Mastiff (21 page)

Lady Sabine had put Drummer and Steady on long reins and a riding saddle on Steady. She rode near the head of the cart while Tunstall lolled on the packs, Master Farmer sat by the carter, and I walked alongside with Achoo. Pounce rode on Tunstall’s lap, flicking his tail at mere street cats.

At the naval yards we found our new peregrine ship, the
Osprey
. It was the biggest of the four at the dock, with a fierce sea eagle painted at the prow and a tall, raised afterdeck. Sailors looked down at us and spat into the water.

Dogs came from the guardhouse in front of the dock. They checked the orders that had come with the wad of documents that Tunstall received at dawn. Once the Dogs had accepted our right to sail, they stepped out of the way and let the carter drive onto the dock itself. When we reached the ship, sailors came down to help us collect our gear from the cart. Master Farmer and Tunstall were ahead of me, Master Farmer warning the crew away from his own things. I’d already put the pouch with the coin and my orders and maps in my smallest pack. I slung it onto one shoulder.

“Gods defend me,” Master Farmer muttered under his breath as we walked toward the ship. One of the folk on the afterdeck, dressed in a long, pale blue tunic under a deeper blue cloak pinned at the shoulder, was waving to him. Master Farmer raised a hand burdened with the straps of three bags.

“Someone you know?” Tunstall asked quietly. The finely dressed cove was at enough distance that he wouldn’t hear.

“Iceblade Regengar,” Master Farmer told us, his voice soft. “Graduate of Carthak University and a snob. He bores the bones out of me.”

“Good thing you’ll be asleep through the voyage, then,” Tunstall said cheerfully. “What does he do?”

“Besides talk about his skill as a lover and his last woman? His specialties are wind and weather magic,” Master Farmer replied. “His family builds peregrine ships.”

We went up the broad gangplank and climbed narrow steps that led to the deck. Lady Sabine came behind us, coaxing an unhappy Drummer into the hold. “What happens to the horses?” Master Farmer asked the sailors who led us to the passengers’ cabin under the afterdeck.

“One of the mages handles them,” the youngest sailor replied as he thrust our bags under the bunks secured to the walls. “She gets them to sleep layin’ down. They’re strapped in soft. Nothin’ too good for a noble’s horses in His Majesty’s navy!”

We walked outside again in time to see Lady Sabine lead Steady below. Tunstall and I followed them. A small Yamani mot stood with Drummer in a stall with a straw-covered floor, keeping her hands on his side. Fleece-lined straps already circled his barrel to hold him at the middle of the stall. Pink fire shone around the Yamani as she and the warhorse knelt. When he lay on his side, she kept her hands on him. Lady Sabine shifted uneasily and Tunstall went to her, putting an arm around her shoulders for her comfort. Moving like they’d done this a hundred times before, the sailors who waited nearby fitted more fleece-lined straps around the gelding’s muzzle and legs. When they were ready, the mage raised Drummer’s great body some inches above the straw so that the coves could place straps along his length, under his tail and around his chest. Once the sailors finished, the mage settled Drummer again and wrote a symbol on his side. It shone in pink light while the sailors began to secure the straps on the stall and the side of the ship. Tunstall watched it all, tugging his short beard. I wondered what he was thinking about.

The mage went to Lady Sabine and bowed. “He has a big heart, that one,” she said. “He will sleep well. I will stay with both your mounts, to keep them from harm.” She turned to go to another stall, where other coves had begun to put the straps around Steady.

My lady looked at her two horses. “Couldn’t I stay here with them?” she asked wistfully. “Just to be sure?”

“You will be in your own slumber. We cannot keep you safely here,” the mage replied over her shoulder. She was already patting Steady’s neck and nose.

I went above. Master Farmer was there ahead of me and had fallen into the clutches of the well-dressed blond mage he’d named Iceblade. “—nice, firm peaches,” Iceblade was saying, his hands shaping the womanfruit he meant. “No pestiferous husband in the way, either—I made certain of that, this time!” The mage’s eyes lit on me. He straightened, and smoothed his shoulder-length hair away from his face. To me he said, “The Gentle Mother weeps to see so beautiful a flower in the coarse gear of a Provost’s Guard.”

I stared at him. A worshipper of the Goddess as Gentle Mother. Did such flummery appeal to any mot of sense?

