Shadow of the Father (12 page)

Yilon turned his attention to the room. The first thing he did was select his bright red shirt and hang it in the window, facing the plaza. That done, he sat down at the desk facing the window. A quick search of the desk drawers turned up no ink, nor any paper to accompany the pens. He took his own ink and paper from the case that sat atop his stack of books, and began a letter to his mother.

He’d gotten so far as telling her about the incident with Sinch at the Silent Muskrat when Min returned to summon him to dinner. Like lunch, he found the meal lacking, not only compared to the cooking in Divalia, but also compared to the cooking in Vinton. Maxon had declined to eat with them, but Velkan and Corwin, who had been visiting with Lady Dewanne, remained for dinner. Corwin kept the conversation lively, which was fortunate, because Yilon was starting to feel the effects of the afternoon’s meetings on top of the morning’s travel, and Velkan was far from an engaging dinner companion.

Min accompanied him back to his room. “I will ensure that your personal servant is assigned by the morning, sir,” he said.

“Thank you.” Yilon sat on the bed and yawned. “Does the window open? This room is rather stuffy.”

“Indeed, sir.” Min crossed the room and cracked open the window facing the city, then stood with ears at attention. “Will there be anything else?”

Yilon shook her head. “I wish not to be disturbed until morning.”

“Certainly.” Min bowed and closed the door behind him. Yilon didn’t see a lock on it, so after opening the window in front of which he’d hung the red shirt, he stripped off his clothes, put on his nightdress, and lay back on the bed.

It seemed he’d no sooner closed his eyes than he was awakened by a soft scratching. He sat up in bed and looked around in the grey night.

“Sinch?” he whispered.

The mouse clambered in through the window, pushing his shirt aside and landing on the bed. His eyes shone. “Hi,” he whispered back.

Yilon’s tail thumped the bed under the sheet. He reached out and clasped Sinch’s arm. “Was it hard to get in?”

“Much easier than the palace in Divalia.” The mouse crawled up the bed to lie next to Yilon. “There’s only guards at the entrance, and the walls are old and easy to climb.”

“You shouldn’t stay,” Yilon said, though he put his arm around the mouse’s shoulder. “I just want to tell you my plan.”

“Okay,” Sinch said. He rested his muzzle against Yilon’s cheekruff. “I can always come back. It’s easy, like I said.”

“You won’t have to for many more nights.” Yilon yawned. “Here’s what I had in mind.”

Sinch let him talk, interrupting only to say, “That sounds dangerous,” and, “In broad daylight?” When Yilon was done, he said, “I know someone who might help. But he’s dangerous, too.”

“It’s only temporary,” Yilon said. “On our way out of town we can tell them. By then he won’t be able to get you.”

“Yeah, but ‘til then…” Sinch drifted off, thinking.

“Can you manage it in time?”

Sinch’s dark eyes looked back at him. “I’ll manage it.”

Yilon smiled and relaxed, resting fingers along Sinch’s arm. “Where are you staying?”

“They dropped me off at the edge of the Warren,” Sinch’s said. “It’s the place where all the mice live. I walked around and found a boarding-house that had room. I found it on the first try. It’s not very clean, or big, but it is cheap. With the money my mother gave me, I could live there for half a year. You wouldn’t have liked the dinner. It was all boiled potatoes. But all the mice there are very friendly. They don’t like the foxes very much, though. When the carriage dropped me off, a couple kits threw stones at it…”

Yilon closed his eyes, both listening and not listening to Sinch. He drifted off again into a half-dream in which Sinch was explaining to him how the lordship of Dewanne worked, a convoluted explanation that involved him boiling potatoes and drizzling them with honey. That made no sense, Yilon thought, because they didn’t have honey here, but then Sinch noticed he wasn’t paying attention and started rapping on the counter of the small kitchen.

He started and sat up in the small bed. The rapping was comin from the door of the bedroom. Sinch lay on the bed next to him, and the room was full of light.

“Just a minute!” he yelled. Sinch stirred. Yilon grabbed his shoulder and shook. “Get up!” he hissed. “You gotta go!”

“Sir,” Min’s voice called. “There is porridge being served downstairs, and Corwin is expected to arrive shortly.”

Sinch blinked and then sat up quickly. “All right,” Yilon said loudly. “Can you send up my personal servant to help me dress?”

