The City in the Lake (6 page)

“I’ve been on the road once or twice. I can take care of myself,” Jonas said, as if he had heard what she did not say. He spoke as though choosing his words carefully. His tone was casual, but his eyebrows had drawn together a little. He wasn’t annoyed or exasperated. He was worried.

“Jonas—” Timou said, “—I know you have. But I believe, where I will be going, I will need to be able to think only about one thing. If you are with me, I will also think about you.”

His mouth relaxed with startlement, then crooked. “Well, thank you.”

Timou started to protest
I didn’t mean it like that,
but then she closed her mouth again without saying anything.

“I don’t like to think of you alone on this journey. Not after . . . well. You know.”

She did. “Yes,” Timou said. “But I need to think about—”

“Only one thing. Yes,” said Jonas. “All right. And if you meet the Hunter on that road? Could you stand him off a second time?”

“I could never challenge the blind Hunter,” Timou said seriously. She closed her hands together in her lap so that he would not see them trembling. “I didn’t stand him off. He left us alone because he chose to. I don’t know why. But I don’t think he would stop me going to the City. Do you?”

Jonas frowned and moved a hand in an ambiguous gesture. “You had better come back, Timou. I don’t think this village could take your disappearance, too. I wouldn’t care for that very much myself.”

“No,” said Timou. “Yes. I will come back.”

Jonas nodded and put the knapsack down on the floor, where Timou had been arranging things that she would take with her. “Then I’ll see you later,” he said—not
Goodbye.
“And I’ll wish you luck in finding your . . . father.” And he went out, closing the door carefully behind him.

Timou left the village quietly, without making any specific goodbyes of her own. She had been taking gradual leave of the whole village for weeks . . . for months, perhaps. It would have been hard to have people watching her walk away, so she did not call attention to her going.

She touched the stone at the edge of the village with her fingertips as she passed it. The sun had not yet warmed it from the chill of the night. She looked for the prints of hooves before it where the Hunter’s white mare had stood, but she saw nothing. Strangely, as she passed the stone, she found she left her nervousness behind; it was as though stepping past the marker was the one irrevocable step that let her commit herself to the road and the journey. She found she could look ahead now with a whole heart; that she could leave the village behind and simply trust it would still be there, unchanged, when she returned.

Autumn had come in quickly this year. Timou became aware of its beauty as she walked through country she had never seen before, so that she looked at everything with curiosity and attention. The road went through the woods for a long time. Many of the hickories were butter-yellow, and the occasional maple flame-orange. Crimson vines climbed trees, dangling from the branches like garlands.

Later the woods gave way to grasses, but the road went on under the suddenly widening sky. The road was broad and level, only a little rutted. There was a breeze in the daytime to cool the heat; the air was still at night, when it might otherwise have been chilly. It would have been a very pleasant journey, except that Timou always had in the back of her mind the knowledge that her father had gone this way and had not come back.

There were other villages and towns all through this country, but Timou knew that she was unlikely to pass any of them. From the moment she had set her foot on the road with the intention to go to the City, her journey had been her own.

And indeed, if there were other travelers, Timou encountered none of them. A hawk turning in lazy circles high overhead was company in the solitude. The crackle of a small fire at night was a reminder of the warmth of human company. Timou thought that if she met another traveler on the road, she might find she had forgotten how to speak to him. But she met no one.

And one afternoon, twelve days after she had left the village, she came over the top of a slight rise and found before her not the familiar vista of grass and sky, but the great forest.

C
HAPTER
4

ord Neill,” a servant said respectfully, holding a basin of water and kneeling by the Bastard’s bedside. Pale early-morning light showed behind the fine curtains, which were of a creamy yellow, half a tone warmer than the light.

The servant’s presence meant that the Bastard was expected to break his fast in the great hall with the King. And that meant that the morning would be difficult. The King’s temper was uncertain—or rather, the King’s temper had become all too certain. And the King’s eldest son bore the brunt of it.

The Bastard did not permit himself to sigh. He sat up instead and set his feet on the creamcolored rug beside his bed. The air in the room was cool: the nights, though not yet cold, had lost the pressing warmth of midsummer. It was autumn, with winter to follow soon enough. But this year the coming winter held no promise of a burgeoning spring to follow.

The Bastard washed his face and hands with the water the man provided. The servant set the basin aside, proffered a warm towel, and went quietly to lay out appropriate clothing: black and violet, because the King, in his despair, expected all the court to dress in mourning colors. The clothing was simple, as austere as the Bastard could get away with in the court. Austerity suited him this morning. After dressing, he sat patiently in a chair while the servant braided his long ash-colored hair into its customary single braid. The servant did his work quietly, seldom glancing up, because the Bastard preferred quiet into the morning.

Properly attired and arranged, the Bastard had no reasonable excuse to linger in his room. He went into the corridor and turned toward the great hall. The morning light came in through high narrow windows.

