Against The World

Chapter 102: The Price of a Question

They found the man at a posting house south of Stoneford.

He had changed his name.

He had not changed his coat.

The ostler recognized the silver repair at one cuff, and the caravan master remembered him because he had complained about the price of sharing a wagon while owning two perfectly serviceable legs.

Eliza told me this without smiling.

“Did he resist?”

“He tried to leave through the kitchen.”

“And?”

“The kitchen door opened onto a yard with one exit.”

“Which you were watching.”

“Which the Stoneford watch was watching.”

I nodded.

I had begun imagining myself at every door again.

“What did they find?”

She placed a small leather book on the table.

“Enough to keep him for questions.”

The book contained ordinary things at first.

Prices.

Names of inns.

Distances between towns.

Then I reached Stoneford.

There were sketches of the exchange court.

The public gate schedule.

Descriptions of the guards.

One page listed people who worked there, with little marks beside their names.

“What do these mean?”

“Whether he approached them. What he thought they might accept.”

Money.

A better position.

An introduction to someone influential.

I turned the page.

There were only four lines on the next one.

Queen travels with both.

Mother and father frequently present.

Children carried.

No fixed hour confirmed.

I read them once.

Then closed the book.

Eliza waited.

For a moment, all I could hear was the fire.

“His name?”

“Deren Holt. We believe that one is genuine. A commercial agent in Stoneford recognized him.”

“Who employed him?”

“He says he sells information to whoever wants it.”

“Then we should find out who wanted this.”

“We’re working on that.”

I rested my hands flat on the table.

“Tell me where I can help.”

Evelyn read the book that afternoon.

She did not close it where I had.

She went to the end.

Then returned to the page with our children on it.

“Has anyone seen these notes besides him?”

“He claims he hadn’t sent that part.”

“Claims.”

“Yes.”

She looked toward Mary.

“Can you compare his dates with the gate records?”

“I have begun.”

“And the names of the workers?”

“Eliza is speaking to them.”

Evelyn set down the book.

Her hands were steady.

Her face was not.

I moved my chair closer.

After a while, she said, “He watched us leave.”

I had reached that conclusion too.

“I’m sorry.”

She turned toward me.

“You didn’t invite him.”

“No.”

We sat together until Mary quietly gathered the papers and left.

Then Evelyn leaned against me.

I held her.

Neither of us tried to make the other feel foolish for being frightened.

Two days later, the Stoneford magistrate asked whether I would attend a second interview.

Holt had agreed to identify his employer.

He wanted to give the name directly to me.

Eliza disliked this.

“So do I,” Garrick said when I told him.

“Why?”

“He wants to negotiate with the person most affected.”

I looked at him.

“He may also think you can promise things the magistrate cannot.”

“Can I?”

“You can. That doesn’t mean you should.”

I considered the invitation.

Then asked Eliza to have the magistrate present, along with Mary.

“I’ll listen.”

Garrick nodded.

“Listening is permitted.”

Deren Holt looked disappointingly ordinary.

I had not expected horns.

But some part of me had wanted him to look as though he belonged to what I had been feeling.

He was a little older than me.

Thin-faced.

Carefully dressed despite several nights in custody.

He stood when I entered the magistrate’s room.

His eyes went immediately to my hands.

I sat down.

“Master Holt.”

“Your Majesty.”

The magistrate, a woman named Vessa, indicated his chair.

He sat.

For a while, nobody spoke.

Then Holt looked toward Mary’s pen.

“I understand there has been concern about the nature of my work.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I never intended harm to your household.”

“What did you intend?”

“To prepare an account.”

“Of when my children travel.”

“Among other matters.”

I kept my voice level.

“For whom?”

He wet his lips.

“That is what I hoped to discuss.”

He wanted safe passage out of Stoneford.

His belongings returned.

A written promise that neither Greykeep nor its officers would pursue him.

Vessa let him finish.

Then she folded her hands.

