The Hallowed Hunt

She nodded. Her expression was more thoughtful than panicked, though what she was thinking, Ingrey could scarcely guess. She possessed no more answers than he did, but he admired her talent for finding very uncomfortable questions. He suspected he would be in want of it shortly.

He clasped her hands, in lieu of the good-bye kiss they could not make under watchful eyes. The strange current that seemed to flow between them still lingered, in that grip. 'I will know if they move you.'

She nodded again, releasing him. 'I’ll be listening for you, too.'

He managed a ghost of a bow and tore himself away.

INGREY REPEATED HIS UPHILL WALK OF YESTERDAY THROUGH Kingstown, trailed this time by a puffing Tesko burdened with his belongings. Horseriver’s porter was plainly expecting them, for they were shown at once to Ingrey’s new room. It was no narrow servant’s stall under the eaves, but a gracious chamber on the third floor appointed for highborn guests, with an alcove for Tesko. Leaving his servant to arrange his scant wardrobe, Ingrey left to explore the mansion. He wondered if Horseriver would expect him to clear the rest of his possessions from Hetwar’s palace, and what the earl would construe if he did not.

Passing a sitting room on the second floor, its moldings gracefully carved in birch wood, Ingrey glanced in to see Fara and one of her ladies. The matronly lady sat bent over some sewing; Fara stood with her hand upon the drape, staring pensively out the window, strained features silvered by the morning light. Her rather rectangular face was pale, her body short and solid in her drab dress; she would be stout in old age, Ingrey thought. Her head turned at some creak or clink from Ingrey, and her dark eyes widened in recognition.

'Lord Ingrey—is it?'

'Princess.' Ingrey essayed a sketchy salute, his hand to his heart recalling, but not quite completing, a sign of the Five.

She looked him over, frowning. 'Biast told me last night you were to enter my husband’s service.'

'And, ah... yours?'

'Yes. He told me that.' She glanced at her attendant. 'Leave us. Leave open the door.' The woman rose, curtseyed, and slipped out past Ingrey; Fara beckoned him within.

She looked up at him in wary speculation as he came to the window. Her voice was low. 'My brother said you would protect me.'

Keeping his tone neutral and equally quiet, Ingrey said, 'Do you feel in need of protection?'

She made an uncertain gesture. 'Biast said a dire suspicion has fallen upon Wencel. What do you think of it?'

'Can you not tell if it is so, lady?'

She shook her head, not exactly in negation, and raised her long chin. 'Can not you?'

'The presence of a blood-companion such as mine is not what defiles a man; it is what he does with it. Or so I must believe. My dispensation tacitly concedes the same. Have you suspected nothing uncanny of your husband, in all this time?'

Her thick black brows drew down in deeper unhappiness over this not-quite-answer. 'No... yes. I don’t know. He was strange from the start, but I thought him merely moody. I tried to lighten his spirit, and sometimes, sometimes it seemed to work, but always he fell back into his blackness again. I prayed to the Mother for guidance, and, and more—I tried to be a good wife, as the Temple teaches us.' Her voice quavered, but did not break. Her frown darkened. 'Then he brought that girl in.'

'Lady Ijada? Did not you like her—at first?'

'Oh, at first—!' She gave an angry little shrug of her shoulders. 'At first, I suppose. But Wencel... attended to her.'

'And what was her response to this regard of his? Did you tax her about it?'

'She pretended to laugh. I didn’t laugh. I watched him, watching her—I had never seen him so much as look twice at another woman since we wed, or before for that matter, but he looked at her.'

Ingrey composed a question that would lead to Fara’s version of the events at Boar’s Head, though it scarcely seemed needful. No searing intellect here, no subtle guile, no eerie powers, just a hurt bewilderment. There seemed to be no uncanny tracks lingering upon her, either; Wencel did not choose to bespell his wife, it seemed. Why not?

But Fara’s mind was circling in another direction. 'Biast’s accusation... ' she murmured. Her gaze upon Ingrey sharpened. 'It could be so, I suppose. I can tell nothing by looking at you, after all. If you really hide a wolf within, it is as invisible as any other man’s sins. It would explain... much.' She drew breath, and demanded abruptly, 'How did you get your dispensation?'

His brows went up. 'I suppose I had a particularly charitable Temple inquirer. He was sorry for a sick orphan. At length, I gave some proof of control of my affliction that seemed to satisfy my examiners. Not enough to give a castlemastership into my young hands, of course. Later—later, Hetwar supported me.'

'If Wencel controls his beast so well that even I cannot tell he carries it, is that not proof enough to gain a like pardon?' she asked, a plaintive note leaking into her voice.

Ingrey moistened his lips. 'You would have to ask the archdivine. It is no decision of mine.' Was Fara thinking in terms of protecting and preserving her husband? Could Wencel slip through a Temple examination such as the one that had vacillated so long over Ingrey’s case? Horseriver had so much more to conceal, but also, it seemed, more power to bring to bear on the task. If he desired. Perhaps he would be driven, through the destruction of his old concealments now in progress, to attempt some such ploy.

In fact, one would think the task would claim all his attention. He pursues something else. Intently. What?

For whatever private reasons, Fara clearly found the accusation that Wencel possessed a spirit beast to be alarmingly believable, once presented to her imagination. She had the look of a woman fitting together some long- worked puzzle, the last pieces falling into place faster and faster. Frightened, yes, both of and for her husband, and for herself.

'Why not ask Wencel these questions yourself?' said Ingrey.

'He did not come to me last night.' She rubbed her face, and her eyes. The hard friction might be supposed to account for their reddening. 'He doesn’t, much, lately. Biast said to say nothing to him, but I do not know... '

'Wencel already knows he is privately accused. You would betray no one’s secret by trying him.'

She stared timidly at him. 'Are you so much in his confidence already, then?'

'I am his closest living cousin.' Temporarily. 'Wencel’s need for kinship has no nearer source of satisfaction, in this crisis.' So to speak.

Her hands wrung each other. 'I shall be glad of you, then.'

That remains to be seen. Unfortunately, he could not very well express his low opinion of her betrayal of her handmaiden and simultaneously expect to cultivate her confidences. He stiffened, his senses attuned to an approaching presence even before the sound of a light step wafted from the corridor and a throat was cleared in the doorway.

'Lord Ingrey,' said Wencel, in a cordial voice. 'They told me you had arrived.'

Ingrey made his little sketch bow. 'My lord Horseriver.'

'I trust you have found your new chambers to your liking?'

'Yes, thank you. Tesko thinks we rise in the world.'

'So you might.' Wencel’s gesture of greeting to his wife was unexceptionably polite. 'Attend on me, if you please, Ingrey. Lady, pray excuse us.'

Fara’s return nod was equally cool, only a slight rigidity of her body betraying her confusion of emotions.

Ingrey followed Wencel out and down two turnings of the halls to his study. Wencel pulled the door firmly shut behind them; Ingrey turned so as not to present his back to his host. Horseriver had certainly had time to prepare a magical attack, if he were so disposed. But the hairs on the back of Ingrey’s neck stirred in vain, for Wencel merely waved him to a chair and hitched his hip over the edge of his writing table. He swung one leg and