“Well, ship or no, my messages must be sent to Tingawa and Merhaven is the only place I can send them from. Meantime, you must find out where Alicia is. If she is at Ghastain, give these messages to our embassy, and they will make appropriate decisions.”
“And if she’s not there?”
“She’ll be at the Old Dark House. You know where it is. How you exact vengeance is your business. Remember how she works. Guard yourself.”
He stood there, very like a bear, standing but weaving slightly, as though he found balancing on his own feet very difficult. She knew he was weighing all that she had told him. If he went back to Tingawa, he could not lie to the Do-Lok family. They had truth tellers among them who could read a lie as another would read words on a page, so he could not claim to have fulfilled his oath if he had not. Standing there, so at a loss, so worried, he seemed to her almost pitiable.
She said softly, “You’ve been in a great turmoil, Bear. It may not be your fault. Alicia may have obtained genetic material from Tingawa, from your betrothed. She may have used this to send a ghost of Legami-am to haunt you, to twist your mind, your nerves . . .”
“All night,” he whispered. “Not so much lately, but before there wasn’t an hour she wasn’t in my head. Whispering. I thought it was her, hating me because I had been so long away. I love her, you know. As Justinian loved his princess, I love her. I am Tingawan, too, Precious Wind. And all the time it was that . . . that foul bitch . . .”
“The duchess hates Tingawans for some reason we know nothing about. We don’t need to understand or explain it, but we do need to repay it in kind.”
He put the messages into his pocket, thrusting them deeply as he sighed, a longing sigh. He said, “I may as well go to the embassy. I’ll find out what’s going on. If I can, I’ll return to Merhaven. It’s still a port. When I was there, I carried a greeting to Genieve from Justinian. He had told me long ago if we ever went there to find her house and to greet her for him. Her house is across the bay, high on the hills, so she has not had to move it. She will no doubt invite you to stay with her while you are there. She invited me, but I was too occupied trying to find a way to get home.”
“Poor Xulai,” murmured Precious Wind.
Bear said, “She was a nice child, but I never understood what all the fuss was about her. Some baby Bright Pearl had. Babies are cute enough, like puppies. As a baby, she was a nice little thing. There at the abbey, though, she was a real . . . well, high and mighty, acting like royalty because she was a Xakixa. Just daring the world to take her for ransom. I suppose something went wrong with the payment for her.”
“Is that what happened? She was taken for ransom? Because she carried Xu-i-lok’s soul?”
He flushed. It was obviously what he had been told. “Why, of course. What else?”
“No, Bear. No ransom was asked. They took Xulai to torture her and kill her.”
His eyes went wildly off to the side. His body went rigid. “That’s . . . crazy.”
“That’s the duchess Alicia. It’s what she does. She cares nothing for souls.”
He turned away, saying at last in a strangled voice, “You know as well as I do the souls come home, eventually. Even if Xulai didn’t get to Tingawa, Xu-i-lok’s soul would get there.”
“And Xulai’s?”
“Hers, too. Eventually.”
“So if there’s no one to carry your soul home, it doesn’t worry you.”
“I’m a warrior, Xu-xin. Many of us don’t have Xakixas. We have a saying. It’s not how we live, it’s how we die that matters.” He laughed harshly.
She nodded. “That must be of comfort to you.” She breathed deeply. “If I am not in Merhaven when you return, I will leave word where you may find me.”
He did not bid her farewell. He got on his horse and rode away north, not looking back. For a moment she had a pang of guilt. She had lied only about Xulai being dead. But she had misled him and . . . and, all too tellingly, when she had done so, he had not grieved for Xulai. She had thought the old Bear would have grieved, and perhaps he would have, for the child, but not for the woman she had become. He had not known, or perhaps had chosen not to know, what her fate was to have been. She feared she had seen the last of him as he rode over a little hill and disappeared. She had hoped for some other memory of him.
From within the edge of the forest, the wolves saw her moving once more. They got to their feet. They would have to hurry to get to their dinner before it was fully dark.
At the palace in Ghastain, Mirami’s dinner party had been a success. Rancitor had been there, enchanted by the daughter of a new ambassador to the court. Mirami had reminded him that his freedom from restraint depended upon treating the girl courteously and making no sexual overtures. She also dosed his food with something that would keep him politely calm. King Gahls enjoyed himself. Alicia was there, of course, sweetly gracious, not trying to outshine anyone, no jewels at all, which Mirami thought a little too inconspicuous but generally sensible of her. No point in attracting attention and making other courtiers jealous of