The great hall was nearly on the other side of the palace. It had wide windows of its own, some of them set to bring in the morning sun and others set to catch the breeze that came off the Lake. It was a big room, brightened by tapestries in blue and gold and green. Lamps hooded with creamy parchment hung above the tables.

One long table took up a quarter of the hall: the King’s own table. It had been made of a single great tree and had room for fifty places. At the moment only four places were laid. Only one was occupied, and it was not the King’s place at the table’s head. It was the Queen’s, placed at the King’s left hand. This was surprising. The King liked to be in his place first, so that he could watch others walk the whole length of the hall to come before his seat.

The Bastard walked the length of the hall. The captain of the guard was there, with half a dozen of his men, behind the Queen. This was also a surprise: normally the captain would have been attending upon the King, or else about duties elsewhere in the Palace. But this morning it seemed there would be nothing more important for him to do than watch the Queen at her breakfast. . . .

The Bastard looked at Ellis, the Queen. She sat quite still at her place, her hands resting quietly on the table, and watched him come. Servants hovered behind her. There were platters and bowls on the table already: bread with salted butter, fruit glazed with honey, little cakes made of ground walnuts and drizzled with syrup. The Queen looked at none of it. She looked only at the Bastard.

The Queen had been very beautiful when she had caught the King’s eye, and very young. She was still beautiful, still far from old. If she had lost the rosy blush of youth, her skin remained very fine, and the delicate lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes only added character to her face. Her raven’s-wing hair was hardly touched with silver. Her eyes, a remarkable shade of violet, picked up the lavenders and violets of her mourning dress, as though the Queen had been meant all her life to wear those grieving colors.

“Where is the King?” the Bastard asked her. He saw, now that he was close to her, that the Queen’s stillness was not calm, but a brittle tight control overlying terrible tension. So he asked, out of mingled hope and dread, because he could imagine one reason above all that the King might be absent, “Has the Prince been found?” What he wanted to know, but did not ask aloud, was
Has the Prince been found, and is he dead?

The Queen shut her eyes, which gave the Bastard a heartbeat to prepare himself before she opened them again and said, in a voice like a shout except it was quiet as a whisper, “What have you done with him?”

The Bastard gazed at her, wordless with surprise.

The Queen drew in her breath, rose to her feet, and, moving with sudden violence, seized the nearest plate of cakes and flung it at him. The Bastard barely got a hand up in time to deflect the plate. Syrup dripped down his shoulder and arm where a cake had struck him.

Servants scattered backward, and several of the guards twitched in startlement and dismay. But as there was no enemy for them to fight, they kept their places. Their captain stood a little straighter, but otherwise did not move.

“You killed him,” said the Queen. Her voice was deathly, but she did not throw any more plates. She threw words instead, like knives. “You killed him and hid his body, as you did with my son! Murderer! Murderer! How dare you stand in the light of day?” She turned to the guard captain. “Arrest him!” she demanded. “Arrest him!”

The Bastard lowered his arm wordlessly. Syrup ran down his fingers. He, too, looked at the guard captain.

The captain met his eyes. None of his men had moved at the Queen’s demands. They looked at their captain, and their captain looked only at the Bastard.

“The King is gone?” the Bastard asked, his voice quite calm.

“Yes, Lord Neill,” said the captain. He was a meticulous man, but not without imagination. There was silvery grizzle shot through his pale-wheat hair, barely showing, but his eyes, light blue and holding all the chilly reserve of long experience, showed his age. He had served the King for thirty-six years and been captain of the guard for twenty-two. He knew everything that went on in the Palace and the City. He looked the Bastard in the face and spoke quietly. “He went to his rooms last night as always. His servants say he paced half the night. They were relieved to hear his steps cease. They thought he had gone to his bed at last, as perhaps he had. But he was not there this morning, though his bed had been slept in. No one went into that room past my men; no one came out.”

“So it was not quite the same as with the Prince.” The Prince had not vanished from a closed room. The Prince had merely gone out riding one fine spring morning and failed to return. Everyone had searched for him. There seemed nowhere, in this, to search for the King. “Have you sent for Trevennen, or Marcos?”

“No, my lord, not before your order.”

“Then please do so. Direct the mages to go into the King’s rooms and search there for any hint or echo or intimation that may suggest to them what happened there. Then have them attend upon me in the . . . in my father’s study.”

“Yes, Lord Neill. Yes, my lord.”

The Bastard looked back at the Queen. She was silent. Her hands gripped the edge of the table. She looked at him bitterly and said nothing.

“You are distraught, madam,” the Bastard stated, not unkindly. He said to the guard captain, “Have one of your men escort the Queen to her rooms, so that she may rest undisturbed.”

“Yes, my lord,” said the captain.

“Then come to me in my father’s study. And,” he added, a little drily, “have someone bring me a clean shirt.”

The King had a surprisingly tidy mind, but he had organized his study according to some principle that escaped the Bastard. The King’s servants clustered in a nervous knot on the far side of the suite while the Bastard went thoughtfully through the papers on his father’s desk. Questioning had yielded nothing from the servants that he had not already known.

