Rainfall put his arm about Forstrel’s shoulders, and the youth took him inside as the house went into uproar. She heard doors closed, shouting, crying, and quick steps as the Lessup clan gathered to discuss events.
Wistala could do nothing. She watched the rider and rig disappear, then went to Rainfall’s library. If he were greatly troubled, he’d probably go there. She curled up about his tablets and waited, unable to simply fall asleep.
He appeared as the juicy smells of dinner being cooked began to fill the house, brought in by Forstrel in a wheeled basket used for gathering fruit.
“I really must have one of those sick-benches built,” he said as he settled into his reading chair. “Thank you, Young Lessup. Ah, Tala, you appear again when you’re most needed. You can see about getting some dinner, Lessup. I won’t eat tonight.”
The boy placed a blanket over Rainfall’s legs and left, shutting the door behind.
“So much for homecoming joy. But she’s beautiful, do you not agree?”
“I’m just getting so I can tell hominids apart,” Wistala said.
“Perhaps not in a way that can be captured by portraits or sculpture, you have to look into her living eyes to appreciate her. Wild and open, like my son’s. I wonder what her mother was like.”
“Why was she angry to you?”
“I need a glass of wine,” Rainfall said. He moved for his bell—
“I’ll bring it,” Wistala said, glad of an excuse to make the trip to the cellar and back. “Which kind?”
“The blueberry, I think. Something sweet to wash the bitter words from my mouth.”
Wistala crept past the room that had been prepared for Lada and heard sobbing from the crack beneath. Her griff extended a little, and she descended to the wine cellar and searched the tags on the month’s table wine for the blueberry picture.
She carried it back up in her mouth, startling one of the younger Lessup girls as she emerged from the cellar. The child let out a squeak and ran off toward the kitchen. It was the one who liked to tie her hair up in ribbons, Wistala noted absently; all the others in the family simply watched her as she went about Mossbell.
Rainfall opened the cork-and-wax top and poured himself a generous glass. “Once I had thirty of these,” he mused as he rolled around the purple liquid. “And I didn’t have to make my own wines. Though if the estate prospers now, I’ll continue the practice. There’s a satisfaction in enjoying the fruits of one’s own labors. That’s the one thing I’ve learned all these wretched years since the troll came. Oh, and about dragons. Forgive me, Tala.”
“You ask my forgiveness? Since you saved me from the river, you’ve lost the use of your legs and your granddaughter’s love.”
“If you’ll indulge me in applying a correction: Don’t be so quick to mark fate and toss it into baskets marked ‘fortune’ and ‘misfortune’ as though you’re sorting apples. It was an illness that forced me to cease traveling as a judge—a heavy misfortune—yet that same illness kept me in Tysander, where I diverted myself at the circus and lost my heart to the most skilled rider that ever sat atop a horse. My wife could stand on a horse’s bare back with reins tied to her hair all day and still beat me with her strategy at Advantages when we played at night. I imagine if her father or grandfather had spoke against me, she would have cried out, too. I should never have shouted at her. Unforgivable.”
“What is the quarrel?” Wistala asked.
Rainfall looked out the library skylight—still cobwebbed and dusty, the Widow Lessup hadn’t climbed a ladder in the library yet—and blinked.
“She’s convinced herself she loves Hammar.”
“A man who stuck her in a cold attic?”
“Apparently she blossomed up there like a solstice succulent shut in the Yule dark. Hammar is young and wild. Nature and instinct took its course.”
“So they are mat—married?” Wistala asked.
“They can’t be, not under Hypatian law, because of her age. But sadly, she’s not too young to bear his child.” Rainfall’s fingers tightened on the glass stem, and it broke.
Her host blotted up the wine and his own blood with blotting paper. “And the last of the thirty are gone. Oh, what shall I do, Tala? I’ve suspected he wanted to add Mossbell to his lands, but to resort to this?”
“Wait, this is about land?” Wistala said.
