“The tall one stays quiet, but Meg talked my ear off before I walked her to work.”
“Good thing you had an extra ear to keep your hat from falling down to your neck.”
His friend grunted again, watching as Hosmer unwrapped his cold meat and cheese to eat. “Think she’d come to Summersend with me?”
“She likes to dance. Ask her.”
“All she talks about is that Jeredon, the queen’s brother. It’s like a mote stuck in her eye.” Buttennoff leaned unhappily against a pillar.
Whenever Hosmer had been about, she’d filled the air talking about Butterknife, but he wasn’t about to tell his friend that. Women were women and Buttennoff had to learn the hard way about them, just as he would be doing if he had time off duty to do any studying. He crunched a roll of crusty bread, soft and flavorful in the center. He tossed the last of the crust down into the courtyard in scraps for birds scattered about to dive down and steal.
“She likes dancing,” he repeated stubbornly. “How could she not want to go to Summersend?”
“True.” Buttennoff scrubbed at his chin, then straightened alertly. “What’s this?” He jabbed his thumb at the Bolger making his way across the courtyard toward them, leather vest open over his chest, a scarred veteran of a Bolger, large leather sack tied to his belt and hanging over one lean hip.
“Dunno,” Hosmer told him, because he didn’t, and had no idea. He planted his feet in the Bolger’s way. “Halt.”
The Bolger halted. Looked him up and down as if taking his measure, and that made the hairs on the back of Hosmer’s neck bristle a little. “Inside.”
“Not today. Last Cause Petitioners’ is on the morrow, anyway.”
“And no Bolgers for that,” Buttennoff added. “Just people.”
The Bolger gave him a dismissive glance. He put his hand out to Hosmer. “Inside.”
“Can’t do. You’ve no business in there.”
The Bolger thumped his chest. “Rufus. Tell Sevryn man here.”
“Hey, now. We’re not your servants.” Buttennoff swelled up, but Hosmer put his hand out to the guardsman. “Why not, I’ll do it. Wait here with him?”
“The queen will have your head for it.”
“I’ll just have a look-see. I won’t interrupt anything.” He nodded to the Bolger. “I’ll be back.”
The Bolger inclined his head, spread his feet wide, and settled into a firmly planted stance on the stairs. Hosmer left the two of them staring into each other’s eyes, the Bolger seeming a little amused.
Deep in the inner recesses of the hall, where the wings held the smaller meeting rooms, he found the queen’s audiences with its guard in the hallway, and by luck or fortune, Sevryn was talking quietly with one of them when he turned the corner. Hosmer hailed him with a wave.
“By the morrow,” Sevryn said to him. “The sun’s only been up a few candlemarks and you’re already red with its glow. I’ll have an ointment sent for that.”
“We Dwellers favor a rosy complexion, m’lord Dardanon. Have you time to give me?”
“Always. Nothing wrong? The lasses all right?” Sevryn joined him quickly, brows lowered.
“They’re fine. I’ve someone looking for you, not sure if you want him sent away or what.”
“Queen Lariel’s not taking any visitors today.”
“Not the queen, sir, you. A Bolger who names himself Rufus.”
Sevryn’s open expression immediately smoothed. “Bring him around to the alley courtyard, know the one? It’s shaded this time of day, and quiet. I’ll be there in a moment.”
Hosmer bowed and went back downstairs to escort the Bolger where he’d been directed. The long lines of the hall slanted over the small yard, where carriages and coaches sometimes unloaded, but no one lingered about now, with everyone inside and already working. Rufus trotted by him with a lope that suggested he ran as much as he rode, the sack thumping at his hip.
Sevryn slipped out without a word, taking the servants’ corridors and going out the small side door to where Hosmer and Rufus waited. He looked little different than he had the last time they’d met, although perhaps a bit more weathered by the sun. Sevryn waved Hosmer to stand down. Whatever Rufus wanted, he didn’t fear an attack.
“Well met,” he said.
“You remember.”
“You helped in a fight. I wouldn’t forget that.”
“You keep her safe?”
“Her family keeps her safe,” he answered the Bolger, his throat tightening a little at the thought of Rivergrace.
“Good. I watch her, little.” And he held his hand off the ground, as though he would pet a toddler’s head, and Sevryn blinked back his surprise at that.
“What is this all about?” demanded Hosmer.
Rufus jerked his head. “I promise Sevryn man remember.” His hands went to his weapons belt.
