The Hallowed Hunt

supposed to be the hub of many intertribal rites; perhaps more mage than holy, in truth.'

Ingrey tried to imagine any hallow king in the recent past as magical, and failed. Nor holy either, in truth. 'So that—uncanny power—is all gone from the kingship?'

'Yes?' said Lewko.

Ingrey wasn’t sure if that rising inflection was meant as assent or encouragement. 'So—what’s left? What makes the hallow kingship hallowed now?'

The archdivine’s eyebrows went up. 'The blessings of the five gods.'

'Your pardon, Learned, but I get blessed by the five gods every Quarterday Service. It does not make me holy.'

'Truly,' muttered Hetwar, almost inaudibly.

Ingrey ignored him and forged on. 'Is there any more to this kingly blessing than pious good wishes?'

The archdivine said sonorously, 'There is prayer. The five archdivine-ordainers pray for guidance in their vote; all invite their gods for a sign.'

Ingrey rather thought he had delivered a couple of those signs himself, in clinking bags. It had not made him feel like a messenger of the gods. 'What else? What other changes? There must be something more.' The slight strain in his voice betrayed too much urgency, and he swallowed to bring it back under close control. Five old kin groups were now missing from the mix, true, three of them extinct, two diminished. Five Temple-men replaced them smoothly enough, and who could say they were any less true representatives of their people? Yet the election had created Horseriver a mage-king once, created him something extraordinary. Aye, and he never stopped being it, did he? Was the present kingship empty in part because Horseriver held on to something in his deathlessness that he should have yielded back?

Biast, who had been jittering in his chair during this, interrupted. 'If the accusation against Wencel is true, I am deeply concerned for the safety of my sister.'

Ingrey bore no love for Fara, after what she had done to Ijada, but considering his suspicions of the fate of Horseriver’s last wife-mother, he had to allow the point. 'Your concern seems valid to me, my lord.'

Hetwar sat up at that admission.

Ingrey added, 'I am reminded, Sealmaster. Earl Horseriver has lately hinted to me that he desires my service. I beg you, if he asks, to say you will not release me. I fear to refuse him to his face. I don’t wish to invoke his enmity.'

Hetwar’s brows drew down in furious thought. The archdivine stared, and said, 'Two spirit-defiled men to be in the same house? Why does he desire this?'

'You assume your conclusion, Archdivine,' Ingrey pointed out. 'The earl is accused, not yet convicted.'

Fritine turned in his seat. 'Lewko... ?'

Lewko spread his hands. 'I would need a closer look at him. And the aid of the god, which I cannot force.'

Fritine turned back to Ingrey, frowning. 'I would have you speak more plainly, Lord Ingrey.'

Ingrey shrugged. 'Consider what you demand, Archdivine. If you wish my testimony of the unseen and the uncanny, you cannot pick and choose. You must take all, or none. And I doubt you are ready to accept me as some sort of courier from the gods, bearing orders for you.'

While Fritine was digesting the implications of that remark, Ingrey continued, 'As for Wencel, he claims to be reminded of our cousinship. Belatedly enough.' Well, that too was true in a sense.

Biast said indignantly, 'You would leave my sister unprotected in a house where you fear to go yourself?' His brow wrinkled, and he added more slowly, 'You are loyal to my lord Hetwar, are you not?'

He has never betrayed me. Yet. Ingrey gave a little ambiguous bow.

Biast continued, 'But if the accusation is true... who better to protect the princess from, from any uncanny act her husband might take, or to rescue her from that place if the need arises? And you might observe, inform, report... '

'Spy?' said Fritine, in an interested tone. 'Could he do that, do you think, Hetwar?'

Ingrey raised a brow. 'Now you would have me take a lying oath of service, my lords?' he inquired sweetly.

'Ingrey, stop that,' snapped Hetwar. 'Your graveyard notions of humor have no place in this council.'

'That was humor?' muttered Biast.

'As close as he ever comes to it.'

'I wonder that you endure it.'

'His trying style has proved to have its uses. From time to time. He wanders his own twisted path, and brings back prizes no logical man would have even suspected were there. I’ve never been sure if it was a talent or a curse.' Hetwar sat back and regarded Ingrey acutely. 'Could you do this?'

Ingrey hesitated. It would make official what he had been doing half-awarely all along; playing both ends against the middle while desperately collecting fragments that he hoped would fall into some pattern. And keeping his own counsel betimes.

He could say no. He could.

'I admit,' he said instead, slowly, 'I, too, desire to understand more of Wencel.' He added to Biast, 'And why do you suddenly think your sister in danger now, and not anytime these past four years?'

Biast looked a trifle embarrassed. 'These past four years, I was scarcely paying attention. We met but once after her wedding, and wrote seldom. I assumed, assumed she was well disposed of by my father, and content withal. I had my own duties. It was not till she spoke with me—well, I taxed her—this past day that she revealed how unhappy she had grown.'

'What did she say to you?' asked Hetwar.

'She’d intended no such harm to fall out of the, um, events at Boar’s Head. She thought Boleso had grown too wild, yes, but hoped that perhaps he and, um, Lady Ijada might grow content with one another, in time. That the girl might calm him. Fara feels her lack of children keenly, though I must say, it is not clear to me that the fault in that is hers. She thought her husband’s eye had fallen on her new handmaiden, for it was he who brought her into Fara’s household.'

That last is new, thought Ingrey. Ijada had thought the offer the work of her Badgerbank aunt, but who had stirred up the aunt to remember her? Could Wencel have been thinking of a new heir, to place between himself and Ingrey? Or were his motives in securing Ijada something altogether else? Altogether else, I now think. He would not so bestir himself without reason, but his reasons are not those of other men.

'Lady Ijada claims the earl offered her no insult,' Ingrey put in. 'I grant you she may be naive enough not to have recognized one unless it were gross, and Wencel is not given to grossness. I hold Fara much at fault in this whole chain of events. Though I admit, Boleso was well along on his own dark path, and it was better he was stopped sooner than later.' Reminded by Hetwar’s quick glare of a need for civility, he added to Boleso’s bereaved brother, 'I’m sorry it had to be so cruelly.'

The prince-marshal vented an unhappy Mm. It was not a noise of disagreement.

The archdivine cleared his throat. 'I would observe, Lord Ingrey, that by your testimony to Learned Lewko—and certain other evidences—it seems your spirit wolf is now unbound. You stand in violation of your dispensation.'

His bland tone concealed not so much menace, or acute fear, as pressure, Ingrey decided. So. He knew how to deal with simple pressure.

'It was not by my will, sir.' A safely uncheckable assertion. 'It was an accident that occurred when Learned Hallana took the geas off me. And so, in a sense, the Temple’s own doing.' Yes, blame the absent. 'While I can’t say it was the gods’ will, two gods have been quick enough to make use of it.'