His smile faltered a little at my glare. Most folk don’t like it when I’m cross with them. As Tunstall keeps telling me, the superstitious ones think I have ghost eyes, or curse eyes, because the color is so pale. Surely a mage ought to know better.

“Forgive me, fair Guardswoman, I did not mean to vex,” Iceblade said.

“I should hope not,” I told him. “Master Farmer, I’ll be in our quarters, if Tunstall asks.” Tunstall was still below with Lady Sabine.

“I’ll come along,” he said, too eagerly for politeness where it concerned Iceblade. “We should see what’s in that bag m’lord give yeh.” He sounded like an Olorun Valley farm lad now, fresh from the furrows. What was he about? “Mebbe they’s messages and all innit, eh?”

Iceblade produced a great, false-sounding laugh from somewhere around his belly. “Still moving your lips when you read, Farmer?” he asked, putting a sting into it.

Master Farmer shook his head, grinning like an utter looby. “Naw, I hardly has to do that anymore,” he replied. “I’ve got that good with the reading, these last years. Folk expect it, you know, when you do mage work. Even the Provost’s Guards like to see me readin’ now and then.”

I thought Master Farmer wasted his time, tweaking this strutting popinjay, so I went back to the cabin. Master Farmer caught the door before it smashed shut. He held it open for Pounce and Achoo, who trotted in past him, then closed it. “What was that?” I asked.

“I don’t like him,” Master Farmer replied mildly, sounding like his normal self. “He nearly cost the life of a girl lost in the swamp, telling her parents he could find her and I could not. I play the dolt to vex him, because he couldn’t bear it that a seamstress’s unschooled brat found the child.”

“Why care what that mumper thinks?” I wanted to know.

He gave me a crooked smile. “People will do nearly anything to bring a good mage into their service. Powerful mages are happy to bind and sell their rivals and lesser mages to such persons,” he explained. “For a reward Master Iceblade lets mage sellers know where unprotected mages are. I am very happy to play the fool for Iceblade, and everyone knows the Provost’s Guard can’t afford to hire good mages. I’m left alone.” Master Farmer shrugged.

The cabin door opened, but it wasn’t Tunstall and Lady Sabine who entered. Two young sailor lads had come, one with a couple of fleece pads rolled up and slung over his shoulder, the other with coils of rope.

“We’re here to secure your animals,” the redhead of the pair explained to me. “So they’ll be comfortable, like.”

I didn’t wish to discuss such vile things anymore, so I turned my attention to the new problem. “The cat,” I said. “If you could put him together with the hound?”

“He’ll stand for it?” asked the redheaded lad, happily surprised. “We’re going to bundle them up, mistress. He might not like it.”

“They’re friends,” I explained. “They’ll do fine.” Achoo wagged her tail and tried to wash Pounce’s face.

The redhead pointed to the other lad. “
He’s
my best friend, and I wouldn’t share a bunk with him,” he told us as he and his friend covered the bunk with fleeces. “He snores. And farts.” The older boy gave him a sharp elbow to the ribs. The redhead patted the fleece. “If the hound and the cat will come up?”

“
Bangkit
, Achoo,” I said. Up she leaped, Pounce following her onto the bunk. Soon the lads had secured them with straps.

As they were finishing, Tunstall and Lady Sabine came in. Tunstall gave each lad two coppers. “We’ll strap ourselves in,” he told them with a wink. “Why don’t you come check us before we set sail, so you know we did it right and can tell your captain so? We need a bit of privacy just now.”

The talkative redhead touched two fingers to his forehead in a salute. “Aye, Guardsman. Actually, we’re only raisin’ anchor now. You’ve a little more time to settle and buckle in before they put the sleep on folk—got to clear the harbor traffic first. Safe voyage to us!” His friend gave us the same salute. Once they left, I took off my shoulder pack and tucked it between me and the wall.

Tunstall looked at Master Farmer and tapped his ear, raising an eyebrow. The mage smiled and looked at the floor. I didn’t see the color of Master Farmer’s Gift, though I felt it. The air in the room relaxed suddenly; my skin stopped prickling. Over our heads I heard a cove’s voice—Iceblade’s?—raised in startlement and anger.

Master Farmer looked up. “If he were wise, he would ask himself how I could do that,” he said. “Instead I’ll wager any amount you care to name he’s telling the others one of you must be a mage as well.”

