The Waters Rising (49 page)

“Can you manage to get him away from here for a few days, having previously arranged for his quarters to be cleaned as I have suggested, but without the prior knowing about the cleaning part?”

“Cleaning is not the prior’s concern. One of the other elders takes care of that function. And yes, before you ask, the elder in question is completely trustworthy.”

“Then you and the abbot should go on a little trip of inspection of something innocuous that’s discussed publicly and loudly. Talk about a trip that will take just a few days. And no one should tell the prior about the cleaning.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Something we can’t trust anyone else to do, Elder Brother. Remember, a secret can be kept between two people only when one of them is dead, and I rather enjoy your company and that of your friend here.”

Wordswell managed a shadowy smile. The loft keeper’s face was frankly jubilant.

Two days later the librarian, the abbot, and one or two other elders set out to make an inspection of the improvements around the southern watchtower, including the arable lands and irrigation systems being constructed there. The librarian was going because he needed to be sure the records were being kept correctly, and for the past two days this had been a matter for continuous semipublic discussion among him and the abbot and half a dozen other brothers and sisters, often within the prior’s hearing. The trip would, in fact, be longer than had been discussed, during which time still other elders would learn about still other matters. That part had not been mentioned where it could be overheard.

While the abbot was away, various cleaning, laundry, furniture-polishing, and woodwork-refinishing people—all with covered hair and gloved hands—did an unobtrusive but thorough turnout of his quarters. Drawers and cupboards were scrubbed. Dust was eradicated. Spiderwebs, never numerous, became nonexistent. No flake of skin was left unswept, no used handkerchief or slightly soiled bit of clothing—indeed, no item of clothing, used or not—was left unlaundered. Floors and furniture shone. Windows were cleaner than when first installed. A small mirror, the only one the abbot allowed himself, was polished. When all was done and inspected, the door was shut and two watchers took up inconspicuous posts where they could see it.

That evening, while the prior was having his evening meal, the abbot’s door was opened again, and a slender figure moved through his quarters, slightly disarranging the bed linen, opening a book and leaving it at the bedside, depositing a few hairs upon the pillow, a few more in the perfectly clean brush on the shelf below the mirror, a film of dust and a few fingernail clippings on the desk, together with the scissors that might have clipped them. A used washcloth was deposited beside the basin. A used handkerchief was placed in the laundry basket. In addition to the newly added material, clothing in the wardrobe was slightly disordered; a pair of new, unworn slippers was left on the floor beside the bed. It had been ascertained that the abbot did not moisten a finger to turn pages, so a few of his books were carefully shaken out the window, wiped, shaken again, and laid on the desk, the places marked by used toothpicks.

The depositer of this detritus then examined the room carefully. It was quite a neat room, with only that minor untidiness one might expect. This figure departed. The two people who had been quietly chatting in the hall outside—to be sure the third one was as uninterrupted here as she had been earlier in the prior’s quarters—hid themselves again where they could watch the door.

At dusk, Solo Winger told a messenger that a message had just arrived for the prior. The messenger delivered it. The prior, remembering the abbot was absent, felt the timing of the message was extremely opportune.

Later that same night, when everyone slept except the guards on duty, another person entered the abbot’s quarters, this one carrying a lantern and a tiny bowl. The person went from place to place, searching diligently, finding and putting into the tiny bowl almost all the bits and pieces the earlier prowler had left behind: Hair from pillow and brush, skin fragments shaken from a washcloth, fingernail clippings, even a scraping from the handkerchief, the toothpicks marking the books. No one was visible in the hall outside. The person was, so he thought, completely unobserved.

Still later that night while Solo Winger, with an empty bottle on the floor beside his bed for verisimilitude, pretended sodden slumber, the prior arrived in the bird loft. He selected a bird from the Old Dark House cage and attached a message tube containing all the material taken from the abbot’s quarters. He thrust the bird into the night. The same pigeon, not at all interested in flying around in the dark, returned almost immediately to the home cage. The home cage was crowded with birds moving about, eating, cooing, fluttering; one more coming in through the hatch was not noticeable. In any case, the prior was preoccupied with another message, this one to the court at Ghastain. Though the prior thrust this bird into the night as well, it too returned unnoticed.

