Chapter 364 - 364: Two Sets of Feet

Mesterica found the panel.

Lower left.

Slide.

The wall gave on a seam that had no business being that clean after a war.

Cold air came out.

Old soap. Wet stone. A sweet film-smell that did not belong in a castle.

Rigel pointed at Cynthia.

"He stays in the chair. If he adds a sentence, you do what you said."

Cynthia did not argue.

Erna arrived with the bag held out from her body like it might bite.

It was moving in short, eager twitches.

"If this hatches on me I quit."

"It won't hatch," Rigel said.

"It wants a neck."

They went in single file.

Mesterica first.

Rigel.

Erna last, because he wanted the bag where he could hear it and she wanted a wall at her back.

The passage was narrow enough that shoulders scraped.

Servant marks on the stone.

Soot.

A child's smudge at waist height, fresh.

Footsteps ahead.

Footsteps behind, fainter, going the other way at the same time.

Erna muttered, "I hate this job."

"Bill me."

The front steps stopped.

Pell stood at a fork, wrists still marked by cord that was no longer there.

He looked like a boy who had gotten out of bed without permission.

He smiled.

"You didn't run home. That's new."

Mesterica's sword lifted.

"On the floor."

Pell sat.

Obedient.

The obedience was the insult.

"One of me went under the hall," he said.

"One of me went toward the stables. You can only catch the loud one. That's also new. We learned it from your collar. Leave the mind awake, send the rest ahead."

Rigel watched the mouth, not the smile.

"You're here to trade again."

"I'm here to be caught. The other one is the letter."

Pell tipped his head at Erna's bag.

"That scrap is loud now. You woke it. It will call until something wears it or something breaks it. Breaking it costs you Riverbend. Wearing it costs you the craftsman. Carrying it costs you time. You are bad at time."

Erna shifted her grip.

"Don't talk like he's the only one in the tunnel."

Pell's eyes went to her, interested.

"You held a hole with your hands. We could make you a door. Better pay than stone."

"Five gold," Erna said flatly.

"No."

Rigel almost smiled.

He didn't.

"Mesterica. If he stands, cut the tendon. Don't kill the body yet."

"Yet," Pell repeated, pleased.

Then his face emptied, just a little, as if someone had leaned away from a window.

"The stable one is already on a horse. Not mine. A sentry's. He asked the gate how far to Gousel lands. They told him. People tell children things."

Mesterica did not look back.

"If that's true, every minute here is stupid."

"If that's a lie, the fork is the trap," Rigel said.

He crouched.

"Pell. Which way did Jorn's keys go."

The boy blinked.

Real confusion first.

Then the other thing found the answer.

"Well," he said.

"He told me no. I asked the keys anyway. Keys don't need a boy once they've been asked."

Erna's breath caught.

"The cover."

Rigel stood.

"We split. Mesterica takes this one to Cynthia. Alive. Gagged."

He took the bag from Erna.

It jumped in his hand, hot.

"Erna with me. Stables. If there's no horse missing, we go back to the well."

Pell's voice followed them down the right fork, muffled as Mesterica bound his mouth.

It still carried.

"The little elf will hear a command before the rider arrives. That's how your stitch works. You should have left the adventurer's collar stupid."

The stable yard was too quiet for the hour.

A sentry sat by the gate with his helmet in his lap, staring at nothing polite.

When Rigel asked who took a horse, the man smiled and said,

"The boy said he was running an errand for Count Blade. He knew the Count's tired voice. We opened."

One gelding gone.

North road tack, not a racer.

Enough to reach a post house by night if no one stopped him.

Erna looked at the empty stall like it was a bad join in a wall.

"You going after a child on a horse."

"I'm going after a letter that stole a child."

Rigel swung onto the nearest remaining mount.

The bag went into his coat.

"You can stay and bill me from here."

Erna swore, grabbed a work pony without asking, and mounted like someone who moved stone, not saddles.

"If I fall off I'm adding it to the estimate."

They hit the north road hard.

Behind them, from the castle, Cynthia's voice rose once, cut off, then came back angry and alive.

Mesterica had made the hall.

That much.

Ahead, hoofprints were clean in the dust.

Small rider.

Light seat.

The prints ran true for a half mile, then split the same way the footsteps had split under the floor.

One set toward the post road.

One set toward the trees, where Riverbend's well waited with a cover that had been nailed down twice.

Erna saw it first.

"That's not one horse."

"No."

Rigel pulled up at the split.

The packet in his coat pulled left, toward the trees.

Then right, toward the road.

Then both, like a needle that could not stand to choose.

From the treeline, Jorn's voice called, almost his own.

"Lord Gousel. The cover's off. I didn't take it off. I sat where you told me. I didn't answer her name."

A pause.

"She's answering mine."

From the post road, farther, a child's laugh skipped back on the wind.

Not cruel.

Pleased.

The sound of someone who had been told he was running an errand and believed it just enough to ride.

Rigel spat blood, turned the horse toward the trees, and threw Erna the spare reins of nothing, only a look.

"Road," he said.

"If it's a boy who still answers to Pell, you keep him on the horse and you don't speak to whatever talks second. If it's only the letter, you don't chase it into the dark. You come back and tell me which."

"And you."

"The well."

He kicked forward.

The packet slammed once against his ribs, satisfied with any throat that moved.