As I lowered the sodden hood of my cloak, ready to proclaim our innocence, I heard a sharp intake of breath. “Seri!” Baglos stumbled to the side, the knife fell to the carpet, and from the shadows stepped a bespectacled man, thin and slightly stooped, gray at the temples with creases at the eyes from too many years reading in dim light. A graying goatee lengthened his narrow face, causing a moment’s uncertainty before I recognized him. Then a small eternity of disbelief passed before I could convince my lips to say his name. “Tennice!”
In movements so swift one could see only the result, D’Natheil’s sword was drawn and touching Tennice’s belly. pressing him to the wall.
“D’Natheil, no!” I cried. “Baglos, tell him no. This is my friend… a friend who’s come back from the dead.”
Baglos spoke quietly and insistently to D’Natheil. After a long moment, the cold-eyed young man released Tennice, but he did not sheathe his weapon.
“Is it really you, Seri?” Once it appeared that he was not going to be spitted on D’Natheil’s weapon, the ghost lowered his hands and touched my cheek with his cold, but quite substantial fingers.
“He heard you die,” I whispered. “They made him listen. All of you were dead.” Now I was shaking. Dead was dead.
“And so I was or so close as to be thought so. I can tell you what happened and must hear the same from you, but first”—he turned to the grisly scene in the library and ran his fingers through his thin hair—“I’ve got to take care of Ferrante.”
“What happened here?”
“I’ve been in Vanesta for several days, searching for a book for Ferrante. An hour ago I rode in and passed four strangers on the service road behind the house. I thought nothing of it. Students are in and out all the time. But no servants were about, no grooms in the stable, and then I came up and found… this. When I heard your call, I thought you must be students or tradesmen. But when I stepped out and spied you coming up the stairs, I thought the murderers had come back. Who would do this to him? They didn’t even steal anything!”
This murder left me with a horrid, creeping sickness… a sensation well beyond that caused by the vile deed itself. I glanced at Baglos and D’Natheil, then down at my own soggy cloak, and my revulsion took on more substance. “What made you believe we were the murderers?”
“Your long cloaks, I suppose, and the colors. Two of those I saw riding away wore gray, one of them black. Like you, they had their hoods up, so I couldn’t see—”
Baglos caught the connection. “Great Vasrin, the Zhid! It’s a trap. We must be out of here!” He was already out of the library door, dragging D’Natheil like a fierce sheepdog, bullying his charge away from the wolf’s lair.
“What’s he saying?” said a bewildered Tennice.
“We’ve no time to explain. We must go, and you must come with us.”
“I can’t leave him this way. I have to notify someone… the University… his friends.”
I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the door. “Please, Tennice. You mustn’t be here if the killers return. You can’t do Ferrante any good.”
Reluctantly, my friend allowed me to drag him down the stairs. D’Natheil listened carefully at the front door, then motioned us to stay back. Watchers, he gestured. Our horses nickered restlessly. A quick exchange of words and gestures between Baglos and D’Natheil, and the Dulcé announced that D’Natheil would fetch the horses and take them around the back. The rest of us should meet him… where?
“Tennice, does the blacksmith’s shed still link the kitchen garden and the stable?” I asked. He confirmed it. “Baglos, tell D’Natheil that the stable is just past the carriage house east of the kitchen garden. We’ll meet him there. And tell him he can fight today.”
Baglos translated, and D’Natheil nodded. He put his hands up to raise his hood, and, for the first time in a fortnight, he smiled, the piercing brilliance of it reflected in his marvelous eyes. For that single moment, my fear vanished, and all the annoyance of the journey was forgotten. Then he disappeared into the back of the house.
From a window that opened onto the courtyard, we watched D’Natheil slog slowly around the corner of the house from the direction of the stables. He looked shorter, bent in the back, and had acquired a slight limp. He untethered our horses and led them back toward the corner of the house, as if he were taking them to the stable to stay the night. No hurry. No hesitation. Melting into the scene every bit as much as the paving stones or the dead leaves heaped in the corners of the courtyard. It was difficult to focus on him. One’s eyes kept slipping off into the background.
“Who is he?” whispered Tennice. “One would almost think…”
I thought I glimpsed movement in the shrubbery beyond the courtyard, but the harder I stared, the less I saw, and finally I forced myself to look away. “I’ll tell you about him once we’re safe. Now it’s our turn.”
Tennice threw on his cloak and led us through the dark, silent passageways and the deserted kitchen into the kitchen garden. We crept through the muddy garden, hugging the high stone wall, and slipped through an iron gate that led to the blacksmith’s shed. The dark enclosure smelled of coal and ashes and cold dirt floor. Carefully, Tennice cracked the wooden door that opened onto the stableyard, and we peered out. Far across the yard the stooped figure shambled toward us, leading our horses. Tennice whispered that he would meet us in the stableyard, and then he vanished into the adjoining stable. I was beginning to think our elaborate precautions foolish when a gray-robed figure stepped out of the rainy gloom behind D’Natheil.
“You! You with the horses. Who are you? All the servants were dismissed today.” D’Natheil didn’t stop, but he didn’t hurry either. Every sense was screaming at me to run out of the shed and get away. But D’Natheil was still too far away.
“You! Come here!” The voice was cold, like jaws of ice gnawing at the heart.
D’Natheil paused and looked around as if he had all the time until world’s end. He waved at the hooded figure and continued on his way to the stable, limping slowly. When the Prince was some twenty paces from the stable, the gray-robed man started running. I needed no signal. I thumped Baglos on the shoulder, and we burst from the shed. D’Natheil snatched me off my feet and catapulted me into the saddle, then did the same for the Duke. The man in gray attacked D’Natheil before the Prince could mount his own steed, but D’Natheil raised his arm and backhanded him. The gray-robed man staggered backwards. Two rough-looking men in leather jerkins appeared from the front of the house and ran toward us, swords drawn. D’Natheil drew his own sword and ran one of them through in a single motion. The second, he upended with a blow so hard, the man’s jaw cracked like dry wood. Two more men leaped out of the bushes.
As D’Natheil threw himself onto the chestnut, shouts rang out from several directions. Tennice shot from the stable astride a fine-boned bay, crying, “This way!” We raced down the carriage road, following him through the wet fields and gardens.
At least three horsemen gave chase. Whisperings of horror teased at my back: might as well stop now… the race is over… you’ll never elude them… Tennice moaned and pulled up on his reins, and Baglos, too, began to slow, but D’Natheil roared and slashed at our horses, and the four of us thundered down the road and through the back gate of Verdillon. Beyond the park boundaries Tennice led us off the road and into the thicker trees, and more quickly than we could have hoped, our pursuers and their creeping horrors had vanished. We pushed on, not daring to stop too soon, scarcely able to see through the rain and the failing light. Raindrops stung our faces and soaked our clothes.