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He was right. I’d known it since that first night away from Queensgrace, or guessed it, and was certain when Farmer and I both found the slave trader’s brass tag on Farmer’s pack.
And who? The knight I’d looked up to for four years, fought beside, laughed with? My new love, with his frank, open blue eyes? Or worst, much worst, of all, my partner. The cove who, with Goodwin, had taught me all I could learn as fast as I could learn it. The cove who’d saved my life so many times I could not count. No matter where I looked, there was a possibility that was fit to tear me in two.
I heard soft sounds and turned back to see Farmer open the silk. Pounce leaped up to see as well. Inside the blue cloth was a long, flat roll of ribbon. As Farmer set the wrapping down, I opened the roll a couple of folds. By the back I knew—barely—that the ribbon itself was red, the color of magical power. It was covered edge to edge with embroideries in all different colors. Looking closer at the front, I realized that each color continued down the ribbon without breaks. It was only in the weaving and curving of the design in tiny bends that it appeared to be tiny bits of color intermingled.
“It’s all spelled, isn’t it?” I asked Farmer. “I’d’ve gone blind, doing this kind of stitching, so small and tight.”
He picked up the ribbon and opened it out another couple of folds. “I have a spell to make the stitching bigger,” he explained. “And I worked on it for a very long time. This makes what went up when my packs burned look like a bucketful compared to a lake.” I looked up at his face. It was set, determined. His soft mouth had gone firm. He had plans for those threads, each holding magic from a different mage. I could not wait to see those plans unfold.
He glanced at me and put one arm around me as he stuck the ribbon in the pocket of his breeches. “Whatever happens, get the lad and get out of the castle,” he told me. “I’ll be right behind you, no matter what.”
“But we don’t have Dog tags,” I reminded him.
“I never needed them,” he said quietly. “That was to make the rest of you feel better.”
“I don’t know the layout here,” I told him. “The Gift is all very well, but there are some practical things to be covered, don’t you think?”
He kissed me and took his mouth only a little bit away. “Do you mind if I magic you? If I call the castle map into your head and mind while we pretend to nuzzle for the guards?”
It was a good plan. I nodded and whispered, “Do it.”
He cupped the back of my head in one hand and wrapped the other arm around me. As he pressed his lips to mine, I felt a vision unfold in my head. It was like my memory houses, only this was a castle, drawn in pen and ink. It built itself from the underground up, dungeons, wine cellars, great hall, kitchens, studies, pantries, armory, and on. It built out, adding floors and towers as it included outbuildings and walls. When the last tower and gate were placed, the vision folded itself up like a map, settling in my mind where I would be sure to find it.
He released the spell, but I continued to show my affection for him a moment longer. I stopped only when the rattle of metal on metal told me that our time alone was done for the moment. The guards who had opened the door after banging on the bars made merry at our expense as they brought in a pitcher of water and two bowls of something.
One of them looked directly at Pounce and didn’t see him. “If I knew I had my last hours to spend, I’d like it this way, lovin’ up a pretty girl!” he jested. They were different from the guards who had shoved Farmer inside.
I glared at them and they stepped back. “Whoa, wench, warm them eyes before you look at your man again!” said the shorter of the two, holding up his hands. “Elsewise he might only be givin’ you cold comfort!” He shivered.
“Her eyes are beautiful,” Farmer said, turning my chin so he looked at me.
“Ghost eyes,” said the taller guard, and “Ice eyes,” said the other.
“Too many mages hereabouts,” the short one added. They left us, locking the door behind them.
“I’m no mage,” I snapped, and spat on the floor.
“No, sweetheart,” Farmer replied, “but that’s a glare that tells folk what you will not—that you are a very bad mot to muck with, and you will see them to their graves. There’s power in it that sticks to those you glare at. It makes me tremble in my boots. Or it would if I had them.” He looked sorrowfully at his bare feet.
I gave him a light buffet on the head. “Looby,” I told him.
As my reward I got his silliest grin. “Ma allus said—”
“Your ma should have drowned you at birth,” I told him as I picked up one of the bowls. It was the usual brown slop with a hint of beef and gravy, and something that looked like a turnip. “I’ve eaten this all along. Unless it’s poisoned today, it’s all right.”
“They’re not poisoning us,” Farmer said, getting to his feet to stretch. “If they want my blood, they want it pure. No wonder they need to change kings. Roger would never allow blood magic to be practiced here. Baird will.”
“Why do you say so? Baird is Roger’s brother, and it’s their father that forbade blood magic,” I said, handing Farmer his bowl.
“Because Thanen and his mages will make sure that’s part of the bargain, if they haven’t already,” Farmer replied.
“Sarden maggot-ridden corpse baits,” I muttered.
Farmer was inspecting the contents of his bowl. “What do you suppose that is?” he asked, prodding a lump.
“It’s better not to know,” I said. “Eat it fast. Don’t try and taste it.”
Once we’d finished, to help pass the time, Pounce told us a story of a hero he had befriended; then Farmer and I managed to find a clean spot of floor to nap on with the cat. None of us spoke of Sabine, who had seemed to turn traitor, or Tunstall, who had gone along like a lamb. None of us spoke of Achoo, out in the woods.
