Sagorn kept his eyes on the king, but spoke to Rap. “The words resist telling—they are hard to say. You truly do not remember your mother telling you hers?”
“No, sir.”
“Yours is undoubtedly stronger than most,” the old man muttered, but his attention was still on the king. “Perhaps it is making you forget that you know it, although I have never heard . . .”
The king uttered a groan and writhed suddenly. His hand was pressed to his side and now sweat dribbled down his ashen face. “More of the cordial, Majesty?”
Holindarn nodded without speaking. The old man turned and went to a corner table. He returned bearing a glass and a tall vial full of some smoky green liquid. Rap rose from his chair, feeling out of place. Sagorn caught his eye and nodded.
Rap bowed and backed toward the door.
He was outside before he realized that he had not been told of the dangers.
2
Next morning Rap found Foronod standing with a group of other men on the shingle in the sunshine. The snow had almost gone. He waited patiently on the outskirts until the others had all been assigned tasks, then stepped forward in his turn. His only greeting was a nod. Although he looked as if he had not slept since the night of the blizzard, the factor made no comment on that affair at all, merely rubbing his eyes and listening in silence as Rap explained the king’s command.
Then the silver mane nodded. “Can you read?”
“No, sir. But I am to learn.”
“It will have to wait, though. Ready to start helping me now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m told there’s a whale beached on Tanglestone Point. I need to know if it’s fresh enough to harvest. Take a good horse.” Tanglestone would be a long ride. Rap took Firedragon, returning that evening weary and content, having achieved what he set out to do. And even Firedragon, had he been gifted with speech, might have reported enjoying the outing. It had been years since any other man had attempted to ride the stallion. No one else ever succeeded in staying on him very long, but Rap he never minded.
Three weeks later, Rap and Foronod fought their way through a blizzard, following the last caravan to cross the causeway. The big one had come at last and Krasnegar was now closed for the winter . . . or, as the inhabitants put it, the world was cut off. The two rode in weary silence through the town. Foronod halted at the foot of a long flight of steps. He slid stiffly from the saddle and handed his reins to Rap. “Tomorrow, then,” he said, and headed off on foot—to family and warm bed, to a long rest that no one had earned more, and possibly even to a hot bath. Rap took the horses to the castle stables, wondering where he would go afterward. Dim and warm and rankly smelly, the stables themselves were more home to him than anywhere else was now. Cobbled floor, rough plank walls, shabby untidiness . . . they all offered a welcome familiarity, but after so long out of doors—he also felt oppressed by being confined. He felt as if those walls were leaning over him whenever he turned his back—and there was always a wall behind him. He rubbed down Foronod’s mare and was still working on his own pony when old Hononin appeared out of the shadows as if one small patch of darkness had just decided to solidify. He looked grumpier and surlier than ever. He grunted a sort of greeting.
“It’s good to be back, sir,” Rap said. .
Another grunt. “Is it? Where are you living now?”
“I was wondering the same.”
Neither said the obvious—that Rap was too old for the boys’ dormitory. It might even be full, anyway. But a factor’s assistant would presumably be paid more than a stableboy, and perhaps almost as much as a driver. Rap had not asked.
“I shall find lodgings in the town, sir.”
The little man scowled and snatched the wisp from Rap’s hand.
“I’ll finish this; you look beat. You know the garret next the drivers’ office?”
Rap nodded, surprised.
“It’s been cleaned out. There may even be a bedroll in it. A man could stay there until he found somewhere better.”
“Thank you, sir. That was kind of you.”
Honinin just grunted.
Krasnegar might be battened down for the winter, but the factor still had much to do, and much of that he could delegate to his new apprentice. Rap was partly diverted by his morning lessons in the arts of reading and writing and summing, squeezed unhappily into a desk at the back of a schoolroom filled with children who giggled and found him an amusing giant. He chewed his knuckles, ruffled his hair, and wrestled with the mysteries of knowledge and the vagaries of a quill pen just as stubbornly as he had battled Firedragon.
The royal appointments of Rap as assistant to Foronod might have been well intentioned, but it greatly widened an already extensive moat. Of necessity, as the accounts were closed on another season, the king’s factor must investigate many matters that had been pushed aside in the summer rush. A wagon crash, unpaid taxes, unexplained injuries, and mysteriously vanished goods—all of these came under review. Every year brought its accountings, to attribute blame or malfeasance, and that year had no more and no less than others.
Yet where the respected factor could rush in, his juvenile helper must tread with care. Rap found himself asking questions whose answers were not readily at hand, testing memories suddenly at fault. He spent a whole week in quest of a certain valuable keg of imported peach brandy that had vanished between the dock and the palace cellar; and he gained no friends thereby.
When he finally made his glum and quite negative report, Foronod scowled and asked grumpily, “You can’t just see it?”
“No, sir. I tried.”
That was a lie. Rap had tried very hard not to see it in his wearying treks through town and castle. Always he tried very hard not to use his farsight, if that was what he had. Yet he had an inexplicable conviction that the missing—and now empty—keg was located under the staircase by the armory latrines. He had already passed beyond the populous domain of childhood, but the well-settled realm of manhood still lay ahead. The borderlands are thinly inhabited and never easy going, being roamed by monsters that prey most readily upon the solitary traveler—and now Rap had no companions.
When he set about a search for lodgings, he discovered what old Hononin had already guessed—that rooms were in short supply. Rap smelled now of the uncanny. An odor of sorcery hung about him, and while no one was so unkind as to snub him for it openly, his friends would drift in other directions when given the chance. The brand was unobtrusive, but it was there. He was human and he suffered. Women suspected that he could see through their clothes and they shunned him even more than men did. And no one wanted a lodger who could spy through walls. Of necessity, Rap’s temporary residence in the garret above the stable became his permanent abode. He moved his scanty possessions in and squandered most of his savings on buying a bed and was miserably content. He ate in the castle commons, but he did not sit at the drivers’ table.
His work for Foronod might lack the romance of being a man-at-arms but it was a challenge; it implied that he was trusted. The factor was a hard master—demanding, saturnine, and slow to praise—yet he was fair. Rap respected him, did his best, and strove to be worthy.
The blizzards came more frequently, the days dwindled. Wagons rolled no more, even within the town itself. Yet Krasnegar had been built for its climate and pedestrians could travel by covered alleys and staircases. A man could walk from castle to deserted harbor without more than a half-dozen brief dashes out of doors. Peat fires glowed. The business of life continued safely below the storms, and pleasures continued, also. There was food in plenty and drink and companionship; singing and dancing; talk and fellowship and romance—but not for Rap.
He was not completely without friends. He did have one, a sophisticated man of the Impire, for whom the supernatural held no terrors; a man without visible occupation to fill his hours and yet of apparently unlimited financial resources—well spoken, much traveled, sympathetic, and even proficient in the use of swords.
“Fencing?” he said. “Well, I’m no expert, my friend, and I would not venture to draw at the imperor’s court, where any young squire may turn out to be a swordsman of prowess, but I am probably as competent as any of the wood-chopping rustics I have noted here in the castle guard. So if you want a lesson or two, lad, I shall be most happy to oblige.”