The Crown of Dalemark (3 page)

He plunged through the nearest door and kept running, through rooms and along corridors, and out again on the other side of the mansion, to the long shed on the cliffs above the harbor. That was the best place to be alone. The people who were usually there would all be rushing about after Keril's followers or getting the Midsummer feast ready. And he was having to miss that feast. Hildy had once said that misery was like this: Silly little things always got mixed up with the important ones. How right she was.

Mitt rolled the shed door open a crack and slipped inside. Sure enough, the place was empty. Mitt breathed deep of the fishy smell of coal and of fish oil and wet metal. It was not unlike the smell on the waterfront of Holand, where he had been brought up. And I might just as well have stayed there for all the good it did me! he thought, staring along a vista of iron rails in the floor, where tarry puddles reflected red sun or rainbows of oil. He felt caught and trapped and surrounded in a plot he had not even noticed till they thrust it at him this afternoon. Everyone had told him that the Countess was treating him almost like a son. Mitt had been pretty sarcastic about that, but all the same he had thought this was the way people in the North did treat refugees from the South.

“Fool I was!” he muttered.

He walked along the rails to the huge machines that stood at quiet intervals along them. Alk's Irons, everyone called them. To Mitt, and to most people in town, they were the most fascinating things in Aberath. Mitt trailed his fingers across the cargo hoist and then across the steam plow and the thing that Alk hoped might one day drive a ship. None of them worked very well, but Alk kept trying. Alk was married to the Countess. It was the only other thing Mitt liked about the Countess, that instead of marrying the son of a lord or another earl who might add to her importance, she had chosen to marry her lawman, Alk. Alk had given up law years ago in order to invent machines. Mitt dragged his fingertips across the wet and greasy bolts of the newest machine and shuddered as he imagined himself pushing a knife into a young woman. Even if she laughed at him or looked like Doreth or Alla, even if her eyes showed she was mad—No! But what about Ynen if he didn't? The worst of this trap was that it pushed him back into a part of himself he thought he had got out of. He could have screamed.

He went round the machine and found himself face-to-face with Alk. Both of them jumped. Alk recovered first. He sighed, put his oil can down on a ledge in the machine, and asked rather guiltily, “Message for me?”

“I—No. I thought nobody was here,” Mitt said.

Alk relaxed. To look at him, you would have thought he was a big blacksmith run to fat, with his mind in the clouds. “Thought you were calling me to come and run about after Keril,” he said. “Now you're here, have a think about this thing. It's supposed to be an iron horse, but I think it needs changing somewhere.”

“It's the biggest horse I ever saw,” Mitt said frankly. “What good is it if it has to run on rails? Why do your things always run on rails?”

“To move,” said Alk. “Too heavy otherwise. You have to work the way things will let you.”

“Then how are you going to get it to go uphill?” said Mitt.

Alk rubbed an oily hand through the remains of copper hair like Doreth's and looked sideways at Mitt. “Boy's disillusionment with the North now complete,” he said. “Taken against my machines now. Anything wrong, Mitt?”

In spite of his trouble, Mitt grinned. Alk and he had this joke. Alk himself came from the North Dales, which Alk claimed were almost in the South. Alk said he saw three things wrong with the North for every one that Mitt saw. “No—I'm fine,” Mitt said, because the Countess had probably told Alk all about her plans anyway. He was trying to think of something polite to say about the iron horse when the door at the end of the shed rolled right open. Kialan's strong voice came echoing through.

“This is the most marvelous place in all Aberath!”

“Excuse me,” Mitt muttered, and dived for the small side door behind Alk.

Alk grabbed his elbow as he went. He was as strong as the blacksmith he looked like. “Wait for me!” he said. They went out of the side door together, into the heap of coal and cinders beyond. “Taken against the Adon of Hannart, too, have you?” Alk asked. Mitt did not know how to answer. “Come up to my rooms,” Alk said, still holding Mitt's elbow. “I have to dress grandly for supper, I suppose. You can help. Or is that beneath you?”

Mitt gasped rather and shook his head. It was supposed to be an honor to help the lord dress. He wondered if Alk knew.

“Come on, then,” said Alk. He let go of Mitt and lumbered ahead of him through the archway that led to his apartments. Alk's valet was waiting there, with candles lit and water steaming and good clothes hung carefully over chairs. “You can have a rest tonight, Gregin,” Alk said cheerfully. “Mitt's going to clean me up today. Part of his education.”

Even if Alk did not know he was doing Mitt an honor, the valet certainly did. His face was a mixture of jealousy, respect, and anxiety. “Sir,” he said. “The coal. The oil.” He started to back out of the room as Alk waved him away, and then came back to whisper fiercely to Mitt. “Mind you don't let him stop you scrubbing him when he's still gray. He'll try. He always does.”

