Chapter Twelve

AS Raffa tried to digest this bleak realization, he heard shouts coming from the direction of the entrance to the clearing.

“HORSE AND RIDER! HORSE AND RIDER!”

The council members jumped to their feet.

“Stay here,” Haddie said to Kuma.

Once the adults had all rushed off, Raffa and Kuma exchanged glances, and began running too. When they drew near the entrance, they saw that the path into the clearing was blocked by a group of people holding improvised weapons—pitchforks, scythes, hoes. Raffa could hear hoofbeats, which grew louder and then slowed as the rider approached.

The horse was a majestic animal, a chestnut with a white blaze and white socks on his forelegs. The rider was a teenaged boy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, dark-haired and olive-skinned, whose fine clothing and beautiful saddle marked him on sight as a Commoner.

“HOY!” the man next to Elson shouted, waving a scythe in the air. “Stop where you are! Who are you and what’s your business here?”

The rider immediately reined his horse to a halt. He raised a hand in the air. “Aren’t you going to say ‘Once upon a time’?” he asked.

Surprise rippled through the group.

“He knows the code.” “Who could have told him?” “Why would a Commoner have the code?”

The rider raised his voice a little. “All right, then, I’ll do it myself. You say ‘Once upon a time,’ and I say ‘Happily ever Afters.’”

Still no one moved, and Raffa felt the tension rising. If a Commoner knows the code, does that mean someone has betrayed us? Does the Chancellor already know we’re here? He could see his own doubts reflected in the grim faces of those blocking the path.

The rider must have sensed it, too, for he spoke again.

“I have a message,” he called, “for the leadership council, from Senior Salima Vale.”

Raffa gasped and started forward. Fitzer, standing next to him, clamped a hand on his shoulder and held him back.

“Wait,” Fitzer growled low. “It could be a trick.”

“So you know the code,” the scythe-man said. “Do you have any other way to prove that you’re solid?”

The rider looked from face to face, clearly nervous. But when he spoke, his voice was steady. “She said that her son would be here and could confirm this: The last time he saw her, she was wearing a yellow tunic. He helped her dye it, using onion skins.”

Raffa saw both Elson and Fitzer looking at him. He nodded: What the rider had said was true.

“Good lad.” Elson clapped his shoulder, then strode forward, calling out, “Dismount, rider, and tell us who you are.”

At a gesture from Haddie, the man with the scythe searched the rider for weapons, finding none. The council then ordered everyone else back to their work.

“We’ll give a full accounting at camp meeting tonight,” Quellin promised. The crowd melted away, some people still looking back in curiosity. Both Raffa and Kuma stayed where they were. Haddie and Elson exchanged glances over their heads, but said nothing.

The council formed a semicircle around the horse, far enough away not to spook the animal. The young man stood with one hand on the horse’s bridle.

“My name is Callian,” he said. “Callian Marshall.”

“Marshall!” Fitzer said in surprise. “You’re the Advocate’s son?”

The Advocate! Raffa stared, his mouth agape. Advocate Marshall—that’s his name. This is his son?

Raffa burrowed through his memory for what he knew about the Advocate’s family. His wife—she died years ago. When I was much younger. And they had a boy, and he was an only child, wasn’t he?

Raffa saw surprise flash across Callian’s face as he noticed Fitzer’s skinstain, but he covered his reaction quickly.

“Yes,” Callian replied. “I’m here because—because Senior Salima persuaded me to leave Gilden. My da, the Advocate . . . Something’s not right with him. She’s trying to figure it out, and she was afraid that I’d be next, so I—”

“Hoy,” Elson said. “Next for what?”

Callian swallowed, and for the first time, Raffa thought he looked more frightened than nervous. “We think my da’s being poisoned.”

Sharp gasps all around, and in that moment Raffa felt the mood of the group shift, from uncertainty to sympathy. Elson came forward and raised his hand to match palms with Callian.

“Steady yourself, son,” he said. “You’re among friends now.”

Callian’s face tightened. “I don’t know exactly what’s happening, or when it started,” he said. “I blame myself for not noticing sooner.”

He explained that over the past few months his father had become more and more withdrawn, staying in his quarters much of the time and neglecting his official duties. “Whenever I saw him, he seemed really distracted, not himself at all. His eyes don’t focus right, and when he talks, he can’t seem to finish a sentence. He’s all sort of vague and—and stupid.”

