‘Mine,’ Milla said, wrapping a protective arm around her trencher.
‘Then try to get more in your mouth, and less on your face, your tunic and, great lords, in your hair!’ Hoyt chided her with a laugh.
Milla giggled. ‘Like p’tatoes.’
‘I can see that, Pepperweed.’ Hoyt brushed the girl’s hair away from her face. He turned to Alen and asked, ‘What else, in your experience, could turn an ordinary soldier, or even one of those Seron things, into whatever that was we saw outside Welstar Palace? Can you think of anything? Alen, those were monsters! Blind, horrible creatures, able to ignore obvious pain – they were diseased, they had open sores, pox, fever – rutters, I saw evidence of four or five serious pandemics eating away at that group. Normal solders don’t just stand around and fester like that, no matter how disciplined. It has to be the bark.’
Alen looked around the front room. The young girl who had been serving them was talking with Hannah. ‘I think you’re right, Hoyt. Why else would Nerak need so much of it? But given the dreams or visions that we experienced, I don’t know how he’s controlling them. With you the bark responded a bit differently, didn’t it… you were able to take orders, and you appeared to hear what we were asking you to do.’
Hoyt remembered waking from his dream of Ramella, the sexy thief from Landry and finding that he had stacked several days’ worth of firewood. ‘That’s right, but with the rest of you, in the forest of ghosts, you were inconsolable, certainly uncontrollable. It was all I could do to get you moving. The army outside Welstar Palace is different; they’re staring into space, waiting. They don’t appear to be hungry or thirsty. Gods, I’d wager some of them die right there on their feet.’
‘And the others eat the cadavers,’ Alen interjected, watching Milla devour a mountain of potatoes covered in gravy. ‘There must be more to it,’ he said finally. ‘The spell must harness the raw power of that bark, or…’ He drifted off.
‘Or what?’
‘Or he’s mixing it with something else. Either way, I think you’re right. He’s harvesting so much of the bark and leaves that it must be for that army.’
‘We can’t just sit here knowing this. We have to do something,’ Hoyt said.
‘What we have to do is to take Milla home,’ Alen countered.
‘Hurray!’ Milla shouted, a bit of potato falling from her lips. ‘On a boat?’
‘On a big boat, Pepperweed.’ Hoyt smiled and wiped her face with a cloth, then checked over his shoulder to make sure they were still alone. He whispered, ‘Think about it, Alen. We haven’t heard anything from Gilmour in how long? Almost a Moon? He was on his way to the Blackstones to find the spell table – well, where is he? What if he failed and Nerak killed him and everyone with him? He told you himself that Nerak was in the Eastlands.’ He didn’t want to upset Hannah with talk of Steven’s death, but that possibility remained very real. Perhaps surprisingly, there had been no awkwardness between them since their morning together, but Hoyt worried she would misunderstand or get angry if she heard him talking about Steven being lost.
Alen said, ‘I should try to contact him again, but if Fantus is dead, I will have to return to Falkan.’
‘Why? We’re here. Think of what we can do here.’
‘And think of what we cannot do,’ Alen said. ‘The city is overrun with Palace Guardsmen, all of them looking to retrieve our little friend, and you saw that army. What are we going to do? Shoot arrows at them? Call them nasty names? No, if Gilmour is dead, we’ll have to find the spell table and Lessek’s key. It’s the only way. Gods, but I wish Pikan was here; she knew how to operate that thing.’
Hoyt smiled. ‘You’ve come a long way from the man who wanted to march into Welstar Palace and commit suicide.’
Alen elbowed Milla playfully in the ribs. ‘Well, I’ve been entrusted with something important. I’ve waited a long time for this charge; now the least I can do is see it through.’
‘I’ll offer you a deal, my friend.’ Hoyt leaned back in his chair. ‘You attempt to contact Gilmour, and I will find us passage to Orindale. The Twinmoon is coming and everything that floats will be making a run for the Northeast Channel. If he has the spell table, we’ll take young Milla home, or to Sandcliff, or wherever it is you plan to take her, and I will come along quietly. If he doesn’t have the spell table, we’ll stay here and pick off a few of the Guard, or maybe disrupt the shipping industry a bit. Churn and I were top-notch at disrupting the shipping industry. I got good marks in school for disrupting things.’
‘You still don’t understand, Hoyt,’ Alen said, ‘without the spell table, we’re lost, and with the spell table, there’s no need for us to be here.’
‘But you said yourself, the Palace Home Guard have come into the city and the prince’s army is stationed up there along the river. Why would we be anyplace else?’ Hoyt argued.
‘With the spell table, we can bring a firestorm down on them. Rutters, Hoyt, with the spell table, we could tear open the foundation of the hillside and drop the lot of them into an abyss.’
Hoyt nodded. ‘All right, then. Sign me up for that.’
Hannah rejoined them, sliding into her chair. ‘Holy shit, boysUm, sorry Milla, that’s not a nice word, I shouldn’t use such words. But have you two been sleeping?’
‘What?’ Alen raised an eyebrow.
‘Look at her; she’s a mess.’ She picked bits of potato from Milla’s hair and head. Hannah couldn’t imagine how she managed to get potato behind her ear.
‘Pepperweed?’ Hoyt shrugged and tweaked the girl’s nose. ‘It’s just a bit of potato.’
‘Love p’tatoes!’ Milla shrieked.
‘See? She loves potatoes.’
Erynn appeared with an empty tray, cleared the trenchers and wiped down the table. ‘Can I get you anything else?’ she asked, trying not to stare at Hoyt.
‘Yes, thank you, Erynn,’ Hannah said. ‘This one needs a bath.’
‘It’s three Mareks,’ she said. ‘There’s a big tub at the back of the scullery. You can pull the curtain across. I’ll let my father know he needs to heat the water for you.’
‘Three Mareks?’ Hoyt was incredulous. ‘For three Mareks, I’m getting in, too.’
‘Age before beauty,’ Alen said, ‘and I want the warm water.’
‘Not fair,’ Hoyt said, ‘you could heat it your-’ He cut himself off, suddenly aware that Erynn was still at the table. Hoyt didn’t notice that the girl was blushing too furiously to make sense of anything she might have overheard. He smiled at her and said, ‘Thanks. Please do ask your father to fill the tub for us. We’ll be down shortly.’
Almost ready to expire from embarrassment, Erynn croaked a weak, ‘Yes, sir,’ and hurried back to the kitchen.
The Wayfarer’s scullery didn’t have a stone foundation like the rest of the building; it had been added onto the back of the kitchen, a long rectangular room with a sloped ceiling. The flagstone floor was littered with stacks of firewood, rusty serving trays and stewpots, even a rickety wheelbarrow laden with old tools. There were several massive tubs, two of which were affixed to the wall on either side of the kitchen door. One, Hannah guessed, would be filled with hot soapy water – a hole had been cut in the kitchen wall big enough to accommodate buckets. The second tub was for clean water, after every trencher, bowl and goblet had at least a token dunking before returning to general circulation. A third tub, easily as large as the other two combined, rested against the back wall, doubling as laundry and bath; one hot bucketful for every two cold buckets, and the water would stay warm long enough for dirty travellers to dive in, scrub briefly, and then dash, shivering and swaddled in blankets, to the fireplace in the front room.
Two empty braziers meant the scullery was clear of smoke, but freezing cold. The tub, filled for three Mareks by the innkeeper, steamed like a volcanic fissure.
‘Holy gods, but it’s cold in here,’ Hannah said, shivering as she helped Milla out of her tunic. ‘Come on, sweetie, we’ll be really fast.’