‘That’s impossible!’ Aunt Cleora squeaked. ‘A young girl, on her own in the country?’
Even then, Lorrie had to smile; Aunt Cleora seemed to think goblins and bandits lurked behind every bush. Or maybe they do, she thought, looking at the saddle again, her eyes drawn to it with unwilling fascination.
‘She won’t be going alone. I’m going too!’ Lorrie said.
It’s my baby brother and my intended. And I can’t let Flora go alone, after all she’s done for me!
Both the other women looked at her. ‘But you can barely walk!’ Flora said.
‘I can use a stick,’ Lorrie said stoutly. True, it’s healing fast, but how far will I get? she thought, more honestly. ‘I can ride, maybe. Or crawl, if needs must.’
Aunt Cleora looked from one to the other. ‘I wish Karl were here with his men,’ she said unhappily. ‘It’ll only be a couple of weeks until his ship’s back from Krondor.’ She looked at them again; Lorrie could tell Flora wore the same mutinous expression as herself. ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all,’ Cleora said again. ‘But if you must go, you’ll take my dog-cart.’
Flora sprang up and hugged her aunt. The dog-cart was a vehicle with two tall spoked wheels and a body slung on leather rests, with a folding cover, drawn by a single horse. It would hold two easily, and on a good road wouldn’t be too hard on a healing leg.
‘Thank you, Aunt Flora!’ she said, and Lorrie nodded enthusiastically.
The pretty, middle-aged features of the older woman creased in worry, but Flora was already up and about, stuffing things in bags.
‘What is it?’ Jimmy asked, prodding with his finger at the locket-sized device that lay on the table.
The old couple whose cottage it was huddled back by the hearth, unconsciously gripping hands as they stared at the thing. They had just finished supper, happy to provide porridge, eggs, a pair of apples and a very bitter brew that almost passed for ale for another of Jarvis’s silver pieces.
Jimmy thought that on another occasion, his entire focus would be upon Jarvis Coe’s purse, for it seemed to possess an endless supply of silver. But that was then, and this was now, and there were mysteries to unravel and boys to save.
Jarvis Coe sat on a stool, hands on his knees as he leaned forward. His craggy face was set, and the low flames from the hearth cast restless red lights across the lines and planes of it. ‘It’s magic,’ he said softly. Jimmy felt the small hairs bristle down his spine at the word. ‘Forbidden magic. It’s a man-finder, bound by blood and bone and seed.’ His finger traced the needle. ‘See, here? The needle is bone from a dead baby harvested in the dark of the moons—’
The old woman moaned and shivered, huddling closer into her husband’s protective arm.
‘—and the hair is of the man you wish to seek, or from his close kin. Mother or father, or both, if you wish to find their child. I’d say that was the case this time: you said the boy was fair-haired, and this tress is brown. Not necromancy; not quite, but related to it. Dark enough magic to be troubling, in any event.’
‘Who are you, that you know this?’ Jimmy asked.
Jarvis looked up quickly, his eyes hooded. After a long moment he nodded. ‘Well, you’ve a right to know, I suppose, if you’re to be involved in this affair. I’m an agent for the High Priestess of Lims-Kragma in Krondor.’
The young thief bounded backward, hand going to his knife. The old midwife made signs with her hands, and her husband rose too and sidled towards the door, where his billhook was propped.
Astonishingly, Jarvis Coe laughed. ‘No, no, my friends, you needn’t worry. She is the Mistress of Death, not murder. We’re all coming home to Her, eventually, so she doesn’t need anyone hurried along.’ His lips quirked, and he quoted in an archaic dialect:
‘Under her sway gois all estatis;
Princes, prelatis, poetasis;
She sparis na prince, for his presence
Na clerk, for his intelligence;
Her awful straik may no man flee . . .’
Jimmy who had no time for such fripperies, nodded stiffly, still alert and poised. ‘And what are you doing on the trail of men who kidnap children?’ he asked.
‘The Temple particularly doesn’t like people who make death-magic,’ Coe said.
‘Why not?’ Jimmy said, thinking of rumours he’d heard of those priestesses.