The Wide World's End (51 page)

“Oluma herself succeeded at that, didn't she?”

“Yes.” Ulvana wrinkled her nose in matronly disapproval. “She bragged about it to me—thought it was funny. That's what the whole business was for her; a grim sort of, of lark.”

“But Oluma didn't manage to drag Denynê into the conspiracy?”

“As far as I know, she didn't try. She wasn't that interested; it was just one more game in all the games she was constantly playing. I shouldn't have been surprised that Naevros had to kill her.”

“But you were surprised?”

“Yes, it. . . . I was surprised, yes.” And frightened, too, Aloê thought, looking at Ulvana's face now and remembering it then, when they had found Oluma in the corpse-house. Frightened that Naevros was getting rid of his fellow conspirators: that was Aloê's guess. Ulvana lived simultaneously with two different versions of Naevros: the hero of her love-romance, and the cold-hearted seducer and murderer.

“What was your role in all this?” Aloê asked. “What did he want you to do?”

“I showed him the . . . the lay of the land, I suppose. He spent some time at my old lumber camps. He wanted me to report to him how the investigation went. And, of course, he stayed with me after it, after the thing.”

“After he had murdered Earno.”

“Yes, that. He could not afford to be seen—there was a simulacrum of himself he had left in the North to give himself an alibi. So he was with me for a number of days. That was. . . . That was a good time.”

Because she'd had her beloved all to herself, Aloê thought. And, of course, he would have been at his most charming; his plan depended on keeping Ulvana happy.

“Did you attempt to mislead me at any time?” Aloê asked.

“Only by omission. Naevros warned me about that in a letter, as soon as he found out that you would be the Graith's vengeancer. He said I should act as I would if . . . if I were not involved. He said you would know if I did not. He rates your cleverness very highly. More highly than he does mine. And he's quite right, of course. I still don't understand what you discovered in our journey together. Was it something you saw in your vision? He said he had a way of concealing his talic imprint from a seer. Did it fail him?”

“No. Tell me, Ulvana, why did Naevros create such an elaborate murder plan? Why not arrange something less spectacular, something that might have passed as an accident?”

“Oh, that wasn't his idea. His partners—his seniors, he called them—they insisted on it. They said they needed to be sure they put Earno out of the way; he was blocking some important task they had in hand. And if an attempt was made and failed, it might draw suspicion.”

“If you strike at the king, you must kill him,” Noreê said, somewhat blasphemously. Ulvana started a little in her chair: she had forgotten the older vocate was there.

Aloê met Noreê's cool gaze and they both nodded: they were done here.

“Ulvana,” said Aloê, “I'll consider your case and consult my peers in the Graith. In the meantime, you must be under guard. The thains here, or some others, will take you to the High Arbitrate in A Thousand Towers.”

“I don't wish to go there. I don't want to see those people.”

“You must go somewhere, and you can't stay here.”

“Yes. I see that. I don't want to stay here, either. Aloê, I've answered your questions; won't you answer mine? What did you discover that led you to Naevros?”

Aloê hesitated before answering. But there was no obvious reason not to tell her.

“It didn't mean anything to me at the time,” she admitted. “But there was a scent in one of the beds I slept in at your logging shelters—a sort of sweet musk.”

“Oh,” Ulvana said quietly. Then, “I gave him that scent. It was a present.”

“I noticed it on him later when I met him in the city. That was what helped me guess. The proof came later.” Aloê thought of Denynê and frowned at a painful memory.

“He said he would wear it in the city,” Ulvana said. “But I wasn't sure. . . . I wasn't sure whether that was only one of his lies.” She looked sharply at Aloê and seemed to be about to speak. Aloê looked straight into her eyes and she flinched.

“Did you always despise me?” she asked plaintively, as Aloê turned to go.

Aloê considered the question fairly. “No,” she said. “No, when I met you again in Big Rock, I sort of liked you. But that wasn't really you, was it?”

“It used to be,” Ulvana said sadly. “Until a year or so ago.”

Aloê shook her head and strode away through the door. Noreê followed her out, and the thain outside folded the door shut, closing Ulvana in alone.

“I'll have some of my thains escort her down, if you like,” Noreê said.

“They're not
your
thains, Vocate,” Aloê said.

Noreê smiled and nodded: a mere detail to her. “Ommil,” she said to the thain on guard, “take a couple of the others and escort Ulvana down to the High Arbitrate in the city tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Vocate,” said the thain.

“What did you think of Ulvana?” Noreê asked as they turned away and walked into the street.

“Pitiable. But I didn't pity her.”

“Yes. My long-dead father would have called her a real woman.”

“Oh? Why?”

Noreê shrugged, a gesture that reminded Aloê oddly of Morlock. “That is easier to know than to explain. She lives through her man; that is part of it. He is everything, and she is content to be nothing, if he only notices her. She is completely selfless.”

“I'd say she's completely selfish.”

Noreê laughed. “You are contrary today, Vocate. How can she be selfish? She gave up everything for that man.”

“For a price. As long as she got what she wanted, nothing else mattered: Earno's life; Oluma's life; Denynê's life—anyone else's; her principles as a member of the Arbitrate; the safety of those who trusted in her; her independence and fortune, so proudly won over a century of work. She threw all that away to satisfy an urge.”

“You speak unkindly of love,” Noreê said, not as if she disapproved.

“I'm not talking about love at all. Naevros purchased her with a fantasy, the way he might have purchased a meat pie with money. He offered her the pretense of love, which was enough for her. For that she sacrificed everything, not for him.”

“Are you going to talk to him now?”

Aloê nodded.

