Joachim and his brother were strolling along the outside of the house. Arnulf spoke as they came under my window. “It’s as though they’d disappeared into thin air. And nothing left-except the sign.”
They continued out of my earshot without speaking again. I looked soberly after them. Sir Hugo’s party had also disappeared into thin air.
There came a sharp knock, making me jump. “Come in!” I called, and Ascelin entered, ducking his head as he came through the doorway.
He closed the door behind him and motioned me away from the window. “What’s going on here?” he asked in a low voice. “Is everyone here under a spell?”
Startled, I probed at once for magic and found none. As my mind slid lightly along the surface of magic’s four dimensions, I could sense the presence inside the house of all our party except Joachim, as well as many minds I did not know, but none of them was a wizard. Down by the front door I found Joachim and his brother, in the courtyard the house guards, and in the stables minds I assumed belonged to the stable boys, but that was all. I came back to myself and looked up into the prince’s worried eyes. “No one’s under a spell here. Why did you think so?”
He shook his head. “It must be hunter’s instincts. This whole house feels as though something has just happened or is about to happen, and I don’t know what it is.”
I had felt nothing of the sort, but then I was no hunter. Ascelin, I knew, had many years of experience in guessing or sensing where animals were hiding and when they would break into the open. I shook my shoulders to dispel a sudden chill that could have been prescience and could have been my imagination.
“We should all stay close together,” said Ascelin, “and leave here as soon as we can.”
“But we just got here,” I protested, “and Joachim hasn’t seen his family in years!” All of us had been in high good humor this entire trip, and an onset of unprecedented caution, just when we reached such a comfortable house, seemed entirely uncalled for.
“And why did his brother want him to visit now?” demanded Ascelin.
I was suddenly reminded of the bandits, who had thought that there was something specific hidden in the silk caravan and that we too were looking for it. Arnulf, I knew, was involved in some way in the luxury trade with the East. Could there be, here in this house, something valuable enough to make a castellan turn outlaw?
“I don’t know if you overheard,” said Ascelin, “the other day when we were at that inn, but several of the merchants were talking about very strange rumors coming out of the East, and I thought I heard one of them say that they involved the kingdom of Yurt ….”
Before I could respond to this startling information, there were brisk steps in the hall outside and another knock. “My lords?” It was Arnulf’s constable, come to tell us that lunch was ready. A few minutes ago, I would have gone to the dining room with pleasant anticipation. Now as we walked down the wide, carpeted stairs I felt instead a stir of misgiving.
But nothing about lunch seemed ominous. The dining room was carpeted and curtained in green, and the view from the window was of bright flowerbeds with the river beyond. The table glistened with silver and crystal. Arnulf and Joachim were already there when we came in.
“Claudia said she and the children would be right down,” said Arnulf. “Ah, here they are.” In the hall we heard children shouting excitedly, and the door swung open with a bang. But there was immediately an abashed silence as they spotted us. For a second I saw our group as the children must see us, six strange men standing looking toward the door, three of them rather formidable warriors. Even clean and well-dressed, we felt to me like a wild and woodsy group in this delicate and gracious setting.
“Go on in, it’s all right, don’t you want to meet your Uncle Joachim and his friends?” came a laughing woman’s voice. Claudia, the lady of the manor, came through the doorway herding two boys and a girl before her.
Claudia was another shock. She was the only woman I had ever met who came close to being as beautiful as the queen.
She did not look at all like the queen, having curly russet hair, already escaping from the coiffure into which I was sure she had just combed it, and a skin so fair it was almost translucent. She had a merry sweetness of expression and yet an air of tender concern in her eyes that made someone who saw her-or at least me-feel she must be protected at all costs from anything troublesome or sad.
She came immediately across to Joachim, wearing the tiniest firm line around her mouth as though determined not to be as shy as her children. She took his hands, looked into his eyes, and gave an almost tentative smile. I would have felt her expression, both sweet and vulnerable, was devastating if it had been turned on me. “You haven’t changed at all,” she said softly.
“Nor have you,” said Joachim. “It’s been too long. So, these are my nephews and my niece.”
Claudia brought the children forward to meet their uncle, then all of us were introduced to her, and she invited us to sit down at the table. Servants came in with steaming platters.
She was the perfect hostess, serving the king first, making sure each of us had what he wanted, asking about our trip and listening attentively to our answers, and at the same time somehow keeping her children quiet and orderly and their meat cut up in bite-size pieces.
But twice, as her husband sat beaming genially at the other end of the table, I thought I saw her shoot a worried look toward him.
III
“I understand your family is also in commercial imports?” said the Lady Claudia to me.
“Was. My parents died when I was little, and my grandmother kept the warehouse going, but she herself died while I was still in the wizards’ school. We imported wool from the Far Islands and wholesaled it to the cloth manufacturers.”
“How interesting,” said Claudia with a bright smile. In fact it wasn’t interesting at all, which was part of the reason I had become a wizard instead of a merchant. I would probably have done an even worse job of running a wool wholesale business than my grand mother had, and there hadn’t been much left over when she died and I had to sell the warehouse to pay the firm’s debts.
“And now you’re a wizard,” said Arnulf genially. “I gather the wizards’ school keeps a fairly close eye on all of you-even tries to establish your routes when you travel.”
“Not really,” I said in surprise. “Of course the school tries to coordinate the practice of wizardry throughout the western kingdoms, but wizards argue with each other too much to allow close oversight.” Arnulf nodded but said nothing more.
The chaplain seemed much more sober during lunch than I would have expected of someone home to see his family after a long absence. “You know, Joachim,” said Claudia when dessert was served, “I still can’t get used to seeing you in priest’s vestments.”
Dessert was lemon pie, and one of the dishes served earlier had been rice with almonds. We didn’t have rice in the royal castle of Yurt very often, and lemons even less frequently. Although I had always assumed that coming to Yurt had been the move into luxury for Joachim that it had been for me, perhaps I was wrong.
“Did he use to wear an earring when you first knew him?” Hugo asked Claudia with a wink for Dominic.
The chaplain did smile at that and brought both ear lobes forward with his forefingers to show they had never been pierced.
“No,” said Claudia, also with a smile. “He always dressed very soberly, even when he was still expected to take over the family business.”
“It’s just as well I didn’t,” said Joachim. “My ideas of fair business practice would have lost our firm everything we had in two years. You and Arnulf would be lucky to have a cottage of your own, much less this house.”