A scuffling sound drew Mouse’s attention, and he looked down to the yard below. He saw his master, the scrubber, making for the old shed that stood on the opposite wall. The sight of him was enough to make Mouse’s jaw clench. That old man could take the most menial tasks in the castle and find a way to make them more demeaning still. And these were the tasks he foisted off on Mouse. It was bad enough to empty chamber pots . . . but worse by far to be forced to scrub them out with nothing but a rag!
Mouse’s stomach heaved at the memory he wished he could pass off as a mere nightmare. He turned away, moving to the other side of the wall overlooking the sheer drop down to Hanna River. The river was a black liquid snake twining about the base of rock on which Castle Gaheris stood.
“Hanna,” Mouse whispered. The word was strange on his tongue. It had taken him some while to begin to pick out the names of things, for no one cared to teach him, and he scarcely cared to take the time to learn. But he did learn despite himself. Hanna. Gaheris. Ferox. Alistair.
“Etanun,” Mouse growled, and his eyes flashed in the night. He tilted his head back, looking up from the river to the vaults of the sky above. To the blue star that seemed to gaze back down upon him.
“If I follow it any farther,” he whispered to himself in his own tongue, “where will I end? The sea? This river must run to the sea eventually. And what then? Take a ship, journey out into that wild bigness?” His stomach heaved once more, this time with terror mingled with sorrow. “How long?” he muttered, shaking his head. “How long and how far? I will never find the heir in time!”
Footsteps coming along the wall startled Mouse, and he turned, pressing his back against the stone. A tall figure approached, and the moonlight and the starlight revealed little of his face and form. But then a voice spoke, and though Mouse could not understand the words, he recognized at once who it must be.
“If it isn’t the Mouse,” said Alistair, surprised but not displeased. He smiled, though the urchin could not see it. He drew closer, though not so close as to startle the boy, and also leaned against the stone wall, looking out upon the river and the cold winter world beyond. “You are, I must say, the last person I expected to meet here. What are you doing away from the kitchen fire? Aside from freezing, that is.”
Mouse could hear a question asked but had no idea what it was or how to answer. He couldn’t decide whether to scamper away or stay. It seemed to him, from the young lord’s stance, that Alistair wished for company. So for the moment at least, he lingered, though his body was tensed to run.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Alistair said. “Never can much, you know. Sometimes it’s better not to try, so I wander about. I’m sure the guardsmen think I’m quite daft! That, or they assume all earls and earls’ heirs are a bit touched in the head. I try not to disturb them anyway.”
He leaned his elbows on the stone, looking down at the river, then looking up, much as Mouse had done, to the crowded heavens. Mouse saw his teeth in a brief flash of a smile.
“We have a name for that star,” Alistair said and pointed at the sky. He indicated the blue star, Mouse was certain of it. Although many bright lights gleamed in that inky sky, the blue star stood out like a torch.
“Ceaneus,” Alistair said in the tone that meant he wanted Mouse to repeat it. Mouse sighed. He didn’t like being treated like a trained parrot. “Ceaneus,” Alistair said again, still pointing.
Mouse folded his skinny arms across his chest. “Cé,” he replied. “Cé Imral.”
Alistair dropped his pointing arm and rested it once more on the stone wall. “Cé . . . Imral,” he said, though his accent was off. Still, it was an effort, and Mouse had to grin appreciation. The tall young lord ruined it, however, by rattling on in his own language immediately after.
“Is that your name for our star? I wonder what language that is. Perhaps you’re from Corrilond. They’re a dark-skinned folk but not so dark as you, I think, and their eyes are different. Hard to say for certain, but I don’t think you quite fit the Corrilondian description. Probably just as well. Corrilonders killed my father, and while I don’t bear a grudge for that—I mean, war is what war is—it’s a bit awkward, you must agree.”
Mouse stared at him. Concentrate though he might, he couldn’t pick a single word from this stream of talk. It ran together in a rush of sounds, leaving Mouse’s head spinning. When the young lord stopped for breath, Mouse could do nothing but offer a relieved smile. Alistair’s return grin vanished after scarcely a moment of life.
He spoke again in an altogether different tone: “My uncle is sick. Earl Ferox.”
Ferox. That name Mouse recognized. He nodded noncommittally, uncertain whether or not he wanted to encourage more babble from this pale stranger. But Alistair needed no encouragement. Scarcely aware of Mouse’s existence, he talked to himself or to the stars or to no one. “He’s dying, actually. Won’t last the winter. And then I’ll be Earl of Gaheris.”
Gaheris. Another word Mouse knew. He nodded again, his brow puckered.