Chapter 19 #2
Fola woke with a crick in her neck where it had draped against the rim of the tub.
A panicked glance out of the window told she had slept the morning away.
Apparently she no longer possessed her youthful capacity to manage both a productive day and a busy night.
She rose from the tepid water, towelled off, and threw on her dress.
If she hurried, she might make the castle just as court adjourned, the ideal time to corner the Count of Glascoed.
She allowed herself only one glance at Colm as she left the inn.
He was seated at the bar in the common room, staring into a mug.
She could manage a trip to the castle and a chat with the young count on her own.
Bleed it. I managed everything on my own for four years before I met the oaf.
He’d proven capable, but was nothing more to her than a useful appendage—or four useful appendages, she supposed.
Maybe five. Yet that, too, was a disgusting way to think of another person—only in terms of their use.
She glowered at the absurd grapevines on their courtyard trellis and crossed the old quarter of Parwys towards the castle gates, her dress swishing around her legs and Frog bobbing along, perched atop her silver staff.
The ghost of Arno’s laughter followed her.
He’d predicted that the complexities of the world beyond the walls would challenge and change her.
Had declared, in fact, that none of his agents ever returned the same.
‘The greater sacrifice is not time away from the City,’ he had said.
‘It is that, on returning, the City’s wonders are never so simple and bright again. ’
Thus far, she had risen to the challenge, doing the right thing whenever possible. That the most difficult moral puzzle so far centred around her attraction to a mercenary in her employ would have struck Arno to the ground with fits of hilarity.
She quickened her pace, slipping through the crowded streets.
The sooner she ended the haunting in Parwys, the sooner she could return home.
And who knew? If she extended an invitation to Colm to join her in the City, he just might accept.
Once he was no longer her employee, and her ability to generate currency at a whim no longer muddied the waters between them, things would be much, much simpler, whether he shared her interest or not.
That line of reasoning concluded, she returned her attention to the world around her, and she noted with astonishment that the gates of the castle were shut.
Court ought to have adjourned less than an hour ago, which meant there should still be nobles and retainers milling about, gossiping and negotiating in shadowed corners.
She claimed a meeting with the queen—true enough, as she owed Medrith a report on the events of the prior night, assuming their arrangement still held after the terse end of their conversation—and was ushered into a foyer by a servant and left to wait.
She grumbled at the inefficiencies of court decorum and paced the length of the foyer, her eyes drifting across the portraits of Parwys’s uninterrupted lineage of kings, from Abal on down to the late King Elbrech.
Each portrait was captioned by a plaque listing the deeds of the king, including his additions to the castle’s sprawling footprint.
Before long her boredom eroded her excitement and transformed into frustration.
The horror that had gripped the festival grounds would have disquieted the prince, yet he ought to have assembled his court to find a way to aid the injured and address the threat to his kingdom, not dismissed it early.
Something was amiss. After four years in the world beyond the walls, she knew enough to deduce as much, though exactly what lay well beyond her powers of reasoning.
‘Ah, Fola,’ Queen Medrith said, appearing through a doorway at the end of the foyer.
Delicate white blossoms dotted the sprouts that grew from her staff—a new development, though what it signified, Fola could not guess.
‘If you’re here to tell me of what transpired in the night, I’m afraid your visit will have been wasted.
There isn’t a soul in Parwys who’s yet to hear of it, I’m sure. ’
‘Ah, but they have not heard of it from me,’ Fola said. ‘What happened was terrible, but it did yield useful clues.’
‘Oh?’ The queen inclined her head in curiosity. ‘How so?’ Then, in a whisper, ‘We should have this conversation in the privacy of my solar.’
Now came the delicate bit—how to give away enough information to get what she wanted from the queen without betraying Siwan’s and Llewyn’s trust. ‘There is no need for secrecy. Only a simple observation, and a favour I must ask of you. The wraiths lashed out at the crowd at the festival, you have heard. What you have not heard is that their wrath did not fall equally.’
‘In what sense?’ Medrith asked.
Fola explained her observation. Some present during the attack had been brutally torn apart, while others—notably outlanders, such as her and Colm—faced no more danger than the touch of a few probing hands, as though the wraiths were searching for their intended victims and ignoring anyone else.
