Irons in the Fire (31 page)

Failla rode out onto the road. She was less concerned with their motives. "You both travel from dukedom to dukedom without anyone hindering you? You've never come under any suspicion?"

"As far as anyone's concerned, I'm Tormalin," Nath said wryly.

Welgren shrugged. "The sick are more concerned with a doctor's effectiveness than his origins. Anyone stopping me on the road generally lets me pass when I explain they risk Ostrin's vengeance if the desperately ill patient I'm hurrying to dies."

Derenna looked dubious. "Have you never been robbed or detained?"

"I carry little enough coin and my books and instruments are of no value to anyone else. Most of my medicines can be replaced straightforwardly enough, and when I explain how easily they might accidentally poison themselves, would-be thieves tend to lose interest." Welgren smiled a little. "The price of my freedom has been treating some mercenary band's wounded a few times. That's no great trial. I can test new treatments and they don't hold the deaths of men already written off their muster against me."

"Charoleia trusts them." Reniack looked at Failla and Derenna.

Derenna nodded. "Then let's make haste before we miss our next meeting."

"Follow me." Failla headed past the gibbet.

Uncle Ernout had insisted, in his ciphered letter replying to the one she'd written at Charoleia's dictation, that she was to be the only one who knew where to find him tonight. What would his answer be, she wondered, to the astonishing proposal that had come from the conspirators in Vanam? Would he join with them or send them away? If he rejected this scheme of theirs, what would she do?

"What do we call you?" Nath the map-maker brought his horse up beside her.

Derenna followed, flanked by Reniack and the apothecary Welgren.

"Failla." It was a common enough name and Charoleia had advised against trying to use something unfamiliar. She'd said few things attracted attention like someone failing to answer when they were supposedly addressed.

"Where are we going?" asked Nath.

"This way."

The sprawling blackness of the ducal hunting forest lay ahead.

There was a rattle and Failla saw Nath making sure his own sword was ready to hand.

"Runaways and bandits lurk along forest tracks," he said defensively.

"We should be safe enough." Failla smiled. "From the Woodsmen anyway."

Behind her, Derenna was immediately curious. "The Woodsmen?"

Welgren chuckled. "According to tavern tales, they're the ones the peasants have to thank when a fresh-killed deer is laid on their doorstep the very day after some mercenary band has stolen their only pig. Or when some despairing goodwife measuring out her last barley to brew ale for selling finds a bag of coin in her grain bin to pay the ducal levy."

"How often does that happen?" Derenna asked acerbically. "Outside tavern tales?"

"We can turn tavern tales to our purpose, whether they're true or not." Reniack dismissed her cynicism. "As long as they show how woefully Duke Garnot fails his people."

Failla kept her mouth shut. She'd already said too much. She didn't want Reniack's broadsheets linking her Uncle Ernout and the guildsmen to such charity. As long as Duke Garnot sent his mercenaries hunting the mythical Woodsmen, they stayed safe.

As Welgren regaled Reniack and Derenna with more stories, Nath was searching the darkened coppices flanking the road ahead. "Charoleia tells me you and I will be travelling together. As brother and sister," he added hastily. "I have a wife and three young children."

"My felicitations." Failla looked for the waymarks Uncle Ernout had described. The first was a lightning-struck tree.

"Do you have a steady hand and a good eye for drafting?" he asked diffidently. "If so, you could act as my assistant."

"I believe so." She needn't explain how she'd honed such skills copying Duke Garnot's private papers.

Seeing a leafless skeleton amid the summer's lush growth, she urged her horse on.

"Will her ladyship be able to play the part of Welgren's nurse?" Nath sounded doubtful.

"After five children, a sickroom shouldn't come as any great shock to her."

To her relief, Nath took the hint and fell silent. Failla turned down a track that forced them into single file. As the trees grew taller, the boughs overhead hid the spangled night sky. Leaf litter muffled their mounts' hooves as they all slowed to let the horses pick their own way safely through the darkness.

