The Dreamtrails (64 page)

“I will get the masks,” said Mona, her eyes shining with tears.

“Do you have any idea how many Hedra will escort Domick?” Iriny spoke for the first time.

Rolf looked at her. “At least two,” he answered. “Can you fight?”

“I can deal with two men,” she said calmly.

Erit stared at her, fascinated, as Rolf asked, “What if there were more?”

She shrugged. “Then I will need help.”

I saw Rolf relax and realized he had been testing Iriny to see if her words were empty boasts.

“I can fight, too,” Erit put in eagerly.

Rolf shook his head. “I think that we had better avoid setting
ourselves up for an open confrontation. What we need is a diversion that will allow Elspeth to spirit her friend away from his escort. One advantage is that they will not regard him as someone who would escape, for they think he is one of them.”

“Will there be enough time to set up a diversion?” I asked worriedly.

Rolf smiled, and for a moment he looked very like Erit. “I will arrange the diversion.”

“What if he refuses to come with you?” Erit said to me.

“We could use a sleep potion,” Rolf told them. “I know of one so strong that the fumes will render him unconscious for a short time. Still, we will need to separate him from the Hedra to manage it. I assume your mind powers will enable you to deal with anyone who sees what is happening?”

“I can manage two or three but not at the same time,” I said.

“Well and good,” Rolf muttered. “Can you scribe the letter to Domick? A metalworker’s hands are not fit for a quill. Better also scribe a covering letter to the Hedra who are to take him to the festivities this evening.” As he spoke, he rose and hobbled across the kitchen to rummage in a cupboard. He withdrew a quill and some parchment. “Scribe that Domick is to be brought to the pier to collect a special gift from the One, which he is to present to Councilman Kana this evening. Ask the Hedra master of the house for an escort or two. That ought to waylay any suspicions.”

By the time I had completed the letters, Mona had returned with a wicker basket filled with beautiful hand-painted boxes. As she began to unpack them reverently, Rolf took the letters from me and read through them, sealed both, and went to some trouble to make a mark that would pass for
an identification stamp that had been damaged or worn away. “If the message is delivered by a reputable message-taker, it is less likely the seal will be scrutinized.”

“If Domick is unconscious, how am I to get him out of the city?”

“I will have Golfur close by, my greathorse,” Rolf said with a fleeting smile. “I have asked Erit to prepare a bundle of supplies, which will be lashed to Golfur’s saddle. I will also have a canvas sheet and ropes ready to truss Domick up so we can lay him over the saddle and make him look like a carpet, and a few false parcels to lash atop him and hide his shape.”

Overwhelmed with gratitude for his thoughtfulness and generosity, I apologized to Rolf for being unable to reimburse him for the supplies, but he interrupted to say that since I was ready to sacrifice my life to save his city, he could hardly begrudge me a bit of food and water. “Now I will also put Golfur’s papers into his saddlebag, for you may be asked to produce them when you leave the city. Once you have no more need for him, you can return him to me.”

I said awkwardly that Rolf ought not to lend me any horse, for I would not return it to him unless the beast wished it. “You see, we Misfits believe that beasts should not be owned by humans. If Golfur comes with me, it will be as a free horse.”

Rolf laughed. “Bless you, lass, but a stolen horse is useless unless you can also steal his papers, and there is no time for that. Better to take Golfur, and if he wishes to be freed of my company, I will not oppose it. But you will discover his will soon enough if you truly can speak with beasts. That is a Talent I might envy,” he added wistfully.

“When this is all over, I will teach you to communicate with beasts,” I promised. “There is a language of signals that
can be learned by men and beasts, which allows them to communicate. These were devised by a man who once ran the Aborium rebel cell.”

“You speak of the Black Dog?” Rolf asked.

“You know him?” I asked eagerly.

“Regrettably, I did not meet him, for I was never a rebel, though I have given them aid from time to time. But I heard he was a good man.”

Erit had returned, and Mona began to remove a series of exquisite masks from their boxes.

“They are very beautiful, but they are all masks for wealthy folk,” I said.

