I could not understand her composure. “How did you know?”
“The servants say men are searching the house. I’ve not slept as much as everyone thinks.”
“No one has seen him since last evening. I’ve sent-”
“Is he dead?”
“We’ve no reason to believe it. I won’t believe it.” Worse… The stone that settled in my stomach whenever I thought of him grew colder, heavier. Some things were worse than death.
Philomena wrinkled her brow as if trying to decide on white wine or red with dinner. “It’s not as if he was ever very affectionate. He didn’t like playing cards or dice with me, and I never knew what else to do with him. Boys are so beastly. They like fighting and dirt and nasty things.”
“He’s not dead, Philomena. I believe Captain Darzid has taken him. Many people know the captain; he’s easy to identify. Do you know of any place he might take Gerick? Did he ever mention any town or city or person to which he might go?”
“I never listened to Captain Darzid. He was boring.” She looked up, her fair brow in an unaccustomed wrinkle. “Some say you are responsible for these terrible things. Auntie says it. But others whisper that the gods make me pay for my husband’s sin-because he killed your child and helped King Evard burn your husband-and that’s why all of them are taken from me. Do you think that’s true?”
“Don’t ask me to explain the workings of fate. Life is incomprehensible enough without believing we have to pay for someone else’s faults in addition to our own.”
“Ren Wesley says you saved my life.”
“I only fetched the midwife.”
“Did you want me to live so that I would know that all my children are gone-so I would suffer? I don’t understand you at all.” She sighed and tossed the gray silk bag onto the floor. “You’ll come read to me tonight?”
I was ready to scream, Are you mad, stupid woman? My son-mine-has been stolen away by a smooth-tongued villain, and I don’t know where in this god-cursed universe they’ve gone. Yet, what else had I to do but wait? Losing myself in fantasy for an hour might be the very thing to save my reason. I bit my tongue. “I’ll be here at the usual time.”
“Do whatever you need to find him,” she said as I left the room.
“You can be sure I will.” But how and where?
And so I had dispatched more searchers and a message to Evard, and when evening came, I read to Philomena until she fell into the image of peaceful sleep. Since then I had waited, gripping the rose-colored stone that hung around my neck as if sheer force of will might bring it to life and send my plea to Avonar along the paths of its enchantment. Our child had been abandoned at his birth- by his dead father’s idealism and his living mother’s bitterness and self-pity. He had grown up in fear, not understanding what he was. If I had to walk the Bridge myself to fetch help for him, I would do it. Somehow.
Just after dawn a footman came to me in the library, saying that a stable lad was causing trouble. “It’s the cripple. I caught him sneaking through the kitchens and threw him out. Then I caught him again, coming through the windows of the wash house. I told him Giorge would have him flogged, but he insists he has to see the Lady Seri-pardon the liberty, ma’am, but that’s how he put it-as he had information you would want to know. I didn’t want to bother you with it, but Allard said that with the hunt and all-”
“Bring him to the housekeeper’s room.” Any distraction was welcome.
“Yes, my lady. As you say.”
The footman dragged Paulo into the little office next to the kitchen, holding him at arm’s length by the neck of his shirt. “Here he is, my lady. I’ll stay close by.”
“No need.” I closed the door firmly, then laid on the table a packet of ham and bread I’d fetched from the larder. Paulo’s eyes brightened, and he reached for it. But I laid a hand on the packet and said, “First a question, my friend. What’s so urgent that you risked punishment to get in here?”
Paulo crammed his dirty hands in his pockets. “Just wanted to tell you she’s on the way.”
“She?” Paulo never liked to use four words when two would do.
“You know. Sheriff’s friend what saved him and me last summer.”
“Kellea? Kellea is on her way here?”
He nodded and eyed the packet of food under my hand. Paulo had every intention of making up for thirteen lean years living with a drunken grandmother. I pushed the bundle toward him, still not understanding.
“But why? I mean, what brings her this way?”
Stuffing the bread in his mouth, he mumbled. “Told her you needed her.”
“You told her…” Needed Kellea? Of course… she was absolutely the one person in this world that I needed, and I hadn’t even thought of it. Kellea, the last survivor of Karon’s Avonar, newborn the week before the massacre, was a Finder. Herbs, lost objects, people… given the proper materials to create a link with the thing or person she sought, she could locate almost anything.
The first spark of hope glimmered in my head. “She’s coming to search for Gerick?”
Paulo nodded. “Be here tonight.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard in two days. But how, in the name of heaven, did she know?”
He gave me the same long-suffering sigh he used whenever I asked how he knew that a horse wanted to run faster or graze in the next clearing rather than the one we were in. “I told her.”
“I think you’ll have to explain that.”
He took the bread from his mouth, but not too far. “When I come here, she said that every once in a while she’d talk to me, tell me about the horses and Sheriff and all. You know, like she can, that way we can’t say nothing about?” Dar’Nethi-J’Ettanne, as Karon’s people had called themselves in this world-had rarely used their ability to read thoughts and speak in the mind, aware of the potential to abuse such power, especially when living in a world where no one else could do it.
“Mind-speaking? I didn’t think she knew how.” Or cared to know.
“Well, she learned it of that woman”-he leaned close and dropped his voice even lower-“the swordwoman.”
The “swordwoman” was one of the three Zhid who had pursued us to the Bridge in the summer. After his battle with Tomas, Karon had healed the three of them, returned or reawakened the souls they had lost in their transformation. I believed that their healing had been the very act that had strengthened the Bridge and kept the Gates open. Karon had been too weak to take them back across the Bridge to Avonar, and, indeed, they had had little reason to hurry. Their own families and friends had died centuries before, and they were unlikely to find welcome among the other Dar’Nethi whose family and friends they had slaughtered or enslaved. So the three had taken up residence in Dunfarrie under Kellea’s and Graeme Rowan’s protection.
“Kellea taught me how to talk back to her when she was with me in my head,” said Paulo. “Just think real hard about her and what I want to say and nothin‘ else at all for as long as it takes. Thought my head might burst while we were working at it, but I learned how. The swordwoman says not many non-magical folk can do it so well as me.” The rest of the bread and a good measure of ham cut off any further discussion.
“Paulo, I knew it was a good day when you came here.”
The boy wiped his mouth on his sleeve and jerked his head at the door. “Best go now. Got work to do.”
“Yes. Not a single word to anyone about these things. You know that?”
He gave me a bready grin, pulled open the door, and disappeared through the hot kitchen.
My revived hopes were quickly swallowed by grim reality. Throughout the day-the second since Gerick’s disappearance-searchers returned empty-handed. I sent them out again, telling them to go farther, ask again, be more thorough, more careful, more ruthless. Even for a Dar’Nethi Finder, the trail was growing cold.