Fool's Quest
Shun lay down beside me. I wished she wouldn’t. I feared that if she nudged me or moved me, the vertigo would come roaring back.
“We obeyed.” The fear in Vindeliar’s voice was like a bad taste in the air. “Lingstra cannot be angry with us. We obeyed and did nothing.” He lifted his hands to cover his eyes. “I did nothing to help my brother,” he moaned. “I did nothing. She can’t be angry.”
“Oh, she can be angry,” Odessa said bitterly. “She can always be angry.”
Very carefully, I let my eyes close. The spinning slowed. It stopped. I slept.
Chapter Thirteen
Chade’s Secret
This is the dream of the flame horses. It is a winter evening. It’s not night but it’s dark. An early moon is rising over the birch trees. I hear a sad song with no words, and it is like a wind in the trees. It keens and moans. Then the stables burst into flames. Horses scream. And then two horses race out. They are on fire. One is black and one is white, and the flames are orange and red, whipped by the wind of the horses’ own passage. They race out into the night. The black one falls suddenly. The white one races on. Then suddenly the moon opens its mouth and swallows the white horse.
—Dream Journal of Bee Farseer
I woke on the floor of the study, not far from where the stable boy slept on. I had not wanted to sleep, and I certainly could not have borne sleeping in my own room. But I had taken blankets from my bed, and Bee’s book from her hiding place, and returned to the estate study. I’d fed the fire to sustain it through what was left of the night and then spread my blankets. I’d settled down and held her book in my hands. I thought about reading it. Was that breaching her trust in me? I’d leafed through it, not settling on any section but marveling at her tidy lettering, her precise illustrations, and how many pages she had filled.
In a bizarre hope that she might have had time to leave some account of the attack, I went to the last page of her journal. But it stopped well short of our trip to Oaksbywater. There was a sketch of a barn cat. The black one with the kinked tail. I’d closed the book, pillowed my head on it, and fallen asleep. The sound of footsteps in the corridor had woken me. I sat up, aching, and the weight of my worries fell on me again. Bleak discouragement soaked me. I’d already failed and there was nothing I could do to change that. Bee was dead. Shun was dead. Perhaps they were worse than dead. It was my fault and I could find neither anger nor ambition to do anything about it.
I went to the window and pushed back the drape. The skies were finally clear and blue. It was an effort to gather my thoughts. Chade would be coming today, with Thick. I tried to make plans, to decide to ride to meet him or make preparations for his arrival. I couldn’t find the mental order to do either. On the hearth, Perseverance slept on. I made myself cross the room and add wood to the fire. I welcomed the blue sky but knew it meant the days would be colder.
I left my study and went to my room. I found clean clothing. I went to the kitchen. I dreaded to see who might not be there, but Cook Nutmeg was present, and Tavia, and the two little kitchen maids, Elm and Lea. Tavia had a black eye and a swollen lower lip, but seemed unaware of both. Elm had a peculiar hobble to her gait. I felt sick with dread and refrained from asking any questions. “So good to have you home again, Holder Badgerlock,” Cook Nutmeg greeted me, and promised to serve me breakfast very quickly.
“We should expect company here soon,” I warned them. “Lord Chade and his man Thick will be arriving in the next few hours. Please prepare something for all of us to eat when they get here. I will ask you to let the other servants know that I expect Thick to be treated with the same respect as Lord Chade. His appearance and mannerisms may give you the impression he is a half-wit. But he is an indispensable and loyal servant to the Farseer throne. Treat him as such. For now, if you’d send a tray of food and some hot tea to my study, that would be very welcome. Oh, and please send up enough food for the stable boy Perseverance, too. He will breakfast with me this morning.”
Cook Nutmeg knit her brow but Tavia nodded at me. “It’s kind you are, sir, to take on that poor benighted lad as a stable boy. Having work to do may settle his mind.”
“Let us hope so” was all I could find the will to say to her. I left them there, fetched a cloak, and walked out to where the Withywoods stables had once stood. Cold crisp air, blue sky, white snow, blackened wood. I walked around what remained. I could see at least one horse corpse, half-baked and crow-scavenged, sprawled in the wreckage. The fire appeared to have burned unchecked. A survey of the grounds around the stable showed me nothing more than what I’d seen in the night. The only tracks were of people on foot, most likely Withywoods folk going about their tasks.