Madame cried, “Mouche?” She looked quickly at D’Jevier, then back at Onsofruct. “Is he all right?”
“We assume so. You seem to care a good deal. Who is he?”
“He’s … just Mouche. Well, I confess, a favorite of mine. We have favorites, though we shouldn’t.”
“What can you tell us about him?” asked Onsofruct.
Madame poured a splash more brandy and sat back in her chair, surprised to find that her hand trembled slightly. “Nothing evil at all. I bought Mouche when he was twelve, and I made the first overture, having seen the boy in the marketplace. The father came to the House first, talked to some of the students and to Simon, who’s one of my old boys. Only when he was convinced the boy would be well treated did he consent, even though his need was great.”
“And his mother?” Onsofruct set down her glass.
“I didn’t meet the mother. She must be a good-looking woman to produce such a son.”
Onsofruct remarked, “He’s handsome, then?”
“Oh, remarkably, yes. Many of my students are extremely good looking, and none are plain. Appearance is what sells! But it isn’t his appearance that made me like him so. Most young men, well, you can imagine, learning to be a Consort is for most of them an occasion for a good deal of lewdness and that excretory jocularity that men seem to find funny. It’s something we work hard to control, since by and large women are offended by it. With Mouche it wasn’t necessary. Mouche was never lewd. He went through a stage when he was about sixteen when he seemed distracted, which isn’t uncommon, but then lately, it seemed that he was above his work, very sure and capable but able to do it without thinking about it. No, it was more than that! He was able to embue a relationship with romance without personalizing it. He was able to do what we try to get all the young men to do; focus on the ideal, treat the real as though it were the ideal. Mouche could do that.”
“A treasure,” murmured D’Jevier.
After a rather long pause, Madame said, “Yes. A treasure. When that woman took him from here, I wanted to kill her. If I’d had a proper weapon in my hand, I might have done so. I managed to warn him, before he left, to be as inconspicuous as possible. Now, hearing that she’s dead but that he is, so far as anyone knows, unscathed, I breathe again in hope. I have not had many like Mouche.”
Onsofruct asked, “Why did the Questioner take him? Or the sailor boy?”
“Most likely she needed strong young hands to fetch and carry. Do you know where they went?”
D’Jevier explained about the sneakway in the wall.
“We must go after her, of course,” said Madame. “Until my students are back, I have little purpose to my life, and my students won’t be back unless we find this Questioner, get her or it off planet, and return to our own lives. Assuming the volcanoes leave us any life.”
“I suppose we must go in search of her,” said D’Jevier, almost unwillingly. “Otherwise … well, we’ll have the Council of Worlds on our doorstep. If by some chance our world survives all this rumbling and rattling, I’d prefer that the Council of Worlds not involve themselves in our lives.”
“We should go as soon as possible,” said Madame. “I’ll need a couple of days to take care of immediate business, but then I can leave the House to my assistant. It’s threeday morning. I can be ready early fiveday. Say at dawn.”
“Let us use the time to prepare well,” Onsofruct suggested. “We will want provisions, and some strong Haggers, and such things as lights and ropes. We can get that together by early fiveday morning.”
“Very well,” said Madame, already assembling her kit in her mind. “I will meet you then, at Mantelby’s.”
45—The Camp of The Wilderneers
The light carriage that Ashes had used to pick up his sons was abandoned at the edge of the wild, not far from the place Marool’s parents and sister had died. The horse behind the carriage was already saddled and there were two more light saddles in the boot. Shortly the three were riding through the forest, along the level top of one of the great lava tubes to the north of the Combers. It was not the first time they had ridden together, though it was the first time they had ridden here, and only Ashes knew the way to their destination.