“But how?”
“It doesn’t matter. Come away from the window,” he said, climbing back into his bed and gesturing for the boy to do the same.
Xaver backed away from the window and then turned toward the Qirsi, his eyes large and fearful, like those of a child.
“The duke can know nothing of what happened tonight,” Fotir said, pointing to the boy’s bed once more.
Xaver lay down again. “You mean our duke?”
“Yes. We’ll tell him soon; he’ll want to know that Lord Tavis is safe. But for now, don’t speak of it, even if the three of us are alone. If Aindreas has any cause to believe that he knew, it could lead to war.”
“But won’t Aindreas suspect the duke?”
“Of course. But leave that to Javan. As long as he doesn’t know anything of the escape, he’ll be able to defend himself against Aindreas’s accusations.”
“All right.”
Fotir heard footsteps in the hallway and the ring of steel as swords were drawn.
“Be brave, Xaver MarCullet,” he said. “Remember who you are and all that your father has taught you.”
Someone pounded heavily on their door.
“Open this door!” a voice called. “Or by authority of the duke of Kentigern we’ll break it in!”
Fotir stepped to the door and pulled it open. Perhaps a dozen guards were crowded in the corridor, all of them with their swords drawn. Several held torches.
“The two of you will come with us,” one of the men said.
Fotir nodded. “Of course. Can we dress first?”
The man nodded. Fotir and Xaver pulled on their clothes and stepped into the corridor. The guards had Javan as well. The duke looked sleepy and confused, his clothes thrown on hastily.
Before the guards could take them anywhere, however, Aindreas
and Shurik came around the far corner, the Qirsi minister hurrying to keep up with his duke.
“Ah, good,” Kentigern said, seeing Javan and the rest of them. “I was afraid the three of you would be gone as well.”
Javan straightened, as if finally rousing himself from his slumber. “What is the meaning of this, Aindreas?”
Kentigern shook his head. “I should have known,” he muttered. He turned to the captain of his guards. “Report.”
“The duke was asleep, my lord. Or at least he seemed to be.” He pointed to Fotir and Xaver. “These two were already awake.”
“We’re both light sleepers,” Fotir explained evenly. “From all the noise outside we thought the castle was under attack.”
The large duke sneered. “Of course you did.”
“I demand an explanation!” Javan said, sounding, Fotir had to admit, like a peevish boy.
A guard who had entered Fotir and Xaver’s chamber a few moments before emerged now and shook his head. A second man stepped out of Javan’s room a few seconds later and did the same.
“Nothing, my lord,” this one said.
“Very well, Javan,” Aindreas said, looking at Curgh’s duke once more. “If you insist on playing this game, I’ll go along. Your son is gone from my dungeon. We don’t know how he got out, or where he is now. But we’re searching the castle and the city, and even now I have soldiers fanning out over the countryside. We will find him. So unless you wish to see him ridden down like an animal, or killed by my archers and dragged back to the castle behind a mount, you’d better tell me where he is.”
The duke paled at the news—surely Aindreas saw it as well—and he put a trembling hand to his lips.
“Tavis escaped?” he said, his voice unsteady. “Ean be praised! When?”
Aindreas dismissed the question with an impatient gesture, turning to Fotir. But the Qirsi could see that he was unnerved by Javan’s response.
“What about you?” Kentigern demanded. “What do you know about this?”
The minister shrugged, surprising himself with how calm he felt. “Nothing, my Lord Duke. As I told you—”
“Yes, yes. You thought we were under attack. No doubt you were hurrying to our aid when my men opened your door.”
“Actually no,” Fotir said. “We were about to check on our duke, just as one would expect of his loyal servants.”
“My lord, my lord!” came a voice before Kentigern could answer. An instant later two more guards ran into the corridor, nearly crashing into several other guards. “My lord!” one of them said again.
Aindreas took an eager step toward them, pushing aside two of his men. “Yes, what is it? Have you found him?”
“No, my lord. Something else. A hole in the wall of the north city tower.”
“A hole? In the stone?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Aindreas whirled toward Fotir, grinning triumphantly. “I knew that there was Qirsi magic behind this! How else could his manacles have broken? How else could he have gotten out of the dungeon without being seen? How else could he have walked after all—?” He faltered, though only for an instant. “After all that time in chains.”
Fotir almost forgot himself. He so wanted to reveal what Kentigern had done to Lord Tavis, here, in front of Javan and Xaver and the man’s guards, that he nearly pounced on Aindreas’s slip of the tongue. But by doing so he would have proven his own complicity in the boy’s escape.
“I don’t understand, my lord,” he said instead. “Are you accusing me of helping Lord Tavis escape?”
“Well, who else would I accuse?” Aindreas gestured toward his first minister. “Shurik?”
Fotir allowed himself a smile. “And you believe that I used my magic to break a hole in your castle?”
“Would you have me believe that you used your hands?”
The Qirsi laughed. “One is as likely as the other, my lord. Even if I had the power to do such a thing, I would barely be able to speak for the effort, much less stand here as I’m doing.”
Aindreas looked at him skeptically.
“You needn’t believe me, my lord,” Fotir said. “Ask your first minister.”
The duke turned to Shurik, a question in his pale eyes.
Shurik cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’m afraid he’s right, my lord. I don’t possess the shaping power myself, but I know many who do. It’s my understanding that, if the minister had done what
you’ve accused him of doing, he would scarcely be able to stand for hours afterward.”
“Well, perhaps you had help,” Aindreas said.
Before Fotir could respond, Javan began to chuckle, shaking his head. “You’re like an Aneiran constable, Aindreas, determined to blame the first person you find for each crime no matter what the facts tell you. Even the most plausible denials aren’t good enough for you. You’ve made up your mind that Tavis is guilty, despite the blood we found on his window shutter. And now you’re doing the same with Fotir, even after what your first minister just told you.”
