I’d never heard him shout like that. He had regained his horse and was thrusting his mount between me and the battle-maddened men I’d heedlessly charged.
“Prince Fitz!” someone else shouted, and suddenly my Rousters were turning to me, grinning and shaking bloody swords, as proud as puppies that had just killed the barn cat. I stared at them. A tremor of fatigue, of giddiness, of drugs, and of despair passed through me. I reached up to seize hold of Riddle’s thigh. I didn’t fall.
“Is Bee here? Is she safe?” Perseverance’s voice had gone high and boyish again in his anxiety.
“No,” I said. “No Bee. No Shine. At least not here.” I summoned every bit of strength that was left to me. My knees were shaky. I drew breath and felt the carris seed surge. “We organize a search. Now.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
A Glove
Of the naturally bred one named Beloved, we have only a brief genealogy. This was due to carelessness of the part of the Servant who received the child at the gates. Although he claimed that he took a complete account of his parentage and siblings, the document either does not exist or was separated from the child and misplaced during his acceptance and orientation time. Some have suggested the candidate himself stole and destroyed the document, but I find this unlikely. His cleverness has been overestimated by far too many of his caretakers.
While at first the child was cheerful and obedient as his family had assured him that Clerres was where he belonged and he would be cared for, as days passed, he became morose and impassive. He shared little with those who attempted to ascertain his lineage. We can say with relative certainty that he had lived with his parents for over twenty years, that all three of his parents were elderly and becoming unable to continue to care for themselves or Beloved. He initially asserted that he had two sisters whom he missed badly. Later, he denied having any siblings. An effort to locate them and harvest their offspring for interbreeding with our established pool of those who carry White lineage was not successful.
Thus Beloved remains the only member of his lineage that we have in our records. Our efforts to have Beloved contribute a child to our stock have been in vain. He is stubborn, occasionally violent, argumentative, and incites like behaviors in the other Whites if allowed to be in contact with them. When it was decided that he should be marked for easy identification no matter where he might go, he resisted the tattooing process, even attempting to burn the completed markings from his own back.
While it is an extreme solution, in my opinion he should be eliminated. Even the accounts of his dreams should be excised from the regular listings and placed separately in our records as I judge them to be unreliable reports. His rebellion knows no bounds and he exhibits no respect. It is my considered opinion that he will never be useful to us. On the contrary, he will be destructive, kindle rebellion, and disrupt the order and peace of Clerres.
—Yarielle, Servant
The first day and a half of fleeing from Dwalia were brutal for Shun and me. We found a tree-well the first night and huddled together there, shaking as much from terror as cold. Close to the trunk of the massive spruce tree, the earth was bare of snow but carpeted thickly with generations of fallen needles. The down-swooping branches were like the walls of a tent. We’d been unable to hide the tracks we made crawling into that space. We could only hope that no one would attempt to track us.
In the distance we could hear screams, angry shouts, and a peculiar sound that I could not at first identify. “Is that sword against sword?” I whispered to Shun.
“The pale people didn’t carry swords.”
“Maybe they snatched some up.”
“I doubt it. Here. Put your coat on the ground for us to sit on. I’ll open my coat and you sit on my lap and get inside it with me. We might be warmer that way.”
The kindness of the offer startled me as much as how pragmatic it was. As we arranged ourselves, I asked, “How did you learn this?”
“Once, when I was very small, my grandmother was taking me home from a visit when our carriage wheel hit a pothole and broke something. It was winter and night and our coachman had to ride off to get help for us. She took me inside her coat to keep me warm.” She spoke to the top of my head.
So. Her childhood had included rides in carriages and a kind grandmother. “Not all of your life has been horrid, then,” I said.
“Not all of it. Only the last four or five years.”