The Death of Dulgath (19 page)

“So you
have
been paying attention.”

“I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”

“You have no idea how stupid I think you are, and honestly, we don’t have time for
that
conversation.”

Hadrian scowled.

“We’ll meet back in the room at Caldwell House tonight,” Royce said. “I might be late, so don’t wait up. And don’t turn your back on her again.”

“Scarlett?”

Royce rolled his eyes, sighed, and grimaced. “She’s not a pretty barmaid. She’s not a
nice
girl.”

“Seems like it to me.”

“Of course she does. She was in the Diamond. Her working name was Feldspar, and the nice-girl thing is part of her act. Cute and disarming, she dances, sings—”

“She sings, too?” Hadrian smiled.

“Pretty sure, and she does magic tricks. One of her favorites is making people’s coins disappear. She’s not innocent. She’s dangerous if you turn your back on her—so don’t.”

Hadrian recalled how deftly Scarlett had prepped the pork.

“And stay away from the pastor, too,” Royce said. “It would appear he was lying.”

“About what?”

“About there being no
i
in his name.”

Chapter Ten
Ghost in the Courtyard

The entirety of the castle staff had assembled in the Great Hall: two stewards, four chambermaids, two gardeners, two charwomen, the trio of cooks, the butterer, four scullery maids, the smith, herbalist, vintner, dyer, tailor, furrier, mercer, milliner, scribe, four grooms, a stable boy, woodcutter, food tester, sheriff, chamberlain, tax collector, treasurer, keeper of the wardrobe, her handmaiden, and the sergeant-at-arms with his six men. Lady Dulgath stood before them, demanding that the person or persons responsible for destroying Sherwood’s easel and paints step forward.

No one did.

Sherwood wasn’t surprised, but he was touched by the emotion in Lady Dulgath’s voice as she made her demand. She was angry. Perhaps—most likely—certainly—she was upset that his property was damaged in her home. She had suffered the embarrassment of failing to protect her guest. Still, Sherwood entertained the whisper-thin notion that she reacted so harshly because she liked him. She had said his name, after all. Wasn’t much to base a verdict on, but Sherwood was in a vulnerable state, and he clung to the idea like an ant riding a leaf in the middle of a flood.

The loss of his paints, palette, brushes, and easel was a mortal blow. They were irreplaceable. The set of tools had taken generations of master artists to build, amass, and perfect. Each painter loathed using up the better pigments, and was always saving to add more color to the collection. Some contributed a different brush or two; in Sherwood’s case, it was walnut oil. When he died, the collection would have been left to an apprentice; he just didn’t know who that would be. Now he had nothing to pass on.

Sherwood calculated that if he painted every noble’s face for the rest of his life, he still couldn’t hope to replace what had been lost. Deprived of the tools of his trade, he couldn’t even feed himself. But worse than all that was the deep disappointment of not finishing Nysa’s portrait. He had so wanted to. He needed to see all of what lay beyond the veil that could only be shown through the slow process of peeling back and layering up.

Feeling the winds of the hurricane blowing, Sherwood left the gathering and sat on the stone carving of a dragon that decorated the castle’s reception hall. Castle Dulgath was famous for its sculptures.

Or ought to be,
he thought.

Much of the castle was crafted from stone, and so beautifully done that rumors persisted about it once being a dwarven fortress. Sherwood didn’t think that was true. He’d been to the ruins of Linden Lott and had seen the ancient dwarven capital. He’d witnessed the skillful precision on a scale no longer possible. The sort of creative artistry on display in Dulgath was wholly different.

Dwarven designs were massive, practical, and tended to use geometric shapes. Castle Dulgath’s statues and reliefs were whimsical and breathtakingly lifelike. The dragon, whose paw he sat on, lay curled up, eyes closed as if it were a sleeping dog—only one of many such decorations. The west tower that stood on the very edge of the sea-battered cliff was adorned with clawed feet at its base—a beautification that few ever saw. The stone railings that led to the fifth floor—the private quarters off limits to all but a few—were adorned with delicately sculpted ivy that hung down like the real thing. A stone otter playing with a pinecone was hidden in a corner of the kitchen pantry, and the wall in the courtyard before the common well was decorated with a bas-relief of a school of fish swimming past. After two months, Sherwood was still discovering hidden treasures. Who had been responsible for the secret wealth of artistry, he couldn’t discover. Apparently, no one remembered.

What am I going to do?
The thought had been rattling inside his skull ever since its predecessors:
Why me?
and
This isn’t real
tired themselves out. Two new thoughts muscled their way in:
I’m going to starve
and
My life is over.

Sitting on the dragon’s paw he felt tears welling in his eyes as the full weight of his loss descended. His mouth folded up, as if a purse string ran through his lips and a miser had pulled them taut. Just then, Lord Fawkes entered the castle. Sherwood hadn’t thought his day could get worse, but his hurricane of bad luck wasn’t done raining. Fawkes spotted him and changed course.

“Stow, I just heard,” he said, shaking his head with sympathy so blatantly false that Sherwood could hear the laughter behind it. “Bad break. What are you going to do now? You don’t have any extra supplies, do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what you’ll do now or whether you have extra supplies?”

“Leave me alone, please.” Sherwood wiped his eyes, dragging the tears over his cheeks.

