“Voluntary,” she cried. “Are you sure?”
“I’m absolutely positive. The only thing anyone suggested to Abasio was that he go to Woldsgard because he might find something interesting there. Precious Wind came to Woldsgard voluntarily, and Oldwife Gancer was already there, and I went away when my beloved died, and I knew you would come to Merhaven. I knew I would go with you.”
“And Genieve?”
He smiled sadly, shaking his head. “I haven’t spoken to Genieve. I know Genieve will stay with her children, her people. We cannot recover our youth, so why make her suffer yet again? Or that may be only my vanity speaking. She may have forgotten me long ago.”
“No, she had not. But she did choose to stay with her people,” Xulai said in some confusion.
“Genieve was always dutiful. And, though people always seem to value what they lose more than what they have, I think, she loved her husband very well. All in all, then, my decision was a good one. Now, take me to meet your companions, the new ones, with four legs.”
She took a deep breath and decided to stop asking questions for a while. She had not yet half absorbed the answers she had been given.
“I can introduce you to Blue, Father, though he is seasick, but only Precious Wind can introduce you to the wolves.”
Alicia and her escort arrived at the Old Dark House four days after leaving Ghastain. They had ridden hard to Benjobz Inn, taken a meal and short rest there, for the horses. Men could be terrorized into staying awake, but horses could not, and flogged horses sometimes stumbled, hurting or even killing their riders. Even Alicia bowed to this necessity. From Benjobz her nearest hidden shaft was not far; the horses went back to Benjobz, the people made the trip down the shaft to the ancient rails and trams, which was fearsome but quick. The underground tram ride from east to west was downhill the whole way, ending at another shaft only one day’s ride from the Old Dark House, and there were always horses kept stabled nearby. She dismissed the men at her gate and went on into the house by herself. No one answered her call. There was no one in the house at all.
Raging, she went to her cellar, opening the door with her code and flinging herself headlong down the stairs, not waiting for the door to close behind her, not seeing Bear, who had caught it in his huge hands and was holding it open. The men from the embassy had found Alicia’s secret route, and they had not rested at Benjobz but had come straight on.
Two Tingawans stepped around Bear and blocked the door open for him. He had realized he was being followed some time ago and had invited the other Tingawans to stop hiding from him in the interest of time. He knew trained assassins and warriors when he met them. It was well they were trained, for the underground way had been terrible, dark, and seemingly endless.
Now the foremost among them gave him a grim salute. “Together,” he said. “Now we take vengeance on the woman who killed Xu-i-lok and ordered the death of Xu-i-lok’s daughter.”
Bear froze, for the moment unmoving. “Daughter?”
“Xu-i-lok’s daughter. Xulai. The granddaughter of Lok-i-xan.”
Still he was motionless. The granddaughter of Lok-i-xan. And he had been too stupid to see it. He had stood there on the road, on his way from Merhaven, talking with Precious Wind, naming Xulai as a mere Xakixa. Ignoring all the time, the attention, the treasure that was spent in caring for her. Calling her the daughter of a nobody. Of course they had said she was, to protect her, from people like himself! A mere Xakixa. Whom he had sold.
He seemed to hear Precious Wind whispering to him from across the wide sea. “Oh, Great Bear of Zol! As though her parentage should have made any difference!”
In the room below, Alicia was inspecting her devices. She had left the seeker device working to find Jenger, and now its screen sparkled with red dots, dozens, hundreds of them, spread in a great circle around the Vulture Tower, and more of them leading south, fading like a comet’s tail. How could he be spread over that wide a distance?
The answer came to her. Wolves: they had torn him apart, eaten him, and shat him out as they traveled away; merely wolves. No need for the little capsules, the seeker mirror, the hunt. He was gone. She was momentarily angry, as momentarily amused: poor Jenger. He certainly wouldn’t have foreseen that!
She turned to her household devices, a simple screen with lights that moved among the various rooms to show her where her servants were. It was completely dark! There were no servants anywhere in the Old Dark House. They were not anywhere in Altamont that she could find upon her map. She screamed, “Where? Where is my cook, where are my maids? My archers? Where have they gone?”
A voice came from behind her, gratingly, slowly, mechanically. “Master said send them all away.”
She turned. Brighter lights than usual gleamed on the huge device in the corner, the one that watched her and made little noises.
“What master?” she demanded. “Who told you to send them away? And what right do you have to send anyone anywhere?”
“He is my master. I do what he says do,” the machine said. The words did not come from any organic throat or mouth, she knew that. Devices could not feel. They could not be threatened, any more than horses could. She forced herself into something approaching calm. “Who told you?”
“Old
