“As you say,” he murmured. “And what of you, Precious Wind?”
“I am going to hear evensong in the abbey tonight. I am going to hear morning psalms at dawn. Then I am going to hitch up my horses and go south, to Merhaven. Solo Winger has given me pigeons. I am taking a little carriage so I can carry the cage and their food. I will let you know.”
“Take half a dozen birds,” said Wordswell, feeling unaccustomed tears gathering in his eyes. “Let us know how you fare. And, Precious Wind, if you can . . . let me know what all of this was about. It wasn’t about a Xakixa, a soul carrier, I know that much. That foul woman in Ghastain and her daughter, they may have thought it was about them and their machinations, but I know it wasn’t. I would hate to die not knowing what the reason was for it all.”
“My friend,” she said, controlling a strong urge to hug him, “I know you for a brave and honest man. I have written here what it is all about.” She handed him an envelope, sealed with her own seal. “You may read this, but only after I have gone, for I may not answer questions and you will be full of them. Read it once I am out of sight and then destroy it, burn it. I hope you will not die for many, many years, but when the time comes, you should not die unsatisfied. To my mind, the worst thing about death is not knowing how the story ends. And, who knows, we may yet meet again. I may even be able to tell you how it is working out.”
Precious Wind was usually kind, but she had a streak of cruelty in her. She knew it and sometimes grieved over it as a character flaw. On the other hand, some of the things she needed to do could not be done without a certain simple cruelty, and she tried never to gloat over it. The prior, however, had infuriated her, for he had gloated in the same way that the duchess gloated. A hot little flame of superiority and entitlement had gusted off both of them. Each of them had breathed a sly little wind of greed. The duchess was out of reach, but it would be good to tell at least one of them that it had been noticed.
She found the prior’s servant and asked if she could be of any help to the prior. Tingawans, she said, were schooled in medicine and perhaps she could help.
The servant inquired. The prior, in great pain and considerable fear, would clutch at any straw.
Precious Wind arrived to express her sympathy. “It is a pity Xulai is not here,” she said when he had told her what he could of his symptoms. “She was far better than I as a physician.”
“She was only a girl,” the prior panted. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, it’s partly learning, sir, but it’s partly talent, inborn. She would have known many cures that I do not. Especially since the only thing I know of that fits the symptoms you describe is impossible. Such symptoms as you have are said to have been caused by a mechanism that has not been known since the Big Kill. It could use such things as hair and fingernail clippings and spit to create a . . . what was it called? A virus? Something of that kind. The virus would find the pattern of the person it was created to find, and it would destroy that pattern. The person would simply melt away.” She shook her head in emphatic negation. “Nothing known today can do that! Such mechanisms no longer exist!” Looking deep into his horrified eyes, she reached forward to pat the hand that quivered uncontrollably upon the blanket.
“Now, if I could find the duke’s treasure that he intended as a reward for me, and for Bear, I might be able to hire the one person in all Norland who can cure that disease I mentioned! It would take all that treasure, believe me. The remedy is known to be effective but it is hideously expensive. However, that’s simply fantasy. Since we know it can’t be that illness, that cure wouldn’t help. I’m sure it’s just a winter cold. Nothing serious.”
She gave him her mostly kindly, brilliant smile and left him, testing her conscience as one might test a tooth with one’s tongue, to see if it ached. It did not.
Behind her, in the prior’s quarters, the prior thought dreadfully of things he had not considered before. Of the fact that the abbot had been away recently; of the fact that when the abbot went away, which he did rarely, his rooms might have been cleaned. Of the fact that his own rooms might have contained the very things he had found in the abbot’s quarters. Of the fact that Tingawans were said to be subtle and secret and knowledgeable about many things.
Surely not. Surely not. It could not be. The Tingawan woman who had just visited him was not that clever. None of those people from Woldsgard had been that clever except perhaps for the girl herself, and she hadn’t been here. Well, there were others on the road south to take care of her if she went that way. The one called Bear. He was there.
No, it had to be that woman, at Altamont. She had done it. Perhaps she and her mother were cleaning up after themselves. Or, more likely, the duchess was conspiring against her mother! No love lost there, she had made that clear. So, no love lost the other way, either. And Mirami might know of a way to cure this! To stop it! Stop it happening!
He called for his servant. He wrote. He asked that the message be sent to Ghastain.
His servant returned. The boy who cleaned the bird lofts had mistakenly released all the birds for Ghastain.
