“Probably not.” Chade fell silent, and then decided that I had accepted the mission. “You’ll go as an attendant for an elderly noblewoman who is also going along, to visit relatives in Neatbay. It will not be too heavy a task for you. She is very elderly and her health is not good. Lady Thyme travels in a closed litter. You will ride beside it, to see she is not jolted too much, to bring her water if she asks for it, and to see to any other such small requests.”
“It doesn’t sound too different from caring for Verity’s wolfhound.”
Chade paused, then smiled. “Excellent. That will fall to you as well. Become indispensable to everyone on this journey. Then you will have reasons to go everywhere and hear everything, and no one will question your presence.”
“And my real task?”
“To listen and learn. It seems to both Shrewd and me that these Red-Ship Raiders are too well acquainted with our strategies and strengths. Kelvar has recently begrudged the funds to staff the Watch Island Tower properly. Twice he has neglected it, and twice have the coast villages of Shoaks Duchy paid for his negligence. Has he gone beyond negligence to treachery? Does Kelvar confer with the enemy to his profit? We want you to sniff about and see what you can discover. If all you find is innocence, or if you have but strong suspicions, bring news back to us. But if you discover treachery, and you are certain of it, then we cannot be rid of him too soon.”
“And the means?” I was not sure that was my voice. It was so casual, so contained.
“I have prepared a powder, tasteless in a dish, colorless in a wine. We trust to your ingenuity and discretion in applying it.” He lifted a cover from an earthenware dish on the table. Within it was a packet made of very fine paper, thinner and finer than anything Fedwren had ever shown me. Odd, how my first thought was how much my scribe master would love to work with paper like that. Within the packet was the finest of white powders. It clung to the paper and floated in the air. Chade shielded his mouth and nose with a cloth as he tapped a careful measure of it into a twist of oiled paper. He held it out to me, and I took death upon my open palm.
“And how does it work?”
“Not too quickly. He will not fall dead at the table, if that is what you are asking. But if he lingers over his cup, he will feel ill. Knowing Kelvar, I suspect he will take his bubbling stomach to bed, and never awaken in the morning.”
I slipped it into my pocket. “Does Verity know anything of this?”
Chade considered. “Verity is as good as his name. He could not sit at table with a man he was poisoning and conceal it. No, in this endeavor, stealth will serve us better than truth.” He looked me directly in the eyes. “You will work alone, with no counsel other than your own.”
“I see.” I shifted on my tall wooden stool. “Chade?”
“Yes?”
“Is this how it was for you? Your first time?”
He looked down at his hands, and for a moment he fingered the angry red scars that dotted the back of his left hand. The silence grew long, but I waited.
“I was a year older than you are,” he said at last. “And it was simply the doing of it, not the deciding if it should be done. Is that enough for you?”
I was suddenly embarrassed without knowing why. “I suppose,” I mumbled.
“Good. I know you meant no harm by it, boy. But men don’t talk about times spent among the pillows with a lady. And assassins don’t talk about . . . our business.”
“Not even teacher to pupil?”
Chade looked away from me, to a dark corner of the ceiling. “No.” After a moment more he added, “Two weeks from now, you’ll perhaps understand why.”
And that was all we ever said about it.
By my count, I was thirteen years old.
8
Lady Thyme
A HISTORY OF THE DUCHIES is a study of their geography. The court scribe of King Shrewd, one Fedwren, was very fond of this saying. I cannot say I have ever found it wrong. Perhaps all histories are recountings of natural boundaries. The seas and ice that stood between us and the Outislanders made us separate peoples and the rich grasslands and fertile meadows of the Duchies created the riches that made us enemies; perhaps that would be the first chapter of a history of the Duchies. The Bear and the Vin rivers are what created the rich vineyards and orchards of Tilth, as surely as the Painted Edges Mountains rising above Sandsedge both sheltered and isolated the folk there and left them vulnerable to our organized armies.
I jerked awake before the moon had surrendered her reign over the sky, amazed that I had slept at all. Burrich had supervised my travel preparations so thoroughly the night before that, had it been left to me, I would have departed a minute after I had swallowed my morning porridge.