Son of Avonar (53 page)

D'Natheil rode into view, leading a riderless horse. He halted beside us, and from a strange, elongated bundle thrown across the saddle in front of him issued a muffled string of curses that would have made Jacopo's sailor comrades blush. “The flea,” he said, dismounting. He dragged the bundle off the chestnut and set it down on a pair of bare feet that protruded from one end. A tousled head popped out of the other end.

“Paulo!”

Most of the boy was lost in the folds of an enormous cloak. D'Natheil took a firm grip on Paulo's ear, transforming the boy's scowl of freckled ferocity itno a forlorn wince.

“Ow!”

Much to the consternation of both prisoner and captor, I started laughing, laughter such as only those who have lived at the edge of danger for days on end can produce.

“The most excellent ferocious boy!” said Baglos, and with only a momentary glance of apology at his grim master, broke into a lively chuckling that rang through the moonlit forest.

“Don't see what's so blasted funny,” the boy mumbled.

D'Natheil had remained unremittingly somber since seeing the conscript gang. But as the disgruntled Paulo hitched up his oversized garment, a glint of amusement danced about the edges of the Prince's eyes. And then, as if the spark had touched fuel, he burst into a convulsion of merriment. I had never heard him laugh. Deep and musical, it seemed to come from the same deep-buried reservoir of joy as his rare smile. It might have been the sun piercing the clouds after a year of storms.

I could not keep my eyes from him, for somewhere in the resonance of his good humor was a note which made my blood burn as it had not in ages of the world. Thus even as I enjoyed the mournful resignation on Paulo's dirty face, I mocked myself for “widow's lust.” I laughed until tears came.

“Oh, Paulo,” I said, once I could articulate a word. “What in the stars are you doing here?”

“Nothin' better to be at,” he said sullenly.

“Than running away from home again and chasing us into the wilderness? Surely there are a thousand things better for you to be about. Your gram will be frantic.”

“She's dead.”

“Oh, no!” And so did the world swallow up our good humor.

“Put away one too many a tankard while I was off to Grenatte. Dead drunk she was. Then just dead.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Not as sorry as her, I guess.”

“Who's to care for you, then?”

“Don't nobody want to. Well, Sheriff had said—But he's gone off and not come back. Dirk Crowley said as Loopy Lucy might take me, but I didn't want no part of an old crow like her. I can do for myself.” D'Natheil had released the boy's ear, and Paulo squirmed a bit to untwist the voluminous cloak. “Gasso said he'd trade me this horse for my two silver pieces and whatever was in Gram's room, and I thought that was fine, so's I took the deal and rode up to your place. Thought I could watch it for you till Sheriff come back. Didn't steal nothin'. Just ate what was goin' to rot. And today I saw this'n come through and look about.” He jerked his head toward D'Natheil.

“And you decided to follow him?”

“Nothin' better to be at. He's a sight more interesting than Loopy Lucy. Got a sword and all.”

“You were welcome to the food. Was everything all right at the cottage?”

“Right enough. Those men—the priests what scragged the highwaymen—they searched right through it, but didn't take nothin' as I could see.”

“You saw the three priests search the cottage?”
. . . they were up at your place . . .
The echo of Graeme Rowan's report sent a shiver through me.

“They left it all careful like, so's you couldn't tell nobody had been there.”

“So they came to my house straight from Grenatte, then?”

“Nope.” He hesitated for a moment. “Went to the village first.”

“To Dunfarrie? Whatever for?”

“Talked to somebody. Askin' about you . . . who you were and where'd you come from and was anyone with you.”

“How did they find my cottage, Paulo? It's very important. How did they know where to go?”

The boy dug a toe into the dirt and kept his eyes away from me. “Somebody told 'em where it was when they first come from Grenatte. Somebody took 'em up there.” With every answer, the words came slower and quieter. “It was the same person what told 'em everything about you, and about the Prince, and about where you'd gone with him—off to Valleor.” The boy kicked a rock so hard it flew into the trees, flushing out three deer who leaped across the road through the moonlight.

I laid my hand on the boy's shoulder. “Paulo, sometimes we can be mistaken about people, and it hurts very much when we find out they're not as honorable as we believed. But the truth is important, especially when lives depend on knowing whom we can trust. Was it a friend of yours that told them?”

Paulo nodded, and he mumbled so softly I almost could not hear him. “Jacopo done it. Sheriff said they must've made him.”

No. That wasn't right. Rowan was the betrayer, not Jacopo. The sheriff had met the Zhid in Grenatte, talked and laughed with them. They said he'd been of great service. And there was the button, of course, and Teriza's story of the Leiran in the dark jacket with shiny buttons, his pursuit through the forest, his presence in Yurevan . . .

“Who told them?” I grabbed Paulo's chin and forced him to look me in the eye, daring him to say it again, ready to yell at him that he was misguided at best, a tool of evildoers at worst, refusing to credit him, even as my heart and soul understood that he spoke truth.

“It was Jacopo.” The boy's gaze did not waver, as if he knew that his best testimony was himself. His thin, freckled face displayed only sorrow and simple truth, forcing me to accept how dreadfully I had erred.

I had determinedly ignored ten years of observation that demonstrated nothing but Rowan's unremitting honesty. No strength of evidence had convinced me of his guilt—I could have come up with a hundred different explanations of buttons and light-haired Leirans. But I had listened only to my personal humiliation and seen only the hateful emblem on his coat. Even his “threat” to be wary of Paulo's and Jacopo's life was certainly a willfully misinterpreted warning.

