The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper part one

Another voice floated up to the high window from which I watched, silvery sweet and deadly. “Oh, Sister, why do you tell such lies? You know that you were not sent for any such reason. The Wizard cares nothing for the boy, nothing. If he has sent you, it is for some treacherous purpose of his own.”

It was Dazzle. I peered down to see her standing against a tapestry, posed there like a statue. Her pose was almost exactly the one which Mandor had assumed when I first saw him in his rooms, profile limned against a background, pale, graceful hands displayed to advantage. Mandor was regarding her with fixed attention.

Silkhands had become as still as some small wild thing, surprised too much by a predator to move. When she spoke, her voice was tight with strain. “The Wizard cares much for Peter, Dazzle. As he has cared for you, and for Borold, and for all who have come to the Bright Demesne. The Prince needs only have his Gamesmen Read my thought to know I do not lie…”

“Or to know you have found some way to hide a lie, Sister. I am of the opinion that the Wizard is clever enough to have found such a way. He is very clever, and ambitious…” She cast a lingering look at Mandor, turning away from him so that the look came over her shoulder. It was all pose, pose, pose, each posture more perfect than the last. Only I could see the horror of her skull’s head, her ravaged features confronting that other skull’s head across the room. Mandor did not see. Dazzle did not see. Oh, Gamelords, I thought, they are using beguilement on one another, and neither sees what is there. She went on in that voice of poisonous sweetness, “Borold will bear me out. He, too, is of the same opinion.” As, of course, he was. Borold had no opinion Dazzle had not given him.

“Well,” Mandor said, his voice cold and hard, “Time will undoubtedly make all plain. Until then, you will be my guest, Healer. And you, Priestess. Both. If there is some Game at large in the countryside, we would not want to risk your lovely lives by letting you leave these protecting walls untimely.”

From the height I saw Silkhands shiver. Dazzle only preened, posed, ran long fingers through her hair. “As you will, Prince Mandor. I appreciate such hospitality, as would anyone who had come for any honest reason…”

Mandor gestured to servants who led them both away, each in a different direction. I watched the way Silkhands went. I might need to find her later. Then Mandor was joined by Huld, and the two of them spoke together while I still listened.

“Have the guardsmen found the Divulger? Any sign of him?”

“Only the boots in the moat, Lord. There is no discernible reason he should have made off with the boy.”

“Oh, don’t be a fool, Huld. He didn’t make off with the boy. He killed the boy. That’s why he fled, in fear of his life.”

“We’ve found no body.”

“When the moat is drained, the body may appear. Or, he may have hidden it deep, Huld, in the Caves of Bannerwell. If you wanted to hide a body, or yourself, what better place than the tombs and catacombs of Bannerwell. Things lost there may never be found again…”

I sneaked away across the slates, summoning Swallow back and telling him to do this and that and then another thing. Which he did. He went to the kitchens and sat about within hearing of the cooks and stewards until one entered the place saying that the Healer in the corner rooms on the third floor had had no evening meal and needed food. There was tsking from the cooks, kind words about Healers in general, and vying between two sufferers as to which of them should take the meal to her when it was ready. Enough.

The two pawns who had come with her were still in the courtyard, crouched along the wall. Swallow slouched toward them, spoke to the guard nearby.

“They c’n sleep in the stable hay along of me if they’d mind to…” The guard ignored him. He had not been told to watch these two inconsiderable creatures. Swallow kicked at Chance’s boots. “Softer there than here, and you c’n bring your things.”