Fey 02 - Changeling (27 page)

"Where are we going?" he asked Hector.

"Yonder," Hector said, nodding in the general direction of the tree.

"The trees?"

Hector tilted his mud-covered face toward Stowe.
 
The man's bizarre eyes appraised him as if he had never seen anything quite that stupid before.
 
"Anything else ye see?"

"We already checked out the trees," another guard said.
 
"There's nothing there."

"Not ta city men, maybe," Hector said.
 

He stepped off the path and instantly sunk to his calves.
 
The marshy water made a large sucking sound.
 
The hair on the back of Stowe's neck rose.

"Ye coming?" Hector asked.

"Of course," Stowe said.
 
He wished he could close his eyes and pray as he stepped off the firm dirt of the path.
 
Instead, he took a deep breath and stepped down beside Hector.

The Marsh gripped Stowe's boots.
 
He was heavier than Hector and sank to his knees.
 
"This will be slow going," Stowe said, hoping for a light tone.

"If'n ye keep acting like a city man," Hector said.

Stowe bit back a reply.
 
He was a city man, had been all his life.
 
He would like to see Hector try to get a meal in Jahn.
 
But he merely said, as mildly as he could, "You'll need to tell me what I'm doing wrong."

"Ye go the way yer supposed," Hector said.

"I've never been here before."
 
Stowe's boots had turned cold.
 
The chill in the air almost felt warm compared to the temperature of the water.

"Sure looks like it," Hector said.

"I mean," Stowe said, "I need your help."

It seemed that admission was what they wanted from him.
 
He had been as reluctant to make it as they had been to help him.
 

"Ye keep behind me," Hector said.
 
"That road ain't the only rise in the Marsh."

From that cryptic remark, Stowe gathered that there was a less visible path that led to the trees.
 
Hector offered his big, filthy hand, and Stowe took it without hesitation, letting the other man pull him onto the rise behind him.
 
Even though he was still in to his calves, the ground beneath him felt solid.
 

"Go slow," Hector said.
 
"Ye try fast, and ye'll fall.
 
Then there'll be nothing of ye."

No wonder the villagers had looked at Stowe with a kind of shock when he asked whether one of them had killed Alexander.
 
Given the site, and the impossibility of travel, he should have seen the killer.

"What's so important about the trees?" he asked, not sure if he wanted to plow that distance through calf-deep mud.

"Want to know who killed yer man?"

Your man.
 
Never the King.
 
Or if it was, the name was spoken with hatred. Stowe wasn't quite certain how Alexander had let it get like this.
 
Although he suspected Alexander had little to do with it.
 
Alexander had inherited the problem, just as Nicholas had, just as Nicholas's pathetic little son would.

Hector stomped through the marsh, lifting one foot and placing it heavily before doing so with the second.
 
The manner of walking was stylized and odd.
 
It did, however, keep him from losing his balance or getting stuck.
 
The mucky water made squishy sounds as he hurried across the rise.

Stowe tried to keep pace as he followed, but his legs ached almost instantly.
 
He wished now he had let the guard go in his place.
 
Aside from the dangers of assassination which he and the guards had already discussed, the amount of work crossing this marsh was more than Stowe was used to.
 
He almost hoped for Hector to take some sort of hostile action so that the trip would end.

Although he knew that Hector would leave him alone.
 
Hector could have killed him that morning.
 
The Danite was gone, and the guards were not near the kirk, thinking it protected.
 
If the villagers had wanted Stowe dead, he would have died days ago.

The long-legged bird watched them cross, then plunged its beak back into the marsh.
 
It brought its head up, a small fish wriggling between its beak.
 
It swallowed the fish head first, a bit at a time, until only the tail remained, wriggling as it went.

Stowe had to keep his hands outstretched for balance.
 
The water was black here, the grass a dark green.
 
Things swam around his legs, and more than once something he couldn't identify bumped into him.
 
Hector didn't seem to notice at all.
 
He was almost to the trees.
 
Stowe still had nearly half the distance to cross.

There were four trees.
 
Three were spindly, with thin crooked trunks and stubby branches.
 
Only one tree was big enough to hold a man.
 
It towered over the others, its branches as thick as a man.
 
The leaves were full and cast a shadow on the water.

When he reached the tree, Hector leaned against its trunk.
 
He crossed his arms and waited.
 
He looked like a clump of mud himself.
 
A mud statue, that was it, something made by man but not of man.
 
Stowe shook his head.
 
The whimsy was a result of the events of the last few days.
 
If he didn't laugh, he would cry, and he didn't dare do that.
 
Not until this mystery was solved.

Although he wasn't entirely sure why he needed to solve it immediately.
 
No one from the Marshes would attack Nicholas.
 
Nicholas would remain in Jahn and learn to rule.
 
The villagers only seemed to attack a King when he arrived in the Marshes.
 
If Nicholas stayed away from the southern part of the Isle, he would be safe.