“Are you seriously crying over spilled paint?” Fawkes put a foot up on one of the dragon’s massive claws and leaned in. “People are dying every day.” He held out a hand about knee-high. “Children starving to death on crowded streets, women raped, men butchered in mindless campaigns for stupid rulers. The world is full of unjust misery, and here you are sobbing over paint? You’re quite the sniveling little quim, aren’t you?”

“Surely a lord of your stature has better things to do?”

“Of course, but I like to be generous to the downtrodden. I suspect you are low on funds—you artist types aren’t known for budgeting your money. I thought I would offer my assistance. I’ve purchased a horse this morning and wish to have it taken back to Mehan. I’m in need of a courier, and you could use the money. I’ll pay you to ride her home for me. I suspect Her Ladyship will be willing to provide you with adequate food and whatever supplies you’ll need, seeing as how she’s sort of at fault for your situation.”

“She didn’t do it.”

“She didn’t stop it, either, but that’s a triviality. What is important is that this is your lucky day, Stow. On the heels of your disaster comes good fortune. The horse is in the stable, a chestnut named Eloise. She came with saddle and tack. You can pack your bags and be on your way to Mehan by midday. I’ll pay you five silver for the trip because I’m feeling generous and because of your misadventure. So stop your blubbering and start packing.” Fawkes clapped his hands and grinned, eyes bright with happiness, as if this news was equally good for him and Sherwood.

“Excuse me,” Sherwood said. He got to his feet, turned his back on Lord Fawkes, and walked away.

Sherwood had no idea where he was off to. Not thinking—not capable of sound thought—he’d taken the obvious path before him. He moved toward the light coming in the front doors of the castle instead of going back inside where he might have lost himself in the many corridors and rooms. All he wanted was to get away. Sherwood knew Lord Fawkes was watching; he felt eyes boring into his back.

He walked out through the big doors onto the stone porch. Castle Dulgath wasn’t built correctly. Sherwood had been to most of the strongholds across Avryn and even a few in Trent and western Calis. None were like this. The differences went beyond the intricate decorations. The porch was a good example—castles didn’t have porches. Fortresses were built for defense and were circled by a curtain wall with ramparts and turrets. The others all had a single massive entry composed of three formidable barriers—a drawbridge, a sturdy gate, and a portcullis. Such strongholds didn’t always have moats, but those without had ditches.

In contrast, Dulgath sported a wide porch with columns that held up the extended roof to shade it from the summer sun. This was less a fortress and more a glorified country manor. That was one of the things Sherwood loved about the castle and, by extension, Nysa Dulgath.

Once on the porch, he made a quick turn to the right to break Fawkes’s line of sight. Immediately his back felt better. Elevated as he was, Sherwood had a broad view of the courtyard. The shadow cast by the east tower divided the yard into dark and light, the contrast leaving those areas in the sun so brilliant they looked washed out. Having no place to go except away from Fawkes, Sherwood stopped three steps after making his escape and stood dumbly on the porch. He was acutely aware of how his arms hung pointlessly at his sides, how heavy his body felt, how dry his mouth was, and how none of it mattered. Depression was closing in; the dark clouds were circling, creeping up, preparing to smother. Just then, he saw movement, or thought he did.

Like his arms, his eyes had been left with no clear direction. Sherwood had been aimlessly staring because at that moment he found even the effort of shifting his gaze to be too much. If he had been walking or merely glancing around the way a person typically might, he never would have noticed the motion. Having seen the subtle shift of light and darkness near the well, he was slow to grasp the impossibility of what he saw. No one was there and nothing was moving in the breeze, because there wasn’t one.

A cloud—maybe? Or a bird’s shadow?

Sherwood stepped off the porch and looked up. The sky was clear.

Everyone—everyone is in the Great Hall. So who—or what—is near the well?

The
or what
surprised him. Sherwood wasn’t usually a believer in the fantastical. He’d spent too many drunken nights with court entertainers. Minstrels, poets, and storytellers accepted him as part of their club and told him the real stories behind the tales of valor and wonder. At a young age, he discovered the truth about the world—mysteries were designed for a purpose, and if something seemed too fantastical to be true, it was. But he was the only audience in the courtyard, and he’d entered only a second before. What had moved in that corner of the yard didn’t look
human.
Nothing more than a shadow, but the movement was strange, too fast, and—

Didn’t it go up rather than across?

Such a thing wasn’t possible. There hadn’t been a sound. In the stillness of the empty, windless yard, Sherwood could’ve heard a leaf fall, but there was nothing.

Who or what is near the well?

The question lingered, and Sherwood realized that the hurricane—with its dreadful, smothering clouds—was holding off. The storm had miraculously been brought to bay by this aberration. Keeping his eyes locked on the spot, he descended the steps and started across the courtyard.

Along with the odd sense that what he’d seen wasn’t
normal
was the equally strong impression that it wasn’t
good.
With each step, he became more certain of two things. The first was the wickedness of what he approached, and the second was that it was still there. Just a day before, he would have returned inside, but it wasn’t the previous day and Sherwood found himself not so much brave as invincible. He was a soaked man caught in a summer rainstorm.

What harm can it do that hasn’t already been done?

The inner ward’s well was set in a niche surrounded on three sides by screening walls. Sherwood was certain something was hiding in that little space where his sight was blocked. Crossing the yard, he approached the well head-on, but saw nothing except the beautiful stone mural of fish and the side-cranking windlass that looked a bit like a sailing ship’s wheel.