The Waters Rising (50 page)

“Ah. Well it was probably the ice. An ice bear probably peed on that particular bit.”

She regarded him with something very like fondness. He wasn’t a handsome man. Too large a nose, too heavy a jaw, and terribly ungainly. But he was as dependable as the sunrise, and she admired him. The thing she most admired was that he never showed emotion about anything. It was so much easier to deal with life if one didn’t have to consider emotions. Of course, Alicia was like that, too, except for her rages. Perhaps it was a useful way to be.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked. He always wanted to know what she was thinking, what she was planning.

“Alicia. I can never tell what she’s doing or going to do next. I know she’s full of anger at the world, always has been. She was born that way. Sometimes I think the Old Dark Man made a mistake with her; there’s too much of him in her.”

Chamfray made an amused sound. “Some of me, too.”

“Some of you, some of me, some of him. Alicia doesn’t know that, though, so be sure not to—”

“I never talk to Alicia about anything. She prefers it that way,” Chamfray said.

“So do I. She gets very strange ideas. She seems to be cooperating in the family business, just as one would expect, but then she goes off on these strange tangents about totally insignificant things. Now she’s all upset over the fact there are a few Tingawan people up at the abbey. As though it mattered!”

“The princess was Tingawan.”

“Yes, she was. And what difference does that make? We own Kamfels and Altamont, we almost own the abbey, and the Thousand Islands are a thousand miles away.”

“More than that.”

She threw up her hands. “Exactly. At this time of our lives, Tingawa has nothing to do with us or our plans or anything else. It will be years before we turn to Tingawa!”

Chamfray stretched his lips in what passed as a smile. “Yes, Mirami, at least that.”

“Well then, let the silly little Tingawan girl do her soul-carrying duties, let her servants take her home, and let us get on with our business!” She heard her voice rising and stopped, hand to throat, listening.

“We’re quite alone here,” he said. “The way the doors are arranged, no one can hear from the hallway or from below us in the plaza. Are you really concerned about Alicia?”

“It’s just that I can never tell what she’s thinking. She’s like the Old Dark Man. I could never tell with him, either. I still can’t understand why it took so long for that Tingawan woman to die. Not that it mattered. It didn’t set anything back. We’re not ready to do without, you know, yet.” She never spoke the name of the king. It would not do to be overheard discussing the king, particularly doing without the king, and what one did in private, one might do without thinking in public. She and Chamfray made it a practice not to mention him by name at all.

Chamfray mused, “Tingawans are skilled physicians. The princess probably had excellent care, strengthening care. Exactly what did Alicia use to kill her?”

“I never asked. She gets pettish if I ask. She says she knows what she’s doing.”

“She did use poison?”

“Of course. That’s what the Old Dark Man taught me to use, and he taught her as well. He told me he would, when I left there. ‘You’ll have a daughter,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach her what she needs to know.’ I suppose he did, though she never went there. I think she lied about not finding any books at all. I think he left books for her in the Old Dark House. He said it was always wise to be elsewhere when people sickened and died, and poison was the surest way to do that. He had a wealth of knowledge, the Old Dark Man.”

“I wonder that he died at all, even at his age. How did it happen?”

“It’s odd you should ask. I was trying to think earlier today when it was I knew he had died, what the sequence of events was. When Alicia was just a baby, he told me he was leaving possession of Altamont to me; he wrote to me saying so. He never mentioned it again. Then after Hulix was born, when Alicia was about eight—I remember, because that’s when I killed Falyrion and Alicia turned odd—some travelers came through with the news that the Old Dark House was empty, that the Old Dark Man was gone. I went there. It was closed, locked. He had never given me a key. No one was seeing to the castle itself, but the farmers were still farming, the stockmen still raising their cattle; everything was going on as before. They told me everything was being managed by an agent who worked for the Port Lords in Wellsport. The Sea King hadn’t yet completely shut down the shipping, but the Port Lords were already looking about for other ways to earn a living. They said they had no instructions regarding my taking the place. None at all. Well, I had his letter telling me the place was mine, but after looking at that dreadful, gray, dead pile of stone, I decided not to bother with it. You and I had other things going on, as you remember.”

