Well, there was no accounting for it. He would simply have to seek her. He turned to saddle his horse, then realized that she had left her own.
Somehow, that struck him more sharply than her mere absence. She had rejected the palfrey that Duke Diarmid had provided. Gregory knew it was ridiculous to feel that by doing so, she had rejected his company as well—but he did.
Of course, if she viewed him as her jailer, she might well reject him or, more to the point, believe that she had escaped him. Gregory sighed and tightened the girth. He would have to seek her out, for jailer or not, he was responsible for escorting her, and for seeing to it that she went to Runnymede and the Royal Coven. He mounted, took her palfrey by the reins, and rode into the wood with the palfrey following.
By the time Moraga reached the marker for the twenty-first mile, she was beginning to wish she had taken that palfrey, or at the very least, picked out a good, stout, dead branch for flying. The quarter mile had not seemed long enough to bother, but as she came up to the milestone, she saw that the men, having teleported, were already waiting. The first of the women came in for a landing as she arrived and the other two were in the sky.
"Good day, Chief Agent," said Mercu. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man of middle years who fought to hide his indignation at taking orders from a chit half his age.
"Good day," Finister replied. She surveyed her male lieutenants with satisfaction, for although she cast no glamour into their minds and they saw her with her natural form and face, she could feel their hunger for her. It was conditioning, no doubt—the residue of the sensuality she had projected into their minds, ever so discreetly, in months past. Like Mercu, Coyle and Lork might resent her rank as Chief Agent, but their hunger for her kept them subservient.
She turned to Leiku and Honoria, just dismounting from their broomsticks. Like the men, they resented her being their boss—but they resented her in every other way, too, envious of her power over men (surely it could not have been envy of her physical appearance!) and jealous of the males' attentions.
Resentful or not, they would do her bidding as long as her schemes worked out, for SPITE had enjoyed very little success on this planet in the past twenty years, and Finister's gains, though minor, were at least not total disasters. She studied the line of faces, taking stock of their abilities and merits. They were all home agents, born on Gramarye of the 10 percent who were operative espers. All had grown up as orphans; most were foundlings. Indeed, only Mercu knew who both parents had been, and that they had died when he was six months old.
They were highly skilled in telekinesis, teleportation, projective telepathy, and, of course, telepathy itself. Moreover, the SPITE orphanage had raised them as it had reared Finister herself—as though it were forging weapons, which in some sense it had. Each was single-minded, dedicated, and ruthless, hating the society that had spawned them and fanatically loyal to the organization that had reared them. There wasn't a one of them who would not cheerfully have died to win Gramarye for SPITE.
Except Finister, of course. In her, the early lessons had taken root too well; she knew she could trust no one but herself. It followed, both logically and emotionally, that she dared not let anyone have power over her, which meant that she could only feel safe if she had both wealth and the power it could buy. Her lieutenants might wish to win Gramarye for SPITE; Finister intended to have it for herself—and these were the weapons with which she would win the fight.
"It's time to divide and conquer," she told her lieutenants. "We're going to split the Gallowglasses away from one another, then hit each of them with an armed squad all at the same moment, so that they can't come to help one another."
The lieutenants stared in surprise for a moment. Then they began to grin.
"Smart, Chief," Coyle said. "They'll have a tough time fighting off a physical attack at the same time as a mental one—and if they call for help, they'll just distract each other. Why didn't anybody think of this before?"
Finister suppressed the urge to say, "Because the old Chief Agent wasn't a genius"; she knew the comment would be too revealing. Instead she said, "Because it was too simple. We were looking for elaborate plots that would tear apart the whole kingdom. We missed the fact that the problem is really personal."
The lieutenants nodded with approval; she could see they appreciated her including them in the credit. Of course, they wouldn't want to share the blame if the attack failed. She gave them a cynical smile.
"What about their psi powers, though?" Leiku asked.
"That will be up to the five of you," Finister answered. "Take some extra home agents with you. Mercu, you take the Lord Warlock. Coyle, take Geoffrey. Leiku, your assignment is Lady Gwendylon. Honoria, you get the chit Cordelia."
"And I?" Lork asked.
"You gather a band of rankers and hold them ready in the forest until I call."
"What are we supposed to be?"
"Bandits," Finister told him.
Lork nodded judiciously. "Shouldn't take much. We're going to take care of Gregory?"
"You'll help—but I'll take care of Gregory," Finister said, "personally." She grinned, adjusting her mental projection so that her lieutenants saw shark's teeth. "Gregory has become a bit of a challenge."
Geoffrey and Alain went out hunting at dawn the next day. They started home about noon, sending their entourage ahead with the day's trophies, so they were riding down the forest path alone when the peasant maiden stepped from the bushes, hair dishevelled, hollow-cheeked, eyes seeming huge in her gauntness, face streaked with tears, skirt ragged where briars had torn it. Her arms were crossed, holding together the tatters of a blouse that had been slashed and burned, "Good knights, pity, I pray you! Pity on all my village, for we are sorely beset!"
Geoffrey reined in, excitement soaring—a good fight was his second favorite pastime, and it was far more fun when it was in defense of the weak. Alain, however, reined in with alarm; then the fierce protectiveness of the rightful king for his subjects came to the fore. "What has struck you, maiden? Bandits?"
"How badly did they harm you?" Geoffrey asked, taking in the state of her blouse and beginning to be angry.
"Only the bruises and cuts that you see, sir, for I ran as soon as I caught sight of the riders. One of them saw me and dashed away from the pack to chase; he even came close enough to slash at me with his sword before the captain called him back. Some cinders blew upon me from the first cottage they burned, but I thank Heaven they charred only my garment!"
Geoffrey could see they had burned her skin, too, even as the sword had left trails of blood—not deep, for they were already drying—but the woman was clearly in shock and did not yet feel the pain. Frowning, he asked again. "Who are these men who have fallen upon your village?"
"Our own baron, sir! Baron Gripardin. impatient that we were slow to pay our taxes! But sir. we could not—we had scarcely enough to hold body and soul together after all he took last year, and the new crop is only half grown!"
"No wonder the poor thing is so gaunt," Geoffrey muttered to Alain.
"Indeed." The prince's face was set in cold anger. "This cannot be the first time he has chastised you, then."
"Indeed not. sir. but it is the first time he has burned more than one hut. Always before, he contented himself with turning out only a single family, taking the wife and daughters to amuse his men and shackling the father and sons with the cattle who turned his gristmill. Now, though. I know he bade his men set fire to two huts, perhaps more!"
"I have not heard of this Gripardin." Alain said to Geoffrey.
But Queen Catherine had. She told them about the man as they sat in the audience chamber, waiting for the young woman to appear in new homespun. "His grandfather was a bandit who grew fat on the plunder of merchants who dared the forest."