The Waters Rising (38 page)

“These are the cellars of the Old Dark House,” he said.

“They aren’t very nice.” The stones were cold, the ceilings hung with webs.“They have spiderwebs.”

“That’s because no one can come down here to clean. No one comes here but me and my family. Your mother is part of my family.”

“So I’m part of your family?”

“You are.”

“But I’m really the duke Falyrion’s daughter, you know. He’s my father.”

“Really?”

“Really. He is.”

The Old Dark Man smiled a very curious smile. “And does he love you dearly?”

“Oh, yes, he says so.”

“Ah. Well, I have deep regard for you, too, Alicia. I’m going to teach you some wonderful things, but first you have to learn that you will not tell the duke and you will not tell your mother.”

“Mother says I must tell her everything.”

“Everything but this. This is our secret.”

She had objected, and he had hurt her, only a little; the scar hardly showed, just enough to convince her that she should not tell her father, should not tell Mirami. Then he had instructed her: the large mechanism in the corner was there to watch and protect her; she must let the large mechanism see everything she did when she was here; this mechanism was used in this way; that mechanism was used in that way. He called them mechanisms, not ease machines. During their visits—always at night, always when Mirami was away—he had moved several of them onto a low bench where she could use them easily: the seeker-mirror mechanisms; the fatal-cloud mechanism; the sending mechanism. He had shown her how to connect the seeker-mirror and the sending mechanisms together to make a haunting. She had wanted to send a haunting onto Mirami, but the Old Dark Man hadn’t let her.

Mirami never knew that Alicia had visited the Old Dark Man. He had always come for her after dark; he had always returned her before anyone knew she was gone. In later years, Alicia had sometimes wondered if he had moved her at all, or whether he had perhaps not directed her to dream everything she had learned, had seen. Later, however, when she became Duchess of Altamont, when she took possession of the castle, when she went down the stairs and opened the secret door, using the key on the screen as he had taught her, everything had been just as she had seen it as a child. Everything that had happened between her and the Old Dark Man had been real and was still a secret.

One of the things he had taught her was to keep her accounts balanced.

Now, instead of raging, Alicia thought very carefully of the account she kept with Mirami. Mirami had questioned her, then ordered her, then given her a specific time in which to comply with the order, as though she, Alicia, were a servant! She had also ridiculed Alicia’s manner, her style, her way of being. None of this was unusual, and the Old Dark Man had told her how to cope with it.

“Comply. Comply in a timely manner. Then do something that Mirami would not like at all if she knew of it. Be sure it is something to your benefit, not hers. Be sure she does not know of it. That way, my child, your accounts will always be in balance.”

Alicia thought she had been about seven years old when he had told her that.

“Your mother will always think she controls you. You will always know she does not,” he had said. “You will take pleasure in that. Your accounts will balance.”

Very well. Now it was time to balance the accounts. Mirami was getting out of hand, and it was time she had something else to think about. Alicia went to a cupboard, opened it, found a small box sealed with wax, cut the wax away, and opened the box to disclose several tiny boxes inside, each carefully labeled, several with the letter M, a couple with the letter C, for Chamfray. Chamfray was her mother’s “chamberlain.” She took a C-labeled box and carried it to the machine she had used to kill the woman at Woldsgard. A rack nearby was filled with small skull-shaped receptacles, rounded at one end, angled like a jaw at the other. The contents of the box—a few hairs, a few scraps of skin—went into one of the receptacles; the receptacle fitted into a little port in the fatal-cloud mechanism, clicking into place with a sound like a key turning in a lock
, scrun-chick
. She entered a certain code, then another one, thinking carefully as she did so. There would be no mistakes this time, even though this was only the second time she had used it. Since that time she had done it badly, she had studied the instructions, over and over. This time there would be no mistake. Finally, satisfied, she pushed a red button. The mechanism hummed. After a time, it stopped humming and clicked again as a small, cylindrical capsule extruded itself from the bottom of the device. The capsule was smooth, without markings except for the fine line that girded its middle, a line indicating that it would probably unscrew or uncap at that point. It was almost exactly the size of the tube one would attach to a pigeon’s leg, to carry a message.