“So you don’t really know that your Old Dark Man is dead.”

“What else? He was already ancient, and he’s gone. When Rancitor spoke to the king, when the king had Alicia made duchess and gave her title to the place, the people in Wellsport gave her the keys and told her to take over. She was still very young, fourteen, I think. She didn’t go there for several years. She wouldn’t have gone at all if the Old Dark Man had still been alive.”

“Did you ever wonder about him?”

“Wonder how?”

“When you speak of him, he seems to be a very strange, almost unearthly kind of creature, and I find myself wondering if he was really human. Do you think he was?”

She stiffened, her face suffused with blood. “I saw him, Chamfray. I saw quite enough of him, head to toe, uncovered. He was just like all other men. Taller, that’s all. Very dark skinned, not brown, more a dark gray, but just like every other man. All men are more or less alike!”

Something about his last question had disturbed her, so he waited for a time before asking, “And you haven’t had any reason to go there since?”

She took a deep breath. “No. As I said: it’s an ugly, uncomfortable pile of stone. The cellars were full of spiders and rats. The rooms were piled with books and ancient papers. As a child, I lived in the little gatehouse. I had a nursemaid, then a governess. I had a tutor. I even had a riding master. It was warm in the little house. It was clean. The food was good. Every time I went into the Old Dark House, I spent the whole time either shivering or rat catching. No, I’ve not been back there since Alicia went there.” Of course, she hadn’t spent the whole time shivering or rat catching. There were other things the Old Dark Man had required that had been far worse than shivering or rat catching. “Why do you ask?”

He shrugged. “Alicia was always fussy about things. She was quite willing to kill any servant girl who didn’t do the dusting properly, so I was just wondering how she could bear to live there, if it is as you say.”

“She has no doubt cleaned it up. She may even have redone the inside of it. It wasn’t dilapidated, just terribly dirty and uncomfortable. Altamont has plenty of income. Alicia may even have left the Port Lords in control and be living off the income from the farms and herds. Most of the produce is sold in the fiefdoms along the coast anyhow, and if I had the place, that’s the way I’d have done it.”

They said nothing more that day. The next day, Chamfray was worse, and worse yet the day after that. A week later he died. The doctors asked if they could cut him, to find out what had killed him. Mirami told them yes, for she wanted to know. They told her it looked as though he had melted inside. They had no idea what could have caused it, nor did she. None of her poisons did any such thing. The doctors said some fungi had spores that became liquescent in the same way; perhaps he had eaten something contaminated by a fungus. Mirami was too upset to ask whether such fungi grew upon mountains where ice was cut.

A
bird brought a message from the abbey to the Old Dark House. It contained the material Alicia had asked for, and she made the proper use of it, sending the resultant little capsule to the abbey just the way she had sent the same kind of capsule to Ghastain. A long time ago she’d found out where the bird towers at the abbey were, quite close enough to the abbot’s quarters.

Later that day, she received a message from her mother asking her to come to Ghastain. Mirami was feeling lonely, as her old friend Chamfray had died. Before Alicia rejoined her mother, however, she had one thing to take care of. Since she intended to deal with Jenger eventually, she needed to have the seeker device start looking for him. The hairs she had kept in her bedroom would provide the material. Wherever Jenger’s particular code was found, the machine would show it as a red light on a map. The map was huge. It covered the entire continent. Alicia had no idea where the Old Dark Man could have found such a map, but she did know the farther away Jenger was, the longer it would take for the seeker to find him. If she set the seeker in motion before going to Ghastain, it would have her answer by the time she returned.