“Perhaps I should ride with you,” Noreê suggested. “The presence of his two unattainable princesses might unnerve him.”

“What is a princess anyway?”

“A sort of female kinglet, I think. They have them in the unguarded lands. They are much sought after as mates, apparently, and people kill dragons and things to woo them.”

Aloê, who'd had occasion to kill a dragon herself, revolved this notion in her mind. “Odd,” she said. “Yes: let's try to shake him up.”

They rode down to the city the next morning and arrived at Naevros' house in the afternoon.

There was a cloud of watch-thains on the street outside Naevros' little house. Aloê was surprised to see them there. Naevros had been released from the Well of Healing after swearing a self-binding oath to appear before the Graith when summoned. No guards were needed, but here they were.

Plus, they wore different badges, as if they belonged to different graiths. One group had green armbands; another sported red caps; a third wore purple leggings.

She rode Raudhfax through the milling crowd as if they weren't there, causing a number to jump out of the way. She dismounted and strode toward the front door, ready to throttle anyone who hindered her.

She heard a timid voice say, “Your pardon, Vocate, but you are not allowed to enter.” She turned and prepared to leap at the speaker like a lioness taking down a deer . . . but he wasn't speaking to her. A herd—no, three distinct herds of thain—were surrounding Noreê, who looked at them curiously with her dark blue eyes.

“Here, you,” Aloê said to them as a body, “get away from her.”

“I'm sorry, Vocate,” said a freckly fellow in purple leggings, “but our orders are that no one shall enter this domicile saving yourself.”

“Ours, too,” supplied a pimply youth with a green armband. “And ours!” chimed in a girl in a red cap, and in general all the cattle mooed the same song.

“Whoever may have given you those orders, and those badges of rank to go with them,” Aloê said, “you can't suppose that their instructions are binding on us. Stand out of her way.”

“Sorry, Vocate. Orders.”

The herds lowed in unison: orders, orders, orders.

Aloê was about to lay a few of them on the ground using her songbow as a club when another voice spoke, breaking the spell: “Don't trouble yourselves, vocates. I'll come down to you.” It was Naevros, standing at the window above his front door.

Neither Aloê nor Noreê responded, but Naevros disappeared, and in a moment the door opened and Naevros stepped out of it.

The thains stood out of his way as if he were carrying a bowlful of plague-infested pus. He was not. He carried nothing: not a sword at his hip, not a cloak on his shoulders against the chill of the summer day. His clothes looked old and ill-matched; there were buttons missing from the shirt and threadbare patches on the trousers. His reattached left hand hung from the end of his arm, barely moving. It had a slightly bluish look to it. He did not offer it, or the other hand, to Aloê or Naevros, but he did acknowledge their presence with a nod and a glance of his green eyes, which is more than he did for the thains.

“Let's go down to the Benches and have a bite to eat,” he suggested. “I don't suppose I'll have many more chances to eat there, one way or the other.”

They agreed and they all walked together down the street to Naevros' favorite cookshop.

“How's Verch?” asked Aloê.

“Gone. Forever, this time,” Naevros said. “I fired him. I'd sell the house if I could find a buyer. I'll need all the money I can get in the unguarded lands. Unless you plan to kill me.”

“You'll have the option of exile, of course,” Aloê said.

“I'll take it. Or did you imagine me drowning my sorrows in a pool of my own blood?”

Aloê noted the bitter bantering tone in his voice and chose to ignore it. “No,” she said frankly.

He winced and sighed. “Well, I suppose it's too late to pretend now that I'm something other than I am.”

They sat in the garden, empty of other patrons as the blue chill of evening approached. Without looking at the server, a young woman with streaked hair who looked at him with sad, sympathetic eyes, Naevros ordered pork seared with cherries and thrummin on the side. Noreê had a plate of jeckfruit and grondil. Aloê ordered chicken and mushrooms, and they shared a carafe of the house wine.

“I suppose you've come to break down my resistance,” Naevros said, when they all had a glass. “You want to ask me questions, expecting no answers, just hoping to plant doubts that will soften the real examination on the Witness Stone. Is that it?”

“What if it is?” Aloê replied.

“If it is, to hell with it. Ask me your questions. I'll answer. I'm not going to put on a defense. I did what I did, and I'll pay for it without whining.”

Perhaps only a little whining
, Aloê thought to herself. Naevros favored her with a green glance, and she wondered if he had understood her unspoken response. It repelled her, but their rapport was as strong as ever. Aloud she said, “I know what you did, and most if not all of your fellow conspirators. What I don't understand is why you did it.”

“Don't you?”

“No.”

“A simple reason, for a Guardian. I did it to maintain the Guard.”

She looked at him without speaking.

“No, really!” he insisted.

“You'll have to put some more lines in the drawing, Naevros. I don't see what you're getting at. How did murdering Earno help maintain the Guard?”

“I don't know all the details. But Lernaion and Bleys had a plan to save the Wardlands from the effects of the dying sun. Earno was planning to interfere with it, or they thought he was. So he had to be killed.”

“Why would you believe them?” Aloê asked.

Naevros seemed genuinely surprised. “Wouldn't you?”

Aloê looked away instead of answering. She wondered if he had always been this stupid and she hadn't noticed it, or whether something had happened to him. She marveled that she had ever felt torn between this clever, shallow, pretty man and ugly, powerful, crafty Morlock Ambrosius. She missed him very much at that moment, and there was a shrill, fearful quality to the feeling. She was worried that the loss was permanent, that he would never return from the journey he'd begun.

She pushed the feeling away. The food came then, and she managed to ask Naevros a few more questions through the meal, but she didn't learn much, and she was increasingly convinced that she never would learn more from Naevros.