“You offered money to a gate employee in return for records he was not permitted to sell. We have his statement and the amount you named in your book.”

“I was asking for information.”

“You were asking him to take it from the receiving office.”

Holt glanced at me.

I said nothing.

His shoulders lowered.

“Then what can you offer?”

“Your cooperation will be recorded,” Vessa said. “You will have an opportunity to answer the accusations before judgment.”

He looked dissatisfied.

I leaned forward.

“You asked for me.”

“Yes.”

“I’m here. Tell me what you wanted me to hear.”

The commission had come through a factor named Verran Dace.

Dace rented rooms above a cloth warehouse near Stoneford’s south market.

He arranged introductions, found buyers for difficult cargo, and took payment for other work that rarely appeared in his ordinary accounts.

Holt had dealt with him before.

“This time he wanted a survey of the gates.”

“Which gates?” Eliza asked.

“Stoneford. Valewood. Greykeep, if I could gain entry.”

“And the household?”

Holt looked at the tabletop.

“That was a separate request.”

The magistrate asked him to repeat it precisely.

He did.

Who accompanied Evelyn.

Whether both children always traveled together.

Where visitors waited before a gate opened.

Whether there was a passage used by servants to avoid the receiving court.

Mary wrote every word.

I felt the edge of the table beneath my fingers.

“Why did he want those details?”

“He didn’t say.”

“What did you think he wanted them for?”

Holt was silent.

I waited.

At last, he said, “I tried not to think about it.”

That was the answer I remembered afterward.

Not his employer’s name.

Not the money.

That.

I tried not to think about it.

He had seen us carrying our children.

Had watched Evelyn adjust a blanket.

Had written down enough to know that the bundles in our arms were people.

Then he had gone looking for a price.

Eliza asked another question.

I let her.

By the time the interview ended, we had an address, a description, and the place where Holt had been told to deliver his notes.

He looked up as I stood.

“Your Majesty. I’ve told you everything.”

“Then I’m glad you decided to.”

“Does that mean—”

“The magistrate explained what it means.”

I left before I said anything else.

Dace was still in Stoneford.

He had apparently expected Holt to be delayed by the weather.

When the watch entered his rooms, he tried to throw a packet of letters into the stove.

An officer caught his wrist.

A second officer retrieved the packet.

There was no fight after that.

Eliza sent word before evening.

I read the message beside the nursery door.

Inside, Evelyn was speaking to Carol.

The familiar softness of her voice made me close my eyes.

Then I went in and told her what had happened.

The letters took three days to examine.

Mary worked with Stoneford’s clerks.

They compared handwriting, payment records, and delivery receipts.

Dace had conducted enough genuine business that separating the two kinds took time.

I found this intolerable.

It still took time.

Meanwhile, the foundry completed another order.

Orselle sent lamp oil.

Bram wrote from the healing house to complain that Hester had confiscated his measuring cord after finding him beside the new store cupboard.

Evelyn laughed when she read that.

I was grateful for the sound.

We continued our lessons.

On the first evening after the interview, I could not hold a simple ward without making it too thick.

Aurelia watched the light gather.

Then she told me to lower it.

I tried.

The working resisted.

I had poured so much into it that every adjustment pulled at something else.

Evelyn stood beyond the practice doorway.

She waited until I released the whole thing.

Then she came to stand beside me.

“You’re doing the interview again,” she said.

I looked at her.

“In your head.”

“Yes.”

“Did you think of a better answer?”

“No.”

Aurelia moved a bench closer.

We sat.

For a little while, the lesson consisted of me telling them what I wished I had said.

Neither interrupted.

When I had finished, Aurelia asked whether I wanted to try again.

This time, I used less power.

Evelyn held the near edge while I opened the center.

The ward remained.

She stepped through.

Then came back.

I felt the little change where her light touched mine.

Distinct.

Steady.

A place I could recognize without looking.

“Again,” she said.

We managed it three times.

