As calmly as he could he got to his feet, performed the obeisance of touching one knee to the ground, and rose.
The prince spoke with chilling sarcasm. “Does the peer’s first server care so little for the responsibilities of his office that he can’t be on hand to greet his peer’s heir?”
Arne sensed her rage, but he kept his eyes averted and spoke calmly, quietly, firmly. “Word of your intended visit failed to arrive, Highness.”
“Where have you been?”
For the first time Arne looked at her directly. Her windswept hair caught the sun like gold. Anger had distorted her face, and she seemed the more beautiful for it.
“Inspecting a bridge, Highness.”
When she spoke again, her fury made her almost inarticulate, but she also sounded triumphant. “You were asked to report the appearance of strangers immediately—any strangers. Not only have you not reported them, but you are caught in the act of harboring them in your own dwelling.” She added scornfully, “Such is the faith of the one-named.”
The sensation of despair that swept over Arne was more painful than his bleeding back, but he managed to keep his voice steady. “I harbor no strangers, Highness.”
“Then what do you call this?” A bundle of garments landed beside him. “Discovered this morning when your dwelling was searched—along with the unmade beds their owners had slept in.”
Arne knelt and spread the contents of the bundle on the cobblestones. Time remained suspended while he sifted through the paltry assortment of garments and personal oddments with the prince glaring down at him.
Then he stood up and met her eyes boldly. “These garments, Highness, and these other possessions, belong to two of the new sawyer prentices from South Province.”
The prince said blankly, “Sawyer prentices—living in the first server’s dwelling?”
Arne continued to meet her gaze. “Midd Village has been assigned more prentices than it can accommodate, Highness. The sawyer prentices you sent to the Prince of Chang had to be replaced. Because I have more room than I need, two of them are living with me. We didn’t consider them strangers because they arrived with credentials signed by the dom warden’s high server. I apologize for not reporting them, Highness. The error was mine.”
The prince stared down at him. Arne met her eyes unwaveringly.
Abruptly she turned her horse and rode away. The lasher cast a last, perplexed glance at his late captive and shuffled after her. At the cross street, the prince called an order. A lasher captain turned and blew a piercing blast on his whistle. In a matter of moments the lashers remounted, formed up, and collected the sentries left at the barriers. They flashed along Midd Street with a sustained rumble of hoofs and were gone.
Even before the last of them had disappeared, villagers poured into the streets. Many of the crafters worked at home, and the raid had come so early that children were not yet at their tasks or studies. Arne was quickly surrounded by a sympathetic crowd.
“Never mind,” he said as a woman tugged worriedly at his ripped and bloody shirt. He gathered the prentices’ belongings into a bundle and handed it to her. “Would you take charge of this, Erinor? It must be returned to the owners with our apologies. The clothing is soiled, and small objects may have been lost.” He turned to another woman. “Margaya, I want a full report in writing describing what the lashers did in every dwelling in the village. I want a list of anything that was taken or damaged and the names of anyone who was injured or mistreated in any way. Would you see that this is done?”
He hurried up the rough stone walk to the schooler’s house and burst in without knocking. Old Wiltzon, massively gray, rugged like a granite boulder, irrepressibly good humored in most situations, was ruefully surveying a room littered with books. Those precious objects had been ripped from their shelves; several had lost their covers.
But the schooler smiled delightedly when he saw Arne. “The prince was hunting blind,” he said. “She knew nothing, and she got nothing.”
“Roszt and Kaynor?”
“I moved them over here after you left yesterday. I was worried that one of those nosey prentices might have noticed something. One of my students brought the alarm the moment the lashers entered the village, and I had them bundled away, nary a trace, long before the search reached this street. The lashers vented their spite on my books. They have an instinctive hatred for books.” He sadly picked up a detached cover and placed it lovingly around a bundle of loose pages. “Sit down. Rest. Have a little wine—you look as though you need it. Let me take care of your back. It is still bleeding. Don’t worry about the raid. The prince got nothing.”
“You would have had more time if the barriers had been up and a watch kept.”
“The barriers weren’t up?” Wiltzon asked wonderingly.
“We were lucky. We were extremely lucky. The prince was not hunting blind. She knew exactly what to look for. She wouldn’t brave the peer’s wrath without good reason. I need to think about this.”
Tiredly he dropped into a chair. He sat there, turning the events over in his mind, stirring them, rearranging them, while Wiltzon, clucking his tongue with concern, washed the blood from Arne’s back and applied a dressing. When the old schooler had finished, he righted a chair the lashers had knocked over and sat down to wait.
Arne gingerly leaned his sore back against his own chair. Now that the suspense was over, he felt exhausted. He said finally, “While the prince was getting nothing, she gave us something. Two things.”
“Aha!”
“For one, she gave us a lever. To her mother, she pretends she is still a child amusing herself with war games, but this raid can’t be called a game. The guard and the prince must be disciplined severely, or the peer will lose her authority.”
Wiltzon nodded excitedly. “Yes. Of course. It wasn’t merely her mother’s orders that the prince violated. It was years of tradition. What is the other thing?”
“We have a traitor among us. We ought to thank the prince for letting us know.”
“A traitor? Are you sure?”
“The prince wouldn’t have raided Midd Village unless she had good reason to believe there was something here. She wouldn’t have dared. When I arrived, she was triumphant. She had caught me violating the rule about reporting strangers— she thought—and that would have justified her own violations. It was my house the lashers concentrated their search on. The prince must have known two strangers were staying there. Thanks to your foresight in getting Roszt and Kaynor hidden, the only evidence they found belonged to the sawyer prentices. Now she has no justification at all for her raid, and she will be extremely worried about the peer’s reaction.”
Wiltzon’s gentle face suddenly became flushed with anger. “You are right. There must be a traitor. What can we do? We have a long road to travel yet. Not even Egarn knows how long. If the prince has any kind of suspicion about the Secret—”
“The Secret is safe, and this is one spy she will never believe again, but I wonder why she suddenly became so obsessed with the notion there are strangers about.” He thought for a moment, and then he said slowly, “When she visited Chang, she may have heard rumors about the League of One-Namers. The League is in difficulty there. Chang viciously mistreats its one-namers, as you know, and during the prince’s visit, a local officer of the League was questioned under torture. He recited a lot of nonsense, but he also let slip some truth. Peeragers are suspicious of crafts and learning because they know so little about either, and many of them fear a one-name revolt. Also, the idea of an organization that reaches through all of the Ten Peerdoms and transcends peerdom loyalties is frightening to them. That was the reason for the order to report the arrival of strangers. The League couldn’t exist without a system of messengers, and the peeragers know that. When the prince’s spy informed her I was harboring unknown persons, she hoped to capture a pair of League officials. She intended to use torture to strip their secrets from them.”