The loft was four stories above her, and she relished every step of the climb. At the top, she sent the loft man away and took time to lean in the window, judging the weather. It had cleared completely; the skies were blue and warm; it was early in the day. She picked a large, strong-looking bird from the Ghastain cage, a bird that would make the trip well before nightfall. She held it gently, stroking it: such a nice, nice strong bird. The loft keeper at the court of King Gahls would open the capsule to get the message out just the way the loft keeper at Woldsgard castle had sometimes done when she sent a new copy of the cloud. They had never caught on to that. Stupid of them! One of Justinian’s cleaners, the one who swept out the lofts, had been bribed to provide a few pigeons. Though there had never been a message, she had sent copy after copy!

No copies this time! This one had been made correctly; once would be quite enough. The lofts in Ghastain, up on the highlands, were part of the castle itself, close to the living quarters of those who dwelt there. Close enough. The cloud would find Chamfray, all by itself. She returned to her cellar empty-handed, humming.

The little box lay where she had left it. The last time Alicia had been at court, she had taken hairs from inside Chamfray’s cap. Hairs with their little roots attached, the only kind that the mechanism could use. With that Tingawan woman, she had taken a fragment of glass from the edge of a wine cup. It was the only material she had, the only she could obtain! And then she’d made mistakes. Instead of killing swiftly, cleanly, it had been like cutting the Stoneway, chip, chip, chip. Like bleeding someone to death a drop at a time! It had taken far too long. If she’d been able to get some other material, she could have ended it earlier, but the princess had been too well guarded.

She would do it correctly for the other Tingawans, too, when she got around to that. Mirami had no idea that Alicia could use the Old Dark Man’s machines. Mirami knew he had the machines, but she had never been taught to use them. It had amused the Old Dark Man to keep her in the dark, to educate Alicia without her mother knowing of it. Mirami thought the Tingawan princess had died from poison because that’s the way Mirami always killed. Though Mirami did not kill for pleasure, she did it easily and without pity when it suited her. If it suited her plans to kill Alicia, she would do that just as easily.

When Mirami found someone more talented than someone already in her employ, the former employee usually died, though sometimes they simply disappeared. Children were no different. Alicia had once overheard her mother say that children were merely anchors for attaching oneself to men one wished to use. Well, Mirami had already used Falyrion, so the children she’d had with Falyrion were disposable. She hadn’t finished using King Ghals, so Rancitor was in good odor at the moment. Hulix, however, would not last long as Duke of Kamfels. Alicia had read her mother’s attitude toward him. He was only a pawn, holding a square until someone else moved in and took him. Alicia had long ago decided not to be another pawn.

T
he Old Dark Man had come for her and found her weeping.

“What’s this? Why are you going on like this?”

“Mother. She killed him. She killed my father. I saw her.”

“Your father?” He made a strange chuckling sound. “You mean Falyrion?”

“My father, yes. She killed him.”

“And you loved him.” His voice was serious, calm, but with something sharp in it.

“I do love him! And I can’t say anything to anybody or she’ll kill me.”

“Yes. Probably. But you remember what I taught you about keeping your accounts balanced?” He chuckled. “Usually what she does is of no concern to me, but I have a special need for you, Alicia, so I have taught you how to keep yourself safe. If you have paid attention?” He had tipped her head, glared into her eyes. Still sobbing, she had nodded. That night he didn’t take her anywhere. That night he went away without taking her anywhere or doing any of the things he sometimes did to her. The “procedures” that hurt. Sometimes they hurt a lot, but learning to use the mechanisms was worth it!