Scrambling out of bed, Sinch stopped to stare at him, covering his mouth to stifle a giggle. Yilon aimed a kick at him as Min opened the door. “Your lordship, I have been selected to be your personal servant,” he said. “I will be happy to assist you.”

At the sound of the door opening, Sinch had slid under the bed. Yilon could hear him breathing there, so the only thing that he could think to do was make as much noise as possible while Min was in the room. “Oh!” he said, stretching, “I had a wonderful night’s sleep. I’m looking forward to breakfast. What should one wear to breakfast? Will I need to change before I leave on my tour?”

He kept up as much of the chatter as he could, trying his best to engage Min and keep him from looking around the room, or sniffing too much. Sinch had the good sense to keep still, waiting for them to clear out the room before making his escape.

Yilon was sure that Min was regretting his assignment as personal servant by the time the two of them left. After all the fuss he’d made over the clothes, he couldn’t even have said what the other fox had picked out by the time he slung the crown’s leather bag over his shoulder and followed Min out of the room.

They’d closed his bedroom door behind them. With his first chance to relax, he took in the concept that this other fox was bound to him by duty, that his only job was to help Yilon. They walked the corridor to the stairs.

“Listen,” he said to Min, who was short enough that he didn’t have to look up to look him in the eye, “I’ve never had a personal servant before. So I don’t really know what’s expected of me, or of you. I hope I didn’t appear too strange back there. I’m just nervous about how to present myself here.”

“Indeed, sir.”

“Would it be okay if you didn’t call me ‘sir’?”

Min paused, his ears flicking. “If his lordship wishes it.”

Yilon almost laughed. “No ‘his lordship’ either. Just ‘Yilon.’ Can you do that?”

“If… if you wish.” The words obviously took an effort for the guard to say.

“Why you were you selected to be my servant?”

Min turned the corner and started down the stairs. His ears flicked back for a moment. “There are no dedicated personal servants in the castle since the late Lord Dewanne’s servant retired.”

“So you drew the short stick?”

Min flicked his ears again. “I volunteered.”

Yilon examined the other fox more closely. He’d assumed that he was older, but he realized now that Min was probably no more than two or three years his senior. He still had the slender build of youth, and when he spoke, he hesitated often, gathering confidence. “I’m flattered,” Yilon said. “I’m sure we’ll get along well.”

They’d reached the bottom of the stairs. Min stopped and half-turned. “There are some who feel a foreigner has no business in our castle. I think it is a good omen. Since Lord Dewanne fell ill, the city has been… uneasy. I wanted to be able to do something about it. I want to help.” He looked away, as if embarrassed by the outburst, but then went on. “I do have one question. In your room, your things… there was a scent of… of a mouse?”

Yilon froze. “Ah…”

“I know his lordship—my apologies, I know that you were traveling with a mouse. But was the mouse so intimate that his scent would remain so strongly?”

Remembering the feel of Sinch’s body against, him, Yilon’s ears flushed. “How do you feel about mice?” he said.

Min tilted his muzzle. “The idea of friendship with a mouse is not repugnant.” His tail twitched.

“I’m happy to hear that.” Yilon relaxed. Maybe not everyone in this backwards town was so uptight. “I think we’re going to get along very well indeed.”

Only Lady Dewanne was seated in the small dining hall, paws folded above her empty plate. A servant held out a chair for Yilon to sit, while another placed dishes of porridge before them both. It wasn’t all that bad, especially when seasoned with some of the sugar paste from the night before and a pawful of berries. While Yilon ate, Lady Dewanne asked if he were happy with his assigned servant. Yilon thought this rather rude when Min was standing right there, but fortunately he didn’t have to lie.

Corwin joined them in the middle of breakfast, at first refusing even to sit. Yilon, just finishing his bowl, saw the look Corwin was giving it, so he insisted the older fox join them, to give Sinch as much time as possible to get out of the castle. Yilon already knew the fox well enough to know that the slightest excuse was enough for him to launch into a story. Sure enough, he’d no sooner mentioned how fresh the berries tasted than Corwin began to tell him about a fox he knew who owned a small berry farm. “His berries were so good that he once traded a single basket of them for an evening of services from a young vixen. He could’ve had mine for half of that,” the older fox told Yilon with a wink. And when that story faltered, Yilon asked about the glassware, and was treated to a lengthy recounting of how Corwin had met the handsome young glassblower and had inspired him to create the lovely delicate glass ornament he’d seen in Lady Dewanne’s study. “I gave it to Sheffin to give to her,” he said with a wink at Lady Dewanne. “On their anniversary.”