Since the Old Dark Man had gone, she had used the fatal cloud on three victims: the princess, Chamfray, and the abbot. She had one prepared for Jenger. It was in her little cubby, ready to use when she found him. Now she would create two more. Another one of Jenger, for the seeker to use in finding him. And on mature consideration—that was a phrase the Old Dark Man had often used, “on mature consideration”—one tube would go with her to Ghastain. She had collected the material for this one in Kamfels years ago, after her father died . . . had been killed! Just to keep her accounts balanced with Mirami.

W
hen Solo Winger received a bird from the Old Dark House carrying a message tube that was a bit different from the usual ones, he did not open it. He had been warned to watch very carefully for anything from that source. He waited for a proper time and took it to the quarters of the person he continued to call the Tingy-away woman. She took it into her hand, looked at it closely, and nodded.

“I’ll take care of it, Brother Winger. Believe me, it will do none of us any harm. By the way, if the abbey needed to be out of touch for a while with either of these places, the Old Dark House or Vulture Tower, what would be the best way?”

He thought about it. “The bes’ way’d be some fool kid cleanin’ after the birds leavin’ cages open, so alla House anna Tower birds got out an wen’ home. They c’d sen’ here, but abbey cudn’t sen back. And they cudn’t sen’ much ’cause I keep a count. I know zackly where my birds is. House’s got two, Tower’s got none, Ghastain’s got three.”

Precious Wind looked him squarely in the eye and repeated words the prior had used: “I don’t suppose an illiterate simpleton like Solo Winger could arrange for that to happen?”

Solo Winger grinned only inwardly as he replied with perfect enunciation: “Oh, anyone as stupid as I might get awkwardly inebriated and commit some unconscionable impropriety. God knows, all total ignoramuses are known to be completely irresponsible.”

Later that night, Precious Wind placed the little capsule on the stone floor outside the prior’s door. Through that door she could hear the snorts and snores of a man deeply asleep. She stepped on it, crushing it, closely observing the wisp of fog that came from the crumbled thing. It swirled, swirled again, and promptly went under the door. Precious Wind smiled to herself.
So much for sending three assassins after me, old man. Tingawa is a very old country. It has forgotten more about assassination than you blundering Norlander conspirators will ever learn.

She had arranged a meeting with the men from Woldsgard this evening, after Oldwife Gancer and Nettie Lean would be asleep. The old woman was recovering from her grief over Xulai and had come to believe the girl was well, somewhere, and would in good time be restored to them, so she’d been eating and sleeping better. Nettie was keeping close watch on her. Even Precious Wind had come to believe Xulai’s return was not impossible, in time, and if the old woman dwelt in that hope, she would not cast doubt upon it. Provided that this abbey nastiness was cleared up, including finding each and every man the prior had corrupted, or perhaps simply co-opted. She went to her meeting with that firmly in mind.

The five Wolds men were in one of the abbey gathering places, those tavernlike places frequented by both men and women who work all day and have either too little or too much family life to keep them at home. The five were known to be old friends, so no one would question their being together with another old friend from the same place. They drank beer. Precious Wind disliked beer greatly, but it was a drink that would draw no attention whatsoever, so she put the mug on the table before her and pretended to take a sip every now and then, trying not to breathe the sour smell of it.

“So we’ve been asking,” said Bartelmy in a low voice, though his face smiled and his eyes crinkled as though he were telling a joke.

Bartelmy had it in him to be a good spy, she thought, unlike Black Mike, who always looked as though he were about to assault someone.

“We’ve been asking this, asking that, what kind of work we can do to make ourselves useful. I’ve been saying I’m a good bowman, do they need a good bowman. Mike says he’s a good one to keep order if order needs keeping; you know the kind of thing, Precious Wind.”

“And?”

“And I’ve had a sergeant or two say I might find a place with the abbey armor, and another fellow said the watch has openings, and like that. But Mike, he had a nibble from someone saying a certain high-up person has occasional very-well-paid work for people who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.”