But in the last five years, nothing had been that simple.
 
Stowe knew that if he did not solve this now, he would make up worse scenarios than the one that had already happened.
 
A mud man, like Hector, had shot an arrow into the King, then disappeared into the Marsh.
 
Sure the ground was flat, but Hector seemed to blend in.
 
Stowe doubted that, from the road, the guards could see anything more than a mud blob against the tree.

Stowe wanted to call the case solved, but couldn't.
 
Hector had something to show him, something less subtle than his own body camouflaged against the swamp.

Tiny black bugs rose from the water and swarmed around Stowe's face.
 
He brushed at them with his hands, but it did no good.
 
A few entered as he breathed and he coughed them out, stopping as he did so.
 
More bugs tangled in his hair and bumped against his skin.

"Keep moving.
 
You opened a nest.
 
Leave them."
 
Hector's tone had that superiority again.
 

Stowe walked forward, waving his arms like a madman.
 
Hector was right; the bugs started fading away almost instantly.
 
When Stowe looked back, he saw the swarm swirling like a black cloud over that small patch of Marsh.

His home with its seven fireplaces, soft beds, and overstuffed furniture had never seemed more inviting.
 
His back ached from the rough pallet in the Danite's cabin.
 
His legs hurt from the strain of slogging through the marsh.
 
And he still had the bitter taste of black bug on his tongue.

Finally he reached the spot where Hector waited for him.
 
To Stowe's surprise, Hector grinned.
 
"Ye done that better than most who grew up here."

"They don't know their way through the Marsh?"

"Not on foot.
 
Takes a special skill."
 
Hector grabbed the nearest branch and held it.
 
A clump of mud fell off his hand and splashed near their boots.
 

"What do you want to show me?"

Hector's grin faded.
 
"I come here after they told me what ye said.
 
Them men of yers, they say they think some of us done this.
 
Yer man, he wasn't well liked here, but we been waiting for him, hoping to get him to change things."

"I gathered that from the meeting," Stowe said.
 
The chill in his feet ran through his entire body.
 
He felt rooted in the mud.

"I thought, not many men can shoot so true, and even fewer can hide in the Marsh.
 
Takes a special skill."

And a willingness to cover oneself in layers of mud.
 
Stowe bit his lip to keep the comment back.
 
He knew better than to alienate Hector this far from the guards.

"So I thought to look around, and I come here."

"You had no one in mind who could have done this?" Stowe asked.

"Oh, I had someone in mind," Hector said.
 
"But I know I didna do it."

The arrogance again.
 
Stowe almost liked it.
 
"Is there anyone else who could have done this?"

"Not here."
 
Hector raised his other arm and swung himself into the tree.
 
Bits of mud flew from his boots and hit Stowe in the face.

Not here
.
 
Stowe had already seemed stupid today.
 
Another question wouldn't hurt.
 
"Do you mean no one else in the Marshes could have done this or —"

"Someone done it." Hector's voice sounded muffled in the tree top.
 
"But it weren't any of us.
 
Come see."

Stowe looked around.
 
There was nothing to step on, no ladder to help him, not even a stone to boost him a little.
 
Hector did not reach a hand down to pull him up.
 
Stowe had never levered himself into a tree, not even as a boy.

"I don't think I can pull myself up like you can," Stowe said.

"Then climb like a girl."
 
Hector's tone was reasonable, but his words made no sense.
 
Suddenly his face appeared through the thick green leaves.
 
"Face tree.
 
Grab trunk.
 
Climb.
 
Swing a leg over like you do on horses."

It sounded simple.
 
Stowe grabbed the tree branch, his hands sliding in the mud that Hector had left.
 
Stowe laced his fingers together, then pulled one booted foot out of the muck.
 
He braced the foot on the tree.
 
Cold water ran down his boot and onto his pants leg.
 
He brought his other foot up, and climbed, childlike, until his right foot neared the branch.
 

Hector's hand appeared suddenly, grabbed Stowe's ankle, and yanked his leg over the branch.
 
Stowe cried out despite himself.
 
His hands slipped and pain shot through his right palm.
 
But Hector had given him momentum, and he was able to swing the rest of the way onto the branch itself.

The whole tree shook with his weight.
 
The leaves rustled.
 
No one could have hidden here successfully.
 
Then he realized that Hector had gotten into the tree without making a sound.

Hector sat on a thicker branch to Stowe's left.
 
Hector's boots were braced on Stowe's branch.
 
"Now look," Hector said.
 
"Ye can see how he works."

Hector pointed to a small hole in the leaves.
 
Stowe leaned forward.
 
The leaves had been pulled away.
 
A few had started to grow back.

He peered through the hole, and got an excellent view of his guards milling on the road.
 
None of them were watching the tree.
 
Not that it mattered, he supposed.
 
They could never have rescued him from this distance across that marsh.
 
But he wanted them to watch all the same.
 
He would talk with them when he got back.