The Hallowed Hunt

sat down cross-legged on a pallet padded thickly with blankets and looked at him expectantly.

'Ijada is being kept in a private house not far from the quayside.' Ingrey kept his voice low. 'Her house warden is Rider Gesca, for the moment, who is Hetwar’s man, but the house belongs to Earl Horseriver. The servants there are the earl’s spies, and Gesca’s discretion is not to be trusted at all. You must not go there as yourself. Have Learned Lewko take you, perhaps in the guise of an examining physician for the inquest or some such. That would give you an excuse to exclude the servants and speak privately with Ijada.'

Hallana’s eyes narrowed. 'Interesting. Is Fara’s husband no friend to Ijada after all—or too much the reverse? Or is it that wretched princess who is the problem?'

'Fara is a tangle of problems, but Wencel’s interest in her handmaiden was not the simple lechery she had imagined. Wencel has secret powers and unknown purposes. Hetwar has just set me in his household to spy upon him in an effort to determine those purposes. I don’t want the waters there muddied worse than they are already.'

'You think him dangerous?'

'Yes.'

'To you?' Her brows went up.

Ingrey bit his lip. 'It has become suspected that he bears a spirit animal. Like mine. This is... true but incomplete.' He hesitated. 'The geas we broke in Red Dike—he was the source of it.'

She huffed out her breath. 'Why is he not arrested?'

'No!' said Ingrey sharply. And at her stare, more quietly, 'No. In the first place, I have not determined how to prove the charge, and in the second, a premature arrest could trigger a disaster.' For me, at least.

She blinked up at him in a friendly way. 'Oh, come, Lord Ingrey. You can tell me more.'

He was sorely tempted. 'I think... not yet. I am at the stage of things... I don’t yet... I am still driving around in circles waiting for something to happen.'

'Oh.' A look of sympathetic enlightenment crossed her features. 'That stage. I know it well.' After a moment she added, 'My condolences.'

He ran a hand through his hair. It was growing again around the stitches, which were surely ready to come out. 'I cannot linger. I must catch up with Prince Biast and Princess Fara. Your husband was at Ijada’s inquest this morning, and can likely tell you more of it than I can. Lewko knows something as well. I wonder'—Ingrey faltered —'if I can trust you.'

Her head came up, cocking a little to one side. She said dryly, 'I assume that was not meant as an insult.'

Ingrey shook his head. 'I stumble through a murk of lies and half lies and stranger tales right now. The legal thing, the obvious thing—like arresting Wencel—may not be the right thing, though I cannot explain it. All feels fluid. As though the gods themselves hold Their breaths. Something is about to happen.'

'What?'

'If I knew, if I knew–' Ingrey heard the rising tension in his own voice, and yanked it to a stop.

'Shh, hush,' Hallana soothed him, as though calming a nervy mount. 'Can you trust me, at least, to move cautiously, speak little, listen, and wait?'

'Can you?'

'Unless my gods compel me otherwise.'

'Your gods. Not your Temple superiors.'

'I said what I said.'

Ingrey nodded and took a breath. 'Ask Ijada, then. She is the only one I have trusted with everything I know so far. The others have only bits and pieces. She and I are bound together in this by more than'—his voice stumbled, choked—'more than affection. We have shared two waking visions. She can tell you more.'

'Good. I will go to her discreetly as you advise, then.'

'I am not sure if the gods and I seek the same ends. I am absolutely sure the gods and Wencel do not seek the same ends.' His brow wrinkled. 'Oswin said you shattered. In your dream. I did not understand what was meant.'

'Neither do we.'

'Would the gods use us to destruction?' She had not brought her children—for speed, for simplicity? Or for safety? Theirs. Not hers.

'Perhaps.' Her voice was perfectly even, delivering this.

'You do not reassure me, Learned.'

Some might call her return smile enigmatic, but Ingrey thought it more sardonic. He returned her a salute in the same mode and glanced out the wagon back for witnesses. He added over his shoulder, 'If you go at once to Lewko, you might find your husband still there. And possibly a red-haired islander whose tongue is lubricated by either vile liquor or holy kisses from the Lady of Spring, or both.'

'Ah-ha!' said Hallana, sitting up in sudden enthusiasm. 'That is one part of my dream I should not object to finding prophetic. Is he as darling as he seemed?'

'I... don’t think I can answer that,' said Ingrey, after a bemused pause. He swung out of the wagon, slipped around its side, and took the shortcut up the alley toward the Horseriver mansion.

THE EARL’S PORTER ADMITTED HIM WITH A MURMURED, 'MY LADY and the prince- marshal await you in the Birch Chamber, Lord Ingrey.'

Ingrey took the hint, nodded, and ascended the stairs at once. The room was the same in which he had surprised Fara on the first day of his so-called service—perhaps its quiet colors and sober furnishings made it a favorite refuge of hers. He found the little company gathered there, Biast and Symark conversing over a tray of bread and cheeses, Fara half-reclining upon a settee while one of her women pressed a damp cloth to her forehead. The scent of lavender was cool and sharp upon the air.

Fara collected herself and sat up as Ingrey entered, regarding him with a worried glower. Her face was pale, the skin around her eyes a smudged gray, and he recalled Ijada’s report of the princess’s tendency to sick headaches.

'Lord Ingrey.' Biast graciously gestured him to sit. 'The learned divine kept you long.'

Ingrey let this pass with a nod; he had no desire to explain Hallana.

Fara was not inclined to await a diplomatic lead-in. 'What did he ask you? Did he ask you anything else about me?'

'He asked nothing further of you, my lady, nor of anything that happened at Boar’s Head,' Ingrey reassured her. She sat back in evident relief. 'His questions were largely'—he hesitated—'theological.'

Biast did not seem to share his sister’s relief. His brows drew down in renewed concern. 'Did they touch on our brother?'

'Only indirectly, my lord.' There seemed no reason not to be frank with Biast about Oswin’s inquiries, although Ingrey was not at all sure he wanted to reveal his other connections with the scholarly divine just yet. 'He wished to know if I could cleanse Lady Ijada’s soul of her leopard spirit, in the event of her death, as I had seemed to do for the late prince. I said I did not know.'

Biast dragged one booted toe back and forth over the rug, frowned down and seemed to grow conscious of the tic, and stilled his foot. When he looked up, his voice had grown quieter. 'Did you really see the god? Face-to- face?'

'He appeared to me as a young woodland lord of surpassing beauty. I did not get the sense... ' Ingrey paused, uncertain how to express this. 'You have seen children make shadow puppets upon a wall with their hands. The shadow is not the hand, though it is created by it. The young man I saw was, I think, the shadow of the god. Reduced to a simple outline that I could understand. As if there lay vastly more beyond that I could not see, that would have appeared nothing at all like the deceptive shadow if I could have taken it in without... shattering.'

'Did He give you any directions for... for me?' Biast’s tone of diffident hope robbed the question of hubris. He glanced over at his intently listening sister. 'For any of the rest of us?'