Return, Page 2

  As she hid him again twenty years later, when it was worth her life to do so. I have never forgotten her, either.

  Far west of Leishai the country turns gradually boggy, especially as you near that place. There are marshes fed by underground springs, and there are even occasional patches of quicksand—not deep or wide enough yet to qualify as a dangerous mire, but larger than I remembered, here and there even interrupting the road. I found myself musing on the fact that my former masters and mentors had allowed this path to their dwelling to go so notably to ruin. I had to assume, for safety’s sake, that the change was one of deliberate policy, but I had other hopes I couldn’t ignore.

  A mile or so from my goal I dismounted, caught up the mare’s reins, and walked on with her the rest of the way: not because I had any expectation of arriving unobserved, but because she had kept her end of the bargain faithfully, despite lately favoring her off hind leg somewhat. I intended to ride away as I had come; my life and death might very well hang upon her good health.

  That place always takes you by surprise. It appears abruptly between one bend in the road and another—not loomingly sky-filling, like the black castle in Fors na’Shachim, where the Queens live, nor as slyly terrifying as the Nameless Tower just west of Drakali, which is supposed to be empty and is not—but oddly elegant, even attractive, with its two simple wings, two soapbubble roofs, and single spire. I knew a house once that was not really a house, and ate things. That place is a little like that.

  My strongest impulse was to enter by the half-hidden kitchen door, as I had first come there, and later left; and I probably would have done so, had I imagined that my childhood friend and savior the cook might still be behind it. But I knew better, and could only pray that she had suffered no punishment for aiding me. When I stabled the mare I saw several other horses in residence, so I knew that place was not yet abandoned; then I walked around to the great double front door—which has no lock, and needs none—and pulled the bell rope.

  Standing once again on that stone threshold, I was prey to a chill loneliness that made me wish I had listened to Lal’s fiercely urgent warnings. What had I imagined accomplishing on my own? What exactly did I want to accomplish, with or without assistance? To strike at the Hunters, or at the Hunters’ masters, when I had no idea how many of either there might be, but a very good idea of the damage that even one Hunter could wreak on a human body? To pull down that place against the wishes of the great figures its masters could call on to extend a finger and crush me, if they could not be bothered to do it themselves? Oh, I heard Lal in that moment, as clearly as ever I have.

  I assumed that I had been intently observed on my road for at least this day, and was being watched now, but I had already determined to behave like any traveler innocently requesting shelter from a house of humble clerics. I rang a second time, stepped back and called out loudly, “Good fathers, I have lost my way and seek lodging for the night—can you oblige me?” The bell woke no echoes, nor could I hear it sounding anywhere within, but I knew where it rang, and who heard it, and I knew who would be most likely to answer the door, as long a time as it had been. I even knocked once or twice, loudly and pointlessly, just because he always hated that.

  As I had expected, it was Brother Laska who opened to me. Brother Laska had been doddering through my youth; he was doddering and palsied now, hanging onto the great door to stand erect, seemingly barely capable of speaking a coherent sentence of challenge or welcome. Nevertheless, he remained as ominous and chillingly senile a figure as I remembered, and I would have wagered whatever I possessed that he continued in that place’s highest council, glowering and hiccupping as ever before. I greeted him as a stranger, giving him the name I had decided upon—Jalsa—and saying “Father, I am a woman alone and unprotected, with my horse spent and night coming on. I beseech refuge and asylum therefore.” Then I held my breath, strangely assured that if Brother Laska did not know me in my woman’s guise, nobody would.

  Nor did he; but merely blinked his yellow-crusted eyes, muttered something indistinguishable from the chronic whine in his chest, and turned, leaving the door open, to totter up the stairs and deliver my message. Seeing no reason to wait outside in the growing dark, I walked into the house behind him, where I stood very still indeed, looking around.

  Nothing, and too much, had changed. As far as I could judge, not a single item in the grand entrance hall had been moved or replaced, cleaned or repaired. As a back-country peasant child I had never ceased to marvel at the style and furnishing of the great house that had given me such safe haven: it was only now—grown, traveled and far more questioning—that I noted the worn weariness of chairs and benches, carpets and curtains and such ornamentation as there was. The stone elegance of the exterior was matched nowhere within: what was not dark oak was heavy cast iron or dull brass. No one would ever have taken that dusty, lifeless mansion for a fortress of silence, a stronghold of secrets.

  The man who came down to meet me I had once known as the young Brother Caldrea, firm overseer of those even younger, like me; but by his bearing and his confident air I realized immediately that he had clearly been promoted. And there is only one rank above “Brother” in that place.

  He was as lean as I remembered, and rather slight, not yet fifty, with thinning blond hair, a well-cut blond beard, eyes of an oddly opaque gray, and pale skin drawn notably tight over strong jaw and cheekbones. He wore a robe no different from Brother Laska’s robe, except for a very small golden pin in the shape of a circle up near his throat. He raised an eyebrow at the sight of my bow, but addressed me genially enough, saying, “Madame Jalsa, you are safe here with us for the night. I myself will show you to your room.”