The jangle of lock and keys brought us all to our feet, instantly awake. “Get ready,” Farmer whispered in my ear.
Don’t worry about me, Beka, Pounce added. If you see me or not, I am with you.
The door swung wide and a lone jailor came in, a short sword in his hand. Already I was scornful of his worth. No cage Dog ever approached celled Rats alone, weapon or no.
“Back, mage,” the empty-headed pig’s knuckle said, pointing his sword at Farmer. “We know your magic is tied up. If you don’t care for your mot to be the same, you’ll stand back. The trull comes wiv me.”
I heard a chuckle from the door. There was his fellow guard, holding the key ring and a glowing orange globe that I guessed was supposed to keep mages under control. “Don’t worry, Master,” that one said. “We’ll take fine care of her.”
“No more gab from you,” Farmer announced in a loud, official bark. “I don’t know what game you’re about, mage, but you’ll not fool any man of my lord’s guard! Over against them shackles on the wall, right quick! You, gabble-monger!” he snapped, pointing to me. “Stop scatchin’ yourself and get that wench afore she sneaks off down the hall and the cap’n sees her!”
“What’s you talkin’ about?” asked the one already in our cell. He sounded even slower than before, dreamy.
“I’m no wench,” murmured the other.
Farmer hadn’t said that he meant to do magic now, but neither had I needed his brief warning to know we were about to take a chance. He was acting like we were the guards, and the guards were us. Seemingly the guards had begun to believe it.
“Here, you!” I ordered, and dashed forward to grab the one with the globe and the key ring. Slipping the ring over the hand I used to hold the globe, I gripped the cove’s louse-ridden hair and thrust him into our cell.
He dug his heels in partway. “I’m a … guard,” he protested, trying to turn in my hold. “A guard in the dungeons …”
I hooked his right leg from under him and helped him drop by shoving his head. Once he was down, I set the globe and keys aside and got one of his arms up behind his back. I released hi
s hair to grip his wrist, shoving it up toward his shoulder. With my other hand I shoved his elbow up toward that same shoulder. Nobody likes that hold, particularly when it’s pushed hard enough to break bones. He screamed. Suddenly he was shouting, “How dare you treat a Provost’s Guard this way! I’ll get you hobbled, so I will, and hie you before a magistrate!”
Seeing that Farmer’s magic had taken, I let the cove go. We did the pair of them up in the shackles on the rear wall, in case anyone came looking from outside. We used their belt knives to cut gags from their tunics to silence them.
The last thing Farmer did before we left that cell was take up the globe. He held it in his palm, eyeing it calmly, with that look that told me he was examining it from the inside out. Slowly the light began to fade. Once the globe had turned lead gray, he dropped it to the floor. It smashed into hundreds of tiny glass fragments. “I’ll take any extra power I can find,” he explained.
Since I had the keys, I locked up. There was no one else in the corridor. I beckoned to the other cells with the keys and raised my eyebrows to my partner. Farmer thought on it for a moment, then nodded. “Don’t let yourself be seen. I’ll silence the keys.”
I peered into one of the cells. Four men were inside, looking as unhappy as any caged Rats I had ever seen. I hoped they were not rapists or murderers and went about my work.
As I unlocked each cell, Farmer drew a strange mark on it that glowed the colors of his Gift. No one left the cells. I was going to open one, but Farmer signaled me to wait.
Next we found the guardroom. No one was there. Farmer twiddled his fingers over a pot of ale that was heating on the fire. Then we looked for the stairs.
“We’ll look like guards for half an hour unless a mage sees the spell and breaks it first,” he whispered in my ear. The climb was a long one. “I learned that bit of magic from a hedgewitch who normally sold it to wives who were cheating on their husbands. If the husband came home while the lover was still there—”
“That’s wicked,” I told him sternly, seeing how such a confusion spell would be useful. Then I grinned.
“Meet me by the shrine to the Maiden of Archers if we’re split up,” he said. I nodded. The shrine was a small one, tucked away near the stables. I had it on the map in my head. “The magic I put on the cells just now opens the doors in an hour. Then this place will be a madhouse. There won’t be any jail guards down here to stop them, not if they drink that ale. Do we find Tunstall and Sabine?”
I thought fast. “Our first duty is to the prince,” I said. The voice I heard was still that of a mot, though deeper and coarser than my own, and the body I saw was shorter and thicker than mine. “Then we just go. However we can. We’ve no time to spend testing the others’ loyalties.”
“Sabine’s giving way to them could have been a ruse,” Farmer pointed out.
I nodded. “I’d thought of that. And it’s better for Tunstall to be with her and free of the cells. But the lad is more important than anything. I’m wagering he’s in the kitchen, the slave quarters when it comes toward bedtime, or Prince Baird’s rooms.”
“The kitchen?” Farmer asked softly. We had reached the room where the servants passed in and out, cleaning up after supper. They didn’t look at us.