Solo knew not only his own birds but also every other bird in the loft. It didn’t matter what cage they were in, he knew where each one would home to, and the birds that would fly to the Old Dark House and to Ghastain were temporarily in the cage labeled Merhaven! When the message sender had departed, Solo Winger rose, withdrew from the abbey cage the two abbey birds that had message tubes on their legs, removed the tubes, and returned the birds to their fellows. He made a copy of the message that accompanied the bits and scraps of skin and hair: “
By the time you get this, there will no longer be any Tingawan people at the abbey. They have all departed.
” He then spent a few moments sorting out-of-place birds into their proper cages before transferring the skin-and-hair message tube to an Old Dark House bird. He would let it go first thing in the morning. It wouldn’t have flown until morning anyhow.

He read the message to Ghastain carefully, word for word.

“For Queen Mirami: A Tingawan girl believes you have an interest in five deaths in Kamfels and Ghastain. The girl has returned to Woldsgard under the protection of Hallad, Prince Orez. Since your armor is in Kamfels, perhaps you can be of assistance to her. There are no longer any Tingawan people here at the abbey. They have all gone.”

Solo Winger decided he should not send this one until Wordswell and the Tingy-away women had seen it. He put it behind one of the stones in the wall along with a great many copies of other messages sent and received. When the abbot returned, along with the librarian and the others, he would give it to them. They could decide what to do with it.

T
he court of King Gahls was known for its luxury in an age when a mere sufficiency satisfied most. The lands on the high plateau were fertile and well watered. Food was easily grown and harvested. There were lakes, streams, and marshes full of fish and fowl, forests full of game, fields full of grass on which sheep and cattle grazed and grew fat. The market gardeners did well, as did the poulterers who provided eggs, the dairy farmers who provided milk, cream, cheese, and butter. The court was the center of all provisioning, each circle around it feeding on the ones farther out. Hay from the outermost provided winter fodder for cattle in the next; the beef fertilized market gardeners in the next; the fancy vegetables and fruit fed the court, which paid for everything in minted gold. The gold came from the mines in the mountains, which were owned by the king. So long as there was enough of everything, everyone benefited. The system was more or less closed. Though the king’s coinage had spread throughout Norland, barter was still widely used elsewhere than in Ghastain itself. People who raised food traded it for wood, people who cut wood traded it for food, both traded to people who wove cloth. Coinage was reserved for things one could not trade for: fancy things, imported things, silks from beyond Tingawa, furs from the high north mountains, even a few manufactured things from the Edges at the center of the continent. These things delighted the court of King Gahls in Ghastain, which is what he chose to call both the city and its surroundings after he took the throne.

The city had not merely accumulated, as do most cities; it had been designed. Streets lined with well-built shops and houses and stores radiated from the center of the city, joined by circular roads that spiraled inward from the four city gates. Four simultaneous processions, one entering at each point of the compass, could, and frequently did, wind their way toward the castle at the center. The castle was not a walled fortress but an architectural triumph surrounded by a paved mosaic plaza, decked with towering spires, with stained glass windows that jeweled the refracted light, with enormous bronze-sheathed doors hammered into images of Ghastain and Huold and all the mighty warriors of past times. Inside were marble floors and columns; walls hung with tapestries; furniture made of rare, fragrant woods imported in some former time, before the Sea King had stopped the ships from the east. Windows reached from floor to ceiling, flooding the rooms with light. At night, velvet curtains were drawn across them to keep out the chill. Stoves were built into the walls, and when the weather turned cold, their isinglass windows glowed with heat. All was warm in Ghastain, all were well fed in Ghastain, all were well clothed in Ghastain, all were at the service of the king. And the queen.

