“Excuse me, Learned. I carry a letter for one Learned Lewko, which I am charged to deliver into his hand.” Her expression altered at once into something, if not more friendly, much more interested. She looked him up and down; indeed, he imagined he looked the part of a road-weary courier, just now.
She led him through a discreet side entry, down and up some steps, back outside behind the temple, and past the archdivine's palace into the next street. Down one more narrow alley they came to a long stone building some two stories high, passed through a side door, and wended up more stairs. Ingrey began to be grateful he hadn't just asked for directions. They passed a succession of well-lit rooms devoted to scriptoria, judging by the heads bent over tables and scratching of quills.
Coming to a closed door in the same row, she knocked, and a man's calm voice bade, “Enter.”
The door swung open on a narrower room, or perhaps that was an illusion created by the contents. Crammed shelves lined the chamber, and a pair of tables overflowed with books, papers, scrolls, and a great deal of more miscellaneous litter. A saddle sat propped on its pommel in one corner.
The man, sitting in a chair beyond one table near the window, looked up from the sheaf of papers he was reading and raised his brows. He, too, was dressed in Bastard's whites, but the robes were slightly shabby and without any mark of rank upon them. He was middle-aged, spare, perhaps a little taller than Ingrey, clean-shaven, with sandy-gray hair trimmed short. Ingrey would have taken him for some important man's clerk or secretary, except that the woman divine pressed her hand to her lips and bowed her head in a gesture of utmost respect before she spoke again.
“Learned, here is a man with a letter for you.” She glanced up at Ingrey. “Your name, sir?”
“Ingrey kin Wolfcliff.”
No special reaction or recognition showed in her face, but the spare man's brows notched a trifle higher. “Thank you, Marda,” he said, polite dismissal clear in his tone. She touched her lips again and withdrew, shutting the door behind Ingrey.
Learned Lewko set down his sheaf of papers rather abruptly and sat up to take it. “Hallana! Not ill news, I trust?”
“Not…that is, she was well when I last saw her.”
Lewko eyed the missive more warily. “Is it complicated?”
Ingrey considered his answer. “She did not show me the contents. But I expect so.”
Lewko sighed. “As long as it's not another ice bear. I don't think she would gift me with an ice bear. I hope.”
Ingrey was briefly diverted. “I saw an ice bear in the temple court, as I came in. It was, um, most impressive.”
“It is utterly horrifying, I think. The grooms were weeping. Bastard forfend, are they actually trying to use it in a funeral?”
“So it appeared.”
“We should have just told the prince thank you, and put it in a menagerie. Somewhere out in the country.”
“How did it come here?”
“By surprise. Also by boat.”
“How big was the boat?”
Lewko grinned at Ingrey's tone, and looked suddenly younger thereby. “I saw it yesterday, tied up at the wharf below Kingstown. Not nearly as big as one would think.” He ran a hand through his hair. “The beast was a gift, or perhaps a bribe. Brought by this giant red hairy fellow from some island on the frozen side of the south sea, who is either a prince, or a pirate-it is hard to be sure. Prince Jokol, fondly nicknamed by his loyal crew Jokol Skullsplitter, I am informed. I didn't think those white bears could be tamed, but he seems to have made a pet of this one since it was a cub, which makes the gift even more dear, I suppose. I cannot imagine what the voyage was like; they say they met storms. I suspect he is quite mad. In any case, he also brought several large ingots of high-grade silver for the bear's upkeep, which apparently robbed the temple menagerie-master of the wits to refuse the gift. Or bribe.”
“The Skullsplitter wants a divine, to carry off to his glacier-ridden island in place of his bear. This is a fine work of missionary duty that any divine should be proud to undertake. Volunteers have been called for. Twice. If none steps forth by the time the prince is ready to cast off again, one will simply have to be found. Dragged from under a bed, perhaps.” His grin flickered again. “I can afford to laugh; they can't send me. Ah, well.” He sighed once more and set the letter before him on the table, with the wax seal uppermost. He bent his head over it.
The amusement drained from Ingrey, and he came alert. His blood-that blood-seemed to spin up like a vortex. Lewko did not bear the braid of a sorcerer, he did not smell of a demon, and yet Temple sorcerers answered to him…? Threw their most complicated dilemmas in his lap?
Lewko laid his hand across the wax seal, and his eyes closed briefly. Something flared about him. It was nothing Ingrey saw with his eyes or smelled with his nose, but it made the hair stir at the nape of his neck. He'd felt a trace of this stomach-wrenching awe once before, from a stronger source, but with inner senses at the time much weaker. At the end of his futile pilgrimage to Darthaca, in the presence of a small, stout, harried fellow, to all appearances ordinary, who sat down quietly and let a god reach through him into the world of matter.
Lewko's not a sorcerer. He's a saint, or petty saint. And he knew who Ingrey was, and he had seemingly been here at the temple for years, judging by the state of his study, but Ingrey had never seen-or was that, noticed?-him before. Certainly not in the company of any of the high Temple divines who waited upon the sealmaster or the king's court, all of whom Ingrey had dutifully memorized.
Ingrey nodded.
“This letter has been opened.”
“Not by me, Learned.”
“Who, then?”
Ingrey's mind sped back. From Hallana to Ijada to him…Ijada? Surely not. Had it ever been out of her possession, parted from her bosom? It had rested in that inner pocket of the riding habit, which she had worn…all but at the dinner at Earl Horseriver's. And Wencel had left the table to receive an urgent message…indeed. Easy enough for the earl to overawe and suborn that warden to rifle Ijada's luggage, but had Wencel thought to use some shaman trick to fool a sorcerer about his prying? But Lewko is not a sorcerer, now, is he. Not exactly. Ingrey temporized: “Without proof, any guess of mine would be but slander, Learned.”
Lewko's look grew uncomfortably penetrating, but to Ingrey's relief he dropped his eyes to the letter again. “Well, let us see,” he muttered, and stripped it open, scattering wax.
He read intently for a few minutes, then shook his head and stood to lean nearer to the window. Twice, he turned the closely written paper sideways. Once, he glanced across at Ingrey and inquired rather plaintively, “Does the phrase broke his chants mean anything to you?”
“Um, could that be, chains?” Ingrey ventured.
Lewko brightened. “Ah! Yes, it could! That makes much more sense.” He read on. “Or perhaps it doesn't…”
Lewko came to the end, frowned, and started over. He waved vaguely toward a wall. “I believe there is a camp stool under that pile. Help yourself, Lord Ingrey.”
“I pity the spy who had to decipher this,” he said, without heat.
“Is it in code?”
“No: Hallana's handwriting. Written in haste, I deem. It takes practice-which I grant I have-to unravel. Well, I've suffered worse for less reward. Not from Hallana, she always touches the essential. One of her several uncomfortable talents. That demure smile masks a holy recklessness. And ruthlessness. The Father be thanked for Oswin's moderating influence. Such as it is.”
“You know her well?” Ingrey inquired. Or, why does this paragon write to you, alone of all the Temple functionaries in Easthome?