Lord Chancellor Pasevalles had spent most of his morning listening to a group of fat, wealthy merchants complaining about Countess Yissola of Perdruin and her attempts to wrest control of shipping in Erkynlandish waters back from the Northern Alliance. To hear the merchants speak, the lady was part demon, part pirate, and the worst parts of both. He had done everything he could to mollify these men, but what they really seemed to want was to complain, as they had been doing for a long time, and clearly intended to continue doing. Pasevalles was trying to look interested, whatever mayhem he might have been privately contemplating, when the messenger from the Nearulagh Gate guardhouse found him. The merchants didn’t stop talking even when Pasevalles leaned aside to listen to the guardsman, and might not have noticed his divided attention if he had not loudly interrupted them.
“I’m sorry, my lords, but something very important has come up. I must leave you, but I promise that your concerns will all be relayed to the king and queen.”
“We do not merely want our concerns relayed, Lord Chancellor,” said the fattest merchant of all, Baron Tostig, who had bought his title from a distressed landowner with the profits of a lucrative trade in wool and hides. “We want the High Throne to do something!”
“And so the High Throne shall, I’m sure—but not before the king and queen return to Erkynland.” It was hard to keep patience with men like these, creatures intent only on their own ledger books and never on any larger issues. But Pasevalles had been well schooled in patience long before he had agreed to act as Hand of the Throne while Count Eolair traveled with the king and queen. “But I told you the truth, my lords—I am needed. Father Wibert, will you show the gentlemen out?”
As his secretary rounded up the herd of merchants—most of them still bitterly advertising their grievances—Pasevalles hurried to find his cloak. He made his way across the Inner Keep to the stables and borrowed one of the post-horses, fresh and already saddled. Only moments later he was riding out through the Nearulagh Gate, where the Erkynguard all gave him vigorous salutes. The chancellor was well-liked by the guardsmen, who knew he had taken their side when Duke Osric, the Lord Constable, would have reduced their numbers.
He cantered down Main Row, through the city, and out into the warren of streets that had sprung up there with the growth of Erchester. He could not help being impressed by the way the place had changed just during his time at the Hayholt. Twenty years earlier, Erchester had ended at the city walls, but today it sprawled far beyond them, with buildings both ramshackle and surprisingly well-made standing shoulder to shoulder all across Swertclif, although most of the roads were little more than well-worn tracks still muddy from the winter rains. When Pasevalles had arrived, some years after the Storm King’s War, no more than ten thousand people had lived in the castle and town, despite it being the capital of all Osten Ard. He felt sure that today there must be at least five times that many. Someday in the not too distant future the new residents outside the city proper would demand the protection of their own wall.
The only place in the outer city where houses were not squeezed higgledy-piggledy along the walls like mushrooms was on the western side, where the royal forest called the Kynswood lay stretched like a sleeping beast. It was becoming harder every year to keep the forest safe from Erchester’s growing population, not just to keep a few deer for the king’s and queen’s table, but to prevent the wholesale cutting of trees for timber, since the Kynswood was a great deal closer than the mighty Aldheorte. Only the previous Autumn the king and queen had been compelled to double the number of royal foresters, and even so King Simon hadn’t liked it much: “But what if a man is starving?” he had asked. “Should he be hung for trapping a hare?”
“If starving men know they can find a meal in the royal forest,” the queen had told him, “then there will soon be no hare in the forest, or deer, or boar, or anything.”
The king and queen made an interesting pair, Pasevalles thought, seemingly as different as husband and wife could be. Simon was proud of his lowly birth and upbringing, and if given his way would have spent most of his time in the stables or the kitchens, gossiping with the servants. But the queen had been born to the old royal house, and was comfortable with most of the privileges of wealth and noble blood. She was also very fierce about protecting what she felt was right: When she sat in judgment she was fair-minded, but in no way the soft touch for a sad story that her husband was.
Once he was beyond the outermost neighborhoods of Erchester, Pasevalles guided his mount off the Kynswood Road and down into the trees. He knew his secretary Wibert would be furious when he learned that the Lord Chancellor had gone outside the city without guards, but there were times when Pasevalles did not want to wait and this was one of them.
It was not easy to find the spot, but at last he saw a flash of red and white through the trees below him—the two rampant dragons, emblem of the royal house. He tied his horse to a branch and made his way down the slope. A pair of Erkynguards and a royal forester with a feather in his cap were waiting with a fourth man, a thin fellow in a ragged jerkin who looked as though he had been sleeping rough for some time.
“Don’t hang me, my lord!” the thin man squealed as Pasevalles finally reached them. “I only found it—I never did nothing!”
Pasevalles could see the unmistakable shape of a human body half-buried in the leaves at their feet. He turned to the man with the feather. “Your name, Forester? Then tell me what has happened here.”
The forester had the lean, weathered look of one who, had he not been given this post, might have been poaching with the man begging for his life. “Natan am I, Lord Chancellor. My lad and I were on our rounds when this fellow ran out, screaming like the White Foxes had come back. Said there was a dead ‘un in the woods. A woman.”
“Was he carrying anything? Any game?”
“I weren’t!” cried the ragged man, bursting into tears. “I were only lost!”
Pasevalles knew better, but he waited for the forester’s reply.
“No, lord. His hands were empty. His bag, too.”
The steward turned to the weeping man. “And what is your name? Be truthful or I will know it, and things will go hard for you.”
“Dregan, lord, but I done nothing wrong! I swear on St. Sutrin’s holy name!”
Pasevalles shook his head. “You may go. But I hope I never hear your name again, Dregan. And if you are caught in the royal forest again—well, you may wish we had hanged you.”
The ragged man got to his feet with many cries of gratitude, then ran back up the hill toward Erchester. The Erkynguards watched him go with the sulky expressions of dogs denied a chase.
“Begging your pardon, lord, but you know he was in these woods for only one thing,” said the forester Natan.
“Of course, but if we’d beaten him, he’d be back in a few nights. As it is, he has told me his name. That will give him pause a bit longer.” Pasevalles stepped closer to the body, then sank to his knees beside it. “So he brought you to see this. Then what happened?”
“I sent my boy to fetch the guards.”
“And we sent a messenger to you, Lord Chancellor,” said one of the Erkynguardsmen, almost proudly.
“Fine. You all did as you should.” He leaned closer, brushing away the damp leaves that clung to the body. He could see a little less than half of the face, but that was strange enough, thin and high-boned and less pale than he would have imagined. What was stranger was that he could see no other sign of decay despite the body likely having been in place for days, at least by the amount of forest debris that covered it. The corpse looked to be a woman’s. “I don’t see any sign of what . . .” he began, then the royal forester jumped and swore behind him.
“That eye!” he said. “It twitched! I saw it!” He took a few stumbling steps back.
“Don’t be foolish,” Pasevalles began, then he saw it too, the faintest tremor in the exposed eyelid. His heart jumped a little in his chest. “Merciful Aedon, I apologize. You are right.”
There was only one thing to do. Pasevalles began to dig away the mulch that covered her. After a moment, the Erkynguards got down beside him to help, although the forester stayed a careful distance away.
When they had uncovered her completely, one of the guardsmen made the sign of the Tree on his breast. The other stared for a moment, then did the same.