Tunstall took the leather pouch from his pack and opened it. “Each of us gets our own copy of our orders,” he said as he gave theirs to Master Farmer and my lady. “My lord wants to be certain none of us risk ourselves while on this Hunt. We each hold true Crown documents in case we are separated.”

I opened my envelope of maps as the others read through their papers. Each covered a section of the realm in the finest detail I had ever seen. One set showed rivers and lakes marked out in blue, cities and large towns labeled clearly. The other set was of noble and temple fiefdoms and Crown lands, the owners of the realm. I know Lord Gershom had not meant these for birthday or Midwinter presents, but this was like a lifetime’s worth of gifts all at once.

I like maps very much.

“Lord Gershom sent word to those Deputy Provosts he could trust in the Three Rivers Province and along the coast between the Summer Palace and Frasrlund, telling them we seek any party coming from Blue Harbor or thereabouts with a child aged about four. He gave them the date of the disappearance,” Tunstall said as all of us got comfortable on our fleeces and bunks. He looked at a paper he’d taken from the leather pouch. “Two days after we left Lord Gershom,” he continued, “my lord had word from the District Commander in Eversoul. Just such a party came to town along the Ware River in the north. The party numbered two mages, one a mot, one a cove, three other women, and five small children. He says—” Tunstall read, “
All of the children were less than six years of age. I sent orders that they were to be detained if possible, followed if not. It was too late to catch them in Eversoul. By the time they got my orders, all of the children had been taken on ships on the Arenaver. At dawn on the eleventh I had word from the Deputy Provost in Arenaver that four groups answering my description
,
two of them small slave trains, had come from the south, three by land, one by ship. The District Commander there sent two Dogs to track them, but he has not heard from the trackers
.

“Proceed to Arenaver. Take up the most likely trail if the Deputy Provost is unable to detain all of those suspected. Master Farmer will sort out false clues and confessions. If you lose the trail, proceed on your own. I will get information to Master Farmer as often as it is available.”
Tunstall looked up. “There’s an emotional bit at the end.” He cleared his throat.
“You four are the best possible team I can field. You have my faith and that of Their Majesties.”

“But we can’t be the only ones!” Lady Sabine said, shocked. “We can’t possibly cover the entire realm, and who knows how many people are in this vicious scheme?”

Tunstall opened the last fold of his document. “Oh, yes. He writes,
I am assembling other teams and have been doing so since the day after we arrived here. You won’t be in the field alone!
Better, my dear?”

“Gods be thanked.” Lady Sabine lay back on her bunk with a sigh. “What do we Hunt? From what I read in the papers Gershom sent to me, these swine have left us precious little to start from.”

Master Farmer was toying with a stone globe the size of a walnut, producing tiny sparks of fire with it. “I’d been thinking we ought to look at slaves—” he began, just as Tunstall said, “It’s the slave trading that has my eye.” They stared at each other.

Since the lads were startled that both of them had come to the same conclusion, I explained, “These Rats came in disguised as a slave-raiding party, took captives like they were taking slaves, and brought at least one slave trader ship. Why do such things when they destroyed the evidence at the palace?”

“Because the slave items were the materials some of the raiders had at hand?” Lady Sabine asked. “Perhaps some of those still alive have ties to slavery?”

“We think mayhap so,” Tunstall said with a nod to her. “They took every caution, but they knew there was a chance that evidence would be found. Slave trade is big enough and messy enough that we might get tangled up just tracking the ships or the chains.”

Master Farmer locked his hands behind his head. “From that idea, what easier way to hide the lad than in a slave train roaming the countryside? It’s summer. Dozens of traders are on the roads and rivers.”

“But now we’ve got this information to follow,” Tunstall went on. “We’ll look at the evidence in Arenaver. If these travelers don’t give us something to chase, we’ll follow the slave ship builders.”

The ship was moving out into the river, swaying gently under us. I’d seen no oars when we boarded. I suppose the mages filled the sails with wind they had summoned and directed the ship as they willed. “They’ll change the lad’s appearance, no doubt,” I said to my comrades. We seemed to have silently agreed to refer to Prince Gareth only as “the lad,” which I thought was a good idea. There was less chance of letting his true name slip that way. “Darker is my guess, since he’s fair-haired and fair-skinned. And there are plenty of brown-haired, hazel-eyed four-year-olds out there.”