N
o doubt Mirami had killed a lot of people before she killed Falyrion, but the deaths had never touched Alicia. Her father’s death was different. She had seen her father lying on the bier. His hands were cold. His face was still. He wouldn’t take her riding anymore. He wouldn’t show her how to fish or read her stories of the Before Time. He wouldn’t take her for surprise picnics into the forest. Mirami could kill whom she liked and Alicia didn’t care, but Mirami had no right to kill Alicia’s father. This death she would not forgive. That was when she really paid attention to the Old Dark Man’s strange words. That was when she really focused on keeping her accounts balanced, in order to be safe, yes, but that wasn’t the only reason.

She hadn’t been blamed for Justinian’s flight, so she could assume she was still safe, still in reasonable favor. Her meetings with the Sea King’s ambassadors would remain secret. It was clever of the Sea King to hide them in the refugee villages, among the Becomers! One day, however, when she had time to search Wold for what the Tingawan had hidden there, the Sea King would put such power into her hands that Mirami would no longer matter. Until that time it was expedient to set the Tingawans aside and at least pretend to attend to family business.

This thought led her to wonder why, since the family business was so important to Mirami, with all her spies and agents and little people passing on bits of information, she had not foreseen Justinian’s leaving. She always seemed to know everything before it happened, but she had not known this! In fact, such immediate action was utterly unlike Justinian’s usual behavior. He was slow to act, usually. He liked to think about things. Perhaps the cursed Tingawan princess had made his plans for him before she died! More than merely perhaps. She had done so! If Alicia needed a reason to hate Tingawans, that was a sufficient reason!

Of course, Mirami had not foreseen that the Sea King’s people would approach Alicia, either. Mirami had not foreseen that Alicia might prefer to have plans of her own. Mirami was not omniscient. Cheered by this, Alicia drummed her fingers, crossing things off her mental list, eventually coming to the subject of her most recent annoyance: Jenger.

If he had reached the Vulture Tower, he was now arranging to abduct the Tingawan females and assassinate the one called Bear. If he succeeded, well and good! The prisoners could be kept at the Old Dark House indefinitely. A few times she had kept prisoners alive for years. Well, almost alive. And if Jenger had not succeeded, it really didn’t matter, because the Tingawans could be killed later. She could simply send a pigeon to the Vulture Tower, telling Jenger to return to Altamont. This would tell her if the route was safe for her to use.

However, Mirami had said they had time and Jenger had been behaving very oddly of late, not as amusing as usual, more subdued. Perhaps he suspected he was about to be replaced. Servants who reached that point were sometimes driven to play games of their own. Well, since a little delay was allowable, she would wait a day or two before sending archers by the same route Jenger had taken. The shafts would be a bit drier by then; they could report on the condition of the tunnels when they returned and they could bring Jenger back with them. As a matter of fact, they could take a pack animal or two and bring back everything in the tower. If Jenger had been playing games, there would be some evidence of it.

Busy with these plans, she left her secret room, which locked itself behind her. Also behind her, she left the remaining hair and fingernail fragments from Bear’s betrothed in far-off Tingawa, along with the hairs she had obtained from Bear’s barber in Wold. The current haunting would go on for a while longer before she had to strengthen it. Bear’s hair in the seeker, the girl’s hair in the sending machine, the two linked. Wherever he was, her essence would be all around him. He would be smelling her, hearing her, feeling her. Alicia could let that situation alone for the moment.

A
n unintended result of Alicia’s temporary abandonment of her devices was that the ghost possessing Bear weakened and for a few days, Bear—who could not scout the way south until the roads cleared somewhat—stopped lecturing Xulai about moving into the house at the edge of the abbey lands. Xulai gave thanks for this, however temporary it might be. She was finding the weathery days an interim she had needed, a few days to get used to herself before she and Abasio needed to act. Also, Abasio had time to get the cephalopod book into his library. He said it was a leftover from a time when nanotechnology had been able to do remarkable things. Not all ease-machines, he claimed, had been evil.