“And the land warden will tell the peer?”
“When her health permits.”
Margaya said bluntly, “ Ifher health permits, but it isn’t going to. I hear her only thoughts are of death. You are right—she is much too sick to be told anything at all.”
“In that case, a formal petition would accomplish nothing except to antagonize the prince. Let’s let the land warden handle this for us and hope the peer won’t be too sick to act when she is finally told. Only the peer has authority over the prince. Only she can decide what should be done. We one-namers have a problem of our own to deal with.”
All three of them regarded him uneasily. Nonen asked, “What problem do you refer to?”
“The prince ordered the raid because she thought the peer’s first server was harboring strangers.”
Their uneasiness changed to alarm. This touched on matters they preferred not to know about. Like all one-namers, they had learned from childhood to look the other way and say nothing if they chanced to see strangers in their midst.
“She wouldn’t have thought that if someone hadn’t told her,” Arne went on. “It means she has a spy in the village.”
Now they were incredulous. Margaya exclaimed, “Surely none of our people would actually tell the prince—”
Arne said earnestly, “As all of you know, no peerager, not even the wisest and kindest—which our peer is—can be trusted with information that concerns only one-namers. Those of us with responsibilities never speak openly of these things, not even in a private meeting such as this one. The only secrets that can remain secret are those that are unspoken. Any one-namer—in Midd Village or elsewhere in the peerdom—may glimpse something from time to time that he has no need to know. We live close together, and our lives are linked in so many ways it would be impossible to prevent that—which is why the presence of a spy in our village is far more serious than the raid. A one-namer loyal to his own kind would pretend to see nothing and forget at once. Only a traitor would remember and tell.”
They exchanged frightened glances. To have a friend, a neighbor, or even a relative eagerly retailing their harmless gossip, their petty complaints and disagreements, their every deed to an agent of the prince seemed too horrible to contemplate.
“If this is true, we must find out who it is as quickly as possible,” Nonen said. “I suppose his guilt will become obvious in time—there will be unmistakable signs of the prince’s favor— but that might happen too late to help us. We must identify him him at once.”
“Aya.” Margaya nodded grimly. “He won’t receive his full reward until the prince becomes peer. Then I suppose she will make him her first server.”
Arne had long expected to lose his office the same day the peer died, but he made no comment. “The traitor is my responsibility,” he said. “Mine—and the League’s.” They shuffled their feet uneasily. “There is one thing you can do,” he went on. “Find out why the log barricades weren’t in place and a watch kept on them. It wouldn’t have kept the guard out of the village, but everyone would have had more time to prepare.”
“The logs weren’t in place?” Nonen asked wonderingly. “Maybe there is more than one traitor.”
“Or maybe someone was lazy. Whatever the cause, it is important to find out who was responsible and make certain it doesn’t happen again. The barricades are your very proper concern, and an inquiry about them can be made publicly.”
Arne promised to press his own search for the traitor, and the three left immediately, pleased to have something to do. Arne thought it best not to tell them—he had decided not to tell anyone—he already had identified the prince’s spy.
He knew it would be a young person. The loyalty of the older crafters to their own kind was deeply ingrained, and all of them had good reason to resent the privileges of pampered peeragers.
Arne’s garden was surrounded by high walls. It was further shielded by his house, which was wider and much deeper than others on the street. The only windows the garden was exposed to were those of the lesson room on the upper story of the schooler’s house.
So the traitor had to be one of Wiltzon’s students, Arne reasoned—a youngster of limited ability, an inept prentice making no progress at all in his craft, one who had received very little praise in his life. He would know he could never rise far above prentice status, and he would prefer the promise of a fine future as a fawning court server to a life of drudgery in Midd. Such a one would be only too susceptible to the prince’s flattery.
Backward students sometimes were required to return to Wiltzon in the evening for extra lessons. This one must have caught a glimpse of Roszt and Kaynor—either when they arrived by way of Arne’s garden or later when they carelessly went out for a breath of fresh air before it was quite dark. The scouts from Slorn knew Wiltzon lived alone and anyway was to be trusted. It wouldn’t occur to them that the schooler might be giving a late lesson.
Under the pretense of reviewing the progress of Wiltzon’s students—a legitimate concern of his—he asked which of them had required extra attention lately. The worst offender was Barlin, Wiltzon said—a thoroughly inept carpenter’s prentice. Wiltzon described Barlin’s problems disgustedly.
“He has difficulty with everything, but it is numbers I have been drilling him on. Imagine—a carpenter’s prentice who can’t remember something he will need all his life. Other students his age learned their numbers sikes ago. He didn’t, so I have to give him extra lessons.”
Arne quickly established that Barlin had been standing near the windows to recite about the time Roszt and Kaynor arrived. “That is, he was trying to recite,” Wiltzon said. “All he did was look out of a window and stammer.”
“It is time Barlin was given a different vocation,” Arne said thoughtfully. “I will see to it at once.”
Arne sent for Barlin, an ungainly youth of sixteen or seventeen who was already terrified. He broke down and confessed at once. The raid had shaken him; he had seen his mother in tears over the damage the prince’s guard had done to their home. The prince herself had flattered him and coaxed him until he agreed to help her. She promised unspecified rewards, but he hadn’t done it with the thought being paid. No one had ever needed his help before, and he simply couldn’t refuse his beautiful prince. He hadn’t realized what the result would be.
It was an enormous tragedy, heightened by the fact that his father and mother were worthy people. If the Three were permitted to judge him, he would be ostracized for life. No village would receive him; no one-namer would work with him. He would have to become a herder, a solitary occupation that few one-namers cared for.
But Arne could temper judgment with mercy. He wrote Barlin’s release from the carpenter prenticeship and sent him off at once to the husbandman of another village who needed help with his cattle.
“No one-namer mentions a one-name secret to anyone,” Arne told him sternly. “If ever again you have the urge to do so, promise you will tell me before you tell anyone else.”
The grateful Barlin solemnly promised. Unfortunately, there was nothing to keep the prince from quickly buying herself another traitor or trying to. Arne would have to be eternally vigilant.