The Tracker (2 page)

From the royal perindens they passed to the garden. No gardeners were around. There was no one at all strolling the paths, sitting on the benches, or bending to admire the flowers. The only sign of life was a tumult of voices coming over the tall hedges from the courtyard.

Despite his odor, Leefa snuggled in closer to him. “But what I can’t understand is why the Master-at-Arms is giving the announcement when that is the role of the king’s man. What do you think?”

“I think we will know soon enough,” Arden said.

“Another baby! I just love those fat arms reaching out.” Leefa sighed wistfully. “We would have a darling baby. A little boy to ride about on your shoulders, a girl . . .”

They entered the courtyard through the archway and he stopped listening to her from his surprise. This was a much bigger crowd than there had been in previous announcements. The entire populace of the palace serving staff was milling around the cobbles. Tolaman’s narrow-lipped wife was sitting on the rim of the fountain and chatting to a first floor maid. Mavic was in a group of younger servants, all engaged in flicking pennies up into the air and catching them. Footmen and butlers, cooks and carriage drivers, nannies and tutors and laundresses, everyone was here down to the children who were too young to work.

Even Etto, who had stolen Arden’s heart a year ago and put it in his pocket with a dozen others to beat for him. The man took hearts because he had none to call his own, and Arden’s infatuation had passed. But for that brief time that Arden had called him his . . . those days where he heard his name being called in the perindens and literally trembled with happiness to look up . . . When he unbuckled his belt at night, he always remembered the one night when Etto’s hands had done the unbuckling. And then the bed had been warm on Etto’s side in the morning, thrilling Arden to imagine the warmth going on and on forever, and cold every morning since then. Etto was charming a groom now, both leaning against the hedge and chuckling in the way of new secrets held between them. Firmly under Etto’s spell, the groom looked at him adoringly. Perhaps he wasn’t aware that Etto never visited the same well for a drink twice. Or he
was
aware but just didn’t care.

Heads turned when the door to the armory opened, but the Master-at-Arms was not among the soldiers to file out. The king’s man Pietru did, however, and snapped at the penny-flickers to comport themselves. Bright copper coins tumbled down through the air and vanished into pockets. Then the king’s man stood with the soldiers and waited, all of them silent and with their backs ramrod straight.

Leefa pulled Arden over to a group of her friends from the kitchen and garden. Carmel looked at her arm through Arden’s with jealousy. Bewitched by her, he was a handsome but low-ranking garden lead who wouldn’t ever catch her eye. She was determined to move up in this world, and Carmel wasn’t going to attain any height except by the lightning bolt of luck. The prime positions were taken, and he would be raking leaves to infinity. Arden wouldn’t move up to first lead unless Tolaman died, and as he was in good health and barely thirty years of age, it was unlikely to happen. Also, he would name someone else as his successor purely out of spite. To be shown up for his lack of a penchant grated on him keenly, and had since the very first day Arden was brought to the perindens.

“She
can’t
be,” Taliss was saying to Leefa. The two of them adored the river of endless gossip to sweep through the palace. “I had it from the laundresses themselves. The monthly sheets haven’t changed and-” Carmel flushed as he put together what Taliss was talking about. “-Dorka had it from the nurse’s assistant. The doctor would have been called to her quarters, and the astrologer, and every time she took to bed for months. But she hasn’t retired, so-”

“I saw her just last Fourday,” piped up a new nanny’s helper. “She wouldn’t have been rolling around the floor like that after her babies had she another one coming along inside. This has something to do with Princess Briala.” Leefa and Taliss dismissed her as being young and foolish, and not a resident of the palace long enough to know anything they didn’t.

Throwing Arden a sympathetic look, Kolfax cut through people to move farther away from Leefa. In retaliation for spurning her advances, she had informed everyone that
she
had spurned
him
because he had oozing black-spot on his manhood. There was nothing that Kolfax could do to prove her wrong unless he planned to stand on the fountain’s rim and lower his trousers in front of the entire staff. Then he would be vindicated, but also unemployed.

They continued to wait for the Master-at-Arms. Pennies reappeared and more people sat upon the fountain’s edge. The light purple sky was strewn with clouds, a pretty sight that many were pointing out, but Arden’s eyes were caught on two of the prince’s gentlemen who were walking in circles around the fountain. Long they had been a couple, and now between them was a dark-haired little girl of four. She was an orphaned niece that they had taken in three years ago, and their faces were alight upon her as she cried, “More, Da! More, Pa!” They lifted her little hands in their big ones and she squealed to come off the ground and swing.

Arden turned away from their happy family in sadness and half-attended to the conversations around him. Gossip about a groom who had behaved so shoddily that he was dismissed just last week . . . a maid who had gotten herself into trouble and fingered the married milkman as responsible . . . the mystery of the stolen statue from the third floor drawing room . . . a handsome man who worked in the perindens and refused to propose to his beautiful girl . . . Arden came back to himself hurriedly as everyone laughed at him. Leefa squeezed his arm and said ruefully to her friends, “I’m still waiting!”

Dagad forgive him, he
was
going to have to scream in her face like a madman. He had few memories of his mother, and none concerning her opinion on how to handle a pushy girl, but he trusted that she would have given him good advice. He just couldn’t figure out what it was. But she
never
would have told him to scream in the girl’s face. Of this he was certain.

He was saved from more comments, queries, and embarrassment when the Master-at-Arms appeared from the armory door and held up his hand for silence. It spread like ripples out from his raised hand, shushes relaying through the courtyard until the only sound was a penny striking the cobbles, and the king’s man delivering a swift clip to the back of Mavic’s head. Then total silence fell.

