The duchess shook her head angrily. “The child can’t be more than four or five. What would she have been doing alone in the forest?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, the only evidence of frustration he allowed himself. “As I remarked at the time, your spy may have been mistaken. The castle swarms with children, and perhaps she saw one of them up to some mischief, but what does it matter? The Duchess of Wold is dead; long live the new Duchess of Wold.” He forced a smile. “Your way into his heart is open if it should be his heart that interests you. Why obsess about a child?”
“I care nothing for his heart, Jenger, as you know well. And it isn’t so much the child I worry about as the place she comes from: Tingawa.” The duchess raised one nostril as though scenting something foul. “While Mirami and I were at the court of King Gahls, the court seer cast the bones. He warned me of a shadow in the direction of Tingawa.”
“The court seer? My lady, oh, consider him. A man so old he cannot see his own face in the mirror? So feeble he needs two attendants to get him out of bed in the morning! And so, he has seen a shadow! I’ll wager that he sees little but shadows! He usually delivers them in assortments: half a dozen dismemberments, a fire, a flood, perhaps an invasion of vampires or kraken.” He relaxed slightly as he saw her smile.
“As he did, yes.” She gestured fretfully. “Perhaps it’s simply that this soul-carrying business seems unbelievable, outlandish to me. The very word ‘Tingawa’ sets me on edge for some reason. Is it really their custom?”
He adopted a ponderous and thoughtful expression, weighty with assurance. “Ma’am, it seems unbelievable only because it is outlandish. Tingawa is far away and many of its customs seems strange to us, though I believe we have adopted the habit of bathing in the winter, which seemed equally outlandish when we first heard of it.” He smiled sweetly at her, willing her to return his smile. “I assure you it is a true custom, frequently spoken of, particularly among the noble houses. Tingawans of dynastic families have a fanatical attachment to their ancestral lands, their temples, their ancestral ghosts. They feel a continuity that is longer than their lifetimes. Part of it is merely historic but the larger part might be called spiritual.”
“Spiritual,” she spat. “Nonsense.”
“I merely use their word. They would say spiritual. The spirits of the people who have kept the land are considered to be integral parts of that land, the very essence of the land, and if they die in some distant place, it is imperative that they be brought back to their own place, their own people. Why, even their diplomats have people attached to their legations to serve as soul carriers if that role becomes necessary.”
Her Grace the duchess chewed her lip, her twisted mouth changing her face into a gargoyle’s mask, harsh and unlovely. “They may say spiritual, but I say nonsense. Land is merely land; trees are trees; rivers are rivers, all of them ours to do with as we will! We have taken the world and subdued it, it belongs to us, not we to it, and custom or not, I will deal with this so-called carrier, she and those who brought her here.”
He shook his head, speaking softly but urgently. “Your family and your powerful friends have undertaken an ambitious project, very ambitious. Very important. Perhaps it is so important it should not be interrupted by a child? Even a Tingawan child?” He flushed, his nostrils narrowed. “The queen, your mother, has remarked that this is a time for concentration. In my presence, she recalled a time in her forefathers’ land when his people found that ridding themselves of a minor annoyance stirred up the hunters, and she has been plagued by them ever since. The hunters are still there, my lady. Be careful. It would take very little to turn a sweet-faced nothing of a child into a blessed martyr.”
She turned a look of such hostility on him that he felt the cold inwardly. He barely kept himself from cringing.
“You would do well, Jenger, not to speak of my mother. Matters between my mother and me are our business, not even remotely yours.”
Then, suddenly, she smiled at him, herself sweet faced and charming. “My mother would no doubt disapprove. She disapproves of most of the things I enjoy. Nonetheless, I will dispose of the soul carrier, her guardians, and any other Tingawans who may be so arrogant as to alight on Norland’s side of the sea because they have no right to offend me by being here in the first place!”
The curve of her lips had almost drawn his eyes away from the frozen, empty depths of her eyes. He pretended not to see them, smiling in return. Sometimes looking into Alicia’s eyes was like looking death in the face, and no easy death at that!
“Surely you are too powerful to be offended by a child! I don’t understand why it would be worthwhile!” he cried, shaking his head in frustration, knowing even as he spoke that he would have done far better simply to stay
