After leaving the prisoner, Badger and Eilir walked back to the residence in silence, not sharing their thoughts. Badger felt awkward without the weight of a sword at his side. He hated the stupid sorcerer’s gown that Owen insisted he wear so he would not stand out and provoke questions. That was either an admission that not everyone in the Hole was completely trusted or just a reminder that Owen never completely trusted anyone.
As they walked into the candlelight entrance, the first person they saw was Owen himself—waiting for them, of course. Suspicious, of course. Standing so his hood shadowed his face, of course.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” Badger said.
The only reason Owen had let him go to speak with Wart was to find out if Wart had anything up his sleeve. Frighten a man enough and he might blurt out secrets. It was unheard of for Ironhall candidates to be taken from the school before their binding, so of course Owen suspected that Wart had not been totally honest. Owen could not imagine anyone being totally honest. He was convinced that the kid was just bait on a hook and the Old Blades were skulking around, waiting to pounce.
“I still want to know why Snake sent a boy!”
Badger groaned. “Just what I said before—the Old Blades are run off their feet and this Smealey lead was a long shot. They sent the boy because he wouldn’t attract attention. Wart isn’t capable of lying on that scale. Snake is, certainly, but the kid is scared spitless. If he knew anything about a rescue coming he’d have told us.”
Owen’s restless gaze flickered to Eilir.
“I agree,” the one-eyed man said. “He didn’t try to bribe me, which I expected, but I’m sure he just didn’t think of it. He certainly wasn’t gloating as if we’d fallen into a trap.”
“He may not know about the trap.”
“Prior,” Eilir said patiently, “I really don’t think there is a trap.”
The sorcerer pouted. “Very well. Another half hour or so. Stay in here until then,” he told Badger. He stalked away.
Without looking at Eilir, Badger headed for the stairs. Treads creaked as he climbed—the same treads that had creaked when he was a child: the third, eighth, twelfth…. Half an hour gave him just enough time to do what he wanted to do. His bones ached from lack of sleep, but that was not the main reason he felt so miserable.
He would not describe Wart as a close friend, or even a friend at all. He didn’t have friends. But the kid was amusing company and not halfwitted like some Ironhall inmates. He was a fine lutenist, juggler, acrobat. He’d earned his living as a minstrel’s helper before he was even in his teens, whereas most of the others arrived there as useless trash. At times he had been a pest, but he didn’t deserve this death. At least it would be quick, now that Owen had been talked out of his more savage intentions.
Carrying his lantern high ahead of him, Badger started up a second staircase, a very narrow one.
Kill Ambrose by all means. But to do it by killing another man—or boy—seemed so unfair! Not that Badger was about to insist on sparing Wart so he could carry out his own suicidal assassination plot. One way or another, Wart must die. He knew too much now. It was not a happy thought. All right for Owen; as a soldier, he’d killed before.
The stair brought him to a narrow, cramped space under the ridge of the roof. Low doors led to attics where servants had slept in the old days, but there were no servants in the Hole anymore, and the novices occupied the old fieldworkers’ bunkhouses. Beyond these squalid sleeping quarters, angular nooks under the eaves provided hideaways for a billion spiders, storage for generations of junk, and play areas for small boys on wet days.
Badger went to the one he wanted and broke a fingernail prying open the access panel. It had not been moved since the day the last of the Smealeys were driven from their home. With less than an hour’s warning that the Sheriff was on his way, they had hidden their most precious keepsakes in these attic cubbyholes—nothing of real value, though. Golden plates and silver candlesticks had stayed on display because the King’s men would certainly have resorted to torture if they had not found the loot they expected. Here were only sentimental treasures, like the pictures Badger had come for. They were stacked exactly as he remembered leaving them. No one was less sentimental than Owen.
But the other things he had left on top of them were still there too, because he had never told Owen or even Anwen about those. Sword, horn, and dagger—personal treasures Ceri had left in the hollow tree. The horn and sword were ordinary, but the dagger was special.
Ceri’s claim to be rightful Prince of Nythia had relied on a very flimsy tale, the drunken ravings of a half-mad grandfather, and not the terrible Grandfather Gwyn, either. It was through Anwen that the royal pretension had come, descent from an illegitimate royal daughter, who had been ignored by historians and perhaps invented long after her death. No one had put much stock in this dubious ancestor, but she had been necessary, and had been accepted by the patriots. One of those supporters had presented Ceri with an ancient dagger bearing the green dragon emblem of the royal house of Nythia worked into the hilt in gold and jade. Ceri had worn it ever after, until that final night when he had shed his last hopes and finery and ridden off to ransom his mother and brothers. It was a beautiful thing still, and much too valuable to be abandoned. Owen should have it, for he was the pretender now, Prince of Nythia. Badger put it aside to take with him.
He took up the topmost portrait and held it near the glimmering lantern. The mice had pretty much ignored it; it had not warped or split. Because Edryd had preferred to work on sawn wooden panels, the portraits were all small, no more than heads and necks, not quite life-size. The first was of the artist himself, eyes fixedly staring out of the mirror he had used. And young! Of course Edryd could not have been much older then than Badger was now. That was an unwelcome surprise. He propped the panel against the wall and reached for the next, unable to remember the order in which he had left them, twelve long years ago.
The second picture was of Bevan himself, a grinning imp of a child with his silver lock prominent. No need to linger over that one.
The third was Aneirin. Poor, tortured Aneirin! Even then, in the golden days of youth before the uprising, life had never been easy for Aneirin. There had been voices and inexplicable changes of mood. Edryd had caught some of that agony in the lowered glance, the hint of sunken cheek.
Then Lloyd, the scholar, with chin cupped in ink-stained fingers, staring down at something not shown—a book, perhaps. Lloyd himself had long since returned to the elements, and only this likeness remained to show that he had ever existed.
Ceri was fifth. Again—how young! How very, astonishingly, young! Ceri looked no older than an Ironhall senior, but perhaps he had been only nineteen or twenty when he posed for his brother. Yet how magnificent, even then! The dark curls lapping the forehead, the line of jaw, eyes raised to horizons unseen by lesser mortals. The silver lock had been most marked on him—Ceri had excelled at everything, always. Even Edryd had been inspired to create a masterpiece when he painted that wonderful head, those shiny eyes, those lips about to speak.
How young! And how…How what? For a long time Badger held the panel, staring at it, teasing out every detail, analyzing it with the experience gained in the past twelve years—adolescence, the longest and most vital years in any man’s life…. How what? What exactly was it he was seeing there that he had not expected? A dreamer? Yes, but he had always known Ceri was a dreamer. Leadership, of course. Intelligence. Courage. What else? Ruthlessness? Rather call it ambition. He had known his rebellion would cost many men’s lives. He had known that his own chances must be least of all, and he had been willing to take that chance.
No, that still wasn’t it. Idealism? Badger had never thought of Ceri as an idealist. He himself certainly wasn’t. Childhood poverty as a foreigner in Isilond had wiped the stars from his eyes. Years of grind in Ironhall under selfimposed sentence of death had toughened him even further. Ceri had been a nobleman’s son, raised in luxury. Maybe Ceri had really expected to find justice and liberty and kindness in this world. Amazing!
Time was up. They would be starting soon.
Badger left the hatch open and everything else where it lay. Only the dagger he tucked out of sight under his robe. Taking up the lantern, he headed back to the stair.