“Do you think he’s coming back?” he asked, not waiting for an answer. “That man left a lot of enemies.”
“Why is that?”
“Me’n the men figure he’s so used to winning fights, he thinks he’s meant to win everything. He plays cards like a drunk. Stupid. He loses. He gets mad, says things, threatens people. Nobody’ll play with him anymore. We’re glad to see him go.”
Precious Wind reflected that his habit had not been that bad when they were at Woldsgard. Something had set the man off, far off. She hoped he was riding out of trouble, not into it.
In the bird tower, without a word to anyone, Brother Solo Winger picked out a pigeon from Woldsgard and another from Etershore-Across-the-Water. He took from his pocket two messages left with him by Abasio, inserted them into the little tubes, attached the tubes to the pigeons’ legs, and let them go. He read them first, of course. He always read everything, going and coming, including the abbot’s messages that were marked personal. In Winger’s opinion, it was high time somebody caught on to what either the abbot or somebody close to the abbot was up to. And wasn’t this business at Woldsgard going to be interesting!
Xulai came to again as she was thrust down on a stony surface, a raised surface, a bench or table. Before she could catch her breath, the sack was pulled up from her legs, which were abruptly shackled to the wall. Hands were next, then the sack came away from her head. The man, Jenger, stood looking at her.
“Why did you do that?” she complained in her most childish, feminine voice. “That’s not a nice thing to do at all.”
“I thought you were the other one,” he snarled. “The little one! She wants all you Tingawans, but especially the little one. How many of you are there? You’re not the one who was driving the carriage.”
“There are five of us.” Misleading him even a little was well worth doing. “The little girl and Yellow Bamboo have already gone to Elsmere, then there’s Blue Pearl and Great Bear, and me, I’m the cook.”
“And what’s your name?”
“I’m Green Bamboo. Yellow Bamboo is my sister.”
Jenger felt both anger and fear at hearing the child was gone. He hadn’t spoken to Bear about the child in some time, but the duchess still wanted her more than the others. Now the whole situation had changed!
“Well, we’ll see what my employer has to say about this. You’re not the one I’d arranged for, but she’s been so busy twisting your Bear’s mind toward his girlfriend in Tingawa, I was afraid he’d head south before we concluded our deal. Your Bear promised he’d have the child where I could get her within a day or two. He didn’t tell me she was gone.”
“She’s been gone since a few days after we got there. She’s in Elsmere by now.” Let them search in all the wrong places, she thought. They’d probably find Bear. At least they’d have a fight on their hands.
He grabbed her arm, checked the shackle to be sure it was tight, then the other arm, then each foot, letting his fingers move up her leg, under the split skirt she’d put on for riding. “I can’t take you to my employer for days. I barely made it here myself. I can send a bird to ask what she wants me to do with you, though I already know what I’m going to do with you tonight.” He sniggered, a nasty sound. Xulai had heard the same snigger from a stable boy who had made some remark about her to the Horsemaster. She had never seen him again, though the Horsemaster had mentioned that he had been “unsatisfactory.”
The intrusive hand was getting far too close to certain hidden weaponry. She chose to distract him. “Your employer? Who is she? And why would she want to do anything with me? She doesn’t even know me.”
He sat back, looking both sulky and fearful. “Doesn’t matter. She wants all Tingawans in her territory dead, and since you’re not the girl or the driver that she plans to play her games with, she’ll probably tell me to drop you down a shaft somewhere. Don’t despair, though. It’s a long night. We’ll have some time together.”
He went away, locking the door from the outside. She looked at the room, built as a cell. When Jenger went out, she had had a glimpse through the cell door. The tower door was lower, with something built at the side of it, a tank of some kind, and the tower floor was shiny and wet. The cell level was three or four steps up from the tower floor, probably so the cell floor would stay dry. The door was heavy timber, banded with iron; the two straight walls and the one curved wall were stone; the floor was stone. The ceiling was too high to reach, even if one were free to try. She was in a stone box with only three irregularities: the door, the stone bench she was shackled to, and the high, grilled opening that admitted a dull but fiery light. Fading red. Past sunset. Same day. The fisher wouldn’t have had time to find Abasio.
“Not as a fisher,” she said aloud, surprised by the sound of her own voice. “As a hawk, he’ll be there by now.”
Certainly if he could be a fisher, he could be a hawk. He had started out as a chipmunk. Perhaps it was all a vain hope. No matter when the fisher or the hawk or the whatever got to Abasio, Abasio could not grow wings. He wouldn’t have time to get here before Jenger decided to amuse himself, and the thought