“Go away, Gregin,” said Alk. “My word by the Undying that we won't let you down.” Gregin sighed and went away. Mitt got down to the hard work of scrubbing Alk clean. “Do I take it you've had another of your disagreements with my Countess?” Alk asked while Mitt labored.

“Not … the way you mean this time,” Mitt said, rubbing away at one huge hairy arm.

“Her bark is worse than her bite,” Alk observed.

Alk had to think that, Mitt supposed. He must have had a lot of illusions about the Countess to have married her at all. “Keril's worse,” he said. “He's all bite and no bark, as far as I can see.”

“So Keril's in it, too?” Alk said musingly. He took his arm away from Mitt, looked at it, and gave it back, sighing. It was still gray. “Now I see you're in no mood to agree with me, but Earl Keril's a good man, shrewd as he can hold together. Knows all about steam power, too. They have a steam organ at Hannart, did you know? Huge thing. But he's not the man to get on the wrong side of if you can help it.”

“Well, I have,” Mitt said bitterly. “I was on his wrong side before he even set eyes on me.”

“Now why was that?” wondered Alk.

He was obviously waiting for Mitt to tell him, but Mitt found he could not bear to, any more than he could bear to go near Kialan. He finished scrubbing Alk's left arm and began on the right, even blacker and larger than the left.

“Something's up,” Alk said at length, “that I don't know about, I think. And it can't be quite legal, or she would have told me. Did they tell you not to tell me?”

Mitt looked up to find Alk staring shrewdly at him across his lathery arm. “No,” he said. “But I'm not saying. They knew I wouldn't, too, for fear you'd be disgusted and kick me out. How do you like being washed by the scum of the earth?”

Alk frowned. “You scrub even brisker than Gregin, if that's what we're talking about.” He said nothing else for a while, until Mitt had scrubbed him to clean pink blotches and was starting to help him into good clothes. As his head came out through the neck of the white silk shirt, he said, “See here. I was only a poor farmer's boy before I came to be a lawman. Keril's Countess Halida was nobody much either, and she was from the South like you.” Mitt had not the heart to answer this. It was kindly meant, but so wrong. “Hmm,” said Alk. “Wrong track there.” As Mitt helped him force his arms down the sleeves, he added, “And it's maybe the wrong track, too, if I was to mention that you're much better placed than you were when you came? You can read and write and use weapons now. They tell me you learn good and quick, and you've brains to use what you learn—well, I know you've got brains. My Countess has not treated you so badly—”

“And that's a lie!” Mitt burst out. “She did it all for a reason!”

“As to that,” Alk said as Mitt threaded golden studs into his cuffs, “
you've
not gone out of your way to make her love you, Mitt. And everyone always has a reason for what they do. It's only natural.”

“Then what's
your
reason for trying to cheer me up like this?” Mitt retorted.

“Easy,” said Alk. “I can't abide misery, and I hate mysteries. Anyone taking half a glance at your face could see something was wrong. And cheering up often brings things to light. I found
that
out when I was a lawman, the first time we had a man accused of murder.” Mitt winced at that and nearly dropped a stud. He knew Alk noticed, but Alk only said, “Want me to talk to my Countess about this?”

“No point. Wouldn't do any good,” Mitt said. Everyone knew that Alk never went against the Countess. He turned away and got Alk's vast brocade trousers. “Look, I don't want to talk about this no more,” he said, helping Alk step into them.

“I see that. And I think you ought to,” Alk said.

Mitt obstinately said nothing while he buttoned the trousers round Alk's bulging waist and then fetched the huge embroidered jacket. Alk backed into it with his arms out, like a bear. “Nothing you want to say, then?” he asked.

“Nothing, only a question,” Mitt said, meaning to change the subject. “Is the One real?” Alk turned round with the jacket half on and stared at him. “I mean,” said Mitt, “I never heard of the One, nor half the other Undying either, until I came here. We don't take much note of Undying in the South. Do
you
believe in any of them?” He went round Alk and heaved the jacket onto him. Then he bent down to help Alk with his boots.

“Believe in the One!” Alk said, and trod into the right boot. “It would be hard not to, here in Aberath, at this time of year, but—” He trod into the left boot and stamped down in it, thinking. “Put it like this. I believed in my machines when they were just a notion in my head and nothing I could touch or see. Who's to say that the One isn't as real as they were in my head—or as real as they are now?” He flipped the fastening at the neck of his shirt to see if Mitt had tied it securely and tramped to the door. “Coming?”

Supper would be ready in the great hall. It came to Mitt that it would be his job to wait on Kialan at table. He could not face it. “I got to polish my gear and pack now,” he said. “I'm off to Adenmouth tomorrow.”

“Are you now?” Alk turned round in the doorway and looked hard at Mitt again. “Then I'll make sure someone remembers to feed you,” he said. “I think I'm on the right track now. And I don't like it, Mitt. I don't like it any more than you do. Don't do anything stupid until I talk to you again.”

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