“He worked there before. It’s warm and there’s food. If he’s avoiding punishment or been set to work again, I’ll wager that’s where he’s to be found,” I explained. “He doesn’t know the heat and the smoke make him wearier, or that mayhap they’re instructed to give him bad food.”
“Where do you think I should search?” Farmer asked. He stopped by a tapestry that covered an entry to the great hall, and peeped through a slit. “They’ve gone to their amusements,” he told me softly. “I’ll be safer than you will, hunting among the nobles.”
“Prince Baird,” I whispered. “You stand a chance of getting to his chambers and looking around.”
“The stroke of midnight at that shrine, unless we’re occupied,” Farmer told me. “We’ll know something by then.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to leave him, but the lad had to be found. Farmer kissed his fingers and touched them to my cheek, then slouched and ambled through a break in the tapestry, the picture of a guardsman off duty. I’d walked but two steps toward the stairwell that smelled of kitchen when I heard Elyot’s voice from the other side of the cloth.
“I thought I felt strange magic. Did you really think such an obvious disguise would get past me, you dolt?”
Back came Farmer’s reply. No more was he playing the country lout for this treasonous louse. “Your thoughts and your ability to detect me aren’t my concern, Elyot. I have more vital business than you.”
I did not wait. I could not wait. Pounce and I trotted down two stairs toward the kitchen smell. When a red and sweaty maid climbed toward us, I stopped her. “Don’t go there,” I warned her. I sounded gruff, the sort of mot who whipped prisoners and teased the maids for extra food for herself. “Two mages is arguin’. I don’t think they mean to keep it to talk.”
As if I could foresee things, the tapestry hiding the big hall’s entry burned in a flash. Crimson and blue fires replaced it. I gripped the maid under the arm and rushed her back down the stair. She clung to me until we were in the kitchen, then screeched her tale to the servants gathered there. They did not stop to argue, but fled through the several doors that opened onto the huge room.
When they were gone, I waited. I knew the child slaves here had not followed the adults. I hadn’t seen them go. They would be tucked in the shadows, niches, and cupboards, or hiding in the open pantries, hoping to steal scraps.
I heard a crash up above. I ground my teeth. I wanted to be there, guarding Farmer as I’d done the night our camp was attacked. Instead I had to follow my duty here, Hunting for a boy who might one day be a liar like his turncoat uncle Baird. Surely I’d be better off helping Farmer!
But duty was duty. I had never failed Lord Gershom. I looked around.
A haunch of pig, half of it already cut away, lay on a table. The cooks must have been preparing it for a baked or stewed dish of some kind. I took up a knife and began to cut slices of my own, stuffing one in my mouth and setting others on a table behind me. I heard them before I saw them, at my back, grabbing the meat I’d set for them. They gave off the telltale jingle of slave chains. When I thought I’d left enough on the other table, I began to set slices on the bare space next to the roast. They had to think about that. It would mean coming into my view. These were the ones who were tucked away behind me. They knew I’d see them when they came out, but they’d be hungrier than ever after watching the others eat.
Mage-made thunder boomed down the stairs. The first of the hidden kitchen helpers dashed out of a niche between cupboards, seized a handful of scraps, and scrambled back to his hiding place, thinking I would be distracted by the noise. Another came after him in that tight-legged run they had to master with only a short chain between their ankles. Their clothes were but ragged shifts. The curst shackles had cost far more.
When I tired of cutting up meat, I went to the shelves and started to look through the bowls. A huge one near the top provided cherries, fresh ones. So did the bowl next to it. I turned with them in my hands to face six scrawny slave children, the youngest six, the oldest ten. Their faces and hands were smeared with pork fat. Three of them held knives.
I set the bowls down on a worktable. “Greasy as your hands are, it’d be easy work to get them knives from you,” I said. “Can you even use those in a fight?” My voice came out differently. I was still in Farmer’s disguise.
Nobody spoke. They’d learned the hard way that silence was the better road for the likes of them. Something crashed again on the level above and all of them flinched.
I shrugged. “Cherries here. Fresh picked. I’m havin’ some. When was the last time you had cherries?” I scooped a handful from a bowl and moved back, leaning against the shelves. Then I ate my cherries, spitting the pits on the floor. I
hoped that any of the kitchen staff who’d put those lash marks and scars on these little ones’ arms would slip on one and break his head, or her head.
They waited until they couldn’t stand it anymore, then went for the cherries, making a wide path around me. I didn’t move. When I finished my fruit, I stuck my hands in my pockets and waited. Pounce walked in and leaped up onto the table with the pig. The little slaves didn’t notice that a big slice of meat suddenly turned into a fine-chopped pile before the cat began to dine. Had I known Pounce could mince his own meat, I wouldn’t have worn myself out for years doing it for him!
I walked around the kitchen, keeping away from the table with the pork and that with the cherries. To them I seemed only to be idling about. I did set cheeses where they might reach them, as well as a loaf of bread and a jar of honey. I found what I sought at last, a small bundle of wires used to lace up stuffed birds, tucked away above the knives. With a mallet for pounding meat I shaped two of the wires as I needed. As I banged away, the battle did the same, flat, ugly crashes sounding along the stairs.