  I did not show in any way that I knew him, or the house. Instead I thanked him for his charity and his kindness, and I followed him along the right wing of the house, to one of the windowless cells kept for visitors, which was, as they all were, bare and clean and cold, furnished only with a rope mattress, a basin, and a bucket for necessities. A servant I did not recognize brought hot water, and Master Caldrea departed courteously, saying that as a woman I would not be permitted to dine in the refectory, but that he would be pleased to serve me in his own quarters, at my convenience. Should we say at seven of the clock?

  He left me all but speechless, and even warier than I had come. To begin with, masters, abbots, priors and the like, even in as dubious a cloister as this one, do not solicit women’s companionship at meals, let alone meals taken in such suspicious intimacy. Second, I had serious doubts that my small enchantment would survive a full evening of Master Caldrea’s probing company—I remembered him ruthlessly quizzing novices regarding their midnight activities until he invariably evoked tearful confessions of every sort. Thirdly…thirdly, I had probing to do myself, concerning the origin and nature of the Hunters, and I was not at all certain that I possessed either the deviousness or the patience to find out from Master Caldrea what I needed to know. I missed the fox: in his human form he could have done it while methodically devouring everything set before him, and before our host as well. I dislike a number of things about the fox, but his value to me over our years together very nearly matches the estimate he himself places on it.

  I slept out the rest of the day on that sagging, prickly rope mattress; then rose, an hour or so before mealtime, to clean myself up as best I could, and to dig a few remotely passable clothes out of my saddlebags. I had no feminine garments with me when I changed my course to come here, but those who get their living at perhaps one remove from a highwayman will still carry a sewing kit when they have thrown away the useless sword. A cautious slash here, a judicious stitch and tuck there, made by firelight and the odd thoughtful sunrise, and I had become acceptably equipped. By fashion, at least, Master Caldrea would not know me from his own maiden aunt.

  The stairways and corridors of that place are crowded with whispers: you can go days there seeing only servants and silent monks, yet feel yourself continual
ly eavesdropping on a dozen muttered conversations, all happening almost out of earshot, in different times, to different ends. I passed half a dozen brothers on the stairs as I set off, slipping by silently, nodding solemnly to me under their gray cowls; but I met others as well, others who, without exception, covered or averted their faces when they passed me, as though I were being shunned. I knew several all the same, despite their feeble incognito, and it was clear that that place, however tempered—I could not help but note a distinct decline in the cleanliness of the halls and the manners of the help—was still functioning as it always had: as a clearing-house or meeting ground for every kind of treacherous plot and betrayal. And I hid my own face as best I could, because I knew the price of knowing. I had seen it paid here more than once, when I was still young.

  Master Caldrea’s apartments were, surprisingly, not set apart at the top of the house, as I remembered the previous Master’s rooms, but shared the second floor with the bare cells of the senior brothers, for whom I had once fetched and carried, run errands, and trudged back and forth with messages to deliver. Now I was a guest where I had long served, and must needs keep such old memories from betraying my disguise. Consequently I went out of my way to lose my way, so to speak, and made sure to require escort to Master Caldrea’s door. I arrived appropriately late, and he apologized graciously for not having thought to send a servant.

  His quarters were hardly less austere than those of its neighbors, being only somewhat more spacious and having a large window, with—as it happened—a view toward the marshes, through which I had made my escape so long ago. The dinner, however, lent final credence to the servants’ old belief that certain people dined quite differently from the rest of us. Indeed, it occurs to me now that those years spent downstairs watching steaming covered dishes go upstairs gave me something of a taste for hunger, and my host remarked on it, though not in those words. “Either you are displeased by the meal, which distresses me, or else you believe, as I do, that one should never feed full, but always leave the table wanting a bit more. Wanting, but not taking.”

  “This is so,” I agreed. “The food itself is delicious beyond description—I’ve never enjoyed finer kashintao, or even suspected that the Southwest could produce such a delicate white branetz—”

  “The very first pressing. Pass this way again, and it will be richer, more mature.” He tucked his bent right-hand fingers into his left palm, squeezing and releasing: a nervous habit that I did not remember from before. “But will you visit a second time, there’s the question? I sense a certain purpose in your presence, Madame Jalsa, for all your protestations of going astray on the road. Am I mistaken in this?”

  “Entirely, entirely,” I assured him, laughing. “Such purpose as I have takes me to Lantry na’Dals, where a niece of mine has fallen ill, and needs me to help care for her children for a time. But my attendant and I became separated—stupid, stupid man, this time I really will discharge him—and had it not been for discovering your establishment, I’d have surely slept cold on hard ground tonight. Thank you, Master.”

  “Our good fortune.” He poured us both a bit more of the branetz, and raised his glass. “To bungling attendants!” We drank, and he went on, “But you must know that you are nowhere near Lantry. If you started at dawn tomorrow, you would not reach it by nightfall—it will be a full day and a half, at the very least, before you see your niece and her children.” He raised an eyebrow and clucked his tongue softly.

  I said meekly, “There is a road just past Malcourek—a straight road, much shorter, but old and long overgrown, easy to miss, as we plainly did. I would appreciate any counsel you may give me tomorrow.”

