The Hallowed Hunt

divines taught me. Four hundred years is far too long for ghosts to survive so entire.'

'I saw what I saw.' Her tone neither offered nor requested rationalizations.

'Maybe that’s what the addition of animal spirits does to men’s souls,' Ingrey continued in a spurt of inspiration. 'Instead of dissolution, damnation becomes an eternal, cold, and silent torment. Trapped between matter and spirit. All the pain of death lingering, all the joy of life stripped away... ' He swallowed in sudden fear.

Ijada’s gaze grew distant, looking down the winding road. 'I trust not. The warriors were worn and tormented, but not joyless, for they took joy in me, I thought.' Her eyes, turning toward him, crinkled a little at the edges. 'A moment ago, you said it must be a dream, but now you take it for truth, and your doom foreshadowed. You can’t have it both ways, however delightfully glum piling up the prospects makes you.'

Ingrey was surprised into a snort; his lips curled up at the sides, just a little bit. He yanked them back straight. 'So which do you think it is?'

'I think... ' she said slowly, 'that if I could go back now, I would know.' Her lids lowered briefly, and the next look she gave him seemed to weigh him. 'I think you might, too.'

They were interrupted then by a crowd on the road, some kinlord’s entourage from Easthome traveling to the funereal duty at Oxmeade. Ingrey motioned his men aside, scanning the mob of outriders for faces he recognized. He saw a few, and exchanged brief, sober salutes. Boarford’s men, and therefore the two brotherearls and their wives sheltered in the tapestry-covered wagon that jounced along the ruts. Almost immediately thereafter, Ingrey’s troop had to make way again for a procession of Temple-men, lord dedicats and high divines, richly dressed and well mounted.

When they had all sorted themselves out once more, Ingrey found Gesca’s horse pressed up to his side, and the lieutenant favoring him with a mistrustful scowl. Ingrey spurred forward, and led on at a more rapid pace.

CHAPTER TEN

THEY CRESTED THE RANGE OF LOW HILLS NORTHEAST OF THE capital in the late afternoon. The town and the broad southern plains beyond spread out before their gaze. The river Stork curled away from the town’s foot in a bright silver line, growing more crooked until lost in the autumn haze. A few boats, merchant craft, sculled laboriously up or drifted down its length, making their way from or to the cold sea some eighty miles distant. As Ingrey reined back beside her, Ijada rose in her stirrups and stared.

He studied her expression, which was part fascinated, part wary. Easthome might well be the largest city she’d seen in her life, for all that perhaps a dozen Darthacan provincial seats eclipsed it, and the Darthacan royal capital could have held it six times over.

'The town is divided into two halves, Templetown and Kingstown,' Ingrey told her. 'The upper town, on those high bluffs, holds the temple, the archdivine’s palace, and all the offices of the holy orders. The lower town has the warehouses and the merchants’ quarters. You can see the wharves beyond the wall, where the drainage runs out to join the Stork. The hallow king’s hall and most of the kin-lords’ houses are on the opposite end from the docks.' His hand swept out the sections. 'Easthome used to be two villages, back in the old days, belonging to two different tribes. They feuded and fought across the creek that divided them till it ran with blood, they say, practically up to the time Audar’s grandson seized the place for his western capital, and stamped out all division with his new stonework. You can scarcely see the creek now, it is so built across. And no one now chooses to die for the sake of a sewer. Hetwar told me this tale; he takes it for a parable, but I’m not sure what he thinks the moral is.'

The cavalcade descended the road to the easternmost gate on the Kingstown side. The stonework was good, it was true, the winding streets lined by high houses of tan blocks or whitewashed stucco, with glints of glass windows peering out from deep-browed embrasures. Red-tile roofs replaced wattle and flammable thatch; ordinary fires had probably destroyed more of the old twin towns than war. The defending walls were even more improved, although crowded with new building lapping too near and spilling beyond, compromising their purpose.

They came at length to a narrow curving street in the merchants’ quarter, and dismounted before a slim stone house in a row of several such built abutting one another, though obviously at different times by different masons. Ingrey wondered if Horseriver owned not just this house but the row, and if such lucrative property had come to him with Princess Fara. The house was neither so rich nor so large as last night’s lodging, but it appeared decent enough, quiet and close.

Ingrey dismounted and passed his and Ijada’s horses to Gesca’s care.

'Tell my lord Hetwar I will report to him as soon as I see the prisoner secured. Send me my manservant Tesko, if you find him sober, with what things I am likely to need for the next few days. Clean clothes, for one.' Ingrey grimaced, stretching his aching back; his leathers reeked of horse and the grime of the road, and the stitches in his scalp were itching again, maddeningly. Ijada, stripping off her riding gloves and craning her neck, managed somehow to appear nearly as trim and cool as she had that morning.

The house’s porter saw them inside; the woman warden-servant, guided by a housemaid, marshaled Ijada at once up the stairs, her leather-strapped case hoisted after by the porter’s boy. Ingrey set down his saddlebags and stared around the narrow hall.

The porter ducked his head nervously. 'The boy will be back in a moment to take you to your room, my lord.'

Ingrey grunted, and said, 'No hurry. If this place is to be my charge, I had best look it over.' He prowled off through the nearest doorway.

The house seemed simple enough. The cellar and the ground floor were devoted to storage, a kitchen with antechamber and pallets for cook and scullion, an eating hall, a parlor, and a cubby under the stairs where the porter lurked. Ingrey poked his head out the only other outer door, which led to a back court with a covered well. The second floor included what might have been meant for a study, as well as two bedrooms. Passing the door of similar chambers on the next floor up, Ingrey heard the murmur of women’s voices, Ijada and her warden. The top floor was divided up into smaller rooms for the servants.

He descended again to find the porter’s boy lugging his saddlebags into one of the bedrooms on the second floor. The furnishings were sparse—narrow bed, washstand, a single chair, a battered wardrobe—and Ingrey wondered if the place had been tenanted or not before Horseriver’s couriers had arrived last night demanding its possession. Light, distinctive footsteps and the creaking of, perhaps, a bed overhead marked Ijada’s location. The proximity was both reassuring and unsettling. When he heard her steps on the stairs, he turned for the hall.

She had her hand raised to knock on his door as he opened it. In the other, she held Learned Hallana’s letter, a little crumpled now. Her warden—or was that, Wencel’s warden?—hovered behind her, peering suspiciously.

'Lord Ingrey,' she said, reverting to formality. 'Learned Hallana charged you to deliver this. Will you do so?' Her level eyes seemed to bore into his, silently reminding him of the rest of the sorceress’s words: to its destination, and no other.

He took it, glancing at the scrawled direction. 'Do you know who this'—he peered more closely—'Learned Lewko may be?'

'No. But if Hallana trusts him, he must be worthy of it, and no fool.'

What does that prove? Hallana trusted me. And a Temple-man neither foolish nor untrue might yet be no friend to the defiled.

Still, Ingrey remained deathly curious as to what Hallana had reported of him, and of the strange events at Red Dike. The only way he might find out short of opening the letter himself was to be there when it was opened. And if he delivered it on his way to Hetwar’s palace, he would be relieved of any possible need to conceal it or lie about it to his master. Hetwar could not demand it of him then. If chided, Ingrey could feign its faithful delivery was just the sort of virtuous act Hetwar might properly expect of his henchman.

'Yes. I will undertake the charge.'

Ijada nodded intently, and he wondered if she read his corkscrew thoughts in his eyes, or not: or if she