The Hallowed Hunt

they passed around her riding beside the wagon. Wencel favored her with a somewhat ambiguous salute.

Wencel turned in his saddle, as the distance between them and the cortege stretched out of any possible earshot, but only remarked, 'Wherever did you find the beer wagon?'

'Reedmere.'

'Ha. At least one thing about his funeral will match poor Boleso’s taste. They’re hauling that silver-plated royal hearse from Easthome to meet us in Oxmeade. I trust it will not collapse any bridges on the way.'

'Indeed.' Ingrey tried to keep his lips from twitching.

'My household awaits me in Oxmeade to attend to my comfort tonight. And yours, if you will join me. I recommend you do so. There will be no lodgings to be found for love nor money once the court arrives there for this procession.'

'Thank you,' said Ingrey sincerely. There had been duels fought by desperate retainers over the possession of haylofts, in certain unwieldy royal excursions of Ingrey’s experience. Wencel would certainly have secured the best chambers available.

'Tell me of this Learned Hallana, Ingrey,' said Wencel abruptly.

At least he did not tax Ingrey for his failure to mention her before. Ingrey wondered whether to feel relieved. 'I judged her to be exactly what she claimed to be. A friend of Lady Ijada’s who had known her as a child. She’d been a physician at some fort of the Son’s Order out west in the fen marches—Ijada’s father was a lord dedicat, and its captain, at the time.'

'I knew something of Lord dy Castos, yes. Ijada has spoken of him. But my mind picks at the coincidence. A sorcerer with some connection with Lady Ijada—and her new affliction—disappears from Boar’s Head. Days later, a sorcerer—or sorceress—with a connection with Ijada comes to her in Red Dike. Is this two sorcerers, or one?'

Ingrey shook his head. 'I cannot imagine Learned Hallana passing without note at Boar’s Head. Inconspicuous, she was not. And she was very pregnant, which I gather lays great constraint upon her use of her demon for the duration. She stays in a hermitage at Suttleaf, for safety. I admit my evidence is indirect, but I’m certain that Boleso was already deep into his disastrous experiments when he murdered his manservant so grotesquely, six months ago. Which must put his pet sorcerer at Easthome then, or near then, as well.'

Wencel frowned in doubt.

'It is as much an error to take truth for lies, as lies for truth,' Ingrey pointed out. 'The dual-divine was a most unusual lady, but that she might also be Boleso’s puppet is one too many things to believe about her. It doesn’t fit. For one thing, she was no fool.'

Wencel tilted his head, conceding the point. 'Suppose she were his puppet master, then?'

'Less unlikely,' Ingrey granted reluctantly. 'But... no.'

Wencel sighed. 'I shall give up my simplifying conjecture, then. We have two separate sorcerers. But—how separate? Might Boleso’s tool have fled to her, after the debacle? The two in league?'

An uncomfortable idea. It occurred to Ingrey suddenly that the suggestion—misdirection?—that his geas had been laid on him at Easthome had come from Hallana. 'The timing... would not be impossible.'

Wencel grunted disconsolately, staring between his horse’s ears for a moment. 'I understand the learned divine wrote a letter. Have you read it yet?'

Curse you, Gesca. And curse that gossiping warden. How much else did Wencel already know? 'It was not entrusted to me. She handed it directly to Lady Ijada. Sealed.'

Wencel waved a hand in dismissal of this. 'I’m sure you’ve been taught how to do the thing.'

'For ordinary correspondence, certainly. This is one from a Temple sorcerer. I hesitate to think what might happen to the letter—or to me—if I attempted to tamper with it. Burst into flame, maybe.' He left it to Wencel to decide if he meant the paper, or Ingrey himself. 'Passing it on to Hetwar also has problems. At the least, he would need another Temple sorcerer to open it. I should think even the royal sealmaster would find it a challenge to suborn one to pry into letters addressed to the head of his own order.'

'An illicit sorcerer, then.' At Ingrey’s sour look, he protested, 'Well, you must grant Hetwar could find one if anyone could—if he chose.'

'If this multiplication of hypothetical sorcerers goes on, we shall have to hang them from the rafters like hams to make room.' Although, Ingrey was uncomfortably reminded, there was still his strange geas to account for.

Wencel gave a short, unhappy nod, then fell silent for a little. 'Yes, speaking of hams,' he finally said. His voice grew conversational. 'It is not, you know, that you lie well, cousin. It’s merely that no one is foolhardy enough to call you on it. This may have given you an inflated idea of your skill at dissimulation.' The voice hardened. 'What really happened in that upstairs room?'

'If I had anything more to report, it would be my duty to report it first to Lord Hetwar.'

Wencel’s brows climbed. 'Oh, really? First, and yet somehow... not yet? I saw your letters to Hetwar, such as they were. The number of items missing from them turns out to be quite notable. Leopards. Sorceresses. Strange brawls. Near drownings. Your romantic lieutenant Gesca would even have it that you have fallen in love— also, if more understandably, without hint in your scribblings.'

Ingrey flushed. 'Letters can go astray. Or be read by unfriendly eyes.' He glowered, pointedly, at the earl.

Wencel’s lips parted, closed. He attended for a moment to his horse, as he and Ingrey separated to ride around a patch of mire. When they were stirrup to stirrup again, Wencel said, 'Your pardon if I seem anxious. I have a great deal to lose.'

With false cheeriness, Ingrey replied, 'While I, on the other hand, have already lost it all. Earl- ordainer.'

Wencel touched a fist to his heart, in acknowledgment of the hit. But he added quietly, 'There is also a wife.'

It was Ingrey’s turn to fall silent, abashed. Because Wencel’s marriage was arranged—and, up till now, barren—did not necessarily entail that it was also loveless. On either side. Indeed, Princess Fara’s betrayal of her handmaiden spoke of a hot unhappy jealousy, which could not be a product of bored indifference. And the hallow king’s daughter must have seemed a great prize to so homely a young man, despite his own high rank.

'Besides,' Wencel’s voice lightened again, 'burning alive is a most painful death. I do not recommend it. I think this missing sorcerer could be a threat to us both, in that regard alone. He knows many things that he should not. We should find him first. If he proves to contain nothing, ah, personally dangerous, I’d be glad enough to pass him along to Hetwar thereafter.'

And if the sorcerer was dangerous to him, what did Wencel propose to do then? And, five gods, how? 'Leaving aside all questions of duty—this is not an arrest I am equipped to handle, privately or otherwise.'

'How if you were? Does having first knowledge not attract you?'

'To what end?'

'Survival.'

'I am surviving.'

'You were. But your dispensation from the Temple depends, in part, upon a bond of surety now broken.'

Ingrey’s eyes flicked to him, wary. 'How so?'

Wencel’s lips tightened in a small smile. 'I could deduce it by the change in your perception of me alone, but I don’t have to; I can see it. Your beast lies quietly within you, by long habit if nothing else, but nothing constrains it except that you do not call it up. Sooner or later, some Temple sensitive is bound to notice, or else you will make some revealing blunder.' His voice grew low and intense. 'There are alternatives to cutting off your hand for fear of your fist, Ingrey.'

'How would you know?'

Wencel’s hesitation was longer, this time. 'The library at Castle Horseriver is a remarkable thing,' he began obliquely. 'Several of my Horseriver forefathers were collectors of lore, and at least one was a scholar of note. Documents lie there that I am certain exist nowhere else, some of them hundreds of years old. Things old Audar’s Temple-men would not have hesitated to burn. The most amazing eyewitness accounts—I should tell you some of