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“Until the last year, no,” Iris told me. “Their Young Lordships being off at court and Her Young Ladyship being married, it got quiet here.”
“You can’t say quiet,” Fay argued. “Not during slave season, it’s not.”
“During slave season?” I asked between some more spoons of soup. It was the best I’d ever had, even better than Aunt Mya’s. Up at the head table I could see Lady Sabine daintily eating hers as the prince talked her ear off.
“Oh, aye, they come through every three-four weeks in summer, bound for Scanra, the Yamanis, or Galla,” Iris told me. Fay was scraping the last of their soup from the trencher. We didn’t get as much as the nobles did. “Most make no matter, but one a month stops here for my lord to look over.” Fay had moved in some and Iris and me had slid back so she could see me as we talked. She could also see the look of startlement on my face. “Don’t you know—no, you’re not from here.” Iris said it like everyone else was. “They have an investment in a slave tradin’ company. The count likes to see where his investment gets him.”
The skin on the back of my neck prickled. I wished the others could hear, but I couldn’t even see Tunstall or Farmer, hidden behind so many walls of people. I looked about, pretending I was trying to see when the next course would arrive. Casually I said, “So he got lucky, having a clutch of slaves on hand when the prince and the baron came for a visit.”
Fay snorted as a slave came up with a plate of jugged hare and dropped slices in the trenchers. I slipped a piece down to Pounce, who ate it and said, Too tart for you. Of late I have learned that my stomach does not care for things which are very tart, as jugged sauces tend to be.
Fay waited for the slave to move from earshot before she told me, “It weren’t no luck, Mistress Dog! My lord count brung them onto castle grounds as soon as they arrived. And that before he’d got the message that the baron was coming to visit!”
I started to reach into a pocket for a handkerchief, then remembered I couldn’t show nice ways if I was to convince folk I was an everyday dull Dog. I wiped my mouth on my arm, on that lovely thin silk. “I’ll wager they’ve been plenty of help, with three extra nobles and their folk visiting,” I commented, and took a seemingly deep drink from my tankard. It was filled with strong ale. I sipped and let the rest stay where it was. The last thing I needed tonight was a gut full of spirits. At the dais, Sabine and the prince were toasting each other with goblets of wine, but I had no fear for the lady. Her head is harder than Tunstall’s, and there’s not a Dog in Corus who will drink against Tunstall.
Iris snorted. She had already refilled her tankard and Fay’s. “Not enough help, my eye. They sent some of them away with their keepers before dawn.”
“Snatched ’em at their work,” Fay told me. “One lass who was kneading bread for me. That bossy slave minder, the one they called Viper behind her back, she grabbed that gixie and took her off with no apology to me.”
“Right in the middle of kneading,” I repeated for a comment. I nodded yes to a slice of lamb and another of baked fish. When the server moved on I said, “That’s bad. But surely you can get other workers. The count should have hundreds of slaves, getting them cheap as he must.”
Iris shook her head. “Only the debt ones, as owed his da and grandda. Slaves is expensive. You can’t just take your own when you like, my man told me. You have to sell them and pay investors their money back. I’m not one for slaves, anyway. You need three times as many to do the work of one free mot or cove. My man manages the apple farms for the count. He says the only places slave labor really pays off is the big fields like they have in Maren or Carthak.”
The mot on Iris’s left said something to them, taking their attention from me. I broke the fish up and fed it to Pounce under the table between bites of lamb, wondering if Iris’s man was right. It would explain why there were so few slaves in the city who didn’t belong to the temple, the palace, or the slave traders themselves.
We got stewed beef, new peas, and stewed greens while the nobles applauded the arrival of venison and the roasted, stuffed pig. Pounce had left me, so I worked on my food alone, watching the crowd. And then a thread of air wrapped around me, carrying voices.
“—six blades with rust. Six! I don’t call that satisfact’ry, nor will—” That was a cove, all military-sounding.
