“What?” He goggled at her. “Scarcely any. A glass or two, to ease the pain.”
“A glass or two, is it?” Merolanna made a face.
In truth, he looked much the worse for wear. Utta had not seen him for some time, so it was possible the new lines on his face were nothing odd, but his eyes seemed sunken and dark and the color of his skin was bad, like a man who has been weeks in a sickbed. It was hard to reconcile this bloated, pasty creature slumped like a sack of laundry with the big man who only a short time ago had moved through the castle like a war galleon under full sail.
Merolanna rapped on the table and pointed at one of the guards. “Lord Brone needs some bread and cheese for the sake of his stomach. Go fetch some.”
The guard gaped at her. “Y-Your Grace...?” “And you,” she said to the other. “I am old and I chill easily. Go and bring a brazier of coals. Go on, both of you!”
“But...but we are not supposed to leave Lord Brone!” said the second guard.
“Are you afraid the Zorian sister and I will assassinate him while you’re gone?” Utta stared at him, then turned to the count. “Do you think we’re likely to attack you, Brone?” She didn’t give him time to reply, but took a step toward the guards, waggling her fingers like she was shooing chickens out of a garden. “Go on, then. Hurry up, both of you.”
When the baffled guards were gone, the count cleared his throat. “What was
“I need your help, Brone,” she said. “Something is gravely amiss, and we will not solve it without you—nor in front of Havemore’s spies, which is why I sent those two apes away.”
He stared at her for a moment, but his eyes failed to catch light. “I can be no help to you, Duchess. You know that. I have lost my place. I have been...retired.” His laugh was a rheumy bark. “I have retreated.”
“And so you sit and drink and feel sorry for yourself.” Utta cringed at Merolanna’s words, wondering how even a woman like the duchess could talk to Avin Brone that way, with such contemptuous familiarity. “I did not come here to help you with that, Brone, and I will thank you to sit up and pay attention. You know me. You know I would not come to you for help if I did not need it—I am not one of those women who runs weeping to a man at the first sign of trouble.”
The specter of a smile flitted across Brone’s face. “True enough.”
“Things may have seemed bad enough already,” Merolanna said, “with Briony and Barrick gone and the Tollys riding herd over us all—but I have news that is stranger than any of that. What do you know about the Rooftoppers?”
For a moment Brone only stared at her as though she had suddenly started to sing and dance and strew flowers around the room. “Rooftoppers? The little people in the old stories?”
“Yes,
“On my honor, Merolanna, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Look at this, then, and tell me what you think.” She pulled a sheet of parchment from out of the bodice of her dress and handed it to him. He stared at it blankly for a moment, then reached up—not without some discomfort—to take down a candle from the shelf on the wall behind him so he could read.
“It’s...a letter from Olin,” he said at last.
“It was the
“The missing page? Truly? Where did you find it?”
“So you know about it. Tell us.” Merolanna seemed a different woman now, more like the spymaster Brone used to be than the doddering old woman she called herself.
“The entire letter was missing after Kendrick’s murder,” he said. “Someone put it among my papers some days later, but a page was missing.” He scanned the parchment with growing excitement. “I think this
“Ah, now that is a story indeed. Perhaps you had better have another drink, Brone,” Merolanna said. “Or maybe some water to clear your head would be better. Understanding this is not going to be easy, and this is only the beginning.”
“So the Rooftoppers...are real?”
“We saw them with our own eyes. If it had been only me you might be able to blame it on my age, but Utta was there.”
“Everything she says is true, Lord Brone.”
“But this is fantastic. How could they be here in the castle all these years and we never knew...?”
“Because they didn’t want us to know. And it is a big castle, after all, Brone. But here is the question. How am I going to find that piece of the moon, or whatever it is? Sister Utta thinks it is Chaven the little woman was talking about, but where is he? Do you know?”
Brone looked around the small, cluttered room. There was no sign of the guards returning, but he lowered his voice anyway. “I do not. But I suspect he is alive. It would be easy enough for the Tollys to trump up some charge against him if all they wanted was an execution. I still have a few... sources around the castle, and I hear Hendon’s men are still searching for him.”
“Well, tell your sources to find him. As swiftly as possible. And it would not hurt to inquire into this moon- stone or whatever it is, either.”
“But I don’t understand—why did these little people ask
“Ah.” Merolanna smiled, and it was almost fond this time. “Once a courtier, always a courtier, I see. Do you not believe they might have come to me because they recognized me as a person of kindness and good will?”
Brone raised an eyebrow.
“You’re right. They told me they would give me news of my child.”
Avin Brone’s eyes went wide as cartwheels. “Your... your...?”
“Child. Yes, that’s right. Don’t worry about Utta—she’s been told the whole dreadful story.”
He looked at her with a face gone pale. “You told her...?”
“You’re not speaking very well, today, Brone. I fear the drink is doing you damage. Yes, I told her of my adultery with my long-dead lover.” She turned to Utta. “Brone already knows, you see. I have few confidantes in the castle, but he has long been one of them. He was the one who arranged for the child to be fostered.” She turned back to Brone. “I told Barrick and Briony, also.”
“You
“Told them, the poor dears. They had a right to know. You see, on the day of Kendrick’s funeral, I saw the child. My child.”
Brone could only shake his head again. “Surely, Merolanna, one of us is going mad.”
“It isn’t me. I thought for a time it must be, but I think I know better now. Tell me, then—what are you going to do?”
“Do? About what?”
“All of this. About finding Chaven and discovering why the fairies took my little boy.” She saw the look on Avin Brone’s face. “Oh, I didn’t tell you about that, did I?” She quickly related the words of Queen Upsteeplebat and the oracular Ears. “Now, what are you going to do?”
Brone seemed dazed. “I...I can inquire quietly again after Chaven’s whereabouts, I suppose, but the trail has probably long gone cold.”
“You can do more than that. You can help Utta and myself make our way to the camp of those fairy-people, those... what are they called? Qar? We’ve always called them the Twilight Folk, I don’t know why everyone has to change. In any case, I want to go to them. After all, they are only on the other side of the bay.”
Now it was Utta’s turn to be astonished. “Your Grace, what are you saying? Go out to the Qar? They are murderous creatures—they have killed hundreds of your people.”
The duchess flapped her hands in dismissal of Utta’s concern. “Yes, I’m sure they are terrible, but if they won’t tell me where my son is then I don’t much care what they do with me. I want answers. Why steal my child? Why put me through year upon year of torture, only to send him back as young as the day he was taken? I saw him, you know, at Kendrick’s funeral. I thought I’d truly gone mad. And why should this happen