“Please, don’t be afraid—Teriza, is it? My name is Seri. I’m a friend of Master Tennice.”
The young woman curtsied abruptly, cast her eyes down, and sat obediently on the bench I indicated, her hand gripping Kat’s.
“Kat, there’s a pot of soup on the stove. Go on and help yourself to all you want.” Brightening considerably, the child ran off, leaving Teriza looking even more uncomfortable. “Kat tells me you were cook’s helper here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And Kat’s mother worked here, too?”
“Yes, ma’am. Nan was chambermaid for ten years, since she was fifteen. She got me the place when it come up.” The woman’s eyes filled with tears.
“I’m so sorry about your sister, Teriza. Kat is lucky to have you to care for her.”
“Kat’s a good child. Nan and I thought she might get on as scullery in a year or so.”
“Teriza, could you tell me of the ones who did these horrible things? Did you see them?”
I needn’t have worried about prying the story out of her. She poured out the tale as if it were burning a hole in her stomach. “It was the awfullest sight, miss. We come through the fields, tripping along smartly, for the day had made out rainy, and Chloe was anxious for the goods for the master’s birthday feast. When we come round the north paddock, we heard screaming so terrible it chilled my blood. I told Kat to get in the root cellar, for the commotion sounded like the war back when I was a girl. I thought maybe the Leiran soldiers had come back again.” She glanced up at me, flushing a deep scarlet.
“I crept up behind the stable, and peeked around, and saw what I hope never to see again in my years on this earth. Chloe and Jasper were running through the stableyard wailing, their eyes orange and bright like you hear about demons’ eyes. Chloe was tearing at her hair like it was burning her head, and it was all down flying wild, and her head was bloody from pulling at it. The two of them ran off into the woods. Then Loris come from the house, crying to Damien, the stable lad, ”Master’s been murdered!“ Damien stopped her and says, ”What do you mean?“ And Loris was crying and said, ”The demons. The demons slit poor Master’s throat“ And right then, two men—horrible men that I couldn’t bear to look on—come out of the house and pointed their fingers at Loris and Damien, and the two of ”em screamed so’s you thought their arms and legs was being pulled off. Then they ran into the woods too, and Damien pulled out his knife and started cutting his flesh to bits as he ran.“
Silent, dignified tears dribbled down Teriza’s smudged cheeks. “All I could think of was to find Nan. Sure enough, she runs out of the house into the yard, wailing like a cat what’s prowling. I was going to run grab her, but I feels Kat up close behind me. I lay on top of the child and shushed up her questions, and in no more time than a fingersnap, four riders come barreling from the front of the house, and they see Nan… and, oh, miss, they just trampled her down. When the riders was gone, we run to Nan, but she looked wild, and said, ”Who are you?“ She didn’t even know her own child or her own sister.” A single sob escaped the young woman’s control.
“Poor Nan.” I put my arm around the girl’s shoulders and released the flood.
“She died right there,” the young woman snuffled into my shoulder. “Kat and I took her to a hole down by the stream where they dig out ice in the winter. We put her in, and closed up the hole, and tried to say a prayer for her, though I don’t know my prayers as I should. But then I didn’t know what to do, for I thought of Master murdered, and I’m the only one left to tell. No one’d believe me, and they might think I done it. But Master was fair and honest and I’d never…”
The stretching shadows took on a more ominous cast. I squeezed Teriza’s shoulders as I gazed around the garden uneasily. “Of course you didn’t do it. Master Tennice is ill just now, but we’ll get him well, and he’ll advise you. Until then, you and Kat must stay with us in the house. My friends and I are at least a little protection.”
Teriza straightened her back and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’d be most grateful, ma’am. And most willing to do my duties or whatever might be needful. It’s a blessing to be sure to hear Master Tennice is alive. We didn’t know but what the wicked men got him as well.”
“Good. It’s settled then. All I ask is that you keep private any of our conversation that might seem… strange. If Professor Ferrante trusted you to be discreet, I’m sure we can also.”
“You can trust me, ma’am. I promise.”
None of this made sense. Why were we still unchallenged? If the Zhid had killed Ferrante and the servants so easily… Perhaps D’Natheil’s efforts were indeed shielding us. I considered Maceron and Rowan and the Zhid again, but I still could not get all the puzzle pieces to fit together.
Later, as a more cheerful Teriza washed up the dishes and wiped the table, I asked her again about a part of her tale. Tennice had said something similar and I hadn’t thought to question it. “You said there were four men riding out.”
“Aye, ma’am.”
“Tell me about them. Three of them were priests, is that right?”
“Aye. Three of them wore robes such as priests do. And the Leiran wore a coat.”
“A Leiran?”
“I believed him so, as he spoke only Leiran. Nan was teaching me, for Master had guests as was Leiran, and Nan said everyone in service should speak enough of it to do her duty. He wore a dark coat with shiny buttons.”
“Shiny buttons…” I reached into my pocket for the brass button I’d found in Ferrante’s library. Closer examination revealed what I hadn’t noticed before. The design engraved upon the button’s slightly tarnished surface was a dragon—the dragon of Leire.
“What was the Leiran like, Teriza? Did you get a look at him?”
“No, ma’am. They went by so fast. He wasn’t so tall as the priests. Light hair. Looked strong. But I didn’t see his face, as it was raining, and I was so scared.”
Of course, I knew a light-haired Leiran who wore a dark jacket with Leiran dragons on it, someone who had done business with the Zhid once before—Graeme Rowan, the upright sheriff.
It was a great day when Tennice was able to sit up and eat a few shaking spoonfuls of soup for himself. We all made a fuss over him. Even D’Natheil smiled and said he was pleased our patient had improved so fairly.
“How long has it been?” Tennice asked.
“Nine days. We were thinking you were going to sleep until winter,” I said.
“Thank you all. What can I say?”
“Say you’re feeling better.”
He smiled weakly. “No question of that.” He fingered the thick bandage on his side. “I don’t understand how a stupid knife wound could have such effects. Such nightmares. Vile. Strange.”
“Baglos thinks it was Zhid poison. D’Natheil had a wound with similar effects.”
Tennice looked at the Prince strangely. “You helped me a great deal, sir. Took me through the worst of it. It’s difficult to remember exactly how”—his voice faded—“but I thank you.”
D’Natheil tipped his head without speaking.
Kat made Tennice her special charge. She brought him food and clean linen, chattered to him when he was awake, and sat quietly at his side while he slept, solemnly feeling his brow for fever. She scolded him when he was up too long, demanding that D’Natheil or Baglos help him back to his bed, and she held his hand while he went to sleep, “so the master won’t have wicked dreams.” Tennice, for his part, was endlessly charmed and mystified by Kat’s whimsical view of the world.
But with all his progress, I could not predict when Tennice would be well enough to travel. He must have felt my anxiety on the morning I told him of my belief that the path to the Exiles’ Gate was the very same map Karon and I had puzzled over for a year.
“You must be off to get it then.”
“As soon as—”
He laid a finger on my lips. “No. Much as I would like to have the resilience of a twenty-year-old, no amount of wishing will make it so. We had many a discussion of realism at Windham, and I remember a young woman declaring that she could never understand why people refused to see themselves as nature sees them. ”One should rejoice in the wisdom of years,“ she would say, ”for it’s of so much more value than youth’s brute strength.“ ”