“—you’d think I was speakin’ Yamani, the way she gawped at me!” A mot, mayhap a bit older than I am.
There was a dust spinner nearby. It had sensed me, and the feel of it raced through the breeze that touched me in that huge chamber.
“—one kiss of your hand, no more. Only let me know I may hope!” A cove, educated and noble, and what a cracknob!
“—I’d say you jest, Niccols, save you have no humor that I know of.” I did not recognize this tight-arsed mot’s voice, but she was noble, no doubt of it. “Count Dewin would never place slaves in the guest wing. He’d cut off an arm before he’d soil rooms meant for the nobility.”
“Far be it from me to argue with my lady’s own cousin, but it’s true.” From his careful way of pronouncing things, Master Niccols sounded as if he might have had a bit more to drink than was wise. “He took them up himself—”
The rest was lost. I wondered if the spinner itself might have more. Where was it? Not inside. They were never inside. What kind of power did a spinner have that would cause it to sense me, and reach me, all the way in here?
The mots around me were well taken up in chatter. The ale pitchers had been replaced twice up and down the table. I tapped Fay on the shoulder and asked her, talking direct into her ear, where I might find a privy I was permitted to use. With her instructions, stooping as I slid between two servants bound for the door, I left the great hall.
Rather than follow the servants, I parted from them and raced up to the room, where I hoped to find doors unlocked and my packs with Sabine’s. I was right twice. The ladies’ solar and the countess’s office were open, and my packs were there, showing signs of the maids’ hunt for my uniform. Achoo greeted me with enthusiasm. She was hungry and ready to go outside. I saw a cot had been set up for my lady, and a pallet for me. I hoped that Farmer’s bug charm still held as I groped in my things.
With a packet of dust from the Day Market in Corus and another from Serenity’s garden in Port Caynn, I went outdoors, Achoo at my side. We walked along the skin of the great hall until we halted between two doors that opened from it to a broad terrace. Here breezes from the spinner found me, passing me strands of talk that flowed from the heated chamber across the terrace and down its steps into a good-sized garden. Torches lit my way and voices reached in my ears. I tucked myself in the shadows by the hedges and went in search of voices and spinner alike. Achoo ran silently at my heels.
“—going over the books and I cannot reconcile these amounts. We should have far more coin in the treasury.” That was the mot Niccols had called “my lady’s own cousin,” the stiff arse.
“Ignore it, Lady Rosewyn.” That was the count. “I had use for that coin.”
The second thread of conversation drowned out the first. “—well, I can do better than a plate-faced virgin nobody who talks of little but religion.” This cove’s voice I did not know. “If you like her so much, Graeme, you marry her.”
I did not hear the answer. Graeme, who was likely the baron of Aspen Vale, must have said something. There was a long pause before my speaker, Elyot, that would be, said, “I’ve never heard of him, but I’m not concerned. Did you see the way he bolted back the ale? No mage with any great power drinks like that. The risk is too great that our magical Gift will start to leak. Besides—”
His voice was gone. I was forced to listen to an eager cove trying to get his fambles into his giggling sweetheart’s clothes until the currents in the air led me to the far side of a stone-lined pond. There, on the middle of the broad path, turned my dust spinner. It was thin, like a narrow tornado, nearly twenty feet tall, and, I sensed, very old. No wonder it had
so much power.
“Achoo, either sit or wander, but behave,” I told her. The clever thing had learned years ago to recognize when I listened to the air, and never bothered me when I did so. Now she trotted off to investigate an interesting rustle in the bushes.
I bowed to the spinner. She had bent herself almost in two, as if she were looking at me. Certainly she wasn’t about to bow to any of the many scuttling mortals that had come her way. “I give you greetings, ancient one,” I said and showed her my two packets. “I brought gifts for you, if I may.”
She slid forward, opening the packets herself. I hadn’t expected it. No spinner had done so before. It was painful as the dust and twigs that made up her base scratched my hands, but I held steady. Somehow she undid the tight knots I used to secure the small bags. Stretching out two thin, spinning fingers, she dipped one into each, sucking up it and its contents.
