“Oh, you are a gem!” said Eff.
As I shouldered the bow and arrows, she hissed instructions at me.
“Take him up to the old mine. Bright’s hiding there. No, he didn’t go back to the frontier. He didn’t like to leave you unprotected. We’ve been keeping it a secret so that you’d have deniability, but now… He should be able to protect you from Illuminus. When there’s no light in the Eyrie, you’ll know it’s safe to come back.”
A pulley disguised as a meat hook opened a door in the cellar wall.
Eff hugged me. “Take care, my dear. And give my love to Bright. Tell him he’s a good boy and I love him.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
HAGEN AND THE ghost were waiting inside. Hagen held a lantern. The ghost hugged me and plied me with anxious questions. Hagen merely said, “Good, you’re still in one piece. Come on. Let’s get going.”
“You’re coming with us?”
I didn’t picture Hagen opting for a hike up a mountain. He seemed too suave for such activities.
“No. I’ve got to stay and help sort out this mess Lady Klea’s got herself into.”
Something in his tone of voice... thoughts of the still missing letter that had so obsessed Klea jumped into the front of my mind.
“Will Klea need your help? Her baby is dead and she has everyone’s sympathy.”
“Oh, I see!” said Hagen. “How sad! Well no need for us to worry about her, then. Worry about this fellow. He’s the one in danger.”
His How sad sounded insincere. As if he didn’t care that Klea’s baby had died. Or....
“What I am worried about is that Illuminus will be waiting for us at the end of this tunnel,” said Shadow.
“I doubt it,” said Hagen. “Aside from the fact that he may not know where the end is, I’ve put a word in Lady Glisten’s ear about his suspected crystal-smuggling activities. I doubt she’ll take her eye off him even with all this uproar about Lady Klea. Family prerogatives are something she gets very worried about.”
I was starting to worry about the letter. Perhaps there was more to Klea’s story than had come out. Perhaps it would still be a good thing if I got hold of this letter. I bent down and whispered in Katti’s ear. I felt her consent—and her confusion—but she didn’t question me, Ladybless her. She just nudged her cheek against my hand. I rubbed her absentmindedly in her sweet spot as I wondered why we had spent so much time and so many tears on a letter that didn’t seem to be important after all.
We walked in silence, until Hagen started grumbling about the length of the walk and the damp earthy smell. It was only three-quarters of a mile, which I pointed out to Hagen and which he failed to appreciate. Little glow worms sparkled in the roof, which pleased the ghost but Hagen also failed to appreciate these. The man had no soul at all.
The tunnel curved to the left, so that if someone found the entrance in the house, they could not easily find the exit in the forest.
“At last!” Hagen muttered, as the lantern light fell on a door and the end of the tunnel. The bolt was stiff with age and underuse, and screeched as the ghost and I wrestled it open. I made a mental note to oil it sometime soon.
The old wooden door opened onto what looked like a horizontal mine shaft. Pale light flooded in from an overgrown opening a short distance beyond the door.
“Strike,” I told Katti.
Katti jumped onto Hagen’s back, knocking him face down in the dirt. The lantern rolled away and, as I’d expected, went out. But at this point we were able to see without it.
I was on Hagen the moment he hit the ground, seizing his arms and twisting them behind his back while he was still stunned from being knocked over.
“Fkeusht wilthkic!” yelled the ghost.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I’m not going to hurt him. I’m going to search him.”
I tied Hagen’s hands with my sash and sat astride him.
“You mad dog,” snarled Hagen. “What are you doing?”
I pulled the front flaps of his robe round to the back and started patting them down.
“I put the evidence together. Two and two makes four, as you said. You’ve got something I want. Ah-ha!”
Sure enough I heard the rustle of paper in his robe, but I couldn’t find out how to open the pocket it was hidden in.
“It’s a lining,” said Hagen.
“Of course I believe you,” I said. “That’s why you have a lining on one side of your robe and not on the other. Have you got a knife?” I asked Shadow, who was leaning against the wall with the air of a man who had ceased trying to understand and had consigned his life to the Lady’s mercy.
“Oh, very well. Don’t ruin the robe. It opens in that seam. Not that one, the other... I don’t know why you’re bothering. I know everything now, which means my master will too, soon.”
“But you don’t have the proof, and neither will the Premier if I take this from you.” I wasn’t going to tell him that some of my reason for stealing the letter was that I couldn’t work out how it fitted into the story. I was hoping that reading it would tell me what was missing.
I slid four letters out of his robe and started looking through them.
“No,” shouted Hagen. “Don’t read those, they’re—”
One of them had a purple seal with a unicorn on it. I resisted a strong temptation to take a look at the other letters and shoved them back in his robe. My life was quite complicated enough for the moment.
“Good,” I said, tucking the letter into my body shaper. “Toy will never be able to produce this evidence. Nor will you.”
Hagen had relaxed back into his usual suave persona now his others letters were safe.
“What? Are you getting up? I was beginning to enjoy myself.”
“Oh, stop it!” I poked him with my foot and laughed. His ability to flirt at the most inappropriate times appealed to me despite myself.
“Pity I wasn’t there to enjoy Lady Chatoyant’s discomfiture. That must have been quite something.”
“It was,” I agreed, undoing my sash from around his wrists. “Though I feel sorry for her poor maid. And so should you, since it’s your fault.”
“I did what was needed,” said Hagen, and suddenly he was much less appealing.
Eff would have used this to start an argument about mundane rights, but I had more important things to worry about.
“Come on,” I said to Shadow and we stumped up to the end of the tunnel and pushed through the overhanging vegetation. The tunnel entrance came out hidden in a copse of tree ferns. Years ago after I had failed the crystal test Hilly had shown me the safe route under the ferns to a nearby path. But I wasn’t interested in that. As soon as we were outside the tunnel I found a place where the sun slanted brightly through the fern fronds, opened the letter and read it.
My dear,
Stop this, or you will bring us undone and we will all lose her.
Our family wants for nothing, neither worldly wealth nor tender care. You must know this. You have seen it for yourself. What can you offer in its place?
We have returned it because we wish you well and we are determined to keep our side of the bargain. Keep yours. You have not done the wrong thing. She is safe and well.