‘And anyone not of Parwys went unharmed, you say?’ the queen said, her voice concerned. ‘The haunting’s object is what, then? The destruction of the kingdom and all its people?’
‘Not all its people,’ Fola said. ‘Every outlander that I saw went unharmed, but so did many Parwysh folk.’
The queen’s frown deepened. ‘Now I am confused.’
‘Which tells us this—the haunting’s object is not only the nobility, such as your late husband and the Count of Glascoed. But neither is it everyone in the kingdom.’
‘Who, then?’
‘I have suspicions,’ Fola said. ‘But nothing certain, yet. To lend them credence, I would speak with the present count, Ifan, who witnessed the first outburst of the haunting. I had hoped to catch him when court adjourned, but it seems court was never called.’
‘No,’ the queen said. ‘My son had other matters to attend to. One of which was the departure of young Ifan. It seems he left for Glascoed in the early hours of the morning. Not spurred on by the haunting, my son insists, but by his duty to quash the rebellion that stirs in the Greenwood. Not that he will have any luck …’
Fola swallowed a curse. ‘How long ago did he leave? If he is slowed by retainers and a baggage train, I might catch him on the road.’
Medrith shook her head. ‘He rode out with only a small coterie of knights, leaving the servants and material he brought with him here. It seems he intends to oust the rebellion in the next fortnight and return in time for my son’s coronation.
Ambition is often the folly of the young, of course, so we mustn’t begrudge him the wasted effort. ’
‘Ah.’ A soft voice drifted from behind Fola.
She placed its lilting, almost musical accent immediately, though she had only heard it once before.
Anakriarch Torin stood in the entryway to the foyer, between her and the castle door, his hands folded in the sleeves of his white robes.
The nested triangles of his raw iron medallion glinted in the lamplight.
‘Lady Fola of the Starlit Tower. A fortunate meeting. It saves me the trouble of seeking you out.’
‘I didn’t know you had been introduced,’ Medrith said, her voice and gaze as cold and hard as ice. ‘Nor do I know what business you have wandering the castle, Anakriarch.’
Torin smiled meekly, though he kept his hands concealed. ‘I confess, Your Majesty, I was summoned by your voices. I have business with Lady Fola. Her retainer badly wounded my subordinate in the chaos last night, you see.’
‘Your spy, you mean?’ Fola’s left hand slowly closed into a circle, despite the bone-deep ache from her tussle with Llewyn the night before.
Frog fluttered to her shoulder, where he shifted from foot to foot and eyed the anakriarch nervously.
‘I gave Colm no orders but to keep watch. He sought no altercation. I am sorry that your man was injured, but if there was fighting, I place the blame for it at his feet.’
‘Alas, he is too badly hurt to describe the night’s events,’ Torin said.
‘Then how can you know that Fola’s retainer is to blame?’ Medrith cut in.
‘From the blade left driven into his side, Your Majesty.’ Torin’s quiet voice took on an acid bite.
‘He cannot speak to what transpired, and my Lady Fola was not herself present for the duel, it seems. Yet the truth of the matter must be discerned, that justice may be served. I trust my Lady will have no objections to remaining here while her retainer is summoned for questioning, and will, naturally, submit to an interview herself?’
Medrith stepped between them. ‘Is the Mortal Church’s interest in truth? Or in finding justification to destroy your rivals? I have heard from my brothers and sisters of the circle in Alberon how your order has treated them since its ascendancy in that kingdom.’
The meekness of Torin’s smile had been replaced by a quiet outrage. ‘My power derives from the example of the Agion, Your Majesty. Earned by my virtue. Were I a liar, as you claim, it would fail me. It is a far more certain thing than your superstitions.’
Medrith laughed, then gestured with her staff. Thorns long and wicked as poniards sprouted between its white blossoms. ‘These superstitions?’
‘Every delusion is built on a scaffold of reality,’ Torin said.
‘I will show you “delusion”,’ Medrith snarled, seeming to grow in stature as shadows gathered around her.
‘It seems I’ve stumbled into a long-simmering conflict,’ Fola said. ‘I’m afraid I have other errands to attend to. I bid you both good day.’