The captain, whose name was Galef, came into the King’s study quietly, with a fresh shirt over his own arm. He met the Bastard’s eyes with a wry expression.

The Bastard changed his shirt. He gave the soiled one to a waiting servant and washed his hands in a basin held by another servant. Then he dismissed all the servants with a jerk of his head. When they were gone, he seated himself in his father’s chair and asked the guard captain, “How is the Queen?”

“She is furious. But she is not throwing plates. She is thinking instead. She is afraid of you,” answered the captain directly. “Now she is also afraid of me.”

The Bastard sighed, and leaned back in the chair. He asked after a moment, “And you? Are you afraid of me, Galef ?”

“You rule now,” said the captain without blinking. He had been a professional guardsman for too long to show anything in his face. “That is your right.”

“And if I killed the King, as the Queen accuses, and hid his body? If I caused the disappearance of my brother, the Prince?”

“I have no evidence that leads to you, my lord.”

Or I would act
was clearly the unspoken message under that statement. “But,” said the Bastard patiently, “do you
think
me guilty? In either case?”

The captain looked the Bastard in the face. He said after an infinitesimal pause, “If you arranged the disappearance of the King in order to gain power in the City, or simply peace in this house, I would understand. I might believe that of you, Lord Neill. There is no evidence of your hand in this, but you are a subtle man. But I do not think you acted against your brother, the Prince. I could believe that you are ambitious. I could believe that you have been jealous. I know you can be ruthless. But whoever stole the Prince stole the very heart of the Kingdom, and could hardly fail to know it after this past summer. I do not think you are so cruel a man as that—my lord. So I will serve you.”

This was rather more direct than any answer the Bastard had looked to find offered to his face, from the captain or any man. It was clear to the Bastard that the captain had had that little speech waiting. He thought he understood: Galef wanted to set everything between them in order if he could, so that he might be free to serve—if not the Bastard, at least the Kingdom. The captain was not, himself, lacking in subtlety.

After a moment the Bastard let his mouth crook a little. He said in a level tone, “I will be glad to have your service. Where were your men last night, when the King disappeared from a room with only one door?”

The captain answered scrupulously, “My men were on guard at that door, and they are good, responsible men. I oversaw them, and I questioned them. They are my men and I am sure of them.” He hesitated a little. “Do you then doubt me? Or them?”

“I am sure we both doubt everyone,” said the Bastard. “Why should you be excepted?”

The captain inclined his head with the sardonic air of a man well accustomed to the uncertainties of life. “I am loyal to the King. I swear you will have no cause to doubt my loyalty to you—if you did not yourself betray the trust of the Kingdom. As I think you did not. But if I find out such a truth, my lord, I will be your enemy. So,” he added, “we know where we stand.”

“I don’t expect your trust,” acknowledged the Bastard, not offended, “until my father is found. Or better, the Prince. Nevertheless, I do expect your loyalty. Don’t move too quickly to make yourself my enemy, Galef. If you find yourself my enemy, I think you will find yourself overmatched.”

The captain had to know this was true. He bowed his head a little.

“But it was not my hand. I did not act either against my father or against my brother. So we know where we stand.” The Bastard touched a stack of his father’s papers. “I’m glad you speak openly to me. I must hope you will bring anything you discover to me.” He allowed only the slightest bite to his tone. “If the secret is here, I will find it, and I will share it with you. Some of these drawers are locked. Do you know where the keys are?”

“I know how to find them, my lord.”

“Good. If you were going to steal a man from a closed and guarded room, Galef, how would you do it? Think on that, and come to me in my own rooms in three hours. Four.” He looked at the clutter in his father’s study and sighed. “Six. And find me the keys to this desk.”

“Yes, my lord.” The captain began to withdraw. “I will send a man of mine to assist you.”

The Bastard looked up sharply. A small movement of his hand stopped the captain. He said plainly, as they had both been speaking plainly, “To assist me? You mean you will send a spy. If I tell you I will have no man of yours at my back in this room, what will you do?”

The guard captain answered after a moment, “What can I do, my lord, but hope that I may trust you?”

The Bastard inclined his head. “Indeed. So we must all hope that we may trust one another. And yet someone acts against us all. You may send a man of yours to me. So long as we are clear between ourselves, Galef, I shall be satisfied.” He smiled, a smile that did not touch his eyes. “Tell your man to bring me something to eat, since I did not have breakfast.”

It took the Bastard five days to go through all the King’s papers, including the ones locked away in his desk. Some of those were interesting. None of them shed light on the King’s disappearance, or that of the Prince.

The mage Trevennen came at the beginning, a distinguished and assured man of fifty, and an experienced and exceedingly subtle mage. He looked carefully at the King’s rooms. “He was here, and then he was gone,” said the mage, which the Bastard already knew. “It’s hard to say how he went. Or where he might have gone. Hmmm.”