“I do love him! And I can’t say anything to anybody or she’ll kill me.”
“Yes. Probably. But you remember what I taught you about keeping your accounts balanced?” He chuckled. “Usually what she does is of no concern to me, but I have a special need for you, Alicia, so I have taught you how to keep yourself safe. If you have paid attention?” He had tipped her head, glared into her eyes. Still sobbing, she had nodded. That night he didn’t take her anywhere. That night he went away without taking her anywhere or doing any of the things he sometimes did to her. The “procedures” that hurt. Sometimes they hurt a lot, but learning to use the mechanisms was worth it!
No doubt Mirami had killed a lot of people before she killed Falyrion, but the deaths had never touched Alicia. Her father’s death was different. She had seen her father lying on the bier. His hands were cold. His face was still. He wouldn’t take her riding anymore. He wouldn’t show her how to fish or read her stories of the Before Time. He wouldn’t take her for surprise picnics into the forest. Mirami could kill whom she liked and Alicia didn’t care, but Mirami had no right to kill Alicia’s father. This death she would not forgive. That was when she really paid attention to the Old Dark Man’s strange words. That was when she really focused on keeping her accounts balanced, in order to be safe, yes, but that wasn’t the only reason.
She hadn’t been blamed for Justinian’s flight, so she could assume she was still safe, still in reasonable favor. Her meetings with the Sea King’s ambassadors would remain secret. It was clever of the Sea King to hide them in the refugee villages, among the Becomers! One day, however, when she had time to search Wold for what the Tingawan had hidden there, the Sea King would put such power into her hands that Mirami would no longer matter. Until that time it was expedient to set the Tingawans aside and at least pretend to attend to family business.
This thought led her to wonder why, since the family business was so important to Mirami, with all her spies and agents and little people passing on bits of information, she had not foreseen Justinian’s leaving. She always seemed to know everything before it happened, but she had not known this! In fact, such immediate action was utterly unlike Justinian’s usual behavior. He was slow to act, usually. He liked to think about things. Perhaps the cursed Tingawan princess had made his plans for him before she died! More than merely perhaps. She had done so! If Alicia needed a reason to hate Tingawans, that was a sufficient reason!
Of course, Mirami had not foreseen that the Sea King’s people would approach Alicia, either. Mirami had not foreseen that Alicia might prefer to have plans of her own. Mirami was not omniscient. Cheered by this, Alicia drummed her fingers, crossing things off her mental list, eventually coming to the subject of her most recent annoyance: Jenger.
If he had reached the Vulture Tower, he was now arranging to abduct the Tingawan females and assassinate the one called Bear. If he succeeded, well and good! The prisoners could be kept at the Old Dark House indefinitely. A few times she had kept prisoners alive for years. Well, almost alive. And if Jenger had not succeeded, it really didn’t matter, because the Tingawans could be killed later. She could simply send a pigeon to the Vulture Tower, telling Jenger to return to Altamont. This would tell her if the route was safe for her to use.
However, Mirami had said they had time and Jenger had been behaving very oddly of late, not as amusing as usual, more subdued. Perhaps he suspected he was about to be replaced. Servants who reached that point were sometimes driven to play games of their own. Well, since a little delay was allowable, she would wait a day or two before sending archers by the same route Jenger had taken. The shafts would be a bit drier by then; they could report on the condition of the tunnels when they returned and they could bring Jenger back with them. As a matter of fact, they could take a pack animal or two and bring back everything in the tower. If Jenger had been playing games, there would be some evidence of it.
Busy with these plans, she left her secret room, which locked itself behind her. Also behind her, she left the remaining hair and fingernail fragments from Bear’s betrothed in far-off Tingawa, along with the hairs she had obtained from Bear’s barber in Wold. The current haunting would go on for a while longer before she had to strengthen it. Bear’s hair in the seeker, the girl’s hair in the sending machine, the two linked. Wherever he was, her essence would be all around him. He would be smelling her, hearing her, feeling her. Alicia could let that situation alone for the moment.
An unintended result of Alicia’s temporary abandonment of her devices was that the ghost possessing Bear weakened and for a few days, Bear—who could not scout the way south until the roads cleared somewhat—stopped lecturing Xulai about moving into the house at the edge of the abbey lands. Xulai gave thanks for this, however temporary it might be. She was finding the weathery days an interim she had needed, a few days to get used to herself before she and Abasio needed to act. Also, Abasio had time to get the cephalopod book into his library. He said it was a leftover from a time when nanotechnology had been able to do remarkable things. Not all ease-machines, he claimed, had been evil.
Xulai found this to be true when Abasio put the strange helmet on her head and she entered the library, where she met Ollie. Ollie was “the Orphan,”