“I knew where it came from, of course.” She smiled. “For Canis’s sake, if you don’t leave soon, Yilon won’t be back in time for his Confirmation. And it wasn’t our anniversary. It was for my birthday.”

“Of course,” Corwin said, smiling and going on with the story as if she hadn’t spoken.

They did finish before the sun was too high in the sky, just a paw’s breadth above the peak of the eastern mountain. Min returned to Yilon’s chambers to finish organizing his books and to air out the room, while Lady Dewanne walked with them as far as the castle gate, where an open cart and bored driver were waiting. “Enjoy what remains of your morning,” she said, leaning close to Yilon again.

“I don’t think he’ll allow me to do otherwise.” Yilon grinned at Corwin, one hind paw on the riding board.

“How quickly he sees through me,” Corwin said ruefully. “All the mystery gone and unraveled.”

“You aren’t exactly known for being guarded,” Lady Dewanne said, stepping back to lean against the gate.

Corwin put a paw to his chest. “I have hidden depths, my lady. Not to match yours, of course, but then, who could match you in anything?”

She laughed. “Flatterer. It’s good you retired when you did, else I’d find it much harder to take my leave.”

“Then would I could be governor again for just one day, long enough to change your mind, but not so long as to interrupt my life of indolence.” He hoisted himself up into the cart, which creaked as he settled himself next to Yilon. He raised a paw to the driver, then waved to Lady Dewanne. She waved back, watching as the mounts snorted and the cart rumbled across the plaza.

“She likes you,” Yilon observed.

Corwin leaned back and stretched in the sunlight. “The feeling is mutual, dear boy. Many’s the time I sat all afternoon with her husband on some affair of state and then stayed up all night with the both of them throwing greenstones.”

“Greenstones?”

“A diversion. Some night when you’re in need of entertainment… of a slightly tamer variety… oh, speaking of which, look up here to the right.” He pointed to a three-story building with stone balconies on the third floor. “It was on that balcony to the right there that a vixen whose name has been lose to history locked out Kilkenic Durenin, who was in line to become the next lord. Sadly, the vixen who locked him out there was not his wife, but rather a tempestuous young thing who took objection to some salacious act Kilkenic had asked her to perform—no doubt something the much more proper Gillia Durenin would have refused to do as well.”

“Surely he could climb down,” Yilon said.

“If only she had locked his clothes out there with him.” Corwin shook his head and clucked. “Of course, the alternative version of that legend is that it was not a vixen at all.” Yilon raised an eyebrow. Corwin answered the gesture with a wink.

“If you think that’s shocking… turn left here,” he called to the driver. The cart swung around the corner onto a narrower street. Foxes scurried out of their way. “See the small shrine there?”

Yilon followed his finger to a round stone building. “The one with the Canis star on the door curtain?”

“That’s the one. The Lord of Dewanne at the time—this was sixty years ago—was discovered in there with not one, but two young males. One in each end, as it were.”

Yilon stared at the shrine, and the thing that was strange about the buildings in the town clicked into place for him, but he had other questions crowding his head. “What happened?”

“He was removed, in favor of Sheffin’s father.”

Yilon blinked. “It’s that easy?”

“Far from it. The council of nobles had to convene and determine that he was unfit, which they had already thought, more or less, because he’d been married for five years and had yet to produce an heir. And it came out that he’d never so much as seen his wife in the marital bed, which scandalized most of the nobles who saw her there in their dreams more or less every night. Except for Hada Buleva, but even he had the good sense to shut his eyes and produce an heir before going off to his muscular plaything. I shouldn’t say that, they were actually very sweet together from all accounts, and Juni Buleva told me that she was raised to think of Poli as a second father, and he came with them to Rekindling.”

“Rekindling?” Yilon was having trouble keeping all his questions in his head at once.

“Local festival, quite a happy time. Takes place at midsummer when there isn’t much planting to be done. All the clans and families spend a day at relaxing and playing. The pools up the slope are a popular place to go; many of the trade clans go out on the lake or up the pass, and the occasional adventuresome group goes to the top of the mountain.”