Chapter 190 Return to Augustburg

The next morning, the three Odenheim women saw Brendan off at the gate.

He sat his horse high and splendid — as if he rode not to a liaison officer's petty post but to a chancellor's seat.

Through the city he took his time, riding easy down the Royal Avenue toward the Aldgate, wishing every acquaintance in Lohenheim would see him.

The news of yesterday — the taking-up of his post at the Regent's palace — had gone flying over half of Lohenheim as if winged; and on the road, every man who knew him saluted him with folded fists.

And the feel of it was fine.

Before, they'd styled the officeless boy "young general" to please him. Now he held an office of his own — no more standing at the tail of his brothers, eating his father's weather-face.

Passing the Fairwind Quarter, a figure came out of the crowd at the roadside that sat deep in his memory.

Whether by set purpose or mere chance, she gave him one look, turned, and slid for the edge of the crowd.

A gust of I-can-lay-hold-of-anything rose in Brendan's breast. He vaulted off the horse, strode up fast, caught her wrist before she could win back into the Fairwind Quarter, and pulled her to a carriage of his own train.

"What are you doing?"

Ruth strained with all she had to break his hold. That he would dismount and lay hands on her before the whole street — she had not dreamed of it, and it threw the rhythm of her heart into tangles all over again.

"Why run the moment you see me? That day you went back — did my cousin give you a hard time of it?"

Brendan looked at her with a smile squinted up warm, as if the two of them were friends of ten years' standing.

"My lord... n-no. He gave me no hard time."

The words Leon had said came back to Ruth; and looking at this fourth lord, his face all smiles, she could not for the life of her join him onto Valentin Voss and a bought office. It set her longing to have it out plain:

"Is — is this office of yours a thing bought of Valentin Voss?"

"How could that be? I don't know the man — never gave him a farthing. And anyway — that little scrap of loose silver of mine, does it look like the price of Valentin Voss?" Brendan's face kept its everyday ease, sure as sure.

Worry came up over her face, and she summoned her courage:

"Lord Brendan — you're new to the official world. Make no enemies, let no bad man make his tool of you, and never lend your arm to a tyrant's work. And if trouble finds you — t-talk it over with your father and your brothers. Don't carry it alone..."

"Is that concern for me I hear?"

Brendan's mood just now could make anything sound sweet — above all when the speaker was a young woman, easy enough to look at, and seemingly not unfond of him. He tipped her chin up with a finger and grinned:

"You'll be going up to Augustburg with my cousin too, won't you? I'll be waiting for you there. When the day comes, I'll find my chance and have you asked over to me — and you're not to say me no."

"No — no!"

Ruth went into a panic. Her lord must not know she was still in touch with the fourth lord of the Odenheims.

"Ha-ha-ha... My sister told me — when a woman says 'no,' it's 'yes'! And true it is!" Brendan's heart was fizzing over; he flung an arm round Ruth where she sat beside him and hugged her fast:

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"I'll remember that."

Ruth got into the carriage in a daze, and got down from it in a deeper one.

Watching the train of carriages draw away, her heart kept printing and overprinting that hard embrace of the fourth lord's. Was it an offense against her?

Ruth did not know. She must forget him. For her father's sake, for her lord's, she could not let the man go boring into her heart.

Two days on, the Countess and her daughter were to set out as well.

"My lady — Lord Leon has sent word: he sets out today as well, and hopes to travel in company with you. His people will wait for us outside the Aldgate." Rosa came in to fetch the lady and the young lady out; the baggage, great and small, had all gone up onto the carriages, and only waited for them to mount.

"Good — it's a long road, and the more company to look to each other on it, the better. Off with you now. An old woman like me goes nowhere; with Physician Zachary in the house, your minds can be at ease."

The old lady could not bear the jolts of the road; there was nothing for it but to leave her in the Lohenheim house. The whole management, outer and inner, went into Coltrain's hands; and the Countess left behind, as well, Azalea and Penny, the dowry-maids of thirty years and more, to bear Coltrain company in the running of things.

"This daughter-in-law goes now to see Alvin's great matter settled — and that lifts a great matter off your heart as well, mother."

A few more parting words, and then, with their farewells made to the old lady, the Countess and her daughter mounted the westbound carriages.

Outside the walls, Leon's train and the Odenheim carriages joined into one: the two women's carriages in the middle, a baggage wagon at head and tail, and Leon's carriage bringing up behind Lora's.

They had not gone far when Lora's carriage door came open, and Norton's grinning face appeared at the back of it.

Chance went over the side in his excitement, and Belle — nothing wiser — jumped down after him. The two dogs stood astonished: a wall-less world, with not a wall in sight to the edge of seeing; and then they were off, racing happy at Norton's horse's heels.

Lora was leaning out the window, grinning like a fool at the two of them — when somebody flashed up into the carriage, pulled her in, and dropped the window-panel to behind him.

In the carriage there was left only the few threads of sun through door and window seams — and two faces that had missed each other. Leon said nothing at all. He only folded her into his arms and kneaded her in.

Lora reached up and cupped his face in her two hands; one thread of the sun lay right across his lips — and she followed where the sun pointed, and met them.

The missing of these few days broke loose — like the avalanche, like the ice going, like ten thousand fathoms of light tearing through cloud to pour down a frozen waste.

"Thank heaven for you. A life lived over — and you're the whole of its meaning."

"Thank heaven for you. One crossing over — and I didn't go and drown at the bottom of it."

Leon brought out the two medallions. The first still wore its old cord; the one come to him from the Frost Ravens' hands he had had newly plaited with a knotted cord.

He hung one medallion at Lora's neck and smiled: "Before, it was borrowed of you. Now it goes home to its owner. The silver and gold in the Navel Hollow are mostly there yet. The Frost Ravens have gone two ways — one party keeping the Hollow, one opening the gold mine — and each of the two goes on growing."

Lora took the other medallion from his hand and knotted it carefully to his belt:

"Corin sent word back — the mining cave is found. A mountain spring runs out of the very mouth of it. Someone must have dug there once, long ago, and stopped, for who knows what reason. After the mountain passed to my great-great-grandfather, no one ever went prying into those caves."

"Corin... now I'm curious. What sort of writing does the man put to paper when he'd say something to you? He's no sit-still, like Norton."

At which Lora covered her mouth and laughed:

"Oh, don't even start. It's Grey Wolf script, plus picture-writing, plus the Empire characters he's picked up, all in one — you might fair call it a foreign language of his own inventing. Why not take him on as a pupil into the bargain? He'll be the death of you, guaranteed."

"You take me for a man going back to Augustburg to open a school? If my brother the King grants my wish and keeps me in Augustburg, there's so much the more room to work in. If it's not to be mentioned, and I'm sent back to Lohenheim still — then the slow seeping into the Silver Shield must go all the faster.

And Voss is no terror in himself. His claws show because the King wants a beast to frighten men with. Hollow him out by degrees from the middle ranks — it's not past doing."

With a fortune at his back now, Leon went at his work more at ease than ever in his life.

"Armand and Shawn have done great service this time. Following the Goldwater thread, they've laid out how the man made his common cause with the rich of the countryside — how bountiful Isfeld, all the while it was sending the King its omens of doubled grain, was having its farmers' harvest bought out from under them at beggar's prices. That million florins of his came not in a day or a night, but out of years of feeding on his own countryside..."

His own chest went heavy with the telling of it, and the words would not carry on. He drew one deep breath, and said:

"Wipe out his whole kin, and I fear there'd not be one wronged head among them."