On the fourth, we both lost concentration.

But when the working faded, I was breathing normally.

Aurelia looked pleased.

“Keep that feeling,” she said.

“Which?”

“Knowing where the other person is helping.”

Evelyn took my hand.

I thought I could remember that.

The payment trail led to Veyr.

More precisely, to an account managed by a secretary in Lord Roderic Sennath’s household.

I remembered him in our hall.

The careful voice.

The demands concerning Aurelia.

His attention when I had called lightning into my hand.

Mary placed the copied records before the council.

“The secretary’s authorization appears on two payments to Dace. One before Holt left. One after his first report.”

“What did the first report contain?” Evelyn asked.

“Public gate hours. Cargo volumes. A description of the receiving arrangements.”

“And the second commission?”

“A request for details concerning the royal household. Dace retained the letter.”

“Signed by Sennath?”

“No. By the secretary.”

I looked at the page.

The request was brief.

That made it worse somehow.

Someone had taken very little space to ask when my children might be easiest to reach.

We sent the evidence to Veyr’s crown.

Copies of the letters.

The payment records.

The statements, with the names of cooperating gate workers withheld from the foreign copies.

I dictated the first draft.

Mary read it back.

Garrick suggested removing one sentence.

I considered it.

Then agreed.

The final letter required an explanation of the commission and the authority under which it had been issued.

It named Sennath’s household.

It stated that any attempt to seize, injure, or interfere with my family would be treated as a hostile act.

I signed it.

Evelyn signed beneath me.

Then she looked at Mary.

“Make certain they receive the question about the children exactly as it was written.”

Mary nodded.

There would be no comfortable version in which this became an ordinary inquiry about trade.

The two porters came to Greykeep the following morning.

Their names were Pellan and Sef.

Pellan was older, with a stiff left knee.

Sef had been the one who reported Holt to the watch.

They stood in my study looking far more nervous than I wanted.

“Please sit.”

They sat on the edges of their chairs.

I thanked them.

Pellan looked down.

“We didn’t know he meant anything by it at first.”

“You noticed when the questions changed.”

Sef nodded.

“He kept asking about the little ones.”

Evelyn sat beside me.

“Our children,” she said quietly.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Thank you for thinking about them.”

Sef’s ears reddened.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Pellan cleared his throat.

“We weren’t dismissed from the gate work for anything bad.”

I glanced toward Eliza.

She gave the smallest shake of her head.

Seasonal work.

Fewer shifts during the coldest weeks.

“I know,” I said.

His shoulders eased.

We discussed the regular positions they had already applied for, the work available, and when they could expect an answer.

When they left, they walked a little less carefully.

That afternoon, I went to the lower garden with Evelyn and the children.

Eliza knew where we were.

A guard stood beneath the arch.

The rest of the arrangements were quiet enough that I did not need to spend the walk looking at them.

Evelyn carried Carol.

I held Garrick close against my coat.

The air had softened.

Water dripped from the bare branches above the path.

At the bench, we sat.

My son looked up at me and made a small sound.

I answered him.

He tried again.

It was not a word.

It was barely a syllable.

I found myself leaning closer anyway.

Evelyn smiled.

“What did he say?”

“I’m not certain.”

“Then don’t agree to anything.”

I laughed.

Garrick opened his mouth and produced another soft, delighted noise.

For a few moments, the whole garden narrowed to his face.

Veyr had not answered when we went to bed.

The inquiry was still open.

There were people in custody and others whose names we might not yet know.

I set the latest report in the study drawer before entering our rooms.

Evelyn looked up from the storybook.

“Finished?”

“For tonight.”

She shifted to make room beside her.

I sat.

Carol slept against her arm.

Garrick watched the moving firelight from his cradle.

My wife handed me the book, open to the fox at the river.

I began reading.

Halfway down the page, she rested her head against my shoulder.

When I reached the end, I waited.

“Another?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

So I turned the page.

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