He had the key. He fumbled after it, and moved stealthily to the door and locked it from the inside. The lock clicked like the crack of doom, and he froze, scarcely daring breathe.
But what was he doing? He had the key. The librarian had allowed him to be here. He could face Lord Crissand’s guards and tell them—tell them he had come down to borrow a book.
And say what, about the plaster?
The footsteps reached the door. He heard muffled voices, and his heartbeat thumped in his ears, so that he hadn’t good sense. The latch moved.
And stopped, against the lock.
“We better get the captain,” someone said outside.
And the footsteps went away.
He had been a complete fool. He had dug this thing out, and now there was no concealing it, no time to hide his work, or the white plaster tracked across the floor. He wanted only to get this thing away and hide it until Lord Tristen arrived, or, failing that, he wanted to think it through before he confessed to Duke Crissand.
And things could go wrong. His mother could make things go wrong. He felt her attention, and her anger on him, burning and furious, and seeking some way to set everything on end and get her hands on what he had. She might have gotten him here—with the guards out and about on a search he might even get to her stairs. She could arrange that.
But she could not make him bring it to her. No.
The footsteps were gone. She could make them turn back. She’d already reached out of the wards to harm Gran, and he might be the only soul in the Zeide keep aware enough to defy her…
He unlocked the door, ducked out into the dim hallway, and had the presence of mind to lock it back to delay pursuit. His heart pounded against his ribs. At any moment the guards could come back, and lies and misdirection were his only cover if they did catch him. With a trembling hand he extracted the key from the grip of the lock, then turned and ran down the hall, up the dark servants’ stairs, breathless. His mother wanted him, wanted the book, all the while his mother knew exactly where he was—knew, and directed things awry.
He raced down the upper hall as stealthily as he could. He reached his own door, dashed in, closed the door, and shot the bar.
“What ha’ ye done?” Paisi asked, from out of the shadows, and he spun against the door.
“I don’t know,” he said in despair, pressing the tiny book to his chest. “I don’t know.”
“What ha’ ye got there?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
“Lad, lad—ha’ ye completely lost your senses?”
“I may have,” he said, overwhelmed. “The guards are in the library by now, and my mother—my mother—wants this. She’ll get it, Paisi. And she mustn’t have it. I don’t know anything else, but she mustn’t have it.”
“Well, shall ye go rouse up ’Is Grace an’ gi’ it to him?”
“No,” he said, suddenly sure, as if he were toeing the edge of a precipice, and this book the only thing that kept his balance on it. “No. To Lord Tristen. We have to get it to him.”
“Well, ’e’s comin’ here, ain’t he? So’s we can just wait.”
“We can’t wait.” He left the door, brushed his way past Paisi, and snatched up his cloak. “Paisi. Help me. We have to get out of here, and they’ll be here, they’ll be here any moment.”
“Aye,” Paisi said, stung into action. “Who’ll be here?”
“Lord Crissand’s guards.”
“Do we run for it, then, m’lord?”
“We have to.” He pinned his cloak on. He snatched up his gloves and his dagger while Paisi was putting on his own cloak. He remembered the key, then, and took the time to turn it out of his purse, and leave it on the dining table, his one gesture toward honesty. The ring should go with it. But the ring, Lord Crissand’s pass, was their way out. “I have His Grace’s ring. I can get our horses from the stable if we just hurry.”
“I take it we ain’t findin’ Lord Tristen too easy,” Paisi said.
“We do as we can.”
“Then we better have food,” Paisi said. “Food’s what ye think of when ye’re deep into things and don’t know how long.”
“Don’t go asking,” he begged Paisi, and Paisi shot back:
“Who said askin’? I’ll get it, m’lord. Gettin’ away is one thing, but apples an’ turnips ain’t in season out there in the woods. Ye get on to the stables, an’ ye act the lord and get the night boy to get them horses out, an’ gods help us, is all—hurry, is it? Was they chasin’ ye when ye run?”
“They don’t know who was there,” he said. That, at least, was true, he was sure of it. No one had seen him. “But the librarian knows where the key is, and they won’t be long figuring out I did it.”
“I don’t understan’ ye a bit,” Paisi said, “but that ain’t no matter: I never understood Lord Tristen, neither, when ’is notions took ’im, an’ if we got to find ’im in the mid of the night, I’ll wager there’s ’is doin’ in it somewheres. Come on, lad.”
He wished it were so simple. He wished it were Lord Tristen who had driven him, sweating and crazed, to steal what he had just stolen. Or that he had time to explain his fears and his choice to Paisi. But Paisi was right: every moment made it more likely his mother would get her way, and he couldn’t explain: when his mother wanted something, they’d had the cruel proof just how far she could reach. She had grown stronger, or hidden her strength. And it wasn’t distance that would save them. It was speed, before she could work her spells and draw someone else to help her. It was a stronger shelter, a protection Lord Crissand couldn’t offer this book, or them.
They left the room, and Paisi reached past him to shut the door, normal as could be: he understood Paisi’s signal to be calm, to do things at a reasonable pace. It seemed forever, the little distance to the servants’ stairs at this end of the hall, but then Paisi hurried, down and down to the main floor—while all the other end of the hall, down toward the library, with light flaring off the walls, rang with voices and the shadowed movement of guards.
“Stay with me!” he begged Paisi. “Never mind the food!”
“Kitchens,” Paisi hissed, and dived off down the stairs in that direction, where the kitchen hall diverged from the outbound door. He had no way to stop Paisi, only his own part to do.
He shoved the heavy door open and went out into snowfall, a white haze that haloed the single torch that burned in the kitchen yard. Remembering how Paisi proceeded, he made a careful descent of the icy steps, down to the yard, where he couldn’t but leave tracks. So he strode boldly across the yard to the stables.
A single guarded light burned inside the warm, horse-smelling dark. He went down the aisle until he found the stall the stableboy used for his cot, and there he gathered up his courage, took a deep breath, and roused the boy out.
“My horse and my servant’s,” he said to the boy, lordlike, trying to keep a steady voice, and showed the duke’s ring on his ungloved hand. “I’m Elfwyn Aswydd. This is His Grace’s ring.”
The boy might never have seen the duke’s ring, or know what it permitted, but it was silver, it was bright in the shadow, and Aswydds ruled in Amefel. The boy looked doubtful, and afraid, then rubbed his eyes and moved, not sluggardly, despite being roused out of bed and with his shirt hanging.
He couldn’t seem a lord and saddle his own horse. That was the difficulty in his plan, that he had to stand and wait, all the while dreading the approach of the guards, who might already have caught Paisi in the kitchens. Sorcery bent things. It moved a breeze to move a leaf to attract attention or sent a wayward thought to turn a guard’s head, and his mother had stopped raging, now and gotten down to other means, the subtler, distant ways he was sure she had used to damn him in Guelessar… she was down to sorcery, now. And how did he even hope he could outride her intent to have this thing, or steal this little book out of her grasp?