The duke’s face shaded to purple, and Fotir feared that Javan had gone to far. It was bad enough likening a Kentigern to an Aneiran, but to do so under these circumstances, with Brienne dead and Tavis gone from the prison, bordered on cruel.
“Your son has escaped my prison,” Aindreas said, biting off each word. “Whom else should I blame but one of your company?”
The duke of Curgh shrugged indifferently. “I don’t know. I won’t lie to you and tell you I’m sorry. I hope that my boy is already leagues away from this castle. I don’t even care if he’s in Aneira, so long as he’s safe from you and your dungeon. But as your own guards have already told you, he’s not in Fotir’s room, nor is he in mine. So blaming one of us for his escape strikes me as rather foolish.” He turned back toward his room. “I’m going back to sleep. I hope your search for Tavis proves as fruitless as your efforts to keep him locked away.”
“Hold, Javan!” Kentigern said, his voice echoing in the narrow corridor.
The duke faced him again. “What is it now? You wish to search my chamber a second time? Perhaps you think I carved a hole in your castle wall with my sword, and you want to see if my blade is notched.”
Aindreas bristled. “I see no humor in this,” he said. “My daughter’s killer has escaped and until he is found I plan to hold you and your company in his place.” He glanced at his captain. “Take them. You’re not to let them out of your sight. Do you understand?”
The man nodded. “You want them in the dungeon, my lord?”
The duke hesitated, his eyes flicking toward his first minister. Shurik held his gaze briefly, then shook his head.
“No, not to the dungeon,” Aindreas answered, shaking his head
as well. “Put them in the prison tower. See to their needs, keep them fed and reasonably comfortable. But they are not to leave the tower.”
“You would make a prisoner of your future king?” Javan demanded.
“If I must.”
“Though it mean civil war?”
“Wouldn’t you do the same to save your son?”
Javan did not respond, but Aindreas must have seen the answer written on his features, for a moment later he gave a dark grin.
“Yes, of course you would. So how can you expect me to do any less as I seek justice for my daughter?”
Still Javan said nothing. What was there to say? The two dukes merely stared at each other, as if with swords drawn for a battle that would determine the fate of the entire kingdom. At last Aindreas looked away, though only so that he could nod to the captain of his guards.
An instant later the captain gave a sharp order to his men, and Javan, Xaver, and Fotir were led away to Kentigern’s prison tower.
After nearly half a turn in the castle prison, Tavis was too stiff and weak to walk on his own. And after all he had done that night, bending the minds of the guards, helping Fotir break the iron bars, healing some of the young lord’s wounds, Grinsa could hardly carry him. At another time, in almost any other place, the gleaner might have found the situation amusing. But scrambling down the side of Kentigern Tor in the shadow of Aindreas’s great fortress, half supporting Lord Tavis, half carrying him, he saw nothing funny in it at all.
The boy hadn’t said a word since they left the castle, though he had cried out in pain several times and was now sucking air through his teeth with almost every step.
“Do you need to rest?” Grinsa asked him. He didn’t want to stop. They were only halfway down the tor. Grinsa couldn’t even see his mount yet. But neither did he want to kill the boy.
“I’m fine,” Tavis managed. “Don’t stop.”
The gleaner could tell that he was lying, that his fear of returning to the dungeon was simply more powerful than his pain. But Grinsa took the boy at his word, continuing to steer him down the mountain.
“I have a horse ahead,” he said. “Not far from here.”
“I’m no more fit to ride than I am to walk, gleaner. You’ll have to sling me across his back like a corpse.”
“If you can lie still enough, that may get us past a guard or two.”
In spite of everything, the boy laughed. Perhaps there was more to him than the spoiled child Grinsa had seen at his Fating.
“Where will we go?” he asked a moment later.
Grinsa started to answer, then faltered. With all the boy had to fear just now, he didn’t need this as well.
“A place where you’ll be safe,” he said at last. “I can’t tell you more than that right now.”
He expected an argument, but Tavis merely nodded, gasping once more as an awkward step jarred him. The moons were obscured by clouds at the moment and while their light might have helped the gleaner navigate the tumble of rocks and clumped grass, Grinsa was just as glad to see them darkened. Panya’s bright glow was not their ally tonight.
The moons emerged again just as they reached the bottom of the tor and the ground started to level off. Panya’s light touched the city once more, revealing Grinsa’s mount standing in the field where the Qirsi had left him.
“This way,” he said, leading the boy toward the horse.
Before they got to the animal, however, the gleaner heard a cry go up from the castle.
He whirled, nearly knocking Tavis to the ground.
“Already?”
“What is it?” Tavis asked.
“I fear they’ve already learned of your escape.”
“Perhaps the gods aren’t with us.”
“Nonsense,” he said, hurrying the boy to the horse and lifting him into the saddle.
Grinsa swung himself onto the beast as well, sitting just behind the young lord to keep him from falling. The shouting in the castle had grown louder. Fires were lit in the towers overlooking the city, to be answered a few seconds later by bright flames atop the city gates. If Grinsa had been planning to leave the city, all would have been lost. But he had another place in mind, one that was far closer, but just as safe.
He kicked the horse into motion, drawing another soft cry from Tavis. He needed more healing and a good deal of sleep.
Grinsa needed rest as well, but first he had to get them to the far side of the city.
The street that ran past the field connected the castle road to the city gate nearest the Tarbin, both of which were sure to be crawling with guards by now. The gleaner steered his mount across the lane and through a narrow yard between two small shops. They came to another field and, crossing that, reached another small lane. Grinsa pulled the animal to a halt and looked around briefly, getting his bearings.