“Or the abbot will confirm that there are troops . . .”
“But we’ll have to confirm what the abbot says,” he said grimly.
She clung to Abasio, feeling that if she let go of him she would fall into some kind of abyss. “Bear was my teacher, Abasio. He was almost what I thought a father would have been. He’s been with me since I was a little child. How could he!”
“Hush,” he said. “We’re moving too quickly . . .”
She remembered, all at once. “My . . . my mother said that. She said one may neither accuse nor exonerate until one knows for sure. It was one of her fumitos, her sayings.”
He managed a grin. “Very wise. There is another possibility. This could be Bear’s attempt to play his own game against the duchess.”
She shivered, feeling something cold and hard form inside her, like a rod of iron extending from her legs up into her brain, as though she had swallowed a poker without knowing it. She had known Bear for a very long time. She had never known him to be dishonorable. Cynical, but there was much in life to be cynical about. “How do we find out? We must know which it is!”
“First, you must forget what you have just heard and seen—”
“I can’t. Not possibly.”
“Not forget, but behave as though you are not aware. Then, you must leave it to me to find out what his intentions really are. This all seems terribly sudden, terribly unexpected. Almost as though . . . something, someone, is pushing him.”
“Oh, when he was talking to Precious Wind, he said his betrothed is calling to him! And he won’t talk to you. Bear is terribly proud. He doesn’t talk to people about personal things.”
“No, and trying to get him to talk would destroy my reputation as a wandering news carrier, a vendor of what’s happening elsewhere, a general odd-body who dyes napkins and is otherwise ignorant of everything important.” He hugged her to him, trying desperately to ignore the fact that she felt frighteningly like another young woman he had held this closely, this desperately. His reverie was abruptly broken by a squirming something between the two of them. He drew back just as an unexpected creature erupted from Xulai’s cloak pocket.
“I may be indeterminate,” said the fisher, “but I’m certainly not incorporeal. If this man is close enough to you to hug you like that, then he should certainly be close enough to know about me.”
Xulai managed to suppress hysterical laughter. She whispered, “Abasio, this is Fisher. He was bequeathed to me by my mother. That is, she’s the likeliest one to have done it, though neither he nor I can say for sure. He is a kind of advance warning system, or a guide if I’m lost, or anything else that’s helpful.”
“And it really is helpful,” said Fisher, with some satisfaction, “to know to whom one can safely go if the person I am protecting has to be rescued from a dungeon or saved from being killed. Obviously, that will not include the man Bear. Not now.”
“No,” agreed Abasio, seeming totally unsurprised that he was being addressed by a member of the weasel family. But then, he had come from a country that had had a good many talking animals, creatures left over from the Big Kill, when men had played with genetics as a child plays with blocks. “No, for the time being, at least, I’m your safest bet. I’ll work the other end of the conspiracy. Either this is really a trap to catch Xulai or Bear is laying a trap for the duchess. Whichever, the duchess doesn’t know me at all. I’m a stranger, and strangers, particularly when drunken or sleepy, can overhear all kinds of things.”
“Abasio, remember what Nettie said! The duchess was at Benjobz Inn when Nettie and the Farrier brothers were there, spying. They stayed out of sight, but you were there at the same time, making royal fripperies for Benjobz. She might have seen you, and Jenger may have been there, too.”
He cast his mind back to his visit at Benjobz Inn. Though he thought he had not been seen by the duchess, certainly she might have seen his wagon. And mentioning the duchess raised the interesting question of how she had managed to get to the inn at the same time they did without having been seen on the road. The winding road onto the heights allowed one to see people two days behind on the road, but they had not seen her. This would imply another route. What possible other route? Up was up; it could not be turned over to run downhill, and he had never heard anyone mention any other route up or down than by the falls, which was invariably fatal!
He took a deep breath, trying to clear his mind. “First things first. I won’t let the wrong person recognize me. You go about your business as though you know nothing. Tomorrow I’ll check out the disposition of troops. The men I’m housed with know a lot about who is where and what’s going on. If the troop business was a lie and Bear lied to Precious Wind about it, that’s a bad thing. Then we’ll have you ask the abbot about the security of the houses and see what he says. If he backs up the lie, that will be a worse thing. Then we know . . . Well, we know we have to get out of here. The two of us can travel more quietly than a whole wagon train of equipment and people.” And maybe he’d have to leave his own wagon and equipment