Hosmer had his short sword out and at his chin before he could move any further. Rufus froze in place, breath growling in his chest.
“Hosmer,” Sevryn said. “Stand down. Any attack would have come by surprise.”
Hosmer drew his sword away slowly, carefully. Rufus kept his hands on his belt until Sevryn gave him a nod. Then, quickly, with hands misshapen by smithing and by age, he undid the laces on his large sack, to give it over to Sevryn.
“What’s this?” He opened the sack to look inside, and saw the top of a large, widemouthed jar. It took both hands to lift it out, the sack sloughing away like an old, used skin and falling to the ground. Balancing the bottom on one thigh, he opened the jar to see a thing immersed in scented oil, hair matted to its skull. It rolled as his hands shook, revolving slowly, turning until the thing’s face bobbed upward, aquamarine gem encrusted in a bloodied earlobe.
He looked at Gilgarran’s severed head, the eyes dulled but open and staring back.
Chapter Sixty-Four
THE WORLD CRASHED DOWN on Sevryn. He fell to his knees under its weight, Gilgarran staring at him, memories cascading down in an avalanche of pain and horror, of betrayal and survival. He heard a low, keening moan in his ears, felt his throat constrict. His hands convulsed about the jar. He knew everything.
Then he knew nothing.
He woke with his forehead on a scarred, splintered wooden table smelling of beer, ale, and garlic. Sevryn rolled onto his cheekbone and stared out of one eye. His dim view of the surroundings threatened to swim about in a sickening, dizzy manner, and he shuddered. A sodden cloth fell from the back of his neck as he did so, and he heard Hosmer saying, “Sunstroke. Nasty thing. It’s dark and quiet in here, and you should be drinkin’. Weak beer or water.”
A clay jug scraped the table by his hand. Sevryn sat up with a groan. Another sodden cloth fell from his head to his lap. He left it lying there as he wrapped his hands about the jug and stared into it to make sure nothing looked back before hefting it to drink. It went down his throat, and he choked before he remembered to swallow. Hosmer thumped his shoulder.
“Where am I?”
“I think this one is called Th’ Lying Wife. Not sure, one tavern looks th’ same as another to me. It was closest.”
“Rufus?”
“The Bolger took his sack and left.”
“What happened?”
“I was going to ask you that one, m’lord.” Hosmer looked kindly at him. “Drink some more. I thought you were going t’ die on that spot.”
“I think maybe I did.” Sevryn took another deep swill, and the water flowed into him, not cold by any means but wet and alive. Eighteen years of shackles, years of the most menial servitude and fear and loathing, working the mines, training men he neither knew nor respected how to fight, how to kill. Moments he could see crystal clear surged through his mind, pushing, shoving their way through, one after another. He swallowed hard. “Who knows I’m here?”
“No one. Seemed t’ be no one else’s business.”
“Thanks for that.”
“He had a head in that jar. Severed from its neck.”
“I know. It came from a man who took me off the streets, treated me like his son, and taught me what I needed to know.”
“I can put word out for the Bolger. We’ll bring him in for the murder.”
Sevryn said, “No. He didn’t do it.”
“You know who did, then?”
“Someone beyond the reach of the Calcort Town Guard.” He put his hand out and clasped Hosmer’s wrist on the table. “Thank you anyway.”
“It’ll be the Warrior Queen’s business then, I’m guessing.”
He nodded slowly. If he told her. There were many things he no longer told her. He would have to leave her side.
He got to his feet. Hosmer jumped to catch him as he swayed. “Maybe another mark or two in here, m’lord.”
“No. No, I’ve lost far too much time already.” He leaned on the compact, sturdy Dweller, reckoning what to do and how. “Do you know the healer’s college, the small inn on Green Lantern Way?”
“I think so. A good place for you the rest of this day.”
“It seems wise. Are you going back on watch?”
“I traded my shift. I’ll go back after dinner hour, work late.”
Sevryn hesitated before asking, “Could you bring Lady Rivergrace to see me?”
The muscles under his arm bunched a bit as if deciding and not favorably, then Hosmer shrugged. “I will. But you treat her fairly, m’lord, or I will find you wherever you are.”
“I understand.” And he did.
Hesitantly, Rivergrace stepped into the inner halls of the building. She lifted both hands to her veils, pulling them off her face and letting them tumble from the back of her head. She looked up quickly as Sevryn appeared on a threshold.
“This is where the queen’s friend Azel healed.”
