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store, a tree, a hole in the ground for the first time, even though you've
passed it a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand times without knowing?"
Ian nodded. There had been a March day, when he had dropped his books and
notebooks beside his desk, thrown on a T-shirt, a pair of walking shorts, and
his old climbing boots, and then gone out for a walk, lest any more studying
and working and sleeping and studying and working and sleeping drive him
absolutely bugfuck.
Three steps out of the building it hit him. He must have walked under the old
oak tree outside Sprague Hall thousands of times, but for the life of him he
couldn't remember it even being there.
But there it stood, easily a hundred years old, gnarled limbs reaching
protectively over the sidewalk, leaving him with the sensation of a father
hunching over his child in a hailstorm. He had reached out and stroked its
rough bark for just a moment before walking on.
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"Yeah," Ian said. "I've felt it. An oak tree, once."
"Well, think of the time before when you saw it."
"Eh?"
"Think of the time before the time you noticed it. It was there, mind you,
but it didn't make any impression on you until you noticed it." Hosea
shrugged. "Entrances to the Hidden Ways are like that, most of the time."
"And what happens when somebody builds a house in front of one and tries to
put a sidewalk over it?"
Hosea shook his head. "He won't. An architect who went out to the site would
find himself planning around it, avoiding building on top of it. And if he
didn't, somebody else would. You can ask any builder who has been in the trade
long enough; some time or another, often for very good reasons that he just
can't quite remember later, a set of plans has to be changed."
He rose to his feet and offered Ian his hand. "Enough talk. Let us go."
Ian accepted his help, and then brushed his pants off. "What do we do now?"
"Now?" Hosea asked. "Now is very simple: we walk. And then we walk some more.
If we make Harbard's Crossing quickly enough, we may yet intercept our
friends, or if not, surely we will be able to find some word of them." He
looked at the sky again. "I doubt that their capture will be a secret, or
their destination, from every . . . thing. So let's walk."
Ian nodded. "I can do that." He looked over at the stone and smiled.
Hosea returned the smile. "I'm pleased that something amuses you. What might
it be?"
"Oh, I was just wishing we could take that stone along with us. The next time
Maggie asks me what rock I crawled out from under, I could show it to her."
CHAPTER S E V E N
In the House of the Fire Duke
Were the truth to be known although he was always resolved to do his best to
prevent that from happening Jamed del Bruno preferred to report to the Fire
Duke with ill news rather than pleasant.
It was not merely that he disliked His Warmth although he did; he found the
title "His Warmth" to be an offensive oxymoron it was that the Fire Duke was
always much more conscious of his obligations to those beneath him under
stress than otherwise. His Warmth was, Jamed del Bruno had long decided, a
cruel man more playing at than living the part of the Duke of the House of
Fire, and was much more likely to play his part well when adversity reminded
him of his obligations than otherwise.
As he made his way down the broad steps of the amphitheater toward His
Warmth's loge, two long-stemmed glasses of blood-red Tenemid and the note he
had just been handed held high on a silver salver, Jamed del Bruno wished for
bad news for his master, although, as always, he was careful to keep no trace
of expression whatsoever on his smooth face, just as he had made no comment
when it was Lady Everlea rather than Lord Sensever who arrived to command His
Solidity's champion at the duel. It was a vague insult on the part of His
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Solidity, implying as it did that this dispute was a matter simply of money,
not honor something His Solidity implied ought to be left to women to handle,
rather than noblemen.
He made his way down past the seats of the middle class, where a burly
rancher, just a generation up from cowherd, argued passionately with a smoker;
their wives, each in her garish finest, watched the nobility below.
Disdaining the seat that was barely large enough to contain his bulk, the fat
duke stood next to the railing, overlooking the dueling floor below, his bulk
at least partly concealed in a cowled cape that fell from neck to ankles. To
his right, Lady Everlea stood, tilting a glass of pale, straw-colored wine to
her full red lips, the plain onyx ring that proclaimed her allegiance to the
House of Stone in open display on her ring finger. Her golden hair, gathered
into a complex Ingarian knot, so closely matched the braiding about her bodice
and the hems of her long sleeves that Jamed del Bruno wondered if, perhaps,
the black silken gown was garnished with her own hair. That would have been a
young girl's affectation, he decided, and definitely out of place for a woman
of her age.
What was her age? Her skin had the smooth and creamy softness of a young
girl's, with no trace of wrinkles at the corners of her blue eyes or firm
mouth, but something in the way that she held herself spoke of a more advanced
age. It was always possible, of course, that she had a strand of the Old Races
in her heritage, and they always concealed their age well.
"Ah, Your Warmth, I see your refreshment arrives," she said, her voice half a
tone lower and more musical than Jamed del Bruno would have expected. "And
perhaps some news, as well."
The expression on His Warmth's face could have been a smile, but perhaps not.
"Perhaps not," he said, taking both glasses from the salver and politely
offering Lady Ev-erlea her choice. She set her now empty glass on Jamed del
Bruno's tray while considering which one of the proffered glasses to accept,
as though it mattered in an idle sort of way, not as though the tradition
arose from the Poisoning of Orfi.
"A fine wine," she said. "Although His Gelidity apparently has a higher
opinion of its value than Her Ladyship does."
"I have noticed," His Warmth said.
Lady Everlea barely raised an eyebrow, and Jamed del Bruno kept his face
impassive. His Warmth was constantly confounding his servants by handling
financial matters himself and directly, at that! rather than relying on his
Lady Wife difficult to do, with her and the Heir, Venidir del Anegir,
effectively banished to the House of the Sky or some of the ladies from the
major families of the House of Fire.
Below, the two swordsmen had entered the amphitheater. Under the watchful
eyes of the crowd and the more watchful eyes of their assistants, the two men
stripped down to shoes and shortened trousers, and launched into their
stretching and warming exercises.
Standing on the tiled floor below, Rodic del Renald and Stanar del Brunden
could have been two waxy Vandes-cardian marionettes cast from the same mold:
each was long-limbed and well muscled in a wiry sort of way; each carried an
assortment of scars from hairline to ankles, light on the face and lower [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]