Part 6 (1/2)
”And?”
”Northen disappeared about the right time.”
”Oh-oh. You think El Murid's got him? What're the chances?”
”I don't know. It's more hunch than anything.”
”So. Let's see. Mocker goes to see Haroun. El Murid's agents intercept him.
Question. How did they know?”
”You've got me. That bothers me more than where Mocker is. It could cost us all.
I've tried every angle I can think of. I can't find a leak. I put tagged information through everybody who was there when we conned Mocker into going. Result? Nothing.”
Ragnarson shook his head. He knew those men. He had bet his life on their loyalties before.
But the word had leaked somehow.
Had Mocker told anybody?
Thus the spy mind works. There had to be a plot, a connection. Coincidence couldn't be accepted.
Habibullah hadn't had the slightest idea of Mocker's mission. He had simply set his agents to kidnap a man, acting on news, which was common talk in the Siluro quarter, that he was traveling to Sedlmayr. Mocker had spread that story himself. The man in black had other resources.
”Keep after it. In fact, get in touch with Haroun's people.”
”Excuse me?”
”Haroun has people here. I know a little about your work. I've done some in my time. Admit it. You know them and they know you. Ask them to find out. Or you could go through our friends from Altea. They're in direct contact. Even if you find out they don't know anything, we're ahead. We'd know Mocker didn't reach the camps. Oh. Ask the Marena Dimura. They know what's happening in the hills.”
”That's where I got my Uhlmansiek rumor.”
The Marena Dimura were the original inhabitants of Ravelin, dwelling there before Ilkazar initiated the wave of migrations which had brought in the other three ethnic groups: the Siluro, Wessons, and Nordmen. The semi-nomadic Marena Dimura tribes kept to the forests and mountains. A fiercely independent people-though they had supported her during the civil war-they refused to recognize Fiana as legitimate monarch of Kavelin.
Centuries after the Conquest they still viewed the others as occupying peoples.... They put little effort into altering the situation, though. They took their revenge by stealing chickens and sheep.It was early spring. The sun rolled west. The afternoon breeze rose. The air grew cooler. s.h.i.+vering, Bragi announced, ”I'm heading back to town. Be d.a.m.ned cold by dark.” It would take that long to get home.
Prataxis and Valther joined him. They had work to do.
”You ought to go see your wife sometime,” Ragnarson told Valther. ”I had a wife who looked like that, I wouldn't go out for groceries.”
Valther gave him an odd look. ”Elana isn't bad. And you leave her alone all the time.”
Guilt ragged Ragnarson's conscience. It was true. His position was opening a gulf between him and Elana. And he hadn't only neglected her. The children, too, were growing up as strangers. He stopped chiding Valther. The man's marriage was even more successful than Mocker's.
”Yeah. Yeah. You're right. I'll take a couple days off soon as I get the new armaments thing lined up. Maybe dump the kids on Nepanthe and take Elana somewhere.
There's some pretty country around Lake Turntine.”
”Sounds perfect. And Nepanthe would love having them. She's going crazy, bottled up with Ethrian.”
Nepanthe was staying at the Palace. There were no children her son's age at Castle Krief.
”Maybe she should move out to my place?” Ragnarson's family occupied the home of a former rebel, Lord Lindwedel, who had been beheaded during the war. It was so huge that his mob of kids, and servants, and Haaken when he stayed over, couldn't fill it.
”Maybe,” Valther murmured. ”My place would be better.” His wasn't far from Ragnarson's.
The head of an intelligence service doesn't always tell his employer all he knows.
FIVE: A Traveler in Black
North of the Kratchnodians, at the Trolledyngjan mouth of the Middle Pa.s.s, stood the inn run by Frita Tolvarson. It had been in his family since the time of Jan Iron Hand. The main trade road from Tonderhofn and the Trolledyngjan interior pa.s.sed nearby, spanned the mountains, formed a tenuous link with the south. For travelers it was either the first or last bit of comfort following or preceding a harrowing pa.s.sage. There was no other hospice for days around.
Frita was an old man, and a kindly soul, with a child for almost every year of his marriage. He didn't demand much more of his customers than reasonable payment, moderate behavior, and news of the rest of the world.
There was a custom at the inn dating back centuries. Every guest was asked to contribute a story to the evening's entertainment.
Winding down from the high range, a path had been beaten in the previous night's snow. The first spring venturers were a.s.saulting the pa.s.s from the south. The path made a meandering ribbon of shadow once it reached the drifted moor, its depths unplumbed by the light of a low-hanging, full Wolf Moon. A chill arctic wind moaned through the branches of a few skeletal trees. Those gnarled old oaks looked like squatting giants praising the sky with attenuated fingers and claws.
The wind had banked snow against the north wall of Frita's establishment. The place looked like a s...o...b..und barrow from that direction. But on the south side a traveler could find a welcoming door.One such was crossing the lonely moor, a s.h.i.+vering black silhouette against the moonlit Kratchnodians. He wore a dark great cloak wrapped tightly about him, its hood pulled far forward to protect his face. He stared down dully, eyes watery. His cheeks burned in the cold. He despaired of reaching the inn, though he saw and smelled the smoke ahead. His pa.s.sage through the mountains had been terrible. He wasn't accustomed to wintery climes.
Frita looked up expectantly as a cold blast roared into the inn. He put on a smile of welcome.
”Hey!” a customer grumbled. ”Close the G.o.dd.a.m.ned door! We aren't frost giants.”
The newcomer surveyed the common room: There were just three guests.
Frita's wife bade him quit gawking and offer the man something to drink. He nodded to his oldest daughter. Alowa slipped off her stool, quickly visited the kitchen for mulled wine. ”No!” she told a customer as she pa.s.sed him on her way to the newcomer.
Frita chuckled. He knew a ”yes” when he heard it.
The newcomer accepted the wine, went to crouch before the fire. ”There'll be meat soon,” Alowa told him. ”Won't you let me take your cloak?” Her blonde hair danced alluringly as she shook it out of her face.
”No.” He gave her a coin. She examined it, frowned, tossed it to her father.
Frita studied it. It was strange. He seldom saw its like. It bore a crown instead of a bust, and intricate characters. But it was real silver.
Alowa again asked the stranger for his cloak.
”No.” He moved to the table, leaned forward as if to sleep on his forearms.
There'll be trouble now, Frita thought. She won't rest till she unveils the mystery. He followed her to the kitchen. ”Alowa, behave yourself. A man deserves his privacy.”
”Could he be the one?”
”The one what?”