Chamfray mused, “Tingawans are skilled physicians. The princess probably had excellent care, strengthening care. Exactly what did Alicia use to kill her?”
“I never asked. She gets pettish if I ask. She says she knows what she’s doing.”
“She did use poison?”
“Of course. That’s what the Old Dark Man taught me to use, and he taught her as well. He told me he would, when I left there. ‘You’ll have a daughter,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach her what she needs to know.’ I suppose he did, though she never went there. I think she lied about not finding any books at all. I think he left books for her in the Old Dark House. He said it was always wise to be elsewhere when people sickened and died, and poison was the surest way to do that. He had a wealth of knowledge, the Old Dark Man.”
“I wonder that he died at all, even at his age. How did it happen?”
“It’s odd you should ask. I was trying to think earlier today when it was I knew he had died, what the sequence of events was. When Alicia was just a baby, he told me he was leaving possession of Altamont to me; he wrote to me saying so. He never mentioned it again. Then after Hulix was born, when Alicia was about eight—I remember, because that’s when I killed Falyrion and Alicia turned odd—some travelers came through with the news that the Old Dark House was empty, that the Old Dark Man was gone. I went there. It was closed, locked. He had never given me a key. No one was seeing to the castle itself, but the farmers were still farming, the stockmen still raising their cattle; everything was going on as before. They told me everything was being managed by an agent who worked for the Port Lords in Wellsport. The Sea King hadn’t yet completely shut down the shipping, but the Port Lords were already looking about for other ways to earn a living. They said they had no instructions regarding my taking the place. None at all. Well, I had his letter telling me the place was mine, but after looking at that dreadful, gray, dead pile of stone, I decided not to bother with it. You and I had other things going on, as you remember.”
“So you don’t really know that your Old Dark Man is dead.”
“What else? He was already ancient, and he’s gone. When Rancitor spoke to the king, when the king had Alicia made duchess and gave her title to the place, the people in Wellsport gave her the keys and told her to take over. She was still very young, fourteen, I think. She didn’t go there for several years. She wouldn’t have gone at all if the Old Dark Man had still been alive.”
“Did you ever wonder about him?”
“Wonder how?”
“When you speak of him, he seems to be a very strange, almost unearthly kind of creature, and I find myself wondering if he was really human. Do you think he was?”
She stiffened, her face suffused with blood. “I saw him, Chamfray. I saw quite enough of him, head to toe, uncovered. He was just like all other men. Taller, that’s all. Very dark skinned, not brown, more a dark gray, but just like every other man. All men are more or less alike!”
Something about his last question had disturbed her, so he waited for a time before asking, “And you haven’t had any reason to go there since?”
She took a deep breath. “No. As I said: it’s an ugly, uncomfortable pile of stone. The cellars were full of spiders and rats. The rooms were piled with books and ancient papers. As a child, I lived in the little gatehouse. I had a nursemaid, then a governess. I had a tutor. I even had a riding master. It was warm in the little house. It was clean. The food was good. Every time I went into the Old Dark House, I spent the whole time either shivering or rat catching. No, I’ve not been back there since Alicia went there.” Of course, she hadn’t spent the whole time shivering or rat catching. There were other things the Old Dark Man had required that had been far worse than shivering or rat catching. “Why do you ask?”
He shrugged. “Alicia was always fussy about things. She was quite willing to kill any servant girl who didn’t do the dusting properly, so I was just wondering how she could bear to live there, if it is as you say.”
“She has no doubt cleaned it up. She may even have redone the inside of it. It wasn’t dilapidated, just terribly dirty and uncomfortable. Altamont has plenty of income. Alicia may even have left the Port Lords in control and be living off the income from the farms and herds. Most of the produce is sold in the fiefdoms along the coast anyhow, and if I had the place, that’s the way I’d have done it.”
They said nothing more that day. The next day, Chamfray was worse, and worse yet the day after that. A week later he died. The doctors asked if they could cut him, to find out what had killed him. Mirami told them yes, for she wanted to know. They told her it looked as though he had melted inside. They had no idea what could have caused it, nor did she. None of her poisons did any such thing. The doctors said some fungi had spores that became liquescent in the same way; perhaps he