Everything was so clear, now I was forced to look: the night of our feast in the meadow, the night the Seeking of the Zhid had come upon us like a summer hurricane. Jacopo's leg had been hurting him, and I could imagine him sitting and smoking a pipe on one of the stone fences between the edge of the forest and Dunfarrie. Away from the trees. Away from the house. It was on the next morning that he'd changed his mind about warning Graeme Rowan. He had denied the reality of our experiences on the ridge and insisted on knowing who I was going to see, even wanting the name—questions to which he had no need for answers. How had he known I was in Montevial? How had he come to be in the Street of the Cloth Merchants? I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could hide the truth again, but all I saw was Jacopo's old sea coat, dark blue with brass buttons—the jacket he'd worn every day since he'd come home from the sea.

D'Natheil led us to a clearing a safe distance from the road, and as we settled in for the rest of the night, I remembered the message I had sent to Jacopo earlier in the day. Not only had I revealed our departure from Montevial, but I had told him that Rowan had accused him of connection with the murderers. Would the Zhid have any use for Jacopo if he'd been discovered? Would they allow Rowan to roam freely with his knowledge of their wickedness? My detestable pride had likely murdered Jacopo and Rowan together.

 

Over our tea and bacon the next morning, Paulo, not Jacopo, was the first topic of conversation. Baglos told the boy that we had no use for him, and so he should take himself somewhere else.

I wouldn't hear of it. Fear and self-reproach and hard earth had made for a long restless night, leaving me snappish and out of patience. “We must either take him back to Dunfarrie where there are people who will see to his welfare, or we must keep him with us. A boy on the road alone . . .” While a mournful Paulo saddled the horses and strapped our loaded packs on them, I explained to D'Natheil and Baglos what happened to children who had no one to care what happened to them. An indenture agreement would be signed by a local magistrate, and it would stipulate that the child was to be given his keep in exchange for his labor until he turned sixteen. In other words, it was free labor for as long as you could squeeze out a day's work, and, as the master had no interest in the children after age sixteen, he could starve them or give them tasks that would cripple them. Most were dead by sixteen. A less than perfect boy like Paulo would have no chance at all.

“We've no time to take him back to his village,” said Baglos. “We must find the Gate.”

“No. Going back would be very dangerous.” I wasn't yet ready to explain the extent of my rock-headed stupidity.

“Then the boy must stay with us,” said D'Natheil simply, leaving Baglos with no argument and me relieved.

When I told Paulo that he was to accompany us on our travels until such time as we could return him to Dunfarrie, he stood at least a hand's breadth taller. “But you'll have to earn your keep,” I said, “and obey any one of us without question.”

“Whatever you want, miss. I promise.”

“This won't be the safest road, but you've shown yourself resourceful in the past, and we'll expect nothing less of you now. And most importantly, you'll hear and see many things you can't tell anyone, now or ever. Our lives and yours will depend on your silence. I think you know what I mean. Are you willing?”

Paulo grinned and ducked his head, probably the nearest he'd ever come to saying thank you.

“To start,” I said, “I think you'll have to care for the horses. Baglos dislikes it very much, and I know you're good at it.”

While I told Baglos what I'd said to Paulo, the boy flung his arms about the neck of my little roan and buried his face in the beast's ruddy coat. Perhaps
some
good had resulted from all this.

By the time we were two days on the road to Tryglevie, the four animals were fast friends with Paulo. They nosed his neck and his pockets and his thin brown hands at every opportunity, and he had but to click his tongue and they stood ready for whatever he wished of them. I soon came to believe the boy was able to read the beasts' minds as clearly as any J'Ettanne. On the third morning of the journey, as the boy gave me a leg up, I grumbled that the roan didn't seem to be learning my commands very well. Paulo asked why I didn't use my horse's name, as that would make him listen better. When I said that I didn't know the beast's name and hadn't had the time to think of one, the boy stared at me in scornful disbelief. “Name's Firethorn,” he said. “Don't know why you never figured it out.”

“And what of the Prince's horse?”

“He don't want a name just yet. He's thinkin' on it.” I wasn't sure whether Paulo meant D'Natheil or the horse. “The other one, now, he's Polestar.” Appropriate for the horse of the Guide.

“And yours?”

Paulo flushed and gently stroked his horse's neck. “Molly. She's naught but a broke-down mare, you know. Just right for me.”

We rode onward into the west.

Three days' hard riding brought us out of the great forest and into the rocky foothills of western Leire. It was harsh country, afflicted with wild extremes of weather and dotted with poor settlements, suitable for little but grazing sheep. I could well believe such a place was the Writer's home. In his journal he had forever lamented the unpredictable weather and rocky soil that made it so hard to feed his family, he was forced to sell the talent he would rather give freely.

As soon as we left the forest, we began to inquire at every house and village as to the whereabouts of Yennet and the ruins that lay nearby. Villages the size of Yennet rarely appeared on any map, and even those who had heard of the place were vague about its location. One said it was directly northwest. Another said it lay just east of the great bend where the Glenaven met the Dun. Another said it was no ruined castle, but a nobleman's quarry that adjoined the village. A traveling tinker we met at a roadside well seemed the most reliable source. He claimed to have visited Yennet. “Two years ago, that was. Wasn't hardly anyone living there. Folks too poor even to have a kettle needed mending.” But he drew us a map showing Yennet about halfway in between something he marked as Pell's Hill and a ruined castle from the times before Leire had a king. Pell's Hill was likely an ancient barrow known as Pell's Mound, a site Karon had always hoped to excavate.