Nath spoke up behind her. "I can smell burning."

"Solstice bonfires." Through the black branches, Failla saw moonlight striking pale rock.

As they emerged into a clearing around a rocky crag, Nath looked dubiously at scorched patches of turf ringed with stones. A few half-burned logs were still smoking. "You'd think they'd quench them more thoroughly when the forest is so dry."

"And risk the god's displeasure?" An old man, cloaked and hooded, sat in a niche carved into the rock.

"Saedrin's stones." Reniack was startled. "I took you for a statue."

"Uncle!" Failla slid from her horse and embraced him with relief.

"Drianon's blessings on your birth festival, child." He held her, strong despite his scrawny frame and snowy hair. "Until I got your letter, we all feared the worst."

"I'm sorry." Failla pressed her face to his woollen weskit.

"Be careful." Her uncle's arms tightened around her. "Your aunts tell me too many folk are still curious as to what's become of you. The duchess's women are forever debating the latest gossip."

Failla pulled away reluctantly, aware that everyone else was waiting. "Can we talk here?"

Nath had caught up her horse's reins. The animal whinnied at the scent of fresh water. A spring flowed from the rock to fill a pool carved at its foot. Long ago, the crag above had been shaped into a sternly bearded visage surrounded by billowing clouds. Pious hands had scoured it clean ready for the Solstice rites.

"This shrine is dedicated to Dastennin?" Derenna looked at Ernout. "You're its priest?"

"No." He shook his head. "Lord Hanriss inherited that honour from his father, as his father had done before him."

"Does he know we're meeting here?" Reniack asked suspiciously.

"Only that I have come to supervise the Solstice rites in Saedrin's honour." Ernout shook his head. "Lord Hanriss is too frail to leave his home and he has no sons left to inherit the priesthood. They all died fighting for Duke Garnot's father. He feels no obligation to Duke Garnot's quarrels, nor to any hopes of greatness for His Grace's son and heir."

Failla remembered hearing about the reclusive old lord from one of her cousins. He wanted revenge above all else, on Duke Garnot and his long-dead father, for the sake of his slaughtered sons. Would hatred that he'd already cherished through two generations keep him alive to see all the dukes brought low?

"I know too many families who feel the same." Derenna accepted Welgren's help and dismounted. "I take it his death means his estates will fall into Duke Garnot's hands to be laid waste by His Grace's folly?"

"Or used to bribe some favourite." Ernout waved a hand at the pool as several horses strained towards the water. "Let your mounts drink. I don't imagine Dastennin will take offence."

"I believe you represent the Guilds of Carluse?" Reniack dismounted and led his horse forward. It joined the others already drinking noisily, bits and bridles jingling.

"A Parnilesse accent," Ernout remarked. "Yet you're committed to the cause of peace in Carluse?"

"To the cause of peace in Lescar," Reniack said firmly. "I leave for Parnilesse tonight, where friends will hide me from Duke Orlin as we spread new hope among all who despise his rule. Lady Derenna--" he spared her a nod "--will travel with Welgren through Sharlac and Draximal, telling those whom they trust to expect a new dawn. If you will spread our word through Carluse, Failla and Nath will head for Marlier, to find men and women of equal goodwill to support our endeavour."

Ernout was unmoved by Reniack's oratory. "Goodwill is all very well, but Failla's letter said you were bringing an army to force Duke Garnot to his knees and to terms thereafter. Where are these fighting men now?"

"We have been travelling too far and too fast for news to catch up with us--" Reniack began.

"I have a letter from Charoleia." Nath reached into the breast of his jerkin. "She says your associates are recruiting in the hunting and mining camps of northernmost Ensaimin. They'll muster their forces in Dalasor by the middle of Aft-Summer."

Derenna looked at Ernout. "Can you convince your guildsmen and townsfolk not to fight? If they cannot escape service in a militia, they must flee the battlefields at the last moment."