On this day, however, the queen was not satisfied with the service she was receiving. Her chamberlain, Chamfray, was seriously ill, and the physicians who served the king could not tell her what it was he suffered from.

“He has no fever, Your Majesty. He has no sign of illness beyond this weakness he complains off. His skin, his heart, his lungs, all appear normal. The weakness may be subjective rather than real. We have no way to test it.”

“The weakness is real,” she snapped. “I do have ways to test it. He drops things. He stumbles. He gets dizzy.”

“He is an elderly man, Your Majesty. The symptoms you describe are those of age. Age is not an illness. It is . . . simply inescapable.”

Mirami did not believe it was inescapable. She had learned as much from the Old Dark Man. She took certain drugs herself, created them herself from the sources she had been taught to use. She had given those same drugs to Chamfray. The Old Dark Man had told her the drugs were good only for the one they were designed for originally. She had not believed him at the time, but now she was concerned. She wished she had his books. Alicia had said there were no books in the Old Dark House when she went there. What could he have done with them? The secret to the drugs had been in the books; she had seen the books, seen him referring to the books when he gave her the drugs for the first time. “Only for you, lovely,” he had said. “Only because you are so beautiful.”

Mirami was well aware she had been created to be beautiful. She had often thought on the matter of beauty. What was it? Why was it? Why did one person think another beautiful, while a second person did not? Why did one person admire a view, a building, a costume, while another did not? Alicia was beautiful and she, too, had been created to be that way.

Well, Chamfray was not beautiful, but he was useful. She depended upon him. He knew everyone, all their secrets, where they were vulnerable, where pressure could be applied. He remembered everything that had ever happened to anyone. He collected stories as porcupines are said to collect fruit: he rolled in it and it stuck to him! As yet, she had found no one who could take his place. Hulix hadn’t the brain. Alicia was too . . . shut in. Closed. Though she knew Alicia was clever, very clever, she couldn’t tell what Alicia was thinking, and how could someone be trusted when one didn’t know what they were thinking? Rancitor was still a boy. He was thirty-one now, but he might always be a boy. He wasn’t interested in anything but women and hunting and leading parades. He loved to lead parades in full armor on any one of his huge horses. He loved to lead dances, especially in costume. He loved to lead young women off to bed. As his mother, she had had to dispose of some of them when her son had finished with them, daughters of influential people! A terrible accident, people had said when a body was found. She had fallen off a cliff. She had drowned. She had been trampled by horses.

Rancitor’s tastes were odd. She wondered where he had picked up such habits. None of the men Mirami had known had had such leanings. She had forbidden him to take women from the court. She had explained the dangers. A milkmaid, fine. A farmer’s daughter, fine. A servant girl, fine. Nobodies, do what you will, a bit of gold will quiet the families. But people of influence? No. She needed such people as friends. Or would soon enough, when King Gahls died.

She went to Chamfray’s room. He was lying down on a low couch near a window that looked out upon the plaza and the fountains. Men were sweeping the leaves that had blown in overnight. The day was mild and pleasant.

“Are you feeling better?” she asked with real concern.

Chamfray considered the question, moving his limbs as though testing symptoms. “Not better. No, not really. I think it’s some kind of passing thing, you know, something I’ve eaten, probably. We had that shellfish last week, remember, from Ragnibar Fjord.”

“Mussels from the coast. They were packed in ice. Hulix sent them. He said he had enjoyed them.”

“Perhaps they came a bit too far. Or the ice was bad. I’ve heard that if ice freezes from contaminated water, the ice itself is bad.”

“Contaminated?”

“Something bad in it. Something that died or was rotten. Where did Hulix get ice?”

“There are high mountains near Kamfelsgard where the ice never melts. People go up and cut great chunks of it with a saw, wrap them in straw, and haul them down the mountain. They put it in a special house at Kamfels Court, a kind of deep cellar where it stays cool, then they use it all summer to keep things cold.”