“You’re welcome, sir. But I shall be very happy to leave your home as soon as I possibly can.” He sketched me a bow and hooked the bottle of brandy on his way to the door.
I sat down in the chair that Lant had vacated and stared at the fire. I could not feel anything. I tried to find my heartache over Bee, my anger at what had happened, but not even my guilt came to torment me. Discouragement as thick as soup. I felt useless, helpless, and weary. Sildwell was right. A cloud of dullness and discouragement hung over Withywoods. Sadness was all I could provoke in myself. I should be furious. I should thirst for vengeance. Instead I thought of killing myself. No. Not yet. I rose and covered the stable boy more warmly. My vassal.
I took a candle and wandered the halls. I went first to my own room, but could not settle there. I went again to Lady Shun’s room, but if there were clues in that disorder, they escaped me. I did not like the woman, but I had no desire to see her kidnapped or dead and burned. I went to Bee’s room. Among the scattered possessions, I glimpsed the seashells we had bought for her strewn across the floor. And the warm red shawl sprawled across a chair. The kerchiefs she had intended for Revel rested undisturbed on a table by her bed. She’d never had the pleasure of gifting them to him.
I left her room and drifted through the halls until I came to my ruined study. I entered and almost thought of building a fire and ordering my thoughts by writing them down. Instead, I triggered the secret door and returned to Bee’s tiny hidden chamber. As I turned the corner to enter it, my Wit told me that someone awaited me there. I felt a sudden leap of hope, only to confront a small black cat blinking resentfully at my candlelight. He was curled on the cushions in perfect ease and regarded me as an annoying but unimportant intruder. We looked at each other.
She’s not here.
She is Bee?
The girl who promised me fish and sausage if I would catch rats and mice for her.
I contained my impatience. Someone stole her. Can you tell me about the people who took her?
They took all the fish. And the sausages, too.
I noticed that. What else?
Some of them stank. Some did not.
I waited for a time. Cats themselves may be very chatty, but they seem to resent it in anyone else. Cats like listeners. But when he had sat regarding me for some time, I dared to ask, Anything else?
They came for her. The ones that did not stink.
What?
A silence fell between us. My question went unanswered. Finally I said aloud, “I wonder if they found all the fish and sausages? I think I shall go down to the pantry to find out.”
I took my shortened candle and left him, eeling my way through the wandering passages. I stepped over the gnawed bread, and took up one of the fallen candles and kindled it from my failing one. It had been nibbled by mice, but not badly. I listened at the door before pushing it open and emerging into the storage room. The sacks of beans and peas and grains had been left. The raiders had taken meat and fish, the two supplies that any traveler depletes first. Could I deduce anything from that?
Gone. Confirmed the cat.
“Do you care for cheese at all? Or butter?”
The cat looked at me speculatively. I pushed the door to the labyrinth closed and went down a short stairway into the cold-room, lined with stone. Here on shelves were crocks of summer butter and wheels of cheese. Either the raiders had not fancied these or they had not discovered the cold-room. I took out my belt-knife and carved a wedge of cheese. As I did so, I became aware that I was hungry. I felt shamed by that. My child and Lady Shun had vanished from Withywoods. Carried off by brutes into the cold and dark. How could I feel such ordinary things as hunger? Or sleepiness?
Yet I did.
I pared off another generous wedge and went back to the kitchen. The cat followed me and when I sat down at the table, he leapt up on it. He was a handsome fellow, very tidy in black and white, the picture of health save for the kink in his tail. I broke off a chunk of the cheese and set it down before him. By the time I returned to the table with a piece of bread and a mug of ale, he had finished it and hooked a second slab toward himself. I ignored that. We ate together and I tried to be patient. What could a cat know, I wondered, that would do me any good?
He finished before I did and sat cleaning his whiskers and dabbing at his face. When I set my mug down on the table, he stopped and looked at me. The ones that didn’t stink had no scent of their own at all.
A shiver ran up my spine. The Scentless One, my wolf had called the Fool. Because he had no scent. And he was invisible to my Wit. Would that be true of all folk with White in their bloodlines?
Once they had her, they stopped killing. They took only her. And one other.
I did not appear too interested. I rose and went back to the cold-room. I emerged with more cheese. I sat down at the table, broke off a respectable piece, and placed it before the cat. He looked down at it, then up at me. They took a woman.