The Hallowed Hunt

the anecdotes, sometime. Enough to lure a not very bookish boy to read on. And then, later—to read as though his life depended on it.' His gaze found Ingrey’s. 'You dealt with your so-called defilement by running away from all knowledge, and acknowledgment. I dealt with mine by running toward. Which of us do you think has the best grip by now?'

Ingrey blew out his breath. 'You give me a lot to think about, Wencel.'

'Do so, then. But do not turn away from understanding, this time, I beg you.' He added more softly, 'Do not turn your back on me.'

Indeed not. I should not dare. He gave Wencel an equivocal salute.

The cortege came then to a rocky ford, fortunately not in so great a spate as the near-disastrous crossing on the first day, and Ingrey turned his attention to getting all across in safety. A mile farther on, the wagon nearly bogged in a stretch of mud, then a guardsman’s mount went lame from a lost shoe. Then, at a stop to water the horses, a fight broke out between two of Boleso’s retainers, some smoldering private quarrel that burst into flame. Ingrey’s customary menace almost did not contain it, and he turned away from the separated pair pale with worry, which they fortunately took for rage, about what might happen the next time if mere threat was not enough, and he was forced to follow with action.

He remounted his horse more blank-faced than ever. Wencel, he had to admit, had thrown his mind into chaos. The earl’s twisting conversation gave Ingrey a sharp sense that the pair of them were fencing in the dark, blades stabbing at hidden targets. Both concealing and confiding dangerous secrets to each other, feint and parry... equally? I think Wencel conceals more. To be fair, Wencel had also seemed to reveal more.

Ingrey had thought his anxiety over the strange geas to be his most pressing problem. The notion that Wencel’s lore might contain clues to the matter was doubly exciting. It suggested Ingrey might have an ally to hand. It equally suggested that Ingrey might have found his unknown enemy. Or, how was it that Wencel seemed to regard illicit sorcerers as minor inconveniences, to be so readily handled? He glanced toward the head of the cortege where Wencel now rode, beyond earshot once more, interrogating one of Boleso’s men. The guardsman was a big fellow, yet his shoulders were bowed as though trying to make himself smaller.

Wencel had dragged a number of lures across Ingrey’s trail, yet it was not the new mystery but the old one that most arrested him, caught and held him suspended between fascination and fear. What does Wencel know about my father and his mother that I do not?

OXMEADE WAS LARGER THAN RED DIKE, BUT BOLESO’S CORTEGE was received at its big stone temple that afternoon with only moderate ceremony, mostly, it seemed, because the town was a madhouse of preparation for greater events tomorrow. Ingrey was hugely relieved finally to hand off responsibility for the corpse and its outriders to Wencel, who handed them in turn to his sober seneschal, a gaggle of Easthome Temple divines, and a formidable array of retainers and clerks. Princess Fara and her own household, Ingrey was glad to learn, had not followed on, but awaited them all in the capital. It was not yet twilight when Ingrey and his guard mounted up again with their prisoner and followed Wencel through the winding streets.

Passing along the edge of a crowded square, Wencel pulled up his horse, and Ingrey stopped beside him. A street market was open late, presumably to serve the needs of the courtiers and their households already starting to arrive for the last leg of Boleso’s funeral procession. Ingrey was not sure at first what had caught Wencel’s attention, but he followed the earl’s gaze past the busy booths to a corner where a fiddler played, his hat invitingly laid upside down at his feet. The musician was better than the usual sort, certainly, and his mellow instrument cast a strange, plaintive song into the golden evening air.

After a moment Wencel remarked, 'That is a very old tune. I wonder if he knows how old? He plays it... almost rightly.'

Wencel kept his face averted until the song ended. When he looked forward his profile was strange. Tense, but not with anger or fear; more like a man about to weep for some inconsolable, incalculable loss. Wencel grimaced the tension away and clucked his horse onward without looking back, nor sending anyone to throw a coin in the hat, though the fiddler looked after the rich party with thwarted hope.

They came at length to the large house Wencel had rented, or commandeered, one of several in a row in this wealthy merchants’ quarter. Bright brass bosses in sunburst patterns studded the heavy planks of its front door. Ingrey handed off his horse to Gesca, shouldered his saddlebags, and oversaw Lady Ijada and her young warden taken upstairs by a maid. By their strained greetings, this was a servant who had known Ijada before. The Horseriver household, it seemed, found the justice of Ijada’s case as disturbingly ambiguous as did their master.

Before Wencel went off to deal with the sheaf of messages that had arrived in his absence, he murmured to Ingrey, 'We shall eat in an hour, you and Ijada and I. It may be our last chance for private speech for a while.'

Ingrey nodded.

He was guided to a tiny chamber on the top floor, where a basin and a can of hot water were already waiting for him. It was clearly a servant’s room, of whatever wealthy family the earl had dislodged, but its solitude was most welcome to him. Horseriver’s own servants were likely crowded into some lesser dormitory or stable loft in this crisis, and Gesca and his men would fare little better. Ingrey trusted Horseriver’s cook would console them.

Ingrey washed efficiently. His wardrobe was too limited to take much time over; he had brought clothing for hard riding, not for courtly dining. Done and dressed, he considered the temptations of the cot, but feared if once he lay down, he would be unable to force himself up again. He wended down the narrow staircase instead, planning to explore the house and the street around it, and perhaps check on Gesca, if the stable proved to be nearby. He paused on the next landing, hearing Wencel’s voice in the hallway. He turned that way instead.

Wencel was speaking to Ijada’s warden, who was listening with a wide-eyed, daunted expression. He wheeled at the sound of Ingrey’s step, and grimaced. 'You may go,' he said to the warden, who bobbed a curtsey and withdrew into what was presumably Ijada’s chamber. Wencel joined Ingrey at the staircase, motioning him ahead, but excused himself when they reached the ground floor to go off and confer with his clerk.

Ingrey stepped outside in the dusk and made his circuit of the environs of the house. Arriving again at the front door, he was passed from the porter to another servant and into a chamber at the back of the second floor. It was not the grand dining room, almost suitable to an earl’s estate, but a small breakfast parlor, overlooking a kitchen garden and the mews. Its single door was heavy, and would muffle sound well, Ingrey judged. A little round table was set for three.

Ijada arrived escorted by a maidservant, who curtseyed to Ingrey and left her. She wore an overdress of wheatstraw-colored wool upon clean linen high to her neck. The effect was modest and maidenly, though Ingrey supposed the lace collar was mostly to hide the greening bruises on her throat. Wencel came in almost on her heels, glittering in the abundant candlelight, having also changed into richer garb than what he’d ridden in. And cleaner. Ingrey briefly wished his own saddlebags had held a better choice than least smelly.

At Wencel’s gesture Ingrey brushed off his court manners and helped Lady Ijada to her chair, and Wencel to his, before seating himself. All equally distant from each other, tripod-tense. Servants, obviously instructed, bustled in around them, leaving covered dishes and withdrawing discreetly. The food, at least, proved good, if countrified: dumplings, beans, baked apples, a brace of stuffed woodcocks, sauces and savories, carafes of three sorts of wines.

'Ah,' murmured Wencel, lifting a silver cover and revealing a ham. 'Dare I ask you to carve, Lord Ingrey?'

Ijada blinked warily. Ingrey returned Wencel an equally tight smile and haggled off slices. He slipped his hands below the table, after, to pull his cuffs down again over the bandages on his wrists. He waited to see how Wencel would bend the talk next, which resulted in a silence for a space, as all applied themselves to the meal.

At length Wencel remarked, 'I had nothing but secondhand reports about the dire events at Birchgrove that