Safe journey, and gods willing, I’ll see you soon.
All my love,
Gwyn
P.S. On a lighter note, you must be curious about the seal, as I was when I first saw it. Apparently it is the sigil of the right noble House of Curdred, crafted by Wynce’s great-grandfather, who thought himself most witty when he noticed that his surname contained the word curd. Why anyone of sense allowed him to think this is beyond me. Nevertheless, it stuck, and we are left with the attached. Fortunately, it does grow on you.
I turned over the letter. Jotted in red ink below the royal postmaster’s seal was the date of sending. Nearly three weeks ago. I folded the paper, trying to remember if I’d mentioned our contract to Lake Meera in my letter to her. Had she spent the last fortnight wondering why I refused to answer? Or worse, that her letter had been intercepted as she feared? But by whom? Where was the Elsian minister’s hand in all this?
Questions burned as hot as the eerie blue flame he’d conjured that dreadful afternoon in the Merybourne gallery. There was more to this affair beyond Master Carlyle’s mismanaged funds. Add to that the darker business of the ghastradi, and perhaps her fear was well founded. The ghastradi of the chief lithosmith in Hatch Ford had known of the minister too. What was it he’d said? “Little debts all around the kingdom . . .”
I tucked the letters into my pocket. Alastair wouldn’t need much persuading to pay Merybourne Manor a visit on our way south, not if there were answers to be uncovered. I left the study, nursing a tenuous thread of hope. The shadowy web settling over the kingdom was a vast, messy thing, but here at least was the solution to one small knot.
Aye, but untie carefully, a little voice said in the back of my mind. Pluck one wrong thread, and all of this begins to unravel, and it may loose more than you expect.
I studiously put the thought from my head and went in search of Alastair.
Chapter 7
Sons of Their Fathers
After a fruitless search through our chambers, Alastair’s study, and the great gallery, I gave in and sought out the housekeeper, who was busy directing the stream of servants attending the washing. The laundry was a bright, noisy room at the back of the house hung all around with damp clothes and filled with the sounds of splashing. Steam wreathed half a dozen bright red faces bent over the washing tubs. A handful of the girls looked up as I entered, followed soon by the rest as their neighbors nudged them. The buzz of conversation dropped at once to a scandalized susurrus. I tapped Madam Gretna’s shoulder.
“What is it now— Oh! Apologies, my lady. How can I help you?”
I hid my smile at her seamless acceptance of my presence in the laundry. She’d already seen enough of my antics as the nakla mistress of Pendragon; after joining Alastair on a contract, I guessed there were few things I could do that would surprise her. It made it a little easier to pretend the servants’ stares didn’t bother me. “Have you seen Lord Alastair?” I asked.
“No, I’m afraid not. Not since he came in, anyway,” she said. “Sarah, that basket goes to the bluing tubs. I’m so sorry, Lady Aliza,” she said as she waved one of the girls to the other side of the laundry. “Is there anything else I can do for you? The bath should be ready in your chambers shortly.”
“No, thank you.” Disappointed, I started for the stairs when a fragment of Gwyn’s letter came to mind. “Actually, there might be. Madam Gretna, has there been any news from Edonarle since we’ve been gone?”
A few of the maidservants nearest us exchanged a look that I didn’t miss. That’s a yes, then. Madam Gretna fiddled with the keys on her belt, frowning slightly. “Well, I suppose that depends on what you mean by news. I only hear rumors, mind.”
“Rumors are a start,” I said. “We didn’t hear much about anything on our contract.”
Still she hesitated. “I’m sure Lord Alastair will have better information, what with the letters he’s been receiving from around the kingdom, but . . .”
“The Tekari are moving, milady.” One of the maids stepped forward, wiping her wet hands on her apron and dipping into a curtsy. “That’s what Madam Gretna’s trying to say.”
“Liana!” the housekeeper chided.
“What? We’ve all heard the stories,” Liana said. Several other maids nodded in eager agreement.
“One of my cousins out near Middlemoor swears he seen a ghoul last fortnight,” another girl said. “Running south, he says it was, fast as it could. And the next night it was a whole gale of nixies.”
“No, I heard it was pixies,” a third girl whispered.
“Nixies, silly! Pixies are Idar.”
“It was Tekari,” Liana said, “of all kinds. Folk say they’re heading south.”
“South to where?” I asked.
She shrugged. “No one’s sure. We ain’t seen any ourselves up here, just heard about it. No Tekari is fool enough to pass through Pendragon grounds,” she added with a touch of pride.
“As I said, rumors, all of them,” Madam Gretna said firmly before Liana could continue. “Now, ladies, back to your chores, please!” The girls returned to their washing with various degrees of reluctance. “And, Lady Aliza, perhaps you’d like to come with me?” she said.
I followed her up the stairs, leaving the maids to continue their argument in peace. “Is it true?” I asked.
“Alas, who knows? Everything’s been chaos since the Battle of North Fields, but Miss Liana’s right. We see none of it up here at the house, thank the gods. All we can rely on is gossip and the occasional letter from relatives.” Her expression grew troubled. “Though now that I think of it, there was some rather odd news out of Ramshead a few weeks back. Town on the southern slope of the mountain,” she said at my blank look. “My sister mentioned it in one of her letters. Seems their local lithosmith was robbed blind. Every last heartstone taken and not a trace of the thieves left behind. The local magistrate was at her wit’s end!”
My blood ran cold, then hot. An empty lithosmith shop, just like what we’d found in Hatch Ford after the ghastradi Erik Tully had been unmasked. I weighed the dreadful import of the question I didn’t want to ask against the answers I needed to know. “Madam Gretna, did your sister happen to mention anything about . . . ghastradi?”
She stopped on the landing and stared at me in dismay. “The ghast-ridden? Good gods, my lady, of course not! Why on earth should she?”
I sighed. Not that that was any guarantee the ghastradi hadn’t been involved, but I would take the rumor mill’s silence as a good sign, or at least a less terrible one. “No reason.”
“You’d best ask the master if he’s heard anything more,” she said.
“Aye, when I find him I will.”
“Have you tried the Sparring grounds up on the hill overlooking the house? Near the Standing Stones. There’s a path around the stables. He might be up that way.”
I thanked her, told her I knew the place, and took my leave. Tekari of all kinds on the move, and now heartstones stolen wholesale? The pieces shuffled around in my mind like a sentient jigsaw, coming together in patterns that made no sense. There was one thing, though, that did: south. Whatever war was stirring, whatever plans the ghastradi were hatching, the answer lay to the south.