Marof shook his head.
“The Prince of Chang has a personal guard of uniformed lashers,” Arne said. “When our prince visited Chang Court last Haro, she saw the prince’s guard and wanted one for herself. The peer her mother said no. The prince must have recruited one without the peer’s knowledge, which is why she has been so secretive about it. I would like to know where she got the uniforms.”
He was anxiously scrutinizing the activity around his dwelling. As he watched, a lasher emerged from it, strode up to the prince, saluted, and handed something to her.
Marof cursed again. “He don’t even kneel. A lasher, and he don’t kneel to his prince. Let me tell the peer.”
Arne spoke slowly, keeping his eyes on the drama being enacted in the street below. “You came to me last night to report a rotten plank in the bridge below the east pasture.”
Marof chuckled. “Aya. Bad plank, that. If you say so, that’s what I did. Is there really a rotten plank there?”
“There is one that looks rotten. I have been saving it for an emergency like this. We went out before dawn to have a look at it. Then I sent you on a watchwalk along the South Wood Road to see whether the other bridges show signs of rot.”
“Aya. We parted at the fork. Do you want me to give the alarm at the ruins?”
“Tell them what is happening. Someone has talked, and the prince is looking for something—if she hasn’t already found it. Roszt and Kaynor were staying at my house.”
Marof turned in alarm. “Aya. That sounds bad. I’ll give the alarm.”
“Circle around by the swamp road and inspect the bridges there. Then head back and approach the court from the south. If anyone asks, tell him you have been inspecting bridges all day, and you have come to tell the land warden about that rotten plank.”
“Aya.”
“The prince’s guard may may bar the road to keep news of this from reaching the peer, but I don’t think they will stop one-namers arriving from the south. If they do, come back and tell me, but don’t enter Midd Village unless the lashers are gone.”
“Aya.”
“If you are able to talk with the land warden, tell him what you saw here. He will decide whether the peer should be told— or when.”
“Aya. This wouldn’t have happened if the peer weren’t so sick.” Marof nodded at the village. “Are you going down?”
“Of course.”
“You will get a lashing.”
“I must do what I can.”
They returned to the road. Old Marof, giving Arne a grim nod and an absent gesture of farewell, started back the way they had come. Arne turned in the opposite direction.
As the road approached the village, it passed through a barrier wall that Arne had designed himself. A tall, sod-covered mound of dirt with steep sides ran from river to hill and back to the river. Dwellings on High Street, at the top of the village, had walled gardens. Thus the entire village was enclosed, including the mills and a large garden common that was used as a sheepfold in winter. In other peerdoms, drunken or bored lashers had slipped their restraints and rampaged through the one-name villages, vandalizing, raping, and looting, and Arne used these incidents as an excuse for fortifying Midlow’s one-name villages.
Midd Road, which became Midd Street as it passed through the village, was supposed to be blocked from dusk to dawn by logs slid into place between stone pillars where the road passed through the barrier on either side of the village. Further, Arne had ordered a niot watch kept on barriers and foot paths and a dae watch by village children. Unexpected though the raid was, there would have been ample warning if Arne’s orders had been followed.
This was no blundering assault by drunken lashers. It was a carefully calculated military operation by a peerager’s personal guard, and nothing like it had happened in Midlow within living memory. It seemed all the more sinister because Roszt and Kaynor had moved from the ruins to the village only two daez before. They wanted to be closer to Wiltzon, the elderly schooler, who was drilling them in studies Egarn had prescribed.
Arne never wasted time looking for scapegoats when something went wrong. He accepted the responsibility himself and set about salvaging what he could, even if—as in this case—he had to take a lashing. He approached the village boldly as though nothing unusual were happening.
Two hulking lashers were posted at the barrier opening. They stood like grotesque statues with whips poised and black capes flapping in a brisk breeze. Their horses were munching grass in the nearby drainage ditch. Arne walked past them without a glance, and a blow from a heavy whip sent him sprawling. The lashers roared with laughter; Arne calmly got to his feet and walked on. They made no further attempt to interfere with him, which meant they knew who he was.
He strode along Midd Street for some distance before another lasher noticed him. This one charged from a dwelling bellowing angrily. “Inside! You heard the orders!”
For a lasher to speak unbidden to the peer’s first server, let alone attempt to order him about, was a flagrant breach of custom. If the peer had been present, she would have ordered the man lashed severely. Merely to take notice of him was beneath Arne’s dignity. He walked on, and another vicious snap of a whip hurled him to the cobble stones. He was seized and marched away with one arm brutally twisted behind his back. At the first crossing, he was jerked to the right and rushed up the slope to High Street where the prince still sat on her horse. By the time he reached her, he was stumbling badly, and only the excruciating grip on his arm kept him from falling. He was flung casually to the ground in front of her.
As calmly as he could he got to his feet, performed the obeisance of touching one knee to the ground, and rose.
The prince spoke with chilling sarcasm. “Does the peer’s first server care so little for the responsibilities of his office that he can’t be on hand to greet his peer’s heir?”
Arne sensed her rage, but he kept his eyes averted and spoke calmly, quietly, firmly. “Word of your intended visit failed to arrive, Highness.”
“Where have you been?”
For the first time Arne looked at her directly. Her windswept hair caught the sun like gold. Anger had distorted her face, and she seemed the more beautiful for it.
“Inspecting a bridge, Highness.”
When she spoke again, her fury made her almost inarticulate, but she also sounded triumphant. “You were asked to report the appearance of strangers immediately—any strangers. Not only have you not reported them, but you are caught in the act of harboring them in your own dwelling.” She added scornfully, “Such is the faith of the one-named.”
The sensation of despair that swept over Arne was more painful than his bleeding back, but he managed to keep his voice steady. “I harbor no strangers, Highness.”
“Then what do you call this?” A bundle of garments landed beside him. “Discovered this morning when your dwelling was searched—along with the unmade beds their owners had slept in.”
Arne knelt and spread the contents of the bundle on the cobblestones. Time remained suspended while he sifted through the paltry assortment of garments and personal oddments with the prince glaring down at him.
Then he stood up and met her eyes boldly. “These garments, Highness, and these other possessions, belong to two of the new sawyer prentices from South Province.”
The prince said blankly, “Sawyer prentices—living in the first server’s dwelling?”
Arne continued to meet her gaze. “Midd Village has been assigned more prentices than it can accommodate, Highness. The sawyer prentices you sent to the Prince of Chang had to be replaced. Because I have more room than I need, two of them are living with me. We didn’t consider them strangers because they arrived with credentials signed by the dom warden’s high server. I apologize for not reporting them, Highness. The error was mine.”
The prince stared down at him. Arne met her eyes unwaveringly.
Abruptly she turned her horse and rode away. The lasher cast a last, perplexed glance at his late captive