“Not necessarily,” Mona replied in her soft voice. “During the masked moon fair, there is much play upon deception and the wealthy delight in wearing their servants’ clothes with a jeweled mask, or they will wear their own attire but have a cheap mask so that none can be sure of their status or their identity. They derive much hilarity from seeing their friends bow and scrape to a potboy or croon to a washer lass. Or even an urchin.” She reached out and took a splendid, bright-red mask, enameled to a high gloss and sewn with shimmering jet beads, setting it on Erit’s dirty face. The urchin offered us a wicked gap-toothed grin. The effect of such a smile with such a mask was as alarming as it was comical. Mona spread out other masks and bade Iriny and I choose our own.

Iriny selected a splendid yellow and gold creation that resembled the metal masks the soldierguards sometimes used to protect their faces during confrontations. I chose a dark green mask with emerald beading about slanted eye slits and beautifully realistic cat’s ears, wondering what Maruman would make of it. Mona went out again and returned with a hooded green cloak of thick velvet, which she said I ought to
wear until I mounted Golfur, for no one seeing a girl in a green velvet cloak and cat mask would think her the same as a simple lad riding a laden greathorse from the city. Uneasy about being given so much, when my gift to this house had been news of a potential catastrophe and a reminder of an old and painful tragedy, I said, “What if some harm comes to it?”

“Better that harm should come to a cloak than a courageous young woman,” Mona said with unexpected firmness. “Take it and wear it now. Return it to Rolf if you can. I will put those clod-stamping shoes you wear now into Golfur’s saddlebags, for you must wear something more dainty with the cloak. Your feet are too big for my shoes, but Carryn’s feet were bigger. Wait.”

Again she withdrew, only to bring back a pair of leaf-green embroidered slippers as exquisite as the mask. Again I tried to refuse and again she stood firm.

“I am afraid you may as well give up,” Rolf laughed. “For all her meek manner, she is a virago when crossed.”

Despite everything, I laughed out loud to hear the gentle, soft-voiced Mona described in such a way. “I will take the cloak and the shoes and the mask, and you have my thanks for them,” I said.

Mona smiled and Rolf kissed her on the cheek. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I think we must begin. Elspeth, you go with Erit to the message-taker’s house and follow him to the Faction house. I assume you can use your powers to reach me?”

I nodded and bent down to remove my heavy shoes before stepping into Carryn’s slippers. They were a little tight but very soft and well made. I bade Mona farewell then, knowing I would not see her again before I left the city, and donned my mask and cloak. Erit put on his, too, and we left
the house together. The shutters on the windows had kept the sunlight out, and I blinked at the day’s brightness.

The streets were already busy with servants and tradefolk bustling about, and all wore masks, though none so fine as the ones Erit and I had. It did not take us long to reach the message-taker’s house with its winged shoe suspended above the door. I hung back in a shadowy doorway, pretending to empty a stone from a slipper, as Erit hammered at the front door and explained to the red-cheeked man who opened it that he had an urgent message for some Hedra. I had already probed the man, so I heard his thought that he would refuse the missives, because his head ached from the ale he had drunk the previous night, and anyway he did not like the Hedra.

Controlling a surge of annoyance, I forced him to accept the messages, and then I constructed a little web of fear, replacing Erit’s image with Ariel’s and dredging his memory until I had enough to construct a false memory of a meeting at the waterfront during which Ariel had given him the missives he would deliver to the Hedra. It was not a deeply bedded or particularly well-constructed memory, but it would serve when he was questioned, since I could not manipulate his answers to the Hedra’s questions once he entered the house. I coerced him to deliver his message promptly, and it was not long after he closed the door on Erit that he came bursting out of it, still buttoning his vest. Erit had already left me, saying he would follow the message-taker across the roofs. He almost fell off the drainpipe he was climbing when he heard my voice in his head.

“How did you think I would communicate with you?” I asked.

“I did not think of it,” Erit admitted sheepishly. “I thought
you would just make me know what I was supposed to know.”

I told him that was coercion rather than farseeking, and Misfits did not coerce friends without their permission.

“I thought the message-taker was going to refuse the hire at first,” Erit reflected as he watched the man from the rooftops.

“He was,” I said. “I changed his mind for him.”