‘“I’ve no doubt of it. With the land—soon to be prosperous again now that the troll is gone—goes responsibility for the road and bridge. He should like to make all who cross pay a toll.”
“How does he stand to get the land?”
“He won’t have any difficulty getting me declared an invalid, with the judge in his pocket. It would devolve to Lada, save that she is not of age to run an estate. Lada’s child would naturally inherit—I’m pierced from my own quiver, insisting Eyen to confirm his parentage with the priests and courts. And she’s only too happy to name Hammar as the father. He would become master of Mossbell.”
Wistala’s head hurt from trying to follow the convoluted circumstances. “I’m not sure I follow the law, but in all your talk of courts and powers—I thought it was to ensure justice and fairness. This strikes me as quite the opposite.”
Rainfall admired the glass one more time before discarding it.
“The law and fairness often dance together, but they are not married,” he said. “Lately I’ve grown too fond of engineering, for one can trust calculation and breaking strengths. No thane may change the weight of a stone, no matter how much he wishes. But! I am still master of Mossbell. Perhaps I shall sell it to the dwarves and move south.”
He sniffed the air. “But I’m keeping you from your dinner.”
She wasn’t hungry; perhaps Rainfall’s upset and sour mood had transferred itself to her by something like mind-speech.
Mossbell’s problems were like a tar pit, the more she struggled to help her host, the worse his plight became!
She went out to the stable barn and found Stog licking at the remains of his evening grain. Jalu-Coke’s kittens, all ears and tails, were chasing each other about on clumsy paws. This was the sort of law she understood: the mice ate Stog’s grain, and the cats ate the mice.
“Does the master need me?” Stog asked her.
“Oh, no,” Wistala said. “I wanted to think. The house was closing in on me. You’re looking well.”
“Good grain and clean water,” Stog said. “I am lucky. It is a blessing to know how lucky one is.”
“What happened that night we parted? Did the men find you?”
“Not the way you think,” Stog said, shifting on his hooves. Wistala nipped his bristly tail—the donkey in him showed most at the mane and tail.
“Tell me. I need a diversion. Treks and tracks, I shan’t be mad.”
“Silly, really. I took my chance to get back to the Dragonblade.”
Wistala was so astonished, she couldn’t speak.
“What?” she finally said.
“You hate me now,” Stog said. “But I’ve been wanting to tell you since our return. I’m grateful to you, unlike these fool kittens, I know what you’ve done for me. Let’s have honesty between us.”
“Was he such a fine master as all that?”
“Not as kind as our good elf. But that didn’t signify. It wasn’t the treatment; it was the excitement of the hunts. I, a pack mule at column-back, used to have flowers thrown on me as we passed through towns, mouth stuffed with carrots and sugar beets. Cheering. You must know that a dragon can wreck whole lands.”
Wistala tried to keep her tail still. “I’ve heard of dragons being blamed for storms and earthquakes.”
“You may well glare, but that doesn’t signify. Hominids fear your kind.”
“Conceded. So you thought you’d make a try for his hall?”
“Yes, I know the look of the mountains; it’s not far south of here. But I stopped in a field to avail myself of some corn . . . and the next thing I knew I had a rope around my neck and another bad master. Then you appeared again. In the Dragonblade’s mule train, I learned not to fear the dragon-smell, but I’ve never liked it until you.”
“So the Dragonblade lives not far south in the mountains? He must be close to the Wheel of Fire dwarves, then?”
Stog’s ears went up and forward. “Close? Of course. He lives in their city.”
For the second time since entering the barn, Wistala was startled into astonishment. But of course he would live with dwarves, as they helped him kill dragons.
“The Wheel of Fire?” Wistala asked.
“The dwarves build fastnesses like no others, and he must be guarded sky and tunnel. It must signify to you that the Dragonblade’s line has made enemies, very powerful enemies, of your kind.”
He’s made an enemy of me, small, stumpy, and misfortunate. But she’d promised Father nests of hatchlings.