since I arrived here. I was not pleased to see my countrymen on the heights above, and particularly not pleased to see
those
countrymen. The only thing that pleased me—” the teeth shone again “—was to know how miserable the last storm had made them. So! I crept about their camp, less than a shadow, and I learned much. I watched them send their message and—I am sorry I could not prevent this—I saw them strike down your friend.”
“But—what do you think I can do?” Mags asked.
“You and I have shared minds. Therefore, you have knowledge of my training. You are not
quite
the equal of me, but you are ten times the Sleepgiver of any of those dogs outside.” Bey’s tone was arrogant, but Mags was not about to argue with him, not with hope unlooked-for in his hands. “Your friend, who became nearly a spitted fowl—how fares he?”
“He’s hurt, but he’ll live,” Mags said. Bey nodded.
“That is well. He is rash. If he is hurt, we can put him with the others of your friends who are no help to us. The most secure place is that cave wherein you bathe in steam. A good custom that; I adopted it, and I think I shall take it with me. We should put them there and pile wood before it to act as a bulwark. They can fire over that at need.” Bey held up a finger. “Your mate. She is useful. I have seen her shoot.” He held up another. “The doctor-of-herbs. He is also useful.
His
mate and the old singer, they are not. They shall be with your wounded friend, while you and I dispose of those inconvenient dogs outside, and your mate and the doctor stand ready.”
Mags gaped at him. After all of the emphasis the Sleepgivers had put on blood relations—he could scarcely believe the words coming out of Bey’s mouth. “But—those are your kinsmen!” he stammered.
Bey made a little motion with his hands, as if he was brushing away a bug. “Not that close. Cousins of cousins of cousins of cousins, and probably born of slave women. Idiots. And they follow a faction that would keep to the old, bad ways. This is as good a way as any to be rid of them.”
Mags felt a tiny chill down his back at the casual way that Bey had just dismissed the murder of his own countrymen . . . but he couldn’t let that stop him. Nevertheless, it was . . . telling. Bey was, in his own way, just as ruthless as any other of the Sleepgivers. When something was going to get in his way, he removed it. If he had to remove it permanently, he obviously didn’t let little things like kinship stop him.
That reminded Mags of the way the young Sleepgivers were first taught; make no friendships, allow no ties of affection. Compete, or fail, and become—what? Probably slaves, or servants no better than slaves, if you were lucky. If you were not, you died as a result of your failure. Bey had never gone through that training, since it was becoming clear to Mags that even as there were three tiers of rank within the Sleepgivers themselves, there were obviously two tiers, at least, of training. But Bey was the product of the culture that had produced that training. No matter how charming and likable he could be,
that
culture was what had formed him.
“So, what do we do?” Mags asked, anxiously. “You don’t want me to give myself up, but I can’t let them slaughter helpless people!”
Bey smiled a little. “That is not an issue at the moment. It is not a hollow threat, I do assure you, but at the moment, they are as trapped here by your wretched
snow”
—he used the Valdemaran word, because presumably the Sleepgivers didn’t have a word for snow—“as we are. They cannot go and cull some hapless woodcutter for days yet. I have seen, when I discovered them and went up to spy upon them. The snow is chest-deep around about here, and as high as a house in places. It will be long before they could even attempt to make good on their threat.”
Mags heaved a sigh of relief. So they had—well, probably several days at least before they had to worry about innocents getting caught up in this.
“They have been here since just before the first great storm,” Bey continued. “They followed you from the city of the Crown, a little behind me, it seems.” He scowled. “It is irritating to admit, but they are better trackers than I. They easily uncovered all your ruses to throw them off the trail. This vexes me. I had not thought that my tracking skills were inferior to anyone.” Then he shook his head. “Never mind. They thought to take you at a town, using the folk there to force you, but they thought better of that plan when they saw how chaotic your towns are. The people are not of one mind, there are dwellings spread all about, and while it would be the work of a child to simply strike at will and fade away, the taking of a hostage is more difficult work than that. There was no good place or time when they could have taken hostages, and you would certainly have fought and maybe been hurt, and the Shadao specifically forbid you being injured.”
“Thank the Shadao for me,” Mags said dryly.
Bey looked at him in astonishment, then barked a laugh. “Ha! Almost a Sleepgiver joke! Are you still so sure you do not wish to come with me?” Before Mags could answer, he waved his hand. “Nay the answer is on your face. So, so, so, they came here. They came up over the hills, where I came in the cleft. They found the high caves where I found the low. They provisioned themselves just in time before the storm struck. They are not, however, nearly so well provisioned as you. They are cold, they are impatient, they begin to hunger, and we may use that to our advantage.”
Now
that
was more like it. “You have a plan?” Mags asked, eagerly.
Bey smiled. “I have many, many plans, and they are all superior, oh my cousin. I am a Sleepgiver. I am of the best of the best of the Sleepgivers. All my plans are superior. We only need to consult and determine which is the
most
superior.”
Then he looked around a little. “Meanwhile . . . I hunger. And after your distress, and sleeping all awry, I expect you hunger as well. Where are those delectable morsels of meat-in-crust? I so enjoyed the ones I stole!”
16
O
f all of the things that Mags had imagined happening this morning, standing beside his cousin as Lita, Lena, Bear, and Amily came out at the sound of voices and saying, “Everyone, this is my cousin Bey,” had not been one of them. He had imagined sneaking off at first light so no one saw him go. He had thought someone might emerge before he could, and there would be tears, or recriminations, or just silent misery. But this was almost a triumph.
The looks on their faces as Bey swept a sort of bow that included an elaborate flourish of his right hand was worth any amount of money.