I lost sight of the message-taker when he entered the street where the Faction house stood, for I had to backtrack to the little lane that was to be my vantage point. By the time I was in place, the message-taker was straightening his small half mask and knocking at the door. The door opened, and fleetingly, I saw in his mind an echo of the cold, stern face of the warrior priest who opened it. The Hedra demanded the message-taker’s documents and studied them, then gestured for the missives. He broke the seal on one without looking closely at it, read it, and asked the message-taker to describe the man who had paid him. His mind dredged up the memory I had built, and he gave an unmistakable description of Ariel. The message-taker was discomfited by the interrogation and the Hedra’s badgering manner, so I loosened my control and let him speak naturally. “Is something amiss, sirrah?”

The Hedra frowned. “This missive asks that one of the Herders staying here meets with the man who hired you, yet that same man bade me strictly to keep the Herder here until this evening, and as I understood it, he meant to travel on with the Raider.”

“Perhaps the Raider will collect the blond man after performing some other errand up the coast,” I made the message-taker say. “In any case, I have fulfilled my duty.” He
gave the bow of his calling and withdrew, and for a moment I had a clear view of the Hedra watching him march away, a preoccupied expression on his hard features. He closed the door, and there was nothing to do but wait.

I sent a probe after the message-taker, erasing his memory and grafting in its place another memory of having delivered a message nearby some days earlier. This done, I farsent Rolf to tell him what had happened. Mindful of the fright I had given Erit, I was careful to announce my presence. But Rolf welcomed me with an openness that startled me. I had just begun to describe the exchange between the message-taker and the Hedra when Erit gave a thin whistle from above. I looked up to see him pointing frantically in the direction of the Faction house where five Hedra had emerged with a hooded figure.

Certain it was Domick, I stretched out my mind to him, but as I had feared, he wore a demon band.

“Follow them!” Erit hissed, and I looked up to see him leap like a cat from one roof to another.

I set off back along the lane at a run, at the same time warning Iriny and Rolf that there were five Hedra, not two, and that Domick was demon-banded, which meant I could not coerce him. Fortunately, Rolf had had the foresight to give me a small bottle of sleep potion and a pad of cloth, though he had stressed that, if possible, it would be better to get him out of the market area on his own two feet. If it proved impossible, I was to summon Iriny to help carry him.

Rolf asked me to name the street I was on so that he could figure out which way we would enter the sea market. “That narrows it to two routes,” the metalworker said after I told him I was on the Street of the Dancer. “How does your friend look?”

“He seems to be walking slowly, but he is hooded, so I cannot see his expression. He is not masked, though, and neither are the Hedra.”

“None of the Faction mask themselves,” Rolf explained.

The streets were busier now, and I guessed they would become busier still with each hour that passed. Even so, I stayed well back, for I did not want the Hedra to mark me. At one point, I lost sight of them when a small crowd of people spilled out of a door into my path, laughing and singing and reeling against one another. They were all masked and clearly had not yet finished celebrating the night before the fair. One of the men leered at me and caught me by the arm, but one of the women spat a curse at him, and he released me as if I had turned into hot embers.

I hurried on, probing Erit to find out where the Hedra had gone. In a few minutes, I had them in sight again, and Erit told me to let Rolf know they had taken the longer route. I obeyed.

Rolf told me to inform him when the Hedra had moved from the Street of the Fishmaid to the sea market. He also suggested I move closer to the group there, because a great throng of people would prevent the priests from noticing me and also keep them from moving too quickly. I needed to be ready to catch hold of Domick the moment Rolf created a diversion. I was to bring Domick to the Lane of the Weaver, next along from the Street of the Fishmaid, where Rolf would wait with Golfur.

I wanted to ask what the diversion would be, but a group of men arguing heatedly blocked my way, and I needed to concentrate to coerce my way through them. By the time I had done so, I had lost sight of the Hedra again. Once more, Erit directed me to them, just as the hooded figure stumbled and
fell to his knees. The Hedra stopped and hauled Domick to his feet, and I felt a stab of pity for the coercer, who had suffered so much abuse. If only I could safely remove him from Halfmoon Bay. Then I was struck by the sad and dreadful irony of applying the word
safe
in any form to Domick, for there was no refuge or rescue or escape from the plague seeds multiplying in his blood. All the horror and danger the world had to offer had been planted inside him with only the leanest of hopes that Jak would know how to cure the plague, or at least slow its progress.