The Master-at-Arms was an imposing figure. The most squirrely, half-witted squires and soldiers straightened their spines in his presence; the man dealt with nonsense harshly. His graying hair cropped closely to his scalp, scars ran down his thick arms from repeat altercations with blades. Despite all of this, he had a very soft voice. Even when he was counting out lash marks, he sounded like he was reciting the dreamy words of a lullaby.

His voice didn’t carry through the courtyard, but the gasps and cries told Arden all that he needed to know. The fresh-faced young nanny’s helper was proven right that it had to do with Princess Briala. She was missing. The last time she had been seen was the evening on Twoday, when she retired to her bedchambers with a severe headache and ordered her staff not to bother her for any reason. Her headaches had grown so overwhelming over the last year that she stayed in total darkness and could not tolerate company or even food for days. For much of the time, she slept under medication given to her by the doctor.

Thus, when her bell for meals did not chime on Threeday and Fourday, no one in the kitchen thought anything of it. She was asleep. If she woke up between the doses of medication she gave herself and was able to tolerate a little food, she had a bowl of fruit in her room. It was only yesterday that her absence began to feel overlong, and her high maid went to investigate at the queen’s behest. The bedroom was empty, as was the study. She wasn’t visiting her nieces and nephews, nor was she in the apothecary with the doctor. She wasn’t anywhere.

Coming to the fountain and stepping up to the rim, the Master-at-Arms’s voice carried further. “Those of you who have known Princess Briala since childhood are well aware that she has a love of the practical joke. It is highly probable that she is still on the palace grounds, but she could be concealed with a
holographie
crystal. It creates a modest projection-”

Insulted at this suggestion, Leefa hissed to Arden, “A practical joke? She is a month away from her marriage! Can you imagine this?”

Arden didn’t respond. Why would he have imagined this? Heads of older people shook around the courtyard and whispers rose of the gracious young woman that the princess had become. What was in character for her at the age of eight was out-of-step for almost twenty. Besides, Prince Reynar had usually been the instigator of those practical jokes and roped in all three of his little sisters for the ride. Beautiful Seeta was gone to Loria, married to the prince second in line to the throne, brave Zalai was performing her service to the Crown by managing the wild people of the southwestern coast, and clever Briala was betrothed to the youngest son of the Isle Zayre royal family. Childhood was behind them one and all, and it had been for some time.

Nodding to the first leads scattered through the throngs, the Master-at-Arms said, “All of you are to have your people search your area of the palace and grounds thoroughly. Leave no stone unturned and be very attentive to any young woman who appears to be out of place. The
holographie
crystal cannot change her into a man; it cannot add or subtract from her age. But it can lighten or darken her skin, shorten or lengthen her hair, twist her form and features into those of a stranger’s. It can even change her clothes. She could be among you now.” Everybody looked at his or her immediate neighbors in suspicion. Several pairs of eyes alighted on the new nanny’s helper, who protested that her identity could be accounted for by multiple personages both within the palace and former places of employment outside it.

“Could the princess have been kidnapped?” someone called out.

“Our investigation has concluded that she was not taken against her will from the palace,” the Master-at-Arms said. “There have been no threats against her as of late. Her room is far too high for someone to slip through the window. There is no evidence that anyone tried. Nothing in her room was stolen or disturbed. No, she is here.”

His eyes slid to the crowd of people that had Arden in its mix, and lingered on a whispering man and woman. “We will locate her soon, and I would hate to hear tales of this carried out of the palace gates. Oh, I would
hate
to hear that.” His fingers flexed. The out-of-place lullaby voice was somehow more frightening than the booming baritone the man should have had. Arden had never crossed the man, and stayed at a distance in the rare times the fellow came to the perindens. The couple stopped whispering and looked nervous.

They divided into their groups, maids together and dividing further by floor, Leefa pressing a kiss to Arden’s cheek before she joined the kitchen staff. Carmel threw over one more jealous look and went to the gardeners. Tolaman put up his hand imperiously and the perindens staff reported to him, Arden included. Rubbing his head, Mavic was scanning the ground for his lost penny and bumped twice into the crowd of squires on the way.

The clip from the king’s man to one of his staff had embarrassed Tolaman, who seized the boy by the collar and shook him. “Flicking coppers! You were told once to stop and once was too much already! How dare you shame the perindens in front of the whole palace?”

“Everyone was doing it! It was just a bit of fun-” Mavic complained.

“Once the princess has been located, get to the squelly pools and clean up in there. The water is disgusting from those clogged pipes and should have been taken care of on Threeday. That can be your fun and if the exhibit isn’t sparkling by dinner, then you won’t get one.”

“But I can’t hold my breath that long! I’ll need help scooping out the jelly clots-”

“Here’s all the help you’ll receive.” Tolaman boxed the boy’s ear viciously and Mavic ceased his argument. Arden winced. In his first two years in the perindens, Tolaman had often boxed his ears for no crime greater than existing. Then Arden grew taller and larger, and Tolaman stopped even though Arden never struck back.

A full-time staff of five managed the exhibits, and the first lead set Retel and Izac to searching the perindens kitchen and stock rooms since that was where they worked. Mavic was in charge of checking out the lower branches of animals, Arden the middle, and Tolaman would search the highest branches and the huts.

The king’s man strolled around the groups and whispered to first leads, whose voices then rang out to their staff about certain places likely to be overlooked. The Master-at-Arms motioned to his soldiers and all of them split apart, having already received areas to search.

“Not a lick and a promise,” Tolaman said sternly, and far more loudly than needed for people standing within two feet of him. He wanted others to hear his authority. “If one of you misses the princess and it turns out that she was within your section of the perindens all along, I will dismiss you from the palace. Are we clear about that?” Arden listened without worry; he could not be dismissed with his penchant. His life and skill belonged to the king. In his angrier moments with Tolaman, he wished that he
could
be dismissed.