“He’s here yet, but sitting in a small patio now. I thought you might like to visit.”
She frowned. “Hosmer said you were ill.”
“I was. Am. A revelation,” he answered, “not unlike the one that sent you running from here.” He took her hand and drew her close.
“I won’t answer any more questions.”
“You won’t be asked any, not like that anyway.”
“Then why am I here?”
He looked into her eyes of river-blue, and sea-green-blue, and stormy ocean-gray-blue. “Because I needed you with me. Forgive me for that.” He walked her with him then, and she didn’t answer, but at least she didn’t push him away as she had been.
Azel d’Stanthe looked up, and a broad smile spread over his face. He held both great hands out in welcome. “Sevryn! Rivergrace! Come, seat yourselves, tell me what is going on in the great world.”
She sat on a wide, low foot ottoman, and Sevryn perched on a nearby stool after moving a few books first. “I apologize—” she began in her low, quiet voice, but he harrumphed loudly and waved her words aside.
“I’m the one, charging like a wild creature through all your perceptions. How are you faring?”
“I am settled into the role of seamstress, with some little talent,” and she gave a wistful smile. She held up her fingers, one or two pricked from needles and still healing.
“You are flesh and blood, then.” He chuckled.
“So it seems.”
“I find that a relief.”
“So do I!” She gave a fleeting but genuine smile.
Azel looked at Sevryn quizzically. “You?”
“The Conference is nearly over and I’ll return with Queen Lariel. She has much to digest and decide upon.”
“Do I hear true rumors?”
“That she is indeed a Warrior Queen. Yes.”
“Hmmmm.” Azel said nothing further on that, but Sevryn was sure he would, if not that day, then another. The historian sat straighter in his chair. He’d gained a bit of weight back, and he looked far stronger than Sevryn had a right to expect. “What brings you here?”
“I brought her hoping you’d tell a story.”
“Me? A talespinner?”
“A true story. I want you to tell her of the Four Kingdoms, and of the Ways.”
“Oh, lad. Well. I will have to shorten it down a bit, not only out of pity for the two of you but because,” and he coughed then, and finally managed, “because I am short of breath as well.” He poured himself a drink from a nearby pitcher, making a face as he swallowed a long draft from it. “Why do things good for you always taste as if they can’t possibly be?”
That brought another flashing smile to Rivergrace’s face, and Sevryn felt a spike of envy through him, that Azel could make her smile and he could not. If the afternoon went as he hoped, as he planned, she would like him even less.
Gesturing with one large hand, the other resting on his knee, Azel drew in the air. “In the beginning, we came without warning to ourselves or anyone else. In the years that followed as we regained what little history we could, we fought with each other and with this new world. There are far more to these years than I could possibly tell you, and there are those who would stop me from giving you that history. But my library is free,” and he leaned forward with an intense light in his eyes. “Free as it should be as long as I have a say in it. Come visit me at Ferstanthe and learn all that you care to learn.”
“Someday,” she answered him softly.
“Good.” He took another drink, stalling a cough. Sevryn watched his face, fearing that the drink might drug him into slumber, but Azel merely cleared his throat before speaking again. “Mine is the smallest of the kingdoms Sevryn mentioned. It isn’t really one, except that we were established by a Stronghold and a House, and we’re maintained free and independent. The sole purpose of Ferstanthe is to collect and preserve knowledge so that it can be known by any who have a need, any of Vaelinar blood, that is. I train scribes from all walks of life there, Kernan, Dweller, Galdarkan, even a Bolger once, most of whom go on to work for traders or other guilds and have little interest in Vaelinar ways, and they don’t see our true library, our Books of All Truth.” He traced a line through the air.
“Ferstanthe rests against a forest of trees, and along a great, lazy lake which grows reeds by the thousands. We use both the trees and reeds for paper and writing quills and such. Ink comes from the ores and other minerals around us. Vegetable inks are easier to make, but they fade rapidly.” He paused and quickly added, “but I bore you with that. Imagine then immense trees, trees that were seedlings when we Vaelinar Strangers first came to Kerith, in 312. They yet grow, towering over buildings of marble and granite, domed buildings that are immense once you’re inside but look as nothing against the trees. You can hear the ocean’s roar in their branches when the wind blows and when it snows, it dapples their branches but cannot possibly cover them, for they are majestic among the hillsides. Among their trunks grow groves of smaller trees, vastly inferior, and it is those we log, for they grow quickly and flourish while our gentle giants take their time in everything.