Raffa remembered seeing Advocate Marshall at Mohan’s trial. In the midst of a commotion, the Advocate had appeared oddly detached.

“I talked to his staff about it,” Callian went on, “but they brushed me off. So finally I went to Senior Salima.”

Salima had explained to him that several weeks earlier she had been asked by the Advocate’s personal health tendant to prepare quantities of two different infusions. One was a sleep aid, to be taken at night, the other a calmative without sedative qualities for daytime.

“She thinks he’s being given them together,” Callian said. “I searched his quarters, but I didn’t find the infusions. His tendants must be keeping them.”

Raffa sucked in his breath. He knew the infusions that his mother would most likely have prepared—and that it was dangerous to take them both at the same time. The result would be symptoms like those being suffered by the Advocate.

“Senior Salima said that if someone is trying to poison my father, then I might not be safe, either. I didn’t want to go—I wanted to stay with him. But there’s another reason I left. The Chancellor had all the messenger pigeons confiscated, so this was the best way to get word to you.”

He shook his head. “What the Chancellor’s been doing—the Afters and the animals and everything—Senior Salima told me that, too. I didn’t know about any of it, and I’m sure my da doesn’t, either.”

“The Advocate’s being poisoned to get him out of the way?” Quellin asked. “So he won’t stop the Chancellor’s plans?”

“Well, yes,” Callian said, “most of all because the Advocate commands the guards. They’re only following the Chancellor’s orders now because my father’s not around. He’s under watch every minute, night and day. Senior Salima is working on a plan to get him away from his guards, so she can fix whatever’s wrong with him and get him back to himself. Then he’ll take command of the guards again. The Chancellor can’t possibly succeed without them.”

“Wait.” Haddie put her hand up, although no one was moving. Raffa saw that beneath her kerchief her brow was furrowed deeply. When she looked up, her face was filled with such excitement that it seemed he could almost see sparks in her eyes.

“That’s it,” she said. “He’s just given us the answer. We have to get word to Salima. She needs to cure the Advocate of—of whatever’s ailing him, and then bring him here. He’s the one who can order the guards to stop what they’re doing!”

Fitzer’s voice was equally excited. “She might not even need to get him here. Couldn’t he just do it from Gilden—give orders from there?”

“We can’t trust that the orders will go through,” Callian said slowly. “Nobody knows for sure anymore who’s with the Chancellor and who’s still loyal to my da.”

“If the Advocate could get here before the guards, there might not need to be any fighting at all,” Quellin said. “Which is what we’ve been aiming for.”

“Yes, but we can’t count on that,” Elson said. “We have to assume that the guards will arrive first, and plan tactics to stall them until the Advocate gets here. How can we get a message back to Salima without a pigeon?”

“There’s a ferry rower named Penyard. I’ve known him all my life,” Callian said. “We can trust him. And Senior Salima introduced me to a girl who’s helping her—”

“Trixin!” Raffa and Kuma said together.

“Yes, that’s right,” Callian said.

“Good, then,” Haddie said. “We’ll get a message to Mannum Penyard, for Trixin to take to Salima.” She turned and began walking back into the clearing, with most of the council following her.

“I’ll put up your horse for you,” Fitzer said. “Raffa, Kuma, maybe you could see that our guest gets to eat and rest.”

“Thank you,” Callian said politely. Before he handed over the reins, he spoke briefly to the horse. “Mal, this man is going to take care of you,” he said. “Go with him, okay?” The horse touched Callian’s arm with its nose and nickered.

Callian gave Fitzer the reins, then said, “There’s one more thing.” He opened the nearest of the two saddlebags.

Raffa was standing close enough to see an animal’s head emerge from the bag. At first he thought it was a cat, but then he saw the distinctive black-and-white mask around its eyes.

A raccoon . . . ?

Callian held out his arm, and the raccoon trundled right up to his shoulder, where it perched, looking around curiously and sniffing the air. It sniffed in Raffa’s direction, once, twice—and then let out a shrill squeak.

“Twig?” the raccoon said.

Raffa froze, his mouth a perfect circle of surprise. He stared and blinked and stared again, and finally managed to speak.

“Bando? Is that you?”

“Twig? Twig? Twig! Twig!”