  “And you shall have it,” Master Caldrea assured me heartily. “But by your leave, bear with me for a single moment further. You yourself have never been here before that I am aware of—I certainly see nothing obviously familiar about you—yet why is it that I seem to feel something that I should know…that I do know, and cannot quite put my hand on. Can you tell me what it might possibly be, this something? Consider your answer for a moment, Madame Jalsa, if you would be so good.”

  There was nothing threatening in the last words themselves, but the sudden warmth of his smile unnerved me just a trifle, even as I knew that the time had finally come to take my next step in this dangerous game. After a mere few hours in this endlessly deceptive place, a larger lie than a simple disguise had already taken hold of me, taken root.

  “I can,” I said. “There is a connection—one I should have spoken of directly I arrived. I ask your pardon.” Master Caldrea continued smiling. I drew a long breath and said, “Soukyan.”

  Having spoken his name—my name—I let a useful tension animate my face, and waited.

  “Well,” Master Caldrea said presently. “Soukyan.”

  “I am on the road to Lantry na’Dals. That was not deception. But I have no attendant, and I did not come to your door first by mistake.”

  “You should indeed have told me honestly that you were here in search of him. And I would be entitled to regard it as a breach of hospitality that you did not.” The smile was gone, but he did not seem indignant; only thoughtful.

  “Master, he wronged me and my family past enduring!” I put all the earnestness I could summon into my voice. “He came to you with my poor brother’s blood smoking on his hands, and when it was found where he had fled for sanctuary, we naturally gave up all hope of justice—of vengeance—and could only leave him in your hands and trust to your well-known mystical wisdom.” Careful now—he was never vulnerable to flattery. I lowered my tone and went on. “The pain he caused, the damage he did—to all the family, all of us—it hardly bears recounting. Our mother was dead within a month of my brother’s death. My own marriage failed to survive, so unsympathetic was my husband to our loss, and each of us could tell you similar tales. The family business died with my brother, leaving us all struggling to survive without him, as we struggle on still.” I paused to catch my breath. “We are past an end, Master. I have a right to know—will you give our murderer to me?”

  A single glance at Master Caldrea, and I knew that I had caught him fairly amidships. He went on studying me, still without his earlier geniality, but equally—as far as I could tell—without any suspicion. At length he said, “Soukyan has…left us, madame.”

  I endeavored to appear stunned, frustrated and further resolved all at once. I said, “May I know where he has gone? I ask for others, not myself alone.”

  “No, you misunderstand,” Master Caldrea said. His right-hand fingernails were digging harder into his left palm. “Soukyan is dead.”

  Even when you know better than anyone else in the room why something cannot be so—and when you know just as well that the person lying to you knows the truth—even then, it is a remarkably disorienting experience to be informed that you are dead. I admit that I did not altogether have to pretend shock at Master Caldrea’s words. I said in very nearly genuine astonishment, “Dead? Soukyan? How…how long?”

  “Oh, quite a few years now.” Master Caldrea made something of a show of casual reflection. “He left us most abruptly—flying out as he flew in, you might say. There was some trouble, of a sort you need not concern yourself with, and it became necessary to…” He shrugged, hesitating. “There really was no choice, in all honesty.”

  “The Hunters,” I said. “You sent the Hunters after him.”

  This time it was Master Caldrea’s turn to attempt to conceal surprise, and fail. I laughed briefly. I said, “Master, I live far from this place, and have never visited here before. Yet even I know that there are such creatures, if I know no more than that. Who the Hunters are, what they are, what services they perform—what they are to you and your companions—all this is utter mystery, and may remain so, for all of me. But they do not walk in the world and leave no trace of their passage. Tongues wag.” I fell silent, as we stared at each other over the last of the wine, and then I added, “What you choose to tell me—ab
out the Hunters, or about him—over that, I have no control. But on my family’s loss I believe I do have a right. Thank you for your hospitality, and the excellent dinner.” I stood up to leave.

  With no reply, with no more than the flick of a forefinger, he sat me down again before I was aware that I was sitting. And that was the first time I understood fully how the Brother Caldrea of my childhood had become the Master. He said, “Dear Madame Jalsa, I could not possibly allow you to leave under such a misapprehension. The Hunters are not hired killers—assassins on retainer, as it were—but just as much a part of this house as I am.” He chose a sulyak pear from a bowl on a sideboard, offered it to me; and, when I shook my head, began to peel it with a delicate silver penknife as he continued. “As I think you are obviously aware, there is a further aspect to this house that is not entirely of the cloister. We are not all monkish here, not all devoted to contemplation of the Infinite. We are more of the mundane world than we may seem, and there are those of us who—ah—choose to take some little part in its workings. That is why…”

  “That is why Soukyan is dead,” I finished for him, “and not at the justified hands of the family he destroyed. Well, there is no more to be said, then—I have a dawn journey ahead of me,” and I rose a second time, feeling as though I had been breathing shallowly for hours. Master Caldrea summoned a servant to escort me back to my room, and walked with me to his own door, promising to have me set on the right road in the morning. I said, “I thank you, but I know the way. And I do not wish to trouble anyone here further with my disappointment.”