"When did you get that letter, Nath?" Welgren was rummaging in a leather wallet belted beneath his cloak. "I have one from Charoleia here. They want to recruit mercenaries who've been wintering in Marlier, according to... Tathrin, is it?" He looked up enquiringly.

"Tathrin, yes, that's his name." Failla felt a pang. She'd much rather be travelling with him again. How was he coping with the hazards of his journey? She wasn't at all convinced those Mountain Men could be trusted, not if they faced a choice between saving his neck or their own.

"When exactly did you get this?" Welgren took Nath's letter and compared them.

The map-maker thought for a moment. "The morning of the forty-first day of For-Summer."

"But it's dated on the twenty-fourth day of the season." Welgren gave Nath his letter back. "I had this on the thirty-seventh, written on the twenty-ninth."

"So the plan has changed in some particulars." Reniack waved both letters away impatiently.

"This doesn't inspire confidence." Ernout looked severe. "If the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing, how is anything to be achieved? How secure are those ciphers? Letters can be intercepted and copied, no matter how secret you think your courier chains might be."

"We will soon have far faster and more secure means of communication," Reniack assured him.

"I don't think we should promise that just yet," Derenna interrupted.

"How so?" Nath demanded simultaneously.

"I wouldn't want to get your hopes up," the older woman said tersely.

Ernout looked at Failla and raised his brows in silent question.

"I can't tell you, exactly." Charoleia had insisted they tell no one outside the Vanam conspiracy that they hoped to use aetheric magic. Besides, Failla was still unclear as to how it was supposed to work. "But I trust those who say it can be done."

If Aremil's twisted body and intense manner unnerved her, Failla knew Tathrin believed in him absolutely. Whatever the circumstances of their first meeting, Failla had found she trusted Tathrin and not just because of his resolute defence of her on their journey to Vanam. The Mountain Men had questioned her closely, as if they knew she was concealing something. Tathrin had accepted what she told him. More, he'd shown no sign of contempt for her trading her body for Duke Garnot's favours. He'd just let her see his admiration for all she had done to help the guildsmen and their undertakings.

"This plan of yours will only work as long as no whisper of it reaches Duke Garnot's ears." Ernout looked stern. "I have discussed your letter with my allies among the Guilds and shrines of Carluse. We are not prepared to identify ourselves or share our plans with you. If one of you lets something slip to compromise us, whether by accident or folly, all that we have achieved over these past few years will go for nothing."

"Don't you want peace?" Reniack demanded, pugnacious.

"Can we trust all those you've told about us?" challenged Derenna.

"I can," Ernout assured her, "and I trust Failla."

Well he might. She smiled tremulously. He knew all her secrets. She would never be able to keep them without him. By way of repayment, doing his bidding had seemed so obvious when she'd lived at Duke Garnot's beck and call, of no more account than some caged songbird.

"We will help you." Ernout raised his hand to silence Reniack's triumphant gratitude "But not without conditions. Failla and Nath can spread your ideas through Carluse with our blessing. We will make sure they have food and shelter and that any talk of their presence is curbed. But we have our own undertakings to carry through and we will not involve you in those. The only point of contact between our people and yours will be Failla. If that's not agreeable, I'm sorry." He shook his head slowly. "We will go our way and you may go yours."

Even in the half-light, Failla could see Reniack's face darken. "That's--"

"Acceptable," Derenna said briskly. "Thank you."

To Failla's intense relief, the rabble-rouser heaved a grudging sigh. "Very well."

She couldn't blame Uncle Ernout for doubting these people and their conspiracy to bring down all the dukes. Far away in Vanam, she had been so easily seduced into believing them. It wasn't nearly so easy now, standing beneath the Solstice night sky in the midst of the forest.

She had thought she'd feel safer once she knew this plot was being folded into the guildsmen's intrigues. On the other hand, all along the road through Caladhria, fear had gnawed at her. If the Vanam conspiracy was discovered, then all the guildsmen and priests working for the common good in Carluse would be at risk. If their plots were uncovered, how could she hope that her own private secrets would remain hidden?