“We were followed,” whispered the foolish Dulcé, as if any watcher would not have noticed me holding back the prickling vines to speak to him. “D’Natheil sensed the enchantment. He has led them south, away from our course, toward your village. We are to proceed on our way, and he’ll meet us tonight west of the river at Fensbridge.”
Baglos and I gave our horses free rein to gallop westward in the dusty heat, crossing the narrow arch of Fensbridge in late afternoon. The sunset had transformed the sluggish, weed-choked Dun into a river of molten gold. On the far side of the river we found a clearing where we could observe the bridge and the roads from the west, as well as the forest track that followed the river’s west bank—the route we ourselves had taken up from Dunfarrie a month before. As we waited for D’Natheil, we built a small fire.
I sat, chin in hand, watching the day’s last travelers straggle in from the western roads and cross the bridge into the town, seeking beds for the night. Without me or the Dulcé to slow him, the Prince should be able to evade any ordinary pursuit. The extraordinary, too, I hoped.
Baglos pulled the Writer’s journal from his pack and sat down beside me. He had said he wanted to study it further, that he hoped to find some insight we had missed. He turned it over in his small hands several times. “Tell me, woman, what happened to the Exiles? You’ve said so little of them. Only that they were hunted and executed. Perhaps if I knew more, I could understand these writings better. Would you tell me of your husband?” His almond eyes glowed in the waning light. He was waiting to consume Karon’s life as he had consumed Ferrante’s maps.
No reason to refuse the Dulcé‘s request—to tell Karon’s stories, to share the past that had spread itself so vividly across my mind’s landscape since D’Natheil had invaded my life. I picked up a long stick and poked it in the fire, rearranging the coals as I cracked open the door of waking memory and peered backward. But a dull ache settled in my stomach and spread quickly to my chest. Even my newfound acceptance—this admission that some greater purpose might have been served by our personal horror— could not ease it. The fire popped, shooting sparks upward into the night. Suddenly nauseated, I threw down the stick and turned my back to the flames. “No, Baglos. Not tonight.” Not ever. Some things were too difficult. I slammed the door shut once more.
Just at dusk a party of hunters, three young nobles decked out in velvet doublets with voluminous sleeves trailing silken ribbons, came dashing down the road toward the bridge. With great whoops and shouts, they paused at our clearing, circling on their quivering mounts. “Hey, you, woman,” shouted a young man with an eagle feather in his cap. “Tell us where is the nearest public house. We have a thirst that is the desert.”
“The desert in summer,” chimed in one of the others.
“The most frightful noontime desert in summer,” drawled a third, prompting the other two to break into giddy laughter entirely out of proportion to the wit displayed.
“Well, goodwife, speak up,” demanded the man with the feather, his excited horse prancing closer to Baglos and me.
“Just over the bridge is a tavern that might suit,” I said. “And I believe you’ll find at least four more between the river and the Montevial road, so you needn’t take a dry step.”
Two of the men dashed off with raucous bellowing, but the man with the feather stayed behind. “Are we not a bit lacking in proper respect, woman? I hear no courtesy of address and see no attitude of humility before your betters.”
Quickly and awkwardly I dipped my knee and cast my eyes to the trampled grass. “My apologies, Your Honor, sir. My eyesight is none too good in the dark time.”
The rider nudged his horse close enough that I could feel the beast’s warm breath, and then he used the end of his riding crop to lift my chin. His long, straight nose, full lips, and receding chin reminded me of a number of young aristocrats I had known—the type it would be wise to approach with caution. “Why do I think your heart does not support your tongue, goodwife? You need a good beating. Is this your man who cowers so cravenly by the fire?” He rode closer to Baglos, his horse churning dust and ashes into our eyes. “And what’s this? A book? Have our peasants got themselves learning? Here, give it over. Let me see what tract amuses you.” His pale fingers were banded with jewels.
“This is certainly not my husband, sir,” I said, crowding in between Baglos and the horse. How stupid of me to let things get so dangerously out of hand. “He is but my companion in service. Our master’s fallen ill with plague and, as his wife is already dead and needs no service, he sends us to Montevial to serve out our bond in his brother’s house. We left the town just before they sealed the gate. We’re mortally afeared of highwaymen, sir. Perhaps we could join with your party and serve you on the way, so to earn your protection from thieves.”
At the mention of plague, the rider backed away hastily, his voice but a thready echo of his sneering command. “We’ve no need of company or service. Our own servants follow us. You, man, tell your new master to beat this woman twice a day until she has a softer tongue.”
“Aye, lordship,” said Baglos, bowing and touching his forehead as I had told him was the custom when addressing a “better.”
The man spurred his mount viciously and raced away after his friends.
“I did not like him,” said Baglos, gravely, as he watched him go.
“Nor I,” I said with a shivering laugh, vowing to bridle my shrewish tongue.
A short time later, a party of three heavily laden servants plodded into view. They asked after the hunting party, and I directed them across the bridge. Trailing slightly behind them was a lone rider, his head drooped on his chest, his horse walking slowly as if he had all the time in the world. He seemed to melt into the gray light. One had to look twice to make sure he was not some mind’s contrivance of limb and leaf and shadow. Only when his horse meandered into our clearing did I realize he was D’Natheil. The Prince dropped from the saddle.
“We should go at once,” he said, as he drained a waterskin Baglos had ready for him.
“Are you still followed, then?”
D’Natheil wrinkled his brow, glancing over his shoulder toward the junction of the road and the dark path through the trees. “I shook off the two who trailed us from the city.”
“They were Zhid?”
He shrugged. “They were constant, like a hound, but never close enough to identify. I was able to elude their enchantments a short way from your village.”
“But something still worries you.”
“I rode from the village up to your dwelling so I could find my way back to this path. Ever since, I’ve felt someone else following me. But I’m not sure. It’s not so powerful a presence as the two—more like a flea than a hound. And no sorcery. We should go on. I’ll catch him up.”
The damnable sheriff, no doubt. I should have let D’Natheil kill him.
As we struck out west into the trees, the full moon beamed through the overhanging branches, transforming the road into a grillwork of light and shade. We rode fast and without conversation, as if now that the peripheral matters were taken care of, the true urgency of our mission could take hold.
Sometime near midnight, D’Natheil pulled up, motioning Baglos and me to ride on ahead. “The flea,” he said softly, and then he melted into the dappled shadows at the side of the road. The Dulcé and I continued on our way without changing the cadence of our passing. After some quarter of an hour, we heard the brisk clop of hooves on the road behind us. Two horses. We reined in and held wary at the side of the road.
D’Natheil rode into view, leading a riderless horse. He halted beside us, and from a strange, elongated bundle thrown across the saddle in front of him issued a muffled string of curses that would have made Jacopo’s sailor comrades blush. “The flea,” he said, dismounting. He dragged the bundle off the chestnut and set it down on a pair of bare feet that protruded from one end. A tousled head popped out of the other end.