Fess, her name given to me in that moment, exploded outward, surrounding me and picking me up, lifting me high in the air. I held very still and prayed. I’d never had this reaction from a dust spinner before, but then, I’d never fed a very old, isolated spinner my entire supplies of grit from richly lived-in city districts, either. Not that I’d chosen to do so, but it made little difference in the end.
What do you seek? she asked me. You came in search, what is it you search for?
Her voice was as much in my skull as my ears. I showed her what I hunted in my mind: the image of the prince on the queen’s locket, the four-leafed bronze emblem I had found on the beach, and magefire of muddled colors.
The spinner swayed deep, moving up onto the terrace. Terrified, I began my prayers. If she dropped me now, I would smash like an egg.
Closer to the house she went, with me motionless at her center, until I stared at the open windows on the floor where the important folk stayed. I recognized Prince Baird’s rooms through one set of open shutters and murmured, “I was here today. He knows they have stolen his nephew. He’s part of it.”
The dust spinner leaned to the side. She stretched so far to carry me along the row of windows that I feared I might fall straight through the arm in which she bore me. We passed a large room for meetings, or so I guessed. Tunstall leaned against a table while the count, Master Elyot, the count’s mage, and the Mithran priest talked. The spinner did not bring me close enough to hear, but from the way Tunstall was smiling and shaking his head, they were offering him a bribe. They were in for a surprise if they thought he would take it. I was surprised he wasn’t striking someone, but he was using his company manners. He’d had to learn them, living with Sabine.
The spinner thrust me along, past an empty set of rooms, until we came to the last of them before the corner. Inside a richly embroidered tunic in the Aspen Vale colors was laid across the bed. A small handful of jewelry was on the stand there. Fess bore me closer so I could examine the things. I could tell these were Master Elyot’s rooms. Packs in the corner gave off a red glow, warning the servants not to touch them. On a table near the corner was a bowl filled with water for scrying. Various bottles and jars, also glowing red, were placed on the top shelf of the wardrobe. More clothes than he would surely need here were on the wardrobe shelves.
None of this would help me. I thanked Fess for her efforts. She was drawing me back when I glimpsed something through the red fire that warned folk away from the packs. I didn’t even have to ask my friend to stop. Seeing my mind, she moved forward to place me at the open window. I squinted at the packs.
There it was, stamped into the flap cover of each bag I could see. The four-leafed emblem we had searched for so long. Looking at the jewels again, I saw a token like the one I’d found on the beach half hidden in the pile, a bronze round with the bases of lance-shaped leaves on the edge. The rest was under the jewelry, but since I’d seen nothing else like it in all our searching, I was willing to wager that this was what I’d sought.
The spinner’s ancient strength was failing. She’d done quite a lot for me, and I will be forever grateful. I asked if she would mind taking me down.
She bent over. I was horizontal to the ground, that was plain. She began to twirl me in a great circle through the air. My supper churned. Between my belly and my fear that Fess was going to throw me into the upper branches of the trees, I was certain I was going to be sick. I tried to drag my hands to my mouth. The winds twisted about me so fiercely, gripping me so tight, that it took a great deal of my strength to clamp my palms over my lips and swallow back my own supper over and over.
Slowly, very slowly, Fess began to ease off her speed. I felt myself being lowered gently to the ground even as Fess poured any number of pieces of talk into my head. I would never be able to sort it all out. She’d held on to some of it as children hold on to special shells or rocks, because she liked the pretty sound. Whatever words had made them up were worn smooth over ages of her use.
In all of it was her thanks for the most incredible meal of her life. She wished me well as she set me gently on my feet.
“Splendid,” I said, feeling it to the bottom of my heart. “That was the most amazing thing.” I remembered to bow to her. Then I found a patch in the bushes where I could vomit up every scrap I’d eaten that evening.