The explanation took surprisingly little time. As he had suspected, although he and Bey had been using the language of the Sleepgivers all this time, Bey spoke passable Valdemaran, and he switched to it except when he didn’t have a word for something. That wasn’t very often. It was the Sleepgiver tongue that lacked Valdemaran words, usually, not the other way around.
Bey exerted a formidable charm and managed to win all of them over so fast that Mags would have suspected Mind-magic if he hadn’t known Bey didn’t have any. Even Lita was caught in his charisma. Or so he thought, anyway.
The Bard was not as enraptured as she seemed. But she also was well aware that their options were limited to Bey’s plans and Mags giving up.
“I thought you said I was an idiot,” Mags whispered to her, as Bey queried Bear earnestly about various supplies.
“What choice to we have?” she whispered back. “We’ve got no guarantee that even if you
do
turn yourself over to these Sleepgivers, they won’t turn around and slaughter us anyway! They’ve already killed Jak, as far as they know. They won’t hesitate to do the rest of us, considering they plan on wiping your mind clean of
you
anyway.”
Mags nodded soberly. That was a very real possibility, and one that he and Bey had discussed, albeit briefly. Now that he knew that these Sleepgivers didn’t give a toss about what Bey told them . . . once they had him in their clutches, they had no incentive to be merciful and plenty of incentive to make sure there was no one to sound an alarm until it was too late and they were back across the border.
Well, this way, if I go down, I go down on my own terms, and ain’t no Ancestor-thing going to be walking around in my body, after.
• • •
They’d all settled in and around Lita’s sleeping nook. The fires were being allowed to die out. Jakyr was sitting up with help from cushions, looking alert but clearly in pain.
“So this is our plan, friend-of-my-cousin,” Bey said cheerfully. “We have made inventory of our options, and they are better than I had thought. The Sleepgivers above are in a worse position than we. Their food is only what they can catch on the hills above; they are reduced to shooting those thin little black birds that flock to sleep in the trees at night. They will not be able to break a path to a village to threaten anyone for some time, and they have a dilemma. They can break the path and chance us escaping,
or
they can lay siege to us and hope that we break. Also, they do not know I am with you. They are hungry and cold. They like this snow no better than I, which is to say, not at all. So, they think they have killed one of you. I think
they
think that you are not well provisioned either. If I were a fool like they, I would say
lay siege, they will come out and we shall kill them one by one except for Meric.
So. We give them something they do not expect.”
“What’s that?” Jakyr asked.
Bey smiled, but it was Mags that answered. “Silence. Now, that means we’re gonna be a mite uncomfortable here ourselves. We let the fires burn out, so there’s no more smoke above, where they can see it, and no light comin’ outa the cave mouth at night. All of you pull back into that dead end where the steam bath is, even the horses an’ the Companions. You’ll all have blankets and the food’ll be cold, but we gotta make ’em think that we run outa provisions, we all died, or maybe we got sick, or somehow we escaped. And they won’t know which, till they come down to look the situation over. We make ’em come to us.”
Bey took it up from there. “They will not
all
come. And they are not all of one mind, which will do us good. Some are loyal to the Shadao entirely, others favor a nephew that might be made heir were I not to be. They will send three of mixed faction, which will mean they do not fight with one mind, but singly, each hoping to be the one to say
I am the one that took Meric
. We will kill them, Mags and I, silently, and with no sign, for Mags has shared my memories and, thus, my skills. We will take the bodies off and conceal them and all signs that they were slain. And then we will wait. When the first three do not return, another three will come. We will do the same. Now their numbers will be halved; they will send no more, and we will have to consider another strategy.” Bey waited, with an air that he expected them all to agree that this was a brilliant plan. Into the silence came a distant drip of water.
“You make it sound so easy,” Jakyr said dryly, after a very long pause. One eyebrow rose, slightly, and he pressed his hand to one of his wounds.
“For a true Sleepgiver, it will be,” Bey said with easy arrogance. “Ehu, we will see, which are the true Sleepgivers and which the inferior. But! Some may slip by us. They might find a way down from the upper caves and come in behind Mags and me. You must be quiet, and you must also be alert to defend yourselves—which is why we will put you in a place with no second entrance. Most of a Sleepgiver’s advantages are gone if he must confront a prepared target, yet they will still be formidable. Inferior Sleepgivers though they be, they are still of the House.” His eyes glittered in the light. “And those of the House, as you have found, are not to be dismissed.” The vanners pawed their straw, then went back to dozing.
“I don’t like it,” Jakyr said flatly, then sighed. “But I don’t see a choice.”
Bey clapped his hands, startling the vanners, who snorted. “Well said! Now, I shall go and gather what we need, the Healer and his mate will commence to move the beasts while we have light and will settle them in a place in that dead end where they can see before we leave them in darkness so that they are content once the darkness closes in, and will sleep. Elder Singer, do you keep companionship with this one, while Mags and his mate make for you all a place that is warm as may be and gather there food enough for two or three days.”
Bey sprang to his feet and trotted off. Bear and Lena headed for the vanners. Before Amily and Mags could move, Lita looked sternly at Jakyr. “Why?” she asked him harshly.
Mags and Amily froze. The Herald and the Bard were intent on each other and oblivious to their presence.
Jakyr did not ask her what she meant. “Lit’, I nearly died back at Carnavon Grove. I saw what happened to Tully’s wife, and Kal’s girl after. I didn’t think you would be able to handle burying me. And I didn’t think you should sacrifice a shot at becoming one of the instructors at Bardic just to follow me around and
then
end up burying me. So I . . . said what I said to drive you away. I just picked the cruelest things I could, even if I knew there wasn’t a grain of truth in them. And you saw what happened here, was I wrong?”