Poor Achoo was at my side, whimpering, as we climbed the steps. She hates it when I get sick, even though her own vomits never distress her as they do me. I was reassuring her that I would be fine when Master Niccols and two men-at-arms halted us on the terrace. Master Niccols folded his arms.
“It was believed you understood you were to remain at supper and not go prying,” he said. “Where have you been? You look the very slut.”
Achoo growled. She knew an insult when she heard one.
I glanced at my clothes. I’d been shaking my tunic and breeches as we walked away from my leavings in the bushes, but odd bits of leaf and grit still clung to them and to the long silk sleeves of my undershirt. I touched my hair and could feel dirt and mussed strands.
Then I grinned at Niccols, showing teeth of my own. “I’ve been savoring your breezes and riding your dust spinner,” I told him. “The little tornado that always blows in the garden? They’re alive, you know. Yours is named Fess. She’s been here since before the stones were laid for the original keep.”
“Nonsense,” blustered Niccols, while the two coves at his back made the Sign on their chests. “I’ve never heard such a thing.”
“Being a Dog, countryman, I’m more in the way of hearing things than you are.” I leaned closer to him so he got a whiff of my pukey breath. He backed up a step, making his coves back up. Now all three of them were off balance, retreating from a little mot Dog and her hound, showing I had them fearful. “Since I’m ill, I’m turning in for the night. And I’ll need food and water for my hound. If you have no objection?”
He’d regained his sack. “My men will take you there, wench,” he snapped. “They’ll get the food and see to it you do not stray.”
My hand went to the spot where my baton usually hung. In Corus I seriously would have considered giving this pompous mumper a nap tap and sending him to the cage Dogs for an afternoon of conversation. He knew more about the business of the slaves, I was certain of it. But I was not in Corus, and there was the Hunt to think on. I said nothing, gave him no polite farewell, but walked off toward the hall with his bully boys at my sides. Achoo led the way back to the ladies’ solar and the countess’s office.
As soon as we entered the solar, the coves shut the door behind me. I waited until a maid came with Achoo’s supper. Then, in the dark, Achoo and I skirted the pallets laid on the floor. I’d had a glimpse in the hall light before the maid closed the door again, enough to show me the path to the office. As we entered the room Sabine and I would share, a light flared in a lamp set on the desk. Pounce sat blinking next to the lamp, letting me know who had done that bit of magic.
“I didn’t know you could light things,” I said as I put down Achoo’s bowl and began to pull off my clothes. I
stood in a clear spot where the dirt and twigs would fall on bare floor, not bedding or packs.
It’s very bad for your character if I do things for you too often, he replied in that training master way of his. But I do not see how you will be improved if you fall over a chair in here and break an arm.
“I’m surprised,” I said as I removed the silk shirt that had been so lovely in the baths. Now it had grease stains on the arms, as well as spinner dirt. “Usually you spare my character so little.”
You’re bitter, Pounce replied smugly. One day you will thank me. I am very proud of you. I thought you might well give in and crack Niccols’s skull for him.
“I have work to do,” I said. I stood there, feeling gritty and tired. “And he’s not bad enough for me to return and invite him to the back of the barn.”
There is a basin and a pitcher of water in that corner, Pounce told me. They brought it in a little while ago. You can dump what’s dirty in the privy behind the door in the opposite corner.
It didn’t matter to me that the water was cool. I was able to clean the grime from my face, neck, arms, and hands, and pour the dirty leavings down the small privy, leaving a clean basin for Sabine. Then I unpinned my hair, and combed out the bits and pieces that were caught in it. The strands were still wet, which meant that the grit had clung. I resolved to wash it in the morning if I woke before my companions. I put on the nightdress that someone had set out on my pack, then got my journal, ink, pen, and stone lamp. Setting myself up at the desk, beside my two lamps, I looked around for Pounce and Achoo. They had gone to sleep, curled around each other beside the pallet that had been left for me. I smiled at them and got to work. I had to catch